A self-determination theory and motivational interviewing intervention to decrease racial/ethnic disparities in physical activity: rationale and design.

BACKGROUND: Although the mental and physical benefits of physical activity are well-established, there is a racial/ethnic disparity in activity such that minorities are much less likely to engage in physical activity than are White individuals. Research suggests that a lack of motivation may be an important barrier to physical activity for racial/ethnic minorities. Therefore, interventions that increase participants' motivation may be especially useful in promoting physical activity within these groups. Physical activity interventions that utilized the clinical technique of motivational interviewing (MI) in conjunction with the theoretical background of self-determination theory (SDT) have been effective in increasing White individuals' physical activity. Nevertheless, it remains unclear the extent to which these results apply to minority populations. METHODS/DESIGN: The current study involves conducting a 12-week physical activity intervention based on SDT and MI to promote physical activity in a racially/ethnically-diverse sample. It is hypothesized that this intervention will successfully increase physical activity in participants. Specifically, it is expected that minorities will experience a greater relative increase in physical activity than Whites within the intervention group because minorities are expected to have lower baseline levels of activity. DISCUSSION: Results from this study will give us a greater understanding of the generalizability of SDT interventions designed to improve motivation for physical activity and level of physical activity. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials Gov. Identifier NCT02250950 Registered 24 September 2014.

Individual differences in self-enhancement and self-protection strategies: an integrative analysis.

Research has identified a large number of strategies that people use to self-enhance or self-protect. We aimed for an empirical integration of these strategies. Two studies used self-report items to assess all commonly recognized self-enhancement or self-protection strategies. In Study 1 (N=345), exploratory factor analysis identified 4 reliable factors. In Study 2 (N=416), this model was validated using confirmatory factor analysis. The factors related differentially to the key personality variables of regulatory focus, self-esteem, and narcissism. Expanding this integrative approach in the future can reveal a great deal about the structure and dynamics of self-enhancement and self-protection motivation.

Beyond oversights, lies, and pies in the sky: exaggeration as goal projection.

The adaptiveness of overly positive self-evaluation is heavily debated. The present research emphasizes that costs and benefits of positive biases are contingent upon their underlying motives. Five studies explored psychological and performance correlates of the tendency to exaggerate academic performance. Students who exaggerated in a private reporting context showed greater achievement motivation and positive affect (Study 1), challenge and approach orientations (Study 2), and observer-rated composure during a stressful mock job interview (Study 3). Moreover, exaggeration predicted subsequent academic improvements. This form of exaggeration apparently reflects an adaptive tendency to project positive goals onto self-reports. In contrast, exaggeration in a more public context was associated with social desirability motives and not with positive affect, approach/challenge motives, or improvement (Study 4). Making actual performance salient (by highlighting that records would be checked) reduced exaggeration; students who exaggerated in this context did not improve over time, instead showing performance decrements (Study 5).

Big tales and cool heads: academic exaggeration is related to cardiac vagal reactivity.

Students who exaggerate their current grade point averages (GPAs) report positive emotional and motivational orientations toward academics (Gramzow & Willard, 2006; Willard & Gramzow, 2007). It is conceivable, however, that these self-reports mask underlying anxieties. The current study examined cardiovascular reactivity during an academic interview in order to determine whether exaggerators respond with a pattern suggestive of anxiety or, alternatively, equanimity. Sixty-two undergraduates were interviewed about their academic performance. Participants evidenced increased sympathetic activation (indexed with preejection period) during the interview, suggesting active task engagement. Academic exaggeration predicted parasympathetic coactivation (increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia). Observer ratings indicated that academic exaggeration was coordinated with a composed demeanor during the interview. Together, these patterns suggest that academic exaggeration is associated with emotional equanimity, rather than anxiety. The capacity for adaptive emotion regulation--to keep a cool head when focusing on academic performance--offers one explanation for why exaggerators also tend to improve academically. These findings have implications for the broader literature on self-evaluation, emotion, and cardiovascular reactivity.

