Perceptions of the social and personal characteristics of hypermuscular women and of the men who love them

A predominately European American sample of middle class college students rated hypermuscular female bodybuilders and the men who were romantically involved with them on measures of perceived gender traits, personality traits, social behaviors, and heterosexual behaviors. Participants perceived hypermuscular women, as compared to the average woman, as having more masculine and fewer feminine interests, less likely to be good mothers, and less intelligent, socially popular, and attractive. However, participants also perceived them as being less likely to engage in socially deviant behaviors or to be sexually manipulative and more likely to be extraverted, conscientious, and open to new experiences than the average woman. Participants perceived men who are romantically involved with hypermuscular women as having stronger masculine traits, interests, and identities than the average man. The authors found no relationships between the perceiver's gender type and his or her perceptions of hypermuscular women or the men who were romantically involved with them.     

Testing Antonovsky's sense of coherence (SOC) scale among Swedish physically active older people

In Antonovsky's salutogenic theory, the major concept sense of coherence (SOC) is constituted of three core components called comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Several scales that are intended to measure SOC are available and used by researchers in health and caring sciences all over the world. When using a scale, evidence of its quality in different study groups is needed in order to get reliable and valid data. The aim of this study was to test reliability and construct validity of the Swedish version of Antonovsky's original 29-item sense of coherence (SOC) scale in a group of physically active older people. The scale was tested with a convenience sample of 140 physically active older individuals, who took part in different fitness-training groups in eastern Sweden. Reliability was assessed as item to total correlations and with the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Construct validity was assessed with the known groups technique, confirmatory factor analysis, and with logistic regression analysis. The results showed that in the studied group of older individuals, the instrument was a very reliable tool with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.92. Construct validity of the scale was supported by the fact that the global concept sense of coherence was found to be hierarchically organized in a model that consisted of the three core components of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Furthermore, perceived health could be explained to some degree by sense of coherence, but even more by comprehensibility, in both cases independently of chronological age. The results clearly corroborated Antonovsky's theory.     

Intelligence and executive functioning in adult age: Effects of sibship size and birth order

Several studies have demonstrated that social influences from having been brought up in a family with few siblings and early in birth order result in higher scores on intelligence tests in childhood and adolescence as compared to having been brought up in large sibships. The present study examined whether influences of such social factors would have long-lasting effects on intelligence (block design and word comprehension) and executive functions (working memory and verbal fluency) in adulthood and old age, i.e., long after the individuals had moved out of the family structure they were born in. After having controlled for socioeconomic status and a variety of health conditions affecting cognition in adult life, a sibship size effect was demonstrated for executive functions but not for intelligence. The social influences of birth order affected only executive functions and working memory in particular; earlier born individuals performed better than later born individuals in tests assessing executive function but not in tests assessing intelligence. Implications for the relationship between executive functioning and intelligence, and implications for the Confluence and Resource Dilution Models (Blake, 1981; Downey, 1995, 2001; Zajonc, 1976) are discussed.     

Parental media monitoring,prosocial violent media exposure,and adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behaviors

Prosocial violent media (e.g., media that combines both violent and prosocial content) is especially popular in entertainment media today. However, it remains unclear how parental media monitoring is associated with exposure to prosocial violent content and adolescent behavior. Accordingly, 1,193 adolescents were asked about parental media monitoring, media content exposure, and behavior. Main findings suggest that autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was associated with lower levels of exposure to prosocial violent content, but only among older adolescents. Additionally, autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was the only form of parental media monitoring associated with lower levels of violent content and higher levels of prosocial content, and autonomy supportive active monitoring was the only parental monitoring strategy that promoted prosocial behavior via exposure to prosocial media content. Discussion focuses on the importance of autonomy supportive parental monitoring, as well as the implications of parents encouraging their children to watch media with limited violent content—even if it is prosocial violent content.