Are fat people less likely to win on Jeopardy?
Of course not. Yet people sill believe that the obese make less competent game show contestants, according to a research paper coming out later this month in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
For the paper, Wharton professor Maurice Schweitzer and Ph.D. candidate Emma Levine conducted several studies seeking to measure bias against the obese. They found that across the board, study participants believed that overweight people are less competent than thinner people.
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A study Puhl and her colleagues did in 2008 showed that reports of weight discrimination increased by 66 percent between 1995 and 2005. But in a survey she conducted last year with colleagues, 75 percent of respondents said they’d support a law prohibiting discrimination.
“Two-thirds of our population is overweight or obese,” says Puhl. “This is a societal issue we need to address, rather than penalizing workers for it.”
