The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task

It has been shown in previous work [Action figures and men. Sex Roles 53, 877–885] that male participants who handled extremely muscular action figures had lower body esteem than those who did not handle action figures or a Ken doll. However, the internal mechanisms that dictated this effect are unclear. Therefore, the current study extended this previous work by having male participants handle action figures of varying muscularity and completing a lexical decision task with target words that consisted of both positive and negative body words and feeling words in order to determine if males would be primed to think negatively about their bodies and self or if positive thoughts about their bodies and self would be interfered with. The results show that those participants who handled the extremely muscular action figures responded significantly more slowly to feeling positive words (e.g., content, confident) and marginally more slowly to body positive words (e.g., muscle, bicep) than those who did not handle any action figures. Overall, this suggests that the interference of positive words, not the priming of negative words, is the internal mechanism that produces the decreased body image satisfaction after exposure to muscular stimuli. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Reduced willingness to approach genuine smilers in social anxiety explained by potential for social evaluation,not misperception of smile authenticity

ABSTRACT

We investigate perception of, and responses to, facial expression authenticity for the first time in social anxiety, testing genuine and polite smiles. Experiment 1 (N?=?141) found perception of smile authenticity was unaffected, but that approach ratings, which are known to be reduced in social anxiety for happy faces, are more strongly reduced for genuine than polite smiles. Moreover, we found an independent contribution of social anxiety to approach ratings, over and above general negative affect (state/trait anxiety, depression), only for genuine smiles, and not for polite ones. We argue this pattern of results can be explained by genuine smilers signalling greater potential for interaction – and thus greater potential for the scrutiny that is feared in social anxiety – than polite smiles. Experiment 2 established that, relative to polite smilers, genuine smilers are indeed perceived as friendlier and likely to want to talk for longer if approached. Critically, the degree to which individual face items were perceived as wanting to interact correlated strongly with the amount that social anxiety reduced willingness to approach in Experiment 1. We conclude it is the potential for social evaluation and scrutiny signalled by happy expressions, rather than their positive valence, that is important in social anxiety.     

Perceptions of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was conducted to compare perceptions of Duchenne smiles, smiles that include activation of the cheek raiser muscle that creates crow's feet around the eyes, with perceptions of non-Duchenne smiles, smiles without cheek raiser activation. In addition to testing the overall effect, moderator analyses were conducted to test how methodological, stimulus-specific and perceiver-specific differences between studies predicted the overall effect size. The meta-analysis found that, overall, Duchenne smiles and people producing Duchenne smiles are rated more positively (i.e., authentic, genuine, real, attractive, trustworthy) than non-Duchenne smiles and people producing non-Duchenne smiles. The difference between Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles was greater when the stimuli were videos rather than photographs, when smiles were elicited naturally rather than through posing paradigms and when Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles were not matched for intensity of the lip corner puller in addition to other perceiver and methodological moderators.     

Women outperform men in distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles

Women tend to be more accurate in decoding facial expressions than men. We hypothesized that women’s better performance in decoding facial expressions extends to distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles. We showed participants portrait photos of persons who smiled because either they saw a pleasant picture (authentic smile) or were instructed to smile by the experimenter (nonauthentic smile) and asked them to identify the smiles. Participants judged single photos of persons depicting either an authentic or a nonauthentic smile, and they judged adjacent photos of the same person depicting an authentic smile and a nonauthentic smile. Women outperformed men in identifying the smiles when judging the adjacent photos. We discuss implications for judging smile authenticity in real life and limitations for the observed sex difference.     

The effects of exposure to muscular male models among men: exploring the moderating role of gym use and exercise motivation

This study examines the effects of exposure to the muscular male body ideal on body-focused negative affect among male gym users and non-exercisers. As hypothesized, the impact of media exposure depended on men's exercise status. Non-exercisers (n = 58) reported greater body-focused negative affect after exposure to images of muscular male models than after neutral images (no model controls), whereas gym users (n = 58) showed a tendency for less body-focused negative affect after the model images than after the control images. Furthermore, the extent to which gym users were motivated to increase strength and muscularity moderated these exposure effects; men who reported stronger strength and muscularity exercise motivation reported a greater degree of self-enhancement after exposure to the muscular ideal. The findings are interpreted with respect to likely differences in motives for social comparisons.     

