“Doing Good” versus “Being Good”: The interplay between pride appeals and regulatory-focused messages in green advertising

Many consumers feel proud of making green choices, which is of crucial relevance to explaining environmentally responsible behaviors. However, compared to other self-conscious emotions, such as guilt and shame, little research attention has been paid to the role of pride in green consumerism. Through conducting two online experimental surveys, this research examined what features of a message induce the two facets of the emotion pride—authentic and hubristic—and how pride appeals interact with message frames having different regulatory foci. In Study 1, participants revealed more favorable eco-friendly attitudes and intentions when hubristic pride appeals were combined with promotion-focused messages (detailing the positive benefits of using the green product), and when authentic pride appeals were matched with prevention-focused messages (emphasizing the negative consequences averted by using the green product). Study 2 replicated and supported the proposed matching hypotheses while including a control condition. Findings of this research will add to a growing body of literature on pride as a discrete emotion and its carryover effects on persuasion while providing guidelines to help practitioners design green advertising campaigns.     

Idiographic network analysis of discrete mood states prior to treatment

Idiographic network models based on time‐series data have received recent attention for their ability to model relationships among symptoms and behaviours as they unfold in time within a single individual (cf. Epskamp, Borsboom, & Fried, 2018; Fisher, Medaglia, & Jeronimus, 2018). Rather than examine the correlational relationships between variables in a sample of individuals, an idiographic network examines correlations within a single person, averaged over many time points. Because the approach averages over time, the data must be stationary (i.e. relatively consistent over time). If individuals experience varying states over time—different mixtures of symptoms and behaviours in one moment or another—then averaging over categorically different moments may undermine model accuracy. Fisher and Bosley (2019) address these concerns via the application of Gaussian finite mixture modelling to identify latent classes of time points in intraindividual time‐series data from a sample of adults with major depressive disorder and/or generalised anxiety disorder (n = 45). The present paper outlines an extension of this work, wherein network analysis is used to model within‐class covariation of symptoms. To illustrate this approach, network models were constructed for each intraindividual class identified by Fisher and Bosley (137 networks across the 45 participants, mean classes/person = ~3, range = 2–4 classes/person). We examine the relative consistency in symptom organisation between each individual's multiple mood state networks and assess emergent group‐level patterns. We highlight opportunities for enhanced treatment personalisation and review nomothetic patterns relevant to transdiagnostic conceptualisations of psychopathology. We address opportunities for integrating this approach into clinical practice and outline potential shortcomings.     

We Agree: Fat IS a Feminist Issue! Response to Commentators

In our review of the literature on women and weight bias (Fikkan and Rothblum 2011), we attempted to cull findings from multiple disciplines that demonstrate the impact (social, educational, and financial) of the stigma of women’s weight. We undertook this for two purposes: the first was to address a gap in the weight bias literature, which tends to make only a side note mention that fat women suffer worse penalties than do fat men; the second, to raise the point that feminist scholars, though highly attuned to pressures on women to be thin, have spent less time discussing the disparate impact for women of being fat, despite the mounting evidence of how much weight bias impacts women. We offered some of our own thoughts on the persisting neglect of this topic among feminist writers, despite previous calls to action (Rothblum 1992, 1994). Given the dearth of attention to what has become one of the most frequent types of discrimination against women (Puhl et al. 2008), we asked: “is fat a feminist issue?” We were delighted with the response from the commentators and the thoughtful exploration they devoted to our question and to this issue within feminist scholarship. Here, we briefly summarize some of the main themes identified by these writers, offer our own thoughts on these themes and repeat their call to action for further study of this important area of women’s lives.     

Self-Reported Cognitive Inconsistency in Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Insight into one's own cognitive abilities, or metacognition, has been widely studied in developmental psychology. Relevance to the clinician is high, as memory complaints in older adults show an association with impending dementia, even after controlling for likely confounds. Another candidate marker of impending dementia under study is inconsistency in cognitive performance over short time intervals. Although there has been a recent proliferation of studies of cognitive inconsistency in older adults, to date, no one has examined adults' self-perceptions of cognitive inconsistency. Ninety-four community-dwelling older adults (aged 70–91) were randomly selected from a parent longitudinal study of short-term inconsistency and long-term cognitive change in aging. Participants completed a novel 40-item self-report measure of everyday cognitive inconsistency, including parallel scales indexing perceived inconsistency 5 years ago and at present, yielding measures of past, present, and 5-year change in inconsistency. The questionnaire showed acceptable psychometric characteristics. The sample reported an increase in perceived inconsistency over time. Higher reported present inconsistency and greater 5-year increase in inconsistency were associated with noncognitive (e.g., older age, poorer ADLs, poorer health, higher depression), metacognitive (e.g., poorer self-rated memory) and neuropsychological (e.g., poorer performance and greater 5-year decline in global cognitive status, vocabulary, and memory) measures. Correlations between self-reported inconsistency and neuropsychological performance were attenuated, but largely persisted when self-rated memory and age were controlled. Observed relationships between self-reported inconsistency and measures of neuropsychological (including memory) status and decline suggest that self-perceived inconsistency may be an area of relevance in evaluating older adults for memory disorders.     

The selfobject as immortal self

This paper begins by defining the selfobject and elucidating its role in the structuring of the self for each unique individual. The self becomes a repository of the memory images of emotional experiences with significant others. This process of internalization through which the self is continually nourished, and which enables it to grow, goes on throughout life. However, as a case example illustrates, the ability to internalize a selfobject depends on the ability to receive and to give love. Once the selfobject is incorporated into the self of “an other” it is perpetuated in another, is perpetuated, analogous to the transmission of genetic material. Each individual carries others within himself or herself and has the potentiality for continuing to live within the self of another. This is a kind of immortality. She is the author of many articles and books, most recentlyAppointment in Vienna (St. Martin's Press).     

Spoken-word processing in aphasia: effects of item overlap and item repetition

Two studies were carried out to investigate the effects of presentation of primes showing partial (word-initial) or full overlap on processing of spoken target words. The first study investigated whether time compression would interfere with lexical processing so as to elicit aphasic-like performance in non-brain-damaged subjects. The second study was designed to compare effects of item overlap and item repetition in aphasic patients of different diagnostic types. Time compression did not interfere with lexical deactivation for the non-brain-damaged subjects. Furthermore, all aphasic patients showed immediate inhibition of co-activated candidates. These combined results show that deactivation is a fast process. Repetition effects, however, seem to arise only at the longer term in aphasic patients. Importantly, poor performance on diagnostic verbal STM tasks was shown to be related to lexical decision performance in both overlap and repetition conditions, which suggests a common underlying deficit.     

The effect of linguistic abstraction on interpersonal distance

It is well known that people describe positive behaviors of others close to them (e.g., in‐group member, friend) in abstract terms, but with concrete terms in the case of people who they are not close to (e.g., out‐group member, enemy). In contrast, negative behaviors of people who we are close to are described in concrete terms, but in abstract terms for people who are distant. However, the communicative impact of such subtle differences in language use on a receiver who is also the actor of the behavior being described has never been addressed. We hypothesized and found that a positive abstract message compared to a positive concrete message leads to perceived proximity to the sender, while a negative abstract message compared to a negative concrete message leads to perceived distance. The implications of this study, which is the first to show the communicative impact of biased language use, are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.