Body dissatisfaction and body comparison with media images in males and females

This study examined the role of media body comparison as a mediator of the relationships between psychological factors and sociocultural pressures to be thin and body dissatisfaction in both females and males. Participants were 1,386 females (mean age = 19.37 years) and 1,130 males (mean age = 19.46) from diverse backgrounds who completed a self-report questionnaire. Path analysis was used to test a cross-sectional model in which media body comparison mediated the impact of self-esteem, depressive mood, parent dieting environment, friend dieting, TV exposure, magazine message exposure, weight teasing and body mass index (BMI) on body dissatisfaction. In females, media body comparison partially or fully mediated relationships between self-esteem, depressive mood, friend dieting, magazine message exposure and BMI, and body dissatisfaction. In males, media body comparison was not a significant predictor of body dissatisfaction. This research particularly highlights the need to further examine processes that are involved in the development of body dissatisfaction in males.     

Implicit and explicit attitudes respond differently to increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information

This research examined the processes by which explicit and implicit attitudes changed to systematically differing levels of counterattitudinal (CA) information. Explicit attitudes changed quickly in response to relatively small amounts of CA information, reflecting rule‐based reasoning. On the other hand, implicit attitudes changed more slowly in the face of CA information, reflecting the progressive accretion of evaluation‐attitude object pairings. Thus, explicit attitudes were extremely malleable and changed quickly when CA information was presented, however, implicit attitudes revealed a slow, linear change trajectory resulting from the on‐going accrual of information about the attitude object. Implications for the processes underlying implicit and explicit attitudes are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stereotype threat and working memory: mechanisms, alleviation, and spillover

Stereotype threat (ST) occurs when the awareness of a negative stereotype about a social group in a particular domain produces suboptimal performance by members of that group. Although ST has been repeatedly demonstrated, far less is known about how its effects are realized. Using mathematical problem solving as a test bed, the authors demonstrate in 5 experiments that ST harms math problems that rely heavily on working memory resources--especially phonological aspects of this system. Moreover, by capitalizing on an understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which ST exerts its impact, the authors show (a) how ST can be alleviated (e.g., by heavily practicing once-susceptible math problems such that they are retrieved directly from long-term memory rather than computed via a working-memory-intensive algorithm) and (b) when it will spill over onto subsequent tasks unrelated to the stereotype in question but dependent on the same cognitive resources that stereotype threat also uses. The current work extends the knowledge of the causal mechanisms of stereotype threat and demonstrates how its effects can be attenuated and propagated.     

Now you see it; now you don't: inhibiting recall and recognition of scenes

Postevent misleading information can distort people's memories by altering and adding scenes. But can you also inhibit the retrieval of information from memory? In two studies we show that postevent information can make memory for a scene less accessible. In both studies participants first saw an event (e.g. a restaurant scene displayed in slides, or a drunk‐driving incident shown via a video clip). Later they were shown the same event without a critical scene and were told either to use this to generate a story (Experiment 1) or to imagine the event (Experiment 2). Finally they were tested. Relative to controls, this postevent omission led to fewer people reporting the critical scene in free recall and in recognition. Thus, we demonstrated that it may be possible to inhibit memories. This finding has important implications for eyewitness testimony and the recovered memory debate. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determ inants of Positive and Negative Generation Effects in Free Recall

Better retention of self-produced as opposed to experimenter-presented material is called generation effect ; the reverse phenomenon is the negative generation effect. Both are found in intentional-learning experiments in which generating versus reading is manipulated between subjects. The present article presents an overview of those findings and aims at clarifying the conditions under which these effects emerge. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that if cuetarget relations are manipulated within one list, a negative generation effect in free recall can be obtained for all items, no matter which cue-target relation they bear. In Experiment 3, cue-target relations were manipulated between lists. Here, a negative generation effect in free recall was found only in lists in which items were cued with words that mismatched the intertarget relations, whereas a positive generation effect was observed in those lists in which the generation cues matched the inter-target relations. A subsequent cued-recall test demonstrated that in cases of mismatch of relations, participants in the generate condition process cue-target relations at the expense of inter-target relations. The three-factor theory can be integrated with the task-demand account in a transfer-appropriate processing framework to accommodate these findings.     

