Differences in appearance can be very influential. But do you really judge others on their body size? And does it matter what size you are when judging others? In this blog I will explain the remarkable answers to these questions. You can even test how influenced you are by body size when judging other people.
Golden Behaviors
– Nudges for a Healthy Lifestyle –
Reading time: 5 minutes
The death of George Floyd sparked a lot of emotions in societies around the world. Equal treatment is back on top of the social and political agenda. While the main focus is on issues regarding race, other differences in appearance can also be very influential. As the riddle about the father and son in the car accident makes manifestly clear.
The car accident
A father and son are involved in a severe car accident. The father dies instantly. The son is seriously injured and is taken to hospital to receive surgery. At the hospital the doctor looks at the patient and says: ‘I can’t operate on him, he is my son.’
How is this possible???
The third-year Bachelor students from The Hague University of Applied Sciences whom I teach had a hard time with the riddle of the father and son in the car accident. They came up with some rather fascinating explanations on how it was possible. The father and the doctor were a gay couple. The doctor was the biological father. It took some more farfetched answers before one of the students gave the most likely answer. Namely, that the doctor is the mother of the patient. Even the next generation initially thinks of a man when they consider a doctor. No matter their own gender. This is called an implicit bias. And its consequences can be stark.
What is an implicit bias?
Everybody has associations, preferences and aversions without being aware of them, as social psychologist Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt explains in her book ‘Biased’. They are heavily influenced by our experiences, environments, schools and images from society. In social sciences this is called an implicit bias. And these unconsious prejudices can be very persistent. Let me explain how this works using a weighing scale.
If I own a weighing scale that is accurate, it states my actual weight of 82 kg. If I have a weighing scale that is severly broken, it gives me very different weights everytime I step on it. One day I weigh 77kg, the next day 87kg. I’m pretty confident I will notice the extreme difference and get myself a new weighing scale. But what if my weighing scale was ‘biased’ and always gives me an extra 3 kg. I continue to be 85 kg from day to day. How would I know it is flawed? Probably not untill I stand on another weighing scale and that could take a while. Our implicit bias influences how we judge people based on their appearances. The colour of their skin, their gender and their body size are obvious and hard to ignore. And that is where our implicit bias comes in.
Do you prefer thin people over fat people?
Probably yes. And you can test it with what is called the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In this test you categorize good and bad words with images of fat people and thin people. The result is described as an “Automatic preference for thin people over fat people” if you were faster responding when thin people and good words are assigned to the same response key than when fat people and good words were classified with the same key. Your score is described as an “Automatic preference for fat people over thin people” if the opposite occurred. The automatic preference may be described as “slight”, “moderate”, “strong”, or “no preference”. This indicates the strength of the automatic preference.
The test I just completed gave me the following result: “Your responses suggests a moderate to strong automatic preference for thin people over fat people.” That is not a very nice thing to hear about yourself. I don’t want to judge a book by its cover. But I’m not alone in this. Almost everybody has the same associations and therefore the same results from the test. Regardless of your own body size. But just because almost everybody has this implicit bias, it doesn’t make it right. Fortunately you can do something about it.
How to tackle an implicit bias?
Here is the good news: You can do something about your implicit bias. First of all by taking the Implicit Association Test and become aware that you too have an implicit bias. Then you can focus on the moments the bias is most likely active. For example in moments of stress, when a decision has to be made fast and when a decision is fully subjective. The last step is to make a plan of action to reduce your bias. By either avoiding making decisions in a stressfull situations, by adding an extra step in a process to give yourself extra time or by using technology to be more objective.
I hope you feel inspired to take steps into combating your own implicit bias. It is not just a moral way of acting, but it has personal benefits as well. By judging someone on their body size you could miss out of a great employee when hiring. Or a potential lifepartner when looking for love. All those missed opportunities has a negative effect on your succes, happiness and overall health. You can take your first step in the direction of mitigating your implicit bias by taking the Implicit Association Test and choose the option Weight IAT. It will only take you ten minutes to finish the test and get your results.
Please share your results as I’m currently providing implicit bias training to businesses and government agencies on how to be more diverse in terms of race, gender and body size. The Black Lives Matter movement deserves all of the attention it receives, but it is not the endgame in terms of equal treatment. Like race or gender, body size shouldn’t be something used to discriminate against people. So remember; Fat Lives Matter.
Fat Lives Matter - Does body size influences how you see other people? Delen op XSander Palm (1980) is author of Golden Behaviors and behavioral economist. He uses insights from the behavioral sciences to explain why people often act against their own interests. As a behavioral expert, he explores how you can nudge your behavior for a healthy lifestyle. He has a Master of Science in Marketing (VU University Amsterdam).
When you have been inspired to start and maintain your Golden Behaviors, reach out to me.
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