Shaping the Body Politic: Mass Media Fat-Shaming Affects Implicit Anti-Fat Attitudes

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin 2019-11, Vol.45 (11), p.1580-1589
• Main Authors: Ravary, Amanda, Baldwin, Mark W., Bartz, Jennifer A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Body fat; Celebrities; Everyday life; Fame; Feedback; Implicit beliefs; Mass media; Mass media effects; Notoriety; Quasi-experimental methods; Suicide; Tests; Women
• ISSN: 0146-1672; 1552-7433
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167219838550

The human psyche is profoundly shaped by its cultural milieu; however, few studies have examined the dynamics of cultural influence in everyday life, especially when it comes to shaping people’s automatic, implicit attitudes. In this quasi-experimental field study, we investigated the effect of transient, but salient, cultural messages—the pop-cultural phenomenon of celebrity “fat-shaming”—on implicit anti-fat attitudes in the population. Adopting the “copycat suicide” methodology, we identified 20 fat-shaming events in the media; next, we obtained data from Project Implicit of participants who had completed the Weight Implicit Association Test from 2004 to 2015. As predicted, fat-shaming led to a spike in women’s (N=93,239) implicit anti-fat attitudes, with events of greater notoriety producing greater spikes. We also observed a general increase in implicit anti-fat attitudes over time. Although these passing comments may appear harmless, we show that feedback at the cultural level can be registered by the “body politic.”