P1: IZO

Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002

Sex Roles, Vol. 51, Nos. 1/2, July 2004 (°

C 2004)

Belief in the Controllability of Weight and Attributions

to Prejudice Among Heavyweight Women

Bruce Blaine1,2 and Zoe Williams1

The perceived controllability of weight is a central feature of prejudice against heavyweight

people, but its role in the experience of prejudice is not well established. Heavyweight women
(N = 66, mean age = 38 years) were exposed to information about cardiovascular health or the
uncontrollability of weight and then wrote a persuasive health-related essay. All participants
received a negative evaluation on the essay quality from a male evaluator whom they believed
could see them or not. Belief in the uncontrollability of weight led to more attributions for the
feedback to the evaluator’s prejudice but only when the participants thought that they were
visible. The results are discussed in terms of the stigma of overweight.

KEY WORDS: heavyweight; attributions; stigma; prejudice.

Research evidence indicates that heavyweight
people face discrimination in many areas of life,
including employment, insurance coverage, college
admissions, legal decisions, and health care (Allon,
1982; Puhl & Brownell, 2001). Stereotypes of heavy-
weight individuals are very negative and include
perceptions of heavyweight people as lazy, unattrac-
tive, lacking self-esteem, socially inept, and intellec-
tually slow (Allon, 1982; Harris, 1990). Research also
shows that heavyweight people evoke in others neg-
ative emotional reactions including pity, fear, dis-
gust, and hostility (Allon, 1979; Hiller, 1981; Weiner,
Perry, & Magnuson, 1988). Beliefs about and reac-
tions to heavyweight people have their roots in con-
servative social ideologies, and they are informed by
the idea that people are responsible for their own
life outcomes and can, through effort, change their
life prospects (Crandall, 1994; Crandall & Beirnat,
1990; Crandall & Martinez, 1996). Thus the belief
that weight is controllable figures prominently in
the widespread prejudice and discrimination against
1 Department Psychology, Hofstra University, Hempstead,
New York.
2 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of
Psychology, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, 11549; e-
mail: psybeb@hofstra.edu.
heavyweight people. Those beliefs, combined with
cultural values on beauty and thinness, result in
the stigmatization of heavyweight status. Following
Goffman’s general definition of stigma (Goffman,
1963), we define heavyweight stigma as the realiza-
tion that one’s weight (or body size) prompts neg-
ative feelings and stereotypic assumptions in others.
Because cultural standards of appearance apply more
to women than to men, women should be more stig-
matized by heavyweight status. In this article we are
concerned with how heavyweight women cope with
that stigma.
The devalued status and negative outcomes as-
sociated with heavyweight stigma should have nega-
tive implications for heavy individuals’ self-esteem,
and this should be especially true for women. Re-
searchers have found lower levels of self-esteem in
heavy than in thin, college-aged women (Crocker,
Cornwell, & Major, 1993; Quinn & Crocker, 1999).
A recent meta-analytic review of data from about
70 studies found a small negative (r = −.18) cor-
relation between weight and self-esteem (Miller &
Downey, 1999; see Friedman & Brownell, 1995, for
an earlier meta-analytic review). This relationship
was somewhat more negative in women than in men,
which is consistent with the greater weight stigmati-
zation experienced by women than men.

