Accepted Article Preview: Published ahead of advance online publication Visual exposure to obesity: experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females E Robinson, P Christiansen
Cite this article as: E Robinson, P Christiansen, Visual exposure to obesity: experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females, International Journal of Obesity accepted article preview 22 May 2015; doi: 10.1038/ijo.2015.87. This is a PDF file of an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication. NPG are providing this early version of the manuscript as a service to our customers. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting and a proof review before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Received 2 February 2015; revised 7 April 2015; accepted 6 May 2015; Accepted article preview online 22 May 2015
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Visual exposure to obesity: experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females
Eric Robinson & Paul Christiansen Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK
Correspondence: Dr Eric Robinson, Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK, email:[email protected]
Word count: 3, 444
Keywords: Body weight norms; obesity exposure; visual adaptation; mate selection
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
ABSTRACT Background: Cultural differences in ideal body weight are well established, but less research has examined attraction toward potential mates of heavier body weights. We examined whether exposure to obesity increases physical attraction toward overweight men. Methods: In Studies 1-2 we examined the effect that exposure to obese vs. healthy weight men had on female attraction toward an overweight man. Study 3 examined whether females who are regularly exposed to males of heavier body weights reported a greater attraction toward overweight men. Study 4 tested whether females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man, after having been exposed to obesity. Results: Exposure to obesity altered visual perceptions of what normal and therefore healthy body weights were and this resulted in greater attraction toward an overweight man (Studies 1-2). Females regularly exposed to men of heavier body weight reported a greater attraction toward overweight men (Study 3). After exposure to obesity, females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man ahead of a healthy weight man (Study 4). Conclusions: Exposure to male obesity increases female attraction toward overweight men and may affect mate choice.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
INTRODUCTION Although men and women tend to find extremely high and low body mass indexes (BMI) less attractive than those closer to the ‘normal’ weight range (1-2), research has shown there are cross cultural differences in preferences toward different body weights (3). There is some suggestion that social groups differ in their attitudes toward body weight, as ethnic groups with higher rates of adiposity have been shown to be less likely to view slender bodies as desirable (4-5).
One potential explanation of some of these cross cultural differences in body size preferences may relate to the size of people an individual encounters in their social environment, whereby attitudes toward different body weights are flexible and adjust as a function of the body sizes a person is frequently exposed to. This proposition is supported by findings which indicate that visual perception can be recalibrated based on the types of stimuli a person is exposed to, commonly referred to as ‘visual adaptation’ (6-8).
Over the last thirty years there has been a rapid increase in adiposity, with obesity now becoming common in many areas of the western world (9-10). Given that studies to date have tended to show that obese individuals are judged as undesirable partners (11-12) and often presented in a negative way in popular media (13-14), one potential consequence could be that adiposity has become more unattractive and undesirable over time. However, a different hypothesis based on the visual adaptation literature (15-16) is that because some individuals will be more frequently exposed to heavier body weights, this could make overweight individuals appear more appealing and attractive.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Recent work has suggested that as well altering perceived normality of body weight (16-17), exposure to heavier body weights may recalibrate perceptions of what a ‘healthy’ body weight looks like (17-18). Given that perceived health is an important cue to attraction and mate choice (19-20), it could be the case that exposure to heavier body weights makes overweight individuals appear more attractive, due to frequent exposure altering perceived normality and healthiness of weight. Thus, if an individual was frequently being exposed to obesity in their social environment, this could have the result of making overweight individuals appear as more suitable or desirable potential mates.
To date, the effect that body weight exposure has on attraction toward overweight individuals or how exposure may alter mate choice has not been empirically examined. We examined these questions across four studies, all of which focused on female attraction toward overweight men. Study 1 tested whether exposure to obese, as opposed to healthy weight men, would result in females being more attracted to an overweight man. Study 2 examined whether this effect may be explained by a pathway involving exposure altering visual perceptions of both perceived normality and healthiness of weight. In Study 3 we tested the hypothesis that women who regularly socialise with men of heavier body weight (increased exposure to larger male body weights) would find overweight men more desirable. Finally, in Study 4 we invited single women to take part in an online dating study and tested whether exposing participants to images of obese males would later result in them being more likely to choose to date an overweight man, instead of a healthy weight man.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
STUDY 1 Participants White US female participants were recruited online from Amazon Mechanical Turk, in exchange for a small monetary reward. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a validated crowdsourcing website used to recruit participants to take part in online research studies (21). The study was described as being about ‘perceptions of other people’. We aimed to recruit a large sample size of approximately 500 participants for this initial study. Five hundred and thirteen participants took part (M age = 32.3, SD = 10.8) and all participants completed the study. The sample had a mean BMI of 26.8 (SD = 7.7). BMI was calculated using selfreported weight and height in all studies. All studies reported were approved by the authors’ institutional ethics board.
