Implicit attitudes and explicit ratings of romantic attraction of college students toward opposite-sex peers with physical disabilities

This is a replication and extension of a study by Man et al. in Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities 18:35-44, 2006, who found that college students rated the romantic attractiveness of opposite-sex peers as equal, regardless of the presence or absence of a physical disability. Based on photographs with brief biographical vignettes 41 college students rated attractiveness of young adults with the Romantic Attraction Scale (RAS; Campbell in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77:1254-1270, 1999) and then completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek et al. in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31:166-180, 2005) to assess their implicit attitudes toward disabilities. Self-reported romantic attractiveness was unaffected by the presence of a physical disability. However, the IAT revealed a clear preference for physical health over physical disabilities. The discrepancy between the explicit attractiveness ratings and the implicit attitudes toward physical disabilities suggests that the former were biased by social desirability. Alternative explanations of the inconsistencies between the explicit and implicit data are discussed.