Higher-weight individuals face pervasive weight-related stigma and discrimination in their daily lives. There is conceptual and empirical evidence to suggest that weight stigma contributes to worse physical and psychological health outcomes, mediated by the deleterious psychobiological responses to psychosocial stress. Activating self-soothing emotional states (such as self-compassion) may protect against this psychobiological cascade, conferring resilience to negative social evaluation (such as weight stigma). This proof-of-concept study aims to establish the feasibility of an experimental protocol testing whether an acute self-compassion intervention can attenuate the psychobiological stress response to induced weight-based social-evaluative threat. Participants will be randomized into either self-compassion intervention or rest control groups. A standard body composition assessment will be used to induce weight stigma among young women who self-identify as "higher-weight." Stress-sensitive biomarkers (i.e., salivary cortisol and heart-rate variability) along with psychological indices of self-conscious emotions will be used to quantify the psychobiological stress response. This novel pilot study will contribute to efforts to understand the psychobiological processes by which self-compassion facilitates adaptive responding to acute stress, and will help inform future tests of interventions focused on mitigating the harmful health effects of social stigma.
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Area under the curve for cortisol reactivity
Timeframe: Saliva samples will be collected at baseline, post-stigma induction (0 minutes), and at 10 (i.e. ~25 minutes post stressor onset, expected peak), 20 and 35 minutes post-induction
Change in State Distress from baseline to post-stigma induction
Timeframe: Self-reported distress will measured at 3 points: baseline (~10 minutes after start of session), post self-compassion intervention or control (45 minutes after start) and post stigma induction (60 minutes after start).
Change in State Self-Conscious Body Emotions from baseline to post-stigma induction
Timeframe: Self-report body emotions will measured at 3 points: baseline (~10 minutes after start of session), post self-compassion intervention or control (45 minutes after start) and post stigma induction (60 minutes after start).
Change in State Shame and Guilt from baseline to post-stigma induction
Timeframe: Self-report shame and guilt will measured at 3 points: baseline (~10 minutes after start of session), post self-compassion intervention or control (45 minutes after start) and post stigma induction (60 minutes after start)
Change in State Weight Bias Internalization from baseline to post-stigma induction
Timeframe: Self-report weight bias internalization measured at 3 points: baseline (~10 minutes after session start), post self-compassion intervention or control (45 minutes after start) and post induction (60 minutes after start).
Root mean square of successive differences in Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Timeframe: 4 phases: baseline measurement (minutes 5-10), intervention (minutes 15-45), weight-stigma induction (minutes 45-60), recovery (minutes 60-95).]