An exploratory study of the correlates of weight-based mistreatment at work

Weight-based mistreatment (WBM), which reflects mistreatment through hostility, threats, underhanded comments, physical violence, or microaggressions that explicitly targets a person’s larger body size, occurs frequently in the workplace. To begin to uncover why it occurs, this research documents correlates of WBM by investigating stigmatization of weight through four conceptual frames: stereotyping, the justification-suppression model of prejudice, objectification theory, and occupational contexts. Across a sample of 1,008 self-identified larger-bodied respondents, 383 paired coworkers, and data from O*NET about occupational features of the larger-bodied respondents’ jobs, we conducted a cross-sectional quantitative exploratory study. Results suggest that larger-bodied employees in workplace climates that promote thinness (e.g., where talk emphasizing that coworkers should strive to be thinner is common) or who fail to regulate or condemn negative body talk tend to report more WBM, as do employees in more generally unsupportive or aggressive interpersonal professional climates. Furthermore, employees’ self-views contribute to differences between rates of WBM: larger employees who report states of self-evaluated vulnerability – that is, believing that they do not measure up to peers or feeling generally unworthy – also report more WBM. Taken together, results suggest that correlates of WBM are multi-factorial, germinating from weight stigmatizing perceptions that originate within the self, from coworkers, and various attributes of workplace climates.