A Dangerous Subject: The Fashion Model and the Beauty/Narcissism Double Bind

In the wake of modernity, women's sexuality was positioned in a way that created a beauty/narcissism double bind that is still with us today. My concern in this article is that the subject position of “fashion model” serves as a constant reminder of this split, which is directed at all women and weakens the generalized woman's political agency. Fashion models themselves experience harassment and humiliation as well as pleasure and desire in their work as fashion models. However, the small portion of feminist work that has engaged explicitly with the fashion‐model business sees it mainly as an enterprise that is alienating and hostile to women. Although I do not entirely disagree with this analysis, it neglects the meaning of beauty and what beauty does to us with regard to creativity and pleasure. I wish to explore how some of the work experience of fashion models intersects with and challenges the beauty/narcissism double bind. I suggest that rather than grounding our understanding of the subject position “fashion model” and the fashion business solely in their reinforcement of the beauty/narcissism double bind, we should pay attention to the importance of what beauty and aspects of narcissism may mean.     

Emotional Abuse in Childhood and Attachment Anxiety in Adult Romantic Relationships as Predictors of Personality Disorders

Personality disorders are characterized by interpersonal problems. These problems might arise not only in current, but also in past relationships. To test this hypothesis, recollections of abuse and neglect in childhood and representations of adult attachment to the romantic partner were related to dimensional ratings of the 10 DSM-5 personality disorders. Ultimately, 110 patients of a psychosomatic clinic took part in the study. All data were collected with self-report measures. Among the different types of child abuse and neglect, emotional abuse was shown to be most frequently correlated with personality disorders. Attachment dimensions avoidance and anxiety were both associated with personality disorders; anxiety, however, showed stronger correlations. The results reveal that personality disorders come along with enduring adversities in close relationships, mainly experiences of emotional abuse and attachment anxiety, starting in the family of origin and continuing in adult attachment bonds.     

Decoding dyadic interactive nonverbal behaviour in Chinese and Australian cohorts: A novel dyadic puzzle‐solving task

The current study used a novel problem‐solving task in which the solution could only be reached via interactions between members of dyads. The study aimed to systematically examine how nonverbal interactive behaviour was related to the cultural background of the dyads, the participant's role in the dyad (viz., instructor, problem solver) and task repetition. Twenty‐one Australian dyads and 32 Chinese dyads performed the dyadic puzzle‐solving task while their interactions were video‐recorded. In each dyad, one instructor and one problem solver worked together to solve a seven‐piece puzzle. Six trials, each comprising a different puzzle, were completed. Results indicate that the Australian instructors engaged in significantly more eye gazing and displayed more hand gestures but smiled less than the Chinese instructors. The Australian problem solvers maintained longer eye gazing, displayed more hand gestures and more echoing than their Chinese counterparts. Over trials, the Chinese instructors reduced their total talking time, hand gestures, nodding behaviour and smiling during self‐talking more than the Australian instructors. Moreover, the problem solvers in the dyads from both countries significantly reduced their smiling across trials. The current study shows that nonverbal behaviours during dyadic interactions are related to one's cultural background, role in the task and task repetition.     

Child-rearing in an indigenous Sami population in Norway: a cross-cultural comparison of parental attitudes and expectations

Semi-structured interviews of 76 Sami mothers and 58 Sami fathers, and 86 Norwegian mothers and 58 Norwegian fathers of four-year olds, revealed consistent cross-cultural differences in parenting. ANCOVA results showed that parental permissiveness was higher in the Sami group. Moreover, the effect of ethnicity was different for boys and girls (mothers' reports). Co-sleeping and self-regulation of food and sleep were commonly practiced in the Sami, but not in the Norwegian families. Sami children were more socially independent than their Norwegian peers. Indirect or internal types of control were used more by Sami parents, and they were less tolerant of child aggression, in the form of temper tantrums and displays of jealousy. These patterns are similar to those found in other indigenous cultures in the circumpolar region. The results are discussed with reference to the Individualism-Collectivism dimension. The study challenges the Individualism-Collectivism construct for apparently confounding the individualism common in European liberalism with the individual autonomy commonly encountered among hunting-gathering peoples.     

Temporal parameters and time course of perceptual latency priming

Visual stimuli (primes) reduce the perceptual latency of a target appearing at the same location (perceptual latency priming, PLP). Three experiments assessed the time course of PLP by masked and, in Experiment 3, unmasked primes. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the temporal parameters that determine the size of priming. Stimulus onset asynchrony was found to exert the main influence accompanied by a small effect of prime duration. Experiment 3 used a large range of priming onset asynchronies. We suggest to explain PLP by the Asynchronous Updating Model which relates it to the asynchrony of 2 central coding processes, preattentive coding of basic visual features and attentional orienting as a prerequisite for perceptual judgments and conscious perception.     

