Implicit Attitudes Toward Body Shape Among Blind Women

Overview

High levels of body image concerns and disordered eating in western women have been associated with the promotion of an unrealistically thin body ideal. The pressure to conform with the thin-ideal forms both explicit and implicit attitudes favoring thinness. Visual-based media depicting thin-idealized bodies plays a major role in forming such attitudes. However, attitudes favoring thinness can also be transmitted through non-visual communication such as peer pressure and significant others. The current study will examine if implicit attitudes favoring thinness and disliking overweight bodies can be formed without ever being exposed to visual-based media or being visually exposed to body shapes. To achieve this goal, the study will assess implicit attitudes towards thin and overweight bodies in congenitally blind women and those who were blinded early in life. The assessment will be carried out using a novel auditory weight-bias implicit association test.

Previous studies have demonstrated strong implicit associations between images portraying thin bodies and positive words and images portraying overweight bodies and negative words among healthy individuals in Western society. This so-called "implicit weight bias" is thought to represent individuals' unconscious or automatic stereotypical attitudes against being overweight. The goal of the current study is to examine implicit weight biases among congenitally blind as well as sighted women using a novel auditory version of the weight bias implicit association task. In this task, participants hear a series of words and are requested to classify each word using a motor response to the matching category. The categories used will be negative and positive words as well as words describing thin and overweight bodies. Implicit anti-fat bias is reflected by longer response times and higher error rates, when positive words and those describing overweight bodies require the same motor response and when negative words are coupled with words describing thin bodies compared to when positive and negative words are coupled with words describing thin and overweight bodies, respectively. The investigators have collected preliminary results in a sample of blind women (N = 18) in Israel. The investigators plan to a) expand the data collection in Israel to reach a sample of 30 blind women and to b) carry out a full replication of the study in an independent sample of blind and sighted women in the US. Data have not been collected yet for the US replication study. Based on the effect size of the the implicit bias effect (represented by the IAT D score) obtained in preliminary results in the Israeli sample (Cohen's D = 0.74), a power analysis using G\*power was carried out and showed that a sample of 22 participants is sufficient to detect the IAT implicit bias effect with a power \> 95% and an a-priori alpha set at 0.05. Based on preliminary results in the Israeli sample, it is hypothesized that: 1. Blind women will demonstrate an implicit bias indicating preference for thin bodies and a dislike of overweight bodies. This effect will be reflected by slower response times when words describing thin bodies will be coupled with negative compared to positive words and when words describing overweight bodies will be coupled with positive compared to negative words. This implicit bias effect will be computed using the IAT's D algorithm. 2. The implicit anti-fat bias effect (IAT D-score) will be comparable between sighted and blind women.