title: Don't look at my wheelchair! The plasticity of longlasting prejudice.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Scientific research has consistently shown that prejudicial behaviour may contribute to discrimination and disparities in social groups. However, little is known about whether and how implicit assumptions and direct contact modulate the interaction and quality of professional interventions in education and health contexts.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This study was designed to examine implicit and explicit attitudes towards wheelchair users.
  
  
  METHODS
  We investigated implicit and explicit attitudes towards wheelchair users in three different groups: patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI); health professionals with intense contact with wheelchair users, and healthy participants without personal contact with wheelchair users. To assess the short-term plasticity of prejudices, we used a valid intervention that aims to change implicit attitudes through brief direct contact with a patient who uses a wheelchair in an ecologically valid real-life interaction.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found that: (i) wheelchair users with SCI held positive explicit but negative implicit attitudes towards their novel in-group; (ii) the amount of experience with wheelchair users affected implicit attitudes among health professionals, and (iii) interacting with a patient with SCI who contradicts prejudices modulated implicit negative bias towards wheelchair users in healthy participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of a wheelchair immediately and profoundly affects how a person is perceived. However, our findings highlight the dynamic nature of perceptions of social identity, which are not only sensitive to personal beliefs, but also highly permeable to intergroup interactions. Having direct contact with people with disabilities might foster positive attitudes in multidisciplinary health care teams. Such interventions could be integrated into medical education programmes to successfully prevent or reduce hidden biases in a new generation of health professionals and to increase the general acceptance of disability in patients.
authors.affiliation: IRCCS (Istituto di Recovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico [Research Hospital]) Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bigna
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lenggenhager
authors.affiliation: IRCCS (Istituto di Recovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico [Research Hospital]) Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scivoletto
authors.affiliation: IRCCS (Istituto di Recovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico [Research Hospital]) Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Molinari
authors.affiliation: IRCCS (Istituto di Recovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico [Research Hospital]) Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.|Department of Psychology, University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Mariella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pazzaglia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D059825:Physical Therapists / Q000523:psychology; D011287:Prejudice / Q000523:psychology*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012933:Social Identification; D013124:Spinal Injuries / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D014910:Wheelchairs; D055815:Young Adult