Improving the efficacy of appearance-based sun exposure interventions with the terror management health model

The terror management health model (TMHM) suggests that when thoughts of death are accessible people become increasingly motivated to bolster their self-esteem relative to their health, because doing so offers psychological protection against mortality concerns. Two studies examined sun protection intentions as a function of mortality reminders and an appearance-based intervention. In Study 1, participants given a sun protection message that primed mortality and shown a UV-filtered photo of their face reported greater intentions to use sun protection on their face, and took more sunscreen samples than participants shown a regular photo of their face. In Study 2, reminders of mortality increased participants’ intentions to use facial sun protection when the UV photo was specifically framed as revealing appearance consequences of tanning, compared to when the photo was framed as revealing health consequences or when no photo was shown. These findings extend the TMHM, and provide preliminary evidence that appearance-based tanning interventions have a greater influence on sun protection intentions under conditions that prime thoughts of death. We discuss implications of the findings, and highlight the need for additional research examining the applicability to long-term tanning behaviour.     

Placing events in time: The role of autobiographical recollection

Episodic experience is argued to be rich in temporal information, but it remains unclear whether temporal information is directly coded in the event memory or is reconstructed at retrieval. The two experiments reported here emphasise the role of reconstructive processes of autobiographical context in establishing the date of memories. Younger and older participants were presented with famous public events, although only the latter had actually lived through them. Participants were asked to make forced-choice judgements about the date of the event and other event-related facts. Overall, while the older group showed better fact knowledge of the events, this did not translate into better dating performance. This older group showed similar dating performance across events with high and low factual knowledge. In contrast, the younger group's dating accuracy was determined by their level of knowledge. This suggests that older individuals who have direct episodic experience of an event may perform the task in a qualitatively different manner, eschewing semantic facts in favour of other sources of information. Crucially, this process does not appear to enhance performance. A second experiment addressed the issue of whether older participants date events based on general qualities of the event memory (e.g., vividness), the availability of other event-related semantic facts, or autobiographical context. It was found that the ability to place an event in autobiographical context is related to dating accuracy, but not to other aspects of memory.     

Christian Leadership and Religiosity Reexamined: The Evidence from College Student Leaders

This article assesses the impact of religiosity on Christian leadership orientations. The theoretical model is taken from the study of Shee, Ji, and Boyatt (2002), which presupposes that quest religiosity is inversely related to the structured, human resource, political, and symbolic leadership frames, while intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity are positively tied with them. The analysis is based on the 116 college student leaders in 12 Protestant colleges and universities. According to the data, the patterns of linkage between religious orientations and leadership frames lend partial support for the hypothesis. Intrinsic religiosity tends to foster structural and symbolic leadership, but quest religiosity promotes political leadership. The human resource leadership has turned out to be independent from religiosity, and extrinsic religiosity is found to have little to do with Christian leadership orientations.     

Representational momentum and the brain: An investigation into the functional necessity of V5/MT

The mental representation of objects can imply motion and momentum. This can be explored by investigating a distortion in recognition memory for pictures that depict objects “frozen” in mid-air, implying motion. This distortion is called representational momentum (RM). Recent functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the V5/MT system (the area of the brain thought to be responsible for perceptual processing of motion) is involved in the mediation of RM. The results of these studies are reviewed here. However the presence of functional activity revealed in brain imaging studies does not mean that this part of the brain is necessary for a particular cognitive task. A greater degree of functional necessity can be inferred by disrupting function in that part of the brain. One way in which this can be done is with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS, a method of temporarily suspending cortical activity). We extended the findings of the previous fMRI experiments by using TMS in conjunction with an RM paradigm. Repetitive magnetic stimulation to V5/MT during the so-called freeze-frame RM task resulted in an absence of the stereotypical distortion in recognition memory (compared to stimulation at the vertex) for approximately 60% of     

Errors and Understanding: The Effects of Error-Management Training on Creative Problem-Solving

People make errors in their creative problem-solving efforts. The intent of this article was to assess whether error-management training would improve performance on creative problem-solving tasks. Undergraduates were asked to solve an educational leadership problem known to call for creative thought where problem solutions were scored for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to beginning work on their problem solutions, participants were provided with training in 0 to 4 error-management strategies. It was found that error-management training was beneficial for talented people (as indicated by scores on the pretraining exercise) resulting in solutions of greater originality. The implications of these findings for improving performance on creative problem-solving tasks are discussed.     

A Review of Single-Case Research in Sport Psychology 1997–2012: Research Trends and Future Directions

Single-case research methods are an important facet of applied sport psychology because they provide a framework for researchers and practitioners to outline intervention effects across time with individuals or groups. This paper reviews the research published since Hrycaiko and Martin's (1996) milestone overview of single-case research in sport psychology. Specifically, we examined the literature between 1997 and 2012 and located 66 studies that met our inclusion criteria of assessing interventions in sport psychology. The review summarizes the body of research, outlines trends, considers the limitations of the extant literature, and identifies areas that require further investigation for future single-case research.     

Strategies Used by an Elite Curling Coach to Nurture Athletes’ Self-Regulation: A Single Case Study

Competition outcomes are a test of an athlete's ability to self-regulate; however, scant literature exists on how self-regulation processes are developed. This study investigated the strategies used by an elite curling coach to support co-regulation and help nurture his athletes’ self-regulation during a 16-week intervention involving multiple individual and group intervention sessions and interviews. The content analysis revealed that the coach utilized the following types of strategies to facilitate the athletes’ self-regulation: (a) preparatory strategies (e.g., anticipating/preparing for obstacles), (b) performance strategies (e.g., letting go of mistakes), and (c) self-reflection strategies (e.g., attributing errors to controllable aspects of performance).     

Ask,Answer, and Announce: Three stages in perceiving and responding to discrimination

Discrimination towards members of low-status groups takes a variety of forms, and results in a variety of negative consequences for its victims. Furthermore, discrimination may influence its targets either directly (for instance, when housing discrimination makes insurance, mortgage rates, or rents higher for African Americans than for whites) or indirectly, that is via perceptions on the part of the stigmatised. In the latter case the outcomes are caused or amplified by perceptions on the part of the victim that he or she is the target of discrimination. This chapter focuses on current research concerning factors that influence the perception of discrimination and its indirect influence on individuals. We review work from our own lab as well as from the field more broadly, focusing on research that attempts to explain contextual and individual variability in how events that are potentially due to discrimination are initially perceived, subsequently interpreted, and then publicly reported or withheld.     

Images of God as They Relate to Life Satisfaction and Hopelessness

The purpose of the present study was to (a) re-evaluate a model of God images based on masculine and feminine characteristics and (b) examine how God images relate to hopelessness and life satisfaction, while controlling for additional religious variables. Participants were 254 college students. A factor analysis indicated that God images did not fall into primarily masculine or feminine factors, rather into Loving, Controlling, and Permissive God factors. Individually, these factors were not found to be significant predictors of hopelessness in a regression analysis, when religious service, participant gender, and religious orientation were controlled. However, an interaction between participant gender and the Controlling God factor indicated that women with more controlling images of God experienced more hopelessness, whereas men with more controlling images of God experienced less hopelessness. Results are discussed in relation to parental styles and gender differences as contributing factors in determining one's image of God.