Body image concern among Australian adolescent girls: The role of body comparisons with models and peers

This study investigated the potential mediating roles of body comparisons with peers and models in the relationship between the internalization of thinness norms and body image concern. A total of 224 Western Australian girls aged 14–15 completed questionnaires assessing their endorsement of thinness norms, body image concerns, and frequency of body comparisons with peers and with models. Both targets of body comparisons were found to significantly mediate the relationship between the endorsement of thinness norms and body image concern, with body comparison with peers a stronger mediator than comparison with models. These findings show that body comparison with peers, in particular, plays a significant role in the experience of body image concerns among adolescent girls, and should be given a higher profile in programs designed to prevent or reduce body image concern.     

One-year temporal stability and predictive and incremental validity of the Body,Eating, and Exercise Comparison Orientation Measure (BEECOM) among college women

This study examined the one-year temporal stability and the predictive and incremental validity of the Body, Eating, and Exercise Comparison Measure (BEECOM) in a sample of 237 college women who completed study measures at two time points about one year apart. One-year temporal stability was high for the BEECOM total and subscale (i.e., Body, Eating, and Exercise Comparison Orientation) scores. Additionally, the BEECOM exhibited predictive validity in that it accounted for variance in body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptomatology one year later. These findings held even after controlling for body mass index and existing measures of social comparison orientation. However, results regarding the incremental validity of the BEECOM, or its ability to predict change in these constructs over time, were more mixed. Overall, this study demonstrated additional psychometric properties of the BEECOM among college women, further establishing the usefulness of this measure for more comprehensively assessing eating disorder-related social comparison.     

Examining an elaborated sociocultural model of disordered eating among college women: The roles of social comparison and body surveillance

Social comparison (i.e., body, eating, exercise) and body surveillance were tested as mediators of the thin-ideal internalization-body dissatisfaction relationship in the context of an elaborated sociocultural model of disordered eating. Participants were 219 college women who completed two questionnaire sessions 3 months apart. The cross-sectional elaborated sociocultural model (i.e., including social comparison and body surveillance as mediators of the thin-ideal internalization-body dissatisfaction relation) provided a good fit to the data, and the total indirect effect from thin-ideal internalization to body dissatisfaction through the mediators was significant. Social comparison emerged as a significant specific mediator while body surveillance did not. The mediation model did not hold prospectively; however, social comparison accounted for unique variance in body dissatisfaction and disordered eating 3 months later. Results suggest that thin-ideal internalization may not be “automatically” associated with body dissatisfaction and that it may be especially important to target comparison in prevention and intervention efforts.     

能力社会比较与归因反馈对不诚实行为的影响

社会比较作为认识自我的一种方式,对个体心理与行为的诸多方面产生影响,但对于社会比较如何影响不诚实行为以及归因反馈在其中的作用,目前尚不清楚。在3项实验中操纵了不同方向的能力社会比较,探讨其对不诚实行为的影响(研究1)以及归因反馈在其中的调节作用(研究2)。结果发现:(1)相比于向下比较和无比较,向上比较会增加个体的不诚实行为;(2)归因反馈调节上述影响:向上比较后,相比于给予能力反馈,给予努力反馈可以减少个体的不诚实行为。本研究拓展了社会比较后效研究,对如何减少社会比较引起的不诚实行为具有重要启示。     

从不同高血压防治指南的比较看高血压治疗策略的变化

为减少因高血压造成的各种心血管事件,世界不同地区制定或修订了适合自己的高血压防治指南。通过对JNC7、ESH/ESC及2004年中国高血压防治指南的比较及分析,以便能更全面、正确地理解和发展我国新的高血压指南,并将该指南灵活运用于实际工作。     

