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The present study compared the extent to which obese women with binge eating disorder (BED), obese women without BED, and controls discounted delayed and probabilistic money and directly consumable rewards: food, massage time, and preferred sedentary activity. Of special interest was whether the BED group differed from the other groups in terms of their discounting of all three types of directly consumable rewards or only in their discounting of food. Overall, the BED group tended to discount both delayed and probabilistic rewards of all types more steeply than the obese and control groups. Thus, rather than finding differences specific to particular types of rewards, we find that women with BED are generally more impatient when choices involve delayed rewards and more risk averse when they involve probabilistic rewards. These results suggest a temperamental difference associated with BED that cannot be accounted for by the concomitant obesity Key words: discounting, binge eating disorder, obesity, impulsivity, decision making, The hallmark feature of binge eating disorder (BED) is the consumption of unambiguously large amounts of food accompanied by a sense of losing control (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Studies have [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00503.x Byline: Elena V. Stepanova (2), Michael J Strube (*), John J. Hetts (*) Abstract: We explored bias and its perception in newspaper reports of the 2002 Olympics figure skating controversy. American and Russian articles were examined for their perceptions of the Canadian and Russian pairs' performances, directionality of the Russian and American media and publics' biases, and media awareness of those biases. Reporters' accounts varied as a function of country of affiliation and indicated a one-sided acknowledgment of media and public bias. The American media acknowledged a pro-Canadian bias in their reporting; there was no self-bias acknowledgment in the Russian press. Country of affiliation produced one-sided coverage of this event, and even the American media's awareness of self-biases did not ensure bias-free reporting. These findings are discussed amid respective countries' cultural and political contexts. Author Affiliation: (*)Washington University-Saint Louis Article note: (2) Elena Stepanova, Department of Psychology, Campus Box 1125, One Brookings Drive, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130. E-mail: evstepan@artsci.wustl.edu

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00448.x Byline: Inbal Gurari (*), Michael J Strube (*), John J. Hetts (*) Abstract: Using a variety of approaches and an array of methodologies, research has shown that mortality salience enhances people's self-esteem. In line with previous work on terror management theory, the current study tested the hypothesis that when mortality salience is high, implicit self-esteem (ISE) is, paradoxically, more positive than when mortality salience is low. Participants were given an implicit measure of self-evaluation either before or after completion of a series of terrorism-related questions. As predicted, participants who completed the terrorism questionnaire first exhibited significantly more positive ISE than did those who completed it second. Ironically, it seems that implicitly, people may feel better about themselves in the face of terrorist attacks designed to demoralize them. Author Affiliation: (*)Washington University in St. Louis Article note: (1) Inbal Gurari, Department of Psychology, Campus Box 1125, One Brookings Drive, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130. E-mail: igurari@artsci.wustl.edu

Participants (N = 59) performed racial typicality ratings and racial categorization of affectively neutral faces. The authors manipulated facial physiognomy, skin tone, and color presentation mode (gray scale vs. color) independently. Participants perceived Eurocentric faces as more European American in the gray-scale presentation mode than in the color mode. Independent of facial physiognomy, the planned effect of skin tone also emerged: Participants perceived dark skin tone faces as more African American than they did light skin tone faces, but this tendency was especially true with faces presented in color. These findings suggest that color presentation mode plays an important role in altering the perceptions of faces on dimensions critical to the study of stereotyping and prejudice. The common use of gray-scale stimuli may exaggerate physiognomy-based perceptions of racial typicality and category membership, but it may diminish skin-tone-based perceptions in comparison with more realistic color presentations. Keywords: gray scale, physiognomy, racial categorization, racial typicality, skin color, IN STUDIES OF PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING, participants are frequently presented with African American and European American faces in a variety of experimental paradigms. Researchers commonly use the facial stimuli to [...]

In 1898, Norman Triplett published was has been called the first experiment in social psychology and sports psychology. Claiming to demonstrate 'the dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition,' this oft-cited [...]

The efficacy of two types of theapy conducted exclusively over the telephone was studied. Clients (N = 55) were recruited from a pool of callers to a suicide hotline and were randomly assigned to a waiting list control (WC) or Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) or Common Factors Therapy (CFT). It was hypothesized that improvements would be significantly higher in the two therapy conditions compared to the waitlist control and SFBT would be significantly more efficacious than CFT. Results confirmed that improvement was significantly higher in the two treatment conditions compared to the waitlist control, but no difference in improvement was found between SFBT and CFT. The implications of these findings for suicide hotlines are discussed.

