Strained Interaction: Evidence That Interpersonal Contact Moderates the Death–Disability Rejection Link Shiri Ben-Naim, Gali Aviv, and Gilad Hirschberger Bar-Ilan University Objective: Our objective was to examine whether brief yet significant contact between a confederate seated in a wheelchair and a nondisabled participant may attenuate the relationship between death reminders and disability rejection found in previous research. Method: One hundred two participants were randomly assigned to a mortality salience or control condition and were then seated in a room with a confederate. In half the cases, the confederate sat in a wheelchair, and in the other half in a regular chair. Furthermore, half the participants were assigned to either a collaborative task with the confederate, or to an individual task condition. At the end of the session, participants were asked to evaluate the confederate. Results: Death primes led to a more negative evaluation of the confederate in a wheelchair in the individual task condition. However, this effect was attenuated in the collaborative task condition. Conclusions: The death– disability rejection link is not deterministic and may be attenuated through meaningful contact between people without disabilities and people with physical disabilities (PWD). The findings suggest that terror management theory is a particularly useful framework for understanding and intervening in the strained interaction between PWD and nondisabled individuals. Keywords: attitudes towards disability, terror management, interpersonal contact Recent terror management research has indicated that atti- tudes and emotional responses toward people with physical disabilities (PWD) are a consequence of the attempt to defend against the awareness of physical mortality. According to this literature, PWD are a constant reminder of the fragility and vulnerability of the human body and also pose a threat to just world beliefs. As a result, when primed with death observers are motivated to feel less compassion towards PWD (Hirschberger, Florian, & Mikulincer, 2005) and to attribute more blame to them (Hirschberger, 2006). Although these studies help under- stand the psychodynamics underlying negative attitudes to- wards PWD, they may also convey a deterministic and hopeless message that reactions to PWD are doomed to be negative. The current research attempts to further explore the impact of death reminders on reactions towards PWD by examining whether brief, yet significant contact between a confederate in a wheel- chair and a nondisabled participant may attenuate the impact of death primes on attitudes toward PWD. To do so, we rely on the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954; Sherif, 1966), which has indicated that intergroup relations and attitudes may be ame- liorated by engaging in meaningful contact. Terror Management Theory Terror management theory (TMT; eg, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997), based on the theoretical writings of Becker (1973), argues that sophisticated human cognitive abilities may engender the awareness of the unpredictability and inevitability of death. This awareness may potentially lead to paralyzing terror. To cope with this threat, people rely on cultural worldviews that provide order, meaning, values, and a possibility for symbolic and literal immortality. Consequently, the identification with one’s group provides a sense of belongingness, as well as the sense of being a valued contributor to a meaningful existence. However, because cultural worldviews are symbolic constructions of reality, these belief systems are fragile and may be threatened by world- view-inconsistent information. Thus, the encounter with others belonging to a different worldview with different conceptions of how and why the world exists and what is the meaning of life, may pose a threat to one’s worldview and the protection from death- awareness that it offers. As a result, the motivation to distance from or derogate and aggress against a worldview-denying other may be greater when personal death is salient (Greenberg et al., 1997). Studies testing terror management hypotheses have shown that priming thoughts of death (mortality salience [MS]) increases the motivation to validate cultural worldviews by positively evaluating people who reinforce the cultural worldview and negatively eval- uating people who threaten it. Specifically, these studies have shown that when primed with death Christian participants rated Christian targets more positively and Jewish targets more nega- tively (Greenberg et al., 1990), American participants reacted more aggressively to an anti-American essay writer (e.g., McGregor et al., 1998), white American participants expressed more sympathy to a white racist (Greenberg, Schimel, Martens, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2001), and American and Iranian participants expressed greater support for extreme violence against each other (Pyszczyn- ski et al., 2006). Shiri Ben-Naim, Gali Aviv, and Gilad Hirschberger, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. Please address all correspondence to Gilad Hirschberger, PhD, De- partment of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel. E-mail: hirschg@mail.biu.ac.il Rehabilitation Psychology 2008, Vol. 53, No. 4, 464 – 470 Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0090-5550/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0013750 464