Organizational Psychology

Purpose. The general goal of this study is to compare the existing attitudes towards people with different physical illnesses and also to identify differences in workplace discrimination against people with specific physical illnesse. Study design. А survey was conducted. N = 1238 (51.62% women, 48.06% men, 0.32% of respondents did not indicate their gender, M_age = 36.00, SD_age = 11.84). 79.32% of respondents do not have relatives or close people with disabilities and 20.68% do havethem. Perceptions of physical illnesses were measured using five questions that were based on a studyby Bonaccio et al. (2020). First, a correlation analysis was conducted. Second, the Friedman test and Durbin — Conover post-hoc test were performed. Next, ANOVA was conducted using the Bonferronitest for multiple comparisons. Results. Only the correlation between the visibility of the illness andwillingness to work with a colleague with this illness is in significant, while correlations between the other variables are significant (p < .001 or p < .01, respectively). There are significant differences in the perception of physical illnesses both in regard to visibility of an illness (χ² = 419.53, df = 9, p < .001) and to acceptability of discussing an illness (χ² = 260.19, df = 9, p < .001). The Durbin-Conover post-hoctest indicated that it is possible to identify the groups of physical illnesses in which the means do not differ significantly. The ANOVA results indicated that according to acceptability of discussing an illnessand visibility of an illness, there are statistically significant differences in the possible negative impactof an illness on work (F(3; 946) = 9.06, p < 0.001, η² = 0.03 и F(3; 946) = 18.98, p < 0.001, η² = 0.06, respectively), in willingness to accept a person with a certain illness as a colleague ((F(3; 946) = 90.40,p < 0.001, η² = 0.22 и F(3; 946) = 8.41, p < 0.001, η² = 0.03, respectively)and in willingness to accept aperson with a certain illness as a boss (F(3; 946) = 149.39, p < 0.001, η² = 0.32 и F(3; 946) = 8.80, p <0.001, η² = 0.03, respectively). Findings. The visibility of an illness is positively associated with negative attitudes towards people with these illnesses, which corresponds with previous studies (Dunn, 2015).The relationship between the acceptability of discussing an illness and negative attitudes towards people with these illnesses is ambiguous. People with various physical illnesses may be discriminated against in the workplace, and the likelihood of discriminatory intentions toward people with physical illnesses is not unambiguously related to either the visibility or the acceptability of discussing anillness. To conclude, other characteristics of illnesses that were not considered in this work may be associated with the more positive or negative perception of certain physical illnesses and, respectively, with following discrimination of people with these illnesses in the workplace. The scientific novelty of this study consists in comparing existing attitudes towards people with different physical illnesses, while taking into account the context of workplace discrimination.