Beyond Double Disability: Dehumanization and the Cognitive Burden of Physical Disability

Physical disability is remarkably common among Americans, with more than one in four affected, yet candidates with physical disabilities remain rare. Prior work suggests disability compounds with other marginalized identities to produce a "double disability." Using a large visual conjoint experiment crossing candidate disability, race, and gender, I find no evidence of this pattern, as disability does not reliably compound racial or gender disadvantage. I argue instead that disability imposes a distinct cognitive burden, activating competing schemas of competence, deservingness, and health, and that dehumanization functions as a burden-resolving mechanism converting this ambiguity into electoral penalty. This effect is selective. Dehumanization predicts reduced support for disabled candidates specifically, not for female or Black candidates, even among voters who dehumanize those groups. The penalty also holds consistently across ideology despite ideological differences in dehumanization's prevalence, suggesting disability occupies a distinct position in political cognition.