When It Comes to Pay, Do the Thin Win? The Effect of Weight on Pay
for Men and Women
Timothy A. Judge
University of Florida
Daniel M. Cable
London Business School
Cultivation theory suggests that society holds very different body standards for men versus women, and
research indicates that the consequences of defying these social norms may not be linear. To test these
notions in the employment context, we examined the relationship between weight and income and
the degree to which the relationship varies by gender. For women, we theorized a negative weight–
income relationship that is steepest at the thin end of the distribution. For men, we predicted a positive
weight–income relationship until obesity, where it becomes negative. To test these hypotheses, we
utilized 2 longitudinal studies, 1 German and 1 American. In Study 1, weight was measured over 2 time
periods, and earnings were averaged over the subsequent 5 years. Study 2 was a multilevel study in which
weight and earnings were within-individual variables observed over time, and gender was a between-
individual variable. Results from the 2 studies generally support the hypotheses, even when examining
within-individual changes in weight over time.
Keywords: weight, gender, sex, earnings, pay
Nemo liber est qui corpori servit (No one is free who is a slave to his
body).
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The ideal image of a woman is almost impossible for anybody to
achieve.
—Peter J. Brown (anthropologist at Emory University)
The standard of attractiveness portrayed on television and in
magazines is slimmer for women than for men (Silverstein, Per-
due, Peterson, & Kelly, 1986), slimmer than in the past (Silverstein
et al., 1986), thinner than the actual female population (e.g., Fouts
& Burggraf, 1999), and often thinner than the criteria for anorexia
(Wiseman, Gray, Moismann, & Ahrens, 1992). In the fashion
industry, models have become so frail and emaciated that shows
have started banning models below certain weight ratios (e.g.,
Cable News Network [CNN], 2008; Wilson, 2006). On the basis of
these pervasive social norms surrounding weight, it is perhaps no
surprise that some women have internalized these values: About
90% of cases of anorexia and bulimia are women (Fouts &
Burggraf, 1999).
What may be more surprising is the degree to which employers
also seem to have internalized the notion that employees’ weight
matters. Roehling’s (1999) comprehensive review suggests that
obese individuals are rated as being less desirable as subordinates,
coworkers, and bosses, and they are viewed as less conscientious-
ness, less agreeable, less emotionally stable, and less extraverted
than their “normal-weight” counterparts. Even though these ste-
reotypes are inaccurate (Roehling, Roehling, & Odland, 2008), it
appears that in the United States, obese employees are viewed by
their employers as lazy and lacking in self-discipline (Puhl &
Brownell, 2003). Roehling’s (1999) review also revealed that
overweight women are consistently judged more harshly in the
workplace than overweight men, and Griffin (2007) reported that
60% of overweight women and 40% of overweight men describe
themselves as having been discriminated against in the course of
employment.
One of the most important employment outcomes that may be
affected by weight is income, because discrimination against obese
employees at any stage of the employment cycle—including hir-
ing, training, or promotions—should ultimately be reflected in
employees’ income. In addition to affecting the type of life one can
live, income can be viewed as a culmination of employees’ social
and human capital investments (Becker, 1993), and it is a symbol
of what society values. As such, income often influences people’s
identities because it serves as mark of success relative to others
and also is an index of career success (Judge, Cable, Boudreau, &
Bretz, 1995). Though economists have studied the wage penalties
applied to obesity (Baum & Ford, 2004; Cawley, 2004; Conley &
Glauber, 2007), we are not aware of any study in the organiza-
tional behavior literature that has examined the weight–earnings
relationship or gender differences therein. Beyond the obvious
relevance of the topic to organizational behavior, there are three
additional limitations in past research that we address with the
present investigation.
First, existing theory on the weight–income relationship has
focused on the effects of being obese but not being thin, and
existing empirical research has assumed a linear relationship be-
tween weight and income. Past research has not examined whether
the weight–income relationship is actually nonlinear because of
employers expecting and rewarding specific weight ideals. In fact,
This article was published Online First September 20, 2010.
Timothy A. Judge, Department of Management, Warrington College of
Business, University of Florida; Daniel M. Cable, Department of Organi-
sational Behaviour, London Business School, London, England.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Timothy
A. Judge, who is now at the University of Notre Dame, 360 Mendoza
College of Business, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail: tjudge@nd.edu
Journal of Applied Psychology © 2010 American Psychological Association
2011, Vol. 96, No. 1, 95–112 0021-9010/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020860
95

we could not locate any research that developed theory or empir-
ically examined the differences between rewarding thin employees
versus penalizing obese employees or whether the mechanism is
different for women versus men. Given the extreme emphasis that
American society places on women being thin, the literature’s
focus on obesity may be obscuring important theoretical distinc-
tions and empirical trends. Thus, we develop theory regarding the
rewards and penalties that employers apply to men and women on
the basis of body weight, which we test using curvilinear analyses.
