Weight bias towards individuals and groups in young children

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of participants??? gender, and target figures??? gender on the preferences for individuals with overweight and average-weight. The study also assessed whether evaluations of the groups are affected by the group composition (the number of children with overweight). The study was conducted on the sample of 102 children (43 girls and 59 boys). The age of the participants ranged from 7 to 11 years. Twenty pairs of female and male child images with average-weight and overweight were drawn for this study. The individual images were combined into five groups of children with average-weight and overweight. The results showed that target with average-weight and male targets were preferred more than target with overweight and female targets and that participants evaluated same-sex targets more positively. The same trend was obtained for group images. The results also showed that the increase in the number of children with overweight in groups was connected with more negative evaluations of these groups.