Avoidance of the handicapped : Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (original) (raw)

An attributional ambiguity analysis

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

37

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12

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:p

2297

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2306

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December 1979

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Conducted 2 experiments with a total of 64 undergraduates to demonstrate a general strategy for detecting motives that people wish to conceal. The strategy involves having people choose between 2 alternatives, one of which happens to satisfy the motive. By counterbalancing which one does so, it is possible to distill the motive by examining the pattern of choice that people make. The motive employed was the desire to avoid the physically handicapped. It was predicted that because most people would not wish to reveal this desire, they would be more likely to act on it if they could appear to be choosing on some other basis. Results show that Ss avoided the handicapped more often if the decision to do so was also a decision between 2 movies and avoidance of the handicapped could masquerade as a movie preference. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)