Somatic Symptom Disorders

Disgust predicts prejudice and discrimination toward individuals with obesity Lenny R. Vartanian1, Tara Trewartha1, Eric J. Vanman2

1School of Psychology, UNSW Australia 2School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

Correspondence concerning this article should

be addressed to Lenny R. Vartanian, School

of Psychology, UNSW Australia, Sydney,

NSW 2052, Australia.

E-mail: [email protected]

doi: 10.1111/jasp.12370

Abstract

This study examined the relevance of disgust to evaluations of an obese target per-

son, and the connection between disgust and prejudice toward that person. Partici-

pants (n 5 598) viewed an image of an obese or non-obese woman, and then

evaluated that woman on a number of dimensions (emotions, attitudes, stereotypes,

desire for social distance). Compared with the non-obese target, the obese target eli-

cited more disgust, more negative attitudes and stereotypes, and a greater desire for

social distance. Furthermore, disgust mediated the effect of the target’s body size on

all of the outcome variables (attitudes, stereotypes, social distance). Disgust plays an

important role in prejudice and discrimination toward individuals with obesity, and

might in part explain the pervasiveness of weight bias.

Weight bias is pervasive in Western cultures, and increasingly in

non-Western cultures as well (Brewis, Wutich, Fallette-Cowden,

& Rodriguez-Soto, 2011). One of the primary challenges faced

by researchers in the area is that efforts to reduce weight bias

have generally been ineffective (Danielsdottir, O’Brien, & Ciao,

2010). Most of these previous bias-reduction efforts have focused

on changing people’s cognitive beliefs about obesity (e.g., the

belief that body weight and obesity are under personal control),

but there has been a recent shift toward examining the emotions

underpinning prejudice toward individuals with obesity. Inter-

group emotions have featured prominently in the study of preju-

dice toward various social groups (Iyer & Leach, 2008), and

focusing on intergroup emotions might provide an avenue for

understanding the pervasiveness of weight bias.

The intergroup emotions most relevant in the current con-

text are the “moral emotions”; namely disgust, contempt, and

anger (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011; Rozin, Lowery, Imada, &

Haidt, 1999). Disgust is elicited when individuals cause impu-

rity or degradation to the self/others (Rozin et al., 1999) or

when individuals engage in what are perceived as intentional

immoral behaviors (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011); contempt is

elicited when people violate their duties or responsibilities

within the community or social hierarchy (Rozin et al., 1999)

or are perceived as incompetent (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011);

and anger is typically elicited when individuals harm others

or infringe on the freedom of others (Rozin et al., 1999),

particularly when the transgression is appraised as self-

relevant (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011). Cottrell and Neuberg

(2005) suggested that the specific emotion elicited by a group

depends on the threat posed by that group. Because obese

people are not generally seen as threatening to others or as

infringing on the freedom of others, disgust (and perhaps

contempt) responses might be more relevant than anger

responses in prejudice toward obese people.

Disgust has received the most attention in the weight-bias

literature thus far. For example, Park, Schaller, and Crandall

(2007) found that obesity is implicitly associated with

disease-related concepts. Furthermore, a series of studies by

Vartanian (2010a) showed that disgust toward individuals

with obesity was associated with more negative attitudes

toward those individuals, and that disgust mediated the asso-

ciation between beliefs about the controllability of body

weight and attitudes toward individuals with obesity.

Comparing the role of different emotions in weight bias,

Vartanian, Thomas, and Vanman (2013) found that disgust

predicted negative obesity stereotypes, but that contempt

and anger did not, thus suggesting a unique role for disgust.

Other researchers have examined the different types of dis-

gust, referred to as “functional domains” of disgust, which

include sexual disgust, moral disgust, and pathogen disgust

(Tybur, Lieberman, & Girskevicius, 2009). For example,

Lieberman, Tybur, and Latner (2012) found significant levels

of self-reported disgust toward individuals with obesity in

each domain, but also found that sexual disgust (i.e., how

VC 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2016, 46, pp. 369–375

Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2016, 46, pp. 369–375

disgusting it would be to have sex with an obese person) was

significantly higher than the other two domains. Overall,

there is consistent evidence that disgust is related to evalua-

tions of individuals with obesity.

