Fat embodiment for resistance and healing from weight stigma.

Western culture is a decidedly anti-fat culture. Thus fat people are subjected to weight stigma and confront discrimination in virtually every facet of their lives. As a result, fat people often develop a self-concept that includes the stigmatized social identity. Weight stigma is also a traumatic experience that disrupts fat people's embodiment by diminishing feelings of attunement to and appreciation for their bodies. Therefore, healing from the trauma of weight stigma may involve developing a more positive fat identity through a process of fat embodiment. Fat embodiment may improve fat people's well-being by bolstering the integrity of the self, supporting efforts to resist public stigma and heal internalized stigma. In our analysis of embodied approaches to resistance and healing, we draw on social and clinical psychology and the works of public fat scholars and activists. We describe methods of fat embodiment like embracing bodily needs, engaging with fat-positive perspectives, connecting with fat community, and embracing desire and sensual pleasure. Ultimately, we conclude that transforming a negative fat identity into a positive identity through fat embodiment can support the pursuit of justice for fat bodies, connect fat people to their bodily needs and sensations, and support increased self-care and bodily fulfillment.

The Friends-to-Lovers Pathway to Romance: Prevalent, Preferred, and Overlooked by Science.

There is more than one pathway to romance, but relationship science does not reflect this reality. Our research reveals that relationship initiation studies published in popular journals (Study 1) and cited in popular textbooks (Study 2) overwhelmingly focus on romance that sparks between strangers and largely overlook romance that develops between friends. This limited focus might be justified if friends-first initiation was rare or undesirable, but our research reveals the opposite. In a meta-analysis of seven samples of university students and crowdsourced adults (Study 3; N = 1,897), two thirds reported friends-first initiation, and friends-first initiation was the preferred method of initiation among university students (Study 4). These studies affirm that friends-first initiation is a prevalent and preferred method of romantic relationship initiation that has been overlooked by relationship science. We discuss possible reasons for this oversight and consider the implications for dominant theories of relationship initiation.

Rules of engagement: A content analysis of accepted and rejected marriage proposals.

Little research exists concerning the Western marriage proposal ritual, and rejected proposals are particularly understudied. The current research used the lens of life script theory to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze 374 first-person written accounts of accepted and rejected marriage proposals between men and women that were sampled from online forums. Rejected proposals were more likely than accepted proposals to violate the proposal script. Compared to accepted proposals, rejected proposals included fewer ritual elements and they often happened "off-time." Specifically, rejected proposals came earlier in the relationship, typically prior to the discussion of the topic of marriage by the couple, and rejected men sometimes proposed to "save" an unstable or abusive relationship that was headed toward dissolution. As with other important life transition events, audiences played an important role in many proposals. Rejected proposals were more likely to occur in public than accepted proposals, and when present, audience members often participated in the proposal by encouraging couples to follow the proposal script and by expressing dissatisfaction when the script was violated. Some audiences became hostile when the woman said "no." Also consistent with life script theory, couples evinced strong emotions during proposals, and confusion and anger were common emotional responses among rejected suitors. Indeed, 15% of rejected proposal accounts described intimate partner violence. Yet, about 30% of relationships continued after the rejection, sometimes for years. These and other novel results contribute to the science of close relationships, family psychology, life script theory, commitment, rejection, and social rituals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Singlehood and Attunement of Self-Esteem to Friendships.

Romantic relationships activate a process of psychological attunement whereby self-esteem becomes responsive to the romantic bond, thereby potentially benefitting relationship quality and bolstering self-esteem. Yet some people are romantically single, raising the question: Do single people also exhibit psychological attunement? In a 2-year longitudinal study of young adults (N = 279), we test whether singles psychologically attune to their friendships. Multilevel modeling revealed that within-person fluctuations in friendship quality predicted within-person fluctuations in self-esteem, and this association was stronger for singles than for partnered people. A cross-sectional mediation analysis also revealed that singles invested more in their friendships than partnered people, and greater friendship investment predicted greater friendship quality and self-esteem later on. Finally, singles maintain their friendship quality over time while partnered people experience declines. Taken together, these results suggest that singles are psychologically attuned to their friendships, and such attunement may benefit their belongingness and self-esteem.

