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Obesity as a perceived social signal

Manasee Mankar¹, Radhika Joshi¹, Prajakta Belsare¹, Maithili Jog¹ & Milind Watve²

Correspondence: (Login to view email address)

1. Abasaheb Garware College, Pune
2. Anujeeva Biosciences Pvt. Ltd., Pune

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Document Type:

Poster

Date:

Received 23 December 2008 05:47 UTC; Posted 23 December 2008

Subjects:

Ecology

Tags:

• handicap principle
• Obesity
• personality

Abstract:

Fat accumulation has been classically considered as a means of energy storage. Obese people are theorized as metabolically ‘thrifty’, saving energy during times of food abundance. However, recent research has highlighted many neuro-behavioral and social aspects of obesity, with a suggestion that obesity, abdominal obesity in particular, may have evolved as a social signal. We tested here whether body proportions, and abdominal obesity in particular, are perceived as signals revealing personality traits.

Faceless drawings of three male body forms namely lean, muscular and feminine, each with and without abdominal obesity were shown in a randomized order to a group of 222 respondents. A list of 30 different adjectives or short descriptions of personality traits was given to each respondent and they were asked to allocate the most appropriate figure to each of them independently. The traits included those directly related to physique, those related to nature, attitude and moral character and also those related to social status. For 29 out of the 30 adjectives people consistently attributed specific body forms. Based on common choices, the 30 traits could be clustered into distinct ‘personalities’ which were strongly associated with particular body forms. A centrally obese figure was perceived as “lethargic, greedy, political, money-minded, selfish and rich”.

The results show that body proportions are perceived to reflect personality traits and this raises the possibility that in addition to energy storage, social selection may have played some role in shaping the biology of obesity.

Presented at:

The 2nd World Congress on Controversies to Consensus in Diabetes, Obesity and Hypertension (CODHy), 31 October 2008

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Mankar, Manasee, Joshi, Radhika, Belsare, Prajakta, Jog, Maithili, and Watve, Milind. Obesity as a perceived social signal. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2008.2711.1> (2008)

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