Gut Reactions

You may have the IQ of Einstein and the diplomatic skills of a UN ambassador,but if you've got the body of a 170-pound Madonna, you may just have to forget about your dream job.

A team of Chicago psychologists reports that overweight job applicants, especially women, are highly susceptible to employment bias. Even moderate overweight is a minus.

The psychologists videotaped professional actors, male and female, who presented themselves as normal-weight applicants in mock-employment interviews. Then the same actors were interviewed and videotaped again, this time using elaborate make-up and devices to make them appear 20 percent overweight.

Researchers showed the videos to 320 raters, along with resumes that showed the candidates to have relevant experience, education, and motivation, and asked them to make a hiring decision. The raters had earlier been screened for body satisfaction and for the centrality of body awareness to their self-concept.

According to Regina Pingitore, Ph.D., of the Chicago Medical School, weight played much more of a role among female decision-makers than male ones. The raters least likely to hire an overweight person were those who expressed satisfaction with their own bodies and whose body image was central to their self-concept. It's the "If I can do it, why can't you?" take on weight loss. Interviewers who are less satisfied with their bodies, in contrast, may be more sensitive to the difficulties of meeting society's often elusive weight standards, Pingitore surmises.

She isn't shocked that such bias exists. What did surprise her was that weight-sensitive evaluators "felt disdain, but couldn't put a label on it." Their prejudice revealed itself instead in a gut-level reaction--as if some inner voice said, "This person's fat. I don't like her," These subjects had a hard time explaining why they thought heavier applicants were unfit for the job. Unfortunately, this kind of bias might be most resistant to change.