79 0360-0025/04/0700-0079/0 °
C 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation
P1: IZO
Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002
80
Heavyweight stigma is particularly problematic
because it lacks an important self-protective quality
that is inherent in other stigmatizing attributes—the
ability to attribute negative or threatening outcomes
to others’ prejudice against one’s group (Crocker
& Major, 1989). Research indicates that attributing
one’s negative outcomes to others’ prejudice, when
it is possible, protects against lowered self-esteem
(Major, Kaiser, & McCoy, 2003; Major, Quinton, &
McCoy, 2002). In one study Black and White par-
ticipants received a positive or negative evaluation
from a White evaluator whom they believed could
either see them or not (Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, &
Major, 1991). The negative feedback was attributed
to the evaluator’s prejudice more by Black than by
White participants, but only when they believed that
they were visible to the evaluator. In a similar study,
thin and heavyweight female participants received
either positive or negative feedback from a male
evaluator (Crocker et al., 1993). Compared to the
other groups, heavyweight women who received
negative feedback attributed it to their weight, rather
than to the prejudice of the evaluator, and also
experienced more negative affect. In the Crocker
et al. (1993) study the type of feedback given to heavy
and thin participants, but not their visibility to the
evaluator, was manipulated. As a result, they could
not test whether heavyweight stigma is dependent on
being aware that one’s “flaw”—and the associated
negative stereotype—is identifiable to others. This is
an important distinction in light of recent theorizing
about the situationally constructed nature of stigma
(Crocker, 1999). According to Crocker, collective
representations about one’s group enter situations
when people know that they can be identified by
others as members of that group. A visibility manip-
ulation, therefore, is able to tease apart dispositional
tendencies to internalize negative feedback from
more immediate, situational causes.
Although research has demonstrated that
temporary belief in the uncontrollability of weight
reduces negative attitudes toward heavy people
(Crandall, 1996, Study 4), only one study has exam-
ined the implications of perceived weight uncontrol-
lability for heavyweight stigma. In that study, heavy
and thin college-aged women participated in a study
ostensibly about “dating relationships,” and they
exchanged personal information with a man whom
participants believed knew their height and weight
(Amato & Crocker, 1995). Participants read an essay
that led them to believe that weight either was, or was
not, controllable. Then they learned that the man was
not interested in dating them. The results revealed
Blaine and Williams
that among the heavyweight participants, those who
were in the “weight controllable” condition made
more attributions for the rejection to the man’s prej-
udice, and they experienced increases in self-esteem
than did those in the “weight not controllable” condi-
tion. Although the study showed that belief in weight
controllability can acquire self-protective properties,
it could not establish that attributions to prejudice
were related to heavyweight stigma. To do so, it must
be shown that belief in weight controllability in-
creases attributions to prejudice and self-esteem par-
ticularly (or perhaps only) when people are weight-
stigmatized—that is, known to others and stereotyped
as heavy. The awareness that one can be visibly cat-
egorized and stereotyped by others is vital to the
experience of stigma (Crocker et al., 1991; Goffman,
1963). Because heavyweight people tend to internal-
ize cultural beliefs about the controllability of weight,
contradicting those beliefs should better equip them
to cope with others’ prejudice against them, but only
when they believe they are known as heavy to other
people. To test this idea, heavyweight adult women
were educated about either cardiovascular health
(control condition) or the uncontrollability of weight
(treatment condition), and then received a negative
evaluation from a male evaluator whom they believed
either knew their weight or not. Their attributions
for the evaluation and self-esteem were measured.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 66 overweight women (40
Black and 26 White) who were recruited through
advertising in local newspapers for a study on
“Health and Health Information” and paid $30 for
their travel and time. Participants’ ages ranged from
18 to 75 years (M = 38.1, SD = 31.5), and their body
mass index (BMI)—a measure of weight corrected
for height—ranged from 24.9 to 52.9 (M = 33.7,
SD = 7.0). Thus, nearly all of the participants met the
BMI criterion reported by the National Center for
Health Statistics (2001) for being either overweight
(>25) or obese (>30).
Materials
Manipulations
Perceptions of weight controllability were ma-
nipulated by the informational reading used in prior
P1: IZO
Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002
Heavyweight Stigma Among Heavyweight Women
research (Amato & Crocker, 1995) and made to ap-
pear like a printed web page. The written report
and fact sheet were embedded with two other (ac-
tual) printed web pages on primary heart disease
(American Heart Association, 1999) and hyperten-
sion (Johns Hopkins Intelihealth, 1999). The order of
these pages was counterbalanced across participants.
Participants in the noncontrollability condition read
only the filler web pages. Perceptions of visibility were
manipulated with full-body photographs of partici-
pants that were either seen by the evaluator or not.
Dependent Measures
A single item (“To what extent is weight control-
lable?”) served as a manipulation check, to which par-
