Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS)

1. Abstract

The Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS) is an established psychometric instrument designed to assess retrospective memories of peer teasing experienced during childhood and adolescence (specifically between the ages of 5 and 16 years). Developed by J. Kevin Thompson, Jill Cattarin, Barbara Fowler, and Eric Fisher in 1995, the POTS represents a refined and psychometrically rigorous extension of the earlier Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale (PARTS). The instrument uniquely evaluates two fundamental dimensions of developmental peer victimization: weight-related teasing and competency-related teasing. Rather than measuring victimization purely as a frequency count, the POTS captures both the perceived frequency of teasing occurrences and the concurrent emotional impact or subjective distress produced by each event.

Structurally, the standard POTS contains 11 primary items scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Very Often). For each primary item where teasing occurred, respondents complete an associated secondary probe evaluating the degree of emotional distress experienced at the time of the event, scored from 1 (Not Upset) to 5 (Very Upset). Psychometric investigations consistently demonstrate robust internal consistency across populations, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .85 to .90 for the Weight-Related Teasing subscale and .80 to .86 for the Competency-Related Teasing subscale. Factor analytic evaluations have confirmed a clear, replicated two-factor orthogonal or oblique structure that differentiates somatic degradation from intellectual and functional disparagement. The POTS has demonstrated profound construct, convergent, and predictive validity in clinical and community cohorts, showing substantial correlations with body dissatisfaction, negative affectivity, restrictive eating patterns, bulimic pathology, depression, and low global self-esteem.

2. Keywords

Perception of Teasing Scale, POTS, weight teasing, competency teasing, childhood peer victimization, body image dissatisfaction, eating disorders, weight stigma, retrospective self-report, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Perception of Teasing Scale was formulated by an authoritative clinical psychology research team at the University of South Florida led by Dr. J. Kevin Thompson:

• J. Kevin Thompson, Ph.D. — Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. Renowned expert on body image disturbance, sociocultural appearance pressure, and eating disorder etiology. Email: [email protected].
• Jill Cattarin, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. Clinical psychologist specializing in developmental peer relationships and body image.
• Barbara Fowler, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. Co-investigator on childhood interpersonal trauma and physical appearance evaluation.
• Eric Fisher, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. Researcher focusing on adolescent social cognitive development and psychometric modeling.

4. Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS) is to quantify individual retrospective recollections of peer verbal harassment and interpersonal victimization occurring during formative developmental stages (ages 5 to 16). Childhood and adolescence represent critical epochs for the consolidation of the bodily self, personal efficacy, and core self-worth. Interpersonal teasing within peer networks can act as an acute or chronic socio-evaluative stressor, fundamentally disrupting healthy identity formation. The authors recognized that existing developmental victimization scales either lumped all types of childhood bullying together or focused exclusively on general physical aggression, obscuring the specialized psychological consequences of distinct categories of verbal teasing.

In both clinical and experimental psychopathology contexts, the POTS was engineered to address two major theoretical gaps. First, it aimed to disentangle appearance-focused ridicule—specifically centered on adiposity, weight, and body shape—from generalized competency-focused ridicule, such as mockery targeting intellectual aptitude, motor coordination, cognitive processing speed, and interpersonal hesitance. Second, Thompson and colleagues sought to separate the objective event occurrence from its affective appraisal. Most bullying questionnaires operate under the assumption that frequency directly dictates developmental harm; however, relational transaction models demonstrate that two individuals experiencing identical objective frequencies of teasing may exhibit drastically different cognitive appraisals and affective reactions. By incorporating paired rating sets (Event Frequency paired with Subjective Distress), the POTS provides a multidimensional matrix of exposure severity.

In clinical settings, the scale is extensively deployed during intake assessments for individuals presenting with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder. Identifying specific historical antecedents of weight-focused degradation enables therapists using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or schema therapy to address core developmental beliefs, such as unlovability, defectiveness, and social undesirability. In academic research, the POTS serves as an indispensable tool within structural equation models evaluating the Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbances, illuminating the paths through which childhood interpersonal degradation predicts adult psychological distress.

