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my work looks at obesity within the united states in the last 50 years obesity has tripled currently 68
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of americans are overweight and a full 30 of those people are obese now a lot of the work has
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looked at the health and economic consequences for our health care system what happens when people are really
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obese and overweight what has received much less attention are the interpersonal and social costs
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and my research looks at how people who are obese are discriminated against and perceived differently within a
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workplace setting people are discriminating a way that we see obese people as less competent
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than non-obese people one of the things we find is that this is a bias that is we can separate actual
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competence from perceived competence and we see that people judge obese people unfairly
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the second thing we find is that these social perceptions are really labile they can be changed as
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a function of things like how warm somebody is so whether or not somebody evokes
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sympathy or disgust is a function of how warm they're perceived to be there are a couple things that surprised
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us uh first we find this bias it works for both men and for women who are heavy second we found that even heavy people
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are biased against other people who are heavy uh and third we were surprised at how
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how important this idea of warmth is that it's this idea about expressing your close relationships with
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your family your friends your pets that is when people express warmth they're judged to be much more
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sympathetic they're liked much better and that in fact this expression of warmth could be even more
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important than actually losing weight in changing the way we're perceived by
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others the two different implications of this work uh i think apply to people who are doing
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the judging like managers who are hiring and promoting people and for targets themselves but first i
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think about the managers that is as a manager we want to think about ways in which we can judge other people
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in a way that's unbiased and that might mean changing the the way we interview or promote people
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and specifically here i'm thinking about trying to make things as objective as
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possible so really judging people on the objective merits rather than some other holistic judgment that might
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be subject to bias the second set of implications where i think about are for people themselves as targets
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when we're concerned about how we're being judged by others demonstrating warmth emerges as a really
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important thing that is when we convey our warmth for our family our friends our co-workers
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that really matters and it turns out what we find is it matters in particular for people who are
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obese and might be targets of discrimination otherwise in our research what we looked at were
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people in basically two categories we we focused our contrasts on people who are sort of a normal
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size and an obese size and by normal what we did is we looked at meeting statistics
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within the united states and for example we looked at women who were five four uh and either 132 pounds or
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220 pounds and for men we looked at people who are five foot nine inches who are either 168 pounds or 243 pounds
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and those heavier weights are classified as obese what's interesting is we found that
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these effects they held for photos which might be more intuitive but they also held even if we just
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presented people with text so we showed people resume information and all they could see were just
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numbers they still had these visceral and emotional reactions to obesity what's interesting is the the biases we
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have against overweight people are different than the biases we have against other categories for example we know
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that there's discrimination based upon race ethnicity religion sexual orientation
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the bias against overweight people i think is particularly pernicious because it's judged to be acceptable
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that is people perceive it's as if people think you chose to be overweight you violated
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this protestant ethic against gluttony and that was your choice and so the sanctions we have against
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people who are obese tend to be more overt and more acceptable societally than than other
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discrimination that we might see well i think the first thing is to be aware that this is a potential bias
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and to recognize that as we judge other people we may judge obese people more harshly what we
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find in our research is a very consistent bias perceiving obese people to be less
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competent now what's interesting is that even when we disentangle actual competence
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from perceived competence we see the gap in judgment it's a bias and i think the first thing
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we can do is recognize that it is a potential bias when we're judging other people
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and again if we're if we're a manager for recruiting if we're promoting we want to think
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about relying on the objective criteria as much as possible and the way we've
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moved for example to try to make things more gender neutral as we do as we do recruiting and
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promotion we want to think about the same kinds of procedures for judging people based upon their their
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size and weight the second part is for people themselves for those of us that are a little bit
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heavier to think about not just the health benefits but now also the career and interpersonal benefits of
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losing weight and the importance of demonstrating warmth that is when we perceive
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when other people perceive us they're going to perceive us differently if we're warm we have close relationships
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we've demonstrated concern and care for other people you know i think the the most obvious
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story in the news or the one that certainly hits me first uh are stories about chris christie when
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he wanted to run for president there was a lot of news regarding his weight and in fact i have a quote here from
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michael kinsley this is on bloomsburg where he says look i'm sorry but new jersey
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governor chris christie cannot be president he is just too fat uh and it goes on but i think the idea
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that we're we accept this kind of bias in a way that we wouldn't if it was a
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racial ethnic uh or other type of discrimination but we see this to be far more acceptable
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when it has to do with weight we root our work in a bias content model where we look at perceptions of other
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people based upon two dimensions warmth and competence and here what we're looking at
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are people who are perceived to be low competence and so obesity what we find is one trigger that signals
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perceptions of low competence but there are others for example there are stereotypical groups like
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the elderly who are also perceived to be low incompetence now we find is that people who perceive
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to be low competence could be discriminated against but that social perception is really
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a labile changeable construct and when those people let's say the elderly demonstrate warmth
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they're perceived much more sympathetically than when they're perceived to be
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cold our research is the first to embed social perceptions of obesity within a broader theoretical
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framework and what this framework allows us to do is explore how perceptions can change
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and we develop testable predictions and test those to show that things like warmth for
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example can shift in a predictable way the reactions that we get both the perceptions and the behavior
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consequences that follow those perceptions i'm very interested in how the appearance
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of somebody influences their interpersonal perception and how it influences our social
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interactions i focus on obesity because it's such a growing and important problem in the united
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states and abroad but i'm also interested in how other aspects of appearance like physical
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attractiveness influence our social perceptions with obesity in particular i'm also
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interested in what happens for example after we lose weight you can imagine somebody that loses
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weight both through a surgical operation or by diet and exercise we might perceive people differently as
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a function of how they lost weight and if they lost weight so i think there are a lot of questions going forward
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that we could fruitfully explore you