The Role of the Relationship with Parents with Respect to Work Orientation and Work Ethic

We examined the extent to which individual relationships with mother and father, social support from partner, and quality of the relationship with the partner, are related to work orientation and work ethic. Survey data were obtained from 3841 respondents from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (wave 2). The results showed that, overall, people with a more positive relationship with their parents had a more positive work orientation and a stronger work ethic. A positive relationship with the father had a greater influence on these work aspects than a positive relationship with the mother, particularly for men. Partner support and the quality of the partner relationship partially mediated the association between the relationship with one's parents and work orientation only for women. There were no significant relationships between partner support or the quality of the partner relationship, and work ethic. Research on the relationship with parents and work-related variables is discussed.     

Breasts Are for Men: Media, Masculinity Ideologies, and Men’s Beliefs About Women’s Bodies

Although masculinity ideology (MI) has been shown to predict men’s sexual risk-taking, less is known about MI’s contribution to men’s beliefs about women and their sexual bodies. Accordingly, we examined associations between masculine ideology, media consumption, and men’s attitudes about women’s reproductive body functions among a sample of 656 undergraduate men. Participants completed measures assessing their endorsement of traditional gender ideologies, their levels of media exposure and engagement, and their attitudes toward childbirth and breastfeeding. It was hypothesized that media use would contribute to traditional MI, and that traditional MI would contribute to negative views about breastfeeding and childbirth. Results supported these individual connections, but not a mediated model. Discussion focuses on implications of these findings for women’s lives.     

Good Guys Can Finish First: How Brand Reputation Affects Extension Evaluations

This research investigates how consumer evaluations of brand extensions are affected by two distinct types of brand reputation: a reputation for social responsibility built through commitments to societal obligations, versus a reputation for ability developed by delivering quality offerings. Through six studies, we establish that while the two reputation types equivalently influence high fit brand extensions, a reputation for social responsibility (vs. ability) leads to more favorable responses toward low fit brand extensions by inducing a desire to support and help the company that has acted to benefit consumers. Furthermore, the facilitative effect of social responsibility on low fit brand extension evaluations is more prominent among consumers who value close relationships and caring for one another's well‐being (i.e., those with high communal orientation), and tends to dissipate when social responsibility initiatives are tainted with self‐serving motives (i.e., when these initiatives are aligned with the brand's core offering).     

Passive tactile feedback facilitates mental rotation of handheld objects

Mental rotation of objects improves when passive tactile information for the rotating object accompanies the imagined rotation (Wraga, Creem, & Proffitt, 2000). We examined this phenomenon further using a within-subjects paradigm involving handheld objects. In Experiment 1, participants imagined rotating an unseen object placed on their upturned palms. The participants were faster at mental rotation when the object was rotated on their palm than when the object remained stationary. Experiment 2 tested whether the performance advantage would endure when the participants received tactile information for only the start- and endpoints of the rotation event. This manipulation did not improve performance, relative to a stationary control. Experiment 3 revealed that ambiguous tactile information, continuous with the rotation event but independent of object shape, actually degraded performance, relative to a stationary control. In Experiment 4, we found that continuous tactile rotation discrepant from imagined object movement also hindered performance, as compared with continuous tactile information aligned with imagined object movement. The findings suggest a tight coupling between tactile information specifying continuous object rotation and the corresponding internal representation of the rotating object.     

Do allogeneic bone marrow transplant candidates match coping to controllability of pre-treatment stressors?

According to the Person x Situation theoretical framework, people adjust their coping to address the unique challenges of encountered stressors. Whether their strategies fit or appropriately address these stressor challenges influences adjustment. We examined the fit between pre-treatment stressors reported by hematological cancer patients awaiting allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (alloBMT) and their coping responses. Stressors were categorized as controllable versus uncontrollable; coping responses were categorized as problem- versus emotion-focused versus mixed (i.e., elements of both coping types). We hypothesized that patients would employ coping responses that fit the controllability of stressors (i.e., a match between stressor and coping response): problem-focused coping for controllable stressors and emotion-focused coping for uncontrollable stressors. In qualitative interviews, pre-BMT patients (10 men, 7 women) described encountered stressors and how they coped with them. Every reported stressor was linked with its associated coping response, resulting in a stressor-coping pair. We determined the proportion of total stressor-coping pairs in which the coping response matched the controllability of its linked stressor. Most stressor-coping pairs involving uncontrollable stressors showed the hypothesized match with emotion-focused or mixed coping. Contrary to hypotheses, fewer stressor-coping pairs that involved controllable stressors matched with problem-focused or mixed coping. Rather, these pairs were more likely to link controllable stressors with emotion-focused coping (i.e., mismatch between stressor controllability and type of coping). AlloBMT candidates may appraise the pre-treatment stage, globally, as permitting very little control. Coping efforts may consequently emphasize regulation of negative emotions (i.e., emotion-focused coping).     

