The heavy weight of death: How anti-fat bias is affected by weight-based group membership and existential threat

Seibert, Ann; Schindler, Simon; Reinhard, Marc-André (2015). The heavy weight of death: How anti-fat bias is affected by weight-based group membership and existential threat. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(3), pp. 139-146. Wiley-Blackwell 10.1111/jasp.12283

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Anti-fat bias is marked by a devaluation of overweight people compared with non-overweight persons. Even though belonging to the same group, research on social identity theory (SIT) indicates that overweight people also devaluate overweight others. Merging insights from research on anti-fat bias, SIT, and terror management theory, our study (n = 101) provides new insights on motivational aspects of anti-fat bias by investigating the effects of existential threat on the evaluation of non-overweight and overweight people. Results revealed that participants in the existential threat condition displayed in-group bias: Participants perceiving themselves as non-overweight showed more pronounced anti-fat bias compared with participants in the non-death threat condition. In contrast, participants perceiving themselves as overweight demonstrated less anti-fat bias than controls.

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