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Obesity beliefs, anti-fat attitudes impact reactions to media
Pre-existing attitudes toward obesity, including beliefs about the amount of control people have over their body weight, determine reactions to related humor in TV and film, according to research published in Psychology of Popular Media Culture.
The findings could inform research on the stigma of obesity and representations in the media, researchers Jacob M. Burmeister, a PhD candidate, and Robert Carels, PhD, both from the Psychology department at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, wrote.
“Although disparaging jokes about physical disability, religion and ethnicity are often considered to be in poor taste or not politically correct, obesity stands out as a condition that is commonly made fun of in entertainment media,” Burmeister said in a press release. “There has been very little research on what viewers think about this kind of humor.”
The pair enrolled 501 participants (mean age, 30.7 years) to watch seven video clips from popular shows and movies, then rate them on dimensions — among then funniness, enjoyment, offensiveness, meanness — to gauge their appreciation and distaste. Participants also completed measures of attitudes about obesity including dislike for people with obesity and beliefs in controllability of body weight and stereotypes.
Those who reported dislike of people with obesity or belief in stereotypes predictably appreciated the weight-related humor more. Similarly, stronger belief that obesity was a controllable condition — and not a less controllable disease state — was associated with less aversion to the viewing content. An individual’s BMI negatively correlated with appreciation of the humor.
While the relationships do not imply causation, the researchers believe additional research is need to determine the nature of humor in perpetuating stigma around obesity.
“Future research should build on the current study by investigating whether experimentally controlled exposure to weight-related humor has a direct effect on viewers’ anti-fat attitudes as well as their willingness to accept obesity stigma more broadly,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosures:The authors did not disclose any financial relationships.
Perspective
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Unlike people suffering from other diseases or chronic health conditions, individuals with obesity face stigma every day, including as the targets of frequent jokes. Unfortunately, weight-related jokes will likely be made until no one finds them funny any longer.
Once an individual has obesity, even the most advanced, evidence-based therapies for weight loss only produce 5% to 10% weight loss on average. While this amount of weight loss improves health, it often doesn’t drastically change a person’s appearance. Moreover, several uncontrollable physiological processes in the human body actively resist weight reduction, often resulting in weight regain. Although weight gain cannot occur without energy intake exceeding energy expenditure, there may be multiple non-volitional causes of energy imbalance, such as endocrine disorders, drug side effects, environmental factors and genetic and epigenetic causes.
This study confirms that persons with obesity may be the targets of jokes because it is believed that they “deserve” to be teased. These findings are significant as they suggest that educating the public about obesity may reduce the acceptance of weight-related humor.
It is the goal of obesity health professional organizations such as The Obesity Society to educate legislators, health care professionals, and the general public about the difficulties of weight control. Communicating and promoting scientific knowledge about the complex reasons for weight gain — and the scientifically proven difficulty of weight loss treatments available today — may reduce the frequency and acceptance of weight-related humor.