On the Role of Fragmentary Knowledge in a Sequence Learning Task

There has been considerable debate about whether or not we need to distinguish between the acquisition of implicit-and, independently thereof, the acquisition of explicit-knowledge in sequence learning tasks. Proponents of the view that a unitary knowledge base is formed assume (a) that the knowledge acquired is explicitly available, and (b) that information about sequence fragments forms the core of this explicit knowledge. Both of these issues are addressed empirically in the present article. In two experiments, an adapted process dissociation procedure and a suitable measurement model were used to separate recollective (explicit) and fluency-based (implicit) memory processes in a sequence learning task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that fluency-based processes came into play much later than recollective processes. Such recollective processes have been conceptualized as being based on simple knowledge about sequence fragments or chunks. Indeed, Experiment 2 showed that recollective processes are more likely to contribute to sequence judgements if chunks are readily available at test than if they are not. Together, these results are in line with the view that the learning of an event systematicity can be conceived of as the memorization of chunks of events that support both the speedingup of reaction times to systematic events and explicit, recollective memory processes even after relatively little training.     

Examining the effects of frustration on working memory capacity

The present study attempts to expand our understanding of frustration, clinical symptoms, and working memory by examining the unique contribution of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and frustration to working memory capacity (WMC). A factor-analytic framework was utilized to isolate and examine WMC based on results from three working memory tasks that were administered in counterbalanced order to control for individual differences in baseline WMC. All participants provided subjective ratings of frustration both prior to and after administration of a frustration induction. Results suggest that although we were able to systematically induce subjective frustration for participants in the experimental group relative to the control group, WMC was not associated with induced frustration in the present study. Results also indicated that inattention symptoms predicted baseline frustration levels. This work highlights the need to examine the extent to which storage/rehearsal WMC and additional process-oriented working memory-related performance variables are related to frustration. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.     

Tailoring computerised interventions to client needs

The results are reported of an experimental study in which 91 subjects rated the perceived helpfulness of three computerised interventions - a work values inventory (WAPS), a job-bank (JOB), and a decisions exercise (DECISIONS) - for hypothetical clients with identity, self-awareness, opportunity-awareness, decision-making and implementation problems. As predicted, WAPS was perceived as most helpful for clients with a self-awareness problem, JOB for clients with an opportunity-awareness problem, and DECISIONS for clients with a decision-making problem. Potential applications of the model implicit in the study to counsellor training, to the assessment of client problems and to careers education programmes are discussed.     

The relationship between daily events and mood: The mood measure may matter

Measures of daily mood have been used as immediate indicators of the effects of the psychosocial environment, the latter concept often measured by daily events. We examined the prediction of two measures of daily mood, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Nowlis Mood Adjective Checklist (MACL), by daily desirable and undesirable events and by day of the week. Unlike prior studies, the event assessment and type of subjects studied (community residents) were the same in both studies, allowing an attribution of differential associations between the two mood scales and either daily events or day of the week to the different mood measures. The mood measures had similar and expected associations with daily events, although the MACL scale generally had stronger associations with events. Surprisingly, the pattern of day of the week effects for positive, yet not negative, mood were different for the two mood measures. Consistent with the weekend's increase in desirable daily events, MACL positive affectincreased on weekends, relative to weekdays, whereas PANAS positive mooddecreased on weekends. Also, for both positive and negative affect scales, the MACL scales had stronger associations with day of week than the PANAS scales. These results suggest caution in the choice of mood measure to use in studies of daily events and pose questions about the meaning of these mood measures.This work was supported, in part, by grant MH39234 from NIMH. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.