Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
My central research evolves around how stereotypes and diversity
affect people's interaction, especially at the workplace.
I've started some research on how technology and technological advances
might change stereotypes towards people with physical disabilities.
Now, that part of my research is also a little bit of 'me-search',
because I was born with a disability myself.
I was born without my lower left arm.
I consider that to be a rather minor disability
in comparison to what other people have to put up with,
and also I'm very privileged
to have been born into a rich western country
that can provide me with, for example, prosthesis.
So, to that regard, I'm not, definitely not representative
for people with physical disabilities in general.
Now, what is a disability?
The social model of disability construes disability as a lack of fit
between a person's capabilities
and the demands of the person's environment.
So, for example, if you cannot walk and are bound to a wheelchair,
being confronted with stairs creates this gap
where your environment demands something from you -
in this case, climbing stairs -
that you're unable to do.
The social model of disability postulates
that there are actually three ways to overcome this gap.
The first one is to change the environment.
If there are ramps instead of stairs,
climbing the height difference with a wheelchair is not a problem.
The second possibility is a technological fix to the situation,
and that is supply technology
that can compensate for the impairment to the individual.
For example, a wheelchair that can climb stairs,
or a robotic exoskeleton.
The third possibility is a social one.
If society at large was aware of this problem,
people would, for example, meet only in places
where there aren't any stairs.
Recent technological advances in the area of robotics, bionics,
have created the impression
that disability is merely a technical issue.
Hugh Herr famously stated that, "I don't see disability.
I just see bad technology."
We're really only, at the moment, in media discourse focusing on this.
However,
technological advancements are unlikely
to eradicate the stigma and the stereotypes
that are associated with physical disabilities.
And that's what I would like to talk about,
how technology may change stereotypes towards people with physical disabilities,
one way or another.
Now, let me tell you a little bit about stigma and stereotypes
from my own perspective.
I got my first electrical prosthesis when I was 19.
I didn't like it very much.
It was fixed in this kind of unnatural position.
It could only grasp between thumb and index finger.
And, worst of all, it had this flesh-coloured plastic glove
that was trying to hide that it was a prosthesis,
but it looked so fake that everybody noticed anyway.
I mean, you could pass it off as a real hand, you know,
if you wore a long-sleeve shirt,
you know, with a certain pose and in a certain angle.
But as soon as you would wear something with short sleeve,
everybody would notice that you were trying to hide your disability,
but you're not doing a very good job at it.
And that creates awkwardness in social situations,
and it results in people treating you with pity.
And being treated with pity is how you learn
that a society does not treat you as equal.
Now, this experience of being treated with pity
is exactly what one of the fundamental models in social psychology
about stereotypes predicts.
It's the Stereotype Content Model
by the American social psychologist Susan Fiske,
who is a bit of my scientific giant,
and it says stereotypes convey information on two core dimensions
about people from certain social groups.
The first dimension is warmth.
It's whether people from that group have good or bad intentions.
The second dimension is competence.
That's whether people from a certain social group
can put their intentions into actions.
Importantly, belonging to social groups
is one of the core sources for our feeling of self-esteem.
So, every one of us has a 'us', a 'we', a 'our people',
a group that we associate with,
from which we derive value and a sense of self-worthiness.
The dimensions dictate or influence how we feel towards groups of people
and how we treat them.
The 'us', the 'our people', and the role models,
also usually the cultural norm,
is seen as having good intentions and as competent.
It's also people who we look up to in terms of our role models,
and we feel agreement, and we support them.
Now, if that's for everyone the 'us', the 'we',
that leaves three more spaces for 'the others',
to devalue others in order to increase the value of one's own group.
First, there's the obvious:
the evil ones, with little levels of competence.
Textbook examples placed junkies and homeless people there.
We meet them with indifference and ignore them.
And then, you have two more spaces left,
and on the top left is what's called paternalistic stereotypes.
Textbook examples include grandmothers, the elderly,
and, this is important, people with physical disability.
And the model says we feel pity for them, and we try to help them.
And on the bottom right is where you don't want to be.
It's groups that are perceived as having bad intentions
and are competent to put them into action.
And textbook examples include bankers and the rich people,
and they're met with, well, envy or, even worse, rejection and harm.
There is empiric research on this model from 35 countries all over the world
that basically supports this two-dimensional structure of stereotypes.
I'm showing you one example here from the United States, from 2007.
This is based on questionnaire data on large population samples.
