Abstract
Background:
Efforts to explain negative attitudes toward obese people have centered on beliefs about the controllability of body weight, whereas other processes (such as the emotion of disgust) have been largely ignored. This study examined the role of disgust in evaluations of obese people, as well as other social groups (for example smokers, drug addicts, women, homosexuals, politicians).
Method:
In three studies, participants (total N=524) made ratings of how much they believe that obesity is a matter of personal control, indicated how disgusted they are with obese people, and reported their attitudes toward obese people. In Study 1, participants also made similar ratings (perceptions of control over group membership, disgust, and attitudes) for 15 additional social groups.
Results:
Disgust was the strongest predictor of negative attitudes toward obese people, and disgust fully mediated the association between perceptions of control and attitudes toward obese people. In addition, obese people were rated less favorably, and as more disgusting, than almost all social groups. Across all social groups, perceived control over group membership was positively correlated with disgust ratings, and disgust mediated the link between perceived control and favorability ratings.
Conclusion:
These findings indicate that disgust is an important, yet understudied, component of weight bias. Furthermore, these findings situate representations of obesity in a broader context by establishing similarities with other social groups.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Goffman I . Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, NJ, 1963.
Puhl R, Brownell KD . Bias, discrimination, and obesity. Obes Res 2001; 9: 788–805.
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL, Johnson CL . Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999–2000. JAMA 2002; 288: 1723–1727.
Crandall CS . Prejudice against fat people: ideology and self-interest. J Pers Soc Psychol 1994; 66: 882–894.
Teachman BA, Gapinski KD, Brownell KD, Rawlins M, Jeyaram S . Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: the impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychol 2003; 22: 68–78.
Schwartz MB, Vartanian LR, Nosek BA, Brownell KD . The influence of one's own body weight on implicit and explicit anti-fat bias. Obesity 2006; 14: 440–447.
Cramer P, Steinwert T . Thin is good, fat is bad: how early does it begin? J Appl Dev Psychol 1998; 19: 429–451.
Schwartz MB, Chambliss HO, Brownell KD, Blair SN, Billington C . Weight bias among health professionals specializing in obesity. Obes Res 2003; 11: 1033–1039.
Yang W, Kelly T, He J . Genetic epidemiology of obesity. Epidemiol Rev 2007; 29: 49–61.
Anesbury T, Tiggemann M . An attempt to reduce negative stereotyping of obesity in children by changing controllability beliefs. Health Edu Res 2000; 15: 145–152.
Cottrell CA, Neuberg SL . Different emotional reactions to different groups: a sociofunctional threat-based approach to ‘prejudice’. J Pers Soc Psychol 2005; 88: 770–789.
Fiske ST, Cuddy AC, Glick P, Xu J . A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: competence and warmth follow from perceived status and competition. J Pers Soc Psychol 2002; 82: 878–902.
Taylor K . Disgust is a factor in extreme prejudice. Br J Soc Psychol 2007; 46: 597–617.
Rozin P, Haidt J, McCauley CR . Disgust. In: Lewis M, Haviland-Jones JM (eds). Handbook of Emotions, 2nd edn. Guilford Press: New York, 2000. pp 637–653.
Harvey T, Troop NA, Treasure JL, Murphy T . Fear, disgust, and abnormal eating attitudes: a preliminary study. Int J Eat Disord 2002; 32: 213–218.
Hodson G, Costello K . Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychol Sci 2007; 18: 691–698.
Krendl AC, Macrae NC, Kelley WM, Fugelsang JA, Heatherton TF . The good, the bad, and the ugly: an fMRI investigation of the functional anatomic correlates of stigma. Soc Neurosci 2006; 1: 5–15.
Haidt J, McCauley C, Rozin P . Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: a scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Pers Individ Dif 1994; 16: 701–713.
Olatunji BO, Williams NL, Tolin DF, Sawchuck CN, Abramowitz JS, Lohr JM et al. The disgust scale: item analysis, factor structure, and suggestions for refinement. Psychol Assess 2007; 19: 281–297.
Baron RM, Kenny DA . The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. J Pers Soc Psychol 1986; 51: 1173–1182.
Preacher KJ, Hayes AF . SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput 2004; 36: 717–731.
Gray H, Gray K, Wegner DM . Dimensions of mind perception. Science 2007; 315: 619.
Gray K, Wegner DM . Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. J Pers Soc Psychol 2009; 96: 505–520.
Oaten M, Stevenson RJ, Case TI . Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. Psychol Bull 2009; 135: 303–321.
Park JH, Schaller M, Crandall CS . Pathogen-avoidance mechanisms and the stigmatization of obese people. Evo Hum Behav 2007; 28: 410–414.
Hebl MR, Mannix LM . The weight of obesity in evaluating others: a mere proximity effect. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2003; 29: 28–38.
Rozin P . The process of moralization. Psychol Sci 1999; 10: 218–221.
Rozin P, Singh L . The moralization of cigarette smoking in the United States. J Consum Psychol 1999; 8: 321–337.
Silverstein B, Peterson B, Purdue L . Some correlates of the thin standard of physical attractiveness of women. Int J Eat Disord 1986; 5: 898–905.
Latner JD, Stunkard AJ . Getting worse: the stigmatization of obese children. Obes Res 2003; 11: 452–456.
Acknowledgements
I thank Danielle Arigo, Daria Bakina, Kristin Heron, Kelly Filipkowski, Lindsay Kraynak, and Lauren Miller for the discussions that motivated this work; Lisa A Williams for her advice on the strategy used for the social-groups analysis; and Rebecca T Pinkus for her helpful comments on this article.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vartanian, L. Disgust and perceived control in attitudes toward obese people. Int J Obes 34, 1302–1307 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.45
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.45
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
A behavioural immune system perspective on disgust and social prejudice
Nature Reviews Psychology (2023)
-
The medical model of “obesity” and the values behind the guise of health
Synthese (2023)
-
Danger appraisal and pathogen-avoidance mechanisms in stigma towards severe mental illness: the mediating role of affective responses
BMC Psychiatry (2022)
-
Pseudo-Contamination and Memory: Is There a Memory Advantage for Objects Touched by “Morphologically Deviant People”?
Evolutionary Psychological Science (2022)
-
Disgust propensity has a causal link to the stigmatization of people with cancer
Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2020)