The weight of weight: The salience of body weight in the impression formation process
Résumé
Western societies preach slimness. However, overweight and obesity are increasing. Overweight individuals often face weight discrimination. No studies have investigated the salience of body weight in the impression formation. This study aims to examine the salience of the overweight attribute in shaping first impressions. Forty-nine participants (Mage = 25.82 years, SD = 13.44; 19 women) were asked to describe fictitious characters who differed in age, gender, skin color, and weight. Overweight targets (i.e., five overweight characters) constituted the experimental condition. Non-overweight targets formed the control condition (i.e., five non-overweight characters). Multilevel analyses showed that weight-related words were more used to describe the overweight target than the non-overweight target (25.41% vs 11.83%; OR=1.56, 95% CI 1.24–1.96, p<0.01). Moreover, the probability of using a weight-related word to describe overweighted targets was significantly higher for the earlier words, than for the later words – (OR=3.82, 95% CI 2.36–6.20, p<0.001 for the first, OR=2.44, 95% CI 1.78–3.33 for the second, OR=1.62, 95% CI 1.24–2.12, p<0.001 for the third, and fourth OR=1.08, 95% CI 0.73–1.60, p=0.695 words used to describe the character). These findings support that the overweight characteristics of individuals is salient in the impression formation process.