The specific psychopathology of bulimia nervosa: A comparison with restrained and unrestrained (normal) eaters.

The hypothesis that patients with bulimia nervosa and restrained eaters exist on a simple continuum of psychopathology was tested in 60 Ss (20 bulimics, 20 restrained eaters, 20 unrestrained eaters). Regarding measures related to dieting behavior and physical appearance, the restrained eaters differed significantly from unrestrained eaters and were similar to bulimic patients except for level of psychopathology. The restrained eaters could not be distinguished from the unrestrained eaters with regard to measures representing interoceptive perception, self-esteem, and fears about interpersonal relationships. On these traits, bulimic patients could be clearly distinguished from the normal Ss. The results support a 2-component model of the psychopathology of bulimia nervosa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bulimia and interpersonal relationships: A longitudinal study.

We assessed changes in bulimia in female college students and changes in the relation between bulimia and interpersonal relationships with women and men. A measure of bulimia (BULIT) of M. C. Smith and M. H. Thelen (see record 1985-02946-001) was taken at Time 1, after a 7-month interval (Time 2), and again after a 12-month interval (Time 3). Measures of interpersonal relationships with women and men were taken at Time 2 and Time 3. Three groups were constituted on the basis of BULIT scores at Time 1: bulimic, subclinical bulimic (Ss who tested just under the cutoff for bulimia), and normal. Ss who tested bulimic or normal at Time 1 tended to continue to do so. In contrast, the subclinical bulimic group endorsed less bulimic symptomatology over time. There were strong negative correlations between the BULIT and ratings of interpersonal relationships with men. The subclinical bulimics showed the greatest improvement over time in ratings of their relationships with men. Counselors may need to consider severity of bulimia and relationship issues during treatment planning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathology of eating disorders: A controlled comparison of bulimic, obese, and normal subjects.

15 bulimic females (mean age 20.8 yrs), 15 obese females (mean age 21.4 yrs), and 15 normal female controls (mean age 21.6 yrs) were administered the MMPI, the SCL-90, the Beck Depression Inventory, and a body image assessment. Results show that bulimics evidenced significantly more psychopathology than did the normal and obese Ss. In particular, bulimics were found to be more depressed, more anxious, and generally more neurotic and impulsive. Bulimics also evidenced a distorted body image in that they perceived themselves as significantly larger and desired to be significantly smaller than did height- and weight-matched controls. Bulimic and obese Ss showed some similarities in eating habits and psychopathology, especially regarding obsessiveness, impulsivity, guilt, preoccupation, and alienation. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social self in bulimia nervosa: Public self-consciousness, social anxiety, and perceived fraudulence.

Bulimic women appear preoccupied not only with their physical presentation but also with their "social self," how others perceive them in general. This study examined the relationship of the social self to body esteem and to bulimia nervosa. In Phase 1, in which 222 nonclinical women (aged 16–50 yrs) participated, the social-self measures of Perceived Fraudulence, Social Anxiety, and Public Self-Consciousness were negatively associated with body esteem. In Phase 2, 34 bulimic women were compared with 33 Ss scoring high on the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) and 67 matched controls. Bulimic Ss, high-EAT Ss, and control Ss all differed on Perceived Fraudulence, and bulimic Ss and high-EAT Ss scored higher than control Ss on Public Self-Consciousness and Social Anxiety. The findings strongly support the hypothesized link of social self concerns to body dissatisfaction and bulimia nervosa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological profiles of purging bulimics, repeat dieters, and controls.

In Study 1, 29 female undergraduates who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) criteria for bulimia were compared with 2 nonbulimic groups drawn from the same S pool. One group consisted of 27 Ss who reported feeling dissatisfied with their weight and engaged in repeated dieting attempts but not bulimic behavior. The 2nd comparison group consisted of 27 Ss who reported feeling satisfied with their weight and not dieting within the last year. Measures included the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Personal Attributes Questionnaire, and Tennessee Self-Concept Scale. All Ss scored in the normal range, but bulimics scored significantly higher than the 2 comparison groups on a number of clinical scales. Also, the bulimics and repeat dieters reported lower self-esteem than did the nondieting group. The major discriminating variables—psychopathic deviance, mania, and physical self-esteem—separated all 3 groups and accounted for 78% of the explained variance. Study 2 was conducted with 27 current bulimic women, 12 former bulimics, 29 nondieters, and 31 repeat dieters. Results confirm the importance of physical self-esteem and psychopathic deviance in differentiating between groups. This study also revealed that bulimics engaged in sexual activities and in the adolescent acting-out behaviors of drug and alcohol use more frequently, and at an earlier age, than did the 2 comparison groups. Implications for therapeutic interventions are discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cynical hostility and vulnerability to disease: Social support, life stress, and physiological response to conflict.

