Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Volume 19, Issue 3, March 2025.

ABSTRACT

Despite the high prevalence and dangerous implications of nonsuicidal self-injury, researchers have seldom investigated how this may be influenced by interpersonal experiences, often focusing on intrapersonal factors. By examining the role of interpersonal experiences in influencing nonsuicidal self-injury and the psychological mechanisms underlying these relationships, we may achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Across three studies (total valid N = 851), we tested whether ostracism, interpersonal maltreatment that could happen daily, promotes perceived objectification, thereby increasing nonsuicidal self-injury, using cross-sectional, and experimental designs. The results consistently showed that, compared with participants with neutral or nonsocial negative experiences, participants with ostracism experiences reported higher perceived objectification and were more likely to engage in nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors. Moreover, perceived objectification mediated the effect of ostracism on nonsuicidal self-injury. We discuss our findings' significance for theoretical advancement and practical nonsuicidal self-injury prevention and intervention strategies, particularly those emphasizing belongingness and rehumanization.

ABSTRACT

Researchers interested in the quantitative analysis of data from dyads must select a preferred statistical framework. In this review, we focus on one option that has seen relatively modest adoption: dyadic structural equation modeling with latent variables. We begin by distinguishing dyadic SEM from alternate, neighboring, and hybridized frameworks, before sharing our view on the unique—and in our opinion, considerable—value-proposition of the dyadic SEM framework. We then provide some preliminary evidence that dyadic SEM is subordinated in terms of adoption rates versus its competitors, before offering a contextual analysis of why that may have come to be the case. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of future possibilities, some near and accessible and others farther away and more technical, that researchers in the field might pursue (and benefit from) with the help of dyadic SEM with latent variables.

No abstract is available for this article.

ABSTRACT

Research suggests that acting more extraverted (outgoing, assertive, and/or energetic) boosts subjective well-being in the short term for most people; however, some work indicates that acting more extraverted could be aversive for those who are relatively more introverted. To further understand participants' experiences in extraverted behavior interventions, we analyzed free-response data from a study in which undergraduate participants generated ideas on desirable outcomes, anticipated obstacles, and prospective plans in their efforts to act more sociable. Additionally, to understand the potential relationship between components of person-activity fit (how natural, enjoyable, and meaningful a person finds an intervention activity like acting more extraverted), we conducted exploratory correlational analyses between the components of fit, personality traits, desire to change extraversion, and the endorsement of outcomes, challenges, and plans identified from our thematic qualitative analysis. Our results suggest four main takeaways: (a) dispositional and situational shyness are highly prevalent challenges that bear on behavioral efforts to act more sociable; (b) lack of specificity in participant-generated plans to act more sociable and their focus on thoughts and feelings instead of actionable behavior may inhibit desired behavior change; (c) participants' sense that their own personality serves as a barrier to desired change is negatively related to how natural, enjoyable, and meaningful they rate the intervention; and (d) more agreeable participants rate the intervention as more enjoyable and meaningful. We close by offering theoretical and practical recommendations for future research and interventions focused on fostering extraverted behaviors.

ABSTRACT

The discipline of psychology is undergoing a credibility revolution whereby researchers are critically evaluating and improving their research practices. In this review, we consider how the field of relationship science could capitalize on this movement in the context of four types of validity. Regarding statistical-conclusions validity, we find that relationship scientists are engaging in open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open data sharing) at similar rates to other fields in the context of personality and social psychology journals. However, journals that are specific to the field (i.e., close relationships journals) could do more to encourage these practices. Meanwhile, new meta-scientific research suggests that the field would benefit greatly from rigorous, widescale measurement validation work (construct validity), novel strategies to account for causal confounds (internal validity), and more diverse representation in our samples and measures (external validity). Overall, the credibility revolution offers several specific, actionable recommendations to improve the validity of research findings, many of which are highly relevant to relationship science.

ABSTRACT

The way that partners communicate with each other has been strongly linked with relationship outcomes, and communication therefore occupies a prominent place in key theories of relationship functioning. Direct observation is considered the gold standard methodology for studying couple communication, and this method has been widely used in relationship science over the past 5 decades. Although direct observation of partners' interactional exchanges has yielded insight into the functioning of relationships, it is a tool that is the product of research conducted in the Global North, primarily using samples of White American couples. White American modes of communication and interaction prioritize openly and directly confronting problems, but there is evidence to indicate that this paradigm would not adequately capture the various ways that couples from other cultural backgrounds deal with relationship problems or communicate love and support. By upholding this rigid epistemological definition of “good science,” relationship scholars are limiting our ability to accurately understand relationship functioning among couples from cultural backgrounds that are not aligned with White American ideals, and perpetuating the White American mode of interaction as the “correct” way to behave in a relationship. The current manuscript highlights the ways in which the current observational paradigm is problematic for diversifying relationship science and discusses adjustments that must be made to this methodology, as well as alternative methodological approaches for studying couple communication, that should be adopted in order to move toward an inclusive, global science of close relationships.

ABSTRACT

Concepts like vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury do important work in making suffering legible and enabling claims to recognition, acknowledgement, and care. Nonetheless, these conceptualizations have little to say about the nature of the suffering, the varied and ambiguous ways it is experienced, or the social, affective, political conditions that give rise to it. In this article I argue for taking up response-ability as a lens for examining, understanding, and addressing the particular kinds of suffering experienced when registering and resisting violence, particularly in the face of complicity. Drawing on ethnographic work with activist volunteers in refugee camps, I explore what response-ability, with its relational ontology, allows us to see, feel, understand about suffering that is otherwise out of view, obscured, or rendered unsayable, or even unfeelable. I discuss the ways in which response-ability assumes complicity and requires grief/mourning and explore how these characteristics alter the possibilities and obligations for collective care and containment when intervening in crises and conflicts.

