Prejudice Against Fat People: Ideology and Self-Interest · Prejudice against fat people was...

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1994, Vol. 66. No. 5, 882-894 Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0022-3514/94/J3.00

Prejudice Against Fat People: Ideology and Self-Interest

Christian S. Crandall

Prejudice against fat people was compared with symbolic racism. An anti-fat attitudes questionnairewas developed and used in several studies testing the notion that antipathy toward fat people is partof an "ideology of blame." Three commonalities between antifat attitudes and racism were explored:(a) the association between values, beliefs, and the rejection of a stigmatized group, (b) the old-fashioned antipathy toward deviance of many sorts, and (c) the lack of self-interest in out-groupantipathy. Parallels were found on all 3 dimensions. No in-group bias was shown by fat people.Fatism appears to behave much like symbolic racism, but with less of the negative social desirabilityof racism.

One of the most interesting and controversial areas of inquiryin attitudes and intergroup relations over the past 20 years hasbeen the issue of symbolic attitudes and beliefs. This work hasfollowed the functional approach to attitudes sponsored byKatz (1960) and Smith, Bruner, and White (1956), and two gen-eral classes of attitude functions have been identified: instru-mental and symbolic (Herek, 1986). Instrumental attitudes arebased on an evaluation of the attitude object in terms of itsutility for the person and are rational, prosaic, and relativelyimmediate in nature. Attitudes with a symbolic basis are char-acterized by the expression of beliefs and values relevant to selfand identity. Based in early childhood learning, they representlong-standing values about society, are affectively laden, and canbe independent of self-interest (Abelson, 1982; Herek, 1987;Pryor, Reeder, & McManus, 1991; Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen,1980).

Symbolic Racism

Most of the research on symbolic attitudes has been on sym-bolic politics, particularly symbolic racism. For example, Sears,Kinder, and their associates suggested that a substantial amountof racism is based on symbolic beliefs about how Black peoplefail to live up to classic American Protestant values (Kinder &Sears, 1981; Sears et al., 1980). The symbolic racism perspec-tive argues that prejudice toward Blacks is made up of two com-ponents: old-fashioned racial hatred and the belief that Blacks

Portions of these data were presented at the Fourth Nags Head Con-ference on Stereotypes and Intergroup Relations, Highland Beach, Flor-ida.

I thank Colby Cohen, Lisa Hardy, Holly Harris, Rebecca Martinez,Brooke Meyers, Jennifer Prendergast, Suzanne Shellabarger, and StaceyWyman for their assistance in collecting data. I especially appreciatethe contributions of Mikey Maclean Thomas in developing the AFAquestionnaire. Monica Biernat, Fletcher Blanchard, and several anony-mous reviewers gave extensive and helpful comments on an earlier ver-sion of this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Chris-tian S. Crandall, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Law-rence, Kansas 66045. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

do not emulate traditional American values, such as discipline,self-control, and self-reliance (Kinder, 1986).

This article extends the notion of symbolic racism to antifat1

attitudes (Allison, Basile, & Yuker, 1991). I build the analogybetween racial attitudes and antifat attitudes, with the intentionof revealing the structure of antifat attitudes, as well as testingthe generality of the symbolic racism idea. Symbolic racism the-ory is briefly reviewed, along with some criticisms of the idea,and some evidence of prejudice against fat people in the UnitedStates is detailed. The studies in this article were designed toshow that the conception of symbolic belief applies to the rejec-tion of fat people. In this research, I attempt to avoid the prob-lems in conception, design, and analysis for which the symbolicracism research program has been criticized.

Symbolic racism can be characterized by three hypotheses(Kinder, 1986). The first hypothesis is that anti-Black affectstems from the belief that Blacks do not support the traditionalvalues of hard work, self-contained independence, obedience toauthority, and self-discipline. The second is that this value-based rejection occurs in addition to old-fashioned atavistic ra-cial prejudice. The third hypothesis is that self-interest does notform the basis of symbolic racism (Sears, Hensler, & Spear,1979).

There are several important implications of the symbolic at-titude notion. One is that abstract ideologies can play an impor-tant role in the prediction of behavior (e.g., voting). Another isthat people are motivated more by ideology and beliefs thanby self-interest. This suggestion is in contrast to realistic groupconflict theory (Sherif & Sherif, 1963), which suggests that com-petition over resources leads to prejudice toward out-groupmembers.

Criticism of Symbolic Racism

It is not surprising that the symbolic approach to racism hasbeen controversial and criticized on both conceptual and em-

1 The words fat and antifat were chosen because they are descriptiveand because they do not imply a medical condition (e.g., obese), nor dothey refer to some normative standard that may be genetically deter-mined (e.g., overweight). The term fat is not used in a pejorative sense.

882

ANTIFAT ATTITUDES 883

pirical grounds. For example, Sniderman, Piazza, Tetlock, andKendrick (1991) have argued that although a variety of dataconsistent with the symbolic racism hypothesis have been col-lected, there is no research suggesting that valuing indepen-dence, self-reliance, or respect for authority are essential aspectsof predicting the rejection of Blacks by Whites.

On similar empirical grounds, several authors have criticizedthe program for relying on ill-defined or changing measures ofsymbolic racism (Bobo, 1983; Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986). Inaddition, there is criticism for measuring attitudes, racism, andself-interest on the basis of single survey items (Bobo, 1983;Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986).

Another area of criticism has been the conceptualization ofself-interest (see Sears & Funk, 1991). Kinder and Sears (1981)defined self-interest in terms of having children potentially sub-ject to busing; they assumed that it is always against parents'self-interest to have their children bused. Crano (1992) arguedthat parents need not be ineluctably opposed to busing; rather,they may be in favor of it. Bobo (1983) argued that this defini-tion is overly narrow. He suggested that a threat to the individu-al's group, or threats to the status quo that favors Whites ingeneral, should be interpreted as within the definition of self-interest. This is an important argument, as it appears thatgroup-level discontent, rather than individual discontent, leadsto politicization and social protest (Dube & Guimond, 1986).

Symbolic Prejudice and Fat People

If antifat attitudes are structured in much the same manneras symbolic racism, then prejudice toward fat people will beassociated with (a) beliefs and values that reflect self-determi-nation and the Puritan work ethic and (b) measures of intoler-ance, such as racism and authoritarianism. In addition, (c) self-interest should be uncorrelated with antifat attitudes in termsof one's own fatness. To test these hypotheses, I developed apsychometrically adequate measure of antifat attitudes and cor-related it with values and beliefs relevant to the Protestant ethicand intolerance.

In addition to addressing methodological and conceptualcriticisms, expanding symbolic attitudes to other groups has thevalue of establishing the generality of the idea. Because Black-White relations in the United States have been a major focus ofthe social sciences, political discourse, literature, education,and popular culture for decades, there remains the possibilitythat Black-White attitudes have an independent and unique at-titude system, with their own structure and set of functions. Byapplying the theory to other stigmatized groups, one may beable to show that attitudes of Whites toward Blacks functionmuch like other prejudicial attitudes.

