Does a Common Ingroup Identity Reduce Weight Bias? Only When Weight Discrimination Is Salient.

Paula M Brochu,John F Dovidio,Jillian C Banfield

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03020

Paula M Brochu, John F Dovidio + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03020

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Abstract

Compared to many other forms of social bias, weight bias is pervasive, socially accepted, and difficult to attenuate. According to the common ingroup identity model, strategies that expand group inclusiveness may promote more positive intergroup attitudes and behaviors, particularly when people are aware of unjust treatment of others included within their shared identity. Considering that most people are not aware of the social justice issue of weight discrimination, we hypothesized that a common ingroup identity would be effective in reducing weight bias primarily when unfair weight-based treatment was made salient (i.e., that fat people experience discrimination in employment). Participants were randomly assigned to conditions following a 3 (discrimination salience: weight discrimination, height discrimination, control) × 2 (group identity: common ingroup, control) design and completed an evaluative measure of weight bias. Results revealed a significant interaction, showing that when weight discrimination was salient, participants in the common ingroup identity condition reported less weight bias than participants in the group identity control condition. When a common ingroup identity was emphasized, weight bias was lower when weight discrimination was salient compared to when height discrimination was salient and the control condition in which nothing about discrimination was mentioned. These results were not moderated by participant weight. This study demonstrates that a common ingroup identity can be effective in reducing weight bias if a cue is provided that fat people experience disparate and unjust outcomes in employment. Given the serious consequences of weight bias for health and well-being, and the relative ease of implementing this prejudice-reduction intervention, the common ingroup identity model has potential application for reducing weight bias in a range of real-world settings. However, these findings should be considered preliminary until they are replicated in well-powered and pre-registered future research.

Highlights

Weight bias includes the expression of negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward people who are higher-weight, overweight, or obese, sometimes referred to in a non-pejorative way as fat1 (Meadows and Daníelsdóttir, 2016; Calogero et al, 2019)
This study was conducted with the aim of testing the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2012) as a weight bias reduction strategy
Results revealed that emphasizing a common ingroup identity in conjunction with making weight discrimination salient decreased weight bias relative to conditions that did not highlight a shared identity as American that included people of different weights, made height discrimination salient, or did not mention group-based discrimination

Summary

Introduction

Weight bias includes the expression of negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward people who are higher-weight, overweight, or obese, sometimes referred to in a non-pejorative way as fat (Meadows and Daníelsdóttir, 2016; Calogero et al, 2019). Weight bias is commonly expressed, given its perceived social acceptability (Crandall et al, 2002) Regardless of their own body size, people express more negative attitudes toward fat people than they do toward a range of other stigmatized groups (e.g., Muslims, immigrants, Blacks, gay people; Latner et al, 2008; Brochu and Esses, 2011). Fat people report experiencing instances of weight bias almost daily in the form of verbal comments, body language and gestures, being stared at, online interactions, and physical barriers (Seacat et al, 2014; Vartanian et al, 2014) These experiences of weight bias produce negative psychological and social outcomes, ranging from eating disorders to bullying and restricted social networks (Hunger et al, 2015; Brochu et al, 2018). The purpose of this study was to examine whether emphasizing a common ingroup identity, a wellsupported prejudice-reduction intervention in the intergroup relations literature (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2012), is effective in reducing weight bias

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