乐商:一个比智商和情商更能决定命运的因素

乐商(或乐观智力)是指人乐观的能力,它既包括一个人乐观水平的高低,也包括个体从所经历的消极事件中获取积极成分的能力,以及影响或感染他人的能力.“杜乡微笑”是高乐商的一种主要外在表现形式.心理学过去的有关研究证实,高乐商不仅有利于个体的社会性发展、获得稳定的幸福婚姻、提高人的生理健康水平、提高学业成绩和减少坏事情的发生,而且高乐商还有利于促使个体寻求社会支持和社会交往.这些研究结果表明,乐商可能是一个比智商和情商更能决定人未来发展命运的因素.     

Children's and adolescents' perception of the authenticity of smiles

Recently, Thibault and colleagues described the Duchenne marker as a cultural dialect for the perception of smile authenticity. The current study had the goal to follow up on this finding and to investigate the cues that French Canadian children use to evaluate the authenticity of smiles from members of three ethnic groups. The authenticity of six smiles differing in intensity and presence of orbicularis oculi (Duchenne marker) was rated by 1206 children from 4 to 17 years of age. No differences were found as a function of encoder group. All children perceived medium Duchenne smiles as more authentic than equally intense medium non-Duchenne smiles. Furthermore, results suggest a decrease in the reliance on intensity across the age span. Younger children use the intensity marker along the whole continuum to infer authenticity. In contrast, older children (14- to 17-year-olds) rated all smiles that did not contain the Duchenne marker as roughly equally low in authenticity.     

Witnessed inclusion improves identification of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles

Social exclusion threatens a person's need to belong and prompts them to behave in ways that often facilitate reaffiliation. For adults, direct exclusion increases attention to social information and facial cues, including an enhanced identification of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. Furthermore, inclusion can buffer or mitigate the effects of exclusion. This study investigated children's (N = 44) and adults’ (N = 52) sensitivity to perceptual changes in smiles following witnessed inclusion and exclusion and inclusion's mitigating and buffering effects on perceptual abilities. Contrary to our predictions, participants in our study demonstrated improved accuracy after witnessing inclusion, rather than exclusion, and showed no buffering or mitigating effects of inclusion. This contradiction with previous findings points to a further need to explore the effects of witnessed versus direct inclusion and exclusion, especially if witnessed inclusion and exclusion have the ability to impact perception and shape our behavior.     

Developmental associations of actual motor competence and perceived physical competence with health-related fitness in schoolchildren over a four-year follow-up

The developmental associations between actual motor competence (MC), perceived physical competence (PC), and health-related fitness (HRF) in schoolchildren were investigated over a four-year period. Participants were 1147 (girls 582, boys 565) schoolchildren aged between 11 and 13 years (M = 11.27 ± 0.33 years) in the beginning of the study. Data were collected at five time points in 2017–2021. MC was measured with three product-oriented (i.e., outcome of the movement) motor competence skill tests: side-to-side jump, five-leaps, and throw-catch. PC was assessed with the Physical Self-Perception Profile. HRF was assessed with the 20m shuttle run, curl-up, and push-up tests. The random intercept cross-lagged panel model with birth month and sex as covariates, was tested using repeated measures (within level) and PC, MC, and HRF levels (between level). The key findings were: 1) PC, MC, and HRF levels were reciprocally associated over time; 2) repeated measures of HRF at each time point were positively associated with PC and MC one year later; 3) PC decreased, MC increased, and HRF remained stable over time; and 4) MC was more important than PC in explaining the variability in HRF levels and repeated measures. The positive reciprocal associations of MC, PC, and HRF from late childhood to early adolescence found in this study are important as they indicate that to support HRF in schoolchildren, both MC and PC can be promoted through investment in MC exercises.     

Neurobehavioral Characteristics of Children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

This study investigated cognitive, metacognitive, and psychosocial aspects of neurobehavioral functioning in 22 boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and 18 unaffected siblings, all between the ages of 6 and 16 years. Probands and siblings completed the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, as well as selected subtests from the Children's Memory Scale and from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System, while parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. Compared to siblings, probands demonstrated relative weaknesses on both verbal and nonverbal measures of delayed recall and response generation and were rated by parents as having more difficulties with social interaction, initiation, and adaptation. It is concluded that DMD is associated with mild but potentially significant difficulties in a range of neurobehavioral areas, likely related to deficient dystrophin levels in an integrated brain circuit that includes the cerebellum, hippocampus, and association neocortex.