The effects of obesity, gender and specialty on perceptions of physicians’ social influence

Abstract

This research examines the effects of obesity, gender, and specialty on the social influence of physicians. Recent research in other areas of social science indicates that the effects of gender are declining, but the effects of the obesity physical appearance dimension linger. For physicians, just the opposite seems to be the case. More significant gender effects than obesity effects were found. Some specialties also interact with gender and obesity. Moreover, the research describes an innovative use of morphing to manipulate and isolate the obesity stimulus.

Moderators of the effect of weight on job‐related outcomes: a meta‐analysis of experimental studies

“…There is a clear need for greater attention to be paid to the way in which target weight is manipulated in the research design and review processes. However, evidence that the label of being “overweight” is applied more liberally to women than to men, and that there is greater variability in assessments of the weight of female target weight (Greenleaf et al., ; Stearns et al., ) suggests developing weight manipulations that are equally reliable and valid for female and male targets (in terms of eliciting the desire categorization of the target) will be a considerable challenge. At a minimum, potential sex difference in the effectiveness of weight manipulations need to be examined in reported manipulation check data, and when there is evidence of differential effectiveness, the implications for interpreting the study's findings explicitly addressed.…”

“…We conducted study‐level, categorical moderator tests (Hedges & Olkin, ) to determine if there were differences between studies in cumulative effect sizes based on the following potential design‐related moderators: design type (within‐ vs. between‐subjects); amount of job‐related information (high vs. low levels); sample type (undergraduate students vs. professional/working subjects); and effectiveness of weight manipulation for the purpose of investigating the role of target sex (effective vs. ineffective). Eight studies provided sufficient data to be included in the analyses; four involved weight manipulations that suffered from one or more of the limitations that were identified as likely to obscure sex differences (Cates, ; Sartore & Cunningham, ; Stearns et al., ; Sype, ), and four studies did not have any such limitations (Bellizzi & Hasty, ; Bellizzi et al., ; McKee & Smouse, ; Pingitore et al., ).…”

Student and Professor Similarity: Exploring the Effects of Gender and Relative Age

“…The largely favorable evaluations for female faculty contrast with unfavorable female professional perceptions seen historically in higher education (Sidanius & Crane, 1989) and more recently in fields such as medicine (Stearns, Borna, & Srinivasan, 2001). The main effect of faculty gender in this study was unanticipated.…”

“…That is, for better or for worse female faculty may be perceived as more approachable, which in turn might be especially important at large, less personal universities. This would be congruous with findings in the health care field in which consumers held higher expectations for female than for male physicians' friendliness, likeableness, sociability, and warmth (Stearns et al, 2001). Expectations may be due to women's, relative to men's, historical emphasis on interpersonal affiliation (Meyers-Levy, 1988).…”

Weight and Gender in Service Jobs

“…This supports the notion that weight more strongly influences perceptions of women than men. However, other studies have found no gender differences based on weight, finding that overweight men and women experience equal levels of weight-based discrimination (Polinko and Popovich 2001;Roehling, Pichler, and Bruce 2013;Sartore-Baldwin and Cunningham 2007;Stearns, Borna, and Sundaram 2001).…”