Registered Replication Report: Study 1 From Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon (2002).

Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, and Hannon (2002, Study 1) demonstrated a causal link between subjective commitment to a relationship and how people responded to hypothetical betrayals of that relationship. Participants primed to think about their commitment to their partner (high commitment) reacted to the betrayals with reduced exit and neglect responses relative to those primed to think about their independence from their partner (low commitment). The priming manipulation did not affect constructive voice and loyalty responses. Although other studies have demonstrated a correlation between subjective commitment and responses to betrayal, this study provides the only experimental evidence that inducing changes to subjective commitment can causally affect forgiveness responses. This Registered Replication Report (RRR) meta-analytically combines the results of 16 new direct replications of the original study, all of which followed a standardized, vetted, and preregistered protocol. The results showed little effect of the priming manipulation on the forgiveness outcome measures, but it also did not observe an effect of priming on subjective commitment, so the manipulation did not work as it had in the original study. We discuss possible explanations for the discrepancy between the findings from this RRR and the original study.

Perceived regard explains self- esteem differences in expressivity.

Baumeister, Tice, and Hutton proposed that individuals with low self-esteem (LSEs) adopt a more cautious, self-protective self-presentational style than individuals with high self-esteem (HSEs). The authors predicted that LSEs' self-protectiveness leads them to be less expressive--less revealing of their thoughts and feelings--with others than HSEs, and that this self-esteem difference is mediated by their perceptions of the interaction partner's regard for them. Two correlational studies supported these predictions (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, LSEs became more expressive when their perceived regard was experimentally heightened--when they imagined speaking to someone who was unconditionally accepting rather than judgmental (Study 3) and when their perceptions of regard were increased through Marigold, Holmes, and Ross's compliment-reframing task (Study 4). These findings suggest that LSEs' expressiveness can be heightened through interventions that reduce their concerns about social acceptance.

Rewriting the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection: self-affirmation improves relational security and social behavior up to 2 months later.

Chronically insecure individuals often behave in ways that result in the very social rejection that they most fear. We predicted that this typical self-fulfilling prophecy is not immutable. Self-affirmation may improve insecure individuals' relational security, and this improvement may allow them to express more welcoming social behavior. In a longitudinal experiment, a 15-min self-affirmation improved both the relational security and experimenter-rated social behavior of insecure participants up to 4 weeks after the initial intervention. Moreover, the extent to which self-affirmation improved insecure participants' relational security at 4 weeks predicted additional improvements in social behavior another 4 weeks after that. Our finding that insecure participants continued to reap the social benefits of self-affirmation up to 8 weeks after the initial intervention demonstrates that it is indeed possible to rewrite the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection.

The regulatory function of self-esteem: testing the epistemic and acceptance signaling systems.

The authors draw on sociometer theory (e.g., Leary, 2004) and self-verification theory (e.g., Swann, 1997) to propose an expanded model of the regulatory function of self-esteem. The model suggests that people not only possess an acceptance signaling system that indicates whether relational value is high or low but also possess an epistemic signaling system that indicates whether social feedback is consistent or inconsistent with chronic perceived relational value (i.e., global self-esteem). One correlational study and 5 experiments, with diverse operationalizations of social feedback, demonstrated that the epistemic signaling system responds to self-esteem consistent or inconsistent relational-value feedback with increases or deceases in epistemic certainty. Moreover, Studies 3-6 demonstrated that the acceptance and epistemic signaling systems respond uniquely to social feedback. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 provide evidence that the epistemic signaling system is part of a broader self-regulatory system: Self-esteem inconsistent feedback caused cognitive efforts to decrease the discrepancy between self-views and feedback and caused depleted self-regulatory capacity on a subsequent self-control task.

Acceptance is in the eye of the beholder: self-esteem and motivated perceptions of acceptance from the opposite sex.

