The Effect of Work Discrimination on the Well-being of Obese People.

Obesity, a serious health problem affecting millions of people in industrialized societies, has also a social dimension that has been mostly ignored by the medical and social sciences. In order to prove that discrimination in the workplace has a bearing on the well-being of obese people, an experimental study was designed in which 110 obese patients of a big Spanish hospital who were at the moment following a weight reduction treatment took part. As expected, a negative relation between discrimination and well-being was found and, in addition, this relationship was mediated by participants' work skills. Stereotype threat effects for obese people in the workplace were also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]