HOW CONCEPTIONS OF DISABILITIES ARE SHAPED BY LABELS AND DIAGNOSES

Abstract

Highly funded social movements aim to improve the lives of persons with disabilities. The “Person-first Language” movement (1980s) has not been empirically revisited to account for recent progress in the treatment of persons with disabilities, such as diminished use of de-humanized language. Evidence suggests that many disabled people and/or communities oppose the person-first language movement, and these sentiments may depend on factors such as whether a disability and/or diagnosis was acquired at birth or later in life. This study explored whether non-disabled adults conceive of novel disabilities differently when a person-first label (vs. a condition-first label) is used to describe them, and when diagnoses were acquired at birth (vs. in the teenage years). Study 1 investigated this impact at the symptom level, while Study 2 investigated it at the diagnosis level. For a series of vignettes, participants were asked to make judgements about how “essential” (consistent, deeply-rooted, and broadly-ramifying) physical, sensory, or cognitive disability symptoms or diagnoses are on characters’ identities. Across both studies, adults judged persons’ disabilities to be just as essential to persons’ lives, regardless of label. In Study 2 (but not Study 1), adults modified their judgements of persons’ disabilities based on the time of diagnosis; they judged persons’ disabilities to be more essential to their lives if those disabilities had been diagnosed since birth. Thus, the time in which a person’s disability is acquired, but not the way in which it is labeled, shaped non-disabled persons’ essentialist judgments. We may be able to shift resources toward other efforts that have more promise in benefitting these communities today.