Hidden Bias: Social Service Professionals' Attitudes toward Physical Disability.

This article examines the explicit and implicit attitudes of social service professionals—including social workers, counselors, and community specialists—toward people with physical disabilities, using 2023 secondary data from the Disability Attitude Implicit Association Test (DA-IAT) involving 5,167 participants. Findings reveal that while 70.3% of respondents reported no explicit preference regarding physical disability, 77.8% demonstrated implicit bias favoring nondisabled people, with a significant discordance between explicit and implicit attitudes. Sociodemographic factors such as age, gender identity, disability status, having disabled friends or family, education, and political orientation were significantly correlated with these attitudes. The study highlights the need for enhanced disability-related education and bias-reduction interventions within social work practice and education to address implicit ableism and improve service outcomes for people with disabilities.