Donna A. Taylor

Social dominance orientation predicts drive for muscularity among British men

The present study tested the hypothesis that mens drive for muscularity would be associated with their valuation of domination, power, status, and aggression over others. A community sample of 359 men from London, UK, completed measures of drive for muscularity, social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, trait aggression, and need for power, as well as their demographic details. Bivariate correlations showed that greater drive for muscularity was significantly correlated with most of the measures and their subscales. However, in a multiple regression analysis, the only significant predictor of drive for muscularity was support for group-based dominance hierarchies (Adj. R(2)=.17). These results suggest that mens drive for muscularity is associated with a socio-political ideology that favours social dominance.

Suicides by foreign national prisoners in England and Wales 2007: mental health and cultural issues

Self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales were at a 10-year low in 2006 but rose in 2007, largely attributed to an unexpected increase in self-inflicted deaths by foreign national (FN) prisoners. All deaths were reviewed in detail using prison and clinical records and interviews with prison staff. This paper reports findings for the deaths of the 20 FN prisoners from non-EU countries. Similarities were found between these deaths and self-inflicted deaths of UK nationals in terms of method, location of death, index offence, and prevalence of mental illness. Additional factors found in the FNs included early anxiety, trauma symptoms in refugees from conflict, language issues, deportation fears, and cultural concepts of shame. These findings are discussed in relation to the entrapment model of suicide and the need for specialised mental health service provision.

Is the hijab protective? An investigation of body image and related constructs among British Muslim women

Previous studies have reported equivocal findings concerning the impact of wearing a hijab, or Islamic head- and body-cover, on Muslim womens body image. Here, we sought to examine that impact using a larger sample of Muslim women than has been relied upon and a wider range of body image measures. A total of 587 British Muslim women completed a battery of scales assessing their frequency and conservativeness of hijab use, body image variables, attitudes towards the media and beauty ideals, importance of appearance, and religiosity. Preliminary results indicated that 218 women never used the hijab and 369 women used some form of the hijab at least rarely. Controlling for religiosity, women who wore the hijab had more positive body image, lower internalization of media messages about beauty standards, and placed less importance on appearance than women who did not wear the hijab. Among women who wore the hijab, hijab use significantly predicted weight discrepancy and body appreciation over and above religiosity. These results are discussed in terms of the possible protective impact among British Muslim women of wearing the hijab.

Weight discrepancy and body appreciation among women in Poland and Britain.

Previous studies have suggested that the process of transmigration has detrimental effects on the body image of migrants relative to women in the country of origin. In the present work, we examined the body image of Polish migrants in Britain (n=153), Polish women in Poland (n=153), and a comparison group of British White women (n=110). Participants completed a measure of actual-ideal weight discrepancy and the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS). Contrary to hypotheses, our results showed that Polish women in Poland had significantly higher weight discrepancy than their counterparts in Britain. Further analyses showed that the BAS reduced to two dimensions among Polish participants, with Polish participants in Poland having significantly lower body appreciation than Polish migrants. We suggest that the sociocultural changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe may place women in that region at relatively high risk for developing negative body image.

The Breast Size Rating Scale: development and psychometric evaluation

Existing measures of breast size dissatisfaction have poor ecological validity or have not been fully evaluated in terms of psychometric properties. Here, we report on the development of the Breast Size Rating Scale (BSRS), a novel measure of breast size dissatisfaction consisting of 14 computer-generated images varying in breast size alone. Study 1 (N=107) supported the scales construct validity, insofar as participants were able to correctly order the images in terms of breast size. Study 2 (N=234) provided evidence of the test-retest reliability of BSRS-derived scores after 3 months. Studies 3 (N=730) and 4 (N=234) provided evidence of the convergent validity of BSRS-derived breast size dissatisfaction scores, which were significantly associated with a range of measures of body image. The BSRS provides a useful tool for researchers examining womens breast size dissatisfaction.

'Spontaneous' Visual Perspective-Taking Mediated by Attention Orienting that is Voluntary and not Reflexive

Experiments revealing ‘spontaneous’ visual perspective-taking are conventionally interpreted as demonstrating that adults have the capacity to track simple mental states in a fast and efficient manner (‘implicit mentalising’). A rival account suggests that these experiments can be explained by the general purpose mechanisms responsible for reflexive attentional orienting. Here, we report two experiments designed to distinguish between these competing accounts. In Experiment 1, we assessed whether reflexive attention orienting was sufficient to yield findings interpreted as spontaneous perspective-taking in the ‘avatar task’ when the protocol was adapted so that participants were unaware that they were taking part in a perspective-taking experiment. Results revealed no evidence for perspective-taking. In Experiment 2, we employed a Posner paradigm to investigate the attentional orienting properties of the avatar stimuli. This revealed cue-validity effects only for longer stimulus onset asynchronies, which indicates a voluntary rather than reflexive shift in spatial attention. Taken together, these findings suggest that attentional orienting does indeed contribute to performance in the Samson et al. avatar task. However, attention orienting appears to be voluntary rather than reflexive, indicating that the perspective-taking phenomenon measured may be less spontaneous than first reported.

Eyewitness Memory in Face-to-Face and Immersive Avatar-to-Avatar Contexts

Technological advances offer possibilities for innovation in the way eyewitness testimony is elicited. Typically, this occurs face-to-face. We investigated whether a virtual environment, where interviewer and eyewitness communicate as avatars, might confer advantages by attenuating the social and situational demands of a face-to-face interview, releasing more cognitive resources for invoking episodic retrieval mode. In conditions of intentional encoding, eyewitnesses were interviewed 48 h later, either face-to-face or in a virtual environment (N = 38). Participants in the virtual environment significantly outperformed those interviewed face-to-face on all episodic performance measures – improved correct reporting reduced errors, and increased accuracy. Participants reported finding it easier to admit not remembering event information to the avatar, and finding the avatar easier to talk to. These novel findings, and our pattern of retrieval results indicates the potential of avatar-to-avatar communication in virtual environments, and provide impetus for further research investigating eyewitness cognition in contemporary retrieval contexts.

An integrated psychology virtual research ethics committee

Research and professional ethics are an integral part of every Psychology degree, as this is seen as a key graduate learning outcome for students leaving to become clinicians working with clients and patients. The development of these skills is embedded in teaching, but they culminate in the final year of a degree when final year students must gain formal ethical approval for their final research project. Decision as to the ethical appropriateness of research are made by a Departmental Research Ethics Committee, which considers all research project proposals submitted by staff and students within the department. One of the challenges of this practice is the scale of work involved for committee members (Doyle & Buckley, 2014) who are all faculty members, and the tracking of applications and decisions, alongside the quality assurance required to ensure that all applications are treated fairly and equally. The time involved in performing this work is often underestimated by Universities, and the variety and complexity of decisions requires extensive discussion and negotiation. Traditionally, these decisions are reached by committee discussions, however this presents logistical difficulties as it requires meetings with quorate attendance. The University of Westminster launched a virtual tool in 2014 to facilitate the management of the Research Ethics Committee, to help track the progress of applications and to allow discussions to occur and be managed virtually. The Department of Psychology adopted the tools in September 2014 to deal with all ethics applications. Here we report on how this virtual committee has affected the role and practices of a working committee that deals with over 300 applications per year, and how an online ethics procedure has facilitated an integrated developmental approach to ethical education.