Stimuli Participants were exposed to ten photographs of obese men (obesity exposure condition), healthy weight men (healthy weight exposure condition) or everyday objects (control condition), before making judgements about an overweight man. Full length standardized photographs of Caucasian men aged 18-30 were used. Models were wearing normal fitting short-sleeved shirts and trousers or jeans, standing facing front with their arms at their sides, next to a standard sized door frame. No photographs of men that regularly participated in strength building sports or appeared to have muscular builds were used. Prior to Study 1 a pilot study (n=50) was conducted to select a set of photographs of healthy weight men and a set of obese men (according to WHO BMI guidelines) that were matched for height, attractiveness, how muscular they appeared and how tight fitting their clothes were (see ref. 17 for more information about the photographs). In the present studies we controlled for any interference of facial expression during exposure by obscuring the middle section of the
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
models’ faces with a black box. Facial features were not obscured for the overweight man, as we reasoned that rating attractiveness with facial features obscured may result in an artificial rating. The healthy weight models’ mean BMI = 21 (range: 19.38-22.40) and the obese models’ = 32 (range: 30.49-34.32). The overweight model’s BMI = 27.
Procedure After accessing the online site, participants were shown an information sheet and gave informed consent. Participants were then randomly assigned to the obesity, healthy weight or control exposure condition. To distract from the main aims of the study participants completed a set of mood items (e.g. ‘I am happy’). After this, participants were shown ten photographs individually on separate pages and answered two questions about each image, using 7-point Likert scales. Participants in the obesity and healthy weight exposure conditions answered questions about the appearance of the men, although questions did not mention body weight or attraction (e.g., ‘this person looks relaxed’). The control condition answered questions about ten images of everyday objects (e.g. a sofa) using similar ratings as those made about the men (e.g. ‘this looks relaxing’). In all conditions, the eleventh photo was always of the overweight man. Underneath this photo, participants rated ‘this person is attractive’ and ‘this man’s clothes are bright’ (to distract from our interest in body weight), using the same 7-point Likert scales. Participants then recorded demographic information, guessed the study aims and were debriefed.
Results No participants guessed the aims of the study. SPSS 22 was used for analysis. Analyses showed that the conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). One way ANOVA indicated a significant effect of condition on how attracted to the overweight man participants
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
were [F(2, 510) = 4.76, p = 0.009, (f) = 0.14]. Planned pairwise comparisons showed that participants exposed to obese men rated the overweight man as being significantly more attractive than participants exposed to healthy weight men (t (336) = 3.1, p = 0.002, d = 0.33). See Figure 1. Compared to the object condition, participants exposed to the obese men rated the overweight man as being more attractive, although this difference was not statistically significant (t (334) = 1.8, p = 0.079, d = 0.19 ). Participants exposed to healthy weight men tended to rate the overweight man as being less attractive than the control condition, but again this difference was not significant (t (340) = 1.3, p = 0.18, d = 0.15). Thus, exposure to obese, as opposed to healthy weight men, influenced physical attractive toward an overweight man.
STUDY 2 Recent findings indicate that exposure to obesity alters normative perceptions of weight, which in turn also effects visual perceptions of what constitutes a healthy body weight (1617). Health is an important cue that attraction is based upon (19-20). Thus, we hypothesised that the effect exposure to obesity has on attraction may be explained by exposure changing perceptions of weight normality and in doing so adjusting the extent to which an overweight man’s weight appears healthy. We tested this in Study 2 using structural equation modelling (SEM).
Participants and Procedure UK women (n=137) were recruited via social network sites (M age = 22.8 yrs, SD = 3.5). This and the remaining studies were powered to detect a medium sized effect. The sample had a mean BMI of 23.0 (SD = 3.9). The exact same procedure was used as in Study 1, although instead of rating whether the overweight man was wearing a bright top, participants
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
rated ‘this person is a normal weight’ (weight norm) and ‘this person is a healthy weight’ (perceived healthiness of weight). The order of the three questions was counterbalanced. We also opted to drop the object exposure condition, as our primary aim was to compare the effects of exposing participants to obese vs. healthy weight men.
Results No participants guessed the aims of the study. The two conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). T-tests indicated that after exposure to obesity, participants were more physically attracted to the overweight man, believed he was a more normal weight and a healthier weight, than after exposure to healthy weight men (ps < 0.001). See Table 1 for full results. As hypothesised, the extent to which participants believed the man was a normal weight was correlated with perceptions of how healthy his weight was (r = 0.72, p < 0.001) and perceived healthiness of weight was also correlated with attraction (r = 0.39, p < 0.001), indicating that our proposed pathway may explain why exposure influences attraction.
We tested whether exposure altered attractiveness indirectly via the effect it had on judgements of weight normality and healthiness using SEM. When examining this pathway we controlled for any effect that exposure may have on healthiness ratings directly, as well as examining the direct association between condition and attractiveness. We hypothesised that the exposure-attraction effect would be mediated by changes to normality of weight and then perceived healthiness of weight. We predicted that if this pathway was responsible for the exposure-attraction effect, then the relationship between exposure condition and attraction would become non-significant when accounting for this indirect pathway.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
We confirmed model fit using a normed χ²; whereby values between 1 and 3 are indicative of a good fit. The standardised root mean residual (SRMR) absolute fit index was also calculated, as well as the comparative fit index CFI. We also conducted a Bollen-Stine bootstrap as a final estimate of model fit. These indices indicated good model fit (see Figure 2). There was a significant indirect effect of condition on healthy weight via normal weight (β = .30; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.05 to 0.12, p =.002), and a significant effect of normal weight on attraction via healthy weight (β = .17; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.07 to 0.48, p =0.003). In line with our hypotheses, condition had a significant indirect effect on attraction via its effects on both normal weight and healthy weight (β = .17; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.02 to 0.12, p =0.003). Moreover, the direct effect that condition had on attraction was no longer significant when accounting for the indirect pathway. These findings suggest that exposure to obesity may impact on attraction toward overweight men by causing adjustments to what is perceived as being a normal and therefore healthy body weight.
