The commonly known negative effects of obesity tend to be health-related, but now, a team of researchers, one from Purdue University and two from Colorado State University, has revealed that overweight people also possess an altered perception - they tend to see things as farther away than people of average weight. The results stem from several field experiments that examined the perceptual differences that occur as people gain weight, as outlined in the press release.
The first experiment examined customers visiting Walmart. The team asked them to estimate how far away a cone was that had been placed on the sidewalk outside. Although the actual distance was 25 meters away, the team found that overweight people tended to overestimate the distance, overshooting by up to five meters. Alternatively, those who were slimmer than the average weight tended to underestimate, undershooting by up to 15 meters.
The team believes that these results may be evidence that as people gain weight, their perception of the world shifts, much in the same way as a person hiking with a heavy backpack typically begins to see the hills as farther away, higher and more difficult to reach compared to a hiker without a backpack.
In another experiment, the team examined volunteers rotating a line on a card in order to show how steep they thought a nearby hill was - overweight subjects tended to show a much steeper hill than reality. And in another, the researchers watched volunteers play putt-putt golf while under an illusion that made the hole look smaller. Despite the fact that the hole size was not actually altered, the teams still played worse, supporting the altered perception hypothesis.
The team believes that these perceptual changes are a fixed result of weight gain that cannot be stopped even if subjects are aware of the process. Furthermore, they believe that weight loss programs should take these perceptual changes into consideration if they want them to be as effective as possible.
The findings were published in the Mar. 2016 issue of Acta Psychologica.
