Lonelier, lazier, and teased: the stigmatizing effect of body size

Swami, V., Furnham, A., Amin, R. , Chaudhri, J., Joshi, K., Jundi, S., Miller, R., Mirza-Begum, J., Begum, F., Sheth, P. and Tovee, M. J. (2008) Lonelier, lazier, and teased: the stigmatizing effect of body size. Journal of Social Psychology, 148 (5). pp. 577-593. ISSN 0022-4545

Documents
24458 06-07-2017_Lonelier.pdf

Request a copy
[img] PDF
24458 06-07-2017_Lonelier.pdf - Whole Document
Restricted to Repository staff only

1MB
Item Type:Article
Item Status:Live Archive

Abstract

The authors conducted 2 studies to examine the stigmatization of the female and male body using photographic stimuli of real people. In the first study, 75 female and 55 male undergraduates rated a series of 50 photographs of women ranging in body mass index (BMI) on 3 items: gets teased, lonely, and lazy. Both male and female observers rated bodies on either side of BMI 19-20 kg/m 2 higher for the gets teased and lonely items. For the lazy item, there was a clear pattern of greater stigmatization with increasing BMI. In the second study, 40 male and 40 female observers rated a series of photographs of the male body that varied in BMI and waist-to-chest ratio on the same items. Results showed that men and women judged overweight and more tubular men to be lazier, lonelier, and teased. These findings suggest that body size is an important characteristic to consider when examining body stigmatization among men and women. These results also show support for the beautiful-is-good bias.

Keywords:body shape, body weight, obesity, stigmatization
Subjects:C Biological Sciences > C800 Psychology
C Biological Sciences > C850 Cognitive Psychology
C Biological Sciences > C880 Social Psychology
C Biological Sciences > C841 Health Psychology
C Biological Sciences > C840 Clinical Psychology
Divisions:College of Social Science > School of Psychology
Related URLs:
ID Code:24458
Deposited On:06 Jul 2017 09:27

Repository Staff Only: item control page