New study finds subjects imagined unpleasant smells when shown photos of obese people
Results highlight growing stigma against overweight people after subjects imagined unpleasant odours through an 'implicit association'
Experimental subjects who were tricked into thinking they should smell something reported they smelled less pleasant odours when they viewed pictures of overweight and obese people than when they looked at trim people individuals, new research has found.
The experimental exercise, conducted by psychology professors at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a clever way to smoke out "implicit association" - or prejudice that lies beneath the level of conscious awareness. While similar exercises have been used to explore racial and other forms of prejudice, heavy people in this case were shown to receive the stigma.
The new findings "suggest that the extent of negative bias toward overweight individuals may be greater than previously assumed," the authors of the study wrote. Previous research, they noted, suggests that prejudice against the obese - in employment, health care and education - is on the rise. They cited studies in which overweight individuals have been found to provoke "more feelings of disgust than 12 historically stigmatised groups (homeless individuals, persons with mental illness etc)".
The latest research, published in the International Journal of Obesity, reflects the judgement of 245 undergraduates who were asked to sniff "scent samples" and rate the odour they were presented while also viewing images of people and things.
While the objects they saw in pictures were intended to evoke neutral feelings - a hammer, a wooden desk, a doorknob - the object of the researchers' interest was subjects' reactions to the people pictured. Taken from "before-and-after" sequences of very heavy people who had lost a significant amount of weight, the photographs alternated between people of normal, healthy weight and others who were overweight or obese.
In fact, the "scent samples" subjects were asked to rate had no smell at all: they were made by mixing a fragrance-free body lotion with different shades of food colouring and brushing the result onto a card.