STUDY 3 Given our reliance on experimental designs in Studies 1-2, Study 3 examined whether crosssectional data also supports the notion that exposure to heavier male body weights increases attraction toward overweight men. We hypothesised that women who regularly socialise with heavier/overweight men (more frequent visual exposure) should prefer mates of heavier body weight.
Participants and Procedure Eighty UK undergraduate students (women) participated in a brief questionnaire study on a voluntary basis (M age = 19.9 yrs, SD = 3.4), with a mean BMI of 21.4 (SD = 3.6). Ten men also took part in the study, but as all other studies we report examine female-male attraction,
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
here we report analyses from only the women. The inclusion of the ten men does not change the results reported.
As a cover story participants were asked to complete a series of questionnaires about attitudes to body weight and demographic information; including gender, age and self-reported weight and height (see ref. 22). Participants were shown nine body silhouette drawings of men, which ranged from very thin to very fat and increased incrementally (23). Participants were asked to select which of the nine they thought was most attractive for a man (body weight attraction measure). On a different page participants were shown an overweight man (as in Study 1) and rated ‘compared to most other young males I spend time with, this person is’ on a 10cm visual analogue scale with anchors: far lighter, far heavier (size of male peers).
Results To assess the association between participants’ usual exposure to heavier body weights (size of male peers) and which of the nine body weight silhouettes they found most attractive (ordinal data), we used a Spearman’s correlation coefficient. A significant association between the size of participants’ peers and body weight attraction measure was observed (r = 0.29, p = 0.01), whereby spending time with heavier male peers was associated with participants selecting a larger body silhouette as being most attractive for a man.
Study 3 supports the experimental findings of Studies 1-2 by showing that women who report socialising with heavy men (more frequent exposure to heavier body weights) chose a heavier body weight as being most attractive for a man. Although this finding is in line with our hypotheses, the inverse may explain some of this association; women who find heavier bodies more attractive adopt heavy male friends. The aim of our final study was to test
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
whether exposure could alter mate choice. To examine this we tested whether exposure to obese men would cause participants to favour dating an overweight man over a healthy weight man, in an online dating study.
STUDY 4 The study was advertised as an online dating study. In studies 1-3 we did not use inclusion criteria for relationship status. Because our outcome measure of interest in Study 3 was mate choice, we recruited only single white females to participate who were of a similar age to the men presented in the study, to make dating choices as realistic as possible. This was specified in the study advert, along with a request for 18-30 year olds.
Participants One hundred and twenty five UK single white women with M age = 24.7 yrs (SD = 4.3) and M BMI = 24. 4 (SD = 5.7) were recruited online in exchange for entry into a small prize draw.
Procedure After accessing the online site participants were shown the 10 photographs of either obese or healthy weight men (Study 1-2). In keeping with the online dating study story, during the exposure phase participants were asked to rate if they would consider dating or be romantically interested in each of the men. After this initial exposure phase participants were shown a photograph of an overweight man (Study 1) and next to this a photograph of a healthy weight man (BMI = 21.5) of similar height. Participants were asked to select which of the two men they would prefer to date. The position of the two photographs (left or right) was counterbalanced.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Results No participants guessed the study aims. Conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). A chi-square test determined if the exposure condition participants were assigned to influenced dating choice. Participants in the obesity exposure condition were more likely to choose to date the overweight man over the healthy weight man than participants in the healthy weight exposure condition [χ2= 4.2, p = 0.04, Phi = 0.18]. Participants in the obesity exposure condition (n = 64) showed a preference toward dating the overweight man, choosing him 68.8 % of the time, whilst only 50.8 % of participants in the healthy weight exposure condition (n = 61) selected the overweight man. Thus, exposure to obese men resulted in participants being more likely to choose to date an overweight man, ahead of a healthy weight man.
THE EFFECT OF PARTICIPANT BMI We also conducted additional analyses across all four studies to examine if participant BMI (calculated using self-reported data) may be an important factor shaping attraction to overweight men. Across the studies, heavier women generally tended to find overweight men more attractive. The effect that exposing participants to obese men had on attraction was not moderated by participant BMI in any of the studies. See online supplemental material for analyses. However, it is of importance to note that these patterns of results may have differed if we had included an objective measurement of participant body weight or a measurement of perceived personal (participant) body weight.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
GENERAL DISCUSSION Across four studies we examined whether exposure to obese men increased female attraction toward overweight men. In Study 1, visual exposure to obese men resulted in women finding an overweight man more physically attractive. Study 2 showed that exposure to obese men altered visual perceptions of what normal and therefore healthy body weights were and this pathway mediated the effect that exposure had on attraction toward an overweight man. Study 3 conceptually replicated these findings by showing that women who regularly socialise with heavier men report a greater attraction toward overweight men. Finally, Study 4 showed that exposure to obese men, as opposed to healthy weight men, may have an effect on mate choice. Single women taking part in an online dating study were more likely to report that they would choose to date an overweight man ahead of a healthy weight man, after having been exposed to obese men.