34 extremely high and 34 low scorers on the hostility (Ho) scale proposed by W. Cook and D. Medley (1954) were selected from a pool of male undergraduates. Consistent with previous findings, high-Ho Ss reported greater anger proneness and a more cynical view of others than did low-Ho Ss. The high-Ho group also tended to be more hostile and less friendly during role-played interactions involving high and low levels of interpersonal conflict. High-Ho Ss displayed greater diastolic blood pressure reactivity during interpersonal conflict and reported less social support and more negative life events and daily irritants then did low-Ho Ss. Results support the interpretations of the Ho scale as a measure of cynical hostility and are consistent with the hypothesis that hostility is related to disease by way of excessive physiological reactivity and a generally stressful, unsupportive social network. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Manipulating the type and source of social support: An experimental investigation.

Investigated whether various types of support (emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal) are distinguishable from each other and whether the type and/or source of support affects stress–outcome relationships in 2 studies with 232 undergraduates. It was found that the type of support, but not its source, was perceived by Ss as being important for predicting outcome and that Ss in the informational condition predicted the most positive outcome. However, since Ss perceived that informational support was also emotional, it is concluded that the perceived combination of informational and emotional support was the most effective in buffering a negative outcome of stress. Implications for the construct validity of social support are discussed. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social conflict, social support, and psychological distress: Evidence of cross-domain buffering effects.

A longitudinal study examined the relative and joint effects of perceived social support and social conflict on psychological distress in 228 college students. Women had higher perceived social support from roommates and friends and less conflict with roommates than did men; there were no gender differences in level of conflict with friends or psychological distress. Roommate conflict predicted increases in psychological distress over time; this effect was attenuated by high levels of perceived social support from friends. Friend conflict also predicted increases in psychological distress over time; this effect was attenuated by high levels of perceived social support from roommates. These results show the importance of negative and positive aspects of social experiences to emotional functioning and the importance of compensatory social support for individuals facing social conflicts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-consciousness, self-attention, and social interaction.

Conducted 2 experiments with a total of 128 female undergraduates to test the effects of self-focused attention on positive and negative social interactions. In Study 1 the behavior of dispositionally high and low publicly self-conscious women (as measured by the Self-Consciousness Scale) was examined in an interpersonal situation involving rejection by a group. It was hypothesized that persons high in self-consciousness, being more aware of how they are perceived by others, would be more sensitive and react more negatively to the rejection than those low in self-consciousness. The predictions were confirmed. In Study 2, female Ss were presented with favorable or unfavorable feedback in the context of an interview, and self-attention was experimentally manipulated by exposing half the Ss to their images in a mirror. Self-awareness increases the negative response to the negative evaluation and tended to increase the positivity of the positive evaluation. The implications of self-awareness theory for the social self and social interaction are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mixed messages: Implications of social conflict and social support within close relationships for adjustment to a stressful life event.

The authors examined the impact of women's perceptions of negative (conflict) and positive (support) exchanges with their mothers, partners, and friends before having an abortion on negative (distress) and positive (well-being) indexes of adjustment after the abortion. Preabortion conflict and support from the partner predicted postabortion adjustment in the same affective domain: Conflict uniquely predicted distress, whereas support uniquely predicted well-being. Within-source interactions were observed between support and conflict from mothers and friends. Women who perceived high support from their mothers or friends were more distressed if they also perceived them as sources of high conflict than if they perceived them as sources of low conflict. Among women who perceived their mothers or friends as nonsupportive, no relationship was observed between conflict and distress. Cross-source buffering was not observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contribution of personality characteristics to the relationship between social support and perceived physical health.

