Dr. Marx Publishes Research in Obesity Journal

Dr. Jenna Marx, assistant professor of psychology, published “Nothing alien about it: A comparison of weight bias in preschool-aged children’s ratings of non-human cartoons and human figures” in the Journal of Obesity Research & Clinical Practice. Marx, a licensed clinical psychologist and the department’s internship director, noted that “media exposes children to weight-biased messaging by presenting overweight characters negatively.” Her study found that preschool children demonstrated weight bias when assigning personality characteristics to images, with “overweight figures consistently rated more negatively than non-overweight figures, regardless of gender, stimulus type, or novelty of the image.”