This was a short validation study of the Weight Stigma Resistance Scale (WSRS). At Time 1, 123 high-weight, UK-based participants completed the WSRS, the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), and the Brief Social Dominance Orientation, Short-Form (SDO7s). At Time 2, two weeks later, a subset of 62 of the original participants completed the WSRS a second time. The WSRS demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity and good test-retest reliability.The prevalence of high-weight status is increasing globally, with approximately 60% of people in the UK considered 'overweight' or 'obese' by BMI standards, and similar rates in many other countries. Despite this, higher-weight individuals experience prejudice and discrimination in practically every domain of daily living, including education, employment, healthcare, and interpersonal relationships. We know from other oppressed groups that stigma is associated with poorer health and life outcomes, and in the last ten years, these effects have been demonstrated also in the case of weight stigma. A better understanding of how these processes occur and identification of potential targets for intervention to reduce resulting harms is of critical importance to public policy. Little is known about how the impact of weight stigma is transmitted, and even less on how the harms can be minimised. My PhD work focused predominantly on internalised weight stigma (IWS) - the phenomenon where higher-weight people devalue themselves because of their weight. IWS has been linked with a range of physical and psychological health problems, and unhelpful coping strategies such as disordered eating, avoidance of exercise, social isolation, and substance use. IWS is also an intermediary in many of the problems associated with experiencing stigma from others. However, we do not know why some people internalise societal stigma, others are largely unaffected, and some actively resist and challenge the stigma. During my PhD, I developed the first questionnaire to measure weight stigma resistance and demonstrated that resistance was associated with improved psychological wellbeing. I also drew on research from the mental health stigma literature and identified a number of key characteristics of internalisers and resisters. One important factor was whether the individual had a strong group identity - that is, whether they feel a sense of kinship and belonging with other higher-weight people. People with high group identity were less likely to internalise and more likely to resist. Another important factor was whether or not they felt that body weight was under individual control and simply a matter of willpower. Those who believed they could become slimmer tended not to resist stigma and were more likely to internalise it. But perhaps most interestingly, believing that stigma of higher-weight people was not justified helped to define resisters even if they didn't have high group identity and whether or not they felt their weight status was controllable. This means that it may be possible to develop health promotion interventions that take a social justice-based approach: that stigma is wrong whatever the circumstances and people deserve to be treated equally and with respect whatever their weight. Such an intervention may improve psychological wellbeing in higher-weight individuals regardless of their current beliefs and feelings about their weight.

Participants were previously self-identified higher-weight adults aged 18 or over currently living in the UK, for a study on “Personality and opinions about groups.” The purpose of the study was transparent, such that participants were informed that the aim of the study was to test a new questionnaire and to assess whether individuals’ personality and values influence their responses to the questionnaire. Two sets of identical recruitment advertisements were used, each with a different pre-screen gender identity criterion (male- or female-identified), to ensure that equal numbers of men and women were recruited. A total of 142 participants were recruited at Time 1, however after excluding those who no longer self-classified as “overweight”, the final sample size was 123 (62 identified as male and 61 as female). All but five participants identified as White. Nearly two-thirds (64.2%) self-classified as “a little overweight”, with 30.9% self-classifying as “moderately overweight” and 4.9% as “very overweight.” An invitation to complete Part 2 of the study was sent to all participants who had completed Part 1. The recruitment target was set at 61 participants – 50% of those who had completed Part 1. Participants who completed the WSRS at Time 2 did not differ from those who did not, either demographically, with respect to self-classified weight, or on any other measure collected at Time 1. Again, participants were informed of the purpose of the study, namely that we were interested in whether responses to the questionnaire were stable over time.