Social risk elicits self-esteem differences in signature social motivations and behaviors during the relationship-initiation process. In particular, the present research tested the hypothesis that lower self-esteem individuals' (LSEs) motivation to avoid rejection leads them to self-protectively underestimate acceptance from potential romantic partners, whereas higher self-esteem individuals' (HSEs) motivation to promote new relationships leads them to overestimate acceptance. The results of 5 experiments supported these predictions. Social risk increased activation of avoidance goals for LSEs on a word-recall task but increased activation of approach goals for HSEs, as evidenced by their increased use of likeable behaviors. Consistent with these patterns of goal activation, even though actual acceptance cues were held constant across all participants, social risk decreased the amount of acceptance that LSEs perceived from their interaction partner but increased the amount of acceptance that HSEs perceived from their interaction partner. It is important to note that such self-esteem differences in avoidance goals, approach behaviors, and perceptions of acceptance were completely eliminated when social risk was removed.

Deconstructing the "reign of error": interpersonal warmth explains the self-fulfilling prophecy of anticipated acceptance.

People's expectations of acceptance often come to create the acceptance or rejection they anticipate. The authors tested the hypothesis that interpersonal warmth is the behavioral key to this acceptance prophecy: If people expect acceptance, they will behave warmly, which in turn will lead other people to accept them; if they expect rejection, they will behave coldly, which will lead to less acceptance. A correlational study and an experiment supported this model. Study 1 confirmed that participants' warm and friendly behavior was a robust mediator of the acceptance prophecy compared to four plausible alternative explanations. Study 2 demonstrated that situational cues that reduced the risk of rejection also increased socially pessimistic participants' warmth and thus improved their social outcomes.

Fostering partner dependence as trust insurance: the implicit contingencies of the exchange script in close relationships.

A model of the trust-insurance system is proposed to examine how people with low and high self-esteem cope with the interdependence dilemma posed by feeling inferior to a romantic partner. Feeling inferior automatically activates "if-then" contingencies that link inferiority to the exchange script (i.e., partner qualities are evenly traded) and exchange script anxieties to reparative efforts to secure a partner's dependence. A daily diary study of newlyweds and 5 experiments supported the model. Induced upward social comparisons to the partner activated exchange anxieties for low, but not high, self-esteem people. When implicitly primed, the exchange script heightened worries about being inferior and motivated behavioral efforts to increase the partner's dependence regardless of self-esteem. When consciously deliberated, the exchange script elicited dependence promotion only for low self-esteem people.

In search of clarity: self-esteem and domains of confidence and confusion.

To date, research suggests that self-concept clarity is a monolithic construct: Some people have clearly defined self-concepts in all domains, whereas others do not. The authors argued that self-concept clarity is instead multifaceted and varies across trait domains. The authors predicted that social commodities (SCs; e.g., looks, popularity, social skills) would show less self-concept clarity than would communal qualities (CQs; e.g., kindness, warmth, honesty), due to domain differences in observability, ambiguity, and controllability. Results replicated past findings that self-esteem predicts self-concept clarity but also demonstrated that participants' SC self-views were less clear than their CQ self-views. Moreover, people showed greater clarity about traits that were lower in observability and higher in ambiguity and controllability. These findings suggest that everyone, regardless of self-esteem, has self-concept domains of relative confidence and confusion.

The cost of lower self-esteem: testing a self- and social-bonds model of health.

The authors draw upon social, personality, and health psychology to propose and test a self-and-social-bonds model of health. The model contends that lower self-esteem predicts health problems and that poor-quality social bonds explain this association. In Study 1, lower self-esteem prospectively predicted reports of health problems 2 months later, and this association was explained by subjective reports of poor social bonds. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 but used a longitudinal design with 6 waves of data collection, assessed self-reports of concrete health-related behaviors (i.e., number of visits to the doctor and classes missed due to illness), and measured both subjective and objective indicators of quality of social bonds (i.e., interpersonal stress and number of friends). In addition, Study 2 showed that poor-quality social bonds predicted acute drops in self-esteem over time, which in turn predicted acute decreases in quality of social bonds and, consequently, acute increases in health problems. In both studies, alternative explanations to the model were tested.