How self‐compassion moderates the effect of body surveillance on subjective happiness and depression among women

According to objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), being treated as an object leads women to engage in self‐objectification, which in turn increases body surveillance and body shame as well as impairs mental health. However, very little is known about what factors could act as buffers against the detrimental consequences of self‐objectification. This paper seeks to understand the role of self‐compassion (the ability to kindly accept oneself or show self‐directed kindness while suffering) in the perception that women have of their own bodies. Results indicate that self‐compassion moderated the effect of body surveillance on depression and happiness separately among women. More specifically, for women low in self‐compassion, body surveillance was negatively associated with happiness, which was explained by increased depression. In sum, our results indicate that self‐compassion protects against the detrimental consequences of body surveillance.     

Does Gender Matter in Personality Psychology?

In this essay, we assess whether gender is important to personality in the eyes of mainstream personality psychologists and in the eyes of feminist psychologists. We discover that these two perspectives are in fact widely divergent. Most research on personality published today in top‐tier ‘mainstream’ personality journals does not take gender seriously. Moreover, frequently‐used textbooks on personality – whether focused on theories or themes – pay little attention to issues of gender. In contrast, most research on personality published in journals focused on the psychology of women and gender treats gender as an important feature of personality. In that research, gender is fully theoretically integrated into the research, testable hypotheses are developed, and analyses include considerable attention to gender. The current segregation of perspectives on the relevance of gender to personality strikes us as deeply problematic for progress in developing a complete picture of personality in context.     

Responding to negativity: How a risky tactic can serve a vigilant strategy

Regulatory focus theory distinguishes between two motivational systems—a promotion system concerned with nurturance and advancement and a prevention system concerned with security and safety [Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300]. In signal detection terms, a preference for eager strategies within the promotion system has been equated with a “risky” bias, whereas a preference for vigilant strategies within the prevention system has been equated with a “conservative” bias. However, we propose that when prevention-focused individuals face negative input, they should be willing to incur false alarms to ensure that negative stimuli are correctly identified. Across six studies, we found for negative stimuli a reversal of the traditional finding that prevention participants show a conservative bias in information processing. In these studies, prevention participants consistently exhibited a risky bias when the input was negative. We suggest that this new tactic—a risky bias in response to negativity—best serves the prevention strategy of vigilance.     

Engaging the consumer: The science and art of the value creation process

Regulatory engagement theory [Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological Review, 113, 439–460.] proposes that value is a motivational force of attraction to or repulsion from something, and that strength of engagement contributes to value intensity independent of hedonic and other sources of value direction. This paper reviews different sources of engagement strength, including dealing with challenges by opposing interfering forces and overcoming personal resistance, preparing for something that is likely to happen, and using “fit” or “proper” means of goal pursuit. We present evidence that each of these sources of engagement strength can intensify the value of something, and we show how stronger engagement can not only make something positive more positive but also make something negative more negative. We also discuss how these effects of stronger engagement on the value of something else are independent of actors' own personal experiences during goal pursuit. We then broaden regulatory engagement theory by describing the nature of these personal experiences from different sources of engagement strength—distinct positive experiences (e.g., feeling “pleasure” vs. feeling “right”) and distinct negative experiences (e.g., feeling “tension” vs. feeling “defiance”)—and consider the science and art of combining them with engagement strength for maximal persuasion and influence.     

Identity Transformation in Medical Students

This paper reviews the literature on the impact of medical school on personal development and consolidation of core identity. The limited literature relies on reports from medical students’ journaling exercises, discussion groups, post-graduation surveys, and repeated personality testing. We review forces acting on medical students, with potential transforming effects. These forces include high external expectations and internal fear of superficial knowledge and skills, entry into the culture of medicine with its insider jargon and hierarchy, high academic workload, and the emotional burdens of confronting cadavers and death as well as bearing witness to patients’ suffering. Potential developmental delay, emergence of substance abuse and hedonic acting out, cynicism, and loss of individual core values are possible consequences. Protections against these adverse outcomes include identification of strong mentors and role models, developing post-conventional morality and relativistic thinking, finding healthy coping strategies such as peer support, and remaining intellectually creative and personally reflective.     

