Anorexia nervosa in the context of daily experience

This research employed the Experience Sampling Method to study the daily lives of two anorectic women. They and 24 women from a normative population filled out reports on their experience at random moments during an ordinary week in their lives. The sample of 40-to-45 reports per person suggests that the anorectics spent more of their time alone and experienced lower average affect than other young single women. In addition, the reports from Case 1 provide concrete quantitative demonstration of an abnormal preoccupation with food. The reports from Case 2 show how this woman's moods are strongly tied to her fluctuating sense of controlThis research was partially funded by the Judith Offer Fund and the George Barr Fund.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.     

Pregnancy and Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: a Comparison of Victims Who Were and Were Not Abused During Pregnancy

The purpose of this study was to examine risk factors, indicators of severity, and differences in post-violence health effects for victims who experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy compared to victims who experienced IPV outside the pregnancy period. Data were from Statistics Canada’s 2009 General Social Survey. Among IPV victims, 10.5 % experienced physical and/or sexual violence during pregnancy. Victims who had experienced violence during pregnancy were more likely than victims who were not abused during pregnancy to experience both less severe and more severe forms of violence. In fully adjusted models, younger age, separated or divorced marital status, as well as partners’ patriarchal domination, destruction of property, and drinking were significant predictors of pregnancy violence. Measures indicative of more severe violence and of a number of adverse post-violence health effects were significantly elevated among victims who experienced pregnancy violence relative to victims who were not abused during pregnancy. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Gendered Face of Partisan Politics: Consequences of Facial Sex Typicality for Vote Choice

Facial cues are consequential for voters’ behavior at the polls. Yet the facial cues that are associated with vote choice remain under-examined. We predicted that vote choice judgments rely, in part, on the sex typicality of facial cues (i.e., the degree of facial masculinity and femininity) that vary as a function of candidate gender and partisan identification. Stimuli included image pairs of winners and runners-up in the elections for the 111th U.S. House of Representatives. In Study 1, we found that female Republican candidates who appeared relatively more feminine and male Republican candidates who looked relatively less masculine in their appearance were more likely to win their election. Democratic candidates’ electoral success was not related to their sex typicality. In Study 2, we found that relatively masculine-appearing Democrats and feminine-appearing Republicans were more likely to be selected in a hypothetical vote choice task. Implications for U.S. partisan politics are discussed.     

African American Child Discipline: Differences Between Mothers and Fathers

Child rearing methods used in African American homes have been the subject of much commentary among social scientists, child welfare, and legal personnel. Much of the deliberation has centered on firm disciplinary techniques used by African American mothers. However, few studies have included the perspectives of African American fathers. This study investigated the differences between African American mothers' and fathers' responses in relation to child misbehavior. Several significant differences were found with mothers utilizing more intense disciplinary methods than African American fathers. Results of this investigation underscored the importance of obtaining the viewpoints of African American fathers as well as mothers in understanding parenting in African American homes.     

Exploring New Directions in Self-Forgiveness Research: Integrating Self and Other Perspectives on Moral Repair

Self-forgiveness is not only shaped by processes exclusively within the self, nor are its consequences limited to the self. The Handbook of the Psychology of Self-Forgiveness (Woodyatt et al. 2017c) offers a timely collection of the growing and diverse scholarship on self-forgiveness, as well as a valuable resource for researchers. More importantly, however, it also provides a launching point for further theoretical and empirical innovations. In particular, we highlight the need to further investigate the role of others in the search for self-forgiveness and ultimately, moral redemption for the self. We reflect on the evolution and conceptualization, antecedents and consequences, and application of self-forgiveness. We then suggest new avenues for research that integrate self and other perspectives to understand an individual’s journey through self-forgiveness within a broader social context. We propose that we can conceptualize self-forgiveness and forgiveness as two complementary sides of the same process toward moral repair.     

Dynamics of Polarizing Rhetoric in Congressional Tweets

Affective polarization is pervasive in modern US politics, and can be intensified by strategic messaging from members of Congress. But there are gaps in our knowledge of the dynamics of polarizing appeals from elected representatives on social media. We explore the usage of polarizing rhetoric by members of Congress on Twitter using the 4.9 million tweets sent by members of Congress from 2009 to 2020, coded for the presence of polarizing rhetoric via a novel and highly accurate application of supervised machine learning methods. Fitting with our expectations, we find that more ideologically extreme members, those from safer districts, and those who are not in the president’s party are more likely to send polarizing tweets, and that polarizing tweets garner more engagement, increasing campaign funding for more polarizing members.