How disability and assistive technologies knowledge might shape transhumanist orientations: a pilot study among...

This pilot study examines disability knowledge, everyday interactions with people with disabilities (PWD), emotional responses to disability, familiarity with assistive technologies, and transhumanist orientation among 863 Romanian adults aged 19 to 45. Results suggested that participants generally reported limited knowledge about disability and assistive technologies, with sadness emerging as the dominant emotional response to disability. Greater disability knowledge was associated with higher knowledge of assistive technologies, which in turn predicted a stronger transhumanist orientation. Assistive technology knowledge mediated the relationship between disability knowledge and transhumanist orientation. Positive interactions with people with disabilities were linked to stronger endorsement of transhumanist orientations. These exploratory findings suggest that assistive technologies may function as a conceptual bridge between social understandings of disability and broader orientations about human enhancement, highlighting the importance of knowledge of assistive technologies in shaping contemporary disability attitudes.