The present studies show for the first time that visual exposure to heavier male body weights can shape how attractive females find men of heavier body weights. These findings are in line with suggestions that body weight preferences are likely to be determined by learning and environmental input (24). In our studies we speculate that exposure obese men skewed the degree to which participants perceived the overweight model’s weight as being ‘normal’, resulting in the overweight man in our studies probably being perceived as being closer to what constitutes the mid-point of a distribution of male body weight (25, 26).
The present findings also have relevance to societal increases in body weight. Previous work has shown that obese individuals are commonly seen as less desirable mates (11-12), but based on the present findings one might predict that mate preferences concerning overweight individuals may become less negative. Here we examined visual attraction toward overweight
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
men, which is more common and presumably more socially acceptable than obesity, so it may be the case that exposure does not enhances attraction toward obese men. Given that obesity is now becoming prevalent in many parts of the world, we may start to see shifts in mate preference toward partners of slightly heavier body weights, as in Study 4. The potential role that stigma has in explaining the present findings warrants attention. Study 2 showed that the exposure-attraction effect may be explained by exposure changing how healthy an overweight man’s weight appeared. Although we interpret this in terms of health being used as a marker for mate suitability, it could also be the case that exposure resulted in participants being less likely to identify and label the man as being ‘overweight’ (22). This may have removed stigma associated with this label (27) and increased attractiveness.
The context in which participants were exposed to obesity in the present study also warrants discussion. Research indicates that obesity stigma may have increased in recent years (28) and one consequence of this is that obese individuals are often portrayed in a negative manner in the media (13), as opposed to the neutral manner of exposure used in the present studies. Thus, it may be the case that the type of visual exposure to obesity which occurs through viewing popular media does not normalise heavier body weights.
Gender The present studies were designed to examine the effect that exposure to different body weights has on female attraction to overweight men. One of our main reasons to do so was because we reasoned that there are likely to be less clearly defined standards for male body weight, in comparison to the widely internalised ‘thin ideal’ for female body weight (29-30). Thus, physical attraction toward overweight men, as opposed to overweight women, may be more sensitive to visual learning in an experimental context. As we observed consistent
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
evidence that exposure to obese men was associated with increased female attraction toward an overweight man, this now raises a question of whether a similar pattern of results would be observed when examining male attraction toward overweight women. There is some research showing that attitudes toward female figures can be adjusted as a result of repeated exposure to slim or rounder figures (15-16) and women’s views about their own body weight can be affected by visual exposure to thin vs. fat females in the media (31). Thus, it seems conceivable that the body weight exposure effects observed in the present studies may translate to judgements made about women.
Strengths & Limitations The use of standardized images of actual healthy, overweight and obese individuals is a strength of this work, as often body image studies rely on artificial or perceptually extreme images (15-16), making it difficult to ascertain whether findings will transfer over to judgements made about actual people. Given that we examined attraction and mate choice shortly after exposure to a relatively small number of bodies it is not clear from the present studies how long these effects would last for. However, if daily experience were to continually ‘top up’ exposure, we presume these effects could in theory be long lasting. A final limitation was that we only examined attraction toward Caucasian men, so further research examining how exposure to heavier body weights influence attraction amongst other ethnicities would now be interesting.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Supplementary information is available at IJO's website
Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding This research received no external funding. ER was partly supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Acknowledgements ER and PC conceived the experiments, analysed data and were involved in writing the paper. ER conducted the experiments.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
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TABLE & FIGURE HEADINGS
Table 1: Ratings of attraction, normality and healthiness of weight for the target overweight man in Study 2 Figure 1: Attraction toward the overweight man by experimental condition, Study 1 Figure 2: Study 2 pathway model
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Table 1: Ratings of attraction, normality and healthiness of weight for the target overweight man in Study 2
Obesity exposure condition (n = 69)
Healthy weight exposure condition (n = 68)
Physical attraction
3.8 (1.4)*
3.0 (1.1)
Normality of weight
5.7 (0.7)*
4.3 (1.3)
Healthiness of weight
5.7 (0.9)*
4.1 (1.3)
Values are means, with standard deviations in brackets. Measures = 1 – 7 Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Higher scores on measure denote greater attraction, perceived normality and healthiness of overweight man. *
indicates significant difference (p < 0.001) between two experimental conditions for measure.
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Figure 1: Attraction towards the overweight man by experimental condition, Study 1
4.5
4
Attraction to 3.5 overweight man 3
2.5
2
Healthy weight exposure (n=167)
Object exposure (n=175)
Obesity exposure (n=171)
Experimental condition
Values are means. Error bars are standard error. Attraction to overweight man = 1 – 7 Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. See text for statistical significance of between condition differences.