认知诊断模型中项目水平模型比较统计量的健壮性

使用模拟研究方法比较了以往研究中提出的基于观察信息矩阵、三明治矩阵的Wald（分别表示为W_Obs、W_Sw）、似然比（Likelihood Ratio）统计量以及新提出的基于经验交叉相乘信息矩阵的Wald统计量（W_XPD）在模型——数据失拟条件下进行项目水平上模型比较时的表现。结果显示：（1）W_Sw的一类错误控制率有很强的健壮性。（2）W_XPD在Q矩阵错误设定的大多数条件下的表现优于W_Sw。结论：模型—数据拟合良好时可以使用W_Sw进行项目水平上的模型比较,当模型与数据失拟时W_XPD可能是更好的选择。     

Psychological Comparison Processes and Self-Concept in Relation to Five Distinct Frame-of-Reference Effects: Pan-Human Cross-Cultural Generalizability over 68 Countries

The concept of self is central to personhood, but personality research has largely ignored the relevance of recent advances in self-concept theory: multidimensionality of self-concept (focusing instead on self-esteem, an implicit unidimensional approach), domain specificity (generalizability of trait manifestations over different domains), and multilevel perspectives in which social-cognitive processes and contextual effects drive self-perceptions at different levels (individual, group/institution, and country) aligned to Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. Here, we provide theoretical and empirical support for psychological comparison processes that influence self-perceptions and their relation to distal outcomes. Our meta-theoretical integration of social and dimensional comparison theories synthesizes five seemingly paradoxical frame-of-reference and contextual effects in self-concept formation that occur at different levels. The effects were tested with a sample of 485,490 fifteen-year-old students (68 countries/regions, 18,292 schools). Consistent with the dimensional comparison theory, the effects on math self-concept were positive for math achievement but negative for verbal achievement. Consistent with the social comparison theory, the effects on math self-concept were negative for school-average math achievement (big-fish-little-pond effect), country-average achievement (paradoxical cross-cultural effect), and being young relative to year in school but positive for school-average verbal achievement (big-fish-little-pond effect—compensatory effect). We demonstrate cross-cultural generalizability/universality of support for predictions and discuss implications for personality research. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives

Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.     

Applying matrix factorization techniques to compare experts’ categorization process during case formulation task performed by concept maps

The aim of this paper was to present a method to enable the analysis of the process of categorization of patients’ testimonials and the comparison of individual categories created by professionals. A complex diagnostic task (case conceptualization) was employed to study the categorization function in professional thinking. Two groups of psychotherapists (30 people in each group) served as subjects of the research. The main objective of the study was to find an appropriate representation of concept maps enabling a comparison of both the categories and the structures between experts. In the comparison process, only the information about the premises justifying each given category was taken into account and represented by a concept-testimonials matrix. Three different elements weighting schemes and matrix factorization-based unsupervised clustering methods were analyzed in the context of consistency and ability to establish main semantic groups of concepts common to the majority of experts. Moreover, special attention was paid to determining the number of main semantic classes. The study showed that even the used representation was similar to the task of documents indexing there was some discrepancy. The highest accuracy in generating main semantic groups was achieved using the PCA and K-Means (nKM) (the average false positive rate in clusters was 32%). This method outperformed Tempered PLSA (the average false positive rate per cluster was 52%). It was demonstrated that in analyzed task the nKM method allowed comparing the similarity of concepts even when they were created by various experts using different conceptual apparatus.     

Weak Consistency for Ensuring Priority Vectors Reliability

Consistency and transitivity are important and leading research topics in the study of decision‐making in terms of pairwise comparison matrices. In this paper, we search for conditions that, in case of inconsistency, guarantee ordinal compatibility between ordinal ranking (actual ranking) derived from a transitive matrix and cardinal rankings provided by the most usual priority vectors proposed in the scientific literature. We provide the notion of weak consistency; it is a condition weaker than consistency and stronger than transitivity and ensures that vectors associated with a matrix, by means of a strictly increasing synthesis functional, provide a preference order, on the related set of decision elements, equal to the actual ranking. This notion extends, to the case in which the decision‐maker can be indifferent between two or more alternatives/criteria, weak consistency introduced in previous papers under constraint of no indifference. Finally, we introduce an order relation on the rows of the matrix, that is, a simple order if and only if weak consistency is satisfied; this simple order allows us to easily determine the actual ranking on the set of decision elements. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.