5. Psychological Construct

The Perception of Teasing Scale conceptualizes peer teasing as a chronic developmental stressor composed of distinct qualitative domains. Rather than reflecting an undifferentiated manifestation of adolescent banter, teasing constitutes a multifaceted communication behavior that blends aggression and humor, frequently serving to enforce social hierarchies, police gender and physical appearance norms, and punish perceived deviations from idealized standards. The POTS operationalizes this broad construct across two distinct subscales:

Weight-Related Teasing

The Weight-Related Teasing subscale captures historical verbal degradation, social exclusion, physical pointing, and public humiliation specifically focused on perceived overweight, bodily mass, and physical bulk. The construct reflects the internal residue of being classified by peers as physically unacceptable or grotesque according to prevailing cultural bodily standards. Behaviors measured within this dimension encompass explicit name-calling (e.g., being called terms such as “fatso”), mocking physical participation in physical education or sporting activities (e.g., peers laughing when attempting athletic activities due to weight), and subtle atmospheric degradation (e.g., individuals snickering about the person’s heaviness upon entering a room). This construct captures the social transmission of weight stigma during foundational periods of peer socialization.

Competency-Related Teasing

The Competency-Related Teasing subscale reflects social derision directed toward intellectual capability, understanding, cognitive performance, and emotional hesitation or fear. It measures interpersonal experiences wherein an individual was characterized by peers as foolish, cognitively slow, or socially inadequate. Items measuring this construct evaluate instances where peers ridiculed the individual for not grasping a joke, repeated something they said in a mocking cadence because it was deemed “dumb,” or openly mocked them for exhibiting fear or reluctance toward an activity. This dimension assesses attacks against an individual’s personal agency, self-efficacy, and perceived intelligence, representing a domain of developmental insult structurally distinct from somatic degradation.

Dual-Axis Operationalization: Frequency versus Affective Reaction

A distinctive feature of the POTS psychological construct is its dual-axis assessment format. For every behavioral interaction assessed across both subscales, the respondent is prompted to evaluate two distinct phenomenological parameters:

• Historical Frequency (Objective Appraisal): The estimated prevalence with which the behavioral event occurred across the developmental epoch spanning ages 5 through 16.
• Subjective Distress (Affective Appraisal): The internal degree of emotional disturbance, shame, or psychological pain evoked by the teasing behavior at the time it took place.

This dual conceptualization prevents the conflation of benign or playfully reciprocal peer interactions with toxic, distress-inducing victimization. It recognizes that teasing behaviors can possess variable emotional valence depending on interpersonal dynamics, peer status, resilience factors, and underlying psychological vulnerabilities.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework guiding the formulation and application of the Perception of Teasing Scale rests primarily upon cognitive-behavioral paradigms of body image development, particularly the Biopsychosocial Model and Thompson’s Tripartite Influence Model of eating pathology. Within these frameworks, developmental psychopathology is understood as an emergent outcome of reciprocal interactions between biological predispositions, cultural ideals, and acute interpersonal feedback loops.

The Tripartite Influence Model

The Tripartite Influence Model posits that three primary socio-environmental vectors dictate the emergence of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating: peers, parents, and mass media. Within the peer sphere, verbal feedback—specifically appearance-related teasing—functions as an intensely potent catalyst. Unlike ambient media messages showcasing unrealistic somatic ideals, peer teasing delivers immediate, personalized, and emotionally charged reinforcement that an individual’s body departs from social standards. According to cognitive schema theory, chronic weight teasing during childhood solidifies negative “core schemas” regarding somatic inadequacy (e.g., “My body is repulsive;” “My self-worth is entirely contingent upon thinness”). Once established, these cognitive schemas selectively filter subsequent experiences, predisposing individuals to body surveillance, hyper-vigilance regarding physical presentation, and maladaptive compensatory behaviors such as dietary restriction or purging.