A Black feminist model was used to investigate rape myth acceptance between African American antirape activists and a comparison group of nonactivists using Cross's (1991) racial identity model and Downing and Roush's (1985) feminist identity model. As predicted, activists rejected rape myths more than nonactivists; the earlier stages of both models were associated with rape myth acceptance; the later stages were associated with rape myth rejection; and activists evidenced more sociopolitical maturity (race and gender consciousness) than nonactivists. The findings suggest that researchers may need to investigate to what degree rape myth acceptance serves an overarching system of social domination where racism and sexism overlap.

The racial and gender attitudes of a group of African American anti-rape activists and those of a group of non-activists are investigated in a preliminary study. An African-centered model of male-female equality, findings from the rape myth acceptance literature and racial identity and contemporary Black feminist theories guide the study's analysis. Findings indicate that activists reject social dominance due to racial/gender identity development that counters White and male supremacist attitudes.

This study examined racial identity, self-esteem, and Black versus White beauty standards as moderators of body image perceptions among 60 Black women. In two experimental conditions, subjects evaluated photographs of either three Black models or three White models, all previously determined to be attractive. Control group subjects did not evaluate photographs. All subjects then completed measures of their own body esteem and attractiveness. Results indicated that body esteem was positively related to self-esteem for subjects in the photograph conditions but not for subjects in the control condition. The relative attractiveness ratings of self versus models were dependent on race of the models and subjects' self-esteem, and on race of the models and subjects' racial identity. The first interaction indicated more favorable comparative ratings for subjects with high self-esteem, but only following exposure to White models. The second interaction indicated more favorable comparative ratings for subjects with high African self-consciousness, but only following exposure to White models. Taken together, the results suggest that explicit beauty standards engage a comparison process and, in the case of Black respondents with high self-esteem or with high African self-consciousness, result in self-evaluations that are significantly higher than the attractiveness attributed to White standards of beauty.

Examination of the validity of the Themes Concerning Blacks (TCB) as a measure of racial identity on 109 African Dutch, African American and African Surinamese subjects reveals that most TCB items were assessed by all subjects equally. The measure involves subjects making up stories based on 20 charcoal drawings on cards with the same cards receiving the highest number of recorded themes. The lack of Afrotypic contents from the stories may be attributed to the negative effects of oppression on identity, an inefficient scoring system and constrained behavior in the testing conditions. The implications for further studies using the TCB are discussed.

The author posits that using theater as a metaphor for experimentation highlights crucial issues surrounding appropriate conduct and proper interpretation of research. He argues that experiments best serve a scientific purpose when they do not resemble the theatrical process.

We examined patient knowledge as a moderator of psychological reactions to illness among patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. We reasoned that knowledgeable patients would have the most severe reactions to their illness because the causal implications of good or poor metabolic control would be most apparent. Accordingly, we expected that more knowledgeable patients would react more negatively than less knowledgeable patients to poor metabolic control but would react more positively to good metabolic control. Results from a sample of 46 patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus supported this hypothesis. These findings suggest that increased patient knowledge may not produce uniformly positive results. Patient education programs must consider the psychological implications of patient knowledge in addition to the physiological consequences.

The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Investment Model (Rusbult, 1980) of romantic commitment for black and white dating couples. Twenty black and 20 white college dating couples completed questionnaires measuring the Investment Model components and additional variables. According to the Investment Model, the level of romantic commitment is positively related to relationship satisfaction and positively related to the magnitude of personal investments, but negatively related to the availability of romantic alternatives. We expected the romantic commitment of black couples to differ from that of white couples due to the shortage of available black male partners. The only racial differences to emerge, however, were found in a Race Gender interaction: Commitment increased with an increase in satisfaction for white males, but not black males. Gender differences indicated that the Investment Model provided a better account of the commitment of females. We also examined the role of two other factors in the prediction of commitment: perceived physical attractiveness of the partner and concern about AIDS. Both factors were significantly related to commitment for males, but not females, and neither of these factors demonstrated racial differences.