There is evidence of strong antifat sentiment in the UnitedStates (e.g., AHon, 1982; Yuker & Allison, in press), and there isreason to believe that factors related to symbolic attitudes applyto antifat prejudice (Crandall & Biernat, 1990). Furthermore,the lesser focus on fat people in culture, science, and politicsmakes it unlikely that an independent attitude system for fatpeople exists.

An added advantage of studying antifat attitudes is that theyare subject to lower levels of social desirability suppression,when compared with racial attitudes. Sears and his colleagues

have hypothesized that symbolic racism developed from thechanging norms about the desirability of expression of anti-Black prejudice (e.g., Kinder, 1986; McConahay, 1986; Sears,1988). Symbolic racism arose, they argued, out of the simulta-neous change in public mores about racism and the individual'searly training in racial antipathy, resulting in a somewhat dis-guised version of racism (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986). Studyingattitudes toward fat people, with the apparent lack of normativepressure to suppress expression, allows us to examine the roleof social desirability suppression in the structure of prejudicialattitudes.

Evidence of Prejudice Against Fat People

Although some reviewers have suggested that the harmfuleffects of obesity stigma have not been convincingly demon-strated (Jarvie, Lahey, Graziano, & Framer, 1983), the majorityof research has suggested that being fat is associated with a widevariety of negative characteristics. Fat people are seen as unat-tractive (Harris, Harris, & Bochner, 1982), aesthetically dis-pleasing (Wooley & Wooley, 1979), morally and emotionallyimpaired (Keys, 1955), alienated from their sexuality (Mill-man, 1980), and discontent with themselves (Maddox, Back, &Liederman, 1968; Rodin, Silberstein, & Streigel-Moore, 1984).Their physicians describe them as "weak-willed" (Monello &Mayer, 1963), and their peers rate them as unlikable (Goodman,Richardson, Dornbusch, & Hastorf, 1963).

Fat people are denigrated by thin people, health care workers,employers, peers, potential romantic partners, their parents,and even by themselves (Allon, 1982; Crandall & Biernat,1990). Employers are unwilling to hire fat people, even if theirfatness would not interfere with performance (Roe & Eickwort,1976). When employed, fat people report significant discrimi-nation on the job (Rothblum, Brand, Miller, & Oetjen, 1990).Fat executives are less likely to be promoted into higher payingpositions (Larkin & Pines, 1979).

Fat people are less likely to attend college (Canning & Mayer,1966), perhaps because their parents are less willing to pay fortheir expenses (Crandall, 1991). These difficulties with advance-ment in the job force and higher education may account for thefact that fat people tend to be downwardly economically mobilefrom their parents (Goldblatt, Moore, & Stunkard, 1965); inthe United States, fatness is associated with lower socioeco-nomic status (Sobal & Stunkard, 1989).

Is Fatness a Function of Willpower?

It is critical to point out at this juncture that the research doesnot point to gluttony or sloth as the primary cause of fatness.The majority of research evidence supports the notion thatbody weight is the result of genetic and metabolic factors andis only modestly related to dietary habits. For instance, in anadoption study, Stunkard and his colleagues (Stunkard et al.,1986) found that the body fat of children was highly correlatedwith the biological parents' body fat, but uncorrelated with theadoptive parents' body fat. To directly examine the overeatinghypothesis, Garrow (1974) reviewed 13 studies of body weightand food intake, and in 12 of these, obese subjects ate the sameamount or less than normal weight subjects.

884 CHRISTIAN S. CRANDALL

In addition, a number of studies have shown that a variety ofphysiological factors make dieting both difficult and ineffective.For example, after dieting, energy metabolism becomes increas-ingly efficient (Brownell, Greenwood, Stellar, & Shrager, 1986)and high-caloric foods become increasingly palatable (Nisbett,1972). In short, the belief that fat people got that way primarilyfrom overeating and a lack of self-control does not properly rep-resent the scientific data.

Instead, I propose the notion that holding antifat attitudesserves a value-expressive function (Katz, 1960), reinforcing aworldview consistent with the Protestant work ethic, self-deter-mination, a belief in a just world, and the notion that peopleget what they deserve. If ideology leads a person to chronicallyattribute controllable causality to others, he or she will tend toblame fat people for their weight and stigmatize them for it.

A similar argument has been made for racism in particular.Many Whites hold Blacks accountable for their relatively pooreconomic status (Ryan, 1971). The belief that individuals in dis-advantaged groups are responsible for any negative aspects oftheir situation is known as the "ultimate attribution error" (Pet-tigrew, 1979). Several researchers have shown relatively consis-tent individual differences in causal attributions (e.g., Ander-son, 1983; Peterson & Seligman, 1984). These consistent attri-butional styles might in turn lead to the derogation of anydisadvantaged group.

Outline

This article is in three sections. In the first section (Study 1),an anti-fat attitudes questionnaire is developed. In the secondsection (Studies 2-4), attitudes and beliefs consistent with thevalues of self-determination, self-control, and a tendency to re-ject deviance are correlated with antifat attitudes, and an exper-iment designed to change beliefs about control is described. Inthe third section (Studies 5-6), antifat attitudes and racism areexplicitly compared in terms of social pressures about the ex-pression of prejudice and the role of self-interest.

Study 1: Development of the Antifat AttitudesQuestionnaire

Method

Subjects were 251 undergraduates (135 women, 53.8%) who filled outa questionnaire in a psychology class. The questionnaire included awide variety of items covering personal relevance, causes of fatness, will-ingness to interact with fat people, and so forth; 26 questions were an-swered on a 0-9 Likert scale. Items were selected for inclusion on thebasis of loading substantially on any factor with an eigenvalue greaterthan 1.0. The text of the 13 items selected on the basis of the analysisdescribed below, are displayed in Table 1.

Results

A principal-components factor analysis of the items, withvarimax rotation of factors with eigenvalues, greater than 1.0,indicated that three dimensions meaningfully described thedata. The results are displayed in Table 1.

The first factor reflects an evaluative scale and is labeled Dis-like (a = .84). The second factor represents the individual's con-

cerns about weight and fat's self-relevance and is labeled Fear ofFat (a = .79). The third factor reflects subjects' beliefs about thecontrollability of weight and fat and is labeled Willpower (a =.66). (In the studies reported below with adequate sample size,the factor structure was replicated with only minor deviationsfrom Table 1.) The relevant items for each subscale weresummed and divided by the number of items to create threescales ranging from 0 to 9. These three scales constitute theAntifat Attitudes (AFA) questionnaire.

