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Hindi Research Article
Implicit and Explicit Biases toward Obesity: Perspectives of School of Education Students
Mary E Walter, Kelsey Ragan, Tracey N Sulak and Janet H Bagby*
Department of Educational Psychology, Baylor University, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Janet Bagby
Department of Educational Psychology
Baylor University, One Bear Place #97301
Waco, TX 76798, USA
E-mail: Janet_Bagby@Baylor.edu
Received date April 23, 2013; Accepted date: May 17, 2013; Published date: May 20, 2013
Citation: Walter ME, Ragan K, Sulak TN, Bagby JH (2013) Implicit and Explicit Biases toward Obesity: Perspectives of School of Education Students. J Community Med Health Educ 3:212. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000212
Copyright: © 2013 Walter ME, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The current study investigated implicit and explicit biases toward obesity among a group of pre-service educators. Educators play a key role in helping children learn habits that contribute to a healthy lifestyle and lowered rate of obesity. Explicit biases, such as overt discrimination against obese children may be rare among educators, but implicit biases, such as not calling on obese children in class, may be more prevalent. More importantly, implicit biases may not be recognized or understood among educators. A total of 102 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a university level school of education were administered the Implicit Attitudes Test, the Antifat Attitudes Questionnaire and the Attitudes towards Obese Persons Scale. The participants did not demonstrate an explicit bias against obesity but did appear to have an implicit bias toward individuals with obesity.
