There is a rising trend of including people with a disability into society. However, they are still viewed as differing from the norm and are discriminated. Negative attitudes towards them are assumed to hinder their full inclusion (e.g., some teachers hold negative attitudes towards including students with a disability into mainstream schools, negatively impacting these students’ educational outcomes; Campbell, Gilmore, & Cuskelly, 2003; Antonak & Lineveh, 2000).

According to Wilson, Lindsey and Schooler (2000), attitudes can be either implicit or explicit. Implicit attitudes are automatically activated evaluations of unknown origin that have an influence on implicit responses. Whereas, people are aware of an explicit attitude and can express it openly, as long as they have the cognitive capacity and motivation needed to access it (Wilson et al.). It is generally accepted that attitudes can be changed. However, Wilson et al. state that the changeability of implicit and explicit attitudes differ. Existing techniques often change the explicit but not the implicit attitudes. Whilist, Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann and Banaji (2009) found that implicit attitudes are better predictors of behaviour when it concerns socially sensitive topics. Thus, improving the implicit attitudes towards people with a disability can enhance their chance of successful inclusion (e.g., improving teachers’ attitudes can enhance these students’ chances of successful inclusion into the school community).

We wanted to develop an intervention that changes implicit attitudes towards people with a disability. We looked towards the relatively new tradition of cognitive bias modification (CBM; Hertel & Mathews, 2011). In particular, we will focus on the interpretation bias (CBM-I) towards people with a disability. We hypothesize that changing this bias into a more positive one, will have a positive effect on implicit attitudes towards people with a disability. Secondly, we hypothesize that the training group will have implicit attitudes that are more pro disabled people than those of the neutral group. We expect the same findings for the explicit attitudes.

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