Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality
Open accessAbstract
Discrimination based on weight is a stressful social experience linked to declines in physical and mental health. We examined whether this harmful association extends to risk of mortality. Participants in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; N = 13,692) and the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS; N = 5,079) reported on perceived discriminatory experiences and attributed those experiences to a number of personal characteristics, including weight. Weight discrimination was associated with an increase in mortality risk of nearly 60% in both HRS participants (hazard ratio = 1.57, 95% confidence interval = [1.34, 1.84]) and MIDUS participants (hazard ratio = 1.59, 95% confidence interval = [1.09, 2.31]). This increased risk was not accounted for by common physical and psychological risk factors. The association between mortality and weight discrimination was generally stronger than that between mortality and other attributions for discrimination. In addition to its association with poor health outcomes, weight discrimination may shorten life expectancy.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Weight discrimination is associated with an increased risk of negative physical, mental, and social health and even morbidity.
“Weight discrimination is associated with an increased risk of negative physical, mental, and social health and even morbidity. 9 , 25”
From Positive psychological well-being in women with obesity: A scoping review of qualitative and quantitative primary research (2022) · cites this paper as [25]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 32 · Cited by 399
- Authors
- Sutin, A. R., Stephan, Y., & Terracciano, A.
- Affiliations
- Florida State University (US)
- Dynamics of Human Abilities and Health Behaviors Laboratory, University of Montpellier
- Corresponding author
- Sutin, Angelina R.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-09-29
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1803-1811
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- PMC
- PMC4636946
- OpenAlex
- W2174041190
- Cited by
- 399
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 50 · 2022: 50 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 20
- FWCI
- 52.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (P01AG020166, U01AG009740, U19AG051426)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R15HD083947)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Pharmacy › Obesity and Health Practices
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- weight discrimination, mortality risk, perceived discrimination, weight stigma, life expectancy, health risk factors, older adults, middle-aged adults, stress and health
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Health, Middle Aged, Mortality, Prejudice, Surveys and Questionnaires, Stress, Psychological, United States, Proportional Hazards Models, Overweight, Social Discrimination
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