A series of/ tests by sex revealed that men scored higher thanwomen on Dislike (Ms = 2.47 and 1.85, respectively), /(243) =3.42, p < .01, and slightly higher on Willpower (Ms = 6.12 and5.65), t(248) = 1.79, p < .08. Women scored notably higher onFear of Fat (M = 6.78) than men (M = 3.55), /(249) = 9.93, p <.001.

Dislike and Willpower were correlated (r = .43, n = 244, p <.001); believing weight is due to willpower and denigrating fatpeople go hand in hand. Fear of Fat was uncorrelated with Dis-like (r = .01, ns). This suggests that self-relevant concerns aboutfatness are not a major aspect of disliking fat people. Fear of Fatwas not correlated with Willpower (r = .01, n = 250, ns).

Discussion

The three scales each represent a different aspect of antifatattitudes: prejudice toward fat people, belief in the controllabil-ity of weight, and the individual's self-relevant concerns aboutfatness. The negative affect and the attribution of controllabilitywere substantially correlated, and neither of these was associ-ated with self-relevant concerns (Fear of Fat).

The correlation between Willpower and Dislike is consistentwith DeJong's (1980) finding that a belief in controllability isan important contributor to antifat attitudes. A similar findingwas reported in a recent article that came to our attention whilepreparing this article. Allison et al. (1991) developed two inde-pendent scales, a measure of antifat attitudes (Attitude TowardObese Persons Scale) and a measure of attribution, fault, orblame (Beliefs About Obese Persons Scale); they found a verysimilar correlation between attributions of controllability andnegative attitudes toward obese people (across three samples,average r = .42). In Study 2, an attempt is made to generalizethis finding to a broader set of attributional variables, connect-ing attitudes and beliefs about fat people to a network of relatedattitudes: an ideological system.

Study 2: Antifat Attitudes in an Ideological System

If one believes that fatness is fat people's fault, then one willdenigrate and stigmatize them (DeJong, 1980; Weiner, 1986;Weiner, Perry, & Magnusson, 1988). The argument is attribu-tional; if ideology leads to controllable attributions to targets,one will blame Black people for their economic situation, beau-tiful people for their good looks (Dion & Dion, 1987), and fatpeople for their weight.

/ suggest that the classic Protestant values that are hypothe-sized to underlie symbolic racism can be described as a generaltendency to make controllable attributions. Attributions andvalues are conceptually linked, in that both reflect characteris-tic ways of giving meaning to the social world. To the extent that


Table 1Factor Analysis ofAntifat Attitude Items

Factorloadings Item text

Dislike".792.776.689.678

.678

.645

.630Fearoffatb

.883

.824

.791Willpower0

.824

.733

.651

I really don't like fat people much.I don't have many friends that are fat.I tend to think that people who are overweight are a little untrustworthy.Although some fat people are surely smart, in general, I think they tend not to

be quite as bright as normal weight people.I have a hard time taking fat people too seriously.Fat people make me feel somewhat uncomfortable.If I were an employer looking to hire, I might avoid hiring a fat person.

I feel disgusted with myself when I gain weight.One of the worst things that could happen to me would be if I gained 25 pounds.I worry about becoming fat.

People who weigh too much could lose at least some part of their weight througha little exercise.

Some people are fat because they have no willpower.Fat people tend to be fat pretty much through their own fault.

Note. All undisplayed factor loadings < .30.* Eigenvalue = 3.6 b Eigenvalue = 2.1. c Eigenvalue =1.9.

one endorses the virtue of hard work and self-determination,one will tend to celebrate the victories of heroes and, conversely,blame victims for their fates. For example, the politically con-servative are more likely to make person attributions in explain-ing poverty, whereas the politically liberal are more likely tomake situational attributions (Converse, 1964; Feather, 1985;Zucker & Weiner, 1993). Thus, beliefs, values, and ideologiesshould be closely linked with individual differences in the ten-dency to make internal, controllable attributions.

If antifat attitudes serve a value-expressive function, reinforc-ing a worldview consistent with this ideology, then they shouldbe correlated with a variety of attitudes that serve this samefunction. For example, antifat attitudes should be correlatedwith the belief in the just world (Lerner, 1980). The belief thathard work is rewarded is consistent with classic American val-ues, with making internal or controllable attributions, with hav-ing a positive attitude toward those who work hard, and with atendency to reject those who are perceived as lazy or noncon-tributing.

Antifat attitudes may also reflect a general orientation of in-tolerance and dislike of social deviance from an ideal norm ofany sort. This argument is akin to the symbolic notion that rac-ism is based in part on old-fashioned racial prejudice (Kinder,1986). Therefore, antifat attitudes should be associated with theclassic general individual-differences measure of old-fashionedintolerance—authoritarianism (Altmeyer, 1984).

Finally, it is interesting to note that the stereotypes associatedwith fat people and Blacks are remarkably similar—bothgroups are regarded as lazy, sinful, and lacking discipline andself-denial (Allon, 1982).2 If the endorsement of this traditional,conservative set of beliefs underlies both racist attitudes andantifat attitudes, then racism should be correlated with antifatprejudice.

Method

Subjects. Five separate samples were collected. All of the samplesfilled out the AFA questionnaire. In a just world sample, participantswere 43 men and 70 women from an introductory psychology class. Inan authoritarianism sample, participants were 53 men and 52 womenenrolled in an introductory psychology course. In a racism sample, par-ticipants were 543 students (270 men and 273 women) in several intro-ductory psychology classes who filled out a series of questionnaires forcourse credit. The scales were embedded into a much longer question-naire, which was designed for selection of subjects into experiments. Ina poverty sample, 74 undergraduates were selected from public placesaround a university campus. Finally, in a values sample, subjects were126 female, 153 male, and 10 gender-unspecified undergraduates in asocial psychology class who participated for course credit.

Measures. Subjects in the just world sample filled out the JustWorld Scale (JWS; Rubin & Peplau, 1975). The JWS probes the beliefthat the world is ultimately fair. The authoritarianism sample re-sponded to a Right Wing Authoritarianism scale from Altmeyer (1984).Christie (1991) has argued that this scale is "the best current measure"of authoritarianism available. The racism sample answered a seven-item Modern Racism Scale taken from McConahay (1986), a scale thathas been used in previous symbolic racism research. The values sampleresponded to the Protestant Ethic Values Scale taken from Katz andHass(1988).

The Modern Racism Scale and the JWS items both ranged from 1 to

2 Finding a correlation between the measure of racism and antifatattitudes does not necessarily speak directly to the issue of the similaritybetween the structure of antifat attitudes and symbolic racism in theway that attitudes toward Cracker Jack and attitudes toward baseballmay share the same structure but be uncorrelated. It is only to the extentthat they share the same underlying causal structure (e.g., similar val-ues, beliefs in causality and justice, and authoritarianism) that we hy-pothesize that measures of symbolic racism and antifat attitudes shouldbe correlated.