Cognitive Vulnerability-Stress Model

The inclusion of Competency-Related Teasing aligns with Beck’s cognitive vulnerability-stress model of depression. Early experiences of competence degradation foster generalized self-deprecating cognitive structures centered on personal inadequacy, helplessness, and unworthiness. When an adolescent or young adult subsequently encounters normative evaluative challenges in academic, professional, or social domains, these latent depressive schemas become reactivated. Thus, the POTS is theoretically equipped to model divergent developmental pathways: weight teasing feeds into appearance-focused pathology and somatic distress, whereas competency teasing channels into generalized depressive symptoms, interpersonal anxiety, and global self-esteem deficits.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Perception of Teasing Scale has been rigorously corroborated across diverse epidemiological, college-age, and clinical eating disorder cohorts:

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was established in Thompson et al.’s (1995) seminal study involving undergraduate women. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses demonstrated that the scale’s two dimensions cleanly bifurcated into theoretical targets: physical weight versus mental/behavioral performance. The scale was found to possess structural independence from unrelated response styles, showing minimal contamination by social desirability biases.

Convergent Validity

The convergent validity of the POTS is exceptionally strong across multiple psychological axes:

• Body Dissatisfaction: The Weight-Related Teasing subscale exhibits high, statistically significant positive correlations with standardized measures of body image distress, including the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ; r values typically ranging from .45 to .62) and the Eating Disorder Inventory Body Dissatisfaction subscale (EDI-BD; r = .40 to .58).
• Eating Pathology: Weight teasing frequency and distress scores correlate significantly with measures of bulimic symptomatology (e.g., the BULIT-R) and restrictive dietary behaviors (e.g., the Eating Attitudes Test; r = .30 to .50).
• Affective Distress and Self-Esteem: The Competency-Related Teasing subscale demonstrates strong convergent linkages with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (negative correlations ranging from -.35 to -.52) and standardized measures of depressive symptomatology (e.g., Beck Depression Inventory; r = .30 to .45).

Predictive and Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that the Weight-Related Teasing subscale consistently predicts body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating far more robustly than the Competency-Related Teasing subscale does. Conversely, competency teasing explains incremental variance in non-appearance-related indices such as general social anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and global depression after controlling for weight teasing. Longitudinal investigations using structural equation modeling have verified that retrospective POTS scores predict prospective increases in body dissatisfaction and binge-eating onset across multi-year intervals, cementing its robust predictive utility.

8. Reliability

The Perception of Teasing Scale exhibits high empirical reliability across a variety of demographic and clinical samples:

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency estimates (Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega) for both POTS subscales consistently surpass psychometric acceptability thresholds (typically set at .70 to .80):

• Weight-Related Teasing: In the initial validation study by Thompson et al. (1995), the Weight Teasing Frequency subscale yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .90, with the associated Weight Teasing Distress subscale producing comparable internal consistency (α = .89 – .92). Subsequent large-scale replications across diverse samples consistently report values between .88 and .94.
• Competency-Related Teasing: The Competency Teasing Frequency subscale yielded an initial Cronbach’s alpha of α = .85, with distress ratings demonstrating values between α = .82 and .87. Across international translations, this subscale reliably maintains alpha coefficients exceeding .80.

Test-Retest Stability

Because the POTS assesses retrospective recollections of childhood events, test-retest reliability reflects the stability of an individual’s cognitive representation of their developmental history over time. Thompson et al. established two-week test-retest reliability coefficients exceeding r = .85 for both subscales. Subsequent longitudinal investigations measuring reliability across intervals spanning 3 to 12 months have yielded temporal stability coefficients between r = .72 and r = .81, indicating that individual recall of childhood teasing remains consistent throughout early adulthood.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Perception of Teasing Scale has been evaluated via both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During scale construction, Thompson et al. (1995) conducted principal components and principal axis factoring with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations on an initial pool of items derived from clinical interviews and the earlier PARTS instrument. The analysis unambiguously supported a two-factor solution based on the scree test, eigenvalue inspection (eigenvalues > 1.0), and interpretability criteria:

