Explaining the relation between thin ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction among college women: the roles of social comparison and body surveillance

Sociocultural models of disordered eating lack comprehensive explanations as to how thin ideal internalization leads to body dissatisfaction. This study examined two social psychological theories as explanations of this relation, namely social comparison and objectification theories, in a sample of 265 women attending a Southeastern university. Social comparison (both general and appearance-related) and body surveillance (the indicator of objectification) were tested as mediators of the relation between thin ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction using bootstrapping analyses. Results indicated that body surveillance was a significant specific mediator of this relation; however, neither operationalization of social comparison emerged as such. Results serve to elaborate upon the sociocultural model of disordered eating by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the processes by which thin ideal internalization manifests itself in body dissatisfaction. The current findings also highlight the importance of targeting body surveillance in clinical settings.     

Commentary on Paper by Françoise Davoine

Françoise Davoine sees madness as a research project involving the uncanny presence of ghosts arising from the realm of the transference as well as the “big” history of wider social catastrophes across the generations, in effect “cut-out” pieces of the unconscious. Madness is a rupture in the social link that needs repairing. The therapist is a coresearcher with the individual whose madness tells a story embedded in the heart of madness itself. Davoine presents her work with a woman who has a history of multiple psychiatric hospitalizations. She invites her patient to link up with and speak of that which formerly resided in the Lacanian Real, that is, the unsymbolized haunting absence of her mother who was tragically murdered by the Nazis. The therapist's dream becomes a bridge to this world of ghosts for both patient and therapist. The dream ushers in an enactment and a transference interpretation by the therapist, which leads to a disappearance of madness from the analytic stage. I attempt to apply the theories of Post Kleinians, as well as Harold Searles and Gaetano Benedetti, to help illuminate the processes of therapeutic action. Contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to dreams and a relational view of madness are also addressed.     

The organizational structure and function of La Nuestra Familia within Colorado state correctional facilities

This article addresses the organizational structure and function of La Nuestra Familia, a prison-based Chicano crime group (gang) that formed in California in 1968 and has gradually moved eastward across the United States and into the Colorado prison system (Colorado Department of Corrections [DOC]). I argue that researchers of La Nuestra Familia have misinterpreted, or been unaware of, many of the vital functions of the organization to its membership. I demonstrate that Familia's organizational structure operates with a strong consensus of the Familianos (members) and that La Nuestra Familia functions, in most situations, as a mutual aid society.     

Dunning–Kruger effects in reasoning: Theoretical implications of the failure to recognize incompetence

The Dunning–Kruger effect refers to the observation that the incompetent are often ill-suited to recognize their incompetence. Here we investigated potential Dunning–Kruger effects in high-level reasoning and, in particular, focused on the relative effectiveness of metacognitive monitoring among particularly biased reasoners. Participants who made the greatest numbers of errors on the cognitive reflection test (CRT) overestimated their performance on this test by a factor of more than 3. Overestimation decreased as CRT performance increased, and those who scored particularly high underestimated their performance. Evidence for this type of systematic miscalibration was also found on a self-report measure of analytic-thinking disposition. Namely, genuinely nonanalytic participants (on the basis of CRT performance) overreported their “need for cognition” (NC), indicating that they were dispositionally analytic when their objective performance indicated otherwise. Furthermore, estimated CRT performance was just as strong a predictor of NC as was actual CRT performance. Our results provide evidence for Dunning–Kruger effects both in estimated performance on the CRT and in self-reported analytic-thinking disposition. These findings indicate that part of the reason why people are biased is that they are either unaware of or indifferent to their own bias.     

