Understanding the role of gender in body image research settings: Participant gender preferences for researchers and co-participants in interviews,focus groups and interventions

Participant gender preferences for body image researchers, interventionists and focus group and intervention co-participants have been largely ignored, despite recognition that such characteristics can influence the nature and quality of data collected and intervention effects. To address this, Australian women (n = 505) and men (n = 220) completed a questionnaire about their preferences for interviewers and focus group facilitators, for teachers delivering school-based interventions, and for co-participants in these settings. Women predominantly preferred female interviewers and teachers, and mixed-sex co-participants, but most had no preference for focus group facilitators. Body dissatisfied women were more likely to prefer female researchers and single-sex co-participants. Most men did not have specific preferences, however, body dissatisfied men were more likely to report a gender preference for interviewers and teachers. Professional capabilities, personal qualities and appearance were regarded as important researcher characteristics. These findings have important implications for body image research, particularly among high-risk groups.     

Do you see what I see?: An exploration of inter-ethnic ideal body size comparisons among college women

The present study explored African American (n = 16) and European American (n = 19) college women's ideal body size perceptions for their own and the other ethnic group along with reasons behind their selections. Respondents completed an ethnically-neutral figure rating scale and then participated in ethnically-homogenous focus groups. European Americans mostly preferred a curvy-thin or athletic ideal body while most African American students resisted notions of a singular ideal body. European Americans suggested that African Americans’ larger ideal body sizes were based on greater body acceptance and the preferences of African American men. African Americans used extreme terms when discussing their perceptions of European Americans’ thin idealization, celebrity role models, and weight management behaviors. African Americans’ perceptions of European Americans’ body dissatisfaction were also attributed to the frequent fat talk they engaged in. Implications for promoting the psychosocial well-being of ethnically-diverse emerging adult females attending college are discussed.     

Integrated cross-domain object storage in working memory: Evidence from a verbal–spatial memory task

Working-memory theories often include domain-specific verbal and visual stores (e.g., the phonological and visuospatial buffers of Baddeley, 1986), and some also posit more general stores thought to be capable of holding verbal or visuospatial materials (Baddeley, 2000; Cowan, 2005). However, it is currently unclear which type of store is primarily responsible for maintaining objects that include components from multiple domains. In these studies, a spatial array of letters was followed by a single probe identical to an item in the array or differing systematically in spatial location, letter identity, or their combination. Concurrent verbal rehearsal suppression impaired memory in each of these trial types in a task that required participants to remember verbal–spatial binding, but did not impair memory for spatial locations if the task did not require verbal–spatial binding for a correct response. Thus, spatial information might be stored differently when it must be bound to verbal information. This suggests that a cross-domain store such as the episodic buffer of Baddeley (2000) or the focus of attention of Cowan (2001) might be used for integrated object storage, rather than the maintenance of associations between features stored in separate domain-specific buffers.     

Processing fluency affects behavior more strongly among people higher in trait mindfulness

Processing fluency is the ease of processing information about a stimulus, which people can attribute to the experience of enjoyment. Despite consistent findings that processing fluency can affect self-reported judgments, little research has examined whether processing fluency or its interactions with personality traits can affect behavior. The current studies demonstrate that processing fluency is more likely to affect behavior among people higher in trait mindfulness. We manipulated processing fluency with rhyming versus nonrhyming maxims in Study 1 and with regulatory fit versus nonfit in Study 2. Participants higher in mindfulness showed a stronger positive effect for processing fluency on the dependent variable: the number of ideas they listed in a task they continued for as long as they enjoyed it.     

Focus of attention and automaticity in handwriting

This study investigated the nature of automaticity in everyday tasks by testing handwriting performance under single and dual-task conditions. Item familiarity and hand dominance were also manipulated to understand both cognitive and motor components of the task. In line with previous literature, performance was superior in an extraneous focus of attention condition compared to two different skill focus conditions. This effect was found only when writing with the dominant hand. In addition, performance was superior for high familiarity compared to low familiarity items. These findings indicate that motor and cognitive familiarity are related to the degree of automaticity of motor skills and can be manipulated to produce different performance outcomes. The findings also imply that the progression of skill acquisition from novel to novice to expert levels can be traced using different dual-task conditions. The separation of motor and cognitive familiarity is a new approach in the handwriting domain, and provides insight into the nature of attentional demands during performance.     

