After reading a case description of a 20-year-old woman, subjects attributed her personal shortcomings to her weight rather than to herself per se. In particular, people who scored higher on a measure of self-handicapping were even more likely to attribute shortcomings to a person's weight and excuse or overlook them. A person who attributes shortcomings to being overweight will very likely find a sympathetic audience. These results support the suggestion by Baumeister, Kahn, and Tice (1990) that obesity can be a self-handicapping strategy.
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