(This is going to be a doozy…)
“Adolescent Girls’ and Boys’ Weight-Related Health Behaviors and Cognitions: Associations With Reputation- and Preference-Based Peer Status” by Shirley S. Wang and Shadi Houshyer.
I. Intro
A.
– Body dissatisfaction, dieting, and identify development interrelate to peer acceptance and likability.
B. Three Issues with Past Research
1. First problem
–Most past research has been based on “self-report methods” which only discuss perceptions of norms rather than actual norms themselves.
2. Second problem
–Researches wish to narrow down peer influence as a factor in body-related cognitions.
3. Third problem
–A distinction in peer popularity and peer likability has never thoroughly been discussed.
C. Social Preference vs. Peer Perceived Popularity
1. Social Preference = Peer Likability
a. Linked with aggressive behavior, school drop-out, severe psychological symptoms.
2. Peer Perceived Popularity = Social Reputation
a. Linked with social hierarchy, also substance abuse, sexual risk, and aggressive behaviors.
D. Goals
1. Researches wished to examine gender differences in social reputation and peer likability in reference to weight-related behaviors and cognitions for adolescents.
II. Research Methods
A. Participants
1. The research was composed of 441 high school juniors and seniors.
B. Procedures
1. 441 students were questioned on peer relationships and adolescent health-risk behaviors.
C. Measures
1. Perceived Body Size
a. Girls were asked to identify their perceived body size and ideal body size based on the Ideal Body Subscale-Female test with twelve different body silhouettes ranging from very thin to very obese, and only 8% recorded desiring a heavier body type than their perceived body type.
b. Boys were asked to identify their perceived body size and ideal body size based on the Ideal Body Subscale-Male test as well, and most wished for body types in the middle of the chart (muscular to very muscular) rather than towards the left, which is very thin.
2. Body-Related Cognitions
a. Girls were not bothered with questions concerning muscularity while boys were not bothered with questions concerning anxiety over slight fluxuations in weight.
3. Dieting
a. Students asked how often they engaged in any kind of dieting behaviors, and results were very similar between both sexes.
4. Peer-Rated Social Preference and Social Reputation
a. Students given list of names of all fellow classmates and asked to nominate those they would most likely spend time with/not spend time with, and those they perceive popular/unpopular, and the adolescents social reputation was calculated according to results.
III. Results
A. Descriptive Statistics
1. There were little variation in body dissatisfaction, dieting behavior, peer acceptance/rejection, or peer popularity between boys and girls, though girls were more worried about obesity while boys were more concerned with muscle development and fitness.
2. There were no differences in the overall scores for ethnicities, though there was slight variation concerning body worries and misperceptions.
3. There was significant correlation between dieting behavior and social reputation but NOT in peer likability.
B. Associations Between Self-Reported Body Size and Peer-Reported Peer Status
1. Boys had a curvilinear association with social reputation and body size (showing a better social reputation between “skinny” and obese) while girls had a linear association (Social reputation being highest at the thinnest and lowest at the heaviest).
C. Peer Status as a Concurrent Predictor of Dieting Behavior
1. For both boys and girls, higher rates of dieting coincided with peer-reported popularity, though boys focused on muscularity and girls focused on obesity.
IV. Results
A. Peer-perceived Popularity, but not peer likability, is linked with ideal body shapes and dieting behavior.
B. Adolescents who want to obtain a higher social status focus on achieving an ideal body type.
C. Boys and girls both reported similar levels of body dissatisfaction in relation to peer-perceived popularity.
D. Peer-led programs would be the most effective in aiding to a healthy body image.
V. Conclusion
A. Though there were some limitations on the report, self-report was used as little as possible and an overall vision of actual versus perceptional popularity and likability was obtained.
B. Striving to maintain a certain body image to obtain a certain social reputation could develop into varying eating disorders later in life.
“Prejudice Against Fat People: Ideology and Self-Interest” by Christian S. Crandall.
I. Intro
A. Symbolic Racism
–Symbolic Racism focuses on the lack of American Protestant values that African Americans supposedly do not possess, as well as the deeply rooted bias that they do not value discipline, self-control, or self reliance.
–The characteristics that make up the antifat attitudes are very similar to those of symbolic racism.
–These characteristics for both antifat attitudes and symbolic racism are the inability to value hard work, self-contained independence, obedience to authority, and self-discipline, as well as traditional hatred.
–Symbolic attitudes imply that abstract ideologies can play an important role in the prediction of behavior instead of self-interest.
B. Criticism of Symbolic Racism
–There is not enough research to imply that valuing authority figures, independence, and self-reliance will lead to racist tendencies, that the definition of symbolic racism is too ambiguous, and that self-interest is also too ambiguous.
