Dian A. de Vries

Women on display: The effect of portraying the self online on women's self-objectification

Objectification research has largely ignored the potential impact of Internet activities, such as online self-portrayal, on womens self-objectification and whether this may interact with traditional sexually objectifying stimuli. In response to these research gaps, the present study had two goals: first, to investigate if portraying the self to others online leads to self-objectification in women; second, to test whether priming with sexually objectifying content from traditional media moderates the effect of online self-portrayal on self-objectification. We conducted an online experiment with a two (priming stimuli: objectifying vs. neutral) by two (audience: online audience vs. no audience) between subjects design among 221 women aged 18-25. All participants created an online profile, which consisted of choosing an avatar and writing a self-description. As expected, participants in the online audience condition self-objectified more strongly than did participants in the no audience condition. However, this effect only held among those who had been primed with sexually objectifying stimuli. Our results suggest that womens online self-portrayal, if combined with sexually objectifying stimuli, may lead to self-objectification.

Social Comparison as the Thief of Joy: Emotional Consequences of Viewing Strangers’ Instagram Posts

ABSTRACT This experiment investigates the emotional consequences of viewing strangers’ positive posts on Instagram. From a social comparison perspective, strangers’ positive posts on social media are expected to negatively affect viewers’ emotions. From an emotional contagion perspective, strangers’ positive posts should positively affect viewers’ emotions. The current lab experiment examines both the social comparison and the emotional contagion perspective while taking individual differences into account. Participants viewed positive, neutral, or no posts of confederates. In support of the social comparison perspective, individuals who tend to compare themselves to others reported lower positive affect if they had viewed positive posts than if they had viewed neutral or no posts. In support of the emotional contagion perspective, individuals who tend not to engage in social comparison reported higher positive affect after viewing positive posts than after viewing neutral or no posts. These findings indicate that individual differences in processing tendencies lead people to respond to social information on social media in opposite ways.

Assessing Therapist Competence : Development of a Performance-Based Measure and Its Comparison With a Web-Based Measure

Background Recent research interest in how best to train therapists to deliver psychological treatments has highlighted the need for rigorous, but scalable, means of measuring therapist competence. There are at least two components involved in assessing therapist competence: the assessment of their knowledge of the treatment concerned, including how and when to use its strategies and procedures, and an evaluation of their ability to apply such knowledge skillfully in practice. While the assessment of therapists’ knowledge has the potential to be completed efficiently on the Web, the assessment of skill has generally involved a labor-intensive process carried out by clinicians, and as such, may not be suitable for assessing training outcome in certain circumstances. Objectives The aims of this study were to develop and evaluate a role-play–based measure of skill suitable for assessing training outcome and to compare its performance with a highly scalable Web-based measure of applied knowledge. Methods Using enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-E) for eating disorders as an exemplar, clinical scenarios for role-play assessment were developed and piloted together with a rating scheme for assessing trainee therapists’ performance. These scenarios were evaluated by examining the performance of 93 therapists from different professional backgrounds and at different levels of training in implementing CBT-E. These therapists also completed a previously developed Web-based measure of applied knowledge, and the ability of the Web-based measure to efficiently predict competence on the role-play measure was investigated. Results The role-play measure assessed performance at implementing a range of CBT-E procedures. The majority of the therapists rated their performance as moderately or closely resembling their usual clinical performance. Trained raters were able to achieve good-to-excellent reliability for averaged competence, with intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .653 to 909. The measure was also sensitive to change, with scores being significantly higher after training than before as might be expected (mean difference 0.758, P<.001) even when taking account of repeated data (mean difference 0.667, P<.001). The major shortcoming of the role-play measure was that it required considerable time and resources. This shortcoming is inherent in the method. Given this, of most interest for assessing training outcome, scores on the Web-based measure efficiently predicted therapist competence, as judged by the role-play measure (with the Web-based measure having a positive predictive value of 77% and specificity of 78%). Conclusions The results of this study suggest that while it was feasible and acceptable to assess performance using the newly developed role-play measure, the highly scalable Web-based measure could be used in certain circumstances as a substitute for the more labor-intensive, and hence, more costly role-play method.