The social psychology of disordered eating: The Situated Identity Enactment model

Eating disorders and subclinical behaviours such as dangerous dieting are a significant public health burden in the modern world. We argue that a social-psychological model of disordered eating is needed to explain how sociocultural factors are psychologically represented and subsequently reflected in an individual’s cognitions and behaviour. We present evidence that three central elements shape disordered eating – social norms, social identity and social context – and integrate these within a Situated Identity Enactment (SIE) model. Specifically, the SIE model states that social context determines the salience of both social norms and social identities. Social norms then influence disordered eating behaviour, but only to the extent that they are consistent represented in the content of a person’s social identities. We conclude by outlining the implications of the SIE model for researchers and practitioners in the domain of disordered eating, focusing in particular on the need for, and potential value of, theory-derived social interventions.     

On What Empiricism Cannot Be

Bas C. van Fraassen, in his Terry Lectures at Yale University (subsequently published as The Empirical Stance), is concerned to elucidate what empiricism is, and could be, given past and current failures of characterization. He contends that naïve empiricism—the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of a thesis—is self‐refuting, and he offers a reductio ad absurdum to substantiate this claim. Moreover, in place of naïve empiricism, van Fraassen endorses stance empiricism: the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of certain attitudes and commitments. The present article, however, argues that van Fraassen begs the question in his reductio of naïve empiricism, and thus that his primary defense of stance empiricism is inadequate.     

Campbell’s Law and the Ethics of Immensurability

The paper examines “Campbell’s Law”: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” The examination of measurability leads to explaining the reason for existence of a class of unmeasurable phenomena. The author describes a kind of habitus in which a strong taboo against measuring must exist by necessity, not by choice. The taboo is, in effect, a result of degradation of a certain kind of habitus. And finally, the paper demonstrates under which conditions the Campbell’s law is in effect, and how we can mitigate its effects in social decision-making.     

Performance,incentives, and needs for autonomy,competence, and relatedness: a meta-analysis

Although self-determination theory (SDT) is one of the most widely cited theories of human motivation and function, critics have questioned the practical utility of its three needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) in performance contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis (k = 108, N = 30,648) to explore the magnitude and boundary conditions of need satisfaction and performance. As expected, autonomy (ρ = .28), competence (ρ = .37), and relatedness (ρ = .25) predict performance. Incentivization per se has little impact on need-satisfaction: instead, the need satisfaction → performance relationship is moderated by incentive salience. Consistent with a crowding-out hypothesis, need satisfaction matters less to performance when incentives are directly salient (ρ = .22) and more when indirectly salient (ρ = .45). Our meta-analysis demonstrates that indirectly salient incentives and need-satisfaction are indeed compatible, providing a direct response to criticisms of SDT in performance contexts. Additional unexpected findings and future directions are discussed.     

Seizing Control: Estimating Multiple Decision Processes and the Investigation of Self-Control

There is a widespread consensus regarding the importance of self-control for various personal and social issues. However, the concept itself remains elusive, with numerous definitions and operational measurements competing. This article proposes a widely applicable statistical framework. Most theories propose that multiple, usually two, latent processes affect self-control. Mixture models can estimate to what extent hypothesized processes explain choice data. They also allow measuring how various dispositional and situational variables affect the relative contribution of each process considered. The approach promises to help seizing the concept of self-control, testing competing theories, and clarifying the effect of various variables.     

The importance of working memory updating in the Prisoner’s dilemma

Successful cooperation requires that humans can flexibly adjust choices to their partner’s behaviour. This, in turn, presupposes a representation of a partner’s past decisions in working memory. The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of working memory processes in cooperation. For that purpose, we tested the effects of working memory updating (Experiment 1) and working memory maintenance demands (Experiments 2 and 3) on cooperative behaviour in the Prisoner’s dilemma game. We found that demands on updating, but not maintenance, of working memory contents impaired strategy use in the Prisoner’s dilemma. Thus, our data show that updating a partner’s past behaviour in working memory represents an important precondition for strategy use in cooperation.     

Disease controllability moderates the effect of coping efficacy on positive affect

Objective: This study aims to test experimentally whether coping strategies (approach- vs. avoidance-oriented coping) have differential effects under conditions of high or low stressor controllability.

Design: Undergraduates (62 women, 30 men) participated in a 2 × 2 experimental study where they were introduced to a fictitious disease (tisomerase enzyme deficiency) said to be either controllable or uncontrollable and an approach- or avoidance-oriented coping behaviour induction.

Main Outcome Measures: Changes in positive and negative affect.

Results: A significant disease control x coping interaction on positive affect (f² = .07, p = .011) revealed that approach-coping condition participants had higher positive affect than avoidance-coping condition participants when disease control was high (d = .94, p = .003), but not when it was low (d = .11, p = .93). The experimental conditions did not significantly influence negative affect.

Conclusion: Results demonstrate that disease control moderates the salubrious effects of approach-oriented coping on positive affect. For controllable, but not uncontrollable, health stressors, promoting problem-focused approach-oriented coping strategies may be recommended.     

Thinking About What Might Have Happened: Counterfactual Thinking and Post‐traumatic Stress in Individuals Directly and Indirectly Exposed to the 2011 Oslo Bombing

Counterfactual thinking (CFT), that is thinking about what might have happened, is linked to post‐traumatic stress. We studied the relationship between type and frequency of CFT and post‐traumatic stress in a sample of directly (n = 50) and indirectly exposed (n = 50) ministerial employees 4 years after the 2011 Oslo bombing. The results showed that frequency of CFT was associated with levels of post‐traumatic stress, among both directly and indirectly exposed participants. In the directly exposed group, self‐reported frequencies of downward counterfactuals were associated with post‐traumatic stress. A similar trend was found for upward counterfactuals. In the indirectly exposed group, self‐reported frequencies of both upward and downward counterfactuals were associated with higher levels of post‐traumatic stress. These results point to the intriguing possibility that people may not only develop post‐traumatic stress disorder as a result of actual experiences, but also via mental simulations of traumatic events that could have happened. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Often biased but rarely in doubt: How initial reactions to stigmatized applicants affect interviewer confidence

Building on a metacognitive framework of heuristic judgments, we investigate the effect of applicant stigma on interviewers’ overconfidence in their (biased) judgments. There were 193 experienced interviewers conducting a face-to-face interview with an applicant who was facially stigmatized or not, and who was visible (traditional interview) or not (partially blind interview), to the interviewer during the rapport-building stage. In traditional interviews, interview judgments of stigmatized applicants were negatively biased, and interviewers reported overconfidence in these judgments. This effect was partially mediated by the interviewer’s professional performance during rapport building. Interview procedure moderated both the direct and indirect effect (through professional performance) of applicant stigma on interviewer confidence. Results show that interviewer (over)confidence in biased judgments is driven by the initial effects of, and reactions to, the stigmatized applicant.