The Shape of Stigma

Picture two women—both the same exact height and the same exact weight, specifically a weight that most observers might call “obese.” But one of these women carries her weight primarily on her hips and thighs, whereas the other woman carries her weight primarily on her abdomen.

Would these women of equal weight experience equal fat stigma?

Our research tackles this question and, more broadly, investigates the role that body shape plays in fat stigma.

Compared to other forms of prejudice, fat stigma is still relatively acceptable (not to the stigmatized persons or allies, of course), and it remains pervasive. People with higher weights experience stigma from parents, teachers, employers, and healthcare providers. These experiences are not only profoundly painful, but they are also associated with a host of negative consequences. For example, regardless of one’s weight, experiences of fat stigma might increase a person’s likelihood of dying from any cause. And for anyone who thinks fat shaming can help people shed pounds—no. In fact, experiences of fat stigma have even been linked to later weight gain.

Given the personal, social, and public health costs potentially associated with fat stigma, it is not surprising that, for decades, social psychologists and other researchers have been hard at work studying this harmful prejudice.

Our field has proposed multiple possible explanations, with some garnering more empirical support than others. One relatively well-supported account holds that people’s beliefs as to why a person has overweight or obesity drive fat stigma: if I think someone is fat because they are lazy, then I stigmatize them—because I stigmatize laziness. Another locates the cause in Western media’s depictions of unrealistically thin female bodies (and increasingly unrealistically muscular male bodies). Still, others focus on threats that people with obesity might be perceived to pose; for example, an intergroup threat theory approach might suggest this stigma is due to the perception that those with obesity monopolize resources.

Although distinct, one thing that these explanations have in common is that they—quite understandably—focus on body size. We wanted to add body shape to this conversation.

Why? First, biomedical literature suggests that not all fats are bad—fats store energy, can protect against pathogens, and perhaps can even promote fertility. Moreover, there are different kinds of fats, which can be stored in different places on the body and give rise to different body shapes. For example, most of the negative outcomes people associate with “obesity” are linked to fat stored on the abdomen. Second, studies from anthropology have long shown that the relative amount of fat on a woman’s abdomen versus her hips strongly affects how people perceive her. This research has focused on what people deem attractive, finding that women with relatively less fat on their abdomens than hips are deemed more physically attractive.

Taken together, this work suggests the possibility that fat stigma, too, might be influenced by body shape. In particular, higher-weight women carrying primarily hip fat might be somewhat buffered against fat stigma.

To investigate this, we first had to create new images for people to judge. Most existing sets of body images depict figures with increasing weight stored on the abdomen. As those figures increase in weight, they have increasingly large guts. By contrast, the figures in our set systematically vary in both body size and shape. We zeroed in on two body shapes—those with fat carried on the hips and thighs, and those with fat carried on the abdomen. We also focused on stigma toward women, although of course, men experience fat stigma too.  

Because researchers have found some differences in fat stigmatization across racial/ethnic backgrounds and cultures, we recruited White and Black Americans as well as participants living in India.

We found that body shape is a powerful driver of fat stigma toward women. Regardless of participant race/ethnicity and nation, people stigmatized higher-weight women more when those women carried abdominal versus hip and thigh fat. Again, these women were the same exact heights and weights—all that differed was their shape.

We also found a surprising difference between women who varied in overall weight (overweight versus obese). Women were stigmatized more when they were overweight and had abdominal fat than when they were obese and had hip and thigh fat. In other words, people actually stigmatized a higher-weight woman less if her fat was on her hips and thighs, countering what we typically see in fat stigma research. This means the effects of body shape on fat stigma might, at times, be even greater than the effects of body size. These results also challenge a common assumption that people see all fat as ‘bad’ and more fat as ‘worse.’

These findings resonate with existing work in biomedicine and anthropology, as well as some lay wisdom. Indeed, women and the magazines often aimed at women have long noted how body shape can affect how people perceive them.

These findings also show that we need to integrate body shape into our theories of fat stigma. Otherwise, we miss opportunities to better understand and combat both fat stigma itself as well as its negative consequences.


