Shaping the Body Politic: Mass Media Fat-Shaming Affects Implicit Anti-Fat Attitudes

The human psyche is profoundly shaped by its cultural milieu; however, few studies have examined the dynamics of cultural influence in everyday life, especially when it comes to shaping people's automatic, implicit attitudes. In this quasi-experimental field study, we investigated the effect of transient, but salient, cultural messages-the pop-cultural phenomenon of celebrity "fat-shaming"-on implicit anti-fat attitudes in the population....