The Presentation of Self-Harm Recovery: A Thematic Analysis of YouTube Videos

ABSTRACT

Little is known about how recovery from self-harm is understood by individuals with personal experience of self-harm. YouTube is an important online venue for posting and discussion of user-generated self-harm videos. Drawing on this material, this study explores how self-harm recovery is presented on YouTube. The 30 most highly-viewed videos about recovery from self-harm were thematically analysed. Three themes were identified: 1) a desire for change, 2) control over change, 3) implementing change. This study identifies multiple understandings of self-harm, which in turn shape individuals’ understandings of self-harm recovery. This has implications for self-harm advice or support.     

A Survey of Ethics Training in Undergraduate Psychology Programs at Jesuit Universities

Training in ethics is fundamental in higher education among both faith-based and secular colleges and universities, regardless of one’s academic major or field of study. Catholic colleges and universities have included moral philosophy, theology, and applied ethics in their undergraduate curricula for generations. The purpose of this investigation was to determine what, if anything, Jesuit college psychology departments are doing to educate psychology majors regarding ethical issues. A survey method was used to assess the psychology departments of all 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the United States. A total of 21 of the 28 schools responded and completed the survey. Five schools (23%) reported that they offered a course specifically on ethics in psychology, and three (14%) additional schools offered related courses. Of the eight (38%) that offered ethics-related courses, only one required its majors to take it, and only if they were enrolled in the mental health or forensic psychology tracks. For two (10%) of the schools, the ethics in psychology course counted as a university core ethics requirement; for two others (10%), the class met an elective university ethics requirement for psychology majors.     

Integration of base rates and new information in an abstract hypothesis‐testing task

In two studies, we investigated how people use base rates and the presence versus the absence of new information to judge which of two hypotheses is more likely. Participants were given problems based on two decks of cards printed with 0–4 letters. A table showed the relative frequencies of the letters on the cards within each deck. Participants were told the letters that were printed on or absent from a card the experimenter had drawn. Base rates were conveyed by telling participants that the experimenter had chosen the deck by drawing from an urn containing, in different proportions, tickets marked either ‘deck 1’ or ‘deck 2’. The task was to judge from which of the two decks the card was most likely drawn. Prior probabilities and the evidential strength of the subset of present clues (computed as ‘weight of evidence’) were the only significant predictors of participants’ dichotomous (both studies) and continuous (Study 2) judgments. The evidential strength of all clues was not a significant predictor of participants’ judgments in either study, and no significant interactions emerged. We discuss the results as evidence for additive integration of base rates and the new present information in hypothesis testing.     

Social cognitive career theory, conscientiousness, and work performance: A meta-analytic path analysis

We performed a meta-analytic path analysis of an abbreviated version of social cognitive career theory's (SCCT) model of work performance (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). The model we tested included the central cognitive predictors of performance (ability, self-efficacy, performance goals), with the exception of outcome expectations. Results suggested that a slightly modified version of the model, incorporating a path between ability and goals, provided adequate fit to the data. In addition, we examined alternative pathways through which conscientiousness, a Big 5 personality variable, might operate in concert with the social cognitive variables in predicting work performance. Good fit was found for a model in which conscientiousness is linked to performance both directly and indirectly via self-efficacy and goals. The implications of these results for SCCT, future research, and practical efforts to facilitate work performance are discussed.     

New knowledge for old credences: Asymmetric information search about in-group and out-group members

Three experiments examined how people gather information on in-group and out-group members. Previous studies have revealed that category-based expectancies bias the hypothesis-testing process towards confirmation through the use of asymmetric-confirming questions (which are queries where the replies supporting the prior expectancies are more informative than those falsifying them). However, to date there is no empirical investigation of the use of such a question-asking strategy in an intergroup context. In the present studies, participants were asked to produce (Study 1) or to choose (Studies 2 and 3) questions in order to investigate the presence of various traits in an in-group or an out-group member. Traits were manipulated by valence and typicality. The results revealed that category-based expectancies do not always lead to asymmetric-confirming testing: whereas participants tended to ask questions that confirmed positive in-group and negative out-group stereotypical attributes, they used a more symmetric strategy when testing for the presence of negative in-group or positive out-group traits. Moreover, Study 3 also revealed a moderation effect of in-group identification. The findings point to the role played by motivational factors associated with preserving a positive social identity. Possible consequences of these hypothesis-testing processes in preserving a positive social identity for intergroup relations are discussed.     

Social cognitive predictors of college students’ academic performance and persistence: A meta-analytic path analysis

This study tested Social Cognitive Career Theory’s (SCCT) academic performance model using a two-stage approach that combined meta-analytic and structural equation modeling methodologies. Unbiased correlations obtained from a previously published meta-analysis [Robbins, S. B., Lauver, K., Le, H., Davis, D., & Langley, R. (2004). Do psychosocial and study skill factors predict college outcomes? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 261–288.] were used to create the input correlation matrices for subsequent path-analytic tests of the model, using both college GPA and retention as performance criteria. Results suggested that SCCT does an adequate to excellent job of modeling academic performance and persistence, but that model fit was better when general cognitive ability versus high school GPA was used to operationalize the ability/past performance variable. Results are discussed in terms of their fit with SCCT and their practical implications.     

Black Beauty: Skin Color and Body Images among African-American College Women1

Skin color has played an historically influential role in the lives of African Americans. The present study examined the role of skin color (i. e., its lightness-darkness) as it pertained to various body-image measures among 66 light-, medium-, and darkskinned Black college females. A Skin Color Assessment Procedure was developed to assess various perceptual dimensions of skin color. Although subjects were generally satisfied with their skin tone, the idealization of lightness was apparent in several respects. Those who desired a different skin tone favored being lighter more than being darker. Unlike light- and dark-skinned Black females, medium-toned Black females' held personal ideals that were significantly lighter than their self-perceived color. The majority of subjects believed that Black men found light skin most attractive. Although actual skin color did not predict various facets of body image satisfaction, skin color satisfaction was positively related to satisfaction with overall appearance and with the face. Future research should address the possible mediating role of racial identity vis-a-vis the effects of skin color and racial physiognomy on body image.     

Missing the dog that failed to bark in the nighttime: on the overestimation of occurrences over non-occurrences in hypothesis testing

In three studies, we investigated whether and to what extent the evaluation of two mutually exclusive hypotheses is affected by a feature-positive effect, wherein present clues are weighted more than absent clues. Participants (N = 126) were presented with abstract problems concerning the most likely provenance of a card that was drawn from one of two decks. We factored the correct response (the hypothesis favored by the consideration of all clues) and the ratio of present-to-absent features in each set of observations. Furthermore, across the studies, we manipulated the presentation format of the features’ probabilities by providing the probability distributions of occurrences (Study 1), non-occurrences (Study 3) or both (Study 2). In all studies, both participant preference and accuracy were mostly determined by an over-reliance on present features. Moreover, across participants, both confidence in the responses and the informativeness of the present clues correlated positively with the number of responses given in line with an exclusive consideration of present features. These results were mostly independent of both the rarity of the absent clues and the presentation format. We concluded that the feature-positive effect influences hypothesis evaluation, and we discussed the implications for confirmation bias.