Physical Attractiveness Contrast Effect and the Moderating Influence of Self-Consciousness

Separate studies provided evidence of amoderating effect of public selfconsciousness (trait)and public self-awareness (state) on the physicalattractiveness contrast effect involving socialcomparison between the self and others. Generally, whenexposed to photographs of attractive women withidealized physiques, women's self-perceptions of theirown physical attractiveness, social physique anxiety, and social self-esteem were each negativelyaffected. However, these negative contrast effects weremost apparent among women with high publicself-consciousness (trait assessment, Study 1) or highpublic self-awareness (state inducement, Study 2).Implications of these findings are considered.     

Forms of Competitive Attitude and Achievement Orientation in Relation to Disordered Eating

The primary focus in this study was anexamination of the differential contributions of twodifferent forms of competitive attitude to disorderedeating in a nonclinical sample of Caucasian universitywomen. The results showed that it is not competitionper se that is a primary contributor to eatingdisorders, but rather a particular form of competitiveattitude. Specifically, hypercompetitiveness was related strongly to eating disorder symptoms, butpersonal development competitiveness was unrelated. Asecond purpose considered the relationship ofcontext-specific measures of achievement to eatingdisorder symptoms. Disordered eating was associatedpositively with the need to achieve in appearance, butnot to a need to achieve in academics and career.Discussion centered on the potential usefulness of these findings in the treatment of women who areeating disordered. It also argued for changes in asocialization process which often leads to thedevelopment of hypercompetitive attitudes and anovervaluing of beauty in American women.     

Adjusting to Retirement: Considerations for Counselors

The purpose of this article is to examine retirement while focusing on issues older adults face in adjusting to retirement and to suggest implications for counseling people who are making this transition.     

The role of social perspective in perceiving the causes of success and failure1

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that observers' causal attributions about an actor's performance at a task would be affected by their social perspective in observing the situation. Observer subjects were either assigned to serve in a role comparable to that of observer-subjects in most actor-observer experiments or were assigned a distinctive role more divergent from the social perspective of the actor. As expected, observers with a similar social perspective to that of the actor made more flattering attributions about the actor's performance than observers with a dissimilar social perspective. We concluded that actor-observer differences in attribution for an actor's performance in any one experiment cannot be taken as definitive evidence either for or against the defensive attribution idea.     

Facilitative interactions of model- and experiencebased processes: Implications for type and flexibility of representation

People are often taught using a combination of instruction and practice. In prior research, we have distinguished between model-based knowledge (i.e., acquired from explicit instruction) and experience-based knowledge (i.e., acquired from practice), and have argued that the issue of how these types of knowledge (and associated learning processes) interact has been largely neglected. Two experiments explore this issue using a dynamic control task. Results demonstrate the utility of providing model-based knowledge before practice with the task, but more importantly, suggest how this information improves learning. Results also show that learning in this manner can lead to "costs" such as slowed retrieval, and that this knowledge may not always transfer to new task situations as well as experientially acquired knowledge. Our findings also question the assumption that participants always acquire a highly specific "lookup" table representation while learning this task. We provide an alternate view and discuss the implications for theories of learning.     

Paving the road to war with group membership, appraisal antecedents, and anger

This study uses appraisal theory, functionalist approach to emotions, and recent theory on group emotions as a basic framework to model the genesis of supporting military action. During the year after the events of 9/11, 588 college students participated in a series of four studies that assessed religious affiliation, appraisal antecedents, anger response to viewing photographs of the 9/11 attack, and support for military action. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that the relation between support for the war and attitudes toward terrorism and relevance could be explained adequately by a model in which anger mediated the effects of attitudes and relevance on support. Attitudes toward terrorism were further identified as mediators that could explain the group effect by Christians. The result was not only generalizable across the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in terms of how consent for war manifests itself--outright calls for bloodshed versus more subtle, politically loaded, posturing (e.g. entreaties to "support our troops").     

Simulation, Theory and Collapse

Recent philosophical discussions of our capacity to attribute mental states to other human beings, and to produce accurate predictions and informative explanations of their behavior which make reference to the content of those states have focused on two apparently contrasting ways in which we might hope to account for these abilities. The first is that of regarding our competence as being under-girded by our grasp of a tacit psychological theory. The second builds on the idea that in trying to get a grip on the mental lives of others we might be able to draw on the fact that we are ourselves subjects of mental states in order to simulate their mental processes. Call these the theory view and the simulation view. In this paper I wish to discuss an argument—which I shall call Collapse—to the effect that if our capacities can be explained in the way that the simulationist supposes then they can also be explained along lines that the advocate of the theory view favours. I am not the first person with simulationist sympathies to have addressed this argument. However, my response is somewhat less concessive than others in the literature: while they attempt to soften its force by attempting to reformulate the simulationist view in a way that evades the conclusion of the argument, I attempt to meet it head on and to show that it does not even succeed in refuting the version of simulationism which it takes as its target.

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Treaters or punishers? The ethical role of mental health clinicians in sex offender programs

Clinicians in sex offender treatment programs are forced to breach traditional mental health ethical principles in order to successfully achieve their outcomes. These breaches include placing the community's interest ahead of those of the offender, restricting confidentiality, and the imposition of involuntary treatment. Unlike breaches in other treatment settings, they are not exceptions to general rules of non-maleficence or beneficence but, rather, must be carried out routinely and universally. Such programs thus take on the characteristics of punishment, rather than treatment, and, unsurprisingly, traditional codes of mental health ethics fail to give any real guidance to clinicians providing them. It is argued that ethical principles justifying and limiting punishment will be of more value in limiting the harms which might be inflicted on offenders participating in these programs while maintaining the integrity of the clinicians working with them.     

Midlife women's generativity and authoritarianism: marriage, motherhood, and 10 years of aging

Generativity and authoritarianism assessed at age 52 were correlated with criterion variables assessed at age 62 in a sample of well-educated women (N = 81). Results indicated that generativity predicted positive personality characteristics, satisfaction with marriage and motherhood, and successful aging. By contrast, although authoritarianism is linked in the literature to endorsing traditional gender roles, authoritarianism was uncorrelated in the current study with happiness about marriage and was negatively related to perceptions of motherhood. Furthermore, authoritarianism was correlated with neuroticism later in life. These data suggest that midlife authoritarianism may be problematic as women transition from their 50s to their 60s. Midlife generativity, in contrast, seems to offer one path to life satisfaction.