**5. Attitudes**

Belief systems, values and attitudes impact on how a person responds to others, those with or without a learning disability, either at an individual, group or societal level [25]. McConkey [27] defines attitude as peoples' expressed opinion and their anticipated reactions towards specific events within their personal experience.

Attitudes can also be defined in terms of mood, thought processes, behavioural tendencies and evaluation [28, 29]. Evaluations including cognition, affect and behaviour are fundamental to the notion of attitudes. Cognitive evaluations refer to thoughts people have about the object. Affective evaluations refer to feelings or emotions people have and behavioural evaluations refer to people's ensuing actions. Attitudes are generally accepted as stable qualities in a person or society and empirical evidence would suggest that attitudes are cognitively and behaviourally learned rather than native [29].

In relation to learning disability, Gellman [30] proposed that positive or negative societal attitudes to people with learning disabilities are learned in early childhood and are dictated by socially accepted norms whereby society creates attitudes towards the people who are categorized as different.

Thomas [31] suggests that societal perceptions and treatments of persons with disabilities within all cultural settings vary from acceptance or tolerance to hatred or indeed awe or revulsion. The affective attitudes held by society as identified by Wright [32] included pity, fear, uneasiness, guilt, genuine, sympathy and respect. These attributes are clearly divided into positive and negative categories and are likely to impact the relationship between persons with disabilities and society. Negative attitudes can and do stigmatize people with disabilities, thereby, denying them equal opportunities for personal and professional development, living options and demoting them to second-class citizens, who should be pitied [33].

In many instances, the initial response when dealing with people with learning disabilities is to place the individual in a predetermined category based on what is assumed to be his or her attributes and status based on exterior appearance. Such attitudes produce stigma and isolation. Wright [32] describes the phenomenon of stigma extension as taking place when a person with a disability is viewed as disabled not only with respect to the specific area of disability but also to other characteristics.

Societal attitudes are significant since they largely determine the extent to which the personal, social, educational and psychological needs of people with learning disabilities will be met [34–35]. From every standpoint, whether that of human rights or social desirability, people with learning disabilities should be treated equally with all others. Those labelled 'disabled' are often treated differently by society, which may emphasize the disability of the individual instead of their ability. Ritchie [25] identified that adults with a learning disability are much less likely than other people in society to have their own home, to have a paid job, to be included in their local school, to have a network of social contacts or to have a bank account.

of service provision perceived by Ritchie [25] in 1999 was one of the segregation and could

The aim therefore of service providers who wish to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities should be to reduce segregation and promote social inclusion. It seems that people with learning disabilities living in community settings participate more than people living in segregated setting; however, the level of participation is still much lower than in other marginalized groups [17, 26–27]. For social inclusion to occur, consideration must be taken of the

Belief systems, values and attitudes impact on how a person responds to others, those with or without a learning disability, either at an individual, group or societal level [25]. McConkey [27] defines attitude as peoples' expressed opinion and their anticipated reactions towards

Attitudes can also be defined in terms of mood, thought processes, behavioural tendencies and evaluation [28, 29]. Evaluations including cognition, affect and behaviour are fundamental to the notion of attitudes. Cognitive evaluations refer to thoughts people have about the object. Affective evaluations refer to feelings or emotions people have and behavioural evaluations refer to people's ensuing actions. Attitudes are generally accepted as stable qualities in a person or society and empirical evidence would suggest that attitudes are cognitively and

In relation to learning disability, Gellman [30] proposed that positive or negative societal attitudes to people with learning disabilities are learned in early childhood and are dictated by socially accepted norms whereby society creates attitudes towards the people who are

Thomas [31] suggests that societal perceptions and treatments of persons with disabilities within all cultural settings vary from acceptance or tolerance to hatred or indeed awe or revulsion. The affective attitudes held by society as identified by Wright [32] included pity, fear, uneasiness, guilt, genuine, sympathy and respect. These attributes are clearly divided into positive and negative categories and are likely to impact the relationship between persons with disabilities and society. Negative attitudes can and do stigmatize people with disabilities, thereby, denying them equal opportunities for personal and professional development,

living options and demoting them to second-class citizens, who should be pitied [33].

