Speaker: Claire Gothreau, Research Associate, Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University 

Title: “Not Fit for Office: Does Weight Bias Impact Evaluations of Political Candidates?”

Abstract: Voters often use metrics to evaluate political candidates that are entirely unrelated to ideology, competence, or policy positions. Factors such as height, facial appearance, physical attractiveness, and vocal pitch can impact candidate selection (Klofstad 2016; Laustsen and Bang Petersen 2018; Stulp et al. 2013). Less understood is the role of body weight bias in how voters evaluate political candidates. This is surprising given the abundance of evidence that overweight and obese individuals are discriminated against in hiring and promotion (Caliendo & Lee 2013; Rudolph et al. 2009), in healthcare settings (Phelan et al. 2015), and even in the criminal justice system (Schvey et al. 2013). Obesity stigma involves stereotypes that overweight and obese people are self-indulgent (Guerrieri et al. 2007), lazy (Hinman et al. 2015), and less intelligent (Crandall 1994). Furthermore, discrimination goes beyond stigmatization -- obese people are subject to blatant dehumanization, meaning that they are seen as less human and more animal-like than non-obese people (Kersbergen and Robinson 2019). In this paper, we first ask “Do voters discriminate against political candidates based on their weight?” Secondly, we posit that if voters are discriminating against overweight and obese candidates, this bias may be rooted in the overall dehumanization of this group. More specifically, we ground our hypotheses in the dual model of dehumanization (Haslam 2006) to argue that overweight and obese people as a group are denied attributes that are unique to humans and are stereotyped as lacking in qualities, such as cognitive capacity, civility, and competence, that distinguish humans from animals. Using an experimental research design, we test the hypothesis that voters more negatively evaluate overweight and obese candidates and are less likely to support them electorally. Furthermore, we test whether or not candidate and participant race and gender moderate this relationship.

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