Intercultural interaction modulating implicit attitudes towards disability and cultural competence in higher education

Abstract

People with disabilities (PWD) are increasingly recognized as one of the most overlooked potentials in the labor market. More and more disability inclusion strategies appear and evolve in the workplaces. Nevertheless, employees with disabilities in the work environment are still faced challenges of explicit and implicit biases. Especially, comparison with positive explicit attitude due to social expectation, implicit attitudes towards disability tend to be negatively tied with charity, inability and distrust. This present article originally proposes intercultural interaction as the solution to modulate implicit and emotional attitudes towards disability. Besides, this article highlights that intercultural interactions between people with and without disabilities could promote individual cultural knowledge. It is underlined the importance to involve schemes of cultural competences and intercultural interactions into higher education to facilitate more inclusive work environment.