Active Coping and Perceived Social Support Mediate the Relationship Between Physical Health and Resilience in Liver Transplant Candidates

Without a transplant, end-stage liver disease is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Transplant candidates endure physical and psychological stress while awaiting surgery, yet little is known about the relationship between physical health and psychological resilience during the wait-list period. This study examined predictors of psychological resilience and mediators of the relationship between physical health and psychological resilience in liver transplant candidates. Wait-listed candidates (N?=?120) from a single Northeast transplant center completed assessments of physical functioning, coping, perceived social support, and resilience. Findings revealed that physical functioning, active coping, and perceived social support were positively associated with resilience; maladaptive coping was negatively associated with resilience. Perceived social support and active coping partially mediated the relationship between physical functioning and resilience. Transplant center care providers should promote active coping skills and reinforce the importance of effective social support networks. These interventions could increase psychological resilience among liver transplant candidates.     

The role of attention in eye-movement awareness

People are unable to accurately report on their own eye movements most of the time. Can this be explained as a lack of attention to the objects we fixate? Here, we elicited eye-movement errors using the classic oculomotor capture paradigm, in which people tend to look at sudden onsets even when they are irrelevant. In the first experiment, participants were able to report their own errors on about a quarter of the trials on which they occurred. The aim of the second experiment was to assess what differentiates errors that are detected from those that are not. Specifically, we estimated the relative influence of two possible factors: how long the onset distractor was fixated (dwell time), and a measure of how much attention was allocated to the onset distractor. Longer dwell times were associated with awareness of the error, but the measure of attention was not. The effect of the distractor identity on target discrimination reaction time was similar whether or not the participant was aware they had fixated the distractor. The results suggest that both attentional and oculomotor capture can occur in the absence of awareness, and have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between attention, eye movements, and awareness.     

The True Self and Psychological Health: Emerging Evidence and Future Directions

A variety of philosophical and psychological perspectives converge to suggest that a happy and meaningful life is the product of living in accord with one’s true self. This idea similarly appears throughout literature, film, and folk wisdom. The current paper examines both theoretical and lay conceptions of the true self and reviews the empirical evidence that supports its role in psychological health, with a particular emphasis on current research that demonstrates that both the accessibility and ease of thinking about one’s true self‐concept is associated with the experiences of meaning and satisfaction. The merits of different approaches to defining the true self, measurement issues, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Fear and Implicit Racism: Whites’ Support for Voter ID laws

Oftentimes, Whites are unaware that they may have slighted Blacks. Although researchers have spent a considerable amount of attention disentangling this form of implicit (unconscious) racial bias from explicit (conscious) racial bias, we are less clear about the conditions that cause implicit racism to matter in American politics. In this article, we offer a theory of how fear and Whites' unconscious racial bias are tightly linked in memory, and triggering this emotion can make these implicit attitudes more salient in public opinion. To test our theory, we focus on Whites’ opinions toward voter ID laws. Our expectation is that inducing fear should cause implicit racism to play an important role in Whites’ evaluation of the policy. Using an adult national experiment over two waves, we induced several emotions to elicit fear, anger, or relaxation. The findings show that the fear condition causes Whites high in implicit racism to be more supportive of voter ID laws than similar individuals in the anger and control conditions. On the other hand, fear does not cause Whites high in explicit racism to be more supportive of voter ID laws.     

Women gaze behaviour in assessing female bodies: the effects of clothing,body size,own body composition and body satisfaction

Psychological Research - Often with minimally clothed figures depicting extreme body sizes, previous studies have shown women tend to gaze at evolutionary determinants of attractiveness when...     

Guilty,But Not Ashamed: “True” Self‐Conceptions Influence Affective Responses to Personal Shortcomings

The current research examined how true self‐conceptions (who a person believes he or she truly is) influence negative self‐relevant emotions in response to shortcomings. In Study 1 (N = 83), an Internet sample of adults completed a measure of authenticity, reflected on a shortcoming or positive life event, and completed state shame and guilt measures. In Study 2 (N = 49), undergraduates focused on true versus other determined self‐attributes, received negative performance feedback, and completed state shame and guilt measures. In Study 3 (N = 138), undergraduates focused on self‐determined versus other determined self‐aspects, reflected on a shortcoming or neutral event, and completed state shame, guilt, and self‐esteem measures. In Study 4 (N = 75), undergraduates thought about true self‐attributes, an achievement, or an ordinary event; received positive or negative performance feedback; and completed state shame and guilt measures. In Study 1, differences in true self‐expression positively predicted shame‐free guilt (but not guilt‐free shame) following reminders of a shortcoming. Studies 2–4 found that experimental activation of true self‐conceptions increased shame‐free guilt and generally decreased guilt‐free shame in response to negative evaluative experiences. The findings offer novel insights into true self‐conceptions by revealing their impact on negative self‐conscious emotions.     

Adolescent Self-Reports of Social Anxiety: Can They Disagree with Objective Psychophysiological Measures and Still Be Valid?

We examined self-reported and parent-reported adolescent social anxiety symptoms and objective baseline measures of psychophysiological flexibility in 62 families. Measures completed by 31 adolescents referred for a clinical screening evaluation for social anxiety were compared to an age- and gender-matched community control sample of 31 adolescents (total sample: age range 14 to 17?years; 22 boys and 40 girls; M?=?15.32?years; SD?=?1.1). Clinic referred adolescents reported significantly fewer social anxiety symptoms than parents reported about adolescents. Further, for all adolescents, self-reported social anxiety symptoms exhibited low correspondence with objective psychophysiological measures. Yet, both measures uniquely discriminated between adolescents on whether they were clinic referred for a social anxiety screening. Further, adolescent self-reported social anxiety symptoms exhibited high levels of internal consistency and convergent validity. Findings indicate that researchers and practitioners should refrain from using disagreements between adolescent self-reports and other measures (e.g., parent report, objective measures) as indicators of the veracity of adolescent self-reports.