Norms and attributions about weight gain during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Objective. Weight gain was common during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially creating a new descriptive norm about weight gain. The unique context of a global pandemic may have influenced situational attributions for weight gain that were not typical prior to the pandemic. We examined the effects of the new norm on people’s views about responsibility and blame for weight gain.

Methods. In two preregistered surveys, we aimed to manipulate the salience of weight gain during COVID-19, and measured views about responsibility and blame for weight gain.

Results. Among participants who gained weight, the more common they perceived weight gain to be, the more they felt their own weight gain was understandable (b = 0.09, se = 0.04, p = 0.02), but perceived commonness didn’t relate to their feelings of responsibility and blame for weight gain. For participants who didn't gain weight, the perceived commonness of weight gain was associated with less blame towards people who gained weight (b = 0.11, se= 1.46, p = 0.044), but not with responsibility for weight gain.

Conclusion. Participants believed weight gain was common during COVID, but this descriptive norm had mixed associations with attributions for one's own and others’ weight gain.

Keywords:

• Weight gain
• descriptive norms
• attributions
• weight stigma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on the 'Open Science Framework' at https://osf.io/ua4rd/.

Notes

1 This was the only backup set of analyses we preregistered