Implicit and Explicit Biases toward Obesity: Perspectives of School of Education Students

Walter, Mary; Ragan, Kelsey; Sulak, Tracey; Bagby, Janet

doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000212

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Although sports may be the subject related strongly to overweight, teachers from other subjects might hold stereotypical expectations as well. In line with this, research among pre-service teachers preparing for various educational subjects has found a bias against obesity and overweight (Walter et al 2013) and even physical education teachers express lower expectations regarding the reasoning ability of overweight students (Greenleaf and Weiller 2005).…”

Section: Academic Consequences Of Negative Stereotypingmentioning

confidence: 83%

Pre-service teachers’ academic judgments of overweight students

2017

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Overweight children in schools can become victims of stereotyping and discrimination from both peers and teachers. Research on stereotypical expectations and impression and judgment formation has suggested that teachers might rely on their negative stereotypical expectations when judging students. In the present study, we experimentally investigated whether pre-service academic subject teachers' judgments about students were biased through stereotypical expectations about students' weights. Pre-service teachers were presented with a case report of an overweight-and a normal-weight student, and judged their academic performance and social skills. Results demonstrated that the overweight student was judged as performing better compared to his normal-weight counterpart academically while perceived social skills did not differ. Response latencies suggest that these findings relate to pre-service teachers' positive stereotypical beliefs about overweight students. These findings inspire to further investigate this surprising positivity bias and develop trainings for pre-service students to overcome other stereotypical expectations, which should ideally lead to evaluations based solely on actual academic performance and not stereotypical expectations, whether they are positive or negative.

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Section: Academic Consequences Of Negative Stereotypingmentioning

confidence: 83%

Pre-service teachers’ academic judgments of overweight students

2017

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“…As the subjects of weight bias and stigma, individuals at a higher weight are often perceived to be at fault for their adiposity due to failures in selfcontrol with food, dieting and willpower (Puhl and King, 2013). Such judgements may be attitudes that are implicitly or explicitly held (Walter et al, 2013) and reduce the identity of an individual to one characteristic that is determined to be undesirable or different.…”

Section: Obesity and Weight Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing, implementing and evaluating an educational intervention targeting weight bias and fat stereotyping

Werkhoven

2020

J Health Psychol

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Weight bias directed at individuals at a higher weight leaves them feeling victimised and judged. When possessed by health professionals, stigmatising attitudes may compromise professionalism and quality of care or education provided. An intervention study was conducted in the higher education setting ( n = 124), through tailored course design and delivery. The intervention was embedded into a health elective that pre-service health professionals were enrolled in. Attitudes to weight and knowledge of nutrition were targeted simultaneously. Surveys conducted pre- and post-intervention revealed moderate success in achieving study aims of improving nutrition knowledge and decreasing bias. Focus group analyses supported the quantitative findings.

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“…Fat stereotyping attitudes demonstrated by pre-service educators include viewing overweight or obese children as weak willed, lazy and lacking self-control [29]. The impact of these attitudes is important as these beliefs can affect how the educators treat their students and in turn how successful the student is academically [30].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2015

IJeHIS

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The purpose of this study was to examine the fat stereotyping attitudes of pre-service health and physical educators towards overweight and obese children and to determine if these attitudes were influenced by gender or degree progression. Preservice health and physical educators (n=38) completed the Fat Stereotypes Questionnaire and endorsed fat stereotyping attitudes on characteristics and attributes including laziness, attractiveness and friendship. Males and females exhibited differing attitudes during their second and third year of study with males associating happiness with thinness whereas females associated it with fatness. Attitudes towards obesity worsened longitudinally with degree progression. Thus, when fat stereotyping attitudes are held by pre-service health and physical educators they are influenced by progression of degree and gender. Further research is required to determine the effect that these attitudes have on the quality of teaching and learning provided to their students once they graduate.

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Implicit and Explicit Biases toward Obesity: Perspectives of School of Education Students

Cited by 6 publications

References 20 publications

Pre-service teachers’ academic judgments of overweight students

Pre-service teachers’ academic judgments of overweight students

Designing, implementing and evaluating an educational intervention targeting weight bias and fat stereotyping

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