Prejudice among egalitarians: The case of values and weight bias

Abstract

Many domains of research suggest that high favourability to social power and low favourability to egalitarian ideals predict more prejudice against other groups. In the present article, we describe theory and evidence suggesting that the relations between power, egalitarianism and prejudice may be reversed for one group: fat men. Using both implicit and explicit measures, we found across four studies (N = 602) that target gender moderated the relation between values and attitude toward fat people. For male targets, implicitly but not explicitly measured positivity toward power (over egalitarian) values predicted significantly more spontaneous positive attitudes toward fat (over slim) people. Further, implicit attitude toward power (over egalitarian) values predicted the time-pressured decision to choose a fat male. Together, the implicit evaluation of values allows us to identify processes in inter-group attitudes and behaviours that would not be possible to detect using explicit measures of values alone.