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness meditation and Buddhist-informed contemplative approaches promote health and well-being in part by helping meditators view present-moment reality from a less immersed perspective. Contemplative practices build meta-awareness and help practitioners psychologically distance from mental activity, thereby reducing negative emotions and craving while promoting mental flexibility. Metcalfe and Mischel's dual-system model contrasts cool analytic processes with more emotional hot system processes. Contemplative practices facilitate adaptive coping in part by reducing hot and promoting cool system activation. Buddhist philosophies emphasizing the importance of present-moment awareness, the futility of striving for self-focused goals (worldly concerns), and the self-perpetuating nature of negative emotions are used to explain how contemplative practices deter hot system activation and promote cool system activation over time.

No abstract is available for this article.

ABSTRACT

In understanding the psychology of social inequalities, research has often portrayed groups of individuals in disadvantaged positions as lacking in agency, skills, or motivation–portrayals that can stigmatize these groups. Countering this stigma, recent developments have been made in so-called “strength-based” research to better understand and acknowledge the agency, skills, and motivation people in disadvantaged positions often show. Yet, this research is not focused on understanding how inequalities emerge. The present research explores ways to study inequalities without risking to stigmatize people. For example, how can we address disparities in certain motivational factors (e.g., belonging, or confidence) without stigmatizing groups as lacking motivation? And how can we study the way people experience disadvantage without reducing them to the role of weak, passive victims? To answer such questions, we integrate traditional social-inequality research with recent advances in strength-based research in what we call a “holistic approach” to studying inequality. At the core of this approach is a simultaneous recognition of context-level disadvantage (a focus of traditional inequality research) and individual-level agency (a focus of strength-based research). This approach allows for a broader–a holistic–perspective on existing inequality-research, and points to underexplored research questions within social psychology (e.g., how do people actively respond to disadvantage?). After outlining this approach, we distill it into 10 practical guidelines and illustrate how to implement guidelines in an existing research agenda. In doing so, we hope to support authors, reviewers, editors, and other stakeholders aiming for an accurate and non-stigmatizing study of inequalities.

ABSTRACT

Black and other BIPOC students face substantial psychological and material harms from racism across predominantly white institutions of U.S. higher education. Drawing on interviews with Black organizers at the University of Missouri, this article asserts the centrality of space to the workings of student racial justice organizing. I examine some of the spaces that interviewees described—including official campus spaces as well protest spaces created by students—that contributed to their well-being and organizing success, and argue that students produced valuable knowledge and spaces through collective struggle that helped to foster a psychological shift toward power, pride, and unapologetic Blackness. I use these examples to argue that the liberatory tools and practices of student racial justice organizers are being increasingly dismantled, punished, and criminalized in the United States, most visibly in the prohibition of programs, policies, and content intended to foster racial equity and inclusion and in efforts to crush the multiracial student movement against war and genocide in Palestine.

Abstract

The Tīpuna Project is a creative community-based collaboration between Tangata Whenua (Indigenous) and Pākehā (White settler) researchers, artists and activists in Aotearoa to experiment with the decolonial possibilities of communing with our Indigenous and settler ancestors. In this performative piece we, the co-leads of The Tīpuna Project, attempt to tell our stories of how we arrived here, honouring our ancestors as co-researchers in our ‘participatory action research’ (PAR) process, considering and enacting our emerging relationship with each other and with darkness and te pō.

Darkness and te pō help us to exist both because and in spite of a colonial episteme that is violently inhospitable to the more-than-human. With them, we move into the cracks, into spaces of entanglement where our senses are heightened and where we are less able to be commanded by binaries, urgency and mastery. And with them, those of us who are Tangata Whenua also move into the caves, into spaces of rest, rhythm, story and breath. These cracks and caves protect us from an (En)light(ened) pollution that otherwise stops us from seeing the stars, enabling us to be (with) our shimmering otherworldly guides – our ancestors, our tīpuna.

In turn, both our project and our collaborative relationship are also (more) sheltered from a colonial hierarchy of Knowing, Knowledge, Knower that structures the colonial episteme. Calling on darkness and te pō, then, is how we struggle for freedom within the colonial academy – an academy within which Indigenous scholars in particular are both disappearing and Still Here.

ABSTRACT

This review proposes future directions for gender and negotiation research in light of two important labor market trends: workforces that are increasingly diverse and career advancement that is more often required to be self-directed. I argue that these two trends have implications for research, both in terms of places where the field seems to be moving and new areas that could be ripe for exploration. I begin by underscoring the importance of context when making claims about gender and negotiation. Then, using two broad banners, diversity and careers, I review discussions that are arising from novel intersections as well as the ways that the changing workplace is shaping future research directions.

Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Volume 19, Issue 1, January 2025.

No abstract is available for this article.

ABSTRACT

Despite the numerous intervention efforts that have been made both at the federal and state levels, racially biased policing remains a significant issue that disproportionately affects people of color. One of the most used intervention strategies has been associated with the implementation of body-worn cameras by police. When initially implemented, it was anticipated that the accountability and transparency associated with their use would have significantly curtailed instances of racially biased policing. However, recent research has not shown consistently positive results that were expected. To improve the effectiveness of body-worn camera usage in racially biased policing intervention, a conceptual model is proposed which is informed by research-based anti-racism educational theories that have been shown to stem racial bias in schools. Further supported by criminal justice automated decision-making research, the proposed model recommends a conceptual real-time auditing framework that, if integrated into body-worn camera technology, can more effectively resist racially biased policing in the United States.