Moral Concerns and Consumer Choice of Fresh and Processed Organic Foods1

This study used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to examine the impact of moral concerns on intention to buy organic apples and organic pizza. Initially, beliefs were elicited from a group of 30 people using a combination of the traditional TPB elicitation technique supplemented by direct questioning about emotions associated with the behavior. The questionnaire—which included measures of behavioral beliefs, attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and measures of moral norms (worded both positively and negatively)—was completed by 281 people. Multiple regressions showed that for both foods, the positive moral component added significantly to the prediction of intention, while negative ones did not. Also, affective attitude was a strong predictor of intention for both foods.     

The role of the media in body image concerns among women: a meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies

Research suggests that exposure to mass media depicting the thin-ideal body may be linked to body image disturbance in women. This meta-analysis examined experimental and correlational studies testing the links between media exposure to women's body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and eating behaviors and beliefs with a sample of 77 studies that yielded 141 effect sizes. The mean effect sizes were small to moderate (ds = -.28, -.39, and -.30, respectively). Effects for some outcome variables were moderated by publication year and study design. The findings support the notion that exposure to media images depicting the thin-ideal body is related to body image concerns for women.     

Neural Correlates of Reward Processing in Adolescents With a History of Inhibited Temperament

ABSTRACT— Functional imaging data were acquired during performance of a reward-contingency task in a unique cohort of adolescents (ages 14–18 years) who were characterized since infancy on measures of temperamental behavioral inhibition. Neural activation was examined in striatal structures (nucleus accumbens, putamen, caudate) with a known role in facilitating response to salient reward-related cues. Adolescents with a history of behavioral inhibition, relative to noninhibited adolescents, showed increased activation in the nucleus accumbens when they believed their selection of an action would affect reward outcome. Neural responses did not differ between the two groups when participants made a prespecified response that they knew would result in reward or when they produced random motor responses that they knew would not be rewarded. These results link inhibited temperament and perturbed neural responses to reward-contingency cues.     

Attentional and anatomical considerations for the representation of simple stimuli in visual short-term memory: evidence from human electrophysiology

Observers encoded the spatial arrangement of two or three horizontal line segments relative to a square frame presented for 150 ms either in left or right visual field and either above or below the horizontal midline. The target pattern was selected on the basis of colour (red vs. green) from an equivalent distractor pattern in the opposite left–right visual hemifield. After a retention interval of 450 or 650 ms a test pattern was presented at fixation. The task was to decide whether the test was the same as the encoded pattern or different. Selection of the to-be-memorised pattern produced an N2pc response that was not influenced by the number of line segments nor by the length of the retention interval, but that was smaller in amplitude for patterns presented in the upper visual field compared with patterns presented in the lower visual field. A sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) followed the N2pc. The SPCN was larger for patterns with three line segments than for two, was larger for patterns encoded from lower visual field than from upper visual field, and returned to baseline sooner for the shorter retention interval than for the longer interval. These results, and others, provide an interesting and complex pattern of similarities and differences between the N2pc and SPCN, consistent with the view that N2pc reflects mechanisms of attentional selection whereas the SPCN reflects maintenance in visual short-term memory.     

Beyond sex differences: Family and occupational roles' impact on women's and men's dreams

The question addressed is: do recent changes in the occupational roles of women, with their indirect influence on men's lives, have an impact on the dreams of women and men? Three groups of parents (N=96) including in equal numbers, mothers at home, wage-earning mothers and fathers, kept a dream diary from which two dreams per dreamer were content analyzed. Assuming continuity between daytime and dream experiences, it was hypothesized that differences in manifest dream content would be a function of single versus dual role enactment, rather than sex. Contrary to predictions, statistical analyses performed on selected dream variables did not yield significant differences between groups for pleasant and unpleasant emotions, friendly interactions and aggression. Dream characters, and the concerns they reflect, were found to vary, though, according to social roles. Commitment to their family was reflected above all in the mothers' at home dreams, while commitment to their profession took precedence in those of the wage-earning mothers. Comparable commitment to work and family was found among the fathers. Findings suggest that as gender differences in waking life decrease, so may differences in dreams.