Implicit Attitudes Toward Body Shape Among Blind Women
Condition: Blindness; Implicit Bias
MeSH terms: Blindness
Study type: Observational

Summary: 
      High levels of body image concerns and disordered eating in western women have been
      associated with the promotion of an unrealistically thin body ideal. The pressure to conform
      with the thin-ideal forms both explicit and implicit attitudes favoring thinness.
      Visual-based media depicting thin-idealized bodies plays a major role in forming such
      attitudes. However, attitudes favoring thinness can also be transmitted through non-visual
      communication such as peer pressure and significant others. The current study will examine if
      implicit attitudes favoring thinness and disliking overweight bodies can be formed without
      ever being exposed to visual-based media or being visually exposed to body shapes. To achieve
      this goal, the study will assess implicit attitudes towards thin and overweight bodies in
      congenitally blind women and those who were blinded early in life. The assessment will be
      carried out using a novel auditory weight-bias implicit association test.
    

Detailed description: 
      Previous studies have demonstrated strong implicit associations between images portraying
      thin bodies and positive words and images portraying overweight bodies and negative words
      among healthy individuals in Western society. This so-called "implicit weight bias" is
      thought to represent individuals' unconscious or automatic stereotypical attitudes against
      being overweight. The goal of the current study is to examine implicit weight biases among
      congenitally blind as well as sighted women using a novel auditory version of the weight bias
      implicit association task. In this task, participants hear a series of words and are
      requested to classify each word using a motor response to the matching category. The
      categories used will be negative and positive words as well as words describing thin and
      overweight bodies. Implicit anti-fat bias is reflected by longer response times and higher
      error rates, when positive words and those describing overweight bodies require the same
      motor response and when negative words are coupled with words describing thin bodies compared
      to when positive and negative words are coupled with words describing thin and overweight
      bodies, respectively.

      The investigators have collected preliminary results in a sample of blind women (N = 18) in
      Israel. The investigators plan to a) expand the data collection in Israel to reach a sample
      of 30 blind women and to b) carry out a full replication of the study in an independent
      sample of blind and sighted women in the US. Data have not been collected yet for the US
      replication study. Based on the effect size of the the implicit bias effect (represented by
      the IAT D score) obtained in preliminary results in the Israeli sample (Cohen's D = 0.74), a
      power analysis using G*power was carried out and showed that a sample of 22 participants is
      sufficient to detect the IAT implicit bias effect with a power > 95% and an a-priori alpha
      set at 0.05.

      Based on preliminary results in the Israeli sample, it is hypothesized that:

        1. Blind women will demonstrate an implicit bias indicating preference for thin bodies and
           a dislike of overweight bodies. This effect will be reflected by slower response times
           when words describing thin bodies will be coupled with negative compared to positive
           words and when words describing overweight bodies will be coupled with positive compared
           to negative words. This implicit bias effect will be computed using the IAT's D
           algorithm.

        2. The implicit anti-fat bias effect (IAT D-score) will be comparable between sighted and
           blind women.
    

Observational model: Case-Control
Time perspective: Cross-Sectional
Sampling method: Non-Probability Sample
Study population: 
        The blind women group will only include women who were blinded earlier than the age of 7
        and cannot see themselves in the mirror not recognize other people's faces or bodies or use
        visual-based media. The sighted women group will include women with normal or
        corrected-to-normal vision.