Perceptions of Perfection: The Influence of Social Media on Interpersonal Evaluations

Through social network sites such as Facebook, people gain information about acquaintances that they would not gain from everyday life. This information typically highlights the most positive aspects of people’s personalities and lives. The goal of this investigation was to determine whether looking at another user’s Facebook profile influences perceptions of that individual’s socially desirable characteristics (e.g., intelligence, attractiveness). One group of participants viewed an acquaintance’s Facebook profile before providing evaluations, and the other evaluated the person without viewing Facebook. Results revealed that participants who viewed another person’s Facebook profile evaluated that person more favorably than those who completed a control task (Study 1) or wrote about the person from memory (Study 2). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Using Gratitude to Promote Positive Change: A Series of Meta-Analyses Investigating the Effectiveness of Gratitude Interventions

Gratitude interventions have been proposed as beneficial practices for improving myriad positive outcomes, and are promoted in self-help literature. The current work examined gratitude interventions’ effects with meta-analytic techniques to synthesize findings of thirty-eight studies, totaling 282 effect sizes. Fifty-six separate meta-analyses examined outcome effects for: gratitude versus neutral comparison at postintervention and delayed follow-up; gratitude versus negative comparison at post and follow-up; and gratitude versus positive comparison at post and follow-up. Results show that gratitude interventions can lead to improvements for numerous outcomes, including happiness, but do not influence others. Their unique benefits may be overemphasized in the literature.     

Body Dissatisfaction in College Women and Their Mothers: Cohort Effects, Developmental Effects, and the Influences of Body Size, Sexism, and the Thin Body Ideal

A study of body dissatisfaction, as measured by the Figure Rating Scale (Stunkard, Sorenson, & Schlusinger, 1983) and the Body Esteem Scale (Franzoi & Shields, 1984), in 75 college women and their mothers indicated that both daughters and mothers experienced body dissatisfaction. When body size was statistically controlled, either no difference was found between the groups or daughters were found to have greater body dissatisfaction than mothers. The results supported the hypotheses that (1) there are generational differences in body dissatisfaction, (2) both cohort and developmental effects contribute to these differences, and (3) that a developmental effect (mothers' greater body size) may obscure a cohort effect (daughters' greater exposure to the thin body ideal). Body dissatisfaction measures based on the mothers' retrospective ratings of how they felt at their daughters' age were consistent with these hypotheses. Relationships between body dissatisfaction and the Sociocultural Attitudes Toward Appearance Questionnaire (Heinberg, Thompson, & Stormer, 1995) were stronger and more frequent for daughters than for mothers and for the Internalization Scale than for the Awareness Scale. Relationships between the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 2001) and body dissatisfaction were stronger for mothers than for daughters and for Benevolent Sexism than for Hostile Sexism.     

Correspondence Bias and American Sentiment in the Wake of September 11, 20011

This experiment examined correspondence bias associated with the expression of pro‐ or anti‐American sentiment in the months following September 11, 2001. Participants read a pro‐ or anti‐United States essay written by a person whose name was varied to suggest that he either was or was not a Muslim. Participants were informed either that the position taken in the essay had been chosen or assigned. Inferences made about the essay writer's true opinions demonstrated strong and consistent correspondence bias only when participants believed the essay writer was not a Muslim. When participants believed the essay writer was a Muslim, correspondence bias was diminished on one measure and disappeared completely on another. These findings are consistent with the notion that participants were concerned about rushing to incorrect conclusions about a Muslim target person. The strong correspondence bias exhibited by participants making judgments about a non‐Muslim is consistent with Gilbert and Malone's (1995) assertion that unrealistic expectations lead to correspondence bias.     

Counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning: some implications for practice

This paper explores counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning. Previous experiences may create distortions in meaning-making perspectives, distortions that create templates for evaluating future experience. These templates act as barriers to being open to experience; thus there is an inability to learn from experience. The process of therapy can provide a learning milieu for the exploration and working through of these barriers, with a potential outcome of a return to learning from experience. It is suggested here that intrinsic to the learning milieu created in therapy there are elements of significant, transformative and emotional learning. Therapy is thus a reparative discourse that facilitates a return to learning from experience. A deconstruction of this concept is provided here as a way of developing the exploration of counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning.     

The Effects of Values on Worries Associated With Acute Disaster: A Naturally Occurring Quasi‐Experiment1

On April 12, 1995, a bomb exploded in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, destroying a federal office building, killing 168 people, and upending American notions of safety and security in the heartland. Using data collected before, immediately after, and 1 year after the bombing from 3 samples living within 25 miles of the explosion in a naturally occurring quasi‐experiment, research examined effects of values on people's worries in the context of a macrolevel traumatic event. High self‐transcendence and conservation values correlated with higher macro‐worries immediately after vs. before the explosion, but these worries were lower 1 year later. Findings indicate that values emphasizing broader social perspectives were associated with higher macrolevel worries, while values emphasizing one's own life and welfare were not.