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Figure 2: Study 2 pathway model
Figures are standardised regression coefficients and are significant at p
Cite this article as: E Robinson, P Christiansen, Visual exposure to obesity: experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females, International Journal of Obesity accepted article preview 22 May 2015; doi: 10.1038/ijo.2015.87. This is a PDF file of an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication. NPG are providing this early version of the manuscript as a service to our customers. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting and a proof review before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Received 2 February 2015; revised 7 April 2015; accepted 6 May 2015; Accepted article preview online 22 May 2015
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Visual exposure to obesity: experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females
Eric Robinson & Paul Christiansen Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK
Correspondence: Dr Eric Robinson, Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK, email:[email protected]
Word count: 3, 444
Keywords: Body weight norms; obesity exposure; visual adaptation; mate selection
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
ABSTRACT Background: Cultural differences in ideal body weight are well established, but less research has examined attraction toward potential mates of heavier body weights. We examined whether exposure to obesity increases physical attraction toward overweight men. Methods: In Studies 1-2 we examined the effect that exposure to obese vs. healthy weight men had on female attraction toward an overweight man. Study 3 examined whether females who are regularly exposed to males of heavier body weights reported a greater attraction toward overweight men. Study 4 tested whether females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man, after having been exposed to obesity. Results: Exposure to obesity altered visual perceptions of what normal and therefore healthy body weights were and this resulted in greater attraction toward an overweight man (Studies 1-2). Females regularly exposed to men of heavier body weight reported a greater attraction toward overweight men (Study 3). After exposure to obesity, females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man ahead of a healthy weight man (Study 4). Conclusions: Exposure to male obesity increases female attraction toward overweight men and may affect mate choice.
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
INTRODUCTION Although men and women tend to find extremely high and low body mass indexes (BMI) less attractive than those closer to the ‘normal’ weight range (1-2), research has shown there are cross cultural differences in preferences toward different body weights (3). There is some suggestion that social groups differ in their attitudes toward body weight, as ethnic groups with higher rates of adiposity have been shown to be less likely to view slender bodies as desirable (4-5).
One potential explanation of some of these cross cultural differences in body size preferences may relate to the size of people an individual encounters in their social environment, whereby attitudes toward different body weights are flexible and adjust as a function of the body sizes a person is frequently exposed to. This proposition is supported by findings which indicate that visual perception can be recalibrated based on the types of stimuli a person is exposed to, commonly referred to as ‘visual adaptation’ (6-8).
Over the last thirty years there has been a rapid increase in adiposity, with obesity now becoming common in many areas of the western world (9-10). Given that studies to date have tended to show that obese individuals are judged as undesirable partners (11-12) and often presented in a negative way in popular media (13-14), one potential consequence could be that adiposity has become more unattractive and undesirable over time. However, a different hypothesis based on the visual adaptation literature (15-16) is that because some individuals will be more frequently exposed to heavier body weights, this could make overweight individuals appear more appealing and attractive.
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Recent work has suggested that as well altering perceived normality of body weight (16-17), exposure to heavier body weights may recalibrate perceptions of what a ‘healthy’ body weight looks like (17-18). Given that perceived health is an important cue to attraction and mate choice (19-20), it could be the case that exposure to heavier body weights makes overweight individuals appear more attractive, due to frequent exposure altering perceived normality and healthiness of weight. Thus, if an individual was frequently being exposed to obesity in their social environment, this could have the result of making overweight individuals appear as more suitable or desirable potential mates.
To date, the effect that body weight exposure has on attraction toward overweight individuals or how exposure may alter mate choice has not been empirically examined. We examined these questions across four studies, all of which focused on female attraction toward overweight men. Study 1 tested whether exposure to obese, as opposed to healthy weight men, would result in females being more attracted to an overweight man. Study 2 examined whether this effect may be explained by a pathway involving exposure altering visual perceptions of both perceived normality and healthiness of weight. In Study 3 we tested the hypothesis that women who regularly socialise with men of heavier body weight (increased exposure to larger male body weights) would find overweight men more desirable. Finally, in Study 4 we invited single women to take part in an online dating study and tested whether exposing participants to images of obese males would later result in them being more likely to choose to date an overweight man, instead of a healthy weight man.
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
STUDY 1 Participants White US female participants were recruited online from Amazon Mechanical Turk, in exchange for a small monetary reward. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a validated crowdsourcing website used to recruit participants to take part in online research studies (21). The study was described as being about ‘perceptions of other people’. We aimed to recruit a large sample size of approximately 500 participants for this initial study. Five hundred and thirteen participants took part (M age = 32.3, SD = 10.8) and all participants completed the study. The sample had a mean BMI of 26.8 (SD = 7.7). BMI was calculated using selfreported weight and height in all studies. All studies reported were approved by the authors’ institutional ethics board.