• Factor 1 (Weight-Related Teasing): Items 1 through 6 loaded unequivocally on this somatic factor, with individual item-factor loadings ranging from .72 to .89. Cross-loadings onto the competency dimension were minimal (< .20).
• Factor 2 (Competency-Related Teasing): Items 7 through 11 cleanly aligned on this cognitive-behavioral performance factor, displaying primary factor loadings between .60 and .81, with cross-loadings onto the weight factor remaining below .18.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent structural validation studies have tested one-factor versus two-factor competing models using confirmatory structural equation modeling techniques. A unidimensional model (collapsing all forms of teasing into a single latent factor) consistently demonstrates poor fit across standard psychometric metrics. In contrast, the two-factor model demonstrates excellent global fit to the empirical data:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≥ .95
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) ≥ .94
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .05 to .06 (with 90% confidence intervals between .03 and .07)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .04

These findings substantiate that peer teasing in youth cannot be validly conceptualized as a monolithic phenomenon; somatic humiliation operates as an empirically independent developmental dimension from cognitive and social-efficacy humiliation.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Retrospective self-report psychometric questionnaire.
• Constructs Evaluated: Developmental peer victimization divided into Weight-Related Teasing and Competency-Related Teasing.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically administered from age 17 upwards to assess retrospective childhood experiences; adaptable for younger cohorts with modified temporal prompts).
• Temporal Frame: Childhood and adolescence, specified as the developmental window spanning ages 5 to 16 years.
• Total Item Count: 11 base behavioral statements, paired with 11 contingent emotional impact/distress probes (22 total possible response points).
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Weight-Related Teasing: Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (alongside associated probes 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, and 6a).
  • Competency-Related Teasing: Items 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 (alongside associated probes 7a, 8a, 9a, 10a, and 11a).
• Response Anchors:
  • Frequency Scale (Items 1 to 11): 5-point Likert scale (1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often, 5 = Very Often).
  • Distress Scale (Items 1a to 11a): 5-point Likert scale (1 = Not Upset, 2 = A Little Upset, 3 = Somewhat Upset, 4 = Upset, 5 = Very Upset). Note: Administered only if the respondent endorsed a frequency score ≥ 2 on the primary item.
• Scoring and Computational Procedures:
  • Frequency Subscale Scores: Calculated by summing or averaging the primary items corresponding to each dimension (Weight Teasing Frequency sum: 6 to 30; Competency Teasing Frequency sum: 5 to 25).
  • Distress Subscale Scores: If an individual responded “Never” (1) to a primary behavioral item, the paired distress probe is typically scored as 1 (Not Upset) for composite calculations. Subscale distress scores are then derived via the sum or mean of the “a” items (Weight Teasing Distress sum: 6 to 30; Competency Teasing Distress sum: 5 to 25).
  • Higher scores uniformly indicate greater exposure to developmental peer teasing and heightened retrospective subjective distress.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Perception of Teasing Scale was formally published in 1995 by Dr. J. Kevin Thompson and his research associates. The copyright is held by Taylor & Francis, Ltd. via the Journal of Personality Assessment. However, the scale is categorized as widely accessible for non-commercial scientific, educational, and clinical research purposes.

The instrument has also been published for public health utility within federal research compendiums, including pages 22–23 of Measuring Bullying Victimization, Perpetration, and Bystander Experiences: A Compendium of Assessment Tools, distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Clinical practitioners, university researchers, and graduate students may typically use the scale in non-funded investigations without fee, provided appropriate scholarly attribution is maintained. Commercial applications, widespread redistribution, or inclusion in proprietary software requires formal licensing permission from Taylor & Francis.

12. References

• Cattarin, J. A., & Thompson, J. K. (1994). A three-year longitudinal evaluation of body image, eating disturbance, and general psychological functioning in adolescent females. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 16(4), 383–393. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullycompendiumbk-a.pdf
• Keery, H., van den Berg, P., & Thompson, J. K. (2004). An evaluation of the Tripartite Influence Model of body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance with adolescent girls. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 57(2), 143–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(03)00592-1
• Thompson, J. K., Cattarin, J., Fowler, B., & Fisher, E. (1995). The Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS): A revision and extension of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale (PARTS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 65(1), 146–157. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6501_11
• Thompson, J. K., Fabian, L. J., Moulton, D. O., Dunn, M. E., & Altabe, M. N. (1991). Development and validation of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 56(3), 513–521. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa5603_12

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)