An experimental analysis of body checking

The relationship between repeated body checking and its impact on body size estimation and body dissatisfaction is of interest for two reasons. First, it has importance in theoretical accounts of the maintenance of eating disorders and, second, body checking is targeted in cognitive-behavioural treatment. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of manipulating body checking on body size estimation and body dissatisfaction. Sixty women were randomly assigned either to repeatedly scrutinize their bodies in a critical way in the mirror ("high body checking") or to refrain from body checking but to examine the whole of their bodies in a neutral way ("low body checking"). Body dissatisfaction, feelings of fatness and the strength of a particular self-critical thought increased immediately after the manipulation among those in the high body checking condition. Feelings of fatness decreased among those in the low body checking condition. These changes were short-lived. The manipulation did not effect estimations of body size or the discrepancy between estimations of body size and desired body size. The implications of these findings for understanding the influence of body checking on the maintenance of body dissatisfaction are considered.     

Appraising the Appraisal‐Tendency Framework

This article considers the consumer research implications of the Appraisal‐Tendency Framework (ATF; Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007). This article outlines how the ATF approach could be applied to sequential consumer choices (e.g., effects of emotional responses to stockouts on later decisions) and high‐stakes decisions (e.g., medical decisions). This article also proposes several areas in which the ATF might be extended: examining complex sequences of choices with emotional consequences, considering how incidental and integral emotions interact, characterizing how both evaluative and regulatory mechanisms may influence the effects of emotion on judgment and choice, and extending the range of positive emotions and appraisal dimensions considered.     

Client‐centred group therapy for survivors of interpersonal trauma: A pilot investigation

Group therapy for trauma survivors provides an opportunity to share experiences with others in a supportive environment. Client‐centred groups have received very little attention as a way of working with traumatised people. Such groups promise to promote psychological growth following trauma. In this paper we present pilot data from a client‐centred group of six survivors of interpersonal violence who were experiencing complex posttraumatic stress reactions. Results suggested that those who perceived the presence of empathic listening within the group therapy sessions benefited from the group, showing greater positive changes. Clinical implications for working with trauma survivors, methodological considerations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Electronic Diaries: A Feasible Method of Assessing Emotional Experiences in Youth?

The primary goal of this study was to examine whether electronic diaries are a feasible method of monitoring transitory emotional states with a school-age, community sample of youth. A second goal was to examine preliminary relations between indices of emotional functioning captured via electronic diaries and other measures of child emotional and psychological functioning. Participants included 38 youth between the ages of 7 and 12 (51% males, M age = 9 [1.52] years and 49% females, M age = 9 [1.94] years) and their mothers (M age = 39 years) and fathers (M age = 42 years). Children were prompted to indicate the intensity of their current emotion four times a day for 1 week using Palm Tungsten E2s. Youth also completed self-report measures of emotion intensity, awareness, and dysregulation. Parents completed measures of child emotion regulation and symptoms of externalizing and internalizing psychopathology. Sixty percent of the prompts were answered as intended. Higher levels of positive emotion intensity based on electronic diary ratings were negatively related to parent reports of adaptive emotion regulation and were positively related to youths’ reports of emotion dysregulation and poor emotion awareness. Given that the electronic diary data offered unique information on youth emotional functioning, strategies to increase compliance with the diaries are suggested.     

Implicit and explicit prejudice in the 2008 American presidential election

The 2008 US presidential election was an unprecedented opportunity to study the role of racial prejudice in political decision making. Although explicitly expressed prejudice has declined dramatically during the last four decades, more subtle implicit forms of prejudice (which come to mind automatically and may influence behavior unintentionally) may still exist. In three surveys of representative samples of American adults, explicit and implicit prejudice were measured during the months preceding the election. Both explicit and implicit prejudice were significant predictors of later vote choice. Citizens higher in explicit prejudice were less likely to vote for Barack Obama and more likely to vote for John McCain. After controlling for explicit prejudice, citizens higher in implicit prejudice were less likely to vote for Obama, but were not more likely to vote for McCain. Instead, they were more likely to either abstain or to vote for a third-party candidate rather than Obama. The results suggest that racial prejudice may continue to influence the voting process even among people who would not endorse these attitudes.     

Instruction and Practice in Learning to use a Device

We explore the extent to which Anderson's (1987) theory of knowledge compilation can account for the relationship between instructions and practice in learning to use a simple device. Bibby and Payne (1993) reported experimental support for knowledge compilation in this domain. This article replicates the finding of a performance cross-over between instruction type and task type that disappears with practice on the tasks. The research is extended by using verbal protocols to model the strategies of novice and more experienced individuals. Production system models of these strategies suggest that knowledge compilation only provides an adequate account of practice for one of two Instruction groups. To model the strategy shifts for the second group, we employ a “procedure modification heuristic” (after Neches, 1987), which relies on access to a declarative model of the configuration of the device. This suggests that instructionally derived declarative knowledge may have a subtle ongoing effect on the changes in procedural knowledge with practice.     

Safety Climate Measurement: an Empirical Test of Context-Specific vs. General Assessments

Purpose

Safety climate researchers develop and use both general and industry-specific safety climate measures. Theories about language comprehension suggest that context facilitates meaning; however, the relative value of context-specific safety climate measures in the prediction of safety outcomes is an empirical question that has not been rigorously tested. The purpose of the present study was to provide a rigorous comparison of context-specific vs. general safety climate measures.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Seven hundred forty-six university laboratory personnel from five different kinds of research labs (i.e., animal biological, biological, chemical, human subjects/computer, or mechanical/electrical) completed contextualized safety climate measures, a general safety climate measure, and measures of other safety-related constructs.

Findings

Measurement equivalence analyses indicated that the general safety climate measure was not equivalent across the five lab types. Hypothesis testing revealed that contextualized information was most helpful when included in safety climate measures for less, rather than more, safety-salient contexts, but overall, there was relatively little difference in the validities for general and context-specific measures.

Implications

Results suggest that context has a small influence on how individuals respond to safety climate measures and provide guidance for researchers/practitioners when deciding between using industry-specific or general safety climate measures. It appears most beneficial to use industry-specific measures when examining safety climate in a less-safety-salient context.

Originality/Value

This study offers one of the first empirical tests of a contextualized safety climate measure involving a rigorous, unconfounded comparison of five context-specific safety climate measures with a general measure.