Although the studies described above provide initial

insights into the connection between disgust and obesity,

those studies involved evaluations of obese people at a group

level or as an abstract category, rather than focusing on evalu-

ations of a specific individual. It is possible that people’s men-

tal representation of “obese people” is more extreme than the

average person they might encounter in daily life who hap-

pens to be obese (Vartanian, 2010b), which might exaggerate

the observed associations. Thus, it is unclear whether the

same emotional processes will be involved when evaluating a

specific target person whose weight status or group member-

ship is not explicitly labeled. Furthermore, prejudice is often

experienced at an individual level (e.g., in the form of job dis-

crimination; Rudolph, Wells, Weller, & Baltes, 2009). There-

fore, it is important to determine whether intergroup

emotions (in particular, disgust) are related to prejudice

toward a specific target person.

An important component of the individual experience of

weight-based discrimination is being avoided or excluded by

others. For example, in a study of individuals in a residential

weight-loss facility, 56% reported that they had been avoided,

excluded, or ignored because of their weight (Friedman et al.,

2005). Similarly, in another study of weight stigma among

adult members of a weight-loss support group, 48%–54%

reported being avoided, excluded or ignored (Puhl & Brow-

nell, 2006). Although there is evidence that individuals with

obesity often feel excluded by others, few studies examining

prejudice toward individuals with obesity have measure

avoidance of those individuals as an outcome. One study did

find that implicit anti-fat attitudes predicted how far partici-

pants chose to sit from an obese person (Bessenoff & Sher-

man, 2000). Another study showed that participants who

viewed stereotypical portrayals of individuals with obesity

expressed more desire for social distance than did partici-

pants who viewed non-stereotypical portrayals (Pearl, Puhl,

& Brownell, 2012). However, there have been no studies

examining the role of intergroup emotions in a desire for

social distance from individuals with obesity. Because disgust

is generally considered to be an avoidance emotion (Oaten,

Stevenson, & Case, 2009), it seems likely that disgust would

be related to a desire for social distance from individuals

with obesity. Thus, examining the association between inter-

group emotions and social distance will enhance our under-

standing of the processes involved in weight bias.

This study extends previous research in two primary ways:

(1) We examined the relevance of intergroup emotions to

evaluations of a specific target person rather than evaluations

of an abstract group; and (2) we examined whether inter-

group emotions could explain desire for social distance from

the target person, as well as attitudes and stereotypes toward

that person. Participants were shown either an obese target

person or a non-obese target person and were asked to evalu-

ate that person on a number of dimensions. We predicted

that: participants would rate the obese target more negatively

than they would rate the non-obese target; disgust would be

a better predictor of evaluations of the target than would

contempt or anger; and disgust would mediate the effect of

the target’s weight on evaluations of that target.

Method

Participants

Participants were 606 individuals based in the United States who

were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Mechanical

Turk has been shown to produce data comparable in quality and

reliability to traditional methods (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gos-

ling, 2011; Vartanian et al., 2013). Eight participants were

excluded from the study because they failed at least one of the

validity checks (questions directing participants to select a partic-

ular response option). The final sample consisted of 598 partici-

pants (337 males, 261 females). Their mean age was 35.88 years

(SD 5 11.66), and their mean Body Mass Index (BMI) based on

self-reported height and weight was 26.39 (SD 5 6.14). The

majority of the sample was Caucasian (80.6%), 6.5% were

African-American, 6.5% were Asian, 5.4% were Hispanic, 0.3%

were American Indian, and 0.7% identified as “other.” This

study was approved by the university’s human ethics committee.

