Slim by design: Redirecting the accidental drivers of mindless overeating

We first choose what to eat and then we choose how much to eat. Yet as consumer psychologists, we understand food choice much better than food consumption quantity. This review focuses on three powerful drivers of food consumption quantity: 1) Sensory cues (how your senses react), 2) emotional cues (how you feel), and 3) normative cues (how you believe you are supposed to eat). These drivers influence consumption quantities partly because they bias our consumption monitoring—how much attention we pay to how much we eat. To date, consumption quantity research has comfortably focused on the first two drivers and on using education to combat overeating. In contrast, new research on consumption norms can uncover small changes in the eating environment (such as package downsizing, smaller dinnerware, and reduced visibility and convenience) that can be easily implemented in kitchens, restaurants, schools, and public policies to improve our monitoring of how much we eat and to help solve mindless overeating. It is easier to change our food environment than to change our mind.     

Boredom: Practical consequences and a theory

Boredom is defined as a unique psychophysiological state possessing interrelated and inseparable emotional, motivational, perceptual and cognitive concomitants. Practical consequences of boredom are reviewed, including diminished performance efficiency, general life satisfaction and health. Finally, the outline of a theoretical model is presented.     

无聊：一个久远而又新兴的研究主题

无聊是个体由于知觉到生活无意义而产生的负性情绪体验, 它会直接或间接地影响各种社会心理功能。目前, 有关心理健康、社会适应、学业成绩等一系列心理问题的研究已经揭示了无聊的负性作用。但是, 无聊领域的研究还停留在理论探讨和相关研究层面, 概念定义尚没有完全统一, 缺乏系统的理论和完整的模型结构。未来研究可进一步深入探究无聊的作用机制, 并制定有效的干预方案来改善人们的无聊状态。     

Psychometric Measures of Boredom: A Review of the Literature

This research presents a review of the psychometric measures on boredom that have been developed over the past 25 years. Specifically, the author examined the Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS; R. Farmer & N. D. Sundberg, 1986), the job boredom scales by E. A. Grubb (1975) and T. W. Lee (1986), a boredom coping measure (J. A. Hamilton, R. J. Haier, & M. S. Buchsbaum, 1984). 2 scales that assess leisure and free-time boredom (S. E. Iso-Ahola & E. Weissinger, 1990; M. G. Ragheb & S. P. Merydith, 2001), the Sexual Boredom Scale (SBS; J. D. Watt & J. E. Ewing, 1996), and the Boredom Susceptibility (BS) subscale of the Sensation Seeking Scale (M. Zuckerman, 1979a). Particular attention is devoted to discussing the literature regarding the psychometric properties of the BPS because it is the only full-scale measure on the construct of boredom.     

Ambivalence and Self‐Deception: Reframing the Debate

A multitude of scholars have recently argued that inherently ambivalent reactions ought to be accepted, and our drive toward overcoming them resisted, in order to preserve a reflectively accurate account of oneself. By contrast, I argue that a genuine commitment to overcome ambivalence aims less at avoiding than acknowledging and understanding, as well as possibly resolving, whatever conflicts led us to become ambivalent in the first place. On the other hand, certain forms of ‘reflective ambivalence’ are especially vulnerable to the very kind of self‐deception they aim to prevent.     

Capturing the noonday demon: development and validation of the State Boredom Inventory

For centuries, scholars have positioned state boredom as an impediment to organizational productivity and performance given its unpleasant and distracting qualities. However, research on state boredom has been impeded by a lack of definitional consensus and measurement issues. In this article, we sought to advance organizational research on state boredom by developing the State Boredom Inventory (SBI), an 11-item measure grounded in a theoretically derived definition of state boredom. Across five studies using 10 independent samples, we develop the SBI and provide validity evidence for our measure, including content validity and convergent and discriminant validity. Our data support the conceptualization of state boredom as a higher-order multidimensional construct with three underlying dimensions: disengagement, unpleasant low arousal, and inattention.     

Two Tales of Rumination and Burnout: Examining the Effects of Boredom and Overload

Although boredom poses serious consequences for employees and organizations, research has paid little attention to this phenomenon, especially when compared to other job experiences such as overload. Building upon the Effort-Recovery Model, our study examines the impact of these two sub-optimal experiences, characterized by under- and over-stimulation, on burnout via three facets of rumination. Using a time lagged design with three measurement moments and a sample of 152 participants, we found partial support for our hypotheses. Boredom and overload led to emotional exhaustion and disengagement 2 weeks later, via an increase in affective rumination. Overload also increased emotional exhaustion via reduced detachment, yet boredom reduced emotional exhaustion by facilitating detachment. These findings stress the importance of addressing boredom as a pervasive, although often silent, workplace phenomenon.     

Self-Report Measures of Boredom: An Updated Review of the Literature

A detailed review of the psychometric measures of boredom was published approximately 12 years ago (Vodanovich, 2003). Since that time, numerous studies have been conducted on existing scales, and new measures of boredom have been developed. Given these assessment advancements, an updated review of self-report boredom scales is warranted. The primary focus of the current review is research published since 2003, and it includes a total of 16 boredom scales. The measures reviewed consist of two trait assessments (Boredom Proneness Scale, Boredom Susceptibility subscale of the Sensation Seeking Scale), five context-specific trait boredom scales (Boredom Coping Scale, Leisure Boredom Scale, Free Time Boredom Scale, Sexual Boredom Scale, Relational Boredom Scale), three assessments of state boredom (Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, State Boredom Measure, Boredom Experience Scale), and six context-specific state boredom measures–Lee's Job Boredom Scale, Dutch Boredom Scale, Boredom Coping Scale (Academic), the Boredom subscale of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, Academic Boredom Scale, Precursors to Boredom Scale. In addition to providing a review of these measures, a brief critique of each scale is included, as well as suggestions for needed research focus.     

Sacred Triads: Augustine and the Indo-European Soul

In this paper the author endeavours to bring together discussions of Georges Dumezil's thesis concerning the tripartite structure of Indo-European mythology with discussions of Trinitarian theology. The claim is, first, that the mythology led to an intrinsically aporetic characterization of the soul as a sphere of 'self-government in space'. Second, that Plato, initially, and then much more emphatically Augustine, dissolved this construction and resolved its aporias by substituting an alternative construction in terms of 'government by the other through time.'     

Prayer and the Soul: Dialogues that Heal

Prayer is more than a bowed head and folded hands. It is the deep longing that is expressed by mute bodies and by our souls, the center of being that connects us to God. Chaplains engage in dialogues that heal, as they risk the encounter with another—soul to soul—discerning the heart of another's concern to find the healing required.     

Short-Term Pastoral Counseling and the Use of Reframing

The purpose of this article is to deal with the advantage of combining short-term counseling with reframing techniques. Short-term counseling states that a) focusing on only one problem, and b) agreeing on a fixed amount of sessions will make the counselee more eager to change before the amount of sessions are spent. The thesis of the paper is that those counselees that engage in short-term counseling will be more resistant to change than the criteria of short-term counseling suggests. Some counselees want to initiate a power struggle with the counselor about the impossibility of change. Rather than giving in to such a struggle, the counselor should use reframing techniques to make the counselee see the problem from a new perspective. Reframing techniques are more likely to make the counselee solve the problem.