Stéréotypes de poids, jugement de valeur et de recrutabilité : les rôles modérateurs du sexe et de la personnalité

Objective

The existing literature testifies to the presence of discrimination against obese people in hiring. The present study aimed to test the effects of candidates’ weight on value judgment and recruitability by taking into account their gender and personality. The study using the judges’ paradigm involved a sample of 279 recruiters. The recruiters were asked to judge eight fictitious CVs including a photo of the candidate, their education, their work experience and their answers to a personality test (proactive or reactive personality). The target job was a medical laboratory technician.

Results

Analyses of variance revealed significant effects of applicants’ weight, and proactivity on judgements of agreeableness, effort, competence and recruitability. Indeed, obese people are discriminated against in hiring whereas proactivity would be a variable increasing the recruitability judgment. Moreover, the gender of applicants alone is no longer a variable that encourages discrimination.

Conclusion

This study opens up a new field of research on proactivity as a social norm of judgement and corroborates previous studies on weight discrimination in personnel selection. The limitations of the study open up new avenues of research.