The weight of weight: the salience of body weight in the impression formation process.

Abstract

Background/objectives: Western societies preach slimness. However, overweight and obesity are increasing. Individuals living with overweight 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.

Subjects/methods: Sixty participants were recruited, among them eleven were excluded because they did not fully complete the study, and we included forty-nine participants (M_age = 25.82 years, SD = 13.44; 19 women). Participants were asked to describe fictitious characters who differed in age, gender, skin color, and weight. Targets with overweight (i.e., five characters with overweight) constituted the experimental condition and non-overweight targets formed the control condition (i.e., five characters without overweight). Targets were presented to participants in a pseudo-random order (participants could not see the same target more than once).

Results: Multilevel analyses showed that weight-related words were used more frequently 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).

Conclusion: These findings support that the overweight characteristics of individuals is salient are the impression formation process.