Obesity, laypeople's beliefs and implications for clinicians and leaders of healthcare organisations.

Background/aim: Overweight and obesity (OAO) is a major and growing public health crisis in the world. There is convincing medical evidence that caloric overconsumption, rather than lack of exercise, is the primary driver of OAO.

Methods: In this translation piece, we summarise our programme of research on laypeople's beliefs about the primary cause of OAO, the origins of these beliefs and implications for clinicians and leadership in healthcare organisations.

Lay theories of obesity predict actual body mass.

Obesity is a major public health problem, but despite much research into its causes, scientists have largely neglected to examine laypeople's personal beliefs about it. Such naive beliefs are important because they guide actual goal-directed behaviors. In a series of studies across five countries on three continents, we found that people mainly believed either that obesity is caused by a lack of exercise or that it is caused by a poor diet.

Moral identity and the experience of moral elevation in response to acts of uncommon goodness.

Four studies using survey and experimental designs examined whether people whose moral identity is highly self-defining are more susceptible to experiencing a state of moral elevation after being exposed to acts of uncommon moral goodness. Moral elevation consists of a suite of responses that motivate prosocial action tendencies. Study 1 showed that people higher (vs.

Overcoming beneficiary race as an impediment to charitable donations: social dominance orientation, the experience of moral elevation, and donation behavior.

Three studies examined the relationship between social dominance orientation (SDO), the experience of moral elevation, and Whites' donations to charitable organizations. Study 1 used video clips depicting acts of moral excellence to elicit a state of moral elevation (a distinctive feeling of warmth and expansion, which is accompanied by admiration, affection, and even love for people whose exemplary moral behavior is being observed). Results show that moral elevation increased participants' willingness to donate to a Black-oriented charity and attenuated the negative effect of the group-based dominance (GBD) component of SDO on donation behavior.