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presented on the roie of genes in obesity, do attitudes change?

The theory on attributions and illness models suggests that a belief in the role of genes is associated with attributions of less control over the condition. The theory also predicts that attributing less control will result in assigning less blame to those with the condition and holding less negative attitudes towards those with the condition. I hypothesised that a belief in a genetic aetiology of obesity would be associated with less blame and less negative attitudes towards the obese.

The relationship between a belief in a genetic aetiology of obesity and attitudes towards the obese was investigated in two ways: 1) associations between the factors were computed for the Community Study sample; and 2) the Experimental Study data was analysed to see if the Intervention group, that read the genetic version of the information, expressed attitudes that were significantly more positive than the Control group.

It was noted earlier, in the Community Study, that a belief in a genetic aetiology of obesity was associated with attributing less blame to the obese for their condition. One may assume then that it would follow that people who believe in a genetic aetiology would also be less negative about the obese, but there was no evidence to support this.

The Experimental Study intervention was devised to try to tease out the causal processes involved in the hypothesised association between a belief in a genetic aetiology and negative attitudes. The data for the Community and Experimental studies was collected concurrently. The data for the Experimental Study was completed before discovering a lack of association between belief in a genetic aetiology of obesity and attitudes towards the obese in the Community Study. It was no surprise to find in the Experimental Study, that the manipulation had no effect on the attitudes towards those who are obese.

The dominant view in Western society is of obesity as a controllable condition (e.g., Allison et ai., 1991; Brownell, 1991; Weiner, 1988), under the will of the individual (e.g.. Craft, 1972; Jones et a!., 1984; Millman, 1980; Paxton & Sculthorpe, 1999) and the obese are viewed and judged negatively (e.g., DeJong, 1980; Harris & Furukawa, 1986; Stunkard, 1980; Rodin, Silberstein, & Streigel-Moore, 1984). It may be that this view of obesity and the obese is so strongly held, that different beliefs about the cause of obesity has relatively little impact on attitudes, and providing brief information does not have a significant effect on attitudes. Other research provides additional reasons as to why a belief in a genetic aetiology was not significantly associated with attitudes. This more general research in psychology research has demonstrated that beliefs are associated with attitudes and attitudes with behaviour. However, beliefs have some, rather than total, influence on attitudes. In the same way, attitudes have only some impact on behaviour. Beliefs only explain a little of the variance in behaviour in a related domain. For example, researchers such as Rosenberg (1956) and Fishbern (1963) have developed algebraic formulas to quantifiably predict attitudes from a person’s beliefs. These formulas predict attitudes within a related domain at levels greater than chance, but not close to 100 percent levels. La Pierre (1934) demonstrated this discrepancy between beliefs and attitudes. This classic study showed how much more the negative attitudes were when expressed towards people of a different race to a scenario on paper, in comparison to their actual behaviour towards members of the different race in the situation in real life. If, as the current research suggests, believing that obesity is caused by genes has little or no impact on attitudes expressed towards the obese, this belief is even less likely to have any impact on behaviour towards people who are obese. Although, not finding a difference may be due to the research design employed - e.g., in the case of the Experimental Study because of the information given, the timing of the delivery and asking attitudinal questions or some other factor.

The results of the Community and Clinical studies indicate similarly negative attitudes towards people who are obese across the continuum of Body Mass Index (BMI). This

provides support for previous work that shows the overweight or obese to have attitudes that are just as negative as those of a lower BMI (Allon, 1982; Crandall & Biernat, 1990; Maddox, Back & Liederman, 1968).

There are three other points about the Experimental Study findings that I would like to make. First, the study failed to find any evidence that increasing belief in one cause, genetics in this case, was associated with a reduction in the extent to which people believed in the other causes. Second, previous studies have shown that informing people that they had a genetic risk for conditions (e.g., heart disease and arthritis) led people to view the development of the conditions as less controllable (Senior, Marteau & Weinman, 1996). This was not replicated in the Experimental Study for obesity. Perhaps this was not found because this study asked about obesity in general, rather than a condition that each of the respondents had. Finally, the presentation of the genetic information to the experimental group was associated with a significant increase in beliefs about the role of genes generally for the characteristics, in comparison to the control group. This was not expected. This may be because the provision of information may have activated or primed the representations associated with genes. This may have brought genetic causes more to the fore of an individual’s cognitive processing and led to questions about the role of genes would receiving a greater endorsement than they would othen^/ise (and did in the Control group).