Abstract
Scientific literature about stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes toward obese people indicates rejection toward the obese individuals and preferences toward thin and average ones, as well as a stereotypical profile that attributes to obese people traits such as weakness, laziness, and sickness, while to thin and average people characteristics as beauty, strength, health, and successfulness (Tiggemann & Anesbury, 2000; Carels & Musher-Eizenman, 2010). One of the most useful strategies for reducing the effects of negative prejudices and stereotypes toward the obesity and obese people is constituted by contact, achievable both in face to face and imagined setting. Purpose: analysis of the exposure effects to stimuli (training course about prejudice on obesity) functional to reduce negative attitudes toward obese people. Participants: 55 psychology university students at University of Catania, Sicily (Italy). Implicit and explicit measures: 1) Anti-fat Attitudes and Dislike of Fat People Scale; 2) Semantic Differential Technique for Fat and Thin People Representation and Physical Self; 3) Fat Stereotypes Questionnaire; 4) GNAT (Nosek & Banaji, 2001). All measures were used before and after the training course (for three months) about the “obesity issue”. Results (before-after the training course): a) low levels of anti-fat prejudice and of dislike of fat people; b) absence of change of fat stereotypes; c) significant increase in fat and thin people positive representation, as well as in self-representation; d) significant effects of the training course only in relation to an increase of accuracy in the GNAT application. Future suggestions regarding to the effects of the direct and imagined contact with obese people functional to reduce negative attitudes toward these target were discussed.
Highlights
Anesbury & Tiggeman (2000) investigated the reduction of negative attitudes toward fat people as a result of the modification of children’s beliefs about the controllability of obesity expressed by children from 9 to 11 years old; children of the experimental group were exposed to a brief intervention focused on the uncontrollability of weight, observing that the intervention was successful in reducing the amount of controllability that children associated to obesity, but it was not successful in reducing negative stereotypes toward the obese compared to the control group
Results indicated that all psychology university students expressed low levels of anti-fat prejudice (AFAS: pre-training: M = 2.86, sd = 0.23; post-training: M = 2.91, sd = 0.21) and dislike of fat people (DFPS: pre-training: M = 2.93, sd = 0.17; post-training: M = 2.95, sd = 0.18), without significant differences after the exposure to imagined contact situations with obese people during training activities (AFAS: t(54) = −1.58, p = 0.12 ns; DFPS: t(54) = −0.87, p = 0.38 ns), displaying scarcely negative attitudes toward obese people
Results indicated that all psychology university students displayed low levels of anti-fat attitudes and dislike of fat people both before and after the imagined contact with fat or obese people and training course about the “obesity issue”
Summary
A great amount of researches has documented the existence of anti-fat attitudes and negative stereotypes toward overweight and obese people from infancy to adulthood (Crandall, 1994; Cramer & Steinwert, 1998; Morrison & O’Connor, 1999; Tiggemann & Anesbury, 2000; Puhl & Brownell, 2001; Lowes & Tiggemann, 2003; Musher-Eizenman, Holub, Miller, Goldstein, & Edwards-Leeper, 2004; O’Brien, Hunter, & Banks, 2007; Carels & Musher-Eizenman, 2010; Vartanian, 2010; Carels et al, 2013). Anesbury & Tiggeman (2000) investigated the reduction of negative attitudes toward fat people as a result of the modification of children’s beliefs about the controllability of obesity expressed by children from 9 to 11 years old; children of the experimental group were exposed to a brief intervention focused on the uncontrollability of weight, observing that the intervention was successful in reducing the amount of controllability that children associated to obesity, but it was not successful in reducing negative stereotypes toward the obese compared to the control group. These results revealed that while children’s beliefs about the controllability of obesity can be modified, their negative stereotyping is more difficult to reduce
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