Victimization,social anxiety,and body dysmorphic concerns: Appearance-based rejection sensitivity as a mediator

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterized by extreme preoccupation with perceived deficits in physical appearance, and sufferers experience severe impairment in functioning. Previous research has indicated that individuals with BDD are high in social anxiety, and often report being the victims of appearance-based teasing. However, there is little research into the possible mechanisms that might explain these relationships. The current study examined appearance-based rejection sensitivity as a mediator between perceived appearance-based victimization, social anxiety, and body dysmorphic symptoms in a sample of 237 Australian undergraduate psychology students. Appearance-based rejection sensitivity fully mediated the relationship between appearance-based victimization and body dysmorphic symptoms, and partially mediated the relationship between social anxiety and body dysmorphic symptoms. Findings suggest that individuals high in social anxiety or those who have a history of more appearance-based victimization may have a bias towards interpreting further appearance-based rejection, which may contribute to extreme appearance concerns such as BDD.     

Getting credit for OCBs: potential costs of being a good actor vs. a good soldier

Employing a sample of 197 employee-supervisor dyads, we explore whether employees’ attitudes and underlying motivation for engaging in organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) differentially relate to supervisors’ assessments of their individual performance and reward recommendations. We theorized that employees who perform OCBs with self-serving motives would be low on affective commitment and high on equity sensitivity, and that such individuals would receive lower performance ratings and fewer reward recommendations than those who are high on affective commitment, low on equity sensitivity, and more selflessly motivated. Our results suggest that employees with high affective commitment, low equity sensitivity, and high selfless motives were more likely to receive positive supervisor performance ratings and high reward recommendations. We also found that affective commitment moderated the mediating path of prosocial values (a selfless motive) on the relationship between OCBs and reward recommendations. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Rejection sensitivity,complaint‐related communication,and relational satisfaction: A mediation analysis

This study examines the links among rejection sensitivity (RS), communication about complaints, and relational satisfaction in intimate relationships. A total of 260 individuals completed an online survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk. RS was positively associated with complaint avoidance and negatively associated with positive politeness and negative politeness when voicing complaints. Furthermore, RS had indirect associations with relational satisfaction, partially mediated through complaint avoidance and positive politeness. The results of this study suggest that communicating complaints openly to one's partner, in concert with positive politeness (i.e., affirming the partner while voicing complaints), may help serve as a buffer against relational dissatisfaction associated with RS.     

Gut interpretations: how difficulties in emotion regulation may help explain the relation of visceral sensitivity with depression and anxiety among young adults with gastrointestinal symptoms

It is widely recognized that abdominal pain and discomfort are common problems in the United States and are often associated with negative quality of life. The prevalence of anxiety/depression elevations and disorders among persons with gastrointestinal disturbances (GI) is estimated to be at least two to three times the rate in the general population. Visceral sensitivity reflects anxiety about GI sensations and its accompanying contexts and often leads to worsening of sensations (e.g. bloating, upset stomach, diarrhea). Among individuals with GI symptoms, visceral sensitivity may be associated with interpreting common sensations as catastrophic which may be related to greater difficulties with emotion dysregulation (e.g. severe anxiety and depression). The current study evaluated the indirect association of visceral sensitivity via emotion dysregulation in relation to depression, anxious arousal, and social anxiety symptoms among 344 young adults with a current history of GI symptoms and problems. Results indicated an indirect effect of visceral sensitivity via emotion dysregulation. These findings provide novel empirical support for the association of visceral sensitivity with emotional distress symptoms among young adults with GI symptoms. Based on the results, targeting emotion dysregulation may be a promising health promotion tactic among young adults with GI symptoms and disorders.     

Both fearful and happy expressions interact with gaze direction by 200 ms SOA to speed attention orienting

Attention orienting towards a gazed-at location is fundamental to social attention. Whether gaze cues can interact with emotional expressions other than those signalling environmental threat to modulate this gaze cueing, and whether this integration changes over time, remains unclear. With four experiments we demonstrate that, when perceived motion inherent to dynamic displays is controlled for, gaze cueing is enhanced by both fearful and happy faces compared to neutral faces. This enhancement is seen with stimulus-onset asynchronies ranging from 200–700?ms. Thus, gaze cueing can be reliably modulated by positive expressions, albeit to a smaller degree than fearful ones, and this gaze–emotion integration impacts behaviour as early as 200?ms post-cue onset.     

School Perceptions of Children Raised by Grandparents

Increasing numbers of children raised by grandparents are students in schools. Their substitute family structure and precursors to the emergence of this family structure have implications for the children's school performance. Research suggests teachers view these children as at risk for difficult school functioning. The aforementioned judgment is problematic because teacher expectations, attributions, and biases are associated with stereotype threat that impacts student performance adversely. The author compares children raised by grandparents with children raised by parents and foster parents. The author examines the children's perceptions of their teachers' views of their school performance. He also examines the children's general feelings about school. Participants in the study were 6,550 students in Grades 6–8 from the nationally representative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. Nonparametric statistical analyses reveal children raised by grandparents believe teachers' view their school performance negatively when compared with children living with both parents. Strategies are described to improve the children's performance in school and to foster favorable teacher perceptions.     

Self-compassion and responses to negative social feedback: The role of fronto-amygdala circuit connectivity

ABSTRACT

Self-compassion has been shown to have significant relationships with psychological health and well-being. Despite the increasing growth of research on the topic, no studies to date have investigated how self-compassion relates to neural responses to threats to the self. To investigate whether self-compassion relates to threat-regulatory mechanisms at the neural level of analysis, we conducted a functional MRI study in a sample of college-aged students. We hypothesized that self-compassion would relate to greater negative connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and amygdala during a social feedback task. Interestingly, we found a negative correlation between self-compassion and VMPFC-amygdala functional connectivity as predicted; however, this seemed to be due to low levels of self-compassion relating to greater positive connectivity in this circuit (rather than high levels of self-compassion relating to more negative connectivity). We also found significant relationships with multiple subcomponents of self-compassion (Common Humanity, Self-Judgment). These results shed light on how self-compassion might affect neural responses to threat and informs our understanding of the basic psychological regulatory mechanisms linking a lack of self-compassion with poor mental health.     

Anxiety sensitivity and attentional bias to threat interact to prospectively predict anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to examine anxiety sensitivity, attentional bias to threat (ABT), and the aggregate influence of these constructs as prospective predictors of anxiety. Participants (N = 176) completed a baseline assessment session which included the completion of self-report measures of anxiety and anxiety sensitivity, as well as an eye-tracking task in which eye movements were recorded during the viewing of neutral and threat images. Measures of anxiety and anxiety sensitivity were completed again as part of an online questionnaire battery at a 1-year follow-up session. As predicted, baseline anxiety sensitivity and ABT predicted anxiety at 1-year follow-up even after accounting for baseline anxiety. However, these main effects were qualified by a significant interaction effect such that those high in anxiety sensitivity at baseline reported relatively higher anxiety at the 1-year follow-up, but only if they also exhibited higher levels of ABT at baseline. Results suggest that individuals with this combination of vulnerability factors (high levels of both anxiety sensitivity and ABT) may be at particularly high risk for developing anxiety and may benefit from preemptive efforts to reduce ABT.