Page 15 - The Mobility Project, 2022

mobility news & research
Study: Bias Against People with Disabilities Isn’t Decreasing
New research out of Harvard says biases against people with disabilities are not substantially fading or changing, even as biases against other groups of people are.
Researchers Tessa E.S. Charlesworth and Mahzarin R. Banaji, both from Harvard University, published their study in American Psychologist.
Charlesworth and Banaji say that while biases about sexual orientation and race have been decreasing, the bias towards people with disability hasn’t changed much over the last decade and a half.
A report on the research from Harvard Gazette said, “Those hidden prejudices [against people with disabil- ities] have hardly changed over a 14-year period and could take more than 200 years to reach neutrality, or zero bias.”
The Gazette quotes Charlesworth, who is doing post-doctoral research with Harvard’s department of psychology: “Implicit bias can change. But so far, it’s only changed for some groups. It changed for sexuality and race bias pretty dramatically. Sexuality biases dropped 64 percent over 14 years. ... Disability bias over 14 years has only shifted by 3 percent. The disparity between the
change in sexuality bias and the stability in disability bias is massive.”
Charlesworth told The Gazette that explicit biases about people with disabilities have dropped by 37 percent. But implicit biases — Charlesworth describes those as “more automatic and less controlled” than explicit beliefs — can be much harder to move. In a June 2021 Harvard Horizons talk called, “Can Implicit Bias Change?”, Charlesworth said implicit bias against people with disabilities hasn’t improved at all in the last 10 years.
In that talk, Charlesworth explained that major shifts
in biases across large swaths of society often happen in response to significant “social movements, such as Black Lives Matter or #MeToo, federal legislation of same-sex marriage or mainstream media representation. My new research is telling us that these are the kinds of social events that are prompting transformation not only in our explicit, conscious values, but also in implicit bias. We know now that even implicit bias can change.”
The research published in American Psychologist is titled, “Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes II.” m
Researchers Say Swearing Can Help in PT
If you’ve ever used colorful language during a tough physical therapy (PT) session... you have science on your side!
A new study in the Archives of Physiotherapy suggests that in physical therapy environments, more relaxed speech — namely, swearing — can help in a number of ways, including pain reduction.
The research, led by Nicholas B.
Washmuth (Department of Physical
Therapy, Samford University, Birmingham,
Ala.) and Richard Stephens (School of
Psychology, Keele University, Staffordshire,
U.K.), proposed that language can impact
how a physical therapy patient “thinks,
feels, and performs... If used correctly, within a biopsy- chosocial approach to care, swearing has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes.”
The researchers noted that swearing can help people
to bond and can “enhance the therapeutic alliance between a patient and a phys-
ical therapist. Improvements in social pain, physical pain tolerance, and physical pain threshold can occur by strategic swearing by our patients.
“Even physical performance measures, such as power and force, could be enhanced if patients swear.”
Washmuth and Stephens suggested swearing in the PT environment “should be used to accomplish specific goals, such as relief from pain or stress.” And they noted that swearing aloud “can also increase physical performance,” as shown in other studies.
The study, titled, “Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: Improving Patient Outcomes with Swearing,” was published March 17, 2022. Archives of Physiotherapy is the journal of the Italian Society of Physiotherapy. m
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