Banking on a bad bet. Probability matching in risky choice is linked to expectation generation

Probability matching is the tendency to match choice probabilities to outcome probabilities in a binary prediction task. This tendency is a long-standing puzzle in the study of decision making under risk and uncertainty, because always predicting the more probable outcome across a series of trials (maximizing) would yield greater predictive accuracy and payoffs. In three experiments, we tied the predominance of probability matching over maximizing to a generally adaptive cognitive operation that generates expectations regarding the aggregate outcomes of an upcoming sequence of events. Under conditions designed to diminish the generation or perceived applicability of such expectations, we found that the frequency of probability-matching behavior dropped substantially and maximizing became the norm.     

Illusion of confirmation from exposure to another's hypothesis

We examine the influence of exposure to an advisor's hypothesis, in the form of a point estimate of an uncertain quantity, on subsequent point estimates and confidence judgments made by advisees. In three experiments, a group of unexposed advisees produced their own estimates before being presented with that of the advisor, while a group of exposed advisees were presented with the advisor's estimate before making their own. Not surprisingly, exposed advisees deliberately incorporated the information conveyed by the advisor's estimate in producing their own estimates. But the exposure manipulation also had a contaminating influence that shifted what the advisees viewed as their own, independent estimates toward those of the advisor. Seemingly unaware of this influence, exposed advisees were subject to an illusion of confirmation in which they expressed greater confidence in the accuracy of the advisor's estimate than did unexposed advisees. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-predictions overweight strength of current intentions

We suggest that people’s predictions of their future behavior overweight the strength of their current intentions, and underweight situational or contextual factors that influence the ease with which intentions are translated into action. As expected by this account, we find that self-predictions closely follow ratings of current intention strength, and that the actual probability of the behavior being predicted does not increase with intention strength to the extent implied by self-predictions (Study 1). We also find that manipulations designed to strengthen intentions to carry out a behavior have a larger impact on self-predictions than on the behavior being predicted (Studies 1 and 2), whereas a manipulation designed to influence the ease with which intentions are translated into behavior has a larger impact on actual behavior than on self-predictions (Study 2). Observers’ predictions of another’s behavior do not follow the same pattern (Study 3).     

Catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met genotype affects neural correlates of aversive stimuli processing

It was previously shown that variation of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene modulates brain activity during the processing of stimuli with negative valence, but not for pleasant stimuli. Here, we tested whether the COMT genotype also modulates the electrophysiological correlates of emotional processing and explored whether the environmental factor of life stress influences this effect. Using the early posterior negativity (EPN) paradigm, event-related brain potentials were measured in 81 healthy individuals during the processing of pictures that evoked emotions of positive and negative valence. As was hypothesized, the COMT genotype affected the EPN amplitudes for unpleasant stimuli, but not for pleasant ones. Specifically, Met/Met carriers respond more sensitively to unpleasant stimuli, as compared with Val/Val carriers. We did not find evidence that life stress moderates the effect of the COMT genotype on emotional stimuli processing.     

Comments on “Getting scarred and winning lotteries: Effects of exemplar cuing and statistical format on imagining low‐probability events,” By Newell,Mitchell, and Hayes (2008)

Newell, Mitchell, and Hayes (NMH) conduct three experiments designed to test whether exemplar cuing (EC) theory or a statistical format theory provides a more accurate account for how people make judgments about low‐probability events. They report finding support for the statistical format theory and little or no support for EC. However, NMH misstate the requirements for the production of exemplars in EC theory. As a result, they confuse non‐exemplar conditions with exemplar conditions in their experiments, and find results that are virtually irrelevant to EC theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How stable are borderline diagnoses?

Borderline diagnostic terms are still being routinely and rather unreliably made in many centers. In the present sample of probands with various borderline states other diagnoses from the entire spectrum of psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia, were also found. Thus, in those cases with multiple admissions, a borderline diagnosis demonstrated only little stability over time. There was a strong tendency for borderline cases towards a diagnosis of schizophrenia and vice versa. Indeed, probands, with both borderline and schizophrenic diagnoses had no clear-cut course characteristics. It is suggested that the criteria of DSM-III for borderline personality disturbance be provisionally used for research purposes.