The disability inclusion effect

A quick note first…

📍 In SF 26-29 Oct? Let’s meet!

I’ll be in the Bay Area next week researching our next Wharton Blueprint on “Cognitive Surrender”: how to use AI every day without forgetting how to think (aka avoiding ‘brain rot’).

I’m co-authoring it with Wharton’s Prof. Gideon Nave (who coined the concept in his foundational research on “system 3 thinking”) and Prof. Stefano Puntoni (Co-Director of Human-AI Research at Wharton).

Like our Wharton Blueprint on AI Agent Adoption, we’ll combine the latest science with insights from executives at pioneering companies (e.g. Google, Zapier, ServiceNow), and it will reach thousands of organizations.

👉 If you’re deeply thinking about this too, or know someone I should talk to, hit reply. Coffee/lunch is on me 🙂

Topic: Ads | Brand & Strategy | Messaging & Copy
For: B2C, Can be tested for B2B
Research date: April 2026 
Universities: University of Amsterdam, Bayes Business School, Bocconi University

📈 Recommendation

Include people with disabilities in your ads, doing the same things a non-disabled person would (not showing them as vulnerable, or defined by their disability). 

People will have a more positive view of your ad, your brand, and will be more likely to choose your product.

Make sure you’re using this in a genuinely inclusive way (e.g. part of a group of friends at a coffee shop) and don’t make the fact that they’re disabled part of your messaging (e.g. “A cup of Joe with our first disabled model”).

🎓 Findings

• As part of a series of 9 experiments with over 4,500 participants, researchers found that:

  • People were 33% more likely to choose a shower gel advertised by a model with a disability

  • Ads focused on the independence of a disabled person led to 38% higher positive attitudes towards the ad and brand (vs female empowerment ads) 

• The effect:

  • Remains even when people are told a brand is only using a wheelchair user to comply with regulations. People saw the brand 9.9% more positively and 15.8% more inclusive.

  • Disappears when a brand explicitly highlights that they’re using a disabled person or shows them as vulnerable

🧠 Why it works

• When we see signs that stigmatized customers are welcomed and valued, it makes a company look more attractive.

• We also consider a company that showcases greater diversity as more moral, leading us to like it more.

✋ Limitations

• The studies were conducted in industrialized Western countries, with relatively educated populations. It’s unknown if this can be applied universally.

• The research didn’t factor in how the effect might work differently across different ages, genders, or different disabilities.

👀 Real-life example

ASOS features Natasha Ghouri, who was born deaf and wears a cochlear implant, in the product image for their hoop earrings.

✅ Solution: ASOS has correctly used a disabled model in an inclusive way, without calling attention to her disability. They could further optimize the page by:

• Including an image of the model wearing the earrings with a contextual background (e.g. when at a restaurant), instead of having all the images be on a plain white background.

• Adding information on how often the product has been viewed (e.g. 500+ people viewed this) or bought (e.g. 1,000+ pairs sold) to increase sales.

• Changing how they display the discounted price, to show the original price before the discounted price (Was $7.90, Now $5.53), not after, to make the discount seem larger.

📖 Research

Cossu, M., Estes, Z. & Vosgerau, J. Beyond Visibility: The Disability Inclusion Effect in Advertising. Journal of Marketing (April 2026)

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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