An assessment of body appreciation and its relationship to sexual function in women

Objectification theory posits internalization of an observer's gaze may negatively impact women's feelings about their bodies, which may subsequently affect their sexual function. Subjective body image and body size (i.e., body mass index [BMI]) have mixed relationships to women's sexuality, but assessment of positive body image as a sign of resistance to objectification has not been researched. This study explored relations between body appreciation and sexual function in women and assessed whether body size impacted this relationship. Cross-sectional data were collected online from 247 women, ages 18 to 58. Body appreciation scores were modestly negatively correlated with BMI, while BMI was not related to sexual function scores. After controlling for sexual orientation, partner status, and age, body appreciation predicted the arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction aspects of sexual function. Practitioners’ encouragement of body appreciation may improve sexual function in a way that encouraging a reduction in body size may not.     

Cosmetic surgery in inpatients with eating disorders: attitudes and experience

Body image disturbance is frequent among individuals undergoing cosmetic surgery and core to the pathology of eating disorders (ED); however, there is little research examining cosmetic surgery in ED. This study examined body image related measures, ED behaviors, and depression as predictors of attitudes toward cosmetic surgery in 129 women with ED. Patients who had undergone surgery (n = 16, 12%) were compared to those who had not. Having a purging diagnosis, linking success to appearance, and making physical appearance comparisons were predictive of more favorable cosmetic surgery attitudes. All of those who had undergone surgery had purging diagnoses and, on average, were older, had higher BMIs, and were more likely to make physical appearance comparisons and know someone who had undergone surgery. In ED, acceptance and pursuit of cosmetic surgery appears to be related to social group influences more than weight and shape disturbance, media influences, or mood.     

Porous skin: Breathing through the prism of the holey body

The skin is a body's largest organ and both a metaphor and a materiality. It constitutes a person's exteriority through which and on which social meaning is negotiated and constructed. My contribution challenges the modern idea of the skin's imagined solidity and fixity by returning to an older set of ideas that approach the body as porous, relational, ambiguous and atmospheric. The thought of a body that is open, holey from both the inside and the outside, atmospheric, strikes against culturally constructed and carefully policed myths and norms of groundedness and boundedness. Porosity, however, has not always been feared in that way. My paper explores the ways in which older, speculative thought celebrated the skin's ability to mingle corporally with air, wind and world. This radical openness affectively and materially ‘ungrounds’ seemingly familiar feelings and expectations of order, sense and stability. I wish to retrieve some of this original thinking, which approaches the body not as surface but through its glands, crevices, pores and holes that blur dichotomies of inside and outside. The purpose is to offer an embodied and relational politics that starts from a breathable skin that makes emotion and affect more contingent on the body's holey relationship to air and atmosphere.     

A unity of the self or a multiplicity of locations? How the graphesthesia task sheds light on the role of spatial perspectives in bodily self-consciousness

Integrating multisensory stimuli from a self-centred perspective is crucial for the unity of the self. On the other hand, understanding external space and communicating spatial knowledge with others necessitate the adoption of decentred perspectives. How do we juggle these two requirements? In this article, we review those studies that have used the graphesthesia task in order to investigate the perspectives that people adopt when interpreting ambiguous tactile symbols (e.g., b, d, p, and q). With such ambiguous symbols, self-centred and decentred perspectives conflict with one another. The results reviewed here reveal that the perspectives adopted vary significantly with spatial, personal, and interpersonal factors. Such findings suggest that the self can adopt a multiplicity of spatial locations. However, the unity of the self can partly be explained by the predominance of a head-centred perspective. On the other hand, perspective-taking abilities contribute to the distinction between self and others, reinforcing self-consciousness.     

Schema and deviation effects in remembering repeated unfamiliar stories

In today's globalized world, we frequently encounter unfamiliar events that we may have difficulty comprehending – and in turn remembering – due to a lack of appropriate schemata. This research investigated schema effects in a situation where participants established a complex new schema for an unfamiliar type of story through exposure to four variations. We found that immediate recall increased across subsequent stories and that distortions occurred less frequently – participants built on the emerging schema and gradually established representations of parts of the story that were initially transformed. In recall with delays increasing up to 1 month, quantitative measures indicated forgetting while distortions increased. The second focus of this research was on content and order deviation effects on recall. The content deviation, in contrast with previous repeated-event research, was not remembered well and was associated with lower recall; the order deviation had a similar (but expected) effect. We discuss discrepancies between results of this study and previous literature, which had focused on schemata for familiar events, in relation to stages of schema development: it seems that in unfamiliar repeated events, a complex new schema is in the early stages of formation, where the lack of attentional resources limits active processing of deviations.     

More than words: Judgments of politicians and the role of different communication channels

We collected short video clips of speakers and created five types of stimuli: (1) the original videos, (2) the audio tracks only, (3) single pictures only, (4) speech content, and (5) stick-figure animations displaying body motion. Participants rated these stimuli on a brief Big Five personality inventory. We then used ratings of the incomplete information conditions to predict ratings of the original video condition. Impressions in the audio track condition were strong predictors throughout all trait ratings. However, other cues were also non-negligible contributors to an overall impression. People even make sense of parsimonious cues, e.g., an animated stick-figure. Thus, presenters on a public stage are not only judged by what they say but also by how they move.     

Tomorrow is the start of the rest of their life — so who cares about health? Exploring constructions of weight-loss motivations and health using story completion

ABSTRACT

In Western societies, health is closely associated with body weight and weight loss, achieved through individual health behaviour. I examined such associations in constructions of weight-loss motivations and health in stories generated using the novel method of story completion. The story stem featured either a female or male protagonist deciding to lose weight; 148 women and 22 men (ages 18–24) provided stories in response. A social constructionist thematic analysis identified five themes: health as clothing size and means to an end; weight-loss activity as good for every woman; tomorrow is going to be the start of the rest of their life; tell me when I’m okay — it’s not about wellbeing; and weight loss as signifier of the “true self.” Considering the adverse social and psychological consequences reflected in the stories and the longstanding elusiveness of successful weight-loss methods, I support calls to review the dominant weight-focused approach to public health.