The implicit nature of the anti-fat bias

The stigmatization and discrimination of obese persons is pervasive in almost any domain of living. at the explicit level,obese people are associated with a wide range of negative characteristics. furthermore,research with the implicit association test revealed the implicit nature of the anti-fat bias. building upon these findings,the present study used event-related brain potential recordings in order to assess key features of implicit processes. participants viewed a series of schematic portrayals of anorexic,medium,and obese body shapes and tools. in a passive viewing condition,participants were asked to simply look at the stimuli and,in a distraction condition,participants were asked to detect a specific tool. viewing obese body images,as compared to medium or anorexic body images,elicited a positive potential shift over fronto-central sites and a relative negative potential over occipito-temporal regions in a time window from ~190 to 250 ms. this evaluative brain response to obese body images was similarly pronounced while participants performed a distraction task. thus,the findings suggest that the anti-fat bias may occur spontaneously,unintentionally,and independent of explicit processing goals. a troublesome picture is emerging in western cultures suggesting that obese-ism may appear to be as inevitable as a reflex. © 2011 schupp and renner.