For Further Reading

Krems, J. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2021). Updating long-held assumptions about fat stigma: For women, body shape plays a critical role. Social Psychological and Personality Sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1177/1948550621991381
 

Jaimie Arona Krems is an assistant professor of psychology, and a member/co-founder of the Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis (OCEAN) at Oklahoma State University. Her research uses interdisciplinary tools to investigate how women actively cooperate, strategically compete, and are perceived by others.

Lab website: https://www.kremslab.com/
Twitter: @JaimieKrems

Stressors in Adolescence and Adult Obesity

We've all heard that diet and lifestyle contribute to obesity, but what if there was more to the story? And what if you could predict the risk of obesity from data collected 14 years earlier?

Adolescence is a formative time of development, and life stressors during these years may be linked to adult obesity. Habits that you develop, or very challenging stressors you encounter in adolescence, can affect your health for many subsequent years.

In our recent study, we measured stressors in middle and high school adolescents in grades 7- 12 in 80 high schools and 52 middle schools in the United States, and then followed them throughout their transition to young adulthood. Two sources of stress were of interest:

  • Interpersonal stressors include being a victim of a crime (e.g., being held up or mugged), the death of close relationships, and a parental figure being in jail.
  • Financial stressors include their family receiving public assistance or welfare, their parents being unemployed, and low parental educational attainment.

All of these are stressful situations and the more of these that you have experienced, the more stress you will feel.

In terms of positive and protective factors, we also measured social support—how much they felt that parents, teachers, other adults, and friends care about them—and also social cohesion in terms of how supportive their neighbors are.

Could Stressors During Adolescence Lead to Higher Adult Obesity?

BMI (Body Mass Index) uses a person's height and weight in a combined index to assess weight-related health risk factors. In our case, when following up with our participants 14 years later, our emphasis was on stressors experienced during adolescence in relation to their later BMI as an adult. Alongside interviewing study participants, we measured their BMI in their homes for accuracy.

Taking all our stress variables and demographic factors into account, we found that interpersonal stressors were directly linked to BMI 14 years later. Even more interesting, social support from friends and family and supportive neighborhoods counteracted the negative effect of stressors in adolescence, particularly interpersonal stress, when we predicted BMI 14 years later. Thus, feeling cared for by others or living in a supportive and safe neighborhood might soften the effects of interpersonal stress on one's later health. Parents, teachers, other trusted adults, friends, and family members can provide this social support. For young people, having a large, compassionate, and caring social network can be helpful in navigating times of crisis and can promote good psychological and physical health. 

Social cohesion, or the solidarity felt between the individual and their community, also can act as a protective factor. Communicating with neighbors, knowing your neighbors, and feeling that neighbors look out for one another are great measures of this, and can thereby be another route of support. Our study did not find a relationship between financial stressors in adolescence and BMI in adulthood.

Understanding the factors contributing to adult obesity can help people better prepare for potential health risks and even develop their own strategies to prevent the development of these stress pathways. Future research is needed, but it could be that targeted social interventions, such as greater time spent with friends and family or joining a local soccer club, at the time of intense interpersonal stressors could protect individuals from developing obesity and other health risks 14 years down the road. Even sessions with a psychotherapist could act as an interpersonal support system in times of hardship.

Adolescents who face major interpersonal stressors may be at higher risk for obesity as adults, a risk that is linked to a multitude of other health issues. To counter this effect, our research suggests that a supportive community and a friendly neighborhood among adolescents can promote positive health in adulthood.


For Further Reading

Stanton, M. V., Jones, A., & Shahani, D. (2022). Relationship among interpersonal stressors in adolescence, social support buffers, and obesity in adulthood 14 years later. Health Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0001223
 

Michael V. Stanton is Associate Professor of Public Health at California State University, East Bay who studies health disparities, stress, and obesity.

Antwan Jones is Professor of Sociology, Epidemiology, and Public Policy at George Washington University who studies neighborhood effects, health disparities, and obesity.

Psychology of Food Choice: Challenging the Status Quo

Researchers are challenging conventional beliefs about the effectiveness of traditional strategies for encouraging healthy eating. The symposium, "Challenging Misconceptions About the Psychology of Food Choice," includes four presentations that tackle issues such as the harmfulness of weight-stigma, encouraging healthy choices, and strategies to help children and teens. The symposium is featured at the SPSP 16th Annual Convention in Long Beach, California.