Ahadi and Diener (1989) argued that the prevalent concern about low trait-behavior correlations may reflect the faulty assumption of a one-to-one relation between traits and behaviors. Using a simulation methodology, they demonstrated that low to moderate trait-behavior and behavior-behavior correlations are to be expected even when 2 behaviors are each completely determined by 3 traits with 1 trait in common. It is demonstrated that the results estimated by Ahadi and Diener can be derived exactly by using the mathematics of linear combinations. The advantage of the mathematical approach is the precise and easy calculation of results that follows from presumed causal models of any complexity. This approach provides a general method for exploring the expected empirical consequences of different causal models.

Previous research indicates that attitudes about information acquisition, and attitudes about behavioral involvement, moderate important health behaviors. These attitudes may play an important role in the management of cystic fibrosis (CF) because of the crucial role that patient knowledge and self-involvement play in maintaining adequate functioning. However, due to the young age of CF onset, and the necessary involvement of parents in CF patients' care, two preliminary questions require attention. First, can health care attitudes be measured reliably in young samples? Second, are parents' attitudes related to their children's attitudes? In this study we examined the measurement of health care attitudes in CF patients and their parents by administering the Health Opinion Survey. Results indicated that health care attitudes could be measured reliably in parents and teens, but that for younger patients (ages 8 to 12 years), reliability was reduced. Results also indicated that parents' attitudes and patients' attitudes were largely unrelated, suggesting that patients do not automatically adopt the health care attitudes of their parents. By implication, educational interventions targeted at parents may have limited effectiveness for their children.

William James's views of self-seeking, truth, and reality suggest that apparently inconsistent models of self-knowledge acquisition can be reconciled by arguing that strategic 'self-seeking,' or self-enhancement, relies on an accuracy-driven self-assessment of capabilities and limitations. This perspective holds promise for reconciling data that suggest that individuals do seek accurate information about the selfbut also hold biased beliefs about their abilities.

The personality traits of captive lion-tailed macaques (Macaca silenus) to relationship of sex, hormone status and dominance are investigated. It is observed that females are more 'extraverted' than males and the agonistic behavior is greater in high status macaques related to lower ranked macaques.

Silver and Dunlap (1987) recently investigated two methods for averaging correlations: (a) simple average of rs, and (b) average of Fisher's z transformations of r backtransformed to r. The latter method was found to be less positively biased than the simple average of rs was negatively biased. The current study extends these results by demonstrating that the z-transformation method is less susceptible to heterogeneity in the correlations that are averaged, but that the absolute magnitude of bias in the two approaches becomes similar as set size increases. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This paper elaborates on several issues related to testing for the presence of ordinal interactions, as described by Bobko (1986). First, the philosophy underlying Bobko's approach is explicitly stated and compared with the traditional approach to testing for the presence of interactions. Second, two modifications of Bobko's approach are described. Third, the procedures for testing ordinal interactions are compared (on the basis of Type I and Type II error rates) with each other as well as to the traditional analysis of variance (ANOVA) approach. All variants of Bobko's procedure have comparable power across different sample sizes and experimental effect sizes. These procedures differ, however, in their likelihood of falsely concluding that an ordinal pattern is present. The traditional ANOVA approach (a) is noticeably lacking in power for detecting ordinal interactions and (b) commonly identifies significant main effects but not an interaction when, in fact, an ordinal interaction is present in the population. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The Inventory of Polychronic Values (IPV) measure of polychronicity is developed. It is shown that the IPV accurately measures polychronicity and provides alpha reliability coefficients in the 0.80 range. The IPV also exhibited high test-retest reliability, independence from social desirability response biases and stable theoretical homogeneity in several confirmatory factor analyses performed in and across three large samples.

One hundred five older adults enrolled in exercise classes were recruited from local YMCAs. Exercise behavior was measured 1, 3, and 9 months after beginning the exercise class. Intentions were not a significant predictor of exercise behavior, probably because of a lack of variance; most people intended to exercise. The direct measures of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, however, explained 9% of exercise behavior at I month. They did not significantly explain behavior at 3 and 9 months. When the indirect measure of subjective norms explained 18% of exercise behavior at I month. The indirect measure of perceived behavioral control accounted for 27% of the variance at 1 month and 10% at 3 months.