5 research outputs found
Prospective and dyadic associations between expectant parentsâ prenatal hormone changes and postpartum parenting outcomes
During the transition to parenthood, both men and women experience hormone changes that are thought to promote parental care. Yet very few studies have explicitly tested the hypothesis that prenatal hormone changes are associated with postpartum parenting behavior. In a longitudinal study of 27 firstâtime expectant couples, we assessed whether prenatal hormone changes were moderated by selfâ and partnerâreported parenting outcomes at 3 months postpartum. Expectant fathers showed prenatal declines in testosterone and estradiol, and larger declines in these hormones were associated with greater contributions to household and infant care tasks postpartum. Women whose partners showed larger testosterone declines also reported receiving more support and more help with household tasks. Expectant mothers showed prenatal increases in testosterone and estradiol, and larger increases in these hormones were associated with lower partnerârated support. Together, our findings provide some of the first evidence that prenatal hormone changes may indeed be functional and that the implications of these changes may be detectable by coâparents.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135629/1/dev21469_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135629/2/dev21469.pd
Does that pose become you? Testing the effect of body postures on self-concept
Self-concept expansion predicts a range of adaptive outcomes. An intriguing possible cause of self-concept expansion is the posing of oneâs body expansively, that is, âpower posing.â In Study 1 (N = 65), we found that body expansion had an effect, of moderate magni- tude (d = 0.58), on self-concept size in college women as measured by the Twenty Statements Test. Participants who were randomly assigned to hold expanded poses (vs. contracted) â under the guise of a cover story about holding different body positions to test the accuracy of wireless electrodes â wrote significantly more self-state- ments than those who assumed contracted positions. In pre-regis- tered Study 2 we tested whether this finding was replicable and extended this research by aiming to characterize the process by which it occurred. One hundred and twenty-eight women students were randomly assigned to hold either expanded or contracted postures. They completed surveys measuring two general classes of potential mediators (âbroaden-and-buildâ and ânarrow-and-dis- ruptâ), body self-objectification as a moderator, and four indices of self-concept size. Posture was not found to affect self-concept size, nor was it moderated by self-objectification. Though there was no effect on self-expansion, in exploratory analyses, assigned posture affected one of the broaden-and-build measures: psychological flexibility. Results of Study 2 could indicate that a mere two minutes of holding an expanded versus contracted body posture is not enough to induce changes in self-concept size; lack of main effects could in addition be due to a range of unmeasured confounders and/or the fragile and transient nature of the effect