EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES ABOUT OBESITY

EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES ABOUT OBESITY

IAT                                     Bias Toward obese       No bias/neutral    Bias against obese

(Implicit Measure)              persons (score of 2       (score of 3)           persons (score of 4

Or less)                                                     or more)

            According to results which were obtained from the six students who were involved in the collection of data regarding the implicit and explicit measures, three students shown bias towards obese persons on the explicit measure but a bias against obese persons on the implicit measure. From these statistics, the student’s attitudes are clearly inconsistent across the two measures. Two students show a bias towards both implicit and explicit measures and that is an indication that the results in the two measures were consistent. Finally, only a single student of all the six had no preference on either thin or fat persons.

One reason behind obtaining divergent results as far as implicit and explicit measures as far as anti-fat discrimination incidences were concerned in the study, it was because those measures reflected separate representations of attitude. This was an implication that people usually held several attitudes towards the issue of anti-fat people in the society. So, when those attitudes happened to change, different new attitude would definitely replace the older ones. This implied that when are introspected, they show the most present attitude, but the impacts of the older attitudes can only be unearthed when probed deeper by implicit tests.

On a different view, lack of connection between the measures does not mean separate attitudes (Lorenzo, Cruz, Pappous & Schmidt, 2016). Instead, these two measures enable people to revisit their responses in different approaches. For that matter, evaluating implicit responses is more of fishing and less like an archeological dig. Implicit tests usually tap the upstream attitudes whereas an explicit test on the other hand catches what runs downstream. In both perspectives however, there is an assumption that the main reason behind implicit– explicit divide is realized from the distinction between “implicitness” and “explicitness.”

In other words, implicit measures deal with automatic responses while explicit measures deal with edited responses. And although the main difference between the two tests may appear as simple as one being implicit and the other one being explicit, considering the other existing possibilities helps in shifting perspectives and recognizing the difference between implicit and explicit tests beyond just cognition.

According to the Theory of Planned Behavior and which started as a theory of Reasoned Action (Leeuw, Valois, Ajzen & Schmidt, 2015), individual intentions to engage in certain behaviors at certain times are easily predicted. Mainly, this theory explains all the behaviors over which individual show the ability of exerting self-control. TPB comprises of six elements that together represents individual’s control over certain behaviors. These include attitudes, behavioral intentions, subjective norms, social norms, perceived power and perceived behavioral control.

According to my case scenario; conditions by which anti-fat attitudes may lead to discrimination of obese people, the second construct of the Theory of Planned Behavior and which is behavioral intention plays a crucial role (Flint, Hudson & Lavallee, 2015). For instance, in a case where there are only two candidates who are qualified for a certain  job vacancy, an interviewee with anti-fat attitudes will look for any slight difference with their qualifications to disqualify the obese person not because it makes sense but just to disqualify him and to be left with the other candidate. This can be clearly categorized under the bracket of discrimination on the basis of anti-fat attitudes of the interviewee.

Again, considering the fourth element of the TPB; social norms, an obese person is more likely to be denied a job opportunity in a construction company because obese people are generally believed to be lazy in when it comes to vigorous activities involved in the construction sites (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015). This is just a customary code in this industry because there are some obese people who can perform better than normal people in the industry. However, because of the anti-fat attitudes by the employers in this industry, an obese person will be denied a chance to another person even if he or she is a performer.

References

De Leeuw, A., Valois, P., Ajzen, I., & Schmidt, P. (2015). Using the theory of planned behavior to identify key beliefs underlying pro-environmental behavior in high-school students:       Implications for educational interventions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 42,      128-138.

Flint, S. W., Hudson, J., & Lavallee, D. (2015). UK adults’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards obesity: a cross-sectional study. BMC obesity, 2(1), 31.

Lorenzo Bertheau, E., Cruz, F. Q., Pappous, A., & Schmidt Rio-Valle, J. (2016). EXPLICIT        AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES TOWARDS OBESITY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION       STUDENTS Actitudes explícitas e implícitas hacia la obesidad en estudiantes de Cultura           Física. Revista de Psicología del Deporte (‘Journal of Sport Psychology’), 25, 91-96.

Montano, D. E., & Kasprzyk, D. (2015). Theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, and the integrated behavioral model. Health behavior: Theory, research and practice, 95-        124.