The Psychological Weight of Weight Stigma
Abstract
The authors theorized that overweight individuals experience social identity threat in situations that activate concerns about weight stigma, causing them to experience increased stress and reduced self-control. To test these predictions, women who varied in body mass index (BMI) gave a speech on why they would make a good dating partner. Half thought they were videotaped (weight visible); the remainder thought they were audiotaped (weight not visible). As predicted, higher BMI was associated with increased blood pressure and poorer performance on a measure of executive control when weight was visible and concerns about stigma were activated but not when weight was not visible. Compared to average weight women, overweight women also reported more stress-related emotions when videotaped versus audiotaped. Findings suggest that weight stigma can be detrimental to mental and physical health and deplete self-regulatory resources necessary for weight control.
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Biographies
Brenda Major is Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Purdue University in 1978 and taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1978 to 1995 before joining UCSB. She has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals and edited books, and co-edited the book The Psychology of Legitimacy. Current research interests focus on the psychology of stigma and social identity threat, responses to prejudice, and status legitimizing beliefs. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Dina Eliezer is completing her doctorate in Social Psychology the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research examines psychological and physiological responses to social identity threat and explores how status justifying beliefs, group identification, and collective self-esteem moderate such responses.
Heather Rieck received her Master in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She currently manages an apartment complex in Seattle, Washington.
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Article first published online: January 19, 2012
Issue published: November 2012
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