Self-perception in early childhood and self-esteem in adulthood are related to a variety of aspects of psychological wellbeing. The goal of the present study was to examine genetic and familial influences on self-perception and self-esteem in separate samples of children (153 twin pairs of 5-year-olds) and adults (753 twin pairs between the ages of 25–75 years). Genetic common factor modeling showed that three facets of self-perception (physical competence, peer acceptance, and maternal acceptance) loaded onto a single heritable factor in children. Multilevel modeling showed no effects of self or co-twin sex on self-perception, but authoritative parenting style was negatively related to self-perception in boys. Similarly, in Study 2, with the adult sample, five self-esteem items loaded on a single heritable factor with no effects of co-twin sex on adult self-esteem. Remembered maternal affection, paternal affection, and maternal discipline were positively related to self-esteem in adults; maternal affection was especially significant for women. The reversal in direction of parenting effects between early childhood and adulthood suggests that parents may play different roles in shaping how children and adults think of themselves. These results suggest that self-perception in childhood and self-esteem in adulthood are both influenced by genetic and environmental factors and that parenting is an important environmental factor for both children and adults.

People suffering from chronic dissociation often experience stress and detachment during self-perception. We tested 18 people with dissociative disorders not otherwise specified (DDNOS; compared with a matched sample of 18 healthy controls) undergoing a stress-inducing facial mirror confrontation paradigm, and measured acute dissociation and frontal electroencephalography (measured with a four-channel system) per experimental condition (e.g. confrontation with negative cognition). Linear mixed models indicated a significant group×time×condition effect, with DDNOS group depicting less electroencephalography power than healthy controls at the beginning of mirror confrontation combined with negative and positive cognition. This discrepancy – most prominent in the negative condition – diminished in the second minute. Correlational analyses depicted a positive association between initial electroencephalography power and acute dissociation in the DDNOS group. These preliminary findings may indicate altered neural processing in DDNOS, but require further investigation with more precise electroencephalography measures.

How attractive we find ourselves decides who we target as potential partners and influences our reproductive fitness. Self-perceptions on women's fertile days could be particularly important. However, results on how self-perceived attractiveness changes across women's ovulatory cycles are inconsistent and research has seldomly assessed multiple attractiveness-related constructs simultaneously. Here, we give an overview of ovulatory cycle shifts in self-perceived attractiveness, sexual desirability, grooming, self-esteem and positive mood. We addressed previous methodological shortcomings by conducting a large, preregistered online diary study of 872 women (580 naturally cycling) across 70 consecutive days, applying several robustness analyses and comparing naturally cycling women with women using hormonal contraceptives. As expected, we found robust evidence for ovulatory increases in self-perceived attractiveness and sexual desirability in naturally cycling women. Unexpectedly, we found moderately robust evidence for smaller ovulatory increases in self-esteem and positive mood. Although grooming showed an ovulatory increase descriptively, the effect was small, failed to reach our strict significance level of .01 and was not robust to model variations. We discuss how these results could follow an ovulatory increase in sexual motivation while calling for more theoretical and causally informative research to uncover the nature of ovulatory cycle shifts in the future.

There is a need for developing tools aimed at assessing fitness in children, due to its relationship with health. This study is aimed at testing the reliability and the validity of a questionnaire designed for assessing self-perceived health-related fitness in Spanish children. The questionnaire was created based on the model of physical self-concept developed by Fox and Corbin (1989) who conceived four sub-domains: Sport competence, attractive body, strength and physical condition. A total of 283 children (mean age: 10.80 ± 0.69 years; 45.6% girls) answered the questionnaire twice, in order to determine its test-retest reliability. The results obtained in the International Fitness Scale (IFIS) and on a fitness battery were used to determine its validity evidence based on relations to other variables. Exploratory and factorial analyses were performed to check its validity evidence based on internal structure. The obtained results indicated that the questionnaire showed an accurate validity evidence based on internal structure and a very good test-retest reliability, Intraclass correlation coefficient: .88; 95% CI [.84, .90]. The questionnaire established moderate correlations with the IFIS questionnaire (ρ = –.51 to –.68) and the fitness level showed by the children (ρ = –.53). These findings indicate that the questionnaire can be a useful research tool for assessing self-perceived health-related fitness in children.

