5 ms·
>Most families include the elderly and the overweight, so the idea that familiarity breeds acceptance would predict that those biases should be going away quick
by blotter_paper 7y ago
>Most families include the elderly and the overweight, so the idea that familiarity breeds acceptance would predict that those biases should be going away quicker than biases against gays.
What I'm about to say is not meant to provide a justification for discriminatory behavior, it's just an armchair-anthropologist's attempt at explaining this discrepancy. We might have a very deep bias against old people; if a group of animals has to decide who gets a split of food, and some of them have a dramtically shorter life expectancy, I could imagine there being a biological tendency to care about the young over the old. A similar calculation might be made about the disabled, since a wounded companion is less helpful than an able-bodied one. Weight, I have a number of ideas about. There's a disease correlation, of course. We also might ostracize overweight people because overweight people were more likely to be hoarding food in our deep past, and sharing with those who don't share back is a bad strategy. Even if the specifics of my armchair-anthropology are utter horseshit, I could see factors similar to these out-weighing the familiarity bias without discounting it.
- awb 7y agoThe bias against overweight people is probably less about them hoarding and more about them being unhealthy. We probably have a bias against unhealthy people because they'd drain the time and resources of a tribe. And they'd be less likely to help with physical activities like hunting, gathering and war. Obesity is a very new phenomenon but not wanting to include or associate with people who seem sick or unhealthy is probably pretty old.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Hitton 7y agoBias against overweight people isn't about them being unhealthy, plenty of other unhealthy people have public sympathies, the problem is they are mostly "voluntarily" unhealthy - they want accommodations for conditions caused by their unhealthy habit. It's similar to drug addicts' plight in both the cause and reaction.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y agoI wonder at want point a gentle pressure to change unhealthy eating habits becomes "discriminatory behavior"?
- pharke 7y agoThe counter to that is that the elderly and the overweight haven't always been the subjects of negative bias. There are plenty of inversions of that bias throughout history and across cultures. It's honestly just fashionable to be young and skinny at this point in history and this part of the world, hence the bias against the opposites.
- blotter_paper 7y agoThat's a pretty good counter, actually. I was aware of those facts, but hadn't considered them in this context as far as I recall.