In many instances, the initial response when dealing with people with learning disabilities is to place the individual in a predetermined category based on what is assumed to be his or her attributes and status based on exterior appearance. Such attitudes produce stigma and isolation. Wright [32] describes the phenomenon of stigma extension as taking place when a person with a disability is viewed as disabled not only with respect to the specific area of dis-

attitudes of those in communities towards people with learning disabilities.

specific events within their personal experience.

behaviourally learned rather than native [29].

ability but also to other characteristics.

categorized as different.

still be said to be the same.

188 Learning Disabilities - An International Perspective

**5. Attitudes**

Bert Massie, Chairperson of the UK Disability Rights Commission, highlighted that attitudes to disability are the major barrier to peoples' full participation, integration and acceptance by societies [35]. While such negative attitudes persist, the full rights of people with learning disabilities will not be justly realized [37]. Researchers no longer question if attitudes predict behaviours, but under what circumstances do attitudes predict behaviours [38]. Behaviour is related to attitudes in complex ways and many factors do influence the attitudes of society.

Attitudes are directly influenced by personal experience of events or people and resultant positive or negative reinforcement outcomes [39–40]. Attitudes are indirectly swayed by social learning and observation or by learning through association [39–40]. A clear relationship exists between attitudes and personal experience of disability and this truism has been identified in many research projects worldwide [41–43].

The role of direct experience may be particularly important in attitude formation. Positive effects of contact have been demonstrated in many arenas including attitudes towards the elderly, psychiatric patients and children with disability [44–47]. Attitudes formed through direct experience may be better predictors of later behaviour than attitudes formed through indirect experience.

Hewstone [46] attempted to answer how direct contact between groups work in changing attitudes and diminishing or banishing prejudices. Pettigrew and Tropp [45] proposed four major potential mechanisms: learning about the other group, the '*out group'*; behaviour-driven attitude change, e.g. forming more positive attitudes after cooperating in a learning task; '*ingroup'* reappraisal and; generating affective ties. It is engendering affective links, including the creation of close friendships that seems to be the most effective strategy in reducing negative stereotypes and misinformed preconceptions about disability.

Deal [47] found that the contact hypothesis was not supported by his research on attitudes of people with disabilities to other people with disabilities and diverse functional impairments. He suggests, however, that whether the contact between people with disabilities is voluntary or involuntary may be a significant variable. Allport [48] in his classic volume, The Nature of Prejudice, expounded the contact hypothesis for future generations of policy makers and social psychologists.

Hewstone [46] demonstrated through research that contact works to improve attitudes, how it works and when it works. Antonak [49] showed that the most influential factor in the attitudinal scores in his study was the intensity of contact with people with disabilities and centred on the impact of contact, however this contact must be on at least equal terms [49].

Wai et al. [40] found, in common with other studies including Gelber [41] and Elmaleh [42], that contact and knowledge factors influence the development of positive attitudes towards people with disabilities.

#### **5.1. Researching attitudes**

Experts in attitude research generally divide methods to measure attitudes into direct and indirect approaches [50]. Direct methods involve the respondents being aware that they are participating in attitude measurement and typically involves self-report surveys. Due consideration should be given to the use of more subtle or indirect methods of assessing attitudes. People may often hold subtle forms of prejudice towards disability that may not be detected when using more direct methods that allow respondents to respond in ways they consider more socially appropriate [51] and therefore while it is now more socially appropriate for the public to espouse positive global attitudes towards disability than negative, specific attitudes, if investigated, may be found to be more negative [4]. This social desirability phenomenon, where it becomes more appropriate socially to express certain sentiments and attitudes, may not necessarily be reflected in behaviour.