Employed structural equation modeling to derive and test a model of the relationships between personality characteristics, social network size, the perceived availability of support, socially supportive behaviors, and perceived physical health with 182 adults (aged 30–90 yrs). Ss completed a telephone interview and a questionnaire that included a version of the Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire and 3 subscales from the Personality Research Form. Significant paths indicated that Ss who perceived themselves as affiliative and as help seekers and help givers reported larger social networks, received more socially supportive behaviors, and perceived more available support. Also, the more support Ss perceived to be available to them, the more positively they rated their perceived physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of social support and conflict on adolescent children of alcoholic and nonalcoholic fathers.

Studies of positive and negative social ties usually are done in isolation of each other, precluding an understanding of their relative contributions to psychological functioning. This research evaluated the effects of adolescents' conflict with and social support from key relationships (parents, siblings, and best friends) on adolescents' self-esteem, substance use, and externalizing symptoms. Ss were 296 adolescents and their parents; 145 families had alcoholic fathers, and 151 had nonalcoholic parents. Support and conflict provided by each network member showed only a mild negative correlation. Support from parents, but not siblings or best friends, was related to adolescents' reports of substance use and externalizing. Conflict with parents was consistently related to externalizing behaviors. There was no evidence that conflict within a relationship neutralizes the effectiveness of the support it provides. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's perceptions of the personal relationships in their social networks.

Tested the hypothesis that children would report that different social-network members provide different social provisions, using 199 5th–6th grade White children. Ss completed network of relationships inventories, which assessed 10 qualities of their relationships with mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, friends, and teachers. Consistent with R. S. Weiss's (1974) theory (i.e., that individuals seek specific social provisions or types of social support in their relationships with others), Ss reported seeking different provisions from different individuals. Mothers and fathers were turned to most often for affection, enhancement of worth, a sense of reliable aid, and instrumental aid. Next to parents, grandparents were turned to most often for affection and enhancement of worth, and teachers were turned to most often for instrumental aid. Friends were the greatest source of companionship, and friends and mothers received the highest ratings of intimacy. Ss also reported having more power in their relationships with other children than in those with adults. Conflict was perceived as occurring most often in sibling relationships. Ss were most satisfied with their relationships with mothers, and they thought their relationships with mothers and fathers were the most important. Bases for children's differentiations of their relationships and implications for understanding social networks are discussed. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parent-child relationships in Vietnamese immigrant families.

This study assessed 49 Vietnamese-born and 124 American-born university students' views of their parental relationships and personal characteristics. Questionnaire packets were also returned by 221 of their parents. Vietnamese-born students reported a lower quality of parental relationships and less social integration than did American-born students. Mothers, but not fathers, of Vietnamese-born students perceived less available social support than did their American-born counterparts. More positive parent–student relationships were predicted by membership in the American-born group, even after personal characteristics of both students and parents were taken into account. Vietnamese-born male students were at particular risk for poor paternal relationships. The study showed the need to consider implications of immigrant experience as well as personal characteristics in understanding parent–child relationships in immigrant groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressed emotion, social skill, and response to negative affect in schizophrenia.

Examined social skills and social perception of 48 schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder patients (aged 18–55 yrs) in response to negative affect as a function of family expressed emotion (EE). Ss participated in a role-play test, a social perception test, and a problem-solving discussion with a family member and were assessed on several measures of symptomatology. EE of family members was evaluated with the Camberwell Family Interview. On the role-play test, Ss with less critical relatives became more assertive in response to increased negative affect from a confederate portraying either a family member or friend, but Ss with highly critical relatives did not. Ss with highly critical relatives were also less assertive when confronted with negative affect from a confederate portraying a family member rather than a friend. The behaviors of both relatives and Ss during a family problem-solving interaction were related to the EE dimensions of criticism, emotional overinvolvement, and warmth. Patient gender was also related to family problem solving but was independent of EE. S's ratings of affect on a videotaped social perception task were not related to family EE, and there were few differences in psychopathology between Ss with high and low EE relatives.… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trust, variability in relationship evaluations, and relationship processes.

