Cheating Your Way to Losing: Perceptions of the Use of Weight Loss Medication

Pooja Somasundaram and Kelly L. Haws

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2026, vol. 11, issue 4, 397 - 412

Abstract: Consumers frequently make judgments about others’ health-related behaviors. Yet the rise of the GLP-1 weight loss industry has sent these judgments into overdrive. Three studies demonstrate that consumers who lose weight using GLP-1 medications are perceived as less moral than those who lose weight through traditional means like diet and exercise. These judgments arise because GLP-1 users are viewed as exerting less effort and taking a less fair approach, with fairness serving as the moral lens through which effort is evaluated. Further, these perceptions decrease observers’ intentions to seek referrals for or recommend GLP-1 use to others. Importantly, these inferences are malleable: signaling concurrent effort, particularly through following restrictive diets, can reduce moral scrutiny and improve social evaluations. Together, our findings highlight the reputational costs associated with GLP-1 use and demonstrate how visible signals of effort can help individuals manage the moral judgments that accompany stigmatized self-improvement methods.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/742538 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/742538 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/742538

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association for Consumer Research from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().