Using Educational Videos and Perspective-Taking to Communicate Gene-By-Environment Interaction Concepts about Eating Behavior: Effects on Empathy and Weight Stigma

This study investigated whether education about gene-by-environment interaction (G × E) concepts could improve G × E knowledge and positively affect empathy and weight stigma. We conducted a randomized trial using a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Online. Five hundred eighty-two American participants from the Prolific platform. Participants were randomly assigned to watch an educational or a control video. Participants then watched a set of vignette scenarios that depicted what it is like to have a predisposition toward obesogenic eating behaviors from either a first-person or third-person perspective. Participants completed questionnaires measuring G × E knowledge, causal attributions, weight stigma, and empathy postintervention. Two-by-two between-subjects ANOVAs and exploratory mediation analyses were conducted. Participants who watched the educational video demonstrated greater G × E knowledge, reported higher empathy toward the characters in the vignette scenarios and held fewer stigmatizing attitudes (notably blame) toward individuals with higher weight. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that the educational video led to these positive downstream effects by increasing the extent to which participants attributed genetic causes to eating behaviors. Education about G × E causes of eating behaviors can have beneficial downstream effects on attitudes toward people with higher weight.