Papers of the Week

The Early Career Awards, given for the first time in 1974, recognize the large number of excellent early career psychologists. Recipients of this award may not have held a doctoral degree for more than nine years. For her compassionate illumination of the bias, stigma, and discrimination to which individuals with obesity are subjected in media portrayals and in their daily lives, Rebecca L. Pearl is a 2024 award winner. Pearl has thoroughly revealed the pernicious effects of weight stigma on physical and mental health, particularly in persons who have internalized society’s stigmatization. Her stellar research has included population surveys, structured clinical interviews, and randomized controlled trials, which have captured the complexities of internalized weight stigma while creating a promising cognitive behavioral intervention to counteract society’s weight-stigmatizing messages. With characteristic empathy and scientific rigor, she is now poised to address the stigmatization that erodes the quality of life in individuals who live with HIV, cancer, Type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, and other diseases. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).