Positive and Negative Attitudes to Individuals with with Intellectual Disability

Every individual cultural faction has their own way of feeling and also thinking, and in consequence to the feelings and thoughts, different behaviours and reactions sprout.

Cultural relativism is brought about most often through the study of societies and community groups and the relation of culture with these groups and how it differs. Basing a society on the way it behaves towards certain events should be foreshadowed by the fact that different cultures react in different ways according to their society and their roots.

Those individuals with intellectual disability (I.D.) and the attitudes towards them can be seen as a major factor for both society and for education, in the light that attitudes like these may bring up important ramifications in terms of the political approaches taken and the outcomes that may stem out of it. Attitudes are motivated in an individual or even in a group by a few factors, these factors can be physical, intellectual, social and emotional.

Social acceptance or psychological acceptance of an individual with a disability is brought about by positive attitudes. Positive attitudes in individuals, groups, and societies can be brought about by developing and also by improving the programmes for those people with disabilities. These programmes can be in any field from educational to social or even medical and also occupational.

In contrast to the positive attitudes, negative attitudes seen in an individual is sure to bring about decisions like rejection, segregation, and degradation.

Knowing what type of attitudes that people have towards those individuals with I.D. is important. It is easy to spot those individuals who have positive attitudes towards those with I.D. as they may be the ones who contribute towards establishing programmes and trying to make the programmes successful for those with I.D. or they may be in the sector to educate the public on their misconceptions of individuals with I.D. so that they can make more people have a positive outlook on intellectual disabilities. As pointed out by Raven and Rubin in 1983, attitudes are not something that is inherited, but it is something that is learned or acquired through socialisation in the societal culture that may currently be prevailing.

Culture can be seen as a collection of joint characteristics that has been passed down from generation to generation. Attempts have been made by researchers to understand and see how culture has an influence on attitudes. This is accomplished by the researchers assessing the effect culture has on the behaviour of the individual. A few of these researchers have shown that there were more positive attitudes towards people with ID in the developed countries than in the developing ones, other studies tend to find more positive attitudes towards people with ID in western countries than in eastern ones. Several studies have shown that there is a tendency to find more positive attitudes towards people with ID in societies characterised by values of individualism rather than in societies characterised by values of collectivism.