Body Surveillance and Body Shame in College Men: Are Men Who Self-Objectify Less Hopeful?

The current study examined self-objectification and hope in a sample of undergraduate men from a Midwestern university in the United States (N?=?227). Specifically, an online survey utilizing self-report measures examined the associations between body surveillance, body shame, trait hope, social relationship hope, and romantic relationship hope were considered through the lenses of Objectification Theory and the Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, bivariate correlations showed that more body surveillance was associated with less trait agency, less trait pathways, less social relationship pathways, and less romantic relationship pathways. As well, more body shame was associated with less trait agency, less trait pathways, less social relationship pathways, less romantic relationship agency, and less romantic relationship pathways. Additionally, consistent with Hypothesis 2 and the model proposed by Objectification Theory, body shame explained relations between body surveillance and hope, specifically, trait agency, social relationship pathways, romantic relationship agency, and romantic relationship pathways in a path analysis. This work fills an important gap in the current literature, as it is the only study to date that examines relations between self-objectification and hope, and furthers objectification research among men. Results are discussed within the context of Objectification Theory and the Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Presentism and the objection from being-supervenience

In this paper, we show that presentism—the view that the way things are is the way things presently are—is not undermined by the objection from being-supervenience. This objection claims, roughly, that presentism has trouble accounting for the truth-value of past-tense claims. Our demonstration amounts to the articulation and defence of a novel version of presentism. This is brute past presentism, according to which the truth-value of past-tense claims is determined by the past understood as a fundamental aspect of reality different from things and how things are.     

Extending the revelation effect to faces: Haven't we met before?

The revelation effect is an episodic memory phenomenon where participants are more likely to report that they recognise an item when it is judged after an interpolated task than when it is not. Although this effect is very robust, nearly all of the extant research has used verbal or readily verbalisable stimuli. The present two experiments examined whether a revelation effect could be produced with non‐verbal stimuli such as faces. A revelation effect was found in both experiments, for both targets and lures, using faces as stimuli. The findings are integrated into the prevailing empirical frameworks for the revelation effect and face recognition memory.     

Book Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to Marx Edited by Terrell Carver Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 357. ISBN 0–521–36625–9 £40.00 hbk.

Paul Ricoeur By Stephen H. Clark Routledge, 1990. Pp. 216. ISBN 0–415–02309–2. £30.00 hbk. £9.99 pbk.

The Analysis of Political Structure By David Easton Routledge, 1990. Pp. xv + 336 ISBN 0–415–90310–6. £35.00 hbk.

Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism By Owen Flanagan Harvard University Press, 1991. Pp. 393. ISBN 0–674–93218–8. £27.95.

God and Greek Philosophy By L. P. Gerson Routledge, 1990. Pp. xi + 340. ISBN 0–415–02219–3. £35.00.

Scepticism By Christopher Hookway Routledge, 1990. Pp. xii + 251. ISBN 0–415–03396–9. £35.00 hbk.

Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy By Peter Hylton Clarendon Press, 1990. Pp. 420. ISBN 0–19–824626–9. £50 hbk. £15.95 pbk

The Poetics of Imagining: from Husserl to Lyotard By Richard Kearney Harper Collins, 1991. Pp. xiii + 234. ISBN 04–445–4503. £30.00.

The Language of Art History Edited by Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. 255. ISBN 0–521–35384‐X. £32.50.

Newman After a Hundred Years Edited by Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill Clarendon Press, 1990. Pp. xvi + 470. ISBN 0–19–812–8916 £45.00

Inference to the Best Explanation By Peter Lipton Routledge, 1991. Pp. x + 194. ISBN 0–415–05886–4. £35.00 hbk.

Dretske and His Critics Edited by Brian McLaughlin Blackwell, 1991. Pp. xvii + 231. ISBN 1–55786–198–6. £40.00.

A History and Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel By Giacomo Rinaldi The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. Pp. 525. $99.95 hbk.

The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume By Galen Strawson Clarendon Press, 1989 (1992 issued in paperback with corrections). Pp. xiv + 291. ISBN 0–19–824038–4. £14.95 pbk.

Analysis and Metaphysics By P. F. Strawson Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 152. ISBN 0–19–875517–6. £22.50 hbk; £7.95 pbk.

