The current study experimentally investigated the impact of causal‐explanatory information on weight bias over development. Participants (n = 395, children ages 4–11 years and adults) received either a biological or behavioral explanation for body size, or neither, in three between‐subjects conditions. Participants then made preference judgments for characters with smaller versus larger body sizes. Results showed that both behavioral and biological explanations impacted children’s preferences. Relative to children’s baseline preferences, behavioral explanations enhanced preferences for smaller characters, and biological explanations reduced these preferences—unlike the typical facilitative impact of biological‐essentialist explanations on other biases. The explanations did not affect adults’ preferences. In contrast to previous findings, we demonstrate that causal knowledge can impact weight bias early in development.

中文翻译：

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体重的因果解释影响儿童的社会偏好：生物本质主义者的解释减少而行为解释得到促进，瘦朋友的偏好

当前的研究通过实验研究了因果解释信息对体重偏倚于发育的影响。参加人数 = 395，年龄在4-11岁之间的儿童和成人）在三个对象之间的情况下接受了关于身体大小的生物学或行为学解释，或两者均未接受。然后，参与者对身材较小或较大的角色做出偏好判断。结果表明，行为和生物学解释都影响儿童的喜好。相对于儿童的基线偏爱，行为解释增加了对较小人物的偏爱，而生物学解释则减少了这些偏爱，这与生物学本质主义解释对其他偏见的典型促进作用不同。这些解释并没有影响成年人的喜好。与以前的发现相反，我们证明因果知识可以影响发育早期的体重偏差。