Materials and procedure

The study was advertised on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a

study on “person perception,” and participants completed the

study online. Participants were randomly assigned to view a

photograph depicting a female target person as obese or as

healthy weight, along with some additional background infor-

mation about the target and her daily activities (e.g., age 35,

owns a pet, enjoys shopping). The images were taken from an

individual’s personal webpage showing images of herself

before and after she had lost weight. Using images of the

same person, we can vary the target’s weight while keeping

constant other personal features (such as attractiveness) that

could influence evaluations of the target. The individual is in

the same pose in both photographs, with the same hairstyle

and facial expression, and both photographs are taken against

a neutral monochromatic background. After viewing their

assigned image and reading the information, participants

were asked to rate the target on the following measures:

Intergroup emotions

Participants indicated the extent to which they felt disgust,

contempt, and anger toward the target individual. Each

370 Disgust, prejudice, and discrimination

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emotion was measured as a discrete item using a visual ana-

logue scale (anchored by 0 5 Not at all, 100 5 Extremely).

The initial marker position was set at “0” for all of the visual

analogue scales in this study. 1

We also included some addi-

tional emotions (fear, sadness, happiness, pity, and sympathy)

as filler items to mask our interest in disgust, contempt, and

anger, but these emotions were not included in the analyses.

Attitude

Participants provided an overall rating of their attitude

toward the target (“How favorable is your attitude toward

[the target person]?”) using a 7-point scale (1 5 Extremely

unfavorable, 7 5 Extremely favorable).

Stereotypes

Participants rated the target individual on a series of common

obesity stereotypes, including: lazy, sloppy, self-disciplined

(reverse-scored), motivated (reverse scored), over-indulgent,

and having poor personal hygiene. Responses to these six

items were averaged to compute a Negative Obesity Stereo-

types (NOS) composite score (a 5 .84). Participants also pro- vided judgments of the target individual on a more general

stereotype dimension relating to perceived competence (i.e.,

competent, efficient, successful, and intelligent; a 5 .91). For each stereotype item, participants used a visual analogue scale

(anchored by 0 5 Not at all, 100 5 Extremely) to rate the

extent to which they believed the characteristics applied to the

target. We also included additional character traits (likeable,

shy, popular, unhappy, irritable, and aggressive) as filler items

to mask our focus on common obesity stereotypes, but these

traits were not included in the analyses.

Social distance

Participants completed a version of the Social Distance Scale

(SDS; Link, Cullen, Frank, & Wozniak, 1987), which was used

as an index of willingness to approach or avoid the target

individual. Participants were asked to indicate their willing-

ness to engage in seven situations involving the target individ-

ual (e.g., “Working on the same project as. . .”) on a 4-point

scale (1 5 Definitely unwilling, 4 5 Definitely willing). A social

distance index was created by averaging responses to these

items (a 5 .89). For ease of interpretation, scale scores were

reverse-coded so that higher values represent a stronger desire

for social distance.

In addition to the SDS, participants also completed an online

version of the Seating Distance Task (Macrae, Bodenhausen,

Milne, & Jetten, 1994) as a measure of avoidance. In the tra-

ditional version of this task, participants are led to a room

where they believe the other participant has already selected

a seat, and the measure of social distance is how far partici-

pants choose to sit from the other participant. Recently,

researchers have sought to identify more efficient ways of

capturing a desire for physical distance. For example, one

recent study had participants draw where they would sit rel-

ative to a target person and measured the distance between

the two drawn images (McIntyre, Barlow, & Hayward,

2015). In this study, participants were shown an image of a

table and seven seats with the target individual’s seat

marked, and they were asked to indicate which seat they

would choose for themselves. There were two versions of

this task: one version showed a row of seven seats on one

side of a rectangular table with the target sitting in the cen-

ter seat; the second version showed a round table with the

target sitting in the seat at the bottom of the image. The

seats that participants could choose for themselves were

coded as follows: one seat removed from the target to the

left or to the right was coded as “1”; two seats removed

from the target to the left or to the right was coded as “2”;

and three seats removed from the target to the left or to the

right was coded as “3.” There were no interactions between

version of the seating distance task and target weight status

for any of the analyses reported below, and the two versions

were therefore combined for all analyses. Responses on the

seating distance task were significantly correlated with

scores on the SDS (r 5 .40, p < .001), supporting the valid-

ity of the measure.

Data analysis

Data for disgust, anger, and contempt were positively skewed.

