Own Race Bias in a Sequential Face Matching Task

Asian and Caucasian participants performed a sequential matching task to pairs of Asian or Caucasian faces. Different patterns of own race bias were observed for making same or different responses. These findings are used to determine the locus of the disadvantage for processing other race faces

Self-Compassion, Psychological Resilience and Social Media Use in Thai Students

Social media is widely used in Thai students, but relatively few studies have explored the effects of social media use on psychological wellbeing. In this study we explored the effects of social media use on self-compassion and psychological resilience. A total of 484 Thai undergraduate students completed a questionnaire and 21 Thai students were interviewed addressing these three constructs. The findings revealed that those Thai students who sacrificed the friends and family time to spend more time on social media use were less self-compassionate and less resilient

A Randomized Controlled Study of Writing Interventions on College Women’s Positive Body Image

College women are at risk for body dissatisfaction, but enhancing the positive aspects of body image can serve as a protective factor. Self-compassion has been associated with body appreciation and may protect against negative body image. This study tested the effect of a self-compassion writing intervention on positive body image and affect and explored self-compassion as a mediator between writing group and positive body image. We used a randomized controlled design to compare self-compassion writing (n = 51), traditional expressive writing (n = 50), and control writing (n = 51) interventions in college women. Participants were mostly European-American (82%) with a mean age of 19. Participants wrote online for 20 min once a week for three consecutive weeks. Results indicated that negative and positive affect decreased for all three groups. There were no differences between groups on positive body image or affect; however, the self-compassion writing group reported greater increases in self-compassion (F = 3.48, p \u3c 0.05, ηp2 = 0.05). Moreover, mediator models revealed that the effect of group (self-compassion vs. traditional/control writing) on body appreciation and body image quality of life was mediated by self-compassion. Overall, the findings indicate that self-compassion writing increased self-compassion, and greater increases in self-compassion were associated with greater increases in positive body image and positive affect

A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth‐based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio‐structural features that co‐occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor