Posts: Links / Glutton Intolerance: What if a war on obesity only makes the problem worse?

Dumbest article I've read in a long time. We hate fat people because fat people are ripe for ridicule. They deserve more of it than we give them. Besides, tolerance for everything is not always the answer. Tolerance for things which are in no way beneficial to society, as obesity arguably is from the perspective of net drain or gain, is a bunch of far-left vagina talk. Unless of course the author of the article is arguing that obesity is helpful in some way.

Humans have a tendency to want to punish others if they feel they are reaping undue success. Just look at what happened in the French version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? when a contestant opted to ask the audience for the question "What revolves around the sun?" The vast majority of audience members chose to select "The Moon" as their response - they felt the contestant was so stupid he didn't deserve to win.

Humans evolved the ability to store fatty tissue when food supplies were plentiful - but a fat person walking amongst a bunch of regular-shapes would very much appear to be cheating his society out of a food-supply. I don't think it is that far-fetched to surmise that we have an innate tendency to detest fat people, or to mistrust or even cast them out of society. Not that this excuses fat-bashing, but it puts our views on fat people in the same vein as people who steal, lie, cheat, etc.

The Yale study on obesity discrimination can be applied to many other physical abnormalities in our environment (e.g., ugly people). In general these people are less likely to get hired, are seen as less intelligent, are less likely to get mates, and face social rejection. Studies have shown, for example, that preschool children are preferentially treated based off of their physical appearance. One study found that preschool teachers perceive attractive children as smarter and more capable. They even found that less attractive students were treated with less attention and more harshly evaluated.

I think that obese individuals are not any different then people with other physical deformities in terms of discrimination? For the most part group bonding results simply from using natural variation in the population to assess who should receive your time and resources. We can not afford to give it away to just anyone. So one reliable means to find healthy strong conspecifics that will benefit you is through physical features. Physical features are a good means to assess genetic quality.

I disagree with Dylan's statement. I would, although, love to see that empirically tested. I do not think there were evolutionary selection pressures for detecting cheating through food consumption or rather in terms of obesity. What I think is going on with the negative affect around obesity, or asymmetrical individuals, is a tendency to dislike what is not normal. We have intrinsic templates of what a face or a body should look like and when people do not fit within this template we tend not want to give these people our resources. We then justify our behavior though stereotypes and become susceptible to other people's stereotypes around us.

Now these stereotypes may lead us to assume behaviors of the out-group member such as likely to cheat or steal but I doubt that it would have been for gluttony. Obesity is definitely a novelty of our own current way of living.