Fat Shoppers: Very Ugly Case of Bigotry
Obese shoppers are treated more rudely and receive fewer smiles and less eye contact from sales clerks than shoppers of normal weight, are the startling results of a study conducted by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
In this study, the researchers enlisted 10 white women of normal weight, all of whom were between the ages of 19 and 28. They visited 152 stores in a Houston shopping mall dressed casually, professionally, or in a prosthetic suit that made them look like a size 22. In a second experiment, the women in the fat suit visited 66 stores; half were told to either drink a diet soda and mention they were trying to lose weight, while the other half sipped an ice cream drink and said they were not on a diet. In each store, the women carefully followed a script where they told the sales clerks they were shopping for a gift for someone else. Recording devices were hidden in their shopping bags, and the shoppers completed written questionnaires following each store visit.
Specifically the shoppers experienced the following while wearing the fat suits:
--Sales clerks ended interactions with the obese shoppers more quickly.
--Sales clerks used a negative tone with them.
--The obese shoppers experienced less discrimination when they were professionally dressed than when they wore casual attire.
--When the obese shoppers sipped a diet soda and mentioned they were trying to lose weight, the sales clerks treated them just as nicely as when they shopped without the fat suit.
Study leader Eden King told Reuters that weight discrimination is "pervasive in all kinds of social interactions." However, in this case, the sales clerks are paid to be nice--and they weren't. "The results of our research revealed that although customer sales personnel do not formally discriminate against obese customers, they do discriminate in subtle, interpersonal ways," she said in a news release announcing the study findings.
King also conducted a separate survey of 191 obese and non-obese white shoppers and found that obese shoppers spend less time and money in a store when they experience discrimination from sales clerks. Storeowners not only have a financial incentive for addressing this, but also an ethical one, she insisted. The study findings will be presented later this month to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in Los Angeles, California.
Obese shoppers are treated more rudely and receive fewer smiles and less eye contact from sales clerks than shoppers of normal weight, are the startling results of a study conducted by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
In this study, the researchers enlisted 10 white women of normal weight, all of whom were between the ages of 19 and 28. They visited 152 stores in a Houston shopping mall dressed casually, professionally, or in a prosthetic suit that made them look like a size 22. In a second experiment, the women in the fat suit visited 66 stores; half were told to either drink a diet soda and mention they were trying to lose weight, while the other half sipped an ice cream drink and said they were not on a diet. In each store, the women carefully followed a script where they told the sales clerks they were shopping for a gift for someone else. Recording devices were hidden in their shopping bags, and the shoppers completed written questionnaires following each store visit.
Specifically the shoppers experienced the following while wearing the fat suits:
--Sales clerks ended interactions with the obese shoppers more quickly.
--Sales clerks used a negative tone with them.
--The obese shoppers experienced less discrimination when they were professionally dressed than when they wore casual attire.
--When the obese shoppers sipped a diet soda and mentioned they were trying to lose weight, the sales clerks treated them just as nicely as when they shopped without the fat suit.
Study leader Eden King told Reuters that weight discrimination is "pervasive in all kinds of social interactions." However, in this case, the sales clerks are paid to be nice--and they weren't. "The results of our research revealed that although customer sales personnel do not formally discriminate against obese customers, they do discriminate in subtle, interpersonal ways," she said in a news release announcing the study findings.
King also conducted a separate survey of 191 obese and non-obese white shoppers and found that obese shoppers spend less time and money in a store when they experience discrimination from sales clerks. Storeowners not only have a financial incentive for addressing this, but also an ethical one, she insisted. The study findings will be presented later this month to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in Los Angeles, California.
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