Depression is associated with a multiplicity of adverse outcomes in adolescence, including peer victimization and low self-esteem. Depressive symptoms, peer victimization, and self-esteem are linked in cross-sectional studies, but no longitudinal study has been conducted assessing their developmental pathways in one integrated model across adolescence. We explored their temporal sequencing in a normative sample of 612 Canadian adolescents (54% girls) assessed annually over 5 years (Grade 7 to Grade 11). Potential confounders such as biological sex, ethnicity/race, and parent income and education were statistically controlled. We found evidence for the vulnerability model (self-esteem predicting depression) and the symptoms-driven model (depression predicting peer victimization). Our findings also supported the integration of these pathways into a self-perception driven model characterized by the indirect effect of self-esteem on later peer victimization via depressive symptoms. Specifically, poor self-esteem initiated a developmental cascade that led to poor mood and poor peer relations. These results highlight the importance of helping youth form a healthy identity that promotes positive mental health and peer relations, and the need to intervene with depressed, victimized, and at-risk adolescents to instill positive self-regard. Our results also emphasize the central role that self-perceptions play in the onset and maintenance of poor outcomes.

The role that physical attractiveness and fluctuating asymmetry (FA), a measure of developmental instability, play in self-perception and peer associations were explored in a well-studied cohort of Jamaican children using a novel research paradigm where subjects were already known to each other for extensive periods of time. The results showed that how attractive a child was perceived by others was significantly positively correlated with self-ratings of attractiveness. Contrary to findings from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples, the study found a reversal in the sex differences in self-perceived attractiveness and self-esteem, where Jamaican females rate themselves more attractive and report higher self-esteem than do males. Attractiveness also predicts overall popularity, as measured by desirability as a friend and the percentage of peers who choose an individual as a friend. Attractive individuals of both sexes were chosen more often as ‘friends’. A significant correlation was also found between an individual’s FA and the average FA of those chosen as friends. However, the effect was primarily due to preferences by males for female friends possessing similar levels of FA, which could be an effective strategy in reducing future mating effort.

Rationalization occurs when a person has performed an action and then concocts the beliefs and desires that would have made it rational. Then, people often adjust their own beliefs and desires to match the concocted ones. While many studies demonstrate rationalization, and a few theories describe its underlying cognitive mechanisms, we have little understanding of its function. Why is the mind designed to construct post hoc rationalizations of its behavior, and then to adopt them? This may accomplish an important task: transferring information between the different kinds of processes and representations that influence our behavior. Human decision making does not rely on a single process; it is influenced by reason, habit, instinct, norms, and so on. Several of these influences are not organized according to rational choice (i.e., computing and maximizing expected value). Rationalization extracts implicit information – true beliefs and useful desires – from the influence of these non-rational systems on behavior. This is a useful fiction – fiction, because it imputes reason to non-rational psychological processes; useful, because it can improve subsequent reasoning. More generally, rationalization belongs to the broader class of representational exchange mechanisms, which transfer information between many different kinds of psychological representations that guide our behavior. Representational exchange enables us to represent any information in the manner best suited to the particular tasks that require it, balancing accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility in thought. The theory of representational exchange reveals connections between rationalization and theory of mind, inverse reinforcement learning, thought experiments, and reflective equilibrium.

Introduction: Inter-disciplinary interaction in the Emergency Department (ED) is critical for good patient care. The perception of paramedics’ experience in this interaction is not well described in the literature. This project gives voice to paramedics’ understanding of their role in the ED. Methods: Qualitative thematic framework analysis of digitally recorded, semi-structured, telephone interviews of 11 paramedics from one urban and one rural Paramedic Service in southwestern Ontario. Recordings and field notes were repeatedly reviewed and discussed by two researchers. A conceptual framework was constructed from themes emerging from the data. Results: Paramedics interviewed had 7-33 years of primary, advanced, or critical care experience. Three major themes emerged. (1) Patient advocate – Paramedics present the patient pre-hospital context and course of care information. They feel this information is essential and must be communicated. (2) Communication – Concerns raised that information is not listened to and valuable information is lost or ignored. A formal 30-second ‘pause’ for a structured paramedic to ED staff handover was seen as beneficial. Paramedics also want clinical feedback and outcome information from ED staff. No formal mechanism exists to obtain this. (3) Respect – When it exists, it is often based upon personal relationships between individuals. Paramedics feel when ED staff don't understand their scope of practice, their skills and abilities are ignored. In smaller EDs, paramedics also see themselves as a resource to help the ED staff with technical procedures. They need respect to do this. Conclusion: Paramedics’ perceive themselves as providing valuable information and advocacy for their patients in the Emergency Department. In order to present this information, they require uninterrupted time, as short as 30-seconds, for communication. Their relationship with the ED staff is further strengthened by mutual respect and understanding of each discipline's scope of practice and interdisciplinary teamwork. Paramedics would like more feedback on clinical outcomes and on their pre-hospital care. Some areas for practice change suggested by this study include: time for un-interrupted communication of pre-hospital information, formal feedback, and reflection on how to improve interdisciplinary interactions.