Physics and Metaphysics: Theories of Space and Time By Jennifer Trusted Routledge, 1991. Pp. xii + 210. ISBN 0–415–05948–8. £30.00.

Political Theory and Postmodernism By Stephen K. White Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. 153. ISBN 0–521–40122–4. £25.00 hbk. ISBN 0–521–40948–9. £9.95 pbk.

Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art By Julian Young Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xiii + 170. ISBN 0–521–51124–6. £27.95.     

The durability of beneficial health effects associated with expressive writing

Abstract

This study examined the durability of benefits associated with expressive writing. Sixty-eight college undergraduates completed measures of physical and psychological health at the beginning of their first year and were then randomized to either an expressive writing or a control writing condition. Changes in physical health, psychological health (i.e., depression, stress, and anxiety), and academic performance were assessed two, four, and six months later. Findings indicated that participants assigned to the expressive writing condition reported less depression symptom severity at the two-month follow-up assessment relative to participants assigned to the control condition. However, these symptom reductions were not observed at any of the subsequent follow-up assessments. No significant changes were reported for physical health complaints, stress symptoms, anxiety symptoms, or academic performance. These findings suggest that, among first-year college students, expressive writing may provide some short-term relief for certain symptoms.     

Main and interactive effects of social support in predicting mental health symptoms in men and women following military stressor exposure

Abstract

Evidence across a multitude of contexts indicates that social support is associated with reduced risk for mental health symptoms. More information is needed on the effectiveness of different sources of support, as well as sex differences in support. Associations between social support from two sources – the military unit and friends and family – and mental health symptoms were examined in a study of 1571 Marine recruits assessed at the beginning and end of a highly stressful 13-week training program. Military social support buffered the stressor exposure–posttraumatic stress symptomatology (PTSS) relationship, whereas the relationship between stressor exposure and PTSS was highest when civilian social support was high. Further inspection of the interactions revealed that military support was most important at high levels of stressor exposure. Sex differences in the relationship between social support and symptoms were found, such that support from military peers was associated with lower levels of PTSS for men, whereas civilian support was associated with lower PTSS for women. While civilian social support was associated with lower levels of depression symptom severity in both women and men, the relationship was stronger for women. Reviewed implications focus on the importance of considering the recipient, source, and context of social support.     

Pediatric Symptom Checklist Ratings by Mothers with a Recent History of Intimate Partner Violence: A Primary Care Study

Screening for psychosocial problems is an effective way to identify children who need further evaluation, and many brief, psychometrically strong measures exist for this purpose. More research is needed, however, about the performance of these measures in special populations who are familiar to primary care settings. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare maternal ratings on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) between low-income, urban mothers who had suffered intimate partner violence (IPV) in the past year (n = 23) and a demographically-matched comparison group of mothers (n = 23). Victims of violence rated their children as having significantly more problems in a number of categories (Total PSC Score, Externalizing, and Internalizing) than did mothers in the comparison group. The PSC shows promise as an adequate screening tool for psychosocial problems in the children of women who have suffered IPV, but more research is needed.     

How to Individuate Universals—Or Not

In a recent article in this journal, J. P. Moreland (2013) extends his theory of individuation to include universals. In this note, I show how Moreland’s novel proposal leads to the unwanted conclusion that every concrete particular exists of necessity and has but a single essential property.     

Attenuated Change Blindness for Exogenously Attended Items in a Flicker Paradigm

When two scenes are alternately displayed, separated by a mask, even large, repeated changes between the scenes often go unnoticed for surprisingly long durations. Change blindness of this sort is attenuated at “centres of interest” in the scenes, however, supporting a theory of change blindness in which attention is necessary to perceive such changes (Rensink, O'Regan, & Clark, 1997). Problems with this measure of attentional selection - via verbally described “centres of interest” - are discussed, including worries about describability and explanatory impotence. Other forms of attentional selection, not subject to these problems, are employed in a “flicker” experiment to test the attention-based theory of change detection. Attenuated change blindness is observed at attended items when attentional selection is realized via involuntary exogenous capture of visual attention - to late-onset items and colour singletons - even when these manipulations are uncorrelated with the loci of the changes, and are thus irrelevant to the change detection task. These demonstrations ground the attention-based theory of change blindness in a type of attentional selection which is understood more rigorously than are “centres of interest”. At the same time, these results have important implications concerning the nature of exogenous attentional capture.