Transforming these variables using the base 10 logarithm

function did effectively normalize the distribution (skew

ranged from 1.24 to 1.66), but the transformation had no

impact on the pattern of results. Therefore, all analyses are

reported using the untransformed variables. Multivariate

Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to compare the

obese target and non-obese targets on the dependent varia-

bles. The multivariate analysis was followed up with a univar-

iate analysis for each dependent variable. We then conducted

a series of multiple regression analyses to determine whether

disgust, contempt, and anger differentially predicted each of

the outcome variables (attitudes, negative obesity stereotypes,

competence, SDS scores, and seating distance). Although dis-

gust, contempt, and anger were significantly correlated with

one another (disgust-contempt r 5 .41, p < .001; disgust-

1 To test whether the start position influenced participants’ emotion ratings,

we conducted a follow-up study in which participants were exposed to the

information about the obese target person and then rated that target on each

of the emotion terms. The start position for the marker on the visual analogue

scale was randomly set to 0, 50, or 100. There was no significant effect of

starter position, F (2, 168) 5 1.51, p 5 .22, and there were no significant con-

trasts between any of the starter positions (ps > .10). Thus, setting the marker

to the 0 point is unlikely to have influenced the results of this study.

Vartanian et al. 371

VC 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2016, 46, pp. 369–375

anger r 5 .70, p < .001; contempt-anger r 5 .49, p < .001),

multicollinearity does not appear to be a problem in this

study (rs < .80; tolerances > .40; VIFs < 2.5). Next, we used

mediation analysis (using the PROCESS macro; Hayes, 2013)

to determine whether intergroup emotions mediated the

effect of target weight status on the outcome variables. This

approach uses bootstrapping, which involves repeatedly sam-

pling from the data set (in this case, 5,000 bootstrap resam-

ples) to create an approximation of the sampling distribution

of the indirect effect and to generate confidence intervals for

these effects. Finally, because there were no interactions

involving participant age, sex, or BMI for any of the analyses,

and because controlling for age, sex, and BMI did not affect

any of the outcomes, these factors were not included in the

analyses reported below. 2

Results

Table 1 shows the mean ratings of the obese target and non-

obese target on each of the dependent variables. There was

an overall effect of target weight status on the combination

of dependent variables, F(8, 588) 5 16.25, p < .001, g2p 5 .18. Univariate analyses indicated that participants expressed

more disgust toward the obese target than toward the non-

obese target, but not more anger or contempt. Participants

also reported more negative attitudes toward the obese target,

rated the obese target higher on the measure of negative obe-

sity stereotypes, and rated the obese target as less competent

than they did the non-obese target. Finally, participants indi-

cated a greater desire for social distance from the obese target

than from the non-obese target on both the SDS and on the

seating-distance task.

We next examined disgust, contempt, and anger as predic-

tors of prejudice toward the target individuals. The overall

regression model was significant for attitudes toward the tar-

get, F(3, 593) 5 47.66, p < .001, adj-R2 5 .19; for NOS, F(3,

593) 5 62.79, p < .001, adj-R2 5 .24; for competence, F(3,

593) 5 14.41, p < .001, adj-R 2 5 .06; for SDS scores, F(3,

593) 5 32.11, p < .001, adj-R 2 5 .14; and for seating distance,

F(3, 593) 5 14.82, p < .001, adj-R2 5 .07. In each case, disgust

was a significant predictor of the outcome variable,

but contempt and anger were not significant predictors (see

Table 2). The only exception to that pattern was that con-

tempt was a significant negative predictor of NOS, with

the coefficient suggesting that the more contempt people

felt toward the target, the less they attributed negative obe-

sity stereotypes to her. Note, however, that this finding is

contrary to the small positive bivariate correlation

observed between contempt and negative obesity stereo-

types (r 5 .11, p 5 .01), suggesting a suppression effect in

the regression analysis.

