Biomedical subjects

Kent D Harber

Publications and source records attributed to Kent D Harber.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Self-esteem and affect as information.

This research tests whether people with high self-esteem are more informed by their emotions than are people with low self-esteem. In Study 1, participants listened to a series of disturbing baby cries, rated how much distress these cries conveyed, and reported their own emotional reactions to the cries. As predicted, the relation between participants' emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strongest at higher levels of self-esteem. In Study 2, self-esteem again determined how strongly participants' own emotional reactions influenced their baby cry ratings, even though esteem was measured weeks before the experiment and even after controlling for social desirability. Study 3 manipulated self-regard and showed that the correlation between participants' emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strong for high-regard participants, moderate for control participants, and weak for low-regard participants. These results suggest that self-esteem serves to validate the informational value of feelings.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Emotional disclosure and closeness toward offenders.

Two studies tested whether emotional disclosure increases feelings of closeness toward offenders. In Study 1, participants recalled either someone who had offended them or a neutral acquaintance. "Disclosure" participants then expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding their targets, and "suppression" participants described their targets nonemotionally. As predicted, disclosure increased closeness toward offenders but not toward acquaintances. Study 2 extended these results by including a good friend to test whether disclosure selectively increases closeness toward offenders, and not simply toward any person who evokes strong feelings. This prediction was confirmed. Furthermore, the disclosure effect remained reliable even after controlling for mood. Studies 1 and 2 also showed that closeness toward offenders, but not toward friends or acquaintances, was positively related to the proportion of emotion-related words disclosed. Collectively, these findings suggest that confronting the emotions associated with an offense may be an important first step toward forgiveness.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2005

Differentiated roles of social encouragement and social constraint on physical activity behavior.

BACKGROUND: Social support is, in general, positively associated with exercise behavior. However, social influence may not always be helpful and may sometimes lead to obligation or a sense of intrusion rather than encouragement or assistance. PURPOSE: The objective was to determine relationships among different types of social influence (social encouragement and social constraint) and exercise motivation and exercise behavior. METHOD: Structural equation modeling was used to investigate relationships among exercise and social influence variables. RESULTS: A model was found to fit the data well in which social encouragement had an indirect association with exercise behavior through motivational variables. Social constraint was associated with only one aspect of exercise motivation--"have to", or obligatory, commitment--and had no direct or indirect association with exercise behavior. CONCLUSIONS: These findings emphasize the importance of social influences that promote desirable behaviors in contrast to those that pose constraints on the failure to perform desirable behaviors.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies.

This article shows that 35 years of empirical research on teacher expectations justifies the following conclusions: (a) Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom do occur, but these effects are typically small, they do not accumulate greatly across perceivers or over time, and they may be more likely to dissipate than accumulate; (b) powerful self-fulfilling prophecies may selectively occur among students from stigmatized social groups; (c) whether self-fulfilling prophecies affect intelligence, and whether they in general do more harm than good, remains unclear, and (d) teacher expectations may predict student outcomes more because these expectations are accurate than because they are self-fulfilling. Implications for future research, the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in social problems, and perspectives emphasizing the power of erroneous beliefs to create social reality are discussed.

Attitude↗