Body image mediates an association between personality and mental health

Personality and body image have been identified as important correlates of mental and physical health. This study sought to explore whether body image mediates the association between the major dimensions of trait personality and self‐reported mental and physical health. In total, 451 Australian adults (121 men, 331 women; M_age = 21.88 ± 7.65 years) completed questionnaires at a single time‐point. After controlling for some demographic and anthropometric factors (e.g., body mass index), neuroticism was associated with all components of body image and mental and physical health. Extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness were associated with mental health and some components of body image. Multiple mediator models identified body image discrepancy and appearance evaluation as mediating the association between personality (neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) and mental health. No significant mediation effects were observed for physical health, and mediation effects were not moderated by participant gender. These findings provide evidence that personality relates to self‐reported mental health, in part, through the variance shared with body image.     

Programmatic prevention of adolescent problem behaviors: The role of autonomy,relatedness, and volunteer service in the teen outreach program

Explored the mechanisms by which a well-validated intervention to prevent school failure, suspension, and teenage pregnancy produces its effects, using site-level data from 66 sites involving over 1,000 students participating in national replication of the Teen Outreach Program. Multiple informants provided data on operating characteristics of each site. These were then used to explain differences across sites in levels of success in reducing youth problem behaviors using a pre-post design and a well-matched comparison group. In accord with predictions from developmental theory, middle school sites that promoted student autonomy and relatedness with peers and with site facilitators achieved significantly greater levels of success in reducing problem behaviors. Offering volunteer experiences perceived as teaching middle school students new skills and leaving them real choices about the type of work they did was also linked to program success. Although the program was equally sucessful with students from a wide range of sociodemographic backgrounds, links of program factors to site-level outcomes were found only for middle school but not high school sites. Implications of these findings for the development of programmatic interventions targeted at adolescents are discussed. The Teen Outreach program and its evaluation have been supported by grants from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund and other sources. We also thank the Association of Junior Leagues International, local Junior Leagues around the country, and the students and facilitators who made this program possible. The Spencer and W. T. Grant Foundations also provided support to the first author for the write-up of this study.     

Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgicencephalomyelitis as a twentieth-century disease: analytic challenges

The challenges of chronic fatigue syndrome (often called myalgic encephalomyelitis, especially in the UK) (CFS/ME) to analytical and medical approaches are connected with our inability to understand its distressing somatic symptoms in terms of a single identifiable and understandable disease entity. The evidence for the roles of viral aetiologies remains inconclusive, as does our understanding of the involvement of the immune system. The history and social context of CFS/ME, and its relation to neurasthenia and psychasthenia are sketched. A symbolic attitude to the condition may need to be rooted in an awareness of psychoid levels of operation, and the expression and spread of CFS/ME may sometimes be aided by the ravages of projective identification. Psychic denial, sometimes violent, in sufferers (especially children and adolescents) and their families may be important in the aetiology of CFS/ME. We draw out common threads from psychodynamic work with five cases, four showing some symptomatic improvement, analytic discussions of three cases being presented elsewhere in this issue of JAP.     

The Psychology of Dependence Between Landlord and Sharecropper in Northeastern Brazil

Contrasting beliefs and attitudes held by sharecroppers and their landlord on a fazenda in Northeastern Brazil reveal a tendency to split one another into positively and negatively idealized images. Sharecroppers who ambivalently seek patronage construct good vs. bad landlords/patrons. The landlord, defensive about envy and hostility among sharecroppers, constructs good vs. bad tenants/workers. Theory from the Kleinian school of psychoanalysis concerning envy, splitting, and idealization provides a framework for interpreting ethnographic case materials.     

DEFINING CHILD NONCOMPLIANCE: AN EXAMINATION OF TEMPORAL PARAMETERS

This study examined compliance parameters for 53 clinic-referred and nonreferred children, ages 2 to 10 years. Although there were significant differences between the referred and nonreferred samples for percentage compliance, there were no significant differences between the referred and nonreferred samples in terms of initiation or completion latencies. The average initiation latency was 5.92 s, whereas 98% of the sample initiated compliance within 14 s. Younger children did take longer to complete tasks. Results suggest that the use of short latencies in defining noncompliance may represent overly conservative criteria.     

Sex-role stereotypes in northern india and the united states

Volunteer college students in India (112 men and 113 women) rated the desirability of 104 traits for Indian men or for Indian women. Similar data for 60 of the traits in a United States sample were compared to Indian results, revealing some cross-cultural similarities in sex roles, but fewer sex-role distinctions in the Indian sample, especially for traits related to assertiveness. Traits rated more desirable for Indian males suggested a pattern of enterpreneurial tendencies. Traits rated more desirable for Indian females suggested a pattern of expressive tendencies. Traits highly desirable in Indian society include those related to ability, interpersonal warmth, trustworthiness, interpersonal strength, motivation, and family orientation.