Appearance‐Related Communication Mediates the Link Between Self‐Objectification and Health and Well‐Being Outcomes

Grounded in objectification theory, the 2 studies presented here predicted that self‐objectification is positively related to appearance‐related communication (i.e., fat talk and old talk), and, in turn, appearance‐related communication is associated with health and well‐being outcomes. Results from Study 1, which investigated only fat talk, revealed that fat talk significantly mediated the relationship between self‐objectification and body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, bulimia, and self‐esteem. Study 2 sought to replicate the findings from Study 1, as well as extend appearance‐related communication to old talk. Fat talk was found to mediate the relationships between self‐objectification and body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, bulimia, depression, and diet. Old talk significantly mediated the relationships between body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and bulimia.     

Demoralization and living alone: outcome from an urban community study.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate differences in demoralization between those who live in single-person households and those who live in households with others in a random sample of 8,634 urban adults. Responses to the 26-item Psychiatric Epidemiologic Research Interview did not substantiate that adults who live alone are more likely to be demoralized than those who live with others, until age and gender are considered. Men who live alone scored higher on demoralization than men who live with others, yet women who live with others scored higher on demoralization than those who live alone. An interaction for living arrangement and age group on demoralization was also observed.     

ASSESSMENT OF STIMULUS PREFERENCE AND REINFORCER VALUE WITH PROFOUNDLY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS

We evaluated a procedure for identifying potential reinforcers with profoundly retarded individuals. In Experiment 1, six persons were repeatedly exposed to 16 stimuli, and approach behaviors to each stimulus were used to identify preferred and nonpreferred stimuli. In Experiment 2, we examined the reinforcing properties of preferred and nonpreferred stimuli by delivering them contingently on the occurrence of arbitrarily selected responses. Results revealed that the preferred stimulus conditions typically produced higher rates of responding than did either the baseline or the nonpreferred stimulus conditions, suggesting that the procedure can be used to assess reinforcer value for individuals with limited behavioral repertoires.     

CLINICAL BEHAVIORAL PHARMACOLOGY: METHODS FOR EVALUATING MEDICATIONS AND CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT

We evaluated methods for comparing the effects of dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), thioridazine (Mellaril), and contingency management in the control of severe behavior problems. A reversal design was used in which medications were systematically titrated and assessed in unstructured as well as structured settings with three clients. Subsequently, behavioral procedures including timeout, differential reinforcement of other behavior, and visual screening, were used in a multiple-baseline design across settings. The assessment and design methods were useful in comparing the interventions. Dextroamphetamine decreased inappropriate behaviors and improved academic behaviors in one client, but no reliable effects were observed in the other two clients. Thioridazine was variable across clients, settings, behaviors, and dosages. Contingency management produced consistent decreases in inappropriate behaviors and small improvements in academic performance.     

Death by 1000 ‘true fans’: Do marketing laws apply to music listening?

The advice to musicians and marketers is to focus on what they love: a truism for practitioners is to find 1000 ‘true fans’ and make $100 from each of them (Kelly, 2008. 1000 True fans. The Technium). If this advice is correct, we should see musicians with loyal user bases engaging more with their favourite artists and less with other music, suggesting a narrow targeting strategy would suffice. On the other hand, the established marketing laws indicate that the listeners of very different genres should overlap more than conventional wisdom would suggest, supporting the need for a much broader approach to targeting potential audiences. Given these conflicting views, musicians need to know if they should market to their existing listeners, the listeners of music similar to theirs (i.e., the same genre), or if they should try to reach a much wider audience. We turn to established choice patterns from the marketing literature to address these questions in the music context. This study examines 84,000,000 observations of music listening from 27,000 unique global users between 2013 and 2014 and survey data from 2019 containing music listening from over 1000 representative respondents in the United States. The results show that listening follows the Duplication of Purchase law for genres, artists, albums, and songs, at an annual, 6-months, 3-months, 1-month, and 1-week period, with no indication of partitioned music listening. The implication is that musicians should try to reach all potential listeners, regardless of what they already listen to. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge about duplication analyses of various durations, extend the contexts of choice behaviour that exhibit this pattern, and managerially, to knowledge about the extent of potential audiences and ‘share of ear’ competition.     

Self-esteem, attitude similarity, and attraction

Subjects evaluated three stimulus persons on several rating scales who were either 10%, 50%, or 90% similar to themselves in attitudes Subjects were divided into low, moderate, and high self-esteem groups on the basis of an earlier Q sort The results showed a strong positive relation between perceived similarity and positive attribution for each of the dependent variables, including liking, sophisticated, intelligent, sincere, happy, and a social distance scale A negative relation was obtained for two undesirable traits, arrogant and cynical Self-esteem interacted with similarity on several of the measures The difference between self-esteem groups was largely restricted to highly dissimilar stimulus persons Moderate esteem subjects were more favorable toward dissimilar persons than either of the other two groups, and the high and low groups tended to resemble each other more than either group resembled the moderate esteem group These results were discussed in terms of the relation between self-esteem and adjustment, and in terms of McGuire's (1968) theory that predicts a nonmonotonic relation between self-esteem and attitudes.