Abstract
Although the increasing popularity of weight-stereotypical bias in China has become a significant issue, there is a relative paucity of empirical research examining whether Chinese college students have both pro-thin and pro-fat implicit preferences. To address this, an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded in twenty-five students (13 male and 12 female) who were required to identify the target words as negative or positive between the subliminal priming concept words that were presented in congruent (fat matches clumsiness) and incongruent conditions (fat matches diligent) in a subliminal attitude prime task. The results confirmed that the amplitude of the N400 elicited in congruent condition “fat words priming-negative words” was significantly larger in the left hemisphere than in incongruent conditions "fat words priming-positive words", and the amplitude of the N400 elicited in incongruent condition “thin words priming-negative words” was significantly larger in the left hemisphere than in congruent conditions "thin words priming - positive words ". Those are indexed by the N400 that are sensitive to the semantic violation, reflecting the higher conflict when participants classified target words as negative words subliminal primed by fat or thin words. These findings demonstrate that N400 could be used as of pro-thin and pro-fat implicit preference of cognitive neural mechanisms among Chinese college students.