C. Symbolic Prejudice and Fat People
–Racism against African Americans has become such a movement in modern culture that it has its own unique qualities that separates itself from other racism.
–Antifat attitudes are not so culturally abundant so there is not an independent attitude system for it.
–Antifat attitudes are also less desirable to aid the victims in any way.
D. Evidence of Prejudice Against Fat People
–The negative characteristics associated with obese persons include aesthetically displeasing, morally and emotionally impaired, alienated from sexuality, disconnected from themselves, weak-willed and unlikeable.
–They are discriminated against by fit persons, health care workers, employers, peers, potential romantic partners, family, themselves, and are less likely to be hired or promoted.
–Fat people are less likely to attend college and are associated with a lower socioeconomic status.
E. Is Fatness a Function of Willpower?
–There is more biological evidence pointing towards being or becoming fat than simply being greedy or gluttonous.
–Certain physiological factors make dieting both difficult and ineffective, so self-control is rarely an issue.
II. Body
A. Outline
Study 1: Development of the Antifat Attitudes Questionnaire
1. Method
–251 People from a Psychology class filled out a questionnaire based on a 26 question, 1-9 Likert-scale.
2. Results
–Men disliked fat people more than women, women had a greater fear of fat than men, and both connected controllability of weight to willpower, as well as to dislike and willpower.
3. Discussion
–The connection between dislike and willpower showes that people belief that weight is a completely controllable phenomena, which contributes to antifat attitudes.
Study 2: Antifat Attitudes in an Ideological System
–Fatness is through the fat person’s fault, so fit people will denigrate and stigmatize them, as will black people will be blamed for their socioeconomic status; heroes will be blamed for their victories and victims will be blamed for their woes.
–The just world theory applies, as hard workers will be rewarded and those who are lazy will receive their just rewards, because they are noncontributing and… lazy.
–Fat deviates from the social norm, as the supposed immoral tendencies of black people do, relating back to old-fashioned racial feelings for going against authority.
–If Black people are discriminated against because they are regarded as lazy, sinful, and lacking in discipline and self-denial, then the same attitudes also apply to fat people.
1. Method
–The subjects, undergraduate psychology students, were split into groups and given questionnaires based on the just world, authoritarianism, values, and poverty.
– Most questions were asked based on a one to five scale, some going higher as needed.
–For the poverty question, the students were given questions based on a one to seven scale.
–The results showed that ideological measures were significantly correlated with antifat attitudes.
–Between males and females, there was no difference in the size of correlation between antifat attitudes and ideological variables.
–The rejection of overweight and obese peoples follows the just world theory, that people get what they deserve and that deviance from the norm is cause for social rejection.
–Undergraduate students were used for the tests, and the concern was that they would not be well-informed on the political and social ideology, so the researcher was very careful to who he chose to answer his questionnaires.
Study 3: College Democrats and College Republicans
–The researcher hypothesizes that Republicans will feel that fat people are fat through the fault of their own in comparison to Democrats because of liberal versus conservative ideals.
–From the University of Florida College Democrats and College Republicans groups, 26 Democrats and 30 Republicans were questioned to answer the questionnaires.
–Republicans were, in fact, more conservative than Democrats and held more antifat attitudes.
–Political conservatism was linked to both Dislike of fat people and the idea of Willpower, but not related to Fear of Fat.
–Conservatism is linked to antifat attitudes, and the general intolerance of others, and is also related to antisemitism, racism, and sexism.
–There was a greater belief in Republicans that fat people, and also black people, deserve whatever fate they receive for the actions they do or do not participate in.
Study 4: Changing Beliefs About the Causes of Obesity
–The researcher wished to attempt to see if he could change antifat attitudes by conducting an experiment based on McGuire’s work on attitude consistency.
–In a group of 11 men and 31 women, an experimental and control group were told that they would be performing a test of memory for written versus spoken prose, where the control group was given information about weight, metabolism, and genetics, while the control group only received facts about sailing.
–They were asked to remember and recite the facts that they remembered, including sailing, physiology of weight control, stress and health, and baseball.
–Those in the experimental group scored lower in willpower than the control group, showing that fewer believed in self-control and willpower contributed to being fat.
–Changing the belief that discipline and self control are the key to keeping a healthy body weight are vital in changing antifat attitudes.
–The report shows it is not stereotypes, but attributions, that lead to antifat attitudes.
Study 5: Prejudice, Social Desirability, and the Distribution of Attitudes
–The researcher believes that racism may be decreasing because the social acceptability of being racist is at an all time low, and research may be slanted due to this fact.
