Is Self-Other Overlap a Malleable Predictor of Willingness to Work with People with Disability?

<p>Nearly 1 in every 5 Americans have some form of disability, creating a high demand for professionals who are interested in working with people with disability (PWD). However, many people are uncomfortable working with PWD, or are unwilling to put in the additional effort that may be necessary to meet their needs. As a result, PWD face many barriers when seeking services. Interventions to address this issue typically focus on changing attitudes or increasing empathy. While these components influence people’s behavior in the short-term, they do not completely account for the variability in people being willing to make sacrifices to put in additional time and effort to meet the needs of PWD. Given that feeling close and connected to a group of people makes a person more willing to go out of their way to help a member of that group (e.g., neighbors, family members, classmates), this work explored the association between self-other overlap and willingness to work with PWD. Across 3 studies, self-other overlap was uniquely associated with students’ willingness to work with PWD as part of one’s profession, even when controlling for attitudes and empathy. The main effects from a fourth study indicated self-other overlap-based enhanced brief intervention did not result in significant improvements in self-other overlap, compared to the other conditions. However, more work will be needed to verify this finding and address more conclusively whether self-other overlap is malleable to intervention in this context.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

2018

Author dc:creator

• Ioerger, Michael

Contributors dc:contributor

• Laura E. VanderDrift

• Attitudes
• Career Decisions
• Disability Training
• Empathy
• IOS, Prosocial
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Repository record dc:identifier

https://surface.syr.edu/etd/853

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:surface.syr.edu:etd-1854