Research participants are commonly engaged with stereotypically negative messages and deleterious images of fatness and fat people and then required to complete anti-fat measures. Intervention research that attempts to engender more positive attitudes is also examined and found to frequently espouse negativity. Examination of these measures indicates that assessments of fat people’s character and attractiveness are central to the current operationalizations of anti-fat attitudes, with the spectrum of negative appraisals including: being deviant, inferior, impaired and disgusting. In this chapter, key measures of anti-fat attitudes are reviewed in order to draw attention to the problematic ways in which fatness, fat bodies and fat people are depicted. While it may seem logical that to reduce anti-fat attitudes we need explicit anti-fat measures, this approach is not without consequence and deserves thoughtful critique.
Currently the more robust and recommended instruments focus on measuring anti-fat sentiment. In assessing and attempting to modify attitudes toward fatness, academics and researchers make use of measures and scales developed specifically for this purpose.
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