Finally, because only disgust was associated with the out-

come variables, only disgust was included as a mediator in

the mediation analyses. Those analyses showed that there

was a significant indirect effect of the target’s body weight

on each of the outcome variables through disgust: attitudes

toward the target (point estimate 5 20.19, SE 5 0.04, 95%

CI 5 20.28, 20.11); NOS (point estimate 5 3.15, SE 5 0.65,

95% CI 5 2.01, 4.55); competence (point estimate 5 21.96,

SE 5 0.52, 95% CI 5 23.15, 21.09); SDS (point

estimate 5 0.08, SE 5 0.02, 95% CI 5 0.05, 0.12); and

Table 1 Means (SD) for Each of the Dependent Variables

Obese target

(n 5 298)

Non-obese

target

(n 5 299)

Cohen’s

d

p

Intergroup emotions

Disgust 8.11 (16.63) 2.48 (8.22) 0.43 < .001

Contempt 9.68 (18.61) 8.38 (21.24) 0.07 .43

Anger 3.76 (9.00) 2.63 (7.97) 0.13 .11

Attitude

How favorable. . .? 5.04 (1.16) 5.52 (0.94) 0.46 < .001

Stereotypes

Negative obesity

stereotypes 37.33 (19.21) 22.89 (13.75) 0.86 < .001

Competence 55.19 (20.39) 60.98 (20.30) 0.28 .001

Social distance

Social Distance Scale 1.88 (0.58) 1.77 (0.48) 0.20 .01

Seating distance task 1.61 (0.72) 1.38 (0.62) 0.34 < .001

Table 2 Regression Coefficients Predicting Attitudes, Stereotypes, and

Social Distance from Intergroup Emotions

b t p

Attitude

Disgust 2.47 9.16 < .001

Contempt .05 1.06 .29

Anger .02 0.45 .66

Negative obesity stereotypes

Disgust .58 11.49 < .001

Contempt 2.08 2.03 .04

Anger 2.09 1.77 .08

Competence

Disgust 2.30 5.48 < .001

Contempt .08 1.71 .09

Anger .04 0.64 .52

Social distance

Disgust .33 6.11 < .001

Contempt 2.02 0.42 .67

Anger .08 1.34 .18

Seating distance

Disgust .20 3.68 < .001

Contempt .02 0.37 .71

Anger .07 1.17 .24

2 The literature on weight bias consistently finds that even individuals who are

overweight or obese hold negative attitudes toward obese people (e.g.,

Schwartz, Vartanian, Nosek, & Brownell, 2006; Wang, Brownell, & Wadden,

2004), suggesting a lack of in-group favoritism among individuals with

obesity.

372 Disgust, prejudice, and discrimination

VC 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2016, 46, pp. 369–375

seating distance (point estimate 5 0.07, SE 5 0.02, 95%

CI 5 0.04, 0.10).

Discussion

This study extended previous research by demonstrating that

intergroup emotions play an important role in evaluations of

a specific individual with obesity, in addition to the general

role they play in evaluations of obese people as a group

(Vartanian, 2010a; Vartanian et al., 2013). Specifically, the

obese target elicited more disgust than did the non-obese

target, which in turn was associated with more negative atti-

tudes, more negative stereotyping, and a greater desire for

social distance from the target. These findings are important

because they contribute to our understanding of the potential

role of disgust in interpersonal interactions and, specifically,

in instances of weight-based stigmatization.

Our findings also provide further support for the notion

disgust, in particular, is an important component of weight

bias (Vartanian et al., 2013): neither contempt nor anger

were differentially associated with the target based on her

weight, and those emotions also did not predict any of the

outcome variables. These findings fit with general conceptu-

alizations of moral emotions (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011;

Rozin et al., 1999). Obesity might be seen as an impurity or

degradation of the self, and the behaviors presumed to make

a person obese (e.g., overindulgence, laziness) may be seen

an immoral behaviors, thus giving rise to a disgust response

toward individuals who are obese. In contrast, individuals

with obesity are not typically viewed as threatening or as

infringing on one’s personal rights and freedoms, and there-

fore should not elicit anger. Furthermore, although obesity

might be viewed as violating social standards in some

respects, this might not amount to the type of violation of

responsibilities to the community that would elicit contempt.

