Causal explanations for weight influence children's social preferences

• In Event: Mechanisms underlying imitation, social learning, and social preferences

Abstract

Weight bias emerges early in development across diverse cultures, and goes on to affect millions of people worldwide (Puhl et al., 2015). However, the cognitive processes driving its development are not yet well-understood. Childhood weight bias does not appear to be driven by a dislike of difference; after all, children of diverse body sizes, including those who are overweight themselves, hold weight bias (Schwartz et al., 2006), and children reliably rank overweight peers as less likable than those with other physical differences (e.g., child in wheelchair, Latner & Stunkard, 2003). Thus, in the present study, we explored whether weight bias might be shaped by children’s beliefs about the causes of weight. Research has found that causal explanations for weight impact adults’ weight bias (Teachman et al., 2003), but less research has focused on how explanations impact children’s weight biases, despite evidence that (a) weight bias emerges early in development, and (b) children’s broader social attitudes are sensitive to causal-explanatory information.
To investigate, we presented participants (n = 395, children ages 4-11 years and adults) with either a biological explanation for weight (“because of how that body is built,” referencing a fixed biological cause) or a behavioral explanation (“because of what that person does,” referencing freely-chosen food and exercise behaviors), or no explanation in three between-subjects conditions. Then, we assessed participants’ social preferences for characters with smaller versus larger bodysizes in a playmate preference task involving 8 forced-choice trials (see Figure 1).
Results showed that, across all ages, children preferred the smaller character (all ps < .003, correcting for multiple comparisons), consistent with past research. Results also indicated that both behavioral and biological explanations impacted children’s preferences relative to their baseline preferences (Behavioral: Wald Z = 3.43, p < .001; Biological: Wald Z = -3.05, p = .002), as shown in Figure 2.
We found that behavioral explanations enhanced children's preferences for smaller characters relative to their baseline preferences. Thus, messages about the importance of healthy eating and exercise behaviors might also inadvertently promote a blameworthy view of overweight children. While previous research had found correlations between children’s beliefs about the controllability of weight and their weight biases, this study contributes the first experimental evidence of a directional relationship. We also found that biological explanations reduced children’s preferences for smaller characters relative to their baseline preferences. The helpful, bias-reducing role of essentialism with respect to weight bias contrasts with the typically harmful, bias-enhancing role of essentialism respect to other forms of bias (e.g., racial and gender biases, see Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017 for review). By viewing weight as biologically-determined, children may view weight as less controllable, and therefore less blameworthy. To date, most evidence of the bias-reducing impacts of essentialist explanations comes from research with adults. Here we present some of the first evidence that biological-essentialist explanations can improve children’s social attitudes as well. In sum, results suggest that causal explanations for weight impact children's weight-based social preferences. Results have important implications for health education, causal reasoning, and social cognition.

Authors

• Rebecca Peretz-Lange, SUNY Purchase
  Presenting Author

• Keri Carvalho, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul Muentener, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author