Neuroscience
Health psychologists are perplexed by a conundrum. With rates of obesity on the rise, experts have warned that social discrimination towards overweight people will increase. Anecdotal evidence suggests this is happening. And yet research studies have repeatedly found that overweight people typically report experiencing only a handful of stigmatising experiences in their life-times.
One reason for this mismatch might be that existing studies have asked overweight people to recall from memory any times they've been subjected to stigma. Different unpleasant incidences could easily blur together, and people might have put many stigmatising encounters purposefully out of mind. To get round this problem, Jason Seacat at Western New England University and his colleagues have conducted the first ever diary study of their weight or "fat stigma" experiences. Their findings appear in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Fifty overweight and obese women (their average BMI was 42.5), recruited from weight-based web-sites and blogs, most of them white, with an average age of 38, kept a diary for 7 days, noting each evening before bed any instances of weight stigma they'd experienced that day. The diary contained prompts of different kinds of weight-based stigma they might have experienced, such as interpersonal stigma (e.g. nasty comments from others), institutional discrimination, and physical barriers (e.g. clothes that don't fit; chairs in theatres and restaurants not being big enough).
On average the women described experiencing an average of 3 stigmatising events per day, the most common being physical barriers, followed by nasty comments, being stared at, and others making negative assumptions. In total, 1077 stigmatising events were recorded. Having a higher BMI was the factor that was mostly strongly associated with experiencing all the various forms of stigma. Women who reported socialising more also reported experiencing more stigma. Dietary health was poorer among the women who reported experiencing more stigma, consistent with prior evidence that weight stigma can contribute to worse eating habits.
The older and better educated women reported experiencing less interpersonal stigma, perhaps, the researchers speculated, because they had learned ways to "mitigate their perceptions of stigmatising events".
The diaries also contained a section for open-ended descriptions of stigmatising experiences, providing a further glimpse of what it can be like to live as an obese person:
_________________________________
Seacat, J., Dougal, S., & Roy, D. (2014). A daily diary assessment of female weight stigmatization Journal of Health Psychology, 21 (2), 228-240 DOI: 10.1177/1359105314525067
--further reading--
If obesity is a disease, is labelling it that way the cure?
Anticipating an interaction with an obese person provokes feelings of social power
Children see obesity as contagious
Hungry men prefer bigger women
Diners order more food and drink from larger waiters and waitresses
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free fortnightly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
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Neuroscience
These 50 overweight women kept a week-long "fat stigma" diary
One reason for this mismatch might be that existing studies have asked overweight people to recall from memory any times they've been subjected to stigma. Different unpleasant incidences could easily blur together, and people might have put many stigmatising encounters purposefully out of mind. To get round this problem, Jason Seacat at Western New England University and his colleagues have conducted the first ever diary study of their weight or "fat stigma" experiences. Their findings appear in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Fifty overweight and obese women (their average BMI was 42.5), recruited from weight-based web-sites and blogs, most of them white, with an average age of 38, kept a diary for 7 days, noting each evening before bed any instances of weight stigma they'd experienced that day. The diary contained prompts of different kinds of weight-based stigma they might have experienced, such as interpersonal stigma (e.g. nasty comments from others), institutional discrimination, and physical barriers (e.g. clothes that don't fit; chairs in theatres and restaurants not being big enough).
On average the women described experiencing an average of 3 stigmatising events per day, the most common being physical barriers, followed by nasty comments, being stared at, and others making negative assumptions. In total, 1077 stigmatising events were recorded. Having a higher BMI was the factor that was mostly strongly associated with experiencing all the various forms of stigma. Women who reported socialising more also reported experiencing more stigma. Dietary health was poorer among the women who reported experiencing more stigma, consistent with prior evidence that weight stigma can contribute to worse eating habits.
The older and better educated women reported experiencing less interpersonal stigma, perhaps, the researchers speculated, because they had learned ways to "mitigate their perceptions of stigmatising events".
The diaries also contained a section for open-ended descriptions of stigmatising experiences, providing a further glimpse of what it can be like to live as an obese person:
"With friends at a baby shower. Went to McDonald's first so people wouldn't look at me eating more than I should."
"I was told what a bad mother I am because I can't set limits as to what my son or his friends eat during sleep overs, because I can't even control myself."
"Teenagers made animal sounds [moo] outside of a store I was in."Because the research featured American women only, most of them white, it's obviously not possible to know how well the findings would generalise to overweight men, or other ethnicities and cultures. Nonetheless, the researchers said their study acts as a corrective to all the stigma research that has relied a retrospective design, and that their findings "help broaden the scientific understanding of factors that may serve to exacerbate and/or alleviate weight stigma."
_________________________________
Seacat, J., Dougal, S., & Roy, D. (2014). A daily diary assessment of female weight stigmatization Journal of Health Psychology, 21 (2), 228-240 DOI: 10.1177/1359105314525067
--further reading--
If obesity is a disease, is labelling it that way the cure?
Anticipating an interaction with an obese person provokes feelings of social power
Children see obesity as contagious
Hungry men prefer bigger women
Diners order more food and drink from larger waiters and waitresses
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free fortnightly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
- The Bigger You Get, The Harder It Is To Tell Whether You've Gained Or Lost Weight
When your waistband feels tighter than usual, or the scales say you've put on a few pounds, it's easy to blame the news on clothes shrinkage or an uneven carpet, especially if your body looks just the same in the mirror. And that lack of visual...
- If Obesity Is A Disease, Is Labelling It That Way The Cure?
When the American Medical Association formally recognised obesity as a disease in June 2013, plenty of public health officials were thrilled for the increases in research, treatment, and prevention funding that would presumably arise as a result. But...
- Children See Obesity As Contagious
Young children see obesity as if it were a kind of contagious illness. That's according to Paul Klaczynski who says his research helps explain why the stigmatisation of fat people is so prevalent, and why obesity prejudice is committed by children...
- The Special Issue Spotter
Science magazine looks at 'life': some of the insights that social scientists are making as they study humans at different stages of the life cycle. (Science). Four papers that showcase the power and promise of cognitive neuropsychology approaches...
- Hungry Men Prefer Bigger Women
Men in rich, Western countries tend to prefer thinner women, whereas men in poorer South Pacific countries tend to prefer bigger women. It’s been argued that this is due to cultural and ethnic differences, but increasingly psychologists now believe...