Weight Stigma and Educators' Perceptions of Children's Psychological Symptoms

Objective: To investigate whether weight stigma influences educators' judgments about psychological symptoms in children.Design: Experimental study manipulating the weight status of children with school problems and examining implicit and explicit anti-fat attitudes as potential moderators of stigmatizing judgments.Subjects: 188 pre-service educators.Measurements: Attributions of laziness as primary dependent variable plus measures of implicit and explicit anti-fat attitudes as potential moderators.Results: Educators were more likely to attribute laziness to overweight children with school problems. Implicit anti-fat attitudes moderated this effect.Conclusion: Spontaneous anti-fat attitudes were importantly related to educators' biases in understanding the psychological problems of obese children at school. Educators with more negative implicit anti-fat attitudes were more likely to attribute the school-relevant psychological symptoms of obese children to laziness. Explicit anti-fat attitudes did not moderate these attributions