A recent episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee discussed how weight stigma can affect individuals’ healthcare. It also makes a nod to Dr. T and Dr. Traci Mann’s research findings that dieting doesn’t work and can lead individuals to gain more weight. Check out the full segment here!
DiSH grad student Daniel recently published a paper titled: “Psychometric properties of the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire among vegetarians.” Whereas an abundance of qualitative research has highlighted that vegetarianism is a form of identity, quantitative research investigating specific constructs that capture the concept of vegetarian identity is profoundly lacking. In this paper, Daniel evaluates the psychometric properties of the “Dietarian Identity Questionnaire” in a large sample of vegetarians, validating this measure as a suitable method for assessing constructs of vegetarian identity — that is, how vegetarians think, feel, and behave when it comes to avoiding meat. Check out the full paper here!
An article called “I Couldn’t Get the Right Medical Care Because I’m Fat” was published this week by Glamour. It discusses the negative effects of weight stigma, including how it can affect patients’ medical care. The article also draws upon Dr. T’s recent paper in BMC Medicine, in which she and her colleagues provide a current overview of the weight stigma literature. Check out the full article here!
A new article published yesterday, called “How The Stigma Against Obesity Harms People’s Health,” discusses the negative effects of weight stigma. The article draws upon Dr. T’s recent paper in BMC Medicine, in which she and her colleagues provide a current overview of the weight stigma literature. Dr. T also alludes to her COBWEBS model of weight stigma and says: “And that’s what makes weight stigma doubly pernicious. In addition to the pain and stress it causes, experiencing it makes the original condition more exacerbated.”
DiSH grad student Daniel just wrote an article for Science Trends that was published this week. The article is titled “The Psychology of Vegetarianism.” Daniel discusses what vegetarianism entails, why people are motivated to become vegetarian, and how psychology intersects with vegetarianism. He also mentions research from his recent review paper. Congrats Daniel!
This paper compares vegetarians who are motivated by each of the three leading reasons for giving up meat — animals, health, and the environment. First, he found that both animal-motivated and environmentally motivated vegetarians view their diets as more grounded in their moral beliefs than do health-motivated vegetarians. Second, he explained why vegetarians with different motivations may follow their diets with varying rates of adherence. He found that animal-motivated vegetarians followed their diets more strictly than did either health-motivated or environmentally motivated vegetarians, an effect mediated by animal-motivated vegetarians’ greater feelings of disgust toward meat. Despite being as highly morally motivated as animal-motivated vegetarians, environmentally motivated vegetarians did not report high levels of disgust toward meat; they were similar to those reported by health-motivated vegetarians. These results challenge the notion that people’s moral beliefs about eating meat directly cause them to be disgusted by meat. Rather, these findings suggest that associating meat with its animal origins is a more probable cause of meat disgust.
In a new article published by Vox, titled “Does stress eating actually make you less stressed?”, Dr. T talks all about stress eating. She discusses what it is, what happens when we stress eat, and if it actually works. She also mentions new research directions in stress eating that we’re pursuing here at the DiSH Lab: “So we’ve amassed a little bit of evidence showing that comfort eating actually comforts, but a lot of people say, ‘Okay that’s great, but we don’t want people eating Snickers bars every time they’re stressed, so what do we do here?’”
Read the full article here to find out what she says!
Last week, Dr. T spoke at UCLA’s annual Bruin Family Weekend. She gave a presentation titled, “Fat Shaming: The Science and Solutions,” to students and their families.
Here is a brief overview of her talk: “We live in a society with widespread fat shaming. Research shows that weight discrimination, anti-fat bias, and stigma against obesity have increased in past decades. Dr. T showed that fat shaming has real consequences, not only for mental health but also physical health. Instead of motivating weight loss, fat shaming backfires. It triggers stress and stress hormones, which ironically bring about weight gain. It also makes people eat unhealthy foods like M&Ms and potato chips. Solving the problem of fat shaming will not be easy, but Dr. T discussed potential solutions. The audience received a glimpse into the workings of the DiSH Lab in an immersive presentation that showed how societal phenomena like fat shaming can be studied using a scientific lens.”
A couple weeks ago, Dr. T & Jeff attended the Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology in Seattle. They were part of a symposium full of DiSH Lab collaborators: Drs. Catharine E. Fairbairn, Eli Puterman, Aric A. Prather, and DiSH graduate Dr. Jenna R Cummings! The symposium was titled, “Eat, Drink, (Exercise, Sleep Well) and Be Merry? How Health Behaviors Affect Our Social World.” Here’s Dr. T presenting her talk with Jenna on: “Social closeness shifts after unhealthy eating with strangers and friends.”
Dr. Fairbairn’s talk was titled “Drinking with Strangers: Examining the Effect of Social Familiarity on Alcohol’s Emotional Rewards in Everyday Life.” Dr. Puterman’s talk was titled “Physical activity as psychological resiliency: Its role in mitigated negative affective reactivity to naturally occurring and laboratory stressors.” And Dr. Prather’s talk was titled “Poor sleep as a contributor to negative affect in response to stressful events.”
The conference was a great experience and we’re looking forward to attending next year!
The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) annual convention is a core event for the DiSH Lab, and two of our grad students – Lauren Hofschneider and Daniel Rosenfeld – were named as recipients of the the Diversity Graduate Travel Award! This award provides $500 to underrepresented graduate students to pay for conference-related expenses. They will also be honored at a special reception and have the chance to meet a social psychology scholar they admire.
Congratulations, Lauren & Daniel!