The Influence Of Imaginary Intergroup Contact On The Implicit Bias Of Obese Women

Reducing intergroup prejudice is an important topic in the field of social psychology.Turner et al.(2007)proposed a new intervention strategy to improve intergroup relations-imagined intergroup contact,which guides individuals imagining take contact with members of the group,thus achieving the purpose of reducing intergroup prejudice.Compared with actual contact and extended contact,imagined contact has obvious advantage,which is not restricted by space and time.Research shows that imagined intergroup contact can effectively reduce intergroup prejudice.The previous research on imagined contact mainly focused on the disadvantaged groups such as black people,old people and immigrants.The obese person,as an expanding social group,has been in a neglected situation.The obesity prejudice is not only more common but also easier to ignore than the prejudice of race,sex and age.It has caused great harm to the body and mind of the obesity group,but there is a lack of research on obesity prejudice.It is found that obesity prejudice is different in gender,and women suffer more bias than men.However,there is little independent research on prejudice of obese women at present.In addition,implicit bias measurement in previous studies is mainly the implicit association test(IAT),but the IAT paradigm has its drawbacks.It needs a test to match the attitude of two target groups,and can not directly measure the attitude of one group.In addition,the counterstereotype information is an effective strategy to improve the intergroup relationship.It has been proved that the counterstereotype strategy has a significant impact on racial prejudice,obesity stereotype,and stereotype of the elderly.The traditional counterstereotype information strategy uses text materials,video materials,and presents the inconsistencies imformation with the stereotype of the target group to individuals,in order to reducing negative attitudes between groups.In view of the above deficiencies,this research selected college students as subjects to explore the influence of imagined intergroup contact and prior contact on the implicit prejudice of obese women.A single category implicit association test(SC-IAT)was used to measure the implicit bias of obese women.This research changed the intervention paradigm of traditional counterstereotype information strategy,and introduced it into the process of imagined intergroup contact to enhance the vividness of imagination,further explore the mechanism of imagined contact.Study 1 used 3*3 between-subject design,implicit prejudice is the dependent variable.The purpose of this study is to explored the impact of college students' imagined intergroup contact on obese women's implicit prejudice.The results showed that:(1)imagined active contact can significantly reduce the implicit prejudice against obese women;(2)prior contact has no significant influence on the relationship between imagined intergroup contact and implicit prejudice;(3)there is no significant difference in the implicit bias between men and women.Study 2 used 3*3 between-subject design,The purpose of this study is to explored the effect of imagined counterstereotype contact and prior contact experience on the implicit prejudice of obese women.The results showed that:(1)imagined counterstereotype contact could significantly reduce the implicit prejudice against obese women;(2)prior contact experience had no significant influence on the relationship between imagined intergroup contact and implicit prejudice;(3)there is no significant difference between men and women in the implicit prejudice towards obese women.This study shows that imagined intergroup contact can significantly reduce the implicit prejudice against obese women,not only promote the attention to the obese population,but also provide a new perspective for the study of imagined intergroup contact,and also provide a reference for the future study of intergroup relationship.