Exaggerating current and past performance: motivated self-enhancement versus reconstructive memory.

The authors propose distinct reasons why individuals exaggerate their current and past performance. Current performance is of motivational and self-evaluative significance, and exaggerations of current performance often stem from motivated self-enhancement concerns. Self-reports of past performance are influenced less by motivated self-enhancement, instead reflecting more subtle biases in reconstructive memory. For students currently in college, grade point averages (GPAs) reflect a currently important goal pursuit, whereas Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores reflect a goal that was important in the past. Study 1 demonstrated that dispositional self-enhancement predicted greater GPA (but not SAT) exaggeration, whereas advanced class standing predicted greater SAT (but not GPA) exaggeration. Study 2 demonstrated that a self-affirmation manipulation attenuated the association between dispositional self-enhancement and GPA exaggeration but not the association between class standing and SAT exaggeration. The distinction between motivated self-enhancement and reconstructive memory bias has important implications for the broader literature on self-evaluation.

Self-esteem and favoritism toward novel in-groups: the self as an evaluative base.

The self-as-evaluative base (SEB) hypothesis proposes that self-evaluation extends automatically via an amotivated consistency process to affect evaluation of novel in-groups. Four minimal group studies support SEB. Personal trait self-esteem (PSE) predicted increased favoritism toward a novel in-group that, objectively, was equivalent to the out-group (Study 1). This association was independent of information-processing effects (Study 1), collective self-esteem, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and narcissism (Studies 2 and 3). A self-affirmation manipulation attenuated the association between in-group favoritism and an individual difference associated with motivated social identity concerns (RWA) but did not alter the PSE effect (Study 3). Finally, the association between PSE and in-group favoritism remained positive even when the in-group was objectively less favorable than the out-group (Study 4).

The Politics of Affirmation Theory: When Group-Affirmation Leads to Greater Ingroup Bias.

It has been well established in the literature that affirming the individual self reduces the tendency to exhibit group-favoring biases. The limited research examining group-affirmation and bias, however, is inconclusive. We argue that group-affirmation can exacerbate group-serving biases in certain contexts, and in the current set of studies, we document this phenomenon directly. Unlike self-affirmation, group-affirmation led to greater ingroup-favoring evaluative judgments among political partisans (Experiment 1). This increase in evaluative bias following group-affirmation was moderated by political party identification and was not found among those who affirmed a non-political ingroup (Experiment 2). In addition, the mechanism underlying these findings is explored and interpreted within the theoretical frameworks of self-categorization theory and the multiple self-aspects model (Experiments 2 and 3). The broader implications of our findings for the understanding of social identity and affirmation theory are discussed.

Sleep Duration and Waist Circumference in Adults: A Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has demonstrated a relation between insufficient sleep and overall obesity. Waist circumference (WC), a measure of central adiposity, has been demonstrated to improve prediction of health risk. However, recent research on the relation of insufficient sleep duration to WC in adults has yielded inconsistent findings. OBJECTIVES: To assess the magnitude and the consistency of the relation of insufficient sleep and WC. METHODS: A systematic search of Internet and research databases using Google Scholar, Medline, PubMed, and PsycINFO through July 2013 was conducted. All articles in English with adult human subjects that included measurements of WC and sleep duration were reviewed. A random effects meta-analysis and regression analyses were performed. Heterogeneity and publication bias were checked. Results are expressed as Pearson correlations (r; 95% confidence interval). RESULTS: Of 1,376 articles, 30 met inclusion criteria and 21 studies (22 samples for a total of 56,259 participants) provided sufficient data for meta-analysis. Results showed a significant negative relation between sleep duration and WC (r = -0.10, P < 0.0001) with significant heterogeneity related to sleep comparison method. Potential moderators of the relation between sleep duration and WC were not significant. Funnel plots showed no indication of publication bias. In addition, a fail-safe N calculation indicated that 418 studies with null effects would be necessary to bring the overall mean effect size to a trivial value of r = -0.005. CONCLUSIONS: Internationally, cross-sectional studies demonstrate a significant negative relation between sleep duration and waist circumference, indicating shorter sleep durations covary with central adiposity. Future research should include prospective studies.