–Studies showed that though racist tendencies was more low key, fatist tendencies were not.
–Though symbolic racism and fatism is very similar, it is also different because attitudes towards being racist and fatist differ in social acceptability.
Study 6: Self-Interest, In-Group Bias, and Antifat Attitudes
–The researcher wished to know if fat people have antifat attitudes or if there is an in-group bias.
–He tested people based on their BMIs, and found that those with an overweight BMI were antifat, as well.
–This contrasts to the in-group bias that Whites and Blacks share, as neither will try to be racist towards their own affiliations.
–Fat people do not see themselves as a group, and do not insist on the deprivations that they as a group share, and there is no self-interest motivation in the antifat beliefs.
III. Conclusion
A. General Discussion
–In comparing symbolic racism and fatism, no self-interest biases appear in antifat attitudes.
–Antifat attitudes are not a new thing, but they have reached new heights, and are as fierce as racist beliefs were half a century ago.
–Fit and obese people are equally likely to be antifat, meaning that fat people should feel that their state is attributed to their faults.
–The stigmatized, here, the obese, do little as a group to shield themselves from negative social attitudes.
–This may be because coming together as a group will not help fat people be less fat, so there is no use for comradery, since they can leave the group through various means, unlike black and white people.
–There is a long, historical record of antifat attitudes, especially in North America, that attribute to socioeconomic status and socialization in general.
–These beliefs seem to be very North Native American, as studies indicate less fatist attitudes in Mexico and farther south.
–Fat people are another discriminated bunch in a long list of those who deviate from the norm, including the elderly, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, and the handicapped.
–Antifat attitudes make a very interesting juxtaposition in the face of symbolic racism for comparisons in discrimination and social desirability.
Article 1:
The difference between the introduction and the lit review was that the intro only stated the perceived issue and the surrounding concerns, whereas the lit review talked about the thesis and some of the conclusions of the research as well. For this article, the authors attempted to reinforce the fact that body image is very connected to peer popularity, which would lead to different behavioral and hierarchal results later in life. Stressing this importance was really the only way the information was attention-grabbing. It was set up as a very informative article, moderately readable, but it is not meant to engage the readers.
a. The purpose was to discuss the connections between body image/body dissatisfaction to peer likeability versus social reputation. It wished to prove that both boys and girls struggle with body image, though in varying degrees, concerning social connections. (Intro)
b. The stressed importance is that those who suffer from body dissatisfaction will try to improve it through unhealthy means that will lead to varying eating disorders, which will become a lasting trend through adulthood. It also stresses the importance of social hierarchy, as girls who are thinner and boys who are more muscular tend to have higher ratings of social reputation, which carries on to obtaining more career-oriented goals as adults. (Under III. Results, C, and IV. Results, A)
c. What are the connections between preference and reputation based peer status and weight-related behaviors and cognition? (Intro)
d. Students were given questionnaires asking about perceived body types and ideal body types based on the 12 Silhouette scale, with body types varying from very thin to very obese. They were also asked about dieting routines, and then asked the students to list their peers according to most likeable to least likely to associate with, as well as those who were considered most popular to least popular. (Methods)
e. Comparing the results of each student’s personal body image to the students’ ratings of popularity and likability, they discerned the connection between the two. (III. Results)
f. Any future research that should be conducted should be done by ME! I wanted to know why body image was so important, and here is one of the suggested reasons why.
Article 2:
Again, the difference between the lit review and the introduction was that the lit review plainly states the research question and some of the results. The Introduction was actually a very vague description of symbolic racism, and only caught my attention because I had to keep reading to see the connection to antifat attitudes in the following paragraphs.
a. The purpose was to compare the ideologies of symbolic racism and fatism, which have very similar characteristics. (I. Intro, A. Symoblic Racism)
b. The importance is that fatism is actually very much apart of Northern American culture but is not as associated with negative social regard as racism. (III. Conclusion, A. General Discussion)
c. Is fatism and symoblic racism based on the same ideologies? (I. Intro, A. Symbolic Racism)
d. Jesus. The author used 6 different methods of research, asking questions about antifat attitudes, the just world attitudes, conservative attitudes, the acceptability of racist attitudes and fatist attitudes, etc. (II. Body)
e. The author found that there are connections between ideologies surrounding symbolic racism and fatism, both based on the just world theories, which conservative persons are more likely to hold than more liberal persons. (II. Body)
f. The thing I want to use from this article was the attitudes against fat people, not necessarily as a comparison to any form of racism. It was useful for this purpose but the author’s claims concerning racism are rather ambiguous.
…oh my god, I’m done. I’m done!
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