Quality of Life and Personality Development: A Reply to Land and Michalos

Land and Michael’s (this issue) offer an excellent overview of the evolving status of the social indicators movement, with thoughtful recommendations for future research. I argue that QOL researchers may want to consider paying increased attention to advances in the science of personality development, such as those articulated in McAdams' (The art and science of personality development. Guilford Press, New York, 2015), in conceptualizing comprehensive assessments of the QOL. Specifically, McAdams' synthesis of the literature on personal agency should provide a useful beginning for developmentally-informed discussions of the potential evolving nature of QOL and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences, with the goal of ensuring greater relevance of QOL evaluations to all age groups.     

Innocent victims,creepy boys: discursive framings of sexuality in online news coverage of the celebrity nude photo hack

Following the hack, theft, and digital dissemination of hundreds of nude celebrity photographs—colloquially referred to as “The Fappening”—in August 2014, online news sites filled with speculation about and commentary upon the actions of both the hackers and the celebrities. Through a critical discourse analysis of coverage of the female celebrities and hackers in six online news outlets this project presents “The Fappening” as a case study for better understanding the ways in which the media produces discourses about sexuality, particularly sexual deviancy and victimhood. The discourse surrounding this incident was inflected with feminist ideals. The celebrities were constructed as victims not only of the hack but of broader structural issues around women’s bodies, while the hackers and posters of the photos were derided as perverted, lonely thieves. Overall, the feminist leanings of the discourse around “The Fappening” indicate that the actions of the celebrities—that is, taking and privately sharing nude photographs—can be integrated into dominant understandings of sexuality, while the online communities that stole and shared their photos must be rejected. However, the coverage indicates that celebrities who use their sexual allure for publicity deserve their victimization, undermining the apparently progressive focus of the discourse.     

Footprints in the Sand: Personal,Psychological, and Relational Profiles of Religious,Spiritual, and Atheist LGB Individuals

The present study offers a comparison of the demographic features and lived experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals with religious, spiritual, or atheist (R/S/A) belief systems. In this sample of 212 participants, the relationship of participants’ R/S/A beliefs to personal variables (e.g., age, gender, race), mental health variables (e.g., life satisfaction, psychological distress, internalized heterosexism, self-esteem), and relational variables (e.g., outness, connection to LGBTQ communities) were assessed. Correlational analyses indicated that level of R/S/A belief was unrelated to self-esteem, life satisfaction, or psychological distress; however, greater religious belief was correlated positively and significantly with internalized heterosexism and outness as LGB. To test the interactions of R/S/A beliefs and categorical variables of interest (e.g., race), log-linear analyses with follow-up chi-square tests were conducted. Findings suggested more similarities than differences for LGB people across R/S/A systems of belief. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Positive Identity Experiences of Young Bisexual and Other Nonmonosexual People: A Qualitative Inquiry

The majority of LGBTQ psychological research focuses on dysfunction. The exclusion of strengths-based perspectives in LGBTQ psychology limits the understanding of LGBTQ mental health. In this article we report experiences that young bisexual and other nonmonosexual people perceive as affirming of their sexual identity. A 28-day, daily diary study was used to investigate whether bisexual-identified participants encountered positive experiences related to their sexual identity, and which type of experiences they perceived to be positive. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, participants’ experiences were organized according to a social ecological model. Experiences were reported at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional levels, but most positive sexual identity experiences occurred at the interpersonal level. Implications for positive health outcome research and the integration of positive psychology with LGBTQ psychology are discussed, as well as study limitations.     

Assessing Politicized Sexual Orientation Identity: Validating the Queer Consciousness Scale

Building on psychological theories of motivation for collective action, we introduce a new individual difference measure of queer consciousness, defined as a politicized collective identity around sexual orientation. The Queer Consciousness Scale (QCS) consists of 12 items measuring five aspects of a politicized queer identity: sense of common fate, power discontent, system blame, collective orientation, and cognitive centrality. In four samples of adult women and men of varied sexual orientations, the QCS showed good test-retest and Cronbach’s reliability and excellent known-groups and predictive validity. Specifically, the QCS was positively correlated with identification as a member of the LGBTQ community, political liberalism, personal political salience, and LGBTQ activism and negatively correlated with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. QCS mediated relationships between several individual difference variables and gay rights activism and can be used with both LGBTQ people and allies.     

Discrimination,Sleep, and Stress Reactivity: Pathways to African American-White Cardiometabolic Risk Inequities

This review provides a model explicating two related physiologic and behavioral pathways through which the chronic daily stress of the expectation and experience of discrimination exposure can shape life course cardiometabolic risk trajectories: sleep and stress reactivity. We argue that these two pathways work together jointly to shape African American-White disparities in cardiometabolic morbidities. The body’s ongoing anticipation of experiencing racism-related stressors disrupts sleep, a behavior highly responsive to stress reactivity, which is also elevated during stressful conditions. The constant feedback between sleep disruption and the body’s stress response can lead to higher allostatic load and disproportionate exposure to stress-related illness among African Americans earlier in their life course.