Stimuli Participants were exposed to ten photographs of obese men (obesity exposure condition), healthy weight men (healthy weight exposure condition) or everyday objects (control condition), before making judgements about an overweight man. Full length standardized photographs of Caucasian men aged 18-30 were used. Models were wearing normal fitting short-sleeved shirts and trousers or jeans, standing facing front with their arms at their sides, next to a standard sized door frame. No photographs of men that regularly participated in strength building sports or appeared to have muscular builds were used. Prior to Study 1 a pilot study (n=50) was conducted to select a set of photographs of healthy weight men and a set of obese men (according to WHO BMI guidelines) that were matched for height, attractiveness, how muscular they appeared and how tight fitting their clothes were (see ref. 17 for more information about the photographs). In the present studies we controlled for any interference of facial expression during exposure by obscuring the middle section of the
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
models’ faces with a black box. Facial features were not obscured for the overweight man, as we reasoned that rating attractiveness with facial features obscured may result in an artificial rating. The healthy weight models’ mean BMI = 21 (range: 19.38-22.40) and the obese models’ = 32 (range: 30.49-34.32). The overweight model’s BMI = 27.
Procedure After accessing the online site, participants were shown an information sheet and gave informed consent. Participants were then randomly assigned to the obesity, healthy weight or control exposure condition. To distract from the main aims of the study participants completed a set of mood items (e.g. ‘I am happy’). After this, participants were shown ten photographs individually on separate pages and answered two questions about each image, using 7-point Likert scales. Participants in the obesity and healthy weight exposure conditions answered questions about the appearance of the men, although questions did not mention body weight or attraction (e.g., ‘this person looks relaxed’). The control condition answered questions about ten images of everyday objects (e.g. a sofa) using similar ratings as those made about the men (e.g. ‘this looks relaxing’). In all conditions, the eleventh photo was always of the overweight man. Underneath this photo, participants rated ‘this person is attractive’ and ‘this man’s clothes are bright’ (to distract from our interest in body weight), using the same 7-point Likert scales. Participants then recorded demographic information, guessed the study aims and were debriefed.
Results No participants guessed the aims of the study. SPSS 22 was used for analysis. Analyses showed that the conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). One way ANOVA indicated a significant effect of condition on how attracted to the overweight man participants
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
were [F(2, 510) = 4.76, p = 0.009, (f) = 0.14]. Planned pairwise comparisons showed that participants exposed to obese men rated the overweight man as being significantly more attractive than participants exposed to healthy weight men (t (336) = 3.1, p = 0.002, d = 0.33). See Figure 1. Compared to the object condition, participants exposed to the obese men rated the overweight man as being more attractive, although this difference was not statistically significant (t (334) = 1.8, p = 0.079, d = 0.19 ). Participants exposed to healthy weight men tended to rate the overweight man as being less attractive than the control condition, but again this difference was not significant (t (340) = 1.3, p = 0.18, d = 0.15). Thus, exposure to obese, as opposed to healthy weight men, influenced physical attractive toward an overweight man.
STUDY 2 Recent findings indicate that exposure to obesity alters normative perceptions of weight, which in turn also effects visual perceptions of what constitutes a healthy body weight (1617). Health is an important cue that attraction is based upon (19-20). Thus, we hypothesised that the effect exposure to obesity has on attraction may be explained by exposure changing perceptions of weight normality and in doing so adjusting the extent to which an overweight man’s weight appears healthy. We tested this in Study 2 using structural equation modelling (SEM).
Participants and Procedure UK women (n=137) were recruited via social network sites (M age = 22.8 yrs, SD = 3.5). This and the remaining studies were powered to detect a medium sized effect. The sample had a mean BMI of 23.0 (SD = 3.9). The exact same procedure was used as in Study 1, although instead of rating whether the overweight man was wearing a bright top, participants
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
rated ‘this person is a normal weight’ (weight norm) and ‘this person is a healthy weight’ (perceived healthiness of weight). The order of the three questions was counterbalanced. We also opted to drop the object exposure condition, as our primary aim was to compare the effects of exposing participants to obese vs. healthy weight men.
Results No participants guessed the aims of the study. The two conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). T-tests indicated that after exposure to obesity, participants were more physically attracted to the overweight man, believed he was a more normal weight and a healthier weight, than after exposure to healthy weight men (ps < 0.001). See Table 1 for full results. As hypothesised, the extent to which participants believed the man was a normal weight was correlated with perceptions of how healthy his weight was (r = 0.72, p < 0.001) and perceived healthiness of weight was also correlated with attraction (r = 0.39, p < 0.001), indicating that our proposed pathway may explain why exposure influences attraction.
We tested whether exposure altered attractiveness indirectly via the effect it had on judgements of weight normality and healthiness using SEM. When examining this pathway we controlled for any effect that exposure may have on healthiness ratings directly, as well as examining the direct association between condition and attractiveness. We hypothesised that the exposure-attraction effect would be mediated by changes to normality of weight and then perceived healthiness of weight. We predicted that if this pathway was responsible for the exposure-attraction effect, then the relationship between exposure condition and attraction would become non-significant when accounting for this indirect pathway.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
We confirmed model fit using a normed χ²; whereby values between 1 and 3 are indicative of a good fit. The standardised root mean residual (SRMR) absolute fit index was also calculated, as well as the comparative fit index CFI. We also conducted a Bollen-Stine bootstrap as a final estimate of model fit. These indices indicated good model fit (see Figure 2). There was a significant indirect effect of condition on healthy weight via normal weight (β = .30; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.05 to 0.12, p =.002), and a significant effect of normal weight on attraction via healthy weight (β = .17; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.07 to 0.48, p =0.003). In line with our hypotheses, condition had a significant indirect effect on attraction via its effects on both normal weight and healthy weight (β = .17; bootstrap estimates CI95: 0.02 to 0.12, p =0.003). Moreover, the direct effect that condition had on attraction was no longer significant when accounting for the indirect pathway. These findings suggest that exposure to obesity may impact on attraction toward overweight men by causing adjustments to what is perceived as being a normal and therefore healthy body weight.
