How do looking patterns, anti-fat bias, and causal weight attributions relate to adults’ judgements of child weight?

Evans, Elizabeth H.; Tovée, Martin J.; Hancock, Peter J.B.; Cornelissen, Piers L.

Abstract

Prevailing weight-normative approaches to health pressure adults to visually categorise children’s weight, despite little understanding of how such judgements are made. There is no evidence this strategy improves child health, and it may harm children with higher weights. To understand decision-making processes and identify potential mechanisms of harm we examined perceptual and attitudinal factors involved in adults’ child weight category judgements. Eye movements of 42 adults were tracked while categorizing the weight of 40 computer-generated images of children (aged 4–5 & 10–11 years) varying in size. Questionnaires assessed child-focused weight bias and causal attributions for child weight. Participants’ eye movement patterns resembled those previously reported for adult bodies. Categorisation data showed a perceptual bias towards the ‘mid-range’ category. For higher weight stimuli, participants whose category judgements most closely matched the stimulus’s objective weight had higher child-focused anti-fat bias and weaker genetic attributions for child weight – i.e,. adults who ‘label’ higher weight in children in line with BMI categories report more stigmatising beliefs about such children, suggesting a possible mechanism of harm. Overall, adults’ judgements reflect both unalterable perceptual biases and potentially harmful attitudinal factors, calling into question the feasibility and appropriateness of public health efforts to promote visual child weight categorisation.

Citation

Evans, E. H., Tovée, M. J., Hancock, P. J., & Cornelissen, P. L. (2023). How do looking patterns, anti-fat bias, and causal weight attributions relate to adults’ judgements of child weight?. Body Image, 44, 9-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.11.001

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 1, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Dec 19, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-03
• Deposit Date: Dec 21, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 21, 2022
• Journal: Body Image
• Print ISSN: 1740-1445
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-6807
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 44
• Pages: 9-23
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.11.001
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1186432