Self-identified Obese People Request Less Money: A Field Experiment

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Empirical evidence indicates weight-based discrimination in various social settings, including employment.
• The internalization of this discrimination and its impact on individual behavior, particularly salary expectations, remains under-researched.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally measure "self-weight bias" and its effect on salary requests.
• To investigate how individuals' perception of their weight influences their economic behavior.
• To explore the link between self-weight bias and labor market discrimination.

Main Methods:

• An experiment was conducted with self-identified obese (n=90) and non-obese (n=180) participants.
• Participants were given the opportunity to request a monetary amount after completing an identical task.
• A within-subject comparison of self-reports and external evaluations was used to assess perceived weight.

Main Results:

• Self-identified obese individuals requested significantly lower amounts of money compared to non-obese individuals, aligning with System Justification Theory.
• The "self-weight bias," characterized by perceived excessive weight, was identified in both obese and non-obese individuals through self-reports, but not always by external evaluators.
• This bias, manifested as lower salary requests, was found to be more pronounced in self-identified obese individuals.

Conclusions:

• Self-weight bias, leading to lower salary requests, can reinforce discriminatory practices in the labor market.
• The study highlights how internalized weight bias contributes to and exacerbates the wage gap.
• Findings suggest that addressing self-weight bias is crucial for promoting wage equity.