A Victoria womanB次元官网网址檚 research reveals that bias against overweight people has increased, while negative attitudes towards race and sexuality has gone down.
Victoria local and Esquimalt High School grad Tessa Charlesworth went from one coast to another to study at Harvard University where, as a graduate student in the department of psychology, she and colleague Mahzarin Banaji used data from a long-running internet test to make incredible findings in the field of prejudice and bias.
The (IAT) has been running since 2004 and reveals both the B次元官网网址渋mplicitB次元官网网址� (internal bias) and B次元官网网址渆xplicitB次元官网网址� (conscious bias) of respondents B次元官网网址� in other words, the outward and inward levels of prejudice people have against others based on skin tone, race, age, disability and body weight.
Implicit bias tests measured the length of time respondents took to press a specific key to categorize pairs of words in relation to social groups and attributes. For example B次元官网网址� the word B次元官网网址済oodB次元官网网址� would be assigned to either an image of a black or white person and researchers would compare how long it took for participants to respond based on the assigned category.
Participants also self-reported their associations B次元官网网址� revealing their B次元官网网址渆xplicitB次元官网网址� or conscious biases.
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Charlesworth collected over four million results from 2004 to 2016 and found that outwardly, self-reported bias towards all social groups and abilities had shifted towards neutral and inwardly, peopleB次元官网网址檚 bias towards race, skin tone and sexuality had also decreased.
But notably, bias towards elderly people and disabled people was basically the same, and bias towards overweight people had actually worsened B次元官网网址� a contrast from the participantB次元官网网址檚 conscious responses.
Charlesworth has a few ideas about what the results might mean.
She speculated the ongoing social push against the obesity epidemic could have something to do with body weight perceptions.
B次元官网网址淚t paints overweight individuals in a really negative light,B次元官网网址� she said. B次元官网网址淚t paints them as a public health crisis.B次元官网网址�
But Charlesworth also noted that body weight is the only data set that participants perceived as controllable.
B次元官网网址淭hat assigns a lot of responsibility to people who are overweight to change themselves B次元官网网址� rather than the person who is perceiving the overweight individual to change their mind,B次元官网网址� she said.
When it comes to areas where bias decreased, Charlesworth points to social priorities. She and her colleague actually looked at Google searches and found that there were far more conversations happening around homophobia and racism than ageism, ableism or sizeism.
B次元官网网址淪o we think that the more weB次元官网网址檙e talking about these biases and social problems, the more opportunities we have to make change,B次元官网网址� she concluded. B次元官网网址淚tB次元官网网址檚 very simple: the more times we try to change our attitudes, the more likely we are to succeed in changing them.B次元官网网址�
Charlesworth said she hopes to have career in academics B次元官网网址� preferably back on the West Coast.
Charlesworth and BanajiB次元官网网址檚 study was .
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