on diigo
16 hours ago
I'll admit right away that this post is perhaps best suited for my personal blog because it is, at least in part, heavily inspired by one of my favorite bloggers (whose blog I read for purely personal reasons - check her out, Nora at Walking With Nora wrote about her body image issues here) and my own battles in this arena, but I found myself wondering about the research and analyzing it as a social scientist and thought I might share it here and get some thoughts...
I was thinking about those of us pursuing higher education, those of us in our twenties and how body image issues affect us as we age. I know I had a lot of problems with this in high school and growing up and I've had various health issues my whole life so what's been "healthy" for me has changed dramatically from being smaller than "average" to larger than "average." It's been a struggle and I know I probably could have handled it better, I know I've had some problems that could have benefitted from professional help. But the point I'm making is that I still struggle with it and I think it's unusual. Or at least it's unusual for anyone in their twenties and seeking a post-graduate degree to admit to feeling body issues and insecurities.
I think there's a belief that you outgrow these "adolescent issues" that only plague insecure teens who don't have any real sense of self, any solid identity, any main source of fulfillment. And then, when you are particularly educated, and especially if you are not married, I think there is a general perception that you're an island, that you are the picture of self-esteem because you have to rely on yourself entirely. You draw strength from a career and a career path, you have the guts to follow your dreams and put yourself through some serious underpaid hell to get there. And the idea that you might not love your body? Well, you're too smart to even care about that... body image is a socially constructed ideal created to keep the little woman dependent on her big, strong man and make her feel the need to seek his approval and remain attractive to him. Or something like that (maybe add in a few more big words and ta-da).
But yet, even as we think this, or are told this by well-meaning friends and family who assure us that we are far too intelligent to fall for such ridiculousness, there's evidence that all women are affected. Look at Dove's real woman, love your body type ads and the viral-like success they had - according to this Harvard Business School blogger, that ad campaign increased Dove sales by 600% within 2 months of the launch of the campaign! (Seriously, holy crap, that's a ridiculous statistic...)
And another post from the Brain Blogger recounts a study in which even women with a supposedly healthy body image showed increased brain activity when they were asked to imagine themselves as obese, indicating what the researchers likened to a fear of being fat. The men in the study did not show a comparable spike. Even if the research is flawed and there's a tiny sample size (even for a neuroimaging study) (and not that I'm saying it is, I'm just saying that I haven't investigated it all and that this isn't my area of expertise, but it WAS published in a highly respected journal - Personality and Individual Differences - so it is obviously a fairly well-done study) and researchers can't say for sure that it's any kind of fear or disgust response (as opposed to increased activity in imagining very different versions of themselves or some other reason for the spike), doesn't it suggest that there are fundamental connections between body image and brain activity in women? Which, at least to me, makes it easier to believe that the problem is far reaching and universal - that there may be hard-wired connections that transcend class, education, race, and more. And that's a simultaneously comforting and terrifying thought for me, at least.
So why do people think that you can be too smart to fall for this stuff? Why do we believe we grow out of it when there's evidence that women relate to campaigns with honest depictions of women and admissions of less-than-perfect relationships with their bodies?
I only noticed this little irony because I'm such a huge college football fan (okay, all football really) and I'm getting incredibly excited about the start of the football season... but I saw a commercial for some of Gatorade's new products - the one I've embedded here actually and I got to thinking... One of the new products for Gatorade (it's Gator-ade, as in drink to 'aid' the Florida Gator athletes), including one that appeared to be some kind of a gel, which I believe is glucose.
That got me thinking about the research that played a role in developing that product and how I believe that some of that research is from our own world of psychology! I believe that Gatorade's gel-like product has to have been at least partially influenced (there's an obvious connection at worst) by some of Roy Baumeister and his colleagues at Florida State (you know, the big rival for the University of Florida). What stands out to me in particular is a study that made an impression on me if for no other reason than because I cannot believe the number of participants, IRB forms and restrictions, and sheer man power taken to conduct it.
