Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Recategorization Threat, Fear Of Fat, And Antifat Prejudice, Katherine Fritzlen

Doctoral Dissertations

Learning one is similar to a stigmatized group can threaten one’s identity and cause disassociation from that group. However, how would learning of an immutable similarity with a stigmatized outgroup, implying possible recategorization into that group, affect prejudice towards that group? In the current investigation, we explored how receiving feedback that one has a high genetic predisposition to become obese in the future affected implicitly- and explicitly-assessed antifat attitudes. Participants (N = 216) were provided feedback indicating they either did or did not have a high genetic predisposition for obesity, or given no feedback (control condition). We found for …