Do people with intellectual disabilities experience bias at the hands of the professionals trained to support them?

Thomson, Duncan R (2007) Do people with intellectual disabilities experience bias at the hands of the professionals trained to support them? University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

The literature review is interested in the presence of and reasons for poor emphatic understanding of people with intellectual disabilities by the professionals who support them. The review examines the literature finding evidence for a focus on behaviour as opposed to emotion and distress. Literature in the areas of the response of people with intellectual disabilities to bereavement and diagnostic overshadowing demonstrate how the Intellectual Disability label can influence the judgement of support workers and psychologists alike. Attribution theory is used as a framework for understanding these biases.

In order to test whether professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities show empathy and attribution bias an online vignette-based approach was used. On entering the study via email the participants were randomly assigned to either the intellectual disability or non-intellectual disability vignette condition and asked to predict the response of the people in the vignettes to seven everyday situations. These predictions were categorised into behavioural and emotional predictions. Participants were also asked to rate these responses on 5 attribution dimensions. Each participant then completed a measure of empathy. It was found that the participants did indeed predict a higher number of behavioural responses to emotional responses when they believed the person had an intellectual disability. The participants also showed significant differences in the way they made attributions for these responses but the style in which they did so varied between situations. Conclusions are drawn about the input psychologists could have in supporting services for people with intellectual disabilities.

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