What drives people to disclose an invisible disability or disorder, especially when disclosure could improve performance but also risks discrimination? This question is particularly relevant for neurodivergent individuals whose struggles are often internal ones, and not always visible to their environments. Disclosure is thus rarely a binary choice; it can grant access to accommodations but also expose individuals to social and material costs.

Against this backdrop, this paper presents two preregistered, interlinked online experiments examining disclosure decisions and social reactions in a performance-based setting. In Study 1 (N = 659), adults with self-reported ADHD chose whether to disclose their condition to a matched partner in exchange for a performance-boosting advantage. I manipulated anticipated backlash and the framing of ADHD (clinical diagnosis vs. identity-focused). In Study 2 (N = 749), a separate sample of non-neurodivergent participants evaluated these disclosures and decided whether to remain matched with their assigned partners, with payoff-relevant consequences for both parties.

Despite credible risks of social rejection and economic loss, disclosure rates remained high across conditions, contradicting the preregistered predictions that heightened backlash would deter disclosure. Instead, the findings are suggestive of disclosure behavior being driven by fairness perceptions and second-order beliefs about how neurodivergence is viewed by others. On the receiver side, diagnostic framing significantly increased rejections relative to identity-based framing, suggesting that taste-based discrimination may play an important role in the present setting. These results have implications for workplace policies that aim primarily at reducing the formal costs of disclosure: these policies may be insufficient unless they also address prevailing norms and beliefs about the legitimacy of accommodations for neurodivergent individuals.