Background. Including spouses in obesity treatment has been found to promote weight loss. We assessed whether spouses' diet and activity changes impacted each other's weight loss when both members attended an active weight loss program (TOGETHER) or only the primary participant attended treatment (ALONE). Methods. Heterosexual couples (N = 132) enrolled in an 18-month randomized controlled weight loss trial were weighed and completed measures of dietary intake and physical activity at baseline and 6 months. We conducted dyadic data analyses using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Results. Participants' weight loss was not predicted by their partners' behavior changes. However, partners' weight loss was predicted by their participants' changes in calorie and fat intake. When partners were coupled with a participant who did not reduce their own calorie and fat intake as much, these partners had higher weight loss when treated in the TOGETHER group but lower weight loss when they were untreated in the ALONE group. There were no reciprocal effects found with physical activity changes. Conclusions. Direct treatment had the greatest impact on participants and partners who were treated. Untreated partners' weight losses were positively impacted by their spouses' dietary changes, suggesting a ripple effect from treated spouses to their untreated partners.

We integrated theories of social stigma and rejection sensitivity to develop a new construct for understanding the effects of day-to-day experiences of interpersonal weight stigma: weight-based rejection sensitivity (W-RS), or a tendency to anxiously expect weight-based rejection. We created a new scale to measure W-RS. Studies 1 and 2 together established the scale as valid and reliable in a college student population. Study 3 examined the outcomes and predictive validity of W-RS by testing the effects of W-RS longitudinally across college students' first semester. Those who were high in W-RS were found to be at additional risk for compromised psychological and physical well-being over time. W-RS also predicted poorer adjustment to college. Overall, W-RS could help to explain individual reactions to stigma and to predict when weight stigmatization may have a greater likelihood of impacting a target.

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Psychology students delivered stress and coping workshops to homeless adolescent mothers as part of a college service-learning project. In this vulnerable and underserved population, stress reduction is critical. Service-learning was used as an avenue to enhance student learning and growth while helping meet this need in our community. The psychology students developed deeper learning, professional skills, and social awareness. The adolescent mothers developed stress reduction skills that they were able to successfully implement. Challenges and recommendations for the implementation of similar service-learning projects are discussed.Keywords: service-learning, action teaching, stress reduction, homeless, adolescent mothers, health psychology, social justice Non-Technical SummaryStudents in a Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine course completed an action teaching assignment for which they taught workshops on stress and coping to homeless pregnant and parenting teens in a temporary shelter. Students visited the shelter weekly for four weeks. The primary objective of the assignment was to develop two interactive workshops, one on stress research and one on coping research, which would be tailored to the needs of the residents.The goal of the project was to deepen student learning about health psychology through the application of research findings and to help local women who were going through challenging times in their lives.Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2017, Vol. 5(2), 463-476, doi:10.5964/jspp.v5i2.813 Received: 2017-06-21. Accepted: 2017-08-28. Published (VoR): 2017 Handling Editor: Johanna Ray Vollhardt, Department of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA *Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY, 14618, USA. E-mail: kmcclure@sjfc.edu This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. jspp.psychopen.eu | 2195-3325 Project Background and Description Journal of Social and Political Psychology Course ContentStress and coping theories are commonly taught in Health Psychology courses. Stress can be very harmful for mental and physical health, especially when stress is chronic (Kemeny, 2003;Segerstrom & Miller, 2004). Stress compromises many systems of the body, leading to higher likelihood of disease and shortened lifespan (Mathur et al., 2016;Segerstrom & Miller, 2004). However, coping effectively with stress can serve to reduce the likelihood of these adverse effects. The important role of stress and coping in the human experience warrants considerable course coverage in Health Psychology courses.A popular technique for teaching stress and coping theories is to have students apply these theories to their own lives. According to Bloom's taxonomy, application of concepts leads to a higher level of lear...

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