Perceptual exposure influences body size perceptions and anti-fat attitudes

Anti-fat attitudes are pervasive and contribute to deleterious social and health outcomes. The following research investigates perceptual exposure (i.e., visual exposure to larger bodies) as a potential mechanism for reducing anti-fat attitudes across various contexts and methodologies. Perceptual exposure in primary environments (i.e., the body sizes of people encountered in daily life) was examined using aggregated county-level data from the United States. Regions with higher adult obesity rates, indicating greater exposure to larger bodies, were associated with lower explicit but higher implicit anti-fat attitudes. Perceptual exposure in media (i.e., the body sizes of people in advertisements) was assessed using France's ban on extremely thin fashion models. Prior to the ban, explicit anti-fat attitudes increased over time. Following the ban, and coinciding with increased representation of larger bodies in French media, explicit anti-fat attitudes decreased. The impact on implicit attitudes was inconsistent. To test the mechanism underlying the relationship between perceptual exposure and attitudes, a two-week longitudinal experiment exposed participants to thin or fat bodies for three minutes daily. Exposure to fat bodies increased the threshold for categorizing bodies as fat, whereas exposure to thin bodies lowered it. Attitudes did not significantly change after two weeks. Together, these findings suggest that perceptual exposure influences body size categorization thresholds and may, over time, contribute to improvements in explicit anti-fat attitudes. The differential effects on explicit and implicit attitudes, as well as limitations and future directions, are discussed.