Psychological factors may explain why some people develop obesity and others remain a normal weight during their life course. We use an umbrella review approach to build an evidence-based map of the psychological correlates of heavier body weight. Synthesising findings from 42 meta-analyses that have examined associations between psychological factors and heavier body weight, we assessed level of evidence for a range of cognitive, psychosocial and mental health individual difference factors. There is convincing evidence that impaired mental health is associated with heavier body weight and highly suggestive evidence that numerous cognitive factors are associated with heavier body weight. However, the relatively low methodological quality of meta-analyses resulted in lower evidential certainty for most psychosocial factors. Psychological correlates of heavier body weight tended to be small in statistical size and on average, people with obesity were likely to be more psychologically similar than different to people with normal weight. We consider implications for understanding the development of heavier body weight and identifying effective public health interventions to reduce obesity.

心理因素可以解释为什么有些人会肥胖，而另一些人一生中仍保持正常体重。我们使用全面审查方法来建立较重体重的心理关联的循证地图。从42项荟萃分析的综合结果中，研究了心理因素与较重体重之间的关联，我们评估了一系列认知，心理社会和心理健康个体差异因素的证据水平。有令人信服的证据表明心理健康受损与体重增加有关，而高度暗示性的证据表明，许多认知因素与体重增加有关。然而，荟萃分析方法学质量相对较低，导致大多数社会心理因素的证据确定性较低。较重的体重与心理的相关性在统计上趋于较小，平均而言，肥胖的人与正常体重的人相比，心理上的相似性更高。我们考虑对理解体重增加的发展和确定有效的公共卫生干预措施以减轻肥胖的影响。