Children’s Attitudes About an Overweight or Non-overweight Weight Victim

The bigger picture: young children's perception of fatness in the context of other physical differences

“…The study aim was not to challenge weight bias per se. There is little doubt that young children will favour lean or healthy weight characters over fat characters and they are more accepting of these as likely friends . Instead, the aim was to place weight bias in a broader context regarding how fatness is seen in comparison with other highly visible differences.…”

Factors Influencing Children’s Attitudes Toward a Peer Who Is Overweight

“…Although Nabors et al (2010) found boys held more negative attitudes toward a same gender peer, other research has not supported these findings. For instance, Latner and Stunkard (2003) discovered that girls held more negative attitudes compared to boys.…”

“…attitudes toward children who are overweight indicates that demographic factors, such as one's gender, age, and race influence attitudes (e.g., Iobst et al, 2009;Nabors et al, 2010). In a previous study (Nabors et al) that used the same dataset that was used in the current study, elementary school-aged children selected whether a line drawing of an average weight or overweight hypothetical peer was the victim in a story depicting teasing or name-calling (i.e., being called stupid by a peer).…”

“…On the other hand, research in this area has yielded mixed results. For example, Nabors et al (2010) reported that girls might hold more positive attitudes. Latner and Stunkard (2003) showed that girls had more negative attitudes toward overweight peers than boys.…”