Using Social Norms to Reduce the Expression of Weight Stigma in Athletic Settings
Everywhere we look, there are advertisements for gyms with aesthetic-looking weight-loss goals at the forefront. Previous research shows fitness communities express weight stigma on a grand scale. In our study, we used false data sets claiming results from a survey taken from a fitness community and sport-related community and manipulated the numbers in a way that would show higher, lower, and no weight bias acceptability rates. We expected people to be relatively accepting of expressing specific comments. While contrary to our hypothesis, we were pleasantly surprised to find that members of the fitness-related communities surveyed were less okay with expressing weight bias than they were with expressing other kinds of bias, regardless of experimental conditions.