ticipants responded on a 1 = not at all to 5 = completely
scale. The State Self-Esteem Scale (SSES; Heatherton
& Polivy, 1991) was used to measure self-esteem. Par-
ticipants responded to 20 items (e.g., “I feel displeased
with myself”) on a 1 = not at all to 5 = extremely
scale, which yields scale scores that can range from
20 to 100. The scale correlates highly (r s > .70) with
other measures self-esteem (see Heatherton & Polivy,
1991), and had high internal consistency in this study
(α = .91). Attributions for feedback were assessed
with a measure used in prior research (Amato &
Crocker, 1995). Participants rated the extent to which
the feedback was due to each of 10 items (e.g., “My
personality,” “My age”) on a 1 = not at all to 5 = com-
pletely scale. Ratings on three items (“The evaluator’s
concern with physical appearances,” “The evaluator’s
prejudice against my overweight,” “My body”) were
combined to form the primary dependent variable;
the response range was 3–15. This scale had high in-
ternal consistency in this study (α = .86).
Procedure
To obscure the study’s focus on weight, partici-
pants were screened with questions about their age,
height and weight, and chronic medical conditions.
Women who met the requirements for heavyweight
status were scheduled for a testing session. The study
was introduced as being interested in “how well peo-
ple are able to process health information and convey
it to others.” All participants, after giving informed
consent, were paid $30. Participants were weighed
and photographed under the pretext that body size
and shape may be a factor in how effectively people
communicate about health issues. Participants were
81
told that their names and photos would not be con-
nected in any way.
Participants were then randomly assigned to
read the treatment or control condition health web-
material. After reading the material participants were
told: “Please write an essay in the form of a persua-
sive argument, as if you were trying to convince some-
one to take more interest in their health.” Participants
were told that the essay would be evaluated by a male
graduate student research assistant who was working
in the next room. After they finished their essays the
experimenter either paper-clipped the participants’
photograph to the page or left the photo on the ta-
ble with the participant and took the essay to the as-
sistant to be evaluated. In this way one-half of the
participants were randomly assigned to be visible to
the evaluator.
After 8 minutes the experimenter returned with
the essay and a form ostensibly completed by the eval-
uator. The form had number ratings and short com-
ments on how well-written, interesting, and persua-
sive the evaluator found the essay. A summary rating
of “poor” was circled, and the form was signed with
a fictitious man’s name. All participants received the
same feedback. Participants then completed the de-
pendent measures and were debriefed on the nature
of the study. The photographs were returned to the
participants at the end of the study.
RESULTS
A manipulation check on the weight controlla-
bility manipulation revealed that participants in the
treatment condition (M = 3.00, SD = 1.16) reported
that weight was less controllable than did those in
the control condition (M = 3.53, SD = 1.08), t(62) =
1.90, p < .05 (1-tailed). Participants’ BMI was unre-
lated to their SSES score, r (66) = −.05, p > .05, but
did predict the belief in the controllability of weight,
r (64) = −.32, p < .05, such that participants’ rating
of weight as controllable decreased as their weight
increased.
To test the prediction that belief in the uncontrol-
lability of weight would prompt more attributions for
negative feedback to the evaluator’s prejudice, but
only when the participants believed that they were
visible to the evaluator, a 2 (Visible to evaluator:
yes/no) × 2 (Belief in the uncontrollability of weight:
yes/no) ANOVA with participants’ attributions to
prejudice for the evaluator’s feedback as the depen-
dent variable was conducted. This analysis revealed
a significant main effect of visibility, F(1, 62) = 7.76,
P1: IZO
Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002
82
Fig. 1. Mean attributions to evaluator prejudice separately by visibility and perceived weight
controllability conditions.
p < .01. Participants in the visible conditions made
more attributions to the evaluator’s prejudice for the
feedback (M = 5.27, SD = 2.67) than did participants
in the nonvisible conditions (M = 3.67, SD = 2.23).
This effect, however, was qualified by a significant vis-
ibility × controllability interaction, F(1, 62) = 5.24,
p < .05 (see Fig. 1).
Post hoc tests revealed that participants’ belief
that weight is uncontrollable prompted more attribu-
tions to evaluator prejudice when they were believed
to be visible (M = 6.06, SD = 3.32) than when they
were not visible (M = 3.06, SD = 1.25) to the evalua-
tor, t(30) = 3.61, p < .05. This effect was not observed
among participants who were not exposed to the treat-
ment information. These results support the hypoth-
esis that information about the uncontrollable nature
of weight has self-protective properties for weight-
stigmatized individuals. Analysis of the filler items on
the attribution scale (e.g., attributions for feedback
to one’s age, gender, or personality) revealed no ef-
fects of the visibility or controllability manipulations.
This indicates that participants’ visibility aroused only
weight-related stigma. Finally, use of the participants’
BMI as a covariate did not change the results reported
above.
Blaine and Williams
To determine if the self-protective property of
belief in the uncontrollability of weight affected par-
ticipants’ state self-esteem, a 2 (visible to evalu-
ator: yes/no) × 2 (belief in the uncontrollability
of weight: yes/no) ANOVA was done with SSES