Gailliot, along with Baumeister and several other co-authors, published a paper in 2007 demonstrating the connection between glucose and self-regulation, self-control... the subtitle was even "Willpower is more than a metaphor." While Gatorade isn't exactly used to improve performance on a Stroop test, I would think its creators and researchers were at least aware of the Baumeister & Tice lab because those who had the best performance (and most self-control, self-regulation) had ingested a glucose drink!
I could easily be reaching with this, but it's a funny coincidence at least... any time you name a product for the school's mascot, I think you probably prompt some comparison to and anger at your rival... plus, I tend to find weird little connections to psychology from Gatorade, such as when they had their "what is g" commercials series and all I could think about was general intelligence... thoughts? Think there is a connection?
(If you're interested, this is the citation: Gailliot, M. T., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Maner, J. K., Plant, E. A., Tice, D. M., Brewer, L. E., & Schmeichel, B. J. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325-336.)
(Somehow, this was the pic Cosmo thought most appropriate for their version of the story...)
I'm always a big fan of psychology making its way into the "mainstream media" and I still get excited when I see some article in Cosmopolitan or The New York Times or some equally "popular" form of media that references a study in a psychological journal (and I'm even more excited when I can guess who one of the authors is - not as hard as you might think given that some people talk to the media a lot and their research is repeatedly featured... sort of like crosswords, after a while, you see that some answers appear over and over again). All that is just leading me to point out that Cosmopolitan magazine had a little article on how women are attracted to men wearing red... which cited a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology!
So being the awesomely nerdy gal I am, I found the journal article. It was seven studies and they compared humans to nonhumans and vertebrates to invertebrates and it's a pretty long thing... but you can tell pretty quickly that - as usual - the Cosmo writers have taken some liberties... though they didn't completely overdo it like I think they are prone to do (which is not unique to them, of course - we all want better answers than just "it depends").
Nonetheless, you can see for yourself what Cosmo said compared to what the scholars had to say... here's what Cosmo had to say:
"Ladies found men in red clothing more attractive and sexually desirable. The not-so-shocking reason why? Women subconsciously viewed men wearing that color as being higher in status and more likely to earn a good salary."
The study's authors:
"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."
(In case you want it, the full citation for the scholarly article is:
Elliot, A. J., Kayser, D. N., Greitemeyer, T., Lichtenfeld, S., Gramzow, R. H., Maier, M. A., & Liu, H. (2010). Red, rank, and romance in women viewing men. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(3), 399-417.)
All this is just to say that Cosmo did a better job with this one than they have with some other studies I've seen them report on in the past and that I'm excited that this study made it to Cosmo, even if I wish something a little less "evolutionary psychology-based" made it (because let's be fair, this basically says that women are gold diggers - a frequent bottom line in evolutionary psychology), but I'll settle for any psychology and some pretty good reporting...
In honor of my internship, we have another intern explaining why he's the most interesting... the video's here, but one of my favorite sites - The Collared Sheep - has the lyrics for us to enjoy here.
While I'm busy finishing up an internship and moving back to my regular small-town, very Southern life - not to mention getting over a recent not-so-pretty break-up - I'm not really overflowing with creative ideas for topics and posts this week. So instead, I thought I'd feature some of the recent stuff I've been reading on the Harvard Business Review's website...
- "A Deeper Kind of Joblessness" on Harvard Business Review - the current economic situation keeps finding its way into various psychological talks and debates. I was fortunate enough to attend a U.S. House subcommittee meeting on potential policy responses to long-term unemployment and one of the expert witnesses pushed Keynesian economics quite heavily... while he was not someone I took all that seriously (and hopefully not too many others did as well), this article actually manages to use economic arguments to persuade readers of the value of improving jobs and work for employees right now...
- "Why the Powerful Can Be So Rude" on HBR - while I was saddened by the passing of George Steinbrenner, at least as much as anyone, I found it somewhat surprising that in death his memory is completely free of much of the hallmark of his personality as a businessman - there is little mention of the fact that Steinbrenner would probably not be anyone's best friend nowadays, at least not based on his personality and treatment of others. But I was thrilled to see this article actually points out that Steinbrenner is NOT associated with much of the traits we currently link to good managers and leaders.
