Body image distortions and muscle dysmorphia symptoms among Asian men : do exercise status and type matter?

Theoretical Framework: Body image distortions and muscle dysmorphia symptoms were assessed among 78 Asian men who engaged in regular resistance training, aerobic training or did not engage in either. Method: Body fat and muscularity were measured and participants also completed the Muscle Dysmorphia Disorder Inventory. Results: Resistance trained men selected a body shape ideal that was higher in muscularity and lower in body fat. Aerobically trained men also reported higher perceived current Body Fat even though their actual levels were close to their ideal. Conclusion: The results suggest that specificity in body image distortion (e.g., perceived current-ideal versus perceived current-actual) when examining body image distortions might reduce conflicting findings in extant research

Mining Human Shape Perception with Role Playing Games

Games with a purpose’ is a paradigm wheregames are designed to computationally capture the essence of theunderlying collective human conscience or commonsense thatplays a major role in decision-making. This human computingmethod ensures spontaneous participation of players who, asa byproduct of playing, provide useful data that is impossibleto generate computationally and extremely difficult to collectthrough extensive surveys. In this paper we describe a gamethat allows us to collect data on human perception of characterbody shapes. The paper describes the experimental setup, relatedgame design constraints, art creation, and data analysis. Inour interactive role-playing detective game titled Villain Ville,players are asked to characterize different versions of fullbodycolor portraits of three villain characters. They are latersupposed to correctly match their character-trait ratings toa set of characters represented only with outlines of primitivevector shapes. By transferring human intelligence tasks into coregame-play mechanics, we have successfully managed to collectmotivated data. Preliminary analysis on game data generatedby 50 secondary school students shows a convergence to somecommon perception associations between role, physicality andpersonality. We hope to harness this game to discover perceptionfor a wide variety of body-shapes to build up an intelligent shapetrait-role model, with application in tutored drawing, proceduralcharacter geometry creation and intelligent retrieval

The sociodemographic context of observed solitary and social smoking behaviours using a behavioural ecological approach

This study used a behavioural ecological approach by observing whether solitary and social smoking varied as a function of gender and stress. In sample 1 (N = 414), the result was consistent with the Tend-and-Befriend Hypothesis in that more female smokers were observed to engage in social smoking during high stress. When the number of smokers observed by stress condition was controlled for in sample 2 (N = 587), this effect was non-significant. Effect sizes were small for both samples. Discrepancies with previous research suggests that self-reported data might over-estimate the interaction of various psychosocial factors on smoking behaviours

BMI and explicit-implicit cues on food choice: The fake food buffet in the United Kingdom and Indonesia

We examined whether people with high BMI sampled from two different countries were more susceptible to behavioural change via an implicit, rather than explicit, intervention. We measured BMI and used three types of cue interventions (implicit vs explicit healthy lifestyle cue vs neutral cue) to examine their impact on our participants' food choice using the Fake Food Buffet. Healthiness of the meal chosen was measured by the percentage of healthy food items in the meal. Portion size of their chosen meal was operationalised by the total number of food items chosen and its total calorie content was also estimated. Participants were recruited from the United Kingdom (N = 264) and Indonesia (N = 264). Our results indicated that while explicit food cues were overall more effective, implicit cues were a more effective strategy to change food choice behaviours among individuals with high BMI. Participants with high BMI were more likely to regulate the healthiness of their meal and less likely to regulate its portion size or calorie content. The efficacy of our healthy eating interventions was cross-culturally generalizable. Our study supports previous research that implicit cues of a healthy lifestyle might be a more effective behavioural change strategy for individuals with high BMI. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Cynicism, anger and cardiovascular reactivity during anger recall and human-computer interaction

Cynicism moderated by interpersonal anger has been found to be related to cardiovascular reactivity. This paper reports two studies; Study I used an Anger Recall task, which aroused interpersonal anger, while participants in Study 2 engaged in a multitasking computer task, which aroused non-interpersonal anger via systematic manipulation of the functioning of the computer mouse. The Cynicism by State Anger interaction was significant for blood pressure arousal in Study 2 but not for Study 1: in Study 2, when State Anger was high, cynicism was positively related to blood pressure arousal but when State Anger was low, cynicism was negatively related to blood pressure arousal. For both studies, when State Anger was low, cynicism was positively related to cardiac output arousal and negatively related to vascular arousal. The results suggest that Cynicism-State Anger interaction can be generalised to non-social anger-arousing situations for hemodynamic processes but blood pressure reactivity is task-dependent. The implication for the role of job control and cardiovascular health during human-computer interactions is discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</p

Positive illusions and its association with cardiovascular functions

The relationship between positive illusions (or self-enhancement) and cardiovascular functions was investigated using Asian samples in two studies. In phase 1 of Study 1, a generalized self-enhancement index was created for 241 participants using a paired word association memory task, a facial emotion recognition task, and a reading test. 122 participants subsequently volunteered for a second phase in this study where their ambulatory cardiovascular functions were measured throughout a single waking day. In Study 2, a priming procedure experimentally induced self-enhancement (n=35) and self-effacement (n=37) and the participants' cardiovascular arousal and perceived control for a mental arithmetic task were measured. Self-enhancement predicted lower cardiovascular functions for both studies. In Study 1, self-enhancement assessed at phase 2 was a significant predictor while self-enhancement measured at phase 1 was not. In Study 2, the relationship between self-enhancement and vascular reactivity was partially mediated by perceived control. The findings indicate that the relationship between self-enhancement and cardiovascular stress response, which has implications for cardiovascular health, (i) is relevant for Asian populations, (ii) is not just correlational but potentially causal, and (iii) is partly mediated by an increase in perceived control for vascular reactivity

Self-enhancement and cardiovascular reactivity: Limitations of the hemodynamic profile-compensation deficit (HP-CD) model of blood pressure regulation

We examined the consistency of results obtained when examining the relationship between selfenhancement and cardiovascular reactivity via analysing raw cardiovascular data and compared this with the hemodynamic profile–compensation deficit (HP–CD) model of blood pressure regulation (James et al., 2012) method. A sample of 112 male participants underwent a computer-based task three times in three weeks. Our results indicate that significant results for self-enhancement and hemodynamic cardiovascular reactivity found using raw cardiovascular data were non-significant when HP–CD model was used. Furthermore, the HP–CD model also obfuscates significant baseline changes with reactivity. We also found that the correlations between blood pressure reactivity and hemodynamic processes obtained in the laboratory setting was reduced rather than enhanced with the use of the HP–CD model. Our results suggest that the HP–CD model should be used cautiously and could contribute to inconsistent results when examining the role of psychological factors in biological outcomes