Public education may reduce bariatric surgery stigma

Researchers at the University of New South Wales recruited 275 men and women through Amazon Mechanical Turk — a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace — to determine whether educating participants on the lifestyle changes required after bariatric surgery would lessen the stigma associated with the surgery.

Participants were shown “before” and “after” weight-loss images of a woman who lost nearly 100 lb in 1 year. After viewing the before image, participants were asked to evaluate the woman by rating the terms lazy, sloppy, competent, efficient, successful, intelligent, self-disciplined, likeable, popular, shy, aggressive, unhappy and irritable on a sliding scale.

Later, participants viewed after weight-loss photographs of the same woman and were given three different accounts of how she lost weight: with bariatric surgery alone, with diet and exercise, or with a combination of surgery and diet and exercise. Besides evaluating the woman in terms such as lazy or competent, questions also were posed regarding how much responsibility she possessed for her weight loss.

Women who lost weight strictly through surgery received the most negative ratings for laziness, competence and responsibility for weight loss. Conversely, those who lost weight by diet and exercise received the most positive ratings for laziness and competence and were viewed as the most responsible for their weight loss. Ratings were more favorable for those whose weight reduction was brought about by a combination of bariatric surgery and lifestyle changes compared with those who underwent surgery alone.