The impact of appearance-focused social comparisons on body image disturbance in the naturalistic environment: the roles of thin-ideal internalization and feminist beliefs

Drawing on Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory and its modern applications, this research investigated the relationship between upward appearance-focused social comparisons and body image disturbance using ecological momentary assessment, which allows for examination of these phenomena in their natural context. Participants were 91 undergraduate women who answered questionnaires five times per day for five days using Palm Personal Data Assistant (PDA) devices. Analyses were conducted using hierarchical linear modeling, which allows for examination of longitudinal data both within and across participants. Results revealed a positive relationship between upward appearance-focused social comparisons and body image disturbance. Upward appearance-focused social comparisons were associated with greater body image disturbance for those with higher levels of thin-ideal internalization and with greater body checking for women with lower levels of feminist beliefs. These findings further illuminate the nature of the relationship between social comparisons and body image disturbance.     

Relationship between respiratory mortality and self-perceptions of aging

Although there is growing evidence that psychological factors affect an individual's susceptibility to respiratory illnesses, psychological predictors of respiratory mortality have received little attention. This study investigated whether an age-specific psychological factor, older individuals’ beliefs about their own aging, predicted the likelihood of their dying from respiratory causes (ICD-9: 460–519). The sample was composed of 620 individuals, aged 50–87 years at baseline, who participated in a longitudinal study with six waves. Our research found that individuals with higher baseline positive self-perceptions of aging were significantly less likely to die of respiratory causes over the next 23 years, after controlling for age, functional health, gender, loneliness, marital status, self-rated health, and socioeconomic status (hazard ratio?=?0.695; p?<?0.005). This is the first study to link individual beliefs about aging to cause-specific mortality. Future research is warranted to further elucidate the relationship between self-perceptions of aging and resistance to respiratory mortality.     

Enthusiastic Improvement: Mary Astell and Damaris Masham on Sociability

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth‐century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework.     

Repertory grid in problem structuring: A case illustration

Although the results of previous psychological studies suggested the existence of behavioral freedom, there existed no methodology that could unequivocally identify the portion of human behavior resulting from self-determination or behavioral freedom in human action. The methodological innovations reviewed herein throw a different light on the factors involved in the genesis of human action than was previously possible with extant psychological research methodologies. But critics contend that in such studies subjects might simply be conforming to the experimenter's demands, rather than demonstrating their ability to self-determine. Two studies are presented that demonstrate that conformity is an extremely implausible explanation for the results attributed to self-determination in previous studies. Furthermore, the second study demonstrates the interaction between the idiographically construed meaningfulness of a behavior and one's desire or ability to voluntarily alter that behavior.     

An experimental manipulation of metacognition: A test of the metacognitive model of obsessive-compulsive symptoms

The metacognitive model of obsessive-compulsive symptoms [Wells, A. (1997). Cognitive therapy of anxiety disorders: A practice manual and conceptual guide. Chichester, UK: Wiley] assigns a necessary causal role to metacognitive beliefs in the development of symptoms. The current study tested the model by evaluating the effects of experimentally manipulating such beliefs. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used. Thirty-two students with high and 32 students with low obsessional symptoms were subject to an experimental (metacognitive belief induction) or control (no metacognitive belief induction) condition. All participants underwent fake EEG recordings and were informed that the EEG could sense hypothalamus activity caused by having thoughts related to drinking. Participants in the experimental condition were told that if such thoughts were detected they may be exposed to an aversive noise. Controls were told that they may hear an aversive noise but this would be unrelated to the thoughts they had. Results showed a significant interaction effect between level of obsessional symptoms and belief induction. Analysis of this effect demonstrated that in the high obsession group, participants in the experimental condition had significantly more intrusions about drinking, time spent thinking about these intrusions and discomfort from them, than controls. There were also significant main effects on some measures, such as effort to control intrusions about drinking, with higher scores in the experimental condition irrespective of levels of obsessional symptoms. Results support the metacognitive model.     

Witness Vetting: What Determines Detectives' Perceptions of Witness Credibility?

During the course of a criminal investigation witness vetting, a detective's process of determining the credibility and weight of witness information, can lead to errors in an investigation that can go virtually unchallenged. Witness confidence, opportunity to view, and type of information proffered were examined in relation to detective inferences about witness reliability, accuracy, and probable cause to arrest. Experiment 1 involved 39 sworn law enforcement officers, and experiment 2 involved 43 sworn law enforcement officers and 86 mock detectives. Participants viewed a digital recording depicting a witness describing a gas station robbery (Experiment 1) or a campus mugging (Experiment 2). Witness confidence and detectives' inferences about culprit information influenced the vetting process and lent credibility to a confident witness whose accuracy was objectively unknown. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that sworn law enforcement are comparable with untrained observers in their use of social inference cues (i.e. confidence) in determining witness credibility; however, social inference can be assuaged by the rational, rule‐governed, decision framework established for witness vetting. Social inference processes inherent in the detective‐witness dyad is influenced by legal procedures in vetting witness information. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.