“It won’t be as bad as you think:” autonomy and adaptation to disability

Abstract

People with disabilities often report enjoying a much higher quality of life than people without disabilities would expect. For instance, many people believe that their lives would be much worse if they were to become paraplegic. Indeed, some people believe that life with paraplegia would be barely worth living. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, many paraplegics report being roughly as happy as able-bodied people (see Gilbert 2006, 167, and Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman 1978).