5, with higher scores indicating greater agreement. Each scales' itemswere separately summed and divided by the number of items in thescale, resulting in 1 to 5 scales. The authoritarianism scale was createdin the same fashion, but its items ranged from 0 to 9. Political orienta-tion was included in both the just world and the authoritarianism sam-ples and was measured by a two-item political ideology scale taken fromthe Gallup Poll (Gallup, 1981), ranging from 0-9, with higher numbersindicating greater conservatism.

In the poverty sample, subjects filled out a survey that included theJ WS and a single 7-point attribution item for the causes of poverty. Thispoverty control item read, "To what extent do you believe that povertyis caused by factors that poor people can control or factors outside ofpoor people's control?" Higher numbers indicate belief that "poor peo-ple can control it." (Correlations between the AFA scales and the JWSare based on the combined data of the just world and poverty samples.)Finally, the Protestant Ethic Values Scale ranged from 0-5, with higherscores indicating more value endorsement.

Results

Subjects averaged 2.56 (SD = 0.59) on the JWS, 2.26 (SD =0.81) on the Modern Racism Scale, 4.56 (SD = 1.17) on theAuthoritarianism Scale, and 5.21 (SD = 2.07) on political con-servatism. Subjects scored across the entire range of belief inthe controllability of poverty, averaging very close to the middleof the scale (M = 3.80, SD = 1.68). As shown in Table 2, ideo-logical measures were significantly correlated with antifat atti-tudes. All of the social ideology variables showed the same es-sential pattern of correlations; they were correlated with Dislikeand Willpower and were not correlated with Fear of Fat. Again,Willpower was significantly correlated with Dislike (just worldsample, r=.52,n= 113; poverty sample, r = .60, n = 74; valuessample, r = .46, n = 289; racism sample, r = .43, n = 540;authoritarianism sample, r = .37, n = 100; allps < .001).

Men scored slightly higher on the Modern Racism Scale (2.4vs. 2.1), /(537) = 4.03, p < .001, the Protestant Ethic ValuesScale (3.0 vs. 2.78), r(277) = 2.98, p < .01, and the Authoritari-anism Scale (4.9 vs. 4.2), /(101) = 3.44, p < .01, than women,and there was no sex difference on the JWS, (̂112) = .22, ns.There were no sex differences in the size of correlations betweenantifat attitudes and any of the ideological variables, and par-tialing out the effect of gender had no substantive effect on thecorrelations reported in Table 2. Authoritarianism was nega-tively correlated with Fear of Fat (r = -.32, n= 104, p < .01).This correlation was based entirely on men (r = —.34, n = 53,p < .02); among women there was no such correlation (r = —.04,

n = 51, ns). Authoritarianism appears to lead men away fromweight concerns, although the reason why is unclear.

Discussion

The pattern of correlations is consistent with the hypothesisthat rejection of fat people is based on the underlying ideologicalassumption that people get what they deserve, or deserve whatthey get, and that deviance from these relatively narrowly de-fined values should result in social rejection. Clearly, antifat at-titudes are correlated with attitudes that reflect this ideology.This ideology appears in its essential aspects to be the same kindof values that may underlie symbolic racism. Antifat attitudesmay be a logical consequence of an ideological network or atti-tude system (McGuire, 1985), although the causal direction re-mains to be determined.

However, to some extent, the power of these data are mutedby the fact that undergraduate subjects are used—a sample thatis likely to be poorly informed about political ideology and tohave limited knowledge about racism, poverty, and whether theworld is indeed a just place (Sears, 1986). For this reason, the"known groups" technique was used, and I chose as subjectsindividuals with well-defined attitudes, a sort of "ideologicalelite," who should have a meaningful and coherent attitude sys-tem, with more internal logical consistency.

Study 3: College Democrats and College Republicans

To further test the degree to which antifat attitudes are asso-ciated with a personal worldview or ideology, two studentgroups with a known political ideology were given the AFAquestionnaire: the College Democrats and the College Republi-cans.

Hypotheses

Republicans will be more likely than Democrats to believethat people are fat through their own fault, and as a consequencethey will be more willing to denigrate fat people. Because fearof fat is more a private issue, depending less on a world viewthan on aesthetics, there should be no difference between thetwo political groups on Fear of Fat.

Table 2Correlation Between Social Ideology and Antifat Attitudes

Scale

DislikeWillpowerFear of fat

n

Conservativepolitics

.28***

.25***

.09

217

Belief injust world

.47***

.48***

.09

190

Povertycontrol

.56***

.67***-.03

73

Protestantethic

29***.32***.04

288

Modernracism

.23***

.28***-.08

542

Authori-tarianism

.29**

.16*-.31**

100

Note. Protestant ethic = Protestant ethic values endorsement. For poverty control, high scores indicatebelief that poverty is internally controllable.*p<.10. **/><.01. ***p<.005.


Method

Subjects were 26 members of the University of Florida College Dem-ocrats and 30 members of the College Republicans (about 90% of theactive membership of each group). The groups were paid $2 per ques-tionnaire. The questionnaires contained the three AFA scales, as well asthe political ideology scale used in Study 2.

Results

College Republicans scored higher in political conservatismthan did College Democrats (8.7 vs. 2.1), t(54) = 27.71, p <.0001; Table 3 shows the attitudes by group. A 3 X 2 (Scale XGroup) mixed model analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealedthat the College Republicans report more antifat attitudes, F( 1,54) = 8.15, p < 0.01. Subsequent t tests indicated that CollegeRepublicans scored higher than College Democrats in both Dis-like, f(54) = 2.21, p < .05, and Willpower, *(54) = 1.74, p < .05,one-tailed, but not in the self-relevant Fear of Fat scale, z(54) =1.33, p > .20. These effects did not change when either genderor body mass index (BMI) was covaried.

As there is variability of political conservatism within group(e.g., conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans), a moreaccurate method of testing the hypothesis is to correlate theAFA scale scores with the continuous measure of political be-liefs. Disregarding group membership, the political conserva-tism scale was significantly correlated with both Dislike {r =.36, p < .01) and Willpower (r = .28, p < .05) but not Fear ofFat (r = .07, ns).

Discussion

A conservative political ideology is associated with antifat at-titudes. This is made more persuasive by the fact that in thesegroups political attitudes are likely to be genuine attitudes (Con-verse, 1963) that are centrally held and relatively important tothe respondents (Krosnick, 1988).

Because these two groups are defined by political attitudes,it is likely that political attitudes are more central and morefundamental than antifat attitudes in this sample. It is doubtfulthat respondents joined political organizations for the opportu-nity to express attitudes toward fat people. Although still corre-lational, these data suggest that holding a conservativeworldview may lead to antifat attitudes, on the basis of the pre-sumption that fat people are responsible for being fat, just asthey are responsible for their social position, income, materialsuccess, and so forth (Lane, 1962).