Second, although existing weight–income research has sug-
gested that the labor market punishes obese people in terms of
income, past research has not used a multilevel analysis of longi-
tudinal data to explore within-person relationships between weight
and income. A multilevel perspective, although having many the-
oretical and analytical advantages (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), also
limits interpretational confounding (confounding within- vs.
between-individual effects) and lessens the possibility that back-
ground variables function as a common cause of weight and career
success. For example, someone born into a lower socioeconomic
class could possess both a tendency to be overweight and a
tendency to hold lower career aspirations. To rule out these alter-
native explanations for the weight–income relationship, we use a
multilevel analysis to examine whether a given person who gains
weight is punished in terms of income and how changes in within-
person weight affect income differently for thin versus obese
individuals. In other words, any “starting” differences in weight
are controlled in our analyses because our analyses focus on
within-person change and because we model an intercept in the
analyses.
Finally, most research on the weight–income relationship has
been conducted in the United States. However, the United States is
one of the most weight-conscious societies in the world while
simultaneously being one of the most obese (e.g., Critser, 2003),
suggesting that weight–income research based on U.S. inhabitants
may not generalize to other countries. We begin to address this
issue by examining whether the trend of results from the United
States extends to Germany, a country with some key differences in
social and employment expectations.
Theory and Hypotheses
Stereotyping theory predicts that obese individuals will be pe-
nalized in the labor market. As described by Greenberg, Eastin,
Hofschire, Lachlan, and Brownell (2003, p. 1342), negative ste-
reotypes are attached to obese individuals, who are often thought
to be “undisciplined, dishonest, sloppy, ugly, socially unattractive,
sexually unskilled, and less likely to do productive work, among
other attributes.” An open aversion toward fat so thoroughly per-
meates Western society that even obese individuals hold negative
attitudes toward other obese people (Finkelstein, DeMuth, &
Sweeney, 2007). These pervasive negative stereotypes also appear
to be held by employers, accounting for the widespread obesity
discrimination that has been documented, for both men and
women, across every part of the employment cycle in the Amer-
ican workplace in both experimental and field studies (Larkin &
Pines, 1979; Pingitore, Dugoni, Tindale, & Spring, 1994; Roeh-
ling, 1999).
Although past obesity research has relied on stereotyping theory
as the rationale for why obese employees experience discrimina-
tion in the workplace, the logic of stereotyping is silent about the
thin-to-average range of weight, and it also is silent about differ-
ences between men and women. In the next section, we use
cultivation theory as a starting point to develop theory on the
weight–income relationship for nonobese individuals, focusing on
the logic for curvilinear relationships and differences between men
and women.
Cultivation Theory
According to cultivation theory, the media (especially televi-
sion) is the most powerful storyteller in Western culture, contin-
ually repeating the myths, ideologies, and patterns of relationships
that legitimize the social order (Brown, 2002). The key cultivation
hypothesis is that the images depicted in the media, over time, act
like the pull of gravity toward an imagined center. This pull results
in a shared set of social conceptions and expectations such that
media portrayals become ideal representations of reality (see Gerb-
ner, Gross, & Morgan, 2002).
In the American media, standards of attractiveness are substan-
tially slimmer for women than for men, and more recent standards
for women are slimmer than they were in the past (Silverstein et
al., 1986). This media ideal is quite pervasive in society, with
female cartoon characters, movie/television actresses, Playboy
centerfolds, and Miss America Pageant winners all having become
increasingly thinner over the decades (Grabe, Shibley, & Ward,
2008; Silverstein et al., 1986). On the basis of the media’s stan-
dards, people generally perceive average female weight as over-
weight, and they perceive very thin women as average in weight.
Although media presentations of women’s bodies are so skewed as
to be out of reach to most, consistent exposure even leads women
themselves to adopt this reality, resulting in decreased satisfaction
with their bodies (e.g., Brown, 2002; Cash, Winstead, & Janda,
1986).
From a cultivation theory perspective, very thin women are
idealized and more socially valued compared with their normal-
weight and obese peers. Consistent with this prediction, empirical
research shows that very thin women are considered more attrac-
tive, better mate choices, and more positive people compared with
those of average weight (e.g., Wade & DiMaria, 2003). In fact,
women who fail to live up to society’s unrealistic weight expec-
tations are often viewed as “rebels” who do not support the classic
American Protestant values of self-discipline, thrift, and hard work
(Crandall, 1994).
Integrating stereotyping theory with the logic and evidence
that very thin women are more socially valued compared with
their normal-weight peers, we predict a curvilinear relationship
between weight and income. Specifically, we hypothesize that—
for women—the strongest relationship between weight and income
occurs in the very thin to average weight range. Conceptually, this
prediction reflects the premise that when employers encounter
very thin female job applicants and employees, who by definition
are rare and therefore stand out, they celebrate these individuals
with higher pay. However, as women reach average weight, they
have already “fallen from grace” according to media images and
social expectations (Crandall, 1994), and the relationship between
weight and income should level off but still remain negative. Thus,
we hypothesize the following:
96 JUDGE AND CABLE