Weight Bias in Competence Evaluation of Faces

This study investigates the impact of gender and obesity on perceived competence, drawing from existing literature that overweight women face harsher judgments and economic penalties compared to overweight men, with such disparities extending to political and social evaluations. Using a data-driven computational model of social judgments, I manipulated apparent weight parametrically to enhance the precision and realism in the assessment of weight's impact on perceived competence. The primary hypotheses were that a) increased apparent weight results in more negative evaluations of competence and b) these negative evaluations are harsher for women. Participants (n = 135) made competence judgments of 126 faces (42 faces x 3 levels of apparent weight: slim, normal, slightly overweight). Evaluations became more negative as apparent weight increased, providing clear support for the first hypothesis. However, I did not find support for the second hypothesis that the effect of weight was different for men and women.