Ichheiser [4] was a social psychologist of the Austrian phenomenological tradition wrote in depth about attribution biases long before other theorists. He theorized that people have two aspects of personality, their visible outside that is exposed to pressure and control from others and an invisible inside. In other words, society misshapes the image of the other person by describing certain characteristics to their personality. He argued that attitudes and opinions are often based on the assumption people do have definite attitudes and opinions, however most people have confused ambiguous indefinite opinions and attitudes about many things, and their attitudes and sentiments are often still more confused [4].

Therefore, Ichheiser [4] maintained that the findings in attitude research seriously missed the point. The reason for this was that people expressed to use '*views in principle*' and '*views in fact*'. He suggested that views in principle are how people think they would act or how they think they should act when confronted by issues are events that are important. *Views in fact* determined a person's actions and reactions when exposed to certain events or issues. He posited that both views were genuine. This theory assists in explaining how members of society, for example, who live in areas where there were no community-homes express no reservations about having people with learning disabilities as neighbours [views in principle]; whereas views in fact surface when a community based home for people with learning disabilities is next door to their home. This latter attitude is referred to as not in my backyard (NIMBY)'effect.

Ichheiser [4] theorized that to prevent distance confounding attitude results, immediate neighbours should be targeted in attitude research. Therefore, in researching attitudes, a microneighbourhood has utility and applicability.

Decisions on choice of instrumentation to measure attitude are always a compromise between the ideal and the practical. It is advisable, however, to use a previously developed validated instrument that has been used in similar attitude [27] research, as showcased in the exemplar, Methodology section. Other widely used instruments to examine attitudes towards people with learning disabilities include the *Attitudes towards Disabled Persons Scale* [ATDP, 52] and the *Scale of Attitudes towards Disabled Persons* [SADP, 53]. Both these tools assess attitudes from a social as opposed to a personal perspective with questions centring how persons are, or should be, treated at the societal level [54]. The latter instrument however poses concerns, specifically relating to socially desirable responses (views in principle) and false positive scores. A more contemporary instrument, commonly used, is the *Attitudes towards Intellectual Disability Questionnaire* [ATTID, 55]. This instrument was developed according to a multi-dimensional model [56] addressing affective, cognitive and behavioural components of attitudes. The ATTID is based on several previously validated instruments such as the *Mental Retardation Attitude Inventory*—*Revised* [57], the *Behavioural Intention Scale* [58], the *Community Living Attitudes Scale-Mental Retardation* [59], the *Pictographic Scale* [36] and the interview questionnaire from the *Multinational Attitude Study Survey* [60]. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the ATTID range from 0.59 to 0.89 showing good internal consistency for the five factors and 0.92 for the overall questionnaire; test-retest reliability generated correlations ranging from 0.62 to 0.83 for the five factors [56]. Morin et al. [55] suggest that the ATTID *can* be used to measure attitudes among different populations and allows comparisons over time within the same population.

The ATTID questionnaire has much practical and research utility in attitude research where the researcher is endeavouring to ascertain the general population attitude in relation to people with learning disabilities.

Much of the research on attitude has suggested however that increasing personal contact with people with learning disabilities by supporting them to access education, employment and social activities on an equal footing with everyone else may prove to be the most important and equitable of interventions. Abbott and McConkey [61] argue that positive attitudes follow on from increased social contact, thus a priority should be to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to engage in social contact. Clifford-Simplican et al. [2] recommended further research in the community. They highlight that communities face different challenges in fostering social inclusion depending on their characteristics, e.g. rural versus urban communities, or heterogeneous versus homogenous communities. Different forms of community organizations will likely have different attitudes towards people with learning disabilities that affect social inclusion and hence ascertaining these attitudes is very important, bearing in mind the need to separate attitudes in fact to attitudes in principle.

A research case study exemplar utilizing McConkey et al.'s [62, Appendix 1] *Attitude Questionnaire* and micro-neighbourhood combined with a comparative survey design will be outlined hereunder, which will compare views/attitudes in principle versus views/attitudes in fact. More specifically, the research examined if differences existed in attitudes to people with learning disabilities in the immediate vicinity of a community-home for people with learning disabilities, when compared with those living in a neighbourhood with no such community-homes.