STUDY 3 Given our reliance on experimental designs in Studies 1-2, Study 3 examined whether crosssectional data also supports the notion that exposure to heavier male body weights increases attraction toward overweight men. We hypothesised that women who regularly socialise with heavier/overweight men (more frequent visual exposure) should prefer mates of heavier body weight.
Participants and Procedure Eighty UK undergraduate students (women) participated in a brief questionnaire study on a voluntary basis (M age = 19.9 yrs, SD = 3.4), with a mean BMI of 21.4 (SD = 3.6). Ten men also took part in the study, but as all other studies we report examine female-male attraction,
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
here we report analyses from only the women. The inclusion of the ten men does not change the results reported.
As a cover story participants were asked to complete a series of questionnaires about attitudes to body weight and demographic information; including gender, age and self-reported weight and height (see ref. 22). Participants were shown nine body silhouette drawings of men, which ranged from very thin to very fat and increased incrementally (23). Participants were asked to select which of the nine they thought was most attractive for a man (body weight attraction measure). On a different page participants were shown an overweight man (as in Study 1) and rated ‘compared to most other young males I spend time with, this person is’ on a 10cm visual analogue scale with anchors: far lighter, far heavier (size of male peers).
Results To assess the association between participants’ usual exposure to heavier body weights (size of male peers) and which of the nine body weight silhouettes they found most attractive (ordinal data), we used a Spearman’s correlation coefficient. A significant association between the size of participants’ peers and body weight attraction measure was observed (r = 0.29, p = 0.01), whereby spending time with heavier male peers was associated with participants selecting a larger body silhouette as being most attractive for a man.
Study 3 supports the experimental findings of Studies 1-2 by showing that women who report socialising with heavy men (more frequent exposure to heavier body weights) chose a heavier body weight as being most attractive for a man. Although this finding is in line with our hypotheses, the inverse may explain some of this association; women who find heavier bodies more attractive adopt heavy male friends. The aim of our final study was to test
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
whether exposure could alter mate choice. To examine this we tested whether exposure to obese men would cause participants to favour dating an overweight man over a healthy weight man, in an online dating study.
STUDY 4 The study was advertised as an online dating study. In studies 1-3 we did not use inclusion criteria for relationship status. Because our outcome measure of interest in Study 3 was mate choice, we recruited only single white females to participate who were of a similar age to the men presented in the study, to make dating choices as realistic as possible. This was specified in the study advert, along with a request for 18-30 year olds.
Participants One hundred and twenty five UK single white women with M age = 24.7 yrs (SD = 4.3) and M BMI = 24. 4 (SD = 5.7) were recruited online in exchange for entry into a small prize draw.
Procedure After accessing the online site participants were shown the 10 photographs of either obese or healthy weight men (Study 1-2). In keeping with the online dating study story, during the exposure phase participants were asked to rate if they would consider dating or be romantically interested in each of the men. After this initial exposure phase participants were shown a photograph of an overweight man (Study 1) and next to this a photograph of a healthy weight man (BMI = 21.5) of similar height. Participants were asked to select which of the two men they would prefer to date. The position of the two photographs (left or right) was counterbalanced.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Results No participants guessed the study aims. Conditions were balanced for age and BMI (ps > 0.05). A chi-square test determined if the exposure condition participants were assigned to influenced dating choice. Participants in the obesity exposure condition were more likely to choose to date the overweight man over the healthy weight man than participants in the healthy weight exposure condition [χ2= 4.2, p = 0.04, Phi = 0.18]. Participants in the obesity exposure condition (n = 64) showed a preference toward dating the overweight man, choosing him 68.8 % of the time, whilst only 50.8 % of participants in the healthy weight exposure condition (n = 61) selected the overweight man. Thus, exposure to obese men resulted in participants being more likely to choose to date an overweight man, ahead of a healthy weight man.
THE EFFECT OF PARTICIPANT BMI We also conducted additional analyses across all four studies to examine if participant BMI (calculated using self-reported data) may be an important factor shaping attraction to overweight men. Across the studies, heavier women generally tended to find overweight men more attractive. The effect that exposing participants to obese men had on attraction was not moderated by participant BMI in any of the studies. See online supplemental material for analyses. However, it is of importance to note that these patterns of results may have differed if we had included an objective measurement of participant body weight or a measurement of perceived personal (participant) body weight.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
GENERAL DISCUSSION Across four studies we examined whether exposure to obese men increased female attraction toward overweight men. In Study 1, visual exposure to obese men resulted in women finding an overweight man more physically attractive. Study 2 showed that exposure to obese men altered visual perceptions of what normal and therefore healthy body weights were and this pathway mediated the effect that exposure had on attraction toward an overweight man. Study 3 conceptually replicated these findings by showing that women who regularly socialise with heavier men report a greater attraction toward overweight men. Finally, Study 4 showed that exposure to obese men, as opposed to healthy weight men, may have an effect on mate choice. Single women taking part in an online dating study were more likely to report that they would choose to date an overweight man ahead of a healthy weight man, after having been exposed to obese men.