An important contribution of the present research is that we

examined the relevance of disgust to a desire for social distance

from the target person. With both measures (the SDS and the

seating distance task), we found that disgust mediated the effect

of target’s weight on the desire for social distance. These find-

ings suggest that, in addition to playing a role in negative atti-

tudes and stereotypes toward individuals with obesity, disgust

might also lead to avoidance or exclusion of individuals with

obesity in social contexts. People with obesity often report

being excluded or ignored (Friedman et al., 2005), and disgust

(as an avoidance emotion) might in part be responsible for

that exclusion. Given the known deleterious effects of social

exclusion (MacDonald & Leary, 2005; Williams, 2007), it is

important for future research to consider this component

when studying weight bias. Note that the measures of avoid-

ance and distance we used in this study did not assess actual

behavior toward an individual with obesity, but rather relied

on self-reports of what people would do, and thus replication

of these results in an interpersonal context would be important.

Future research could also determine whether disgust is related

to other forms of discrimination against individuals with obe-

sity (e.g., hiring decisions, punishment).

This study was conducted with an online community sam-

ple which allowed for a greater range of age and BMI than is

typical in a student sample, increasing the generalizability of

our findings. Note, as well, that previous studies have found

similar results between student samples and online commu-

nity samples (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2012; Vartanian & Far-

douly, 2014; Vartanian et al., 2013), suggesting that these

findings regarding weight bias are robust. One limitation of

this study, however, is that our measures of emotions were

based on self-reports. Although a substantial amount of past

research has used self-reported emotions when studying both

prejudice and basic emotional processes (Tapias, Glaser, Kelt-

ner, Vasquez, & Wickens, 2007), future studies using other

indices of emotion, such as physiological measures, would be

beneficial to our understanding of the emotional reactions to

obesity. It should also be noted that the overall level of

reported disgust, even toward the obese target, was quite low,

and the regression models showed that intergroup emotions

accounted for 6%–24% of the variance in outcomes. Thus,

although disgust does differentiate obese from non-obese tar-

gets, and is a significant predictor of prejudice toward individ-

uals with obesity, there are likely additional factors involved

in weight bias that need to be considered if we hope to

develop effective interventions. A final methodological point

is that this study only included female targets. Although some

past work suggests that bias is similar for male and female tar-

gets (Vartanian & Fardouly, 2014), it might be that the emo-

tional responses are different to men and to women.

Intergroup emotions, and in particular disgust, have been

shown to play an important role in prejudice toward obese

people as a group (Vartanian, 2010a; Vartanian et al., 2013),

and we extended those findings by showing that disgust

toward a specific target person also influences prejudice and

discrimination toward that person. The role of disgust in

prejudice toward individuals with obesity people might be

one explanation for the failure of previous bias-reduction

efforts to reduce weight bias: that is, modifying people’s cog-

nitive beliefs are unlikely to change their emotional experien-

ces. This then raises a new challenge for researchers: How do

we change people’s emotional reactions to individuals with

obesity? One approach that might be effective is to increase

positive intergroup contact. There is some evidence that pro-

fessional contact (e.g., as a clinician), and also positive perso-

nal experiences, with individuals with obesity is associated

with less weight bias (Schwartz, Chambliss, Brownell, Blair,

& Billington, 2003). Similarly, research shows that positive

portrayals of obesity in the media are associated with less

weight bias (Pearl et al., 2012). It is possible this positive

exposure decreases disgust responses to obesity, thereby

Vartanian et al. 373

VC 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2016, 46, pp. 369–375

reducing prejudice (cf. Curtis, 2011). Another mechanism

through which intergroup contact can reduce prejudice is by

capitalizing on building positive emotions, such as empathy.

Increased empathy is one of the mechanisms through which

intergroup contact reduces prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp,

2008). In the context of obesity, there is some evidence that

understanding what it is like to be obese or learning about an

individual’s experience with weight-based social rejection

results in less negative evaluations of individuals with obesity

(Schwartz et al., 2003; Teachman, Gapinski, Brownell, Raw-

lins, & Jeyaram, 2003). Reducing negative emotions and

increasing positive emotions toward individuals with obesity

could be a promising means of reducing weight-based preju-

dice and discrimination.

Acknowledgment This research was supported under Australian Research

Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project num-

ber DP130100759).

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