Studies 2 and 3 indicate that antifat attitudes exist within an

Table 3Antifat Attitudes by Political Group Membership

Antifat attitude Republicans Democrats

DislikeWillpowerFear of fat

2.885.824.20

1.71*4.72*4.08

Note. Overall test of group difference, F\ 1,54) = 8.15, p < .01.* p < .05, between groups.

attitude system. They are consistent with studies by Crandalland Biernat (1990) that found antifat attitudes to be associatedwith a wide variety of conservative social attitudes and with thestudy by Weigel and Howes (1985) that found that the deroga-tion of out-groups tends to be an individual-differences charac-teristic.

The dislike of fat people was also correlated with a measurerepresenting a general intolerance of others (authoritarianism).These data explicitly bring antifat attitudes into the mainstreamof research on prejudice and intolerance. Authoritarianism hasalso been shown to be associated with a wide range of intoler-ance and low acceptance of members of any out-group in theform of antisemitism, racism, and sexism (e.g., L. B. Brown,1973; R. Brown, 1965). Fat people are no exception.

Not only are antifat attitudes hypothesized to be an expres-sion of a nonspecific rejection of deviance, but also a conse-quence of a sociopolitical value system. McGuire (1985) arguedthat the ramifications of beliefs in attitude systems tend to bevertical in nature; for example, in his scheme, belief in the justworld would serve as a premise in a formal syllogism, leadingone to the logical conclusion that fat people had done somethingto deserve their fate—presumably indolence and gluttony. Atendency to blame the victim may play a causal role in antifatattitudes.

Study 4: Changing Beliefs About the Causes of Obesity

To gather support for the notion that an underlying set of be-liefs and values causally precede antifat attitudes, I designed anexperiment to directly manipulate these beliefs. In this study,subjects were persuaded that fatness was not caused by a lack ofself-control, but rather was subject to uncontrollable physiolog-ical and genetic factors.

In the spirit of McGuire's (1960) work on attitude consis-tency, I attempted to persuade subjects about the conclusion ofa logical syllogism by attacking one of its premises. McGuire(1960) persuaded his subjects that any recreation constitutinga serious health menace would be outlawed by the city healthauthority and then indicated that local beaches were polluted.Although they did not initially believe swimming would be out-lawed by the city, and the attitude was not directly attacked,subjects ultimately came to agree that swimming would be out-lawed, indicating that they had worked out the implication ofthe change in the premise for the syllogism's conclusion.

An analogous experiment was designed to persuade subjectsthat weight and fatness are a function of physiology. To the ex-tent that belief in self-control is essential to antifat attitudes,persuading subjects against this premise should lead to the con-clusion that people are not responsible for their fatness. Subjectsso persuaded should score lower on the Willpower scale, andthus lower on the Dislike scale, but with no effect on Fear of Fat.

Method

Subjects were 11 men and 31 women enrolled in a psychology coursewho received course credit for their participation.

Subjects came into the lab in groups of two to five and assembled inone room. The experiment was billed as a test of memory for writtenversus spoken prose. One of the subjects withdrew a slip of paper froma container that read either "Sailing and Weight Control" or "Sailing

CHRISTIAN S. CRANDALL

and Stress." Assignment to condition was made on the basis of thisdrawing. Subjects were told that there were three conditions, one inwhich the messages were verbal, another in which the messages werewritten, and another in which they were both verbal and written, andthat they were in this third condition. The experimenter (one of twowomen) then proceeded to read a page of material describing safetyfactors associated with sailing, followed by either the experimental per-suasion materials or the control materials. Experimenters were keptblind to the hypotheses.3

Subjects in the "persuade" condition (n = 24) were read a two-pagepersuasive message concerning weight metabolism and genetics. Thesematerials stressed the genetics of weight control, describing (a) twinstudies, (b) the genetic component of fatness, and (c) the effects of diet-ing on metabolism. The studies were described in terms of set-pointtheory, and human and animal studies were described. Subjects in thecontrol condition (n = 18) were read a two-page message concerning therole of psychological stress on illness. The message was similar to thepersuasion message in its psychobiological content, length, emphasis onhuman and animal studies, and complexity of materials, but did notrefer to weight.

Subjects were then given two "fact sheets," purportedly composed bythe writer of the essay, which restated the essential facts of the essay.They received two fact sheets, corresponding to the two messages theyhad just heard. Immediately after they read the fact sheets, subjects weregiven a questionnaire packet containing the dependent measures. Thepacket was separated into four sections, one each for the several mes-sages the subject "might" have heard: sailing, physiology of weight con-trol, stress and health, and baseball (a distractor—no one heard aboutbaseball).

Two kinds of questions were asked. Each section began with 10 true-false factual questions. These answers served as a check that the subjectswere attending to the message. These were followed by opinion items,answered on a 0-9 Likert scale. Typical factual questions concerningweight were "When people (and rats) lose weight, they become irrita-ble" (true), "It is hard to either lose or gain a large amount of weight"(true), and "Obese people eat many more calories than normal weightpeople" (false). For the weight control section, the opinion items werefrom the AFA questionnaire.

Subjects always began the packet with the sailing section and thuswere used to the opinion-type question by the time they came on theAFA questionnaire. This format allowed for some ability to disguise thetrue purposes of the study.

Results and Discussion

On average, subjects in the control condition answered 7.0true-false items correctly (with 5.0 representing chance); in thepersuade condition they correctly answered 9.5, t(40) = 8.67, p<.001.

To test the effects of the persuasive message, a 3 X 2 (Persua-sion X AFA Scale) mixed model ANOVA was calculated. Theresults are displayed in Table 4; an effect of condition was found,

Table 4Antifat Attitudes by Persuasion

Antifat attitude

WillpowerDislikeFear of fat

Persuade

4.651.756.19

Control

5.57*2.52*6.50

F{\, 40) = 4.41, p < .05. Subsequent / tests revealed that sub-jects in the persuade condition scored lower in Willpower thanthe control group, suggesting that the subjects were persuadedby the arguments, t(40) = 2.06, p < .05. Consistent with thehypothesis, subjects in the persuade condition also showed lessDislike, /(40) = 2.14,p < .05.

No significant difference emerged on the Fear of Fat scale,/(40) = .46, ns, indicating that the self-relevant aspect of antifatattitudes is not based on beliefs about self-control and will-power. Furthermore, if these results were due primarily to de-mand factors, it would also be reasonable to assume that theywould operate on Fear of Fat. That the Fear of Fat scale did notshow a difference between groups suggests that the differencesmay have been due to the persuasive effect of the information.

This experiment cannot definitively demonstrate that beliefsabout the controllability of weight and obesity are the cause ofthe correlation between the Willpower and Dislike scales. How-ever, it does show that assumptions about discipline and self-control can play a causal role in antipathy toward fat people.Changing this belief reduces antifat attitudes.

