Body Image and Anti-Fat Attitudes: An Experimental Study Using a Haptic Virtual Reality Environment to Replicate Human Touch

It is well documented that anti-fat attitudes influence the interactions individuals have with overweight people. However, testing attitudes through self-report measures is challenging. In the present study, we explore the use of a haptic virtual reality environment to physically interact with overweight virtual human (VH). We verify the hypothesis that duration and strength of virtual touch vary according to the characteristics of VH in ways similar to those encountered from interaction with real people in anti-fat attitude studies. A group of 61 participants were randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions involving giving a virtual hug to a female or a male VH of either normal or overweight. We found significant associations between body image satisfaction and anti-fat attitudes and sex differences on these measures. We also found a significant interaction effect of the sex of the participants, sex of the VH, and the body size of the VH. Female participants hugged longer the overweight female VH than overweight male VH. Male participants hugged longer the normal-weight VH than the overweight VH. We conclude that virtual touch is a promising method of measuring attitudes, emotion and social interactions.

[1]  R. Puhl,et al.  Stigma, obesity, and the health of the nation's children. , 2007, Psychological bulletin.

[2]  N. M. McKinley,et al.  Gender Differences in Undergraduates' Body Esteem: The Mediating Effect of Objectified Body Consciousness and Actual/Ideal Weight Discrepancy , 1998 .

[3]  M. Mendelson,et al.  Body-Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults , 2001, Journal of personality assessment.

[4]  K. Brownell,et al.  Obesity and body image. , 2004, Body image.

[5]  K. Oatley,et al.  Understanding emotions, 2nd ed. , 2006 .

[6]  G. Riva,et al.  Allocentric lock in anorexia nervosa: new evidences from neuroimaging studies. , 2012, Medical hypotheses.

[7]  Line Tremblay,et al.  Body Image Disturbance and Psychopathology in Children: Research Evidence and Implications for Prevention and Treatment , 2009 .

[8]  R M Gardner,et al.  Methodological issues in assessment of the perceptual component of body image disturbance. , 1996, British journal of psychology.

[9]  Rebecca Lawton,et al.  The impact of thin models in music videos on adolescent girls' body dissatisfaction. , 2007, Body image.

[10]  Christian S. Crandall,et al.  Anti-Fat Prejudice , 2009 .

[11]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  Virtual Interpersonal Touch: Expressing and Recognizing Emotions Through Haptic Devices , 2007, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[12]  J. Pryor,et al.  A dual-process model of reactions to perceived stigma. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  M. Aruguete,et al.  Gender Differences in Attitudes about Fat , 2006 .

[14]  Harold E. Yuker,et al.  The measurement of attitudes toward and beliefs about obese persons , 1991, International Journal of Eating Disorders.

[15]  Kerry S O'Brien,et al.  Body image and explicit and implicit anti-fat attitudes: the mediating role of physical appearance comparisons. , 2007, Body image.

[16]  H. Rosenfeld,et al.  Touch, Justification, and Sex: Influences on the Aversiveness of Spatial Violations. , 1978, The Journal of social psychology.

[17]  J. Duckitt.  The social psychology of prejudice , 1992 .

[18]  Karon E. MacLean,et al.  Communicating emotion through a haptic link: Design space and methodology , 2007, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[19]  Fiona Kate Barlow,et al.  Applying the contact hypothesis to anti-fat attitudes: contact with overweight people is related to how we interact with our bodies and those of others. , 2014, Social science & medicine.

[20]  Louise Connell,et al.  A Functional Role for Modality-Specific Perceptual Systems in Conceptual Representations , 2012, PloS one.

[21]  Thomas F. Cash,et al.  The Relationship of Antifat Attitudes to Other Prejudicial and Gender‐Related Attitudes1 , 2001 .

[22]  C. Crandall.  Prejudice against fat people: ideology and self-interest. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[23]  Stéphane Bouchard,et al.  The Development of a Haptic Virtual Reality Environment to Study Body Image and Affect , 2013, Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine.

[24]  C. Spence,et al.  The science of interpersonal touch: An overview , 2010, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[25]  C. Crandall,et al.  The Ideology of Anti‐Fat Attitudes1 , 1990 .

[26]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.