Overweight Men As likely To Face Interpersonal Discrimination As Overweight Women While Shopping Or Applying For Jobs, New Study Suggests

A new study has found that over-weight men are as likely to face interpersonal discrimination as overweight women while shopping for clothes or applying for a retail job.

"We were interested in looking at biases toward men who are heavy in employment settings," said study author Enrica Ruggs in a statement released by Rice University, according to University Herald.

Ruggs is an assistant professor of psychology at University of North Carolina.

"A lot of the research that has looked at weight stigmatization or discrimination toward heavy people has tended to focus on women. It's perceived as more of a critical issue surrounding women, so we wanted to see if men experience some of the same types of detriments that women face," she added.

Ruggs and her colleagues conducted two studies to test out their theory.

In the first study, non-overweight men applied for jobs at retail stores in the southern U.S. The same men were then made to apply for jobs at different stores wearing overweight prosthetics.

The researchers also wanted to find out if overweight men would be subjected to discrimination as customers, so the same men posed as customers and visited other retail stores.

It was found that when the men applied for jobs or were shopping as customers in their overweight prosthetics, they experienced more types of subtle discrimination or interpersonal discrimination. They didn't experience 'formal' discrimination or illegal types of discrimination, reported Medical Daily.

Ruggs said that employees, whom the overweight people interacted with, tried to end the interaction early. There was less affirmative behavior like less nodding or smiling and there was more avoidance types of behavior like frowning and trying to get out of the interaction.

In the second study, researchers found the same types of subtle discrimination was taking place, this time with the customer being the discriminator.

"It's really unfortunate," Ruggs added.

"There are these really subtle influences that can have large negative effects on heavy men in the retail settings -- that's whether they're applying for jobs, they're actual employees or as customers."

Ruggs concluded saying that the study findings remind that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of creating equitable workplaces for all employees, potential employees and consumers and that organizations must take steps to achieve the same.

The study was published in the "Journal of Applied Psychology."