This experiment can be contrasted with one by Wiese, Wil-son, Jones, and Neises (1992). Weise et al. attempted to reducemedical students' endorsement of the obese stereotype. Theyused a broad-band manipulation based on the elaboration like-lihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) that increased sympa-thy for obese patients, which included a videotaped interviewwith an attractive and articulate obese nurse describing herproblems with dieting, two role-playing exercises, and a Na-tional Public Radio special on the causes of obesity. Wiese et al.succeeded in reducing endorsement of the stereotype, but theydid not succeed in reducing the stigma of obesity. Although theyincreased empathy with the obese and changed their subjects'stereotypes, they did not change attributions, perhaps becausethese medical students held largely accurate beliefs about thecauses of obesity before the experimental manipulations. Iwould argue that because attributions did not change, Weise etal. did not successfully reduce their subjects' social rejection offat people. This suggests that attributions, rather than stereo-types, lead to the rejection of fat people (see Brigham, 1973;Stangor, Sullivan, & Ford, 1991).

Kinder and Sears (Kinder, 1986; Kinder & Sears, 1981) haveargued that an essential component of anti-Black attitudes is thebelief that Blacks have earned their fate and that their economicand social position has resulted from controllable factors. Thissame logic applies to antifat prejudice. When subjects are per-suaded that fat people are not responsible for their condition,they become more accepting of fat people.

Study 5: Prejudice, Social Desirability, and theDistribution of Attitudes

I have argued that a useful analogy can be drawn betweenantifat attitudes and symbolic racism. However, there is one

Note. Test of group difference, F( 1,40) = 4.41, p< .05.* p < .05, between groups.

3 The experimenters were told about the hypotheses shortly beforethe end of the study, so that in the case of seven subjects (two sessions),the experimenters were not blind. Removing these subjects from analy-ses had no appreciable effect.


critical difference between racism and weightism, that is, strongsocial norms suppress the public expression of racism. It hasbeen found that American Whites' attitudes toward Blacks havebecome more favorable over the last four decades (Case & Gree-ley, 1990; Firebaugh & Davis, 1988). On the other hand, theseapparently favorable trends may simply reflect an increase inthe normative constraints against the public display of racialprejudice, thus suppressing the accuracy of self-reported racialattitudes (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986).

For the past 20 years or more, modern theories of interracialrelations (e.g., ambivalent racism, Katz, Wackenhut, & Hass,1986; automatic and controlled processes in stereotyping, De-vine, 1989; aversive racism, Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986; modernracism, McConahay, 1986; symbolic racism, Kinder & Sears,1981) have in common the notion that people's underlying"true" racism is suppressed by a second factor, which governsthe public expression of the prejudice (Crosby, Bromley, &Saxe, 1980; Sigall & Page, 1971). These two factors amount toa feeling of ambivalence about Blacks, and whether positive ornegative behaviors are carried out usually depends on the socialnorms about the expression of racism (Blanchard, Crandall,Brigham, & Vaughan, in press; Blanchard, Lilly, & Vaughan,1991).

Why suppress the expression of racist emotions? For two rea-sons: social norms and egalitarian values (Katz et al., 1986).Americans by and large express strongly egalitarian and pro-Black attitudes (Case & Greeley, 1990). Overtly racist behaviorsare suppressed because they are normatively inappropriate andbring about guilt, punishment, and rejection for "incorrect" be-havior. These theories all suggest that when using self-reporttechniques to measure racial attitudes, social norms about pub-lic behavior, egalitarian values, and social desirability concernsall contaminate the process. How powerful are these normswith respect to antifat attitudes?

A closer look at the distributions of the Modern Racism Scaleand the Dislike scale from Study 2 is instructive. The averageModern Racism Scale score was 2.26 on a scale running from 1to 5 (SD = 0.81); the distribution was highly positively skewed(7! = 1.92), with most subjects self-reporting low levels of rac-ism. On the other hand, on a 0-9 scale, the Dislike scale wassymmetrically and normally distributed (M = 2.51, SD = 1.51;7, = 0.48). Both distributions were divided into three groups:subjects at least one standard deviation below the mean, sub-jects within one standard deviation of the mean, and subjectsgreater than one standard deviation above the mean. Using thenormal distribution as the expected value, the Modern RacismScale significantly deviated from normal, x2(2, N = 542) =23.26, p < .001, but the Dislike scale did not, x

2(2, N = 542) =0.41, ns.

The difference in distributions can be interpreted in twoways. One possibility is that there is very little racism extantamong these subjects, causing almost all of the subjects to scoreat the low end of the Modern Racism Scale. A more likely pos-sibility is that there is a normative pressure (e.g., social desir-ability), which suppresses agreement with the racism items andleads to the skewing of responses at the lower end of the scale.

To test this, I assembled several samples of undergraduateswho had filled out the Modern Racism Scale4 and the Dislikescale, and I calculated what I call the Political Correctness Index

Table 5PC Index of the Dislike and the Modern RacismScales Across Samples

Scale PC Index

Modern RacismDislike

1,1471,259

9.682.94

Note. PC Index represents the percentage of respondents who chosethe most politically correct response on every item of the scale, x2(l) =47.21, p<. 001.

(PC Index). To be counted as politically correct, an undergrad-uate must have disagreed as strongly as possible with each itemof the scale. For the Dislike scale, subjects had to chose a 0 onall seven items; for the Modem Racism Scale, subjects musthave chosen a 1 on all seven items. The PC Index represents thepercentage of respondents answering all items in a politicallycorrect (antidiscriminatory) fashion.

A total of 1,147 Modern Racism and 1,259 Dislike com-pleted questionnaires were obtained. The results of the analysisare displayed in Table 5. Where the measure of racism elicitednearly 10% politically correct responses, a measure of antifatprejudice elicited less than one third of that proportion, x2( 1, N= 2,406) = 47.21, p < .001. There may be a normative pressureamong some of these respondents to disavow all feelings of prej-udice toward Blacks, but this pressure seems to be weaker fordisavowing prejudice against fat people.5

A study by Crandall and Thompson (1993) supports this in-terpretation. For a study of "group decision making," Crandalland Thompson had subjects in small groups read the folders offour equally qualified applicants to psychology graduate school,which included photographs that indicated the applicants werea lean White man, a lean White woman, a lean Black man, anda fat White man. Subjects expressed their opinions about theapplicants in turn; the last person to discuss the folders was afemale confederate who either made a race-prejudiced or fat-prejudiced remark. In the control condition, she agreed with thesubjects' comments. In the race-prejudiced condition, she said"I would definitely not pick the Black guy. I don't think Blackpeople make good counselors. I know I wouldn't go to a Blackguy. Personally I just don't like Black people." In the fat-preju-diced condition, she made exactly the same comment, exceptthe v/ordfat was substituted for Black.

Subsequently, subjects made favorability ratings of the groupmembers on a series of questions on a 1-7 scale. When express-ing no prejudice, the confederate was rated positively (M =

41 thank Monica Biernat for making some of the modern racism dataavailable. The sample of Dislike questionnaires came from studies de-scribed in this article, from the American sample from Crandall andMartinez (1993), and from other unpublished data sets.