Perceptual latency priming by masked and unmasked stimuli: evidence for an attentional interpretation

Four experiments investigated the influence of a metacontrast-masked prime on temporal order judgments. The main results were (1) that a masked prime reduced the latency of the mask's conscious perception (perceptual latency priming), (2) that this effect was independent of whether the prime suffered strong or weak masking, (3) that it was unaffected by the degree of visual similarity between the prime and the mask, and that (4) there was no difference between congruent and incongruent primes. Finding (1) suggests that location cueing affects not only response times but also the latency of conscious perception. (2) The finding that priming was unaffected by the prime's detectability argues against a response bias interpretation of this effect. (3) Since visual similarity had no effect on the prime's efficiency, it is unlikely that sensory priming was involved. (4) The lack of a divergence between the effects of congruent and incongruent primes implies a functional difference between the judgments in the temporal order judgment task and speeded responses that have demonstrated differential effects of congruent and incongruent primes (e.g., Klotz & Neumann, 1999). These results can best be interpreted by assuming that the prime affects perceptual latency by initiating a shift of attention, as suggested by the Asynchronous Updating Model (AUM; Neumann 1978, 1982).     

Genetic factors in neuromuscular pain

Recent evidence suggests that fibromyalgia, a chronic widespread pain condition and related syndromes (chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.) may share heritable pathophysiologic features. We review the recent literature on genetic and familial factors found to participate in the pathogenesis of these syndromes, specifically fibromyalgia, including evidence suggesting that serotonin- and dopamine-related genes may play a role in the pathogenesis of these illnesses. The importance of environmental factors triggering these conditions in predisposed individuals is also discussed.     

Lactation and stress: protective effects of breast-feeding in humans

Whilst most research on breast-feeding has been designed to assess its importance for infant health or to find a human nutrient replacement for infant formula, the effects of breast-feeding on maternal health have received little scientific attention. In several animal studies lactation has been shown to be associated with a marked blunting of physiological and behavioral responses to physical and psychological stress. However, the literature on the effects of lactation on stress in humans remains limited. This review focuses primarily on recent findings on the effects of breast-feeding on neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to acute stress exposure in lactating women. The available data suggest that breast-feeding suppresses the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response to physical and psychosocial stress. However, lactation in women, in contrast to lactating rats, does not seem to result in a general restraint of the endocrine stress response during the whole period of lactation. Recent data strongly suggest that the blunted HPA axis response to stress in women seems to be counterbalanced if the acute stressor, at least when of a psychosocial nature, occurs later than 1 h after suckling. Further elucidation of the underlying psychobiological mechanisms involved in suppressed stress responses during lactation will no doubt lead to new insights into improved health sequelae of breast-feeding in women and to a better understanding of the psychobiology of human stress protection in general.     

Approach and avoidance: the influence of proprioceptive and exteroceptive cues on encoding of affective information

In 3 experiments, the authors tested the assumption that perceived movements toward a person trigger the approach system and thereby facilitate the processing of positive affective concepts, whereas perceived movements away from a person trigger the avoidance system and thereby facilitate the processing of negative affective concepts. In the 1st study, participants categorized positive words more quickly than negative words while flexing the arm and negative words more quickly than positive words while extending the arm. The 2nd study revealed that positive words were categorized more rapidly than negative words if viewers had the impression that they were moving toward the computer screen, whereas negative words were categorized faster if viewers had the impression that they were moving away from the screen. These findings were replicated in Experiment 3 using a lexical decision task instead of an adjective evaluation task.     

"Mood contagion": the automatic transfer of mood between persons

The current studies aimed to find out whether a nonintentional form of mood contagion exists and which mechanisms can account for it. In these experiments participants who expected to be tested for text comprehension listened to an affectively neutral speech that was spoken in a slightly sad or happy voice. The authors found that (a) the emotional expression induced a congruent mood state in the listeners, (b) inferential accounts to emotional sharing were not easily reconciled with the findings, (c) different affective experiences emerged from intentional and nonintentional forms of emotional sharing, and (d) findings suggest that a perception-behavior link (T. L. Chartrand & J. A. Bargh, 1999) can account for these findings, because participants who were required to repeat the philosophical speech spontaneously imitated the target person's vocal expression of emotion.