Background
Currently, almost one in every two Americans is overweight and one in every
five is obese. These individuals face discrimination on a daily basis in employment,
education, and relationship contexts. They are viewed as having a physical,
moral and emotional impairment and there is a tendency for others to hold them
responsible for their condition. Physicians -- people who are trained to treat
all their patients warmly and have access to literature suggesting uncontrollable
and hereditary aspects of obesity -- also believe obese individuals are undisciplined
and suffer from controllability issues. The current research, conducted by Mikki
Hebl and Jingping Xu, examines physicians' treatment of obesity in their
patients more systematically by extending past research to look at physicians'
behavioral intentions as well as their expressed attitudes toward male and female
patients who are of average weight, overweight, or obese. Although past studies
tend to compare only overweight and average-weight individuals, this study provides
a novel look at multiple increments of overweight by including both overweight
and obesity. However, to simplify the presentation of this case study, only
the average and overweight conditions will be presented.
Watch a movie of Mikki Hebl describing the experiment.
Low Bandwidth (2.2 M, 80k bits per second)
High
Bandwidth (4.4 MB, 160k bits per second)
Requires QuickTime
4.
Displayed with permission.