Who Do People Think of When They Think About Disability?

Posted on December 1, 2025

By Carli Friedman, CQL Director of Research

When we think about groups of people, we often think about the most ‘typical’ member of that group, called a prototype. For example, when asked to think about a man, most people will think of a man that is white. While prototypes are designed to help our brains process information and categorize things, such as shapes or colors for example, when it comes to people, who we think of as prototypical is often informed but ideas we take in from society. The problem is that when we have prototypes of people, our brains can use this information to make snap judgements about people, including ones that are based on stereotypes. This can contribute to discrimination.

While research about who is considered prototypical has been conducted about gender and race, no research has examined prototypicality and disability. So for example, in research about disabled people, we do not know who exactly participants are thinking about, which may significantly impact the findings and applicability of that research because disability doesn’t exist in abstract and all people have multiple identities. For these reasons, the aim of this study was to examine who the prototypical disabled person is. To do so, I had 230 people complete an online survey where I asked them to picture a disabled person who just experienced discrimination and then asked them several follow up questions about who they thought about.

When asked to picture a disabled person who just experienced discrimination, 60% of people pictured a cisgender man. In addition, 79% of people pictured a white person. When gender and race were combined, 48% of people pictured the disabled person as a white man, 29% as a white woman, 7% as a Black man, and 5% as a Black woman (see figure below). There wasn’t a relationship between people’s own identities and who they pictured as disabled – regardless of their own identities, most people still pictured a disabled white man.

Prototypical: Who Was Pictured Experiencing Discrimination

When asked how warm or cold they thought others would feel towards the person they pictured who just experienced discrimination, at first glance, it appeared they rated disabled cisgender women as having the most warmth. However, when both gender and race were examined together, people only rated disabled white cisgender women as having more warmth, not disabled women of color.

“Prototypicality plays an important role not only in how people are treated and discriminated against, but also whose experiences with discrimination are seen as legitimate. When it comes to research, prototypicality can also mask the experiences of people with multiply marginalized identities… we found when thinking about a disabled person experiencing discrimination, participants overwhelmingly thought about white people and cisgender men… it suggests that research which ‘solely’ focuses on disability, may unintentionally be doing anything but. The results suggest prototypicality may also make some populations of disabled people invisible. As such, in order to reduce discrimination and promote equity, much more intersectional research about disability is needed – both including and considering other intersections in disability-centric research, and not ‘forgetting’ about (ignoring) disabled people in non-disability-centric research about gender, race, etc.” (Friedman, 2025, pp. 4-5).

This article is a summary of the following journal manuscript: Friedman, C. (2025). The prototypical disabled person and its implications for discrimination research and intersectionality. Rehabilitation Psychology, advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000646