Effects of disability exposure on implicit association test scores

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of exposure to counter-stereotypical information about physical disabilities on implicit attitudes. Ten undergraduate students completed a mental imagery task relating to physical disabilities while the other ten students were given a filler task prior to the measurement of their implicit and explicit attitudes using an Implicit Association Task (IAT). It was hypothesized that both groups would have equally negative implicit attitudes. However, results revealed that the implicit attitudes of participants who completed the counter-stereotypical task showed significantly more negative implicit attitudes than the no imagery group whose attitudes were also negative (F(1, 16) = 7.61, p=.014, 112 =.32). It is believed that exposure to the category group resulted in increased accessibility of negative attitudes because memory prefers stereotype congruent information rather than incongruent information. To overcome this memory bias, repeated presentation of counter-stereotypic information is suggested due to the way the cognitive system responsible for implicit attitudes is thought to function