ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1576406
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Mental Health Impact of Weight StigmaView all 3 articles
Associations between Weight Stigma and Mental Well-Being among People in Romantic Relationships: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model Investigation
Provisionally accepted
Paula Brochu1*
Emily Georgia1Madeline Jubran1
Molly Robbins1Katherine West1Jillian Crocker1Alexandria Schmidt1Katerina Rinaldi1
Em Joseph1McKenzie Roddy2- 1Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, United States
- 2Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
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Background: Romantic relationships are primary sources of mental well-being, including life satisfaction. Stigma not only has adverse effects on individual mental well-being but also negatively affects relationship functioning. The purpose of this dyadic, cross-sectional study was to examine the associations between internalized, anticipated, and experienced weight stigma and mental well-being among people in romantic relationships and their partners. Method: Prolific, an online crowdsourcing platform, was used to recruit 287 couples in long-term relationships who resided in the United States. Participants completed measures of internalized weight stigma, anticipated weight stigma, experienced weight stigma, and mental well-being. Actor-partner interdependence models estimated the associations between participants' weight stigma and their own mental well-being (actor effect) and the mental well-being of their romantic partners (partner effect). Results: As expected, significant negative associations were observed between participants' internalized, anticipated, and experienced weight stigma and their own mental well-being; these actor effects had small to medium effect sizes. Significant negative associations were also observed between participants' internalized and anticipated weight stigma and their partners' mental well-being; these partner effects had small effect sizes. Unexpectedly, a significant partner effect was not observed for experienced weight stigma. Conclusions: Weight stigma is negatively associated with individual mental well-being as well as the mental well-being of romantic partners. Future research is needed to replicate and expand these findings and examine internalized and anticipated weight stigma as potential mechanisms through which experienced weight stigma may affect mental well-being among people in romantic relationships and their partners.
Keywords: Weight Stigma, Mental well-being, Actor-partner interdependence model, Perceived weight discrimination, Internalized weight bias, weight stigma concerns, romantic relationships
Received: 13 Feb 2025; Accepted: 22 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brochu, Georgia, Jubran, Robbins, West, Crocker, Schmidt, Rinaldi, Joseph and Roddy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Paula Brochu, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, United States
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