scores as the dependent variable. No significant ef-
fects emerged from this analysis. It is possible that
the self-protective quality of the belief in the uncon-
trollability of weight is only observable in particular
self-esteem domains. Thus, we analyzed separately the
three SSES subscales—performance (e.g., “I am con-
fident about my abilities”), social (e.g., “I feel self-
conscious”), and appearance (e.g., “I feel unattrac-
tive”). These analyses, however, yielded no significant
interaction effects. It appears that although belief in
the uncontrollable nature of weight enables heavy-
weight women to attribute negative evaluations to the
evaluator’s prejudice when they are visible to an eval-
uator, this attribution does not seem to improve state
self-esteem.
The failure to find the predicted interaction ef-
fect of controllability and visibility on the SSES
and its subscales may relate to whether state self-
esteem in adult women is higher than the levels ob-
served in undergraduate students, and thus less able
P1: IZO
Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002
Heavyweight Stigma Among Heavyweight Women
to be increased by any manipulation. Heatherton and
Polivy (1991) reported that for their samples of fe-
male undergraduate students SSES means ranged
from 69.6 to 77.5. Our sample mean of 73.4 was within
that range, which makes the possibility of a ceiling ef-
fect in SSES scores unlikely. Second, it is also possible
that the effects of belief in weight controllability on
self-esteem can only be detected by controlling for
premanipulation levels of self-esteem. We did not ad-
minister an SSES pretest, therefore that analysis was
precluded.
In exploratory analyses we considered the mod-
erating effects of the participants’ race on the
effects tested above. A 2 (visible to evaluator:
yes/no) × 2 (belief in the uncontrollability of weight:
yes/no) × 2 (participant race: White/Black) ANOVA
analyzed participants’ attributions to prejudice and
SSES scores separately. No significant effects of
race emerged on attributions to prejudice. How-
ever, a significant 2-way interaction between race
and belief in the uncontrollability of weight emerged
on SSES scores, F(1, 62) = 3.99, p < .05. Post hoc
tests revealed that the self-esteem of White partic-
ipants in the controllable (M = 71.15, SD = 11.57)
and noncontrollable (M = 75.77, SD = 10.62) con-
ditions did not differ. However, Black participants
reported marginally higher self-esteem in the control-
lable (M = 77.81, SD = 14.99) than in the noncon-
trollable (M = 68.47, SD = 15.75) condition, t(38) =
1.92, p < .07. Thus, the data suggest that the tem-
porary induction of belief in the uncontrollability of
weight only affected Black participants’ self-esteem
such that those in the controllable condition had
higher levels of self-esteem than those in the uncon-
trollable condition. No effects of the participants’ age
on either attributions to prejudice or state self-esteem
were significant.
DISCUSSION
The study showed that belief in the uncontrolla-
bility of weight improved heavyweight participants’
ability to cope with an evaluator’s apparent prejudice
against their group. Participants who were reminded
of the uncontrollable nature of weight were more
likely to blame a negative evaluation on the prejudice
of the evaluator, but only when they were visible to the
evaluator, than were control participants. This finding
shows that heavyweight stigma is related to the belief
that being heavy is one’s own fault, and that the mean-
ing of this belief for the experience of stigma depends
83
on whether one’s weight is known to others. When
temporarily disconfirmed, belief in weight controlla-
bility took on self-protective properties and allowed
weight-stigmatized participants—those who believed
the evaluator could see them—to attribute the nega-
tive outcome to the evaluator’s prejudice against their
weight or appearance.
The results of this study can be understood in
the context of the justification-expression theory of
the expression of prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman,
2002). The widespread belief about the controllabil-
ity of weight is a social norm that correlates with and
justifies the expression of prejudice against heavy peo-
ple. This norm has been internalized by heavy indi-
viduals, rendering them vulnerable to stigmatization.
When that norm was contradicted among perceivers,
prejudice against heavy people was suppressed (see
Crandall, 1994, Study 4). In this study the norm was
contradicted in the minds of heavy individuals them-
selves and the result was a lowered tolerance for oth-
ers’ prejudice against them.
The effect of the belief-about-weight-
controllability induction, however, was not reflected
in participants’ self-esteem scores. Two explanations
were considered for the lack of predicted self-esteem
findings. First, previous research that has manipulated
feedback to overweight participants and measured
their self-esteem has used college-aged participants
(Amato & Crocker, 1995; Crocker et al., 1991). It
is possible that, as they age, heavyweight women
disconnect their self-esteem from the chronic threat
posed by weight-based negative outcomes. If so, this
might have buffered the self-esteem of the adult
women in this study from the effects of a negative
evaluation. Second, if stigma is related to the collec-
tive representations about one’s group that others
are perceived to bring to a situation, as Crocker
(1999) has argued, then one’s stigmatizing attribute
should threaten self-esteem only if the situation is
constructed so that one’s weight or appearance is
perceived as a disadvantage. In other words, being
aware that other people see you as heavy may
not threaten self-esteem unless the situational task
demands are related to an ability that is part of
others’ stereotype about heavy people. The ability to