5 Because the Dislike scale has 10 response categories, and the Mod-ern Racism Scale has only 5, by chance we might expect as much astwice as many politically correct responses on Modern Racism ques-tionnaires. To account for this, I doubled the PC Index rate for the Dis-like questionnaires, which was still highly significantly lower than therate for Modern Racism, x

2(l,Ar= 2,406) = 12.21, p< .0005.


5.31); when expressing race prejudice, her ratings dropped sub-stantially (M = 3.72); and when she expressed fat prejudice, herratings were between the control and Black prejudice conditions(M = 4.44). All three conditions differed significantly from eachother. The the expression of prejudice resulted in social rejec-tion, for both anti-Black and antifat prejudice. Festinger,Schachter, and Back (1950) suggested that the more importanta norm is, the greater its effect will be on liking. It appears thatthe race prejudice norm was significantly more powerful thanthe fat prejudice norm; the expression of racist remarks resultedin a significantly lower rating than the expression of antifat re-marks.

In this article I simultaneously argue two things: that antifatattitudes are similar to symbolic racism and that antifat atti-tudes are dissimilar to racism. There is support for both of theselines of argument. Both symbolic racism and antifat attitudestake their place in a wide ideological net of conservative atti-tudes and values, authoritarianism, and rejection of deviance.On the other hand, the social suppression of antifat sentimentis not as strong or well-developed as the pressure to suppressracist attitudes. To the extent that the processes underlying rac-ism are the same as fatism, excepting that antifat attitudes ap-pear in a relatively pristine, unsuppressed form, racism (and therejection of any deviant group) might be well be understood bycomparing it with attitudes toward fat people.

Study 6: Self-interest, In-Group Bias, and AntifatAttitudes

The "negative hypothesis" of symbolic racism is especiallyinteresting, that self-interest does not form the basis of symbolicracism. In-group bias is one of the broadest possible measuresof self-interest. Because both a sense of self and self-esteem de-pend to a large extent on group membership (Brewer, 1979; Taj-fel & Turner, 1985), it is in one's self-interest to evaluate one'sown groups positively. The sixth and final study reported in thisarticle is based on the secondary analysis of data from the pre-vious studies, to ascertain whether heavier subjects reportedmore accepting attitudes toward fat people. If antifat attitudesare based, even in part, on self-interest, then fatter respondentsshould have more positive attitudes toward fat people and thusshould score lower on the Dislike scale.

In all of the samples described above, subjects reported theirheight and weight. To determine "fatness," the BMI was calcu-lated as (weight[kg]/height2[m]). Kraemer, Berkowitz, andHammer (1990) argued that BMI is the best noninvasive mea-sure of fatness; it is highly correlated with weight and not cor-related with height.

Table 6 shows the correlation between the Dislike scale fromthe AFA questionnaire and the respondent's own BMI amongseven samples. A clear pattern emerges: there is no relation be-tween one's own weight and attitudes about other people'sweight. Taking all seven data sets together, the correlation be-tween BMI and the Dislike scale was — .01 (n = 1384, ns), a verymodest association.6

A potential threat to the straightforward interpretation of Ta-ble 6 is the possibility that correlations are low because no "truemembers" the in-group are represented in the table. Despite thefact that many college students believe that they are fat, partic-

Table 6Correlations Between Dislike and Body MassIndex: Lack of In-Group Bias

Study sample

Scale developmentPolitical groupsJust worldAuthoritarianismProtestant ethicPersuasion experimentModern racism

n

25056

114101276

44543

r

.05-.07-.01

.14

.08

.06-.05

Note. All ps ns.

ularly women (Rodin et al., 1984), fat people are underrepre-sented among college students, perhaps because of prejudice(Crandall, 1991, in press; Yuker & Allison, in press). To ascer-tain whether the sample included subjects who might be con-sidered fat, I compared the BMIs of my subjects with tablednorms of height, weight, and BMI taken from a large generalsample study of weight and health, the National Health and Nu-trition Examination Study (NHANES; Cronk & Roche, 1982).Light-to-medium-weight subjects were classified as being in thelower 75% of the tabled norms, and heavy subjects were in thetop 25% of the norms.7

Similar to previous research (Crandall, 1991), college stu-dents were lighter on average than the general population fortheir age group; 45 of 676 (6.7%) women fell in the top 25% ofthe tabled norms of BMI for women, and 69 of 649 (10.6%)men were in the top 25% for men. These deviations are highlysignificant for both women and men, x2(l, iVs = 676 and 649)= 121.31 and 71.46, respectively, both ps < .0001, suggestingthat college students, particularly women, x2(l, N = 1,325) =6.65, p < .01, are on the lighter side for their age group. How-ever, a t test by weight class on Dislike revealed that students inthe top 25% of the population in terms of BMI were no lessantifat than those in the lower 75% (Ms = 2.25 and 2.38, respec-tively), /(1323) = 0.83, p > .40. Allison et al. (1991) found asimilar result, using a sample that was composed of both nor-mal weight and obese respondents (see also Harris & Smith,1982). There is simply no evidence to suggest that fat peopledisplay an in-group bias when it comes to expressing prejudiceabout fat people.

This lack of an in-group bias among fat people is differentfrom what has been found with racism—Blacks and Whitesdemonstrate in-group bias. For example, in Study 2, White re-spondents scored a 2.59 on the Modern Racism Scale, andBlack respondents scored a 1.93, t(509) = 6.51, p < .001, y =.28. At the same time, Table 6 is consistent with the negativehypothesis of symbolic racism, that self-interest in relation tothe stigmatized out-group is unrelated to the symbolic attitude.

Bobo (1983) has shown that when self-interest is reconstrued

6 The correlations between BMI and Dislike computed separately bysex were not significant (both rs = .07).

7 These results do not change if the cutoff is made at the 90-10 per-centile.


as the broader group interest, symbolic racists show attitudesand voting patterns consistent with their own group's (WhiteAmericans) interests. This is consistent with Dube and Gui-mond's (1986) finding that the motivation to engage in socialprotest is based not on an individual's sense of deprivation, buta feeling that one's group is suffering relative deprivation. Bycontrast, the data on antifat attitudes pass a fairly stringent test;we find no evidence of self-interested in-group bias. This is notto say that fat people would never express self-interested atti-tudes; in certain domains they may do so (e.g., in the domainsof clothing, airplane seat size, industrial design, etc.). But indomains measured by the AFA Dislike scale, there was no evi-dence of a bias motivated by self-interest.

