The following is an excerpt of the intervention methodology. For more information, please see the full text of the article on the publisher's website or through your institution's library.

Participants and design

The study used a 2 (candidate body fat: lower or higher) x 2 (intervention: control or IIC) between-subjects design. Participants were 159 undergraduate students recruited through the psychology subject pool at a medium-sized, urban university in the Midwestern United States over the course of several years. Data from five participants were excluded from analysis [...], producing a final sample of N = 154. Of these, 51.3% were Caucasian, 29.2% were African American, 7.1% were Asian American, 3.9% chose Other, 3.2% were multiracial, 2.6% were Hispanic, and 2.6% declined to respond to the question. Our sample was predominantly (79.2%) female, and the average age was 23.95 years. When asked whether they worked at a job outside of school, 66.2% of participants responded “yes.” Their mean number of hours worked per week was 20.4, and 23.4% of the sample indicated that they had interviewed a job applicant at least once. [...]

Procedure At Time 1, the participants completed a survey containing several demographic measures and received a randomly assigned imagery intervention (control or IIC). Participants were asked to write a description of the imagined scenario [...]. Next, they read a job description and watched a videotaped interview in which the content was standardized, but the candidate had either lower or higher body fat. The interview responses were designed so that the candidate’s suitability for the job was ambiguous [...]. After watching the interview, participants rated the candidate’s competence and warmth. Time 2 occurred 1 week later. At Time 2, participants were asked to provide a hiring recommendation (yes/no) based on their memory of the candidate’s interview. To test our hypotheses that IIC would decrease discrimination against the fatter female candidate, we selected a job setting where we thought such discrimination would likely occur. Thus, our candidates were interviewing for the job of sporting goods salesperson [...].

Manipulations

Candidate weight [...] Aside from BMI, the actors looked similar—both were young, White women with long, brown hair, and each wore a cardigan sweater over a navy blouse.

Manipulation Participants were randomly assigned to either the control or the IIC intervention. [...] In the control intervention, the participants were asked to: [Verbal Stimulus A]. In the IIC intervention the participants were asked to: [Verbal Stimulus B].

Manipulation checks At the end of the study, participants were asked to classify the weight of the interviewee in the video. [...] In addition, participants were asked to write an open-ended description of their mental imagery. Two of the authors coded the responses in the mental imagery condition for the extent to which the participants seemed to have followed three components of the instructions. Coders assessed whether each written response described (a) when and (b) where the interaction occurred along with (c) whether the participants reported learning something new about the woman with obesity. [...]

Measures

Candidate competence Competence was measured using seven items on a 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). [...]

Candidate warmth Candidate warmth was measured using four items [...] that were assessed on a 5-point, Likert-type response scale. [...]

Hiring recommendation The hiring recommendation was provided 1 week following the initial session. Participants rated whether they would recommend the candidate be hired using a single item on a Yes/No scale [...].