Emotions play a central role in the stigmatization of fat people. At a basic level, there is an established interplay between attitudes and emotions and beliefs (Frijda, Manstead & Bem, 2000). Attitudes, particularly implicit attitudes, involve an affective component, in addition to a cognitive component often associated with explicit attitudes. How we think about, treat and react to others in society is, in part, a reflection of what we feel. The notion that weight bias is related to emotions has also been taken up by critical scholars. Gard and Wright (2005) for example articulate that “obesity epidemic” thinking and dogma is as much about moral anxieties as it is about science. They illustrate how anxieties about some of the “scourges” of
