Media influence on drive for thinness,body satisfaction,and eating attitudes among young women in Hong Kong and China

The present study examined the impact of thin-ideal media exposure on Chinese women’s drive for thinness, attitudes towards body shape, and eating attitude. Women were assigned to one of two video conditions, which portrayed the thin-ideal (experimental) or was neutral (control group), in terms of content. A total of 83 young women from Hong Kong (N = 38) and Shanghai (N = 45), aged between 18 and 25 years (M_age = 22.7) participated in the study. A significant interaction was observed between the experimental video condition and location. Hong Kong women in the experimental group experienced greater levels of body dissatisfaction than Shanghai women exposed to the same condition. Exposure to thin-ideal media produced an increase in drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction and problematic eating attitudes regardless of location, with a greater immediate impact shown in Hong Kong women.     

Perceived interpersonal sources of life satisfaction in Chinese and American students: Cultural or gender differences?

This study evaluated cultural and gender differences in perceived interpersonal sources of life satisfaction between 341 Chinese and 222 American college students. Comparative analyses indicated overall lower life satisfaction in Chinese, than in Americans. However, Chinese, compared to Americans, reported greater life satisfaction derived from perceived sources involving the self, parents, teachers and peers. Results of regression analyses indicated that, for both Chinese and Americans, the self and parents were unique sources associated with life satisfaction. However, for Americans, close friends also emerged as an additional unique source. When gender differences were examined, additional nuances were found within each cultural group. Thus, some evidence for both cultural and gender differences in perceived interpersonal sources of life satisfaction across Chinese and Americans was found. Some implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Genetic Gating of Human Fear Learning and Extinction: Possible Implications for Gene-Environment Interaction in Anxiety Disorder

ABSTRACT— Pavlovian fear conditioning is a widely used model of the acquisition and extinction of fear. Neural findings suggest that the amygdala is the core structure for fear acquisition, whereas prefrontal cortical areas are given pivotal roles in fear extinction. Forty-eight volunteers participated in a fear-conditioning experiment, which used fear potentiation of the startle reflex as the primary measure to investigate the effect of two genetic polymorphisms (5-HTTLPR and COMTval158met) on conditioning and extinction of fear. The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, located in the serotonin transporter gene, is associated with amygdala reactivity and neuroticism, whereas the COMTval158met polymorphism, which is located in the gene coding for catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), a dopamine-degrading enzyme, affects prefrontal executive functions. Our results show that only carriers of the 5-HTTLPR s allele exhibited conditioned startle potentiation, whereas carriers of the COMT met/met genotype failed to extinguish conditioned fear. These results may have interesting implications for understanding gene-environment interactions in the development and treatment of anxiety disorders.     

Type A as a Moderator of Stressors and Job Complexity: A Comparison of Achievement Strivings and Impatience-Irritability

This study examined two components (achievement strivings and impatience-irritability) of the Type A Behavior Pattern as moderators of job stressors and job complexity on health and job satisfaction. It was predicted that achievement strivings would moderate the impact of job stressors and impatience-irritability would impact responses to job complexity. Data from 525 employed adults provided mixed support for the moderator hypotheses. Relations between job stressors and both health and job satisfaction were strongest among employees reporting high levels of achievement strivings. Impatience-irritability had no moderating effect. For job complexity, only one moderator effect was found. Mental demands were positively related to job satisfaction among those reporting low levels of impatience-irritability. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Issues and Insights: Working With God: Managing Conservative Christian Beliefs That May Interfere With Counseling

Counselors who work with conservative Christians may ask how to respect a client's values when “God” seems to be saying something contrary to what the counselor believes is in the client's best interests. In a managed care era of decreasing choice about one's counselor, referral of such clients to a conservative Christian counselor is not always an option. “Working with God” when counseling conservative Christian clients requires counselors to understand conservative Christian beliefs. This article portrays conservative Christianity as a culture and articulates conservative Christian beliefs that may challenge the counseling process, suggesting options within the framework of these beliefs.     

Does action make you faster? A retrieval‐based approach to investigating the origins of the enactment effect

The enactment effect, the stable finding that memory for action phrases is enhanced in a subject-performed compared to a verbal task (SPT; VT), has repeatedly been demonstrated. The question remains whether the enactment effect has to do with specific characteristics of the SPT-retrieval process. Experiment 1 tested younger and older adults in a within-subjects design with two direct free recall tests. Thorough analyses of the recall process showed that the benefit from self-performing the items becomes apparent early into the retrieval phase for both age groups. Experiment 2 tested the same age groups with a retention phase of 30 minutes. The same general results pattern emerged. The acceleration of the recall process in SPTs is indicative of a heightened accessibility of the actively encoded material, making it less susceptible to forgetting. This property of SPTs must be taken into account when trying to determine the origins of the enactment effect.     

Forum on Paulo Freire's pedagogy: Leaning educationally into our future

This forum revisits Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed on the 50^th anniversary of its publication in 1968. William R. Myers's opening essay reflects on his discovery of the book and the impact it has had on his life as a Christian minister and theological educator. He provides a Freirean critique of his own schooling and of church and society today. He pulls out several themes in Freire's work, demonstrating their usefulness for cultural analysis and critique in a variety of educational contexts. Succeeding essays by Tina Pippin, Neomi De Anda, and Cláudio Carvalhaes describe specific Freirean‐style pedagogies they have used in their classrooms.     

Attachment to groups: Relationships with group esteem,self-esteem,and investment in ingroups

We apply a model of interpersonal attachment style to the group domain, examining how attachment to ingroups relates to self-views, group esteem, and ingroup investment. In Study 1 (N = 306), participants completed measures of self-esteem, group esteem, group attachment insecurity, and investment. Study 2 (N = 316) implemented a within-subjects experimental design in which participants completed the same measures as in Study 1 with regard to ingroups they held in high versus low esteem. In both studies, the negative relationship between group esteem and group attachment avoidance was stronger among participants with higher self-esteem, and the negative relationship between self-esteem and group attachment anxiety was stronger for more esteemed ingroups. Over and above group esteem, group attachment anxiety was positively and avoidance negatively related to investment in ingroups. We integrated frameworks spanning group dynamics and close relationships to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals perceive their relationships with ingroups.     

Gender differences in remembering and inferring spatial distances

The abilities of males and females to make spatial inferences were compared. Spatial inference is concerned with the ability to work out new spatial information from memory. In two experiments, participants had to study line drawings depicting shapes linked either by straight or meandering lines. Afterwards, they had to remember the straight-line distances or to infer the straight-line distances. Several spatial abilities were also assessed: perceptual discrimination, mental rotation, and visuo-spatial working memory span. The results showed that males outperformed females in spatial inference and mental rotation. Experiment 2 extended the study to old people. The results replicated and clarified those obtained in Experiment 1. Spatial inference and mental rotation showed age-related and gender-related differences; in addition, age reduced the visuo-spatial memory span. Overall, the findings suggest that gender differences favouring males are maximised with tasks requiring active processing and strategic control of metric information.