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Weight Bias and Psychological Perceptions of Weight
An individual’s psychological perception of weight can lead to weight bias in themselves and others. Weight bias is defined as “unreasonable judgments based on a person’s weight”
(Washington, 2011). Exposure to and endorsement of weight bias can affect an individual's mental and physical health starting at a young age (Bensley et al., 2023). Additionally, weight bias can lead to negative attitudes toward people because of their weight or body type. Acts of unreasonable judgment include engagement in weight discrimination, weight teasing, and weight bias (Washington, 2011). Exposure to weight bias is detrimental to health and can lead to numerous issues in adolescents, such as low self-esteem, maladaptive eating behaviors, depression, anxiety, and poor social and academic outcomes (Puhl & Lessard, 2020). Exposure to weight bias at a young age typically comes from parents' weight talk. These behaviors can lead to explicit (e.g. bullying others based on weight) and implicit (e.g. people with larger bodies are not good) biased attitudes in children. Researchers suggest that parents monitor how they speak about their own and others’ bodies around their children, especially around young children (2-3 years old) who are at the age where self-reflection, self-evaluation, and categorization begin to develop (Muris & Meesters, 2014). However, with the emergence of social media exposure to weight talk and weight bias is increased in children.
The following article provides more information on how social media has influenced diet culture and weight talk. It also proposes some solutions on how to eliminate the harmful effects social media has on dieting.
https://recreation.ucsd.edu/2021/01/diet-culture-social-media/
Social media allows for children to listen to others explicitly hate their own or others’ bodies, and praise “ideal” body types. When adolescents witness this hate they are likely to accept it and engage in a cognitive process called moral disengagement. Moral disengagement occurs when people justify immoral acts in a situation to avoid distress or negative feelings they may have as a bystander (Bedrosova, 2023). Individuals high in moral disengagement are more likely to be passive bystanders when witnessing cyberbullying, and bystanders with low moral disengagement are likely to intervene in instances of cyberbullying (Doramajian & Bukowski, 2015). Furthermore, when adolescents are exposed to cyber aggression without intervention, they become desensitized to the hate, and it promotes acceptance and encourages them to engage in similar behaviors in the future (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Social media is also responsible for creating and pervasively representing the “thin ideal”. The thin ideal is the appearance norm for women in society. The thin ideal represents women who are extremely thin, which is a body type that is highly unattainable for most women. Although the majority of women in society do not have this body type the over-representation on social media creates weight bias against those who are plus size and do not conform to the perceived body type norm by promoting the thin ideal and negatively portraying/fat-shaming people who are plus-sized. Adolescents learn weight bias online similar to how children develop weight bias through observational learning from their parents.
Social media does not only allow adolescents to seek out weight loss or “fitness” content, but it increases the risk of being cyberbullied or cyberbullying others. Physical appearance, specifically weight, is a common reason for cyber attacks from adolescents (Bedrosova et al., 2023). Cyberbullying and cyberhate are significant issues among adolescents and have proven to have worse effects than previous types of bullying. Mainly, cyberbullying and cyberhate have been focused on groups’ ethnicity and sexuality (Castano-Pulgarin et al., 2021) despite weight also being a significant target among adolescents. Multiple researchers have determined that physical appearance and weight are one of the most frequent reasons for victimization among adolescents. Plus-size youth are the most at risk for experiencing not only cyber victimization but traditional bullying as well (Puhl et al., 2011, 2015). The victimization does not just attack people for their physical appearance but attacks them for the negative stereotypes associated with being plus-sized as well. Negative stereotypes about plus-sized individuals include traits of being lazy, stupid, slow, unattractive, and weak (Harriger et al., 2010). Victimization leads to negative effects like lower body esteem, self-efficacy, less social support, poor body image, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and negative physical health consequences (Puhl & Luedicke, 2012). Lower body esteem and other issues can lead to mental and physical health issues when individuals seek out and use unhealthy mechanisms to lose weight. These negative attitudes about oneself can facilitate eating disorder behaviors and attitudes.
To further give insight into image dissatisfaction and its originations (specifically in women) is Panatda Inthavong via Ted Talk.
Made by Elizabeth Russell and Mikayla Henesy, undergraduates at Shippensburg University. Made for the Psychology of Computers and the Internet.
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