Eye of the Beholder? Sociocultural Factors in the Body Image and Sexual Well-Being of Heterosexual Women

ABSTRACT. Participants (124 heterosexual women) completed measures of thin-ideal internalization, discrepancy between perceptions of actual and ideal figure (DISC_SELF), perceptions of the discrepancy between estimates of partner's view of actual and ideal female figure (DISC_PART), body image, and sexual well-being. We found support for the proposed perception-of-partner pathway in that greater DISC_PART was associated with poorer body image, which in turn was associated with poorer sexual well-being. However, we found little support for a link between thin-ideal internalization or DISC_SELF and sexual well-being. The results suggest that heterosexual women's beliefs about how their partners view them are important to their sexual well-being.     

Psychometric Confirmation of the Sexual Health Survey as a Useful Tool for College Health Professionals

Abstract

Objective: To conduct a confirmatory factor analysis on the 17-item Sexual Health Survey (SHS), a comprehensive instrument designed to be used with college students. Participants: College students (N = 515) aged 18 to 26 years enrolled at a Midwest public university October 2009. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis with maximum likelihood estimation was performed to test the stability of the constructs. Results: All factor loadings were significant (p < .001), ranging from .55 to .99 (standardized). The range of squared multiple correlations of items was .31 to .98, and the intercorrelations among the 5 factors were from ?.03 to .52. These small to moderate levels of intercorrelation support discriminant validity of 5 constructs. Conclusions: This study supports the 5-factor version of the 17-item SHS as a viable scale that can measure sexual health overall and 5 distinct areas. College health professionals should consider use of this scale for assessment purposes and evaluation of programmatic efforts.     

Religion Imagined: The Conceptual Substructures of American Religious Understandings

Sociologists have increasingly drawn on the cognitive sciences to better theorize how culture works. While this shift has improved understandings of the distinct qualities of practical and discursive modes of cognition, limited consideration has been given to the cognitive structures that scaffold cultural understandings. This article theorizes the influence of “image schemas” in structuring cultural understandings beneath the level of conscious awareness. After outlining how image schemas can be identified in interviews, I reconstruct how 50 religious Americans unconsciously “imagine” religion's role in their lives. Focusing on the implicit rather than respondents' explicit discourse, I identify five image schemas that structure Americans' religious understandings. Although respondents' understandings often appear incoherent and inconsistent at the level of explicit discourse, I show that they are coherent and consistent at the level of implicit image schemas. I then use factor analysis to identify patterns in these implicit understandings across social divisions. I conclude by discussing the promise of image schema analysis for improving studies of religion and other areas, as well as for theorizing how culture works.     

唐诗槐意象的文化与文学观照

唐代沿袭周代以来视槐树为三公之位的文化心理,在长安的街道与宫廷广植槐树。但是,考察唐诗发现,槐的政治意蕴已经退化,从政治符号衍变成了情感符号,并成为一个重要的文学意象。槐意象既是一个时间意象,也是一个空间意象。对于游子而言,槐暗示其与故乡的距离;对于举子而言,槐暗示考试的时间。诗人的时空体验是槐意象的文学意蕴得以建构的内在机制,游宦、赴举等新的文化是外在动因。唐诗中的槐意象传达出流寓者的漂泊情怀、举子的科场心态。     

媒介批评视角下的肖洛霍夫形象

中国媒体对肖洛霍夫形象的构建,与中苏(俄)两国的政治、经济与文化关系密不可分。当两国关系处于和平友好阶段时,中国媒体对肖洛霍夫的态度就显得很亲善,甚至达到狂热崇拜的地步;一旦两国关系恶化,中国媒体对肖洛霍夫及其作品采取憎恶态度;只有两国关系正常化之后,媒介批评才归于理性与公正。     

The role of corporate image and extension similarity in service brand extensions

In this article we examine the role of corporate image in extending service brands to new and traditional markets in the telecommunications sector. With regards to corporate image, service brand extensions are primarily associated with innovation-related attributes, such as order of entry (i.e., pioneers versus followers). Increasingly, firms are extending their services to markets that are beyond the markets that they traditionally have been active in. The results of an experimental study show that consumers evaluate service extensions by providers with an innovative late mover image more favourably that service extensions by companies with a pioneer image in terms of perceived corporate credibility and expected service quality. With regards to these evaluation criteria, it was also found that consumers prefer service brand extensions to related rather than unrelated markets. In addition we find that the relative distance between service providers with an innovative late mover image and pioneers is larger in related markets.     

Older Women's Body Image and Embodied Experience: An Exploration

ABSTRACT

This paper presents and analyzes findings from unstructured interviews with women aged 61 to 92 regarding their perceptions and feelings about their aging bodies. The data are discussed in light of the existing literature on women's body image which has largely ignored the experiences of women in later life and which has tended to focus on adolescent and middle-aged women. Given the fact that beauty is equated with youthfulness and thinness in our society, older women face unique challenges as they strive to construct and maintain positive evaluations of self. The women in the study exhibit the internalization of ageist beauty norms even as they assert that health is more important to them than physical attractiveness and comment on the ‘naturalness’ of the aging process.     

Predictors of Sports Motivation Among Gay and Bisexual Men

ABSTRACT

Athletic activities are associated with reduced levels of stress and negative mood states among heterosexuals; thus, examining this association among gay/bisexual men is warranted. The current study examined the relationship between sports motivation and mood states, self-esteem, body esteem, life satisfaction, perceptions of masculinity/femininity, and parental encouragement for athletic endeavors among 195 gay/bisexual men. The results were mixed, but suggest that sports participation among gay/bisexual men may relate to a desire to express their masculinity and maintain a positive body image. Gay/bisexual men may be more likely to participate in sports if they receive positive reinforcement from others.     

Markov Random Fields with Higher-order Interactions

Discrete-state Markov random fields on regular arrays have played a significant role in spatial statistics and image analysis. For example, they are used to represent objects against background in computer vision and pixel-based classification of a region into different crop types in remote sensing. Convenience has generally favoured formulations that involve only pairwise interactions. Such models are in themselves unrealistic and, although they often perform surprisingly well in tasks such as the restoration of degraded images, they are unsatisfactory for many other purposes. In this paper, we consider particular forms of Markov random fields that involve higher-order interactions and therefore are better able to represent the large-scale properties of typical spatial scenes. Interpretations of the parameters are given and realizations from a variety of models are produced via Markov chain Monte Carlo. Potential applications are illustrated in two examples. The first concerns Bayesian image analysis and confirms that pairwise-interaction priors may perform very poorly for image functionals such as number of objects, even when restoration apparently works well. The second example describes a model for a geological dataset and obtains maximum-likelihood parameter estimates using Markov chain Monte Carlo. Despite the complexity of the formulation, realizations of the estimated model suggest that the representation is quite realistic.     

Split-plot designs for multistage experimentation

Most of today’s complex systems and processes involve several stages through which input or the raw material has to go before the final product is obtained. Also in many cases factors at different stages interact. Therefore, a holistic approach for experimentation that considers all stages at the same time will be more efficient. However, there have been only a few attempts in the literature to provide an adequate and easy-to-use approach for this problem. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for constructing two-level split-plot and multistage experiments. The methodology is based on the Kronecker product representation of orthogonal designs and can be used for any number of stages, for various numbers of subplots and for different number of subplots for each stage. The procedure is demonstrated on both regular and nonregular designs and provides the maximum number of factors that can be accommodated in each stage. Furthermore, split-plot designs for multistage experiments with good projective properties are also provided.