1. Valerie Douglas Advisor: Sarah Savoy, Ph. D
Weight-Based Stereotyping as a Moderator of the Relation between Weight Stigmatization Experiences and Eating Disorder-Related Pathology
Valerie Douglas
Advisor: Sarah Savoy, Ph. D

2. Weight Based Stigmatization Experiences
Negative social consequences of weight stigma the overweight endure
More than half of America’s population is overweight
Prejudice rates against the overweight are high
Has increased by 66% over the past decade
Higher reports of weight stigmatization experiences are associated with higher reports many health risk factors, but also many psychosocial risk factors.

3. Weight Stereotypes Weight stereotypes
Lazy
Unattractive
No willpower
Internalization in addition to weight
stigmatization experience is linked to:
Higher rates of binge eating & BED
Harmful coping mechanisms
Eating more, exercising less, refusing to diet
Internalization- for an overweight individual, they would think the stereotypes are true about themselves because they are overweight.
They have found that the higher an individual’s internalization of negative weight stereotypes was, the higher the individual’s degree of disordered eating pathology was.

4. The Current Study Aimed to
Determine patterns of eating disorder risk associated with weight
stigmatization experiences
Determine roles of specific
stereotypes in conjunction
with experience with weight stigmatization experiences
Investigate how it affects a college age population
Younger people report more weight stigmatization experiences than older people.
Recent work suggests that college students are just as likely as bariatric patients to have a severe risk for binge eating behavior.
It has also been shown that eating disorders in general have a high prevalence and a high level of persistence in the college student population.

5. Participants 783 participants Mean age = 35.4 years, SD = 8.7
74% female
Undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses at SFASU
Completed an online survey for extra credit
Figure 1. Ethnic Breakdown of participants in percentage.

6. Measures Weight Status Weight Stigmatization Experiences
BMI computed from reports of height and weight
Weight Stigmatization Experiences
Myers and Rosen’s (1999) Stigmatizing Situations Inventory
Indicated their level of experience with different weight-based stigmatization experiences
Ex. “Having a doctor recommend a diet even if you did not come in to discuss weight loss.”
Ex. “Having people assume that you overeat or binge-eat because you are overweight.”

7. Measures Eating-disorder related pathology
Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (Fairburn & Beglin, 1994)
Self-report survey measure that is based on an investigator-based eating disorder interview
Explicit Weight Stereotyping
Using adjective pairings participants rated how they describe overweight or obese people
Industrious-Lazy, Attractive-Unattractive, and Has Will Power-Has No Will Power
The items we used for the EDEQ assessed the participants desired to lose weight, had a fear of fat, were dissatisfied with their weight, and how many times they had felt fat in the past week.

8. Results

9. Figure 2. Male desire to lose weight as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of unattractiveness stereotype.
Figure 3. Female reports of feeling fat as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of unattractiveness stereotype.
The unattractiveness stereotype was a vulnerability factor in a similar way for males for the desire to lose weight and body dissatisfaction items and for females for the feeling fat item.
On all, high endorsement of the stereotype meant that weight stigmatization was more strongly associated with these risk factors.
Figure 4. Male body dissatisfaction as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of unattractiveness stereotype.

10. However, for females who endorsed the unattractiveness stereotype, low levels of weight stigmatization was actually more strongly associated with body dissatisfaction, meaning it’s a protective factor.
Figure 5. Female body dissatisfaction as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of unattractiveness stereotype.

11. For males who did not endorse the laziness stereotype, weight stigmatization was more strongly associated with desire to lose weight, making high endorsement a protective factor.
Figure 6. Male reports of desire to lose weight as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of laziness stereotype.

12. For females who did not endorse the no-willpower stereotype, weight stigmatization was more strongly associated with fear of fat, meaning high endorsement is a protective factor.
Figure 7. Female fear of fat as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of no will-power stereotype.

13. For males who endorsed the no-willpower stereotype, weight stigmatization was more strongly associated with feeling fat, making it a risk factor.
Figure 8. Male reports of feeling fat as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of no will-power stereotype.

14. For males who endorsed the no willpower stereotype, weight stigmatization was more strongly associated with body dissatisfaction, making it a risk factor.
Figure 9. Male body dissatisfaction as a function of weight stigmatization and endorsement of no will-power stereotype.

15. Discussion The data support the idea that prevention or intervention:
Needs to be stereotype belief specific
Needs to be different for males and
females
Especially for certain stereotypes
These results point to a need to consider each weight-related stereotype as a distinct predictor.
Stereotypes appear to moderate risk in ways that are dependent upon gender.
For example, the No will-power stereotype belief may buffer risk in females while exacerbating risk in males. Since the participant’s gender moderates the effects for certain stereotypes, interventions can not be generalized across genders.

16. Discussion Future research should:
Determine the direction of the relationships
Further explore the acceptance and rejection of these beliefs as protective or detrimental factors
Relationships between weight stigmatization experiences, stereotyping, and eating-disordered pathology