ORIGINAL ARTICLE Implicit Attitudes and Explicit Ratings of Romantic Attraction of College Students Toward Opposite-Sex Peers with Physical Disabilities Johannes Rojahn & Kristi G. Komelasky & Michelle Man Published online: 17 May 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008 Abstract This is a replication and extension of a study by Man et al. in Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities 18:35–44, 2006, who found that college students rated the romantic attractiveness of opposite-sex peers as equal, regardless of the presence or absence of a physical disability. Based on photographs with brief biographical vignettes 41 college students rated attractiveness of young adults with the Romantic Attraction Scale (RAS; Campbell in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77:1254–1270, 1999) and then completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek et al. in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31:166–180, 2005) to assess their implicit attitudes toward disabilities. Self-reported romantic attractive- ness was unaffected by the presence of a physical disability. However, the IAT revealed a clear preference for physical health over physical disabilities. The discrepancy between the explicit attractiveness ratings and the implicit attitudes toward physical disabilities suggests that the former were biased by social desirability. Alternative explanations of the inconsistencies between the explicit and implicit data are discussed. Keywords Physical disabilities . Implicit attitudes . Romantic attraction . Attractiveness . Social desirability bias The second part of the twentieth century witnessed far reaching legislation in the USA and abroad for recognition of the human rights of people with disabilities and to confront prejudice, negative attitudes and expectations, and discrimination. J Dev Phys Disabil (2008) 20:389–397 DOI 10.1007/s10882-008-9108-6 J. Rojahn (*) : K. G. Komelasky Department of Psychology, George Mason University, 10340 Democracy Lane, Suite 202, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA e-mail: jrojahn@gmu.edu M. Man Department of Physical Therapy, Southern California University, Los Angeles, CA, USA