Little is known about why some people experience greater temporal fluctuations of relationship perceptions over short periods of time, or how these fluctuations within individuals are associated with relational processes that can destabilize relationships. Two studies were conducted to address these questions. In Study 1, long-term dating partners completed a 14-day diary study that assessed each partner's daily partner and relationship perceptions. Following the diary phase, each couple was videotaped trying to resolve the most important unresolved problem from the diary period. As predicted, (a) individuals who trusted their partners less reported greater variability in perceptions of relationship quality across the diary period; (b) they also perceived daily relationship-based conflict as a relatively more negative experience; and (c) greater variability in relationship perceptions predicted greater self-reported distress, more negative behavior, and less positive behavior during a postdiary conflict resolution task (rated by observers). The diary results were conceptually replicated in Study 2a, in which older cohabiting couples completed a 21-day diary. These same participants also took part in a reaction-time decision-making study (Study 2b), which revealed that individuals tend to compartmentalize positive and negative features of their partners if they (individuals) experienced greater variability in relationship quality during the 21-day diary period and were involved in higher quality relationships. These findings advance researchers' understanding of trust in intimate relationships and provide some insight into how temporal fluctuations in relationship quality may undermine relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of social interactions in depressed psychiatric patients.

20 21–61 yr old depressed females, 20 depressed Ss in remission, and 20 control Ss were shown videotapes of positive (involving praise), negative (involving criticism), and neutral social interactions. Half of the Ss in each group were instructed to imagine the interactions being directed toward them, and half were instructed to imagine the interactions being directed toward another person. Ss rated each interaction on 11 semantic differential scales. Following a principal components analysis with varimax rotation, analysis of component scores indicated that depressed Ss rated negative interactions lower (i.e., in a more socially undesirable way) than controls only when the interactions were directed toward them. The question of whether or not the perception of negative interactions by depressed persons is distorted is discussed. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On going to the counselor: Contributions of life stress and social supports to the decision to seek psychological counseling.

Studied life stresses and social supports in 100 17–27 yr old college students to specify how these factors contributed to the decision of 50 Ss to seek psychological counseling. Life stress was measured with a life events checklist that yielded scores on the number and perceived impact of events. Social support was measured with a network size index that yielded scores on the number of potential and actual providers of support in each of 6 support categories. Results show that Ss who sought counseling reported no more negative events than their peers, but they reported greater impact of these events, fewer positive events, less family closeness, less frequent speaking to their parents, and more family history of seeking counseling. Ss who sought counseling reported having fewer available supports in 5 of the 6 categories of support. It is suggested that given equal numbers of stressful events, the likelihood of seeking counseling increases as social supports decrease. (53 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral manifestations of social support: A microanalytic investigation.

Examined the specific interpersonal behaviors that convey support from one person to another, the types of interpersonal experiences that characterize individuals who report high vs low levels of social support, and the effectiveness of a range of helping behaviors in preventing depressive reactions to stressful events. 41 undergraduates completed a general measure of perceived social support and kept daily records of their social interactions and stressful experiences for 14 days. They also completed the Depression Adjective Check Lists each day. Results show that behaviors reflecting emotional support and informational support occurred as a specific response to stressful life events. Although esteem support was expressed with equal frequency in the presence and absence of stress, it was especially effective in preventing depressive reactions to stressful events. Ss who perceived themselves as having high levels of social support were more frequently the recipients of helping behaviors following stressful events than those low in perceived support. Perceived social support was only predictive of helping behaviors on days on which at least 1 stressful event occurred. The total number of helping behaviors received following stressful events was a significant negative predictor of level of depressive mood, although 1 helping behavior (frequency of confiding) was associated with higher levels of depression. Results are interpreted in terms of the buffering model of social support. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time counts: Future time perspective, goals, and social relationships.

On the basis of postulates derived from socioemotional selectivity theory, the authors explored the extent to which future time perspective (FTP) is related to social motivation, and to the composition and perceived quality of personal networks. Four hundred eighty German participants with ages ranging from 20 to 90 yrs took part in the study. In 2 card-sort tasks, participants indicated their partner preference and goal priority. Participants also completed questionnaires on personal networks and social satisfaction. Older people, as a group, perceived their future time as more limited than younger people. Individuals who perceived future time as being limited prioritized emotionally meaningful goals, whereas individuals who perceived their futures as open-ended prioritized instrumental or knowledge-related goals. Priority of goal domains was found to be differently associated with the size, composition, and perceived quality of personal networks depending on FTP. Prioritizing emotion-regulatory goals was associated with greater social satisfaction and less perceived strain with others when participants perceived their future as limited. Findings underscore the importance of FTP in the self-regulation of social relationships and the subjective experience associated with them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)