- "Millenials Won't Change Work; Work Will Change Millenials" on HBR - the title is catchy and I wish I could say that the arguments are somehow unique or eye opening, but ultimately, as much as I want to just agree with the author and not have to read another freakin' article about this topic and the generations at work, etc. (despite my interest in the topic, these articles manage to recycle a horrifyingly large amount of content), I'm not sure I'm convinced. The changes in work design and the employment relationship are too overwhelming and real to ignore and it's hard to say that it's not partially due to the rise of the millenial employee and the changes that shape both the millenial attitudes and the design of work... at least for me.
- "Getting Beyond Engagement to Creating Meaning at Work" on HBR - it's almost ridiculous to think about something so 'luxurious' as making meaning and finding a job that provides you with personal fulfillment in the context of the current economy, but it's still a topic that's interesting to me personally and should be to researchers too as the author wisely points out that even in the midst of dangerous and miserable working conditions, individuals can thrive and create meaning. I think the arguments here harken back to Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model, but I love that the idea of making meaning - this active process that employees can choose to engage in and take action to alter the quality of their own experiences - is making it to the workplace!
(from the Washington Post story "Why going green won't make you better or save you money")
I was SO excited when I saw the Washington Post's Express today had a cover story about the green revolution and behavioral change... or the lack thereof. Basically, the Post covered the rapidly expanding area of social psychology and judgment and decision-making (JDM) called moral licensing. It's the idea that we have internal debates with ourselves and we'll give ourselves credit for doing something good for the environment (or our health, etc.), but then we'll do something else that's bad because we gave ourselves permission to do something worse after doing something good... and vice versa. It's a constant game of withdrawals and deposits, decision-making on the fly and in complicated situations.
It's the science and studies behind findings that humans will install green-er light bulbs, but leave them on longer. Or get an energy efficient washer, but wash more clothes; get a Big Mac and fries with a Diet Coke; drive a Suburban to Whole Foods... the examples are virtually endless. I find some of these findings so fascinating and the intersection psychology with marketing and techniques to encourage behavioral change is really exciting and I imagine that this research will get a lot of funding in coming years as advertisers and businesses catch on and the "hippies" campaigning for change realize that the science of human behavior can offer as much as the science of climatology towards saving the planet!
(from Time Magazine's "The Cruelest Study: Why Breakups Hurt" - from Getty Images)
Again... an absence of posts from me! I'm disappointed in myself right now, but there are major life changes happening, so it's not easy... I'm about to move back to my regular home down south after an internship and I'm trying to get over a nasty breakup. It's ugly - the kind where your heart gets ripped out, the pieces put in a blender, and then the liquified bits set on fire... and then you can use your imagination.
So of course it's fabulous timing that a new study says that points out that brain areas involved in dealing with a break up (or looking at the photo of the one that broke your heart) is also associated with craving and addiction. Obviously it's hard to dig through the mass media coverage ("Will we soon have medical interventions to help get over the heartbreak?" "Why yes, CNN... soon you can take Vicodin for the heart!" - so I might be ad-libbing a bit, but you get the point), and there are a lot of reasons not to jump to any big conclusions or generalizations about all people experiencing a break up, but I have to say that right now, I wish I was a little less aware of scientific research because I find these results pretty disheartening (pun only somewhat intended).
Anyone have any fabulous advice?
P.S. I made the little "artsy quote" from the Zooey Deschanel quote myself - like it? I'm kinda proud of myself!
Recently I was thinking about how envious I am of certain bloggers and other internet celebs that I think have it really "together." They have a schtick and a theme and an identity that is, at once, comprehensive and beautiful, informative yet integrative. The bottom line is that I want one. That I've created several blogs and currently maintain several sites, I read blogs in a variety of areas and topics, I clip stories to about five places, and the contents of those clips varies enormously. Refusing to narrow myself down or pigeonhole myself is in many ways my own identity - I like a little bit of everything and worry I'd get bored if I got too immersed, too expert, too far down the rabbit hole of one thing. Oddly, this dilemma of online identity mirrors my current career struggle (which is a series of about 400 posts in and of itself, but I'll spare you).
