Attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities: A meta-cognitive approach to persuasion

Attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities are becoming critical for promoting diversity and egalitarianism within organizations. The few interventions designed to promote positive attitudes toward people with disabilities have relied on changing either the direction and/or the amount of thoughts people generate with regard to this discriminated, understudied group. In the present research, we examine the impact of a different psychological process of attitude change based on meta-cognition, or thinking about thinking. We used a meta-cognitive approach to changing prejudiced attitudes because thoughtful processes are often overlooked or denied with regard to this particular group. Specifically, we explored the impact of thought confidence on attitude change across two studies designed to change attitudes toward the incorporation of people with disabilities in companies. In each study, participants first generated either positive or negative thoughts about the proposal (thought valence manipulation). Then, the confidence in those thoughts was measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). In concert with the self-validation hypothesis, results showed that when thought confidence was relatively high (vs. low), thought valence had a greater impact on attitudes. Thus, thought valence was more predictive of attitudes when participants were confident in their thoughts. Specifically, confidence in thoughts enhanced persuasion for positive thoughts but reduced persuasion for negative thoughts. These findings provide insights into assessing effects of interventions aiming at improving attitudes toward the inclusion of minority groups in organizations.