Perceiving personal discrimination: the role of group status and legitimizing ideology.

It was hypothesized that relative group status and endorsement of ideologies that legitimize group status differences moderate attributions to discrimination in intergroup encounters. According to the status-legitimacy hypothesis, the more members of low-status groups endorse the ideology of individual mobility, the less likely they are to attribute negative outcomes from higher status group members to discrimination. In contrast, the more members of high-status groups endorse individual mobility, the more likely they are to attribute negative outcomes from lower status group members to discrimination. Results from 3 studies using 2 different methodologies provide support for this hypothesis among members of different high-status (European Americans and men) and low-status (African Americans, Latino Americans, and women) groups.

Boasts are a boost: achievement prime self-reactivity predicts subsequent academic performance.

The present research tests the hypothesis that self-reactivity following an achievement prime reflects the strength of achievement goals and is a predictor of future goal-relevant performance. In Studies 1-3, undergraduates reported their grade-point averages (GPAs) following either an achievement goal prime or a control prime. Academic exaggeration (higher self-reported than official GPA) was the indicator of self-reactivity to the prime. Study 1 involved a direct achievement goal prime, whereas Studies 2 and 3 involved indirect priming techniques. In all 3 experiments, greater academic exaggeration following the achievement goal prime (but not the control prime) predicted better academic performance a semester later (based on official records). Study 4 demonstrated that the magnitude of students' GPA goals mediated the association between academic exaggeration and subsequent performance (1 year later). The fact that self-reactivity to a single achievement goal prime in the lab predicted later performance in "real life" suggests that individual differences in reactivity to a specific prime can signal much broader motivational orientations related to the primed goal.

Disentangling child and family influences on maternal expressed emotion toward children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

OBJECTIVE: We used multi-level modelling of sibling-pair data to disentangle the influence of proband-specific and more general family influences on maternal expressed emotion (MEE) toward children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHOD: MEE was measured using the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) for 60 sibling pairs (aged 5 through 17 years) each comprising one proband with ADHD and one child without ADHD. Questionnaire measures were used to assess child and adolescent conduct and emotional problems and maternal depression and ADHD. Multi-level models partitioned the effects of five MEE components (initial statement [IS], relationship [REL], warmth [WAR], critical comments [CC], and positive comments [PC]) into proband-specific and general family effects. RESULTS: Significant proband-specific effects were confirmed for all MEE components, with higher levels of MEE expressed toward probands with ADHD than siblings without ADHD. For REL, PC, and CC, this effect was explained by comorbid child conduct problems rather than ADHD. Only low WAR was associated with child ADHD itself. Furthermore, only low WAR was related to variations in more general family characteristics, especially levels of maternal depression. CONCLUSIONS: MEE toward children with ADHD was influenced by proband-specific factors. For most components, these were driven by comorbid symptoms of conduct problems rather than ADHD itself. WAR was different; it was influenced by both child-specific and more general characteristics of the family. Further studies utilising a longitudinal design are required to establish the direction of causation and extend our understanding of the relationship between EE components and ADHD.

Red, rank, and romance in women viewing men.

In many nonhuman species of vertebrates, females are attracted to red on male conspecifics. Red is also a signal of male status in many nonhuman vertebrate species, and females show a mating preference for high-status males. These red-attraction and red-status links have been found even when red is displayed on males artificially. In the present research, we document parallels between human and nonhuman females' response to male red. Specifically, in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect. The influence of red appears to be specific to women's romantic attraction to men: Red did not influence men's perceptions of other men, nor did it influence women's perceptions of men's overall likability, agreeableness, or extraversion. Participants showed no awareness that the research focused on the influence of color. These findings indicate that color not only has aesthetic value but can carry meaning and impact psychological functioning in subtle, important, and provocative ways.