But it all got me thinking about my own identities and what really unites them, if there's a real theme... the one thing I can think of is that I'm in my mid-twenties. I'm a Gen-Y, Millenial, whatever. I was going to try to connect this all to some scholarly text, or something written about the generations who has a bit more expertise than I, but I found something that makes me feel better about myself and this crisis of coherence, this failure to create my own personal narrative and faithfully represent it online - from "Welcome to the Occupation," Paul Smith's HR-f0cused blog, comes his post titled "I'm a Me." (It's from May 2010, but still good - I found it while searching through my subscriptions.) He talks to his six-year-old nephew about what it means to be a Generation Z (as in, post-Y) and I'm tempted to take the tongue-in-cheek "interview transcription" too far and analyze it, but the end result is that his nephew refused to be pushed into a category, refuses to be defined.
To be fair, I tried to group myself into this age group/category, but at the same time, I wonder how other people reconcile their online identities... do you all keep the sites separately? Or if you are HR focused, is it easy to keep your Tweets and clippings and blogs you read focused on that? Or do you just divide into folders and let them flow together when desired?
More fabulous quotes from the Monitor on Psychology (from APA) in the July 2010 issue...
“Younger people, including younger medical personnel, often don’t notice [depression among older adults]. When they do, it doesn’t surprise them. They think: ‘They ought to be depressed, they’re old.’ So instead of helping the person deal with it, they ignore it.”
—Bob G. Knight, PhD, associate dean at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California.
The Los Angeles Times, April 19
“There is a very bad set of values that are embedded in the air because of performance reviews.”
—Samuel A. Culbert, PhD, of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, who says annual reviews not only create a high level of stress for workers, but end up making everybody — bosses and subordinates — less effective at their jobs.
The New York Times, May 19
“People need to change their mindset about agreeing to everything. By saying no, you can focus on your goals.”
—Susan Newman, PhD, social psychologist and the author of “The Book of No.”
Forbes.com, May 27
You can find the quotes on APA's website here.
(This is a peak at the Tumblr site.)
I've been doing some updates on the blog... or just general exploring and trying to teach myself how to do things to make the whole thing prettier and easier to use. But there's also one fun change - I've started an official tumblelog (blog on Tumblr) called "Psych at Work." You can find it here and I've set it up so that (at least for now) all of my posts there are sent to Twitter, so it's all going to show up on the Twitter sidebar over here. I also have a little Tumblr RSS feed in the sidebar too, but I think that will only be up now... once I get it going, it probably won't be featured in a sidebar because it's covered by Twitter.
The main idea behind the Tumblelog is that I can save links, photos, articles, videos, etc. and more together in one place rather than trying to use Flickr and Digg and Delicious and all of the other services out there. And with Tumblr, I can just post little bits of content without needing to make a whole big entry... so it's a good sort of supplement (complement?) to this site. So check it out!
I'm a sucker for any blog post or article that attacks the mainstream media's failure to look at actual scientific research or that breaks down how "impartial" articles somehow manage to forget the entire other side of a debate.
So, I had to share this article from Bella DiPaulo's "Living Single" blog on Psychology Today, where she examines how a nine page article from the Washington Post (pictured) on the 'effectiveness' of marriage education somehow failed to include quotes from those who didn't think the programs are all that they're cracked up to be or any examination of examinations of the programs in peer-reviewed scientific journals...
Basically, it's a scary look at how articles in reputable publications really aren't as scientific or unbiased as we think they are, even when they are supposedly covering scientific topics and interviewing experts. I guess it's terrifyingly easy to ignore the dissenting opinions when you need an angle - in this case, the idea that divorce rates are so high because couples just don't know how to be married - but in getting people to read about the science, it's scary how much is ignored... and ultimately, is this really better? Is anyone really learning anything from this?
Just another reason we need more science in the mainstream, if you ask me!
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