Associations of Weight Bias with Disordered Eating Among Latino and White Men

Abstract

Objective This study examined associations of different aspects of weight bias, which can include negative attitudes toward and beliefs about obesity, with eating/weight‐related psychopathology. Methods Participants (N = 544) were White (n = 376) and Latino (n = 168) men living in the United States who completed an online battery of established measures of weight bias (both attitudes toward and beliefs about obesity) and eating/weight‐related psychopathology. Results Among White men, negative attitudes toward obesity were associated significantly with dietary restraint, overvaluation of weight/shape, and body dissatisfaction, whereas among Latino men, negative attitudes toward obesity were associated significantly with overvaluation of weight/shape. Among White men, less negative attitudes toward people with obesity were associated with decreased use of compensatory behaviors, and weaker beliefs about the controllabilty of obesity were associated with decreased overeating and binge eating. Among Latino men, neither attitudes about people with obesity nor beliefs about the controllability of obesity were associated with eating‐disordered behaviors. Conclusions Weight bias was related to eating/weight‐related psychopathology in men, with fewer associations observed among Latino men than White men. This highlights that associations with psychopathology may vary by ethnicity. Future research is needed to clarify the mechanism by which weight‐biased attitudes and beliefs are associated with eating/weight‐related psychopathology and why this might differ between White and Latino men.

The Effect of Own Body Concerns on Judgments of Other Women’s Body Size

“…This is illustrated by studies which suggest a prevalence of anti-fat bias, which is the negative attitude toward, belief about, or behavior against people perceived as being "fat" (Danielsdottir et al, 2010) and is believed to arise from the adoption of the thin ideal (Crandall and Schiffhauer, 1998). Moreover, there is evidence for: (a) varying levels of both implicit and explicit anti-fat bias in both clinical (Cserjési, et al, 2010;Spring and Bulik, 2014) and non-clinical populations (Klaczynski et al, 2004;Puhl et al, 2007), and (b) positive linkage to body image distortion scores (Lydecker et al, 2019) and overall thin idealization (Thompson and Stice, 2001;Dittmar, and Howard, 2004;Brown and Dittmar, 2005;Fitzsimmons-Craft et al, 2012). Thus, individuals with high levels of anti-fat bias might well interpret "overweight" in a body image context as a more negative judgment compared to an individual with lower levels of anti-fat bias, and this could introduce a source of variation into the data that we have not quantified.…”