Well, it shows indeed that there is a cluster up here
where the elderly and people with physical disabilities
are actually grouped together and they're seen as similar
in terms of they're rather warm, but not very competent.
But that may change as technology advances.
The prosthesis that I'm wearing today
is quite different from the one that you saw in the picture.
It's a bionic prosthesis, it's a Touch Bionics i-limb.
It's actually made in Scotland.
It has five movable fingers, it is pressure sensitive,
and you can even rotate the wrist a full 360 degrees.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
(Laughter)
It's a bit of a party trick -
(Laughter)
but it's very useful to demonstrate that in a context like this,
I can do something that you cannot do.
(Laughter)
And of course, it has a lot of functional benefit for my life.
I can do now a lot of things that I couldn't do as well before I got it;
for example, driving my car, riding my bike, cooking.
It's the little things really that make a difference.
But it has also fundamentally changed how people interact with me.
And not just with me: many amputees who I've spoken to recently,
who wear similar technology,
report the same experience,
that they're no longer treated with pity, but with interest and fascination
that lacks this paternalistic element from the paternalistic stereotype.
So, on top of being like a functional prosthesis,
this, for people like me,
who are fortunate enough to receive this expensive technology,
is also a bit of a psychological prosthesis,
because nothing signals competence more than technology.
And these devices don't hide their technology,
they proudly display
that, for example, this standard-wise comes with a transparent glove.
So, and if technology signals competence,
and if this is associated with people with physical disabilities,
it has the potential to move them to the right,
towards the 'we', the 'us',
towards a more inclusive way of looking at us.
So that is the potential of this technology,
also in terms of stereotypes.
However, there is also a bit of a risk.
In history, if one group has advanced on one dimension,
it was typically devalued on the other,
because devaluing other groups is a way of maintaining social hierarchy.
So what happens when people with physical disabilities
now suddenly become more competent?
What happens to the warmth?
And I'm a little sceptical, to be honest,
and I'm going to give you a few examples that fuel my scepticism.
The first one is media coverage of Paralympic athletes such as this woman.
Paralympic athletes who wear modern prostheses like these running blades
now start to achieve performances
that start to become on level with able-bodied athletes.
Now they're seen as a threat,
and in the media, have been met with accusations of 'techno-doping'.
Journalists have said that people like that
have 'an unfair advantage'.
Now, let that sink in for a minute.
'Unfair advantage techno-doping'.
Doping implies cheating.
That's bad intentions. And it's competent.
And there's other examples. Think of the media and the pop culture.
I don't know how many of you have seen the movie 'Kingsman'.
It features a female villain called Gazelle,
who has running blades just like her prosthesis,
but on top of the running blades,
she has real blades, like swords, coming out of her prosthesis
that she used to chop off people's heads.
The newest Wolverine film called "Logan"
features a villain with a bionic hand just like mine, or very similar to mine.
I'm like, "Oh, okay - "
There's even top ten lists on the internet,
top ten villains with prostheses now, seriously!
(Laughter)
People with high-tech prostheses
are currently always displayed as either villains or in dystopian settings,
like the Deus Ex computer game.
Think of the Borg in Star Trek: 'Resistance is futile'. Seriously?
So that's cold; that's evil.
I'm wondering whether what we see here
is just the stereotypes of the people who write these stories coming to surface,
that depict people with physical disabilities with high-tech prostheses
as cold and competent.
And so the question is really: this development,
where will it take people with physical disabilities
who have the privilege to have access to this kind of technology
in terms of the stereotypes?
The potential is that people with physical disabilities
who wear high-tech prostheses are perceived as more competent,
and that that results in a more inclusive view of them
and a higher level of social inclusion of these people in society.
The risk is that we replace one harmful stereotype,
the pitiful, disabled person,
with another one, and that's the evil cyborg.
And if that happens, nothing is won,
because we're just replacing one exclusionary stereotype with another one,
one that's even more hurtful because it results in being treated
with, you know, harm, and rejection, and envy.
And there's even talks of prosthetic envy somewhere.
I read that in WIRED.
What I would like to instill
is a more balanced discourse and awareness of these issues
that includes a responsible covering
of, for example, high-tech prostheses in the media.
Don't overexaggerate potential superpowers that do not exist!
I can't even play the piano with this thing!
And maybe it's not so helpful to call Paralympic athletes 'superhumans'
because it implies such a high level of competence
that it might come at a cost, and that's the warmth.
So sometimes, in terms of media discourse,
less is a little more if we want to achieve the ultimate goal
of a society that's more inclusive than our current one.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)