Recognizing Ableism: A Social Identity Analysis of Disabled People Perceiving Discrimination as Illegitimate

A pernicious impact of ableism is its tendency to take-for-granted ability as a legitimate criterion for negative differential treatment, thereby making disability discrimination difficult to challenge for people with disabilities. This project aims to examine factors underlying disabled persons' perceptions of discrimination legitimacy and potential ways to make discrimination more unambiguously unacceptable. Study 1 (N = 340) tested the Social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel and Turner) prediction that sociostructural beliefs (i.e., group boundary permeability, cognitive alternatives to the status quo, and perceived pervasiveness of discrimination) are significant predictors of disabled group members perceiving discrimination as illegitimate. Study 2 (N = 189) extended this analysis to examine how disabled persons' endorsement of the social model of disability differentially shapes their perceptions of the sociostructural relations we tested in Study 1, and how those in turn predict perceptions of discrimination as illegitimate. The major findings of this research both validate social identity theory's proposed predictors of perceptions of discrimination as illegitimate and provide evidence that how one conceptualizes disability (endorsement of disability models) significantly affects disabled peoples' experience of ableism. This work is most relevant for disability political mobilization, because it accounts for the variability in how disabled people perceive exclusionary treatment and offers guidance for how to frame disability exclusion towards social change efforts.