This article explores the middle classes as cultural practice by focusing on the young professionals, or “yuppies,” of Nairobi. Young professionals are particularly interesting to study because they are the population that has reaped the benefits of a historical development of socioeconomic opportunities. They also occupy an interesting position in the context of local preoccupations with being modern or “sophisticated” in Kenya and in terms of the expectations and assumptions of previous generations. The article touches briefly on the history of class analysis in African studies and then, departing from Marx and following a Weberian analysis, shows how three factors are important in analyzing the middle classes and the forging of class identities in a globalizing world: access to education, resulting in salaried occupations; consumption patterns; and modern self-perceptions.

Background: Recent work on cognitive-behavioural models of obsessive-compulsive disorder has focused on the roles played by various aspects of self-perception. In particular, moral self-ambivalence has been found to be associated with obsessive-compulsive phenomena. Aims: In this study we used an experimental task to investigate whether artificially priming moral self-ambivalence would increase participants’ deliberation on ethical problems, an index that might be analogous to obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Method: Non-clinical participants completed two online tasks designed to prime either moral self-ambivalence, general uncertainty, or neither. All participants then completed a task requiring them to consider solutions to moral dilemmas. We recorded the time participants took to respond to the dilemmas and the length of their responses; we then combined these variables to create a measure of deliberation. Results: Priming moral self-ambivalence led to increases in deliberation, but this was only significant among those participants who scored highly on a baseline measure of moral self-ambivalence. Priming general uncertainty had no significant effect upon deliberation. Conclusions: The results suggest that moral self-ambivalence may play a role in the maintenance of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. We propose that individuals who are morally self-ambivalent might respond to situations in which this ambivalence is made salient by exhibiting behaviour with obsessive-compulsive characteristics. These findings have implications for the incorporation of ideas about self-concept into theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Video feedback (VF) interventions effectively reduce social anxiety symptoms and negative self-perception, particularly when they are preceded by cognitive preparation (CP) and followed by cognitive review. Aims: In the current study, we re-examined data from a study on the efficacy of a novel VF intervention for individuals high in social anxiety to test the hypothesis that physical appearance anxiety would moderate the effects of VF. Method: Data were analyzed from 68 socially anxious participants who performed an initial public speech, and were randomly assigned to an Elaborated VF condition (VF plus cognitive preparation and cognitive review), a Standard VF condition (VF plus cognitive preparation) or a No VF condition (exposure alone), and then performed a second speech. Results: As hypothesized, when appearance concerns were low, both participants who received Elaborated and Standard VF were significantly less anxious during speech 2 than those in the No VF condition. However, when levels of appearance concern were high, neither Elaborated nor Standard VF reduced anxiety levels during speech 2 beyond the No VF condition. Conclusions: Results from our analog sample suggest the importance of tailoring treatment protocols to accommodate the idiosyncratic concerns of socially anxious patients.

The present study aims to analyze the dimensionality of physical self-concept through confirmatory factor analysis of the AFI questionnaire (Esnaola, 2005; Esnaola & Goñi, 2006) and to compare two models: a) a quadri-dimensional model in which physical self-concept is made up of the sub-domains ability, condition, attractiveness and strength, and, b) a three-factor model in which the items corresponding to ability and condition are grouped together as one factor. The sample consists of 1,259 participants ranging in age from 12 to 84 years old (700 women and 556 men) who were divided into four groups as a function of age: 627 adolescents (12-18 years old), 272 young people (19-30 years old), 248 middle-aged adults (31-49 years old) and 112 people over 55, all living in the Basque Autonomous Region of Spain. The results indicate that the quadri-dimensional model of physical self-concept fits the data better than the three-dimensional model (which showed poor goodness of fit) for the study's total sample, as well as within the male and female sub-samples. Furthermore, the four-factor model was found to be stable throughout adolescence, youth and middle-age, but not for the group of adults over 55.

Background: For elementary school-children with aggressive behaviour problems, there is a strong need for effective preventive interventions to interrupt the developmental trajectory towards more serious behaviour problems. Aim: The aim of this RCT-study was to evaluate a school-based individual tailor-made intervention (Stay Cool Kids), designed to reduce aggressive behaviour in selected children by enhancing cognitive behavioural skills. Method: The sample consisted of 48 schools, with 264 fourth-grade children selected by their teachers because of elevated levels of externalizing behaviour (TRF T-score > 60), randomly assigned to the intervention or no-intervention control condition. Results: The intervention was found to be effective in reducing reactive and proactive aggressive behaviour as reported by children, mothers, fathers or teachers, with effect sizes ranging from .11 to .32. Clinically relevant changes in teacher-rated externalizing behaviour were found: the intervention reduced behaviour problems to (sub) clinical or normative levels for significantly more children than the control condition. Some aspects of problems in social cognitive functioning were reduced and children showed more positive self-perception. Ethnic background and gender moderated intervention effects on child and teacher reported aggression and child response generation. Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness on outcome behaviour and child cognitions of an individual tailor-made intervention across informants under real-world conditions.