Personality, Attentional Focus, and Novelty Effects: Reactions to Peers With Disabilities Catherine S. Fichten Dawson College and Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital Rhonda Amsel McGill University Kristen Robillard CISC NDG - Montreal West Stephane Sabourin Laval University John Wright Universite de Montreal ABSTRACT. Tested the hypothesis that common reactions to people with disabilities are partly due to the attentional consequences of novelty and explored the impact of personality on nondisabled individuals' reactions, three hundred and fifty one college students completed personality measures (social anxiety, shyness, public self- consciousness, self-monitoring) and indicated their feelings, self and other-focused thoughts, and behavioral intentions con- cerning a hypothetical encounter with an "average" student or with 2 types of novel peers: student with a disability and an all-round outstanding individual. Implications of the findings, which indicate that (1) novelty provides a partial explanation of interaction problems between nondisabled and disabled peers and (2) personality factors have a different impact on thoughts and feelings about encounters with peers who are novel than on those who are not, are discussed. The literature indicates that in casual social encounters between people who do not know each other well, nondisabled individuals (1) behave differently with people who have a disability, (2) are less comfortable with disabled than with nondisabled peers, (3) have more negative thoughts when it comes to interacting with people who have physical impairments, and (4) commonly make both overly positive and negative evaluations (Berry & Meyer, 1995; REHABILITATION PSYCHOLOGY Vol. 42, No. 3,1997 © 1997 by the Division of Rehabilitation Psychology of the American Psychological Association Published by Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 536 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 209