The analogy between antifat attitudes and symbolic racismhas become more complete. The research using the AFA ques-tionnaire supports (a) the beliefs-and-values hypothesis (classicAmerican values are part of the ideological network that in-cludes antifat attitudes), (b) the old-fashioned antipathy hy-pothesis (antifat attitudes are correlated with authoritarianismand racism), and (c) the negative hypothesis, that self-interestdoes not appear to play a primary role in antifat prejudice.

General Discussion

I have attempted to avoid many of the methodological andconceptual criticisms leveled at symbolic racism in the past. Apsychometrically sound measure of antifat attitudes was devel-oped and used consistently across studies. The position antifatattitudes have in a network of beliefs and values relevant to thedominant American social ideology have been shown explicitly.Finally, despite being given an opportunity to manifest a corre-lation between antifat attitudes and self-interest, in no case didevidence of self-interested beliefs appear. These data extend theclass of symbolic beliefs to another social group, fat people, sug-gesting that symbolic attitudes are an important part of preju-dice in America.

There is one important area of disagreement between thedata on antifat attitudes and symbolic racism theory. Symbolicracism is thought to be a newly emerged form of racism, distinctfrom old-fashioned racism (Kinder, 1986). On the other hand,there is no reason to suspect that the antifat attitudes describedhere are new. Antifat prejudice has been demonstrated by socialscientists for decades (see Allon, 1982;Bruch, 1941;Cahnman,1968). Instead, antifat attitudes appear to be currently at thestage that racism was some 50 years ago: overt, expressible, andwidely held. Symbolic racism is thought to have developed be-cause of changing norms about the expression of racial hostility.However, because antifat attitudes appear to be constructedmuch like symbolic racism, the presence of norms suppressingracist belief and speech do not appear to be a necessary compo-nent of symbolic attitudes. Anti-Black racism may have longbeen constructed in the manner of symbolic racism (see Weigel& Howes, 1985), well before the recent movement toward wide-spread endorsement of egalitarian values (Firebaugh & Davis,1988).

In fact, evidence that symbolic racism has existed for a verylong time in the American consciousness can be found in aspeech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to the Cooper Insti-tute (Lincoln, 1991). Lincoln describes the slave states' attitudes

toward slavery in largely symbolic terms. He reviews the histor-ical record and concludes that beliefs and attitudes about slaveryare largely symbolic, based on values rather than experience,and virtually unrelated to concerns about realistic threat.

Group Identification

Perhaps it is because antifat attitudes are so closely linked toa worldview, rather than self-interest, that fat and lean peopleare equally likely to be antifat. This suggests that the self-esteemof fat people should be closely linked to their antifat attitudesand attributional habits. For example, Crandall and Biernat(1990) found that heavy but antifat women suffered from lowself-esteem.

In an influential essay on how the stigmatized protect theirself-esteem, Crocker and Major (1991) described several self-protective strategies that buffer the negative feedback stigma-tized people receive, for example, attributing negative feedbackto prejudice toward the group and engaging in social compari-son only with in-group members. However, the strategies theyreviewed are group oriented; for them to work, a sense of iden-tification with the group is essential. Because fat people do notshow in-group bias, it may be that there is little group feelingamong fat people. If fat people feel individuated, these self-pro-tective strategies would be unavailable to them. Crocker, Corn-well, and Major (1993) found that when fat women attributed alack of interest as a dating partner to their weight, they sufferedfrom anxiety and depression. Several studies suggest that fatpeople have difficulties with self-regard (Rodin et al., 1984;Wadden, Foster, Brownell, & Finley, 1984).

Ideological explanations may supersede self-interest, interfer-ing with group identification and politicization, with sometimesharmful consequences. Another reason fat people may not showin-group bias is that identification with other fat people does notimprove their self-image. One primary reason for identifyingwith a group is that association with other members in thegroup can enhance self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1985), and fatpeople may see few opportunities for basking in reflected glory.In addition, fat people may see themselves as capable of leavingthe group through dieting and exercise, further inhibiting groupidentification. However, fat people might benefit from self-cate-gorization as members of a group, avoiding the self-rejectionthat Franz Fanon described for Blacks and citizens of colonizedcountries in the 1960s (see Fanon, 1967, 1968).

The Culture of Antifat Attitudes

The research reported here has been focused on individualdifferences in antifat attitudes. However, antifat prejudices arecommon among Americans and have been demonstrated acrossa wide variety of settings (Yuker & Allison, in press). This isin part due to a deep-seated historically conservative thread inAmerican values. One of the most fundamental of Americanmyths is a conservative one—that any boy can grow up to bepresident one day. Another belief is that social and economicpositions are fluid, that is, that anyone can pull himself or her-self up by his or her own bootstraps. These articles of faith arepart of the core of American socialization and are inherentlyindividualistic and conservative.


These beliefs are not uniquely American, but self-determina-tion and internal control are signal North American values (Be-tancourt, Hardin, & Manzi, 1992). In countries such as Brazil,Chile, or Mexico, where these beliefs are not so strong (Kluck-hohn & Strodtbeck, 1961), antifat attitudes should be uncorre-lated with belief in willpower, and ultimately both the Will-power and Dislike scales should not be highly endorsed. Cran-dall and Martinez (1993) have found antifat attitudes to belower in Mexico than in the United States, and in Mexico antip-athy toward fat people was unrelated to social ideology. Perhapsas a result, obese people in Central America are not economi-cally disadvantaged, as they are in the United States (Sobal &Stunkard, 1989).

This cross-cultural analysis suggests that it is the simulta-neous presence of two variables that leads to antifat attitudes.The first is a personal or cultural preference for thinness. Thesecond is the belief that weight is volitionally controlled. To gen-erate dislike of fat people, one must think fat undesirable andsimultaneously blame the person for his or her situation. Thereis no cause for antipathy when a person is not responsible andno denigration when fat is not stigmatized. This argument istrue at both the cultural as well as the personal level (see Cran-dall & Martinez, 1993).

Fat people appear to be just one more on a long list of deviantgroups, including the elderly, homosexuals, ethnic minorities,the handicapped, and the poor, who are stigmatized by the in-tolerant. Because rejection of any one of these groups tends tobe substantially correlated with any other (Altmeyer, 1984;Weigel & Howes, 1985), further research is needed on prejudiceas an individual-differences variable. Although this approachfell out of esteem in the 1970s (Christie, 1991), several con-structs show promise, such as authoritarianism, politics, andideology. These data suggest that the consistent tendency tomake controllable attributions for others' misfortunes is an-other viable candidate.

Antifat attitudes provide a remarkable opportunity to cometo a greater understanding of the general processes of prejudiceand discrimination. They are pervasive, have an internal logic,and result in discrimination. In contrast to racism and sexism,the overt expression of antipathy toward fat people is currentlyaffected only modestly by normative pressure and concernsabout social desirability. The study of antifat attitudes, whilestill in a relatively pristine form, provide an appealing counter-part to the study of race and gender in social psychology.

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Received August 20, 1991Revision received September 7, 1993

Accepted September 13, 1993 •

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