write a persuasive essay, which was the task in this
study, is not obviously related to others’ stereotype
about heavy people, and perhaps should not have
been expected to affect participants’ self-esteem.
Finally, it could be argued that the weight con-
trollability manipulation was confounded with weight
salience and that participants who were primed with
P1: IZO
Sex Roles [sers] PP1245-sers-488663 June 4, 2004 5:5 Style file version June 3rd, 2002
84
weight were more likely to use a weight-based ex-
planation for the evaluator’s feedback. This alterna-
tive explanation seems unlikely, however, in light of
research that shows a lack of ingroup bias or pos-
itive social identity among heavy people (Crandall,
1994). Priming weight, and thus making salient one’s
membership in a disliked group, would seem to be
associated with more, rather than less, internaliza-
tion of negative weight-based outcomes. Although
the weight controllability manipulation seems to be
valid, the manipulation check data suggest that the
treatment effect was small. Although the weak ma-
nipulation can explain the low absolute level of at-
tributions to prejudice (all means were in the lower
half of the response scale), the study shows that even
a small, temporary dose of information that contra-
dicted widely-accepted cultural beliefs allowed par-
ticipants to better cope with an evaluator’s apparent
prejudice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by a Hofstra Uni-
versity Faculty Research and Development grant.
REFERENCES
Allon, N. (1979). Self-perceptions of the stigma of overweight in
relationship to weight losing patterns. American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition, 32, 470–480.
Allon, N. (1982). The stigma of overweight in everyday life. In B. B.
Wortman (Ed.), Psychological aspects of obesity (pp. 130–174).
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Amato, M., & Crocker, J. (1995, August). The stigma of being over-
weight and self-esteem: The role of controllability. Paper pre-
sented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association, New York, NY.
American Heart Association. (1999). Retrieved from www.amhrt.
org/Heart and Stroke A Z Guide/prevpri.html
Crandall, C. (1994). Prejudice against fat people: Ideology and self-
interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 882–
894.
Crandall, C., & Biernat, M. (1990). The ideology of anti-fat atti-
tudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 20, 227–243.
Blaine and Williams
Crandall, C., & Eshleman, A. (2002). A justification-suppression
model of the expression of experience of prejudice. Psycho-
logical Bulletin, 129, 414–446.
Crandall, C., & Martinez, R. (1996). Culture, ideology, and antifat
attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1165–
1176.
Crocker, J. (1999). Social stigma and self-esteem: Situational con-
struction of self-worth. Journal of Experimental Social Psy-
chology, 35, 89–107.
Crocker, J., Cornwell, B., & Major, B. (1993). The stigma of over-
weight. Affective consequences of attributional ambiguity.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 60–70.
Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The
self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96,
608–630.
Crocker, J., Voelkl, K., Testa, M., & Major, B. (1991). Social stigma:
The affective consequences of attributional ambiguity. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 218–228.
Friedman, M., & Brownell, K. (1995). Psychological correlates of
obesity: Moving to the next research generation. Psychological
Bulletin, 117, 3–20.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled
identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Harris, M. (1990). Is love seen as different for the obese? Journal
of Applied Social Psychology, 20, 1209–1224.
Heatherton, T., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and validation of
a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 60, 895–910.
Hiller, D. (1981). The salience of overweight in personality charac-
terization. Journal of Psychology, 108, 233–240.
Johns Hopkins Intelihealth. (1999). Retrieved from www.
intelihealth.com/IH/int1H
Major, B., Kaiser, C., & McCoy, S. (2003). It’s not my fault: When
and why attributions to prejudice protect self-esteem. Person-
ality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 772–781.
Major, B., Quinton, W., & McCoy, S. (2002). Antecedents and con-
sequences of attributions to discrimination: Theoretical and
empirical advances. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experi-
mental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 251–330). San Diego,
CA: Academic Press, Inc.
Miller, C., & Downey, K. (1999). A meta-analysis of heavyweight
and self-esteem. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3,
68–84.
National Center for Health Statistics. (2001). Available from http://
www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Puhl, R., & Brownell, K. (2001). Bias, discrimination, and obesity.
Obesity Research, 9, 788–805.
Quinn, D., & Crocker, J. (1999). When ideology hurts: Effects of
belief in the Protestant ethic and feeling overweight on the
psychological well-being of women. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 77, 402–414.
Weiner, B., Perry, R., & Magnusson, J. (1988). An attributional anal-
ysis of reactions to stigmas. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 55, 738–748.
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Belief in the Controllability of Weight and Attributions

to Prejudice Among Heavyweight Women
SOURCE: Sex Roles Ment Health Jron 51 no1/212/12 Jl
20047652004

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it

is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in
violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:
http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/1573-2762/