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From Bias to Behavior: Predicting Prejudice Towards Autistic Individuals
An increasing number of young people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis are entering the university population, but little research has examined bias that these individuals may experience in the university setting. The existing literature on bias towards individuals with ASD has typically focused on children and offers mixed results. Also, no study has attempted to investigate the connection between bias and behavior in the context of a peer interaction.
Objectives:
This study assessed bias against ASD individuals, by examining whether interacting with an individual they believed to be autistic would influence university students’ judgments of and behaviors toward the individual. We also measured both explicit and implicit bias, as well as the relationship between bias and interaction behavior.
Methods:
The participants were 112 undergraduate students from a medium-sized Southeastern university. In Part 1 of the study, participants completed the Societal Attitudes Towards Autism Scale (SATA), an explicit measure of attitudes towards individuals with ASD. Next, participants completed an implicit association test (IAT) to measure implicit biases against individuals with ASD. During Part 2 of the study, participants completed an interaction task in which they spent 3 minutes discussing a neutral prompt with a trained confederate who displayed behaviors consistent with or inconsistent with ASD. A 2 x 2 factorial design was employed, in which the confederate portrayed either an ASD or neurotypical individual, and the participant was led to believe that the confederate belonged to a fictitious ASD Club, or not (non-ASD Club). Non-verbal behavior indicating implicit discomfort in the interaction was subsequently coded by research assistants.
Results:
A total of 56 participants completed all testing sessions and were included in the final data analyses (24 male; Mage = 19.00, SD = 1.11). Scores on the IAT were significantly higher than 0, p < .001, suggesting an overall implicit bias against ASD individuals. The mean score on the SATA, however, suggested an overall positive explicit attitude towards ASD individuals. Regression analyses revealed a significant IAT x Club interaction, β = .44, p = .015. For the ASD Club condition, there was a significant negative relationship between IAT and non-verbal behavior such that greater implicit bias was associated with more positive non-verbal behavior. For the non-ASD Club condition, there was a significant positive relationship between the two variables such that greater bias was associated with more negative non-verbal behavior. Finally, SATA was associated with more positive non-verbal behavior.
Conclusions:
We found an overall negative implicit bias against ASD individuals but overall positive explicit attitudes towards ASD individuals. Furthermore, more positive attitudes were associated with more positive non-verbal behavior. Implicit attitudes were also associated with non-verbal behavior, but this relationship differed as a function of whether participants thought they were interacting with an ASD individual or not. This work has implications for the experience of college students on the Autism Spectrum. Future research could help establish whether this is a product of social desirability bias.