Visual perception of group fatness as a precursor to social identity threat and safety

ABSTRACT

Across two studies (N = 190), we evaluate how fat people perceive groups of bodies and how this visual processing predicts social identity threat and safety. We examined how fat people ensemble code – rapidly and simultaneously extract visual information from a group – body size from groups of bodies. Stimuli included sets of 3-d modeled bodies varying in body mass index (BMI; Study 1) and real photographs of groups of people with known BMI (Study 2). As hypothesized, we found that fat people were generally accurate at ensemble coding the average body size of arrays after 500 ms exposure, and that, particularly among fat people with medium and high stigma consciousness, arrays of increasing average BMI were associated with heightened feelings of identity safety. Our work suggests that the representation of fatness in one’s environment may be an important precursor to social identity threat and safety processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual perception
• group perception
• body size
• social vision
• marginalization

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Drs. Jes Matsick, Jill Wood, Jonathan Cook, and Max Weisbuch for helpful comments and discussions on previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout this manuscript we use terminology including “underweight” “overweight” and “obese” to refer to BMI categories as defined by health authorities. However, we believe these are not appropriate descriptors of body size and related identities, and reflect a history of racism, medicalization, and pathologization (see Rothblum and Solovay 2009; Strings 2019). We confine this terminology to scare quotes in recognition of its stigmatizing potential (see Wann 2009).

2. SCQ scores were collected to be tested as a moderator in analyses. We collected these during the screening process to avoid biasing scores during the experimental procedure.

3. 500 people were screened via Prolific, resulting in an eligible sample of 383 participants.

4. No participants were excluded from this sample, however, 10 participants experienced compatibility issues with Pavlovia and therefore were not able to complete the survey.

5. On the show, participants are required to complete weekly weigh-ins where their weight (in pounds) is recorded. This information, as well as participant height, are available in the show and online.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the The Pennsylvania State University [Alumni Dissertation Award, RGSO Dissertation Award].

Notes on contributors

Flora Oswald

Flora Oswald is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences and the Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Flora is interested in how marginalized identities shape people’s experiences and perceptions of their social worlds, with a particular focus on stereotyping and stigmatization. Much of Flora’s current work bridges feminist social psychological approaches with visual perception research to elucidate a feminist social vision perspective that prioritizes marginalized perceivers. Flora’s work has been supported by awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Women and Gender Equality Canada, and the Government of Alberta, among others.

Reginald B. Adams

Reginald B. Adams, Jr. is a Professor of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Dartmouth College in 2002. Reg is interested in how we extract social and emotional meaning from nonverbal cues, particularly via the face. His work addresses how multiple social messages (e.g., emotion, gender, race, age, etc.) combine across multiple modalities and interact to form the unified representations that guide our impressions of and responses to others. His research has been funded by NSF, NIA, and NIMH (NIH).