Helping kids eat more vegetables

A study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, observed whether or not photographs of vegetables on a school lunch tray had an impact on the amount of vegetables eaten. The study found that placing photos of carrots and green beans did increase the amounts of vegetables eaten during lunch, but it still was not at levels consistent with government-recommended dietary guidelines.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota are now studying other simple methods that schools could utilize to encourage eating vegetables during lunch. Their research will be published in the coming year.

"[Our] research suggests that little changes to the lunchroom setting can help kids eat more vegetables. For example, you can help kids eat more vegetables by providing vegetables before you offer any other food," explains researcher Traci Mann. Children who were given vegetables to eat first before any other food ate more than children who were provided all food options at once.

Challenging teens' attitudes

Researchers at the University of California at San Diego and the University of Texas at Austin are investigating ways to motivate teenagers to make healthier food and drink choices.

"Teenagers are notoriously uninterested in healthy eating," says lead researcher Christopher Bryan. In response to that disinterest, Bryan and his colleagues have taken a novel approach at motivating teens. "Instead of trying to convince teens to care about something they don't care about, we link healthy eating to things they already care about," Bryan explains.

The researchers are framing the intervention as an expose of deceptive food marketing practices designed to manipulate teens to eat junk food, for instance, explaining how companies engineer junk food to be as addictive as possible and use dishonest labeling to make products appear healthier than they are. "We find that by changing the way teens think about healthy eating, we're able to increase the extent to which teens want to see themselves as healthy eaters...and by doing that, we're able to increase the rate at which teens make healthy choices," says Bryan.

The researchers are continuing to study whether their approach can effectively change teens' behavior long-term.

Downsides of calorie counting

Counting calories may negatively impact an individual's ability to focus, according to researchers at the University of California at San Diego, Harvard University, and Princeton University.

"If you're counting calories, seemingly innocuous reminders of tempting, high-calorie food--such as an empty donut box in the middle of a conference table--can lead to worse performance on difficult tests of attention and reasoning ability," says lead researcher Aimee Chabot.

Many employers often provide indulgent food in meetings with the intention of motivating their staff, but that may be having an unintended negative effect. The researchers suggest that individuals looking to reduce their calorie intake avoid counting calories and instead opt for simpler strategies, such as avoiding added sugars or not eating after 7 p.m.

The research is still preliminary, and more data is being collected to replicate the initial results and examine the effect of the presence of actual tempting food on cognitive performance.

Effects of weight shaming

Weight-loss campaigns and programs often portray overweight and obese individuals negatively. Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have found that media messages that stigmatize obesity had negative behavioral and impacts on overweight participants. The research was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"Our research shows that weight stigma leads to behavioral responses that can ironically contribute to weight gain," says co-author Jeffrey Hunger. The researchers observed that self-perceived overweight women who read a weight-stigmatizing news article consumed more high-calorie snack foods compared to overweight women who read a neutral article.

"Simply reading about the potential for weight stigma was enough to impair self-regulation among overweight women," explains Hunger. The research suggests that the mere threat of stigma can have important behavioral effects, even in cases where an individual does not directly experience weight-based mistreatment.

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The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter, @SPSPnews and find us at facebook.com/SPSP.org.

Related symposium:

Challenging Misconceptions About the Psychology of Food Choice
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM, Room 202ABC, Long Beach Convention Center

"Social Psychological Approaches to Obesity: Using Nudges or Norms to get Kids to Eat Vegetables"
Traci Mann, University of Minnesota

"Sticking it to the Man: Framing Healthy Eating as Rebellious and Socially Conscious Shapes Teens' Attitudes and Motivates Healthy Choices"
Christopher J. Bryan, University of California at San Diego

"Distracted by Donuts?: The Cognitive Strain of Calorie Counting may Undermine Focus and Work Performance"
Aimee Chabot, University of California at San Diego

"The Ironic Effects of Weight Stigma"
Jeffrey Hunger, University of California at Santa Barbara