Just world beliefs, causal beliefs, and acquaintance: Associations with stigma toward eating disorders and obesity

The current study investigated the relationship between just world beliefs and stigmatizing attitudes toward eating disorders and obesity. Further, the associations between stigma and causal beliefs, and between stigma and acquaintance with these conditions, were examined. Participants (n = 447) read four vignettes describing an individual with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, or obesity. After each vignette, participants completed questionnaires assessing stigmatizing attitudes, just world beliefs, causal beliefs, and acquaintance with the condition depicted in the vignette. Stronger just world beliefs were associated with greater stigma toward all three eating disorders, as well as obesity (rs ranging from −.11 to −.18). More stigmatizing attitudes were associated with greater attribution of individual responsibility for the development of the disorder. However, participants with personal experience or who knew someone with the depicted problem did not have lower stigma scores than those who did not. The current study suggests that justification ideologies such as just world beliefs and controllability beliefs may underlie the stigmatization of eating disorders and obesity. These findings provide support for stigma reduction efforts aimed at targeting justification ideologies and altering causal beliefs.     

Charting a Course,Weathering Storms,and Making Lemonade: A Person-Centered Mixed Methods Analysis of Emotional Wellbeing and Dispositional Strengths following University Graduation

Journal of Adult Development - How well emerging adults adapt to transitions, like entering or graduating from post-secondary education, may depend on individual differences. Emotional wellbeing...     

Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms Predict Posttraumatic Growth: A Longitudinal Study

Although posttraumatic growth (PTG) has received growing attention, the relationship between PTG and distress remains unclear. This longitudinal study examines the relationship between posttraumatic obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms and PTG. Israeli veterans were followed over 17 years using self-report questionnaires of OC symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTG. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that OC symptoms predicted PTG, even when initial PTG levels and PTSD symptoms were controlled for in the combatants group. These preliminary findings suggest that OC symptoms may play an important role in facilitating psychological growth. Future research is warranted to explore the mechanisms responsible for this relationship.     

Personality,risky health behaviour,and perceived susceptibility to health risks

We examined the relations between personality (Five‐Factor Model), risky health behaviours, and perceptions of susceptibility to health risks among 683 university students. The hypothesis was that personality would affect perceptions of susceptibility to health risks in two ways: directly, irrespective of risky health behaviours, and indirectly, through the effects of personality on risky health behaviours. The students were surveyed about smoking, being drunk, drunk driving, risky sexual behaviour, and perceptions of susceptibility to related health risks. In path‐analytical models we found the expected direct and indirect effects. The personality dimensions of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness had negative direct effects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect effects through risky health behaviours. Neuroticism was the only personality dimension to show positive direct effects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect effects. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Age-related trends in Stroop and conflicting motor response task findings.

Inhibition problems are reportedly at the heart of several childhood pathologies and learning disorders, but few instruments are available for their in-depth investigation. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the development of a capacity to inhibit automatic responses in young and middle childhood. For this purpose, 100 children between 6 and 11 years old were administered two tests that measure executive inhibition: an animal Stroop task (in a paper-and-pencil version of the computerized original proposed by Wright and colleagues in 2003) and a conflicting motor response task. Our results indicate that performance clearly improves in both tests during the course of a child's development and the data obtained with the paper-and-pencil animal Stroop task overlap with those obtained with the computerized version. When the task calls for a stronger inhibitory control (the incongruent situation in the Stroop task and in the opposite condition in the conflicting motor response test) the trend of the response times is less homogeneous, peaking in the youngest and oldest age brackets considered. The positivity and significance of the correlation coefficients between the two tests also suggest that the two measures are tapping cognitive abilities that are developing in a parallel fashion.     

Towards a neo-configurational theory of intrinsic motivation

Motivation and Emotion - This research seeks to improve our understanding of how intrinsic motivation is instantiated. Three motivation theories, flow theory, self-determination theory, and...     

Disease-avoidant behaviour and its consequences

Medical conditions that are non-contagious, but that appear contagious, seem to result in the sufferer being avoided. Error management theory (EMT), suggests that such false alarms occur because the cost of infection poses a greater threat to ones fitness than avoidance. Study 1 attempted to demonstrate a disease-related false alarm effect by asking participants, to evaluate a series of vignettes, featuring people with infectious diseases, non-infectious diseases that looked infectious and non-infectious diseases that did not. Judgements of contracting infection under varying levels of contact, and desire to avoid were obtained. Consistent with EMT, a false alarm effect was evident. Study 2 examined the importance of the face as a key indicator of real and apparent infection, by determining whether facial symptoms result in a greater desire to avoid people with infectious and non-infectious diseases. Consistent with expectation, participants reported a greater desire to avoid people with facially displayed symptoms. Together, these results support the idea that humans have evolved a general tendency to avoid individuals with disease signs, especially if displayed upon the face. One consequence is that where a facially displayed disease sign persists, even if known to be benign, its bearer will experience chronic avoidance.