Ethnic identity and implicit anti-fat bias: Similarities and differences be twee n African American and caucasian women

Abstract

Research using self-report or explicit measures of body image suggests African American women have a more accepting view of larger figures than non-Hispanic White (NHW) women. However, increasing research indicates that explicit views may vary from those held at a deeper, implicit level. Our study examined whether African American women held an implicit negative bias toward overweight/fat individuals, despite a greater explicit acceptance of larger body size. Additionally, ethnic identity was measured to assess if strength of identity related to bias. Anti-fat bias was compared within and between ethnic groups using an Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures the strength of automatic associations between two concepts. This online IAT measured spontaneous thoughts about figures of various body weights (underweight, overweight, obese) and positive and negative terms (eg, attractive and unattractive or healthy and unhealthy). A pervasive anti-fat bias was found in African American as well as NHW women. For both groups, this bias was related to ethnic identity when thinking about figure size and health. Specifically, African American women with lower ethnic identity were more negatively biased and NHW women with higher ethnic identity were more negatively biased. Findings from this study indicate that implicitly there are few differences in the way these two ethnicities classify heavy figures, and therefore African Americans may not be immune to weight stigma. Given the prevalence of obesity and the lack of research on weight stigma among African American women, there is need to address this issue and its impact on well-being.