Thursday, February 2, 2012

Obese self-discriminators

Minorities, ugly, fat and "different" people are discriminated against, there is no question about it. It is very unfortunate, and laws (and education) try to correct this. Unfortunately, those that are discriminated may not be helping their cause by not doing enough to promote themselves.
think if it like they conceded defeat against discrimination.

What is the evidence? Pablo Brañas-Garza & Antonios Proestakis ran some experiments where people were supposed to declare how much they feel they should be compensated to fill the experiment questionnaire. It turns out that obese people were asking significantly less frequently (-5%) for money, and when they ask for some they ask for much less (-20%). What is most important here is that they self-diagnose themselves as obese, less whether they actually. Seeing this, my first reaction was that they ask for less because their opportunity cost is lower, as they do earn less. But the authors take account of the wage. So it must be that obese have such low self-esteem that they cannot be ambitious in what they ask for.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps they are obese because they have a general tendency to try less vigorously in life. Asking less just jibes with this general tendency.

Pablo BraƱas said...

... But we know that some of them are not fat, they just feel as being obese! So i think thatr your suggestion does not applies here...

Thanks a lot, Pablo

Anonymous said...

Pretty cool study