Overweight Men May Face Discrimination When Applying For Jobs, Study Suggests

Overweight men are not only at risk of potential health problems but also on discrimination.

In a new research led by Enrica Ruggs, assistant professor of psychology and colleagues from Rice University and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC), it was discovered that men also face subtle discrimination or "interpersonal discrimination" when shopping and applying for jobs, Medical News Today (MNT) reported.

In order to reach this conclusion, Ruggs and her team conducted two studies. The first study involved non-overweight actors who were tasked to apply for jobs in retail stores in US as well as shop in other retails stores. The same men repeated the same thing, but while wearing prosthetics to make them look overweight.

Additionally, the actors were given scripts to "closely follow" during the said situations.

Rating their experience in a scale of 0 to 6 with zero meaning "no discrimination" and 6 meaning "extremely discriminatory," the actors rated the stores 2.0 when they are in their normal weight and 2.3 when they are in prosthetics.

Moreover, in order to have more bases for evaluation, the researchers sent out observers in the store who pretended to be shopping. The said observers also provided their individual assessments on the tests.

"Their results were consistent with the actors, as they witnessed greater interpersonal discrimination when the men were heavy compared with when they were not. It may not seem like a lot, but it's statistically significant. It suggests that men who are heavy are experiencing really negative behaviors more often than men who are not heavy," Ruggs said.

As pointed by MNT, although the actors were not prevented from applying in the retail stores, they do experience "subtle negative behavior" from the employers such as behaviors of wanting to finish the conversation early, less "affirmative behavior," and "more avoidance behavior."

Meanwhile, in the second study, the researchers created marketing videos for five products that are neutral such as coffee mugs and luggage. Like the first test, it features actors of both men and women who are not overweight. This is done in order to determine if having overweight employees affects the evaluation of the product and the company.

The participants of the test, who were told that the videos will be used as a promotion for a product that will be sold online, were given a questionnaire after.

Thus, after evaluation, it was found that the participants perceive overweight people to reflect negative thoughts with the participants saying that they look "less professional," "less neat and clean," and "were more careless."

"It's really unfortunate. There are these really subtle influences that can have large negative effects on heavy men in the retail settings- that's whether they're applying for jobs, they're actual employees or as customers," Ruggs added.

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