The psychology of social norms.

Ethnocentrism: Theories of conflict, ethnic attitudes, and group behavior.

It is universally held among researchers and social critics that a thin ideal dominates current cultural conceptions of what is attractive, especially for women. Using interviews with eighteen women and men, this paper investigates an apparent paradox: how thin people negotiate a landscape where the attention they receive because of their thinness distresses them. Results indicate that thin people are often the target of unwanted comments about their size, comments produce an unpleasant state of self-consciousness, and the expectation of unwanted social interaction will motivate thin individuals to avoid certain social situations. Results are interpreted in terms of thinness being a hypervisible condition that produces a breakdown of norms regarding civil inattention toward thinness and produces the experience of being othered by social perceivers.

“Oh, My God, I Hate You:” The Felt Experience of Being Othered for Being Thin

Drawing from social comparison theory, we examine how perceptions of friends' body sizes may influence adolescents' subjective evaluations of their own body (e.g., how accurate they are in judging their weight, how much body dissatisfaction they feel), particularly for adolescent females. Participants were low-income, minority adolescents (Study 1: N = 194 females, Mean age = 15.4; Study 2: N = 409 males and females; Mean age = 14.9). Adolescents used figure rating scales to indicate their perceived size and that of four of their closest friends and completed several measures of subjective weight evaluation (e.g., weight classification, body dissatisfaction, internalized weight bias). In both studies, how adolescents perceived their body size and the body sizes of their thinnest and heaviest friends were positively correlated. In Study 1, overweight females based on measured BMI were less likely to accurately judge themselves as overweight if they had a close friend they perceived as heavy. In addition, females who viewed themselves as having a larger figure reported more internalized weight bias when they had friends they viewed as relatively thin. Findings from Study 2 suggest that how friends' bodies are perceived is predictive of subjective weight evaluation measures only for adolescent females. Programs that address negative aspects of social comparison may be important in preventing both obesity and eating disorder symptoms in adolescent females.

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Perceived size of friends and weight evaluation among low-income adolescents

Research on facial attractiveness and face recognition has produced contradictory results that we believe are rooted in methodological limitations. Three experiments evaluated the hypothesis that f...

Facial attractiveness, social status, and face recognition

Bias against overweight people is documented; however, little attention has been directed to bias against thin people. Theoretically, light and heavy bodies can invoke an affective mechanism leading to bias and avoidance of those different physically from the average. Participants (N = 62) rated six same or opposite sex targets varying randomly in weight. Ratings of traits and liking were curvilinear as a function of weight and showed bias against light and heavy targets. For heavy targets, negative affect predicted discriminatory behavioural intentions; stereotypes did not. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Explicit weight stereotypes are curvilinear: biased judgments of thin and overweight targets.

People often favor groups they belong to over those beyond the in-group boundary. Yet, in-group favoritism does not always occur, and people will sometimes favor an out-group over the in-group. We delineate theoretically when in-group favoritism (i.e., self-protection) and out-group favoritism (i.e., benevolence) should occur. In two experiments, groups’ relative status and competence stereotypes were manipulated; groups’ outcomes were non-contingent in Experiment 1 and contingent in Experiment 2. When allocating reward, members of a low-status group were self-protective, favoring the in-group over the out-group under both non-contingent and contingent outcomes. Those with high status benevolently favored the out-group when outcomes were non-contingent, but were self-protective with contingent outcomes. People were willing to engage in social activities with an out-group member regardless of competence. However, when task collaboration had implications for the self, those with low status preferred...

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Lorin Kinney

Papers

Explicit weight stereotypes are curvilinear: biased judgments of thin and overweight targets.

Implications for the self determine benevolence and self-protection in intergroup relations