The present studies show for the first time that visual exposure to heavier male body weights can shape how attractive females find men of heavier body weights. These findings are in line with suggestions that body weight preferences are likely to be determined by learning and environmental input (24). In our studies we speculate that exposure obese men skewed the degree to which participants perceived the overweight model’s weight as being ‘normal’, resulting in the overweight man in our studies probably being perceived as being closer to what constitutes the mid-point of a distribution of male body weight (25, 26).
The present findings also have relevance to societal increases in body weight. Previous work has shown that obese individuals are commonly seen as less desirable mates (11-12), but based on the present findings one might predict that mate preferences concerning overweight individuals may become less negative. Here we examined visual attraction toward overweight
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
men, which is more common and presumably more socially acceptable than obesity, so it may be the case that exposure does not enhances attraction toward obese men. Given that obesity is now becoming prevalent in many parts of the world, we may start to see shifts in mate preference toward partners of slightly heavier body weights, as in Study 4. The potential role that stigma has in explaining the present findings warrants attention. Study 2 showed that the exposure-attraction effect may be explained by exposure changing how healthy an overweight man’s weight appeared. Although we interpret this in terms of health being used as a marker for mate suitability, it could also be the case that exposure resulted in participants being less likely to identify and label the man as being ‘overweight’ (22). This may have removed stigma associated with this label (27) and increased attractiveness.
The context in which participants were exposed to obesity in the present study also warrants discussion. Research indicates that obesity stigma may have increased in recent years (28) and one consequence of this is that obese individuals are often portrayed in a negative manner in the media (13), as opposed to the neutral manner of exposure used in the present studies. Thus, it may be the case that the type of visual exposure to obesity which occurs through viewing popular media does not normalise heavier body weights.
Gender The present studies were designed to examine the effect that exposure to different body weights has on female attraction to overweight men. One of our main reasons to do so was because we reasoned that there are likely to be less clearly defined standards for male body weight, in comparison to the widely internalised ‘thin ideal’ for female body weight (29-30). Thus, physical attraction toward overweight men, as opposed to overweight women, may be more sensitive to visual learning in an experimental context. As we observed consistent
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
evidence that exposure to obese men was associated with increased female attraction toward an overweight man, this now raises a question of whether a similar pattern of results would be observed when examining male attraction toward overweight women. There is some research showing that attitudes toward female figures can be adjusted as a result of repeated exposure to slim or rounder figures (15-16) and women’s views about their own body weight can be affected by visual exposure to thin vs. fat females in the media (31). Thus, it seems conceivable that the body weight exposure effects observed in the present studies may translate to judgements made about women.
Strengths & Limitations The use of standardized images of actual healthy, overweight and obese individuals is a strength of this work, as often body image studies rely on artificial or perceptually extreme images (15-16), making it difficult to ascertain whether findings will transfer over to judgements made about actual people. Given that we examined attraction and mate choice shortly after exposure to a relatively small number of bodies it is not clear from the present studies how long these effects would last for. However, if daily experience were to continually ‘top up’ exposure, we presume these effects could in theory be long lasting. A final limitation was that we only examined attraction toward Caucasian men, so further research examining how exposure to heavier body weights influence attraction amongst other ethnicities would now be interesting.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
Supplementary information is available at IJO's website
Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding This research received no external funding. ER was partly supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Acknowledgements ER and PC conceived the experiments, analysed data and were involved in writing the paper. ER conducted the experiments.
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
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RUNNING HEAD: Attraction and obesity exposure
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TABLE & FIGURE HEADINGS
Table 1: Ratings of attraction, normality and healthiness of weight for the target overweight man in Study 2 Figure 1: Attraction toward the overweight man by experimental condition, Study 1 Figure 2: Study 2 pathway model
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Table 1: Ratings of attraction, normality and healthiness of weight for the target overweight man in Study 2
Obesity exposure condition (n = 69)
Healthy weight exposure condition (n = 68)
Physical attraction
3.8 (1.4)*
3.0 (1.1)
Normality of weight
5.7 (0.7)*
4.3 (1.3)
Healthiness of weight
5.7 (0.9)*
4.1 (1.3)
Values are means, with standard deviations in brackets. Measures = 1 – 7 Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Higher scores on measure denote greater attraction, perceived normality and healthiness of overweight man. *
indicates significant difference (p < 0.001) between two experimental conditions for measure.
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Figure 1: Attraction towards the overweight man by experimental condition, Study 1
4.5
4
Attraction to 3.5 overweight man 3
2.5
2
Healthy weight exposure (n=167)
Object exposure (n=175)
Obesity exposure (n=171)
Experimental condition
Values are means. Error bars are standard error. Attraction to overweight man = 1 – 7 Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. See text for statistical significance of between condition differences.
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Figure 2: Study 2 pathway model
Figures are standardised regression coefficients and are significant at p