Exploring the acceptance of connected and automated vehicles: Focus group discussions with experts and non-experts in transport

The successful deployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) will largely depend on public opinion. Expectations and concerns are essential components driving the speed of market uptake and final adoption of these technologies. We have studied user expectations and concerns, as well as their provenance, by conducting a series of Focus Group (FG) discussions with transport area experts and non-expert participants, in Italy, Germany, and Spain. Together with user acceptance, potential advantages and disadvantages that CAVs may bring at a societal level were explored. Results show that benefits like increased safety and accessibility and improved travel experience for both driver and passengers could support CAVs’ deployment. Nevertheless, a variety of concerns were raised during the discussions, related to privacy, responsibility in case of an accident, and increase in maintenance and repair costs. These aspects could significantly hamper or delay CAVs acceptability and need to be carefully considered by stakeholders. The reported insights from the FG discussions and the fact that some participants noted positive changes of their initial idea of CAVs due to their participation in the discussion, exemplify the importance of citizen engagement activities to address mobility challenges.     

The relationship between career growth and organizational commitment

This research examines the relationship between employees' career growth and organizational commitment. Career growth was conceptualized by four factors: career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed and remuneration growth, while organizational commitment was conceptualized using Meyer and Allen's (1997) three component model. Survey data, collected from 961 employees in 10 cities in the People's Republic of China, showed that the four dimensions of career growth were positively related to affective commitment, and that three of the facets were positively related to continuance and normative commitment. Only three of eighteen two-way interactions among the career growth factors affected organizational commitment, suggesting that the career growth factors influence commitment in an additive rather than a multiplicative manner.Results focus on how career growth can be used to manage organizational commitment.     

When technology tells you how you drive––truck drivers’ attitudes towards feedback by technology

Behavior based safety approaches have proven effective in reducing accidents in industrial settings, but cannot easily be extended to commercial driving. For considerable periods of working time, truck drivers are alone, and do not interact with peers. It might be possible to use data gathered by new in-vehicle technology to provide real-time and post-shift feedback to drivers about their driving behavior. This paper reports the results of focus group interviews conducted with subject matter experts from the trucking industry (truck drivers, supervisors, managers, and other involved persons, such as insurance industry safety professionals). The focus groups discussed safety critical behaviors in commercial driving, the best way to provide feedback to truck drivers, and benefits of feedback by technology as well as concerns drivers and operators may have regarding monitoring and feedback systems. The focus group discussions showed that, in general, drivers would like to receive more feedback and that feedback by technology is acceptable, if designed and implemented properly. In addition, the participants had many suggestions on how to properly design and implement such systems.     

Discontinuity in the enumeration of sequentially presented auditory and visual stimuli

The seeking of discontinuity in enumeration was recently renewed because Cowan [Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87–185; Cowan, N. (2005). Working memory capacity. Hove: Psychology Press] suggested that it allows evaluating the limit of the focus of attention, currently estimated at four items. A strong argument in favour of a general constraint of the cognitive system is that similar discontinuities should be observed in modalities different from the classic simultaneous presentation of visual objects. Recently, data were provided on tactile stimuli, but the authors diverged in their conclusion about the existence of such discontinuity [Gallace, A., Tan, H. Z., & Spence, C. (2006). Numerosity judgments for tactile stimuli distributed over the body surface. Perception, 35(2), 247–266; Riggs, K. J., Ferrand, L., Lancelin, D., Fryziel, L., Dumur, G., & Simpson, A. (2006). Subitizing in tactile perception. Psychological Science, 17(4), 271–272]. Following a similar rationale, our study aimed at evaluating discontinuity in the enumeration of auditory and visual stimuli presented sequentially. The clear and similar discontinuity observed in error rates, response times and given responses for both modalities favours the general capacity limit view, but also questions the size of this capacity, because the discontinuity occurred here at size 2. However, the masking of stimuli in sensory memory could not be entirely discarded.     

How preferences for eager versus vigilant judgment strategies affect self-serving conclusions

People are often motivated to reach self-serving conclusions during judgment. This article examines how such self-serving judgment outcomes are influenced by preferences for different judgment strategies. Two studies tested how preferences for eager (promotion-oriented) versus vigilant (prevention-oriented) judgment strategies affected self-serving explanations for success or failure. Regardless of their performance, those preferring vigilant strategies selectively endorsed a few explanations above others, whereas those preferring eager strategies more evenly endorsed multiple explanations. Furthermore, although the explanations selected by those preferring vigilant strategies were indeed self-serving (emphasizing personal responsibility for success and external circumstances for failure), the more balanced endorsement of multiple explanations by those preferring eager strategies was associated with attenuated self-serving tendencies. Finally, those preferring eager strategies were also less self-serving in their generalization from explanations of current performance to predictions of future performance. The larger implications of these findings for the role of strategic preferences in judgment are discussed.