Meetings: A Swampy Terrain for Adult Development

This article introduces a model of modes of experience as a tool for making sense of some of the complexity in meetings. Although derived from theories of adult development, the mode model presented here assumes that individuals are more internally diverse than they may appear through the lenses of some stage theories. The article includes vignettes of meetings in various organizational contexts to illustrate the dynamic nature of modes, and it suggests that an individual's psychological development may be fruitfully viewed in terms of both an evolving repertoire of modes, and a growing capacity to exercise judgment about when to shift and when to stay in a mode. Seen in the light of a mode model, meetings bring nearly continuous opportunities to foster collective creativity and constructive risk-taking. Constructive approaches to using modes are described, as well as risks, such as that of attempting to pigeonhole individuals. The concept of modes is best used as a background way of thinking and relating with the ultimate aim of fostering conditions that support organizational and individual development over the long term.     

Letters From V: Adolescent Personality Development in Sociohistorical Context

Systematic content analysis of personal documents is used to assess the course of personality development in one adolescent female exposed to traumatic historical and personal events, as well as more normative life changes. Seventy-one letters written by a young girl to her former teacher over a 9-year period comprise the data for this study. Our analyses assess the normal developmental processes of preoccupation with identity formation and the establishment of intimate relationships, as well as responses to life changes (emigration, marriage, pregnancy). Overall, results suggest that despite serious challenges and losses, this individual experienced normal personality development throughout her trying adolescence. In addition, particular life events affected the course of that development. Factors which may have facilitated her resilience are discussed.     

Some supplementary methods for the analysis of WAIS-IV index scores in neuropsychological assessment

Objectives. To develop supplementary methods for the analysis of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) in neuropsychological assessment. Design and Methods. Psychometric. Results. The following methods are made available: (a) provision of traditional confidence intervals (CIs) on index scores, (b) expression of the endpoints of CIs as percentile ranks; (c) quantification of the number of abnormally low index scores exhibited by a case and accompanying estimate of the percentage of the normative population expected to exhibit at least this number of low scores; (d) quantification of the reliability and abnormality of index score deviations from an individual's index score mean (thereby offering an alternative to the pairwise approach to index score comparisons available in the WAIS-IV manual); (e) provision of CIs on an individual's deviation scores or pairwise difference scores, (f) estimation of the percentage of the normative population expected to exhibit at least as many abnormal deviations or abnormal pairwise differences as a case; and (g) calculation of a case's Mahalanobis distance index (MDI), thereby providing a multivariate estimate of the overall abnormality of an index score profile. With the exception of the MDI, all the methods can be applied using tables provided in this paper. However, for ease and speed of application, and to reduce the possibility of clerical error, all the methods have also been implemented in a computer program. Conclusions. The methods are useful for neuropsychological interpretation of the WAIS-IV.     

Why Fat is a Feminist Issue

The proposition that fat is a feminist issue is almost an axiom within the feminist literature. And yet, different feminist scholars see fat as a feminist issue for radically different reasons. An analysis of mainly U.S. research suggests that for some, fat is a symptom of underlying distress and compulsive eating as a coping mechanism for this gendered anguish. For others, higher rates of “obesity” among poor women and women of color is a scandalous form of environmental injustice necessitating policy interventions to combat obesity in these populations. Others have argued that fat is a feminist issue because the fear of being or becoming fat tyrannizes average-size and relatively thin women, limiting their quality of life and often leading to eating disorders. In contrast, Fikkan and Rothblum (2011) argue that fat is a feminist issue because fat women are subjugated to bias, discrimination and abuse precisely because they are fat women. Unlike other approaches, they put actual fat women at the heart of their analysis, comparing their experience to that of both thin women and to fat men. They rightly signal the importance of examining how the social experiences of fat people vary by sex, social class, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation, among other factors. While emphasizing the importance of their perspective, this article advocates that this line of feminist analysis be pushed even further.