A latent profile analysis of attributions for poverty: Identifying response patterns underlying people’s willingness to help the poor

The Relationship between Weight‐Based Prejudice and Attitudes towards Obesity‐Reducing Public Policies

“…The statistical findings of this study illustrate a clear association between prejudice and support for punitive policies, a finding consistent with the previous literature linking prejudice and attitudes toward policies affecting specific target groups (Cozzarelli et al., ; Crosby et al., ; Fraser, et al., ; Gutiérrez & Unzueta, ; Osborne & Weiner, ; Reyna et al., , , ). However, the policy items included in Study 1 were only directed at behavior, and would therefore apply to all people, regardless of their weight.…”

“…These findings are consistent with previous research linking prejudice and policy attitudes in regard to immigration (Reyna et al., ), affirmative action (Crosby et al., ; Reyna et al., ), welfare (Cozzarelli et al., ; Osborne & Weiner, ), and gay rights (Reyna et al., ). As weight‐based prejudice plays a significant role in policy attitudes, driving support for punitive measures at the potential expense of other more impactful policies, promoters of comprehensive environmental health policies may need to include prejudice reduction measures in their efforts.…”

“…Prejudice has also been argued to be an essential element of opposition to affirmative action (Crosby, Iyer, Clayton, & Downing, ; Reyna, Henry, Korfmacher, & Tucker, ), with negative attitudes toward measures aimed at increasing gender and race diversity shown to be associated with higher levels of social dominance orientation, the degree to which people favor inequality between specific social groups (Fraser, Osborne, & Sibley, ; Gutiérrez & Unzueta, ). Likewise, biased judgments against the poor have been shown to influence attitudes toward welfare programs (Cozzarelli, Wilkinson, & Tagler, ; Osborne & Weiner, ) and anti‐gay prejudice has predicted opposition to gay rights initiatives (Reyna, Wetherell, Yantis, & Brandt, ).…”

“…For example, studies have shown that obese individuals are perceived as being “lazy,” “slow,” “dirty,” “stupid,” “ugly,” “sloppy,” and as “having poor willpower” (Ryckman, Robbins, Kazcor, & Gold, ). This distorted perspective regarding the causes of obesity may even motivate some individuals to favor policies that are more punitive in nature, viewing them paternalistically as potential corrections of obese people's personal shortcomings and presumed poor choices, similar to how attributions of poverty are related to support—or nonsupport—for welfare policies (Osborne & Weiner, ). As negative stereotypes against the obese are both prevalent and highly negative, the likelihood that they play a significant role in attitudes toward weight‐based public policies appears high.…”

Extending multivariate distance matrix regression with an effect size measure and the asymptotic null distribution of the test statistic

“…Person-centered methods are useful tools for research focused on inter-individual differences among response profiles (Muthén & Muthén, 2000). Furthermore, they are viable alternatives to variable-centered methods when MV data are expected to violate the assumptions of linearity or interchangeability (Bauer & Shanahan, 2007; Bernstein et al, 2010; Breslau, Reboussin, Anthony, & Storr, 2005; Osborne & Weiner, 2015). Person-centered methods are more flexible in their treatment of variables because the distance between response profiles can be calculated in many different ways, some of which do not rely on these assumptions (Johnson, 1967; Kruskal, 1964b; McArdle & Anderson, 2001).…”