Does Control-Related Information Attenuate Biased Self-Control and Moral Perceptions Based on Weight?

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Attitude Research
• Moral Psychology

Background:

• Negative weight-based attitudes are common and resistant to change.
• Weight is often moralized, linking higher weight to lower self-control and moral character.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if higher weight is perceived as lower self-control and morality.
• To test if interventions on control perceptions can reduce weight-based moralization.

Main Methods:

• Two preregistered experiments were conducted.
• Interventions provided evidence of weight uncontrollability (Study 1) or high self-control (Study 2).
• Participants' perceptions of weight, self-control, and morality were assessed.

Main Results:

• Participants perceived higher-weight individuals as having lower self-control, predicting lower moral character perceptions.
• Neither intervention strategy successfully improved moral evaluations of higher-weight individuals.
• Existing interventions on control beliefs were insufficient to reduce weight moralization.

Conclusions:

• Intervening solely on control-related beliefs is insufficient to decrease weight moralization.
• Directly targeting moral perceptions may be necessary.
• Weight moralization might be an automatic process requiring interventions on automatic attitudes.