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Biomedical subjects

T Kasser

Publications and source records attributed to T Kasser.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs.

Three studies compared 10 candidate psychological needs in an attempt to determine which are truly most fundamental for humans. Participants described "most satisfying events" within their lives and then rated the salience of each of the 10 candidate needs within these events. Supporting self-determination theory postulates (Ryan & Deci, 2000)--autonomy, competence, and relatedness, were consistently among the top 4 needs, in terms of both their salience and their association with event-related affect. Self-esteem was also important, whereas self-actualization or meaning, physical thriving, popularity or influence, and money-luxury were less important. This basic pattern emerged within three different time frames and within both U.S. and South Korean samples and also within a final study that asked, "What's unsatisfying about unsatisfying events?" Implications for hierarchical theories of needs are discussed.

Affect↗
PubMed2001

Getting older, getting better? Personal strivings and psychological maturity across the life span.

Measures of psychological maturity based on personal strivings (R. A. Emmons, 1989) were administered to 108 adults aged 17-82. On the basis of organismic-theoretical assumptions regarding maturity, age was hypothesized to be positively associated with K. M. Sheldon and T. Kasser's (1995, 1998) two goal-based measures of personality integration. E. Erikson's (1963) assumptions regarding maturity were the basis for the hypothesis that older people would tend to list more strivings concerning generativity and ego integrity and fewer strivings concerning identity and intimacy. Finally, on the basis of past research findings, maturity and age were hypothesized to be positively associated with subjective well-being. Results supported these hypotheses and also showed that measured maturity mediated the relationship between age and well-being. Thus, older individuals may indeed be more psychologically mature than younger people and may be happier as a result.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Of wealth and death: materialism, mortality salience, and consumption behavior.

Theoretical work suggests that feelings of insecurity produce materialistic behavior, but most empirical evidence is correlational in nature. We therefore experimentally activated feelings of insecurity by having some subjects write short essays about death (mortality-salience condition). In Study 1, subjects in the mortality-salience condition, compared with subjects who wrote about a neutral topic, had higher financial expectations for themselves 15 years in the future, in terms of both their overall worth and the amount they would be spending on pleasurable items such as clothing and entertainment. Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that subjects exposed to death became more greedy and consumed more resources in a forest-management game. Results are discussed with regard to humanistic and terror-management theories of materialism.

Achievement↗
PubMed1995

Coherence and congruence: two aspects of personality integration.

Coherence and congruence-based measures of personality integration were related to a variety of healthy personality characteristics. Functional coherence was defined as occurring when participants' "personal strivings" (R.A. Emmons, 1986) help bring about each other or help bring about higher level goals. Organismic congruence was defined as occurring when participants strive for self-determined reasons or when strivings help bring about intrinsic rather than extrinsic higher level goals. Study 1 found the integration measures were related to each other and to inventory measures of health and well-being. Study 2 showed that these goal integration measures were also related to role system integration and were prospective predictors of daily mood, vitality, and engagement in meaningful as opposed to distracting activities.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

A dark side of the American dream: correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration.

Aspiring for financial success is an important aspect of capitalist cultures. Three studies examine the hypothesis that values and expectancies for wealth and money are negatively associated with adjustment and well-being when they are more central to an individual than other self-relevant values and expectancies. Studies 1 and 2 use 2 methods to show that the relative centrality of money-related values and expectancies is negatively related to college students' well-being and mental health. Study 3, using a heterogeneous noncollege sample, extends these findings by showing that a high centrality of aspirations for financial success is associated with interview ratings of lower global adjustment and social productivity and more behavioral disorders. Discussion is focused on the deleterious consequences of materialistic world views and the need to examine differential effects of content regarding goals and values.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

A behavioral taxonomy of obese female participants in a weight-loss program.

To create a behavioral classification of obesity, 2-wk baseline food diaries were obtained from 236 obese women entering weight-loss programs. Subjects monitored food intake along with the social, environmental, and emotional context in which each meal occurred. Variables representing situation-specific eating behaviors were statistically extracted from greater than 11,000 eating episodes. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified five distinct groups of subjects on the basis of similarity of eating patterns. The five groups were (1) moderately healthy eating habits, (2) chronic food restrictors, (3) alternating diet-binge eaters, (4) emotional overeaters, (5) unrestricted meal overeaters. The five groups differed on questionnaire measures of emotional adjustment and eating behavior but did not differ on dropout rates, amount of weight lost, or exercise compliance. The chronic food restrictors had significantly less lean body mass, lower resting metabolic rates, and higher waist-to-hip ratios than did the unrestricted meal overeaters.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Obesity: a biogenetic or biobehavioral problem.

A great deal of effort is being expended to investigate the biogenetic basis of the development and maintenance of obesity and the regulation of food intake. The task of developing and validating theoretical models of the regulation of food intake and its relationship to body weight is hampered by a lack of basic descriptive data. This study investigated the eating behavior of 96 obese women by conducting a microanalysis of 2-week baseline behavioral eating diaries. Subjects were in approximate energy balance consuming a high-fat diet (41 percent of kcal from fats) averaging 1978 kcal/day. Self-reported episodes of overeating and impulsive eating occurred frequently and were associated with situational antecedents such as eating in the car, snacking alone, friends, restaurants, availability of forbidden foods, craving sweets, tired, irritable, bored, depressed, and skipping meals. Markov chain analysis showed that overeating and impulsive eating were positively autocorrelated, suggesting the presence of an abstinence violation effect. These data suggest that eating behavior is often controlled by environmental, cognitive, and affective variables and that a complete understanding of obesity will require an integrated biobehavioral approach.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Does binge eating play a role in the self-regulation of moods?

Self-reported emotional experiences and eating behaviors were studied in college students in an attempt to determine what types of emotional experiences precede and follow binge eating and how specific types of compensatory behaviors modify these experiences. First-year male and female students (N=390) were surveyed for depression, anxiety, health status, life satisfaction, and eating attitudes (EAT-26). Those reporting recurrent binge eating episodes were asked to describe their emotional feelings before and after bingeing and before and after compensatory activities. EAT-26 scores corresponding to scores previously reported for eating disordered patients were found in 9.7% of students. Binge eating was nearly twice as frequent among females (16.4%) as males (8.6%). Among females, positive relationships were found between specific EAT-26 factors scores and both anxiety and depression scores. The emotional antecedents and consequences of binge eating and of compensatory activities were compared in three sub-groups of individuals who reported recurrent bingeing with loss of self-control during binges. The three sub-groups consisted of individuals who reported, 1) bingeing without engaging in compensatory activities, 2) bingeing and compensating by means other than vomiting (fasting, exercising, or use of laxatives or diuretics), and 3) bingeing and compensating by vomiting. Regardless of the type of activity, those individuals who engaged in compensatory activities reported greater negative affect preceding binge episodes than those who did not compensate. In addition, contrary to expectations, negative affect did not decrease, but instead increased significantly, following binge episodes and decreased immediately before and after compensatory activities.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Attitude change in response to information that male homosexuality has a biological basis.

We assessed 28 college students' attitudes toward homosexuals immediately before and 1 week after the presentation of either an article suggesting that male homosexuality has a biological component or a control article. Change in attitude toward homosexuality for subjects exposed to the biological article depended on subjects' memory of the article and on their college major. Subjects undecided in their major and those who scored below average on a memory test of the article's content had the most positive attitude change, while biological science majors and those who scored above average on the memory test became more negative toward homosexuals. The results suggest biological information about homosexuality can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on attitudes toward homosexuals.

Adolescent↗