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Abstract
This study was designed to determine whether therapists discriminate in their preferences for clients based on client body size and gender. The one hundred and twenty eight therapists who served as research participants were 64 doctoral and 64 predoctoral status psychologists, located and surveyed in hospital, clinic, and academic settings. After considering four descriptions, with pictures, of hypothetical clients in different conditions (female obese, male obese, female nonobese, and male nonobese) the therapists ranked the clients by order of preference for treating them and designated the degree of their preferences on five-point Likert scales. Demographic data were collected which disclosed therapists' age, gender, personal and family history with overweight difficulties and amount of experience to determine if these characteristics were predictive of therapists' preferences.
It was hypothesized that: (1) therapists rate obese clients as less desirable for their practice than nonobese clients; (2) therapists rate obese female clients as less desirable for their practice than obese male clients; and (3) therapists' characteristics of age, gender, personal overweight difficulty, overweight difficulty in a family member, and amount of experience affect their preferences for treating obese and nonobese men and women. With this study these three hypotheses were not confirmed statistically.
However, there were significant results that revealed an interaction between therapists' gender and client gender. Male therapists did not discriminate in their preferences for male and female clients. Female therapists overwhelmingly indicated a preference for treating female clients of both body sizes.
The results also demonstrated that female subjects who reported personal overweight difficulty, or had a family member with overweight difficulty, preferred treating both obese and nonobese female clients over male clients of either body size. Female therapists, however, who did not indicate backgrounds with either personal or familial overweight difficulties consistently ranked the female nonobese condition over the male nonobese condition.
It is suggested that in future research a greater degree of client obesity should be used and that the visual images developed for the study should not give the appearance of being distorted. In addition, the incorporation of methods to more closely simulate an "en vivo" experience of the client's obese body volume is recommended. Caution against the emergence of an anti-male bias is presented along with the suggestion to monitor this unsettling new trend.
