It was the small square photo clipped to an applicant's resume that most influenced whether a woman would be hired. But there was a hidden catch: The pictures showed the same six women both before and after weight-loss surgery.
The end result: The "employers" in the study rated these six women more poorly when their photos were taken when they were obese.
For the research, published recently in the International Journal of Obesity, the 95 raters actually were New Zealand under graduate students who weren't aware that weight bias was the real focus of the study.
"Clearly, these were not actual employers," said study co-author Janet Latner, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. "But they are people who will enter the workforce, and the underlying prejudice that they're displaying could ultimately affect their decisions regarding future colleagues."
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