Applying the Attribution‐Value Model of Prejudice to Fat Pedagogy in Health Care Settings

There is a need for weight bias to be effectively addressed in health care training programs. Health care professionals often report negative attitudes and stereotypes about fat people, reducing the quality of health care provision (Brochu et al., 2018; Phelan et al., 2015). Some researchers have begun testing interventions to reduce weight bias in health care training settings, with limited success (Alberga et al., 2016). In general, research shows inconsistent outcomes of such interventions for weight bias reduction (Daníelsdóttir et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2014). One mechanism that underlies weight bias is weight controllability beliefs (Crandall, 1994). Interventions that seek to change people's beliefs about the causes of weight and the ability to control body weight are known as controllability interventions. In this chapter, a critical analysis of weight bias reduction interventions that focus on changing controllability beliefs is conducted from the perspective of the attribution-value model of prejudice (Crandall et al., 2001). This analysis is conducted in order to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effective incorporation of fat pedagogy (Cameron & Russell, 2016) in health care training programs.