The association between weight- and attractiveness-based biases

Physical attractiveness, an individual trait associated with social standards of appearance and health, forms a bias that is conceptually overlapping with weight-based bias. There are a number of notable similarities. First, both weight- and attractiveness-based biases are formed through similar mechanisms such as idealized standards of beauty perpetuated by media portrayals. For example, physically attractive individuals are portrayed more favorably than less attractive characters in top-grossing films and exposure to such biased films leads to greater favoritism toward attractive people (Smith et al., Reference Smith, McIntosh and Bazzini1999). Second, as in the case of weight-based bias, attractiveness bias demonstrates similar negative consequences on various important outcomes, such as interpersonal relationships, socioeconomic status, and mental health. Like thin people, attractive people are perceived as more intelligent, sociable, and competent (Eagly et al., Reference Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani and Longo1991) and have advantages in hiring decisions, career advancement, and wages (Maestripieri et al., Reference Maestripieri, Henry and Nickels2016). They also tend to show better mental health and well-being (Gupta et al., Reference Gupta, Etcoff and Jæger2015).

Third, both attractiveness- and weight-based bias intersect with other social identities such as gender and race, exerting varying impacts (Monk et al., Reference Monk, Esposito and Lee2021). In general, it has been documented that biases based on weight and attractiveness are more salient among women. Fourth, as in the case of weight, attractiveness is also somewhat perceived as controllable.

Women apply makeup to enhance attractive facial characteristics (Davis & Arnocky, Reference Davis and Arnocky2020) and rate themselves as more attractive when wearing makeup than when not wearing cosmetics (Cash et al., Reference Cash, Dawson, Davis, Bowen and Galumbeck1989).

Merging insights from attractiveness-based bias literature

Given these similarities, examining pro-beauty bias literature can lead to a more comprehensive and nuanced analyses of antifat bias. One of the notable trends of literature on attractiveness bias that weight researchers can leverage is its wide acknowledgment of implicit mechanisms. Research on attractiveness bias has generally relied on the halo effect to explain the mechanism leading to discrimination against less attractive individuals. The halo effect is a cognitive tendency that occurs when an impression created based on one feature of a person influences the evaluation of the person in another area. Batres and Shiramizu (Reference Batres and Shiramizu2022) emphasize how this bias becomes apparent in terms of physical appeal. Around the world, individuals with apparently pleasing features are often regarded as having positive qualities in other, often unrelated, domains such as intelligence or compliance. Similarly, people not fitting the social standard of desirable weight can be judged negatively in other unrelated domains, such as job skills, which would yield disadvantages in their professional careers.

The attractiveness literature’s greater emphasis on the halo effect suggests that people’s negative attitudes toward obese people tend to be implicit and automatic rather than explicit and controlled. Although the focal article focuses on explicit mechanisms of antifat bias such as (potentially) conscious reasoning about weight controllability, some research evidence also implies the necessity for weight researchers to carefully attend to implicit mechanisms. For example, implicit association tests (IAT; Greenwald et al., Reference Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz1998), which measure the strength of associations through a series of timed tasks, have provided consistent evidence that people generally associate “fat” with “bad” and “thin” with “good,” regardless of their different level of explicit biases (Schupp & Renner, Reference Schupp and Renner2011). It has been also documented that the mere sight of an obese person triggers negative nonverbal behaviors such as facial expressions. A series of field studies found consistent evidence that shoppers who appeared to be obese (wearing obesity prosthetics) received significantly less eye contact and friendliness than did the same shoppers who appeared to be thin (not wearing obesity prosthetics; King et al., Reference King, Shapiro, Hebl, Singletary and Turner2006).

However, in the same experiments, apparent weight did not lead to differences in overt behavior of the store employees such as providing help upon request or greeting. Such contradicting evidence of antifat justice is in line with the justification suppression model (JSM) described in the focal article. People suppress their genuine prejudice against obese people in the realm where they can consciously control their behavior. Although altering beliefs in weight controllability can enhance motivation to suppress conscious discriminatory behavior, however, unconscious and implicit forms of discrimination are more pervasive in contemporary society, as seen in the King and colleagues’ field experiments. Because such subtle discrimination still has severe consequences (Pearson et al., Reference Pearson, Dovidio and Gaertner2009), weight researchers need to take broader approaches to effectively address such implicit mechanisms as well. Likewise, merging insights from research on attractiveness bias will enable weight researchers to have a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of antifat bias while equipping strategies to address antifat bias more effectively.

Distinctions between weight- and attractiveness-based biases

Whereas pro-beauty and antifat biases often overlap and intersect, they differ primarily in their focus. Weight-based bias centers on judgments related to an individual’s body size and weight, whereas attractiveness bias focuses on judgments related to facial features, body symmetry, and overall appearance. These biases also show somewhat different intersectionality. Although women are more severely penalized for not meeting both weight and attractiveness standards than men, race influences different patterns in weight and attractiveness biases.

Attractiveness is a stronger predictor of income among Black people than among White people (Monk et al., Reference Monk, Esposito and Lee2021), but it has been also documented that Black women are less vulnerable to the stigma of obesity than White women (Hebl & Heatherton, Reference Hebl and Heatherton1998), suggesting that weight may have less impact on mental health among Black women.

Articulating boundaries from attractiveness-based bias literature

Although the focal article argues that antifat bias stems from unique stereotypes specifically attached to obese individuals such as being lazy and selfish, little is understood about how much these stereotypes contribute to negative consequences after accounting for physical attractiveness. Whereas it is plausible that these unique stereotypes would have a distinct set of negative consequences from the consequences of lacking physical attractiveness, clear evidence has been unavailable. To assess the distinct effect of each bias, future research should consider the confounded impact and establish the boundary of each bias. Acknowledging the great overlap as well as the distinctiveness of weight and attractiveness biases will also enable researchers to build on and contribute to cumulative knowledge.

Suggestions for future weight-based bias researchers

Drawing upon the associations and distinctions between weight and attractiveness biases, we discussed the necessity to attend to implicit mechanisms and disentangle the often-confounded impacts of those biases. We will extend these points below by providing more concrete examples of how organizational researchers can pursue these inquiries.