Self-structure and well-being in life transitions

Passive Facebook use and students' academic stress: The moderating role of authenticity

Objective: The present study examined the association between passive FB use and academic stress, as well as the moderating role of users' dispositional levels of authenticity. Participants and Methods: A total of 188 college students responded to questionnaires regarding their FB use, trait authenticity, and academic stress. Results: The amount of time users reported they routinely engaged in passive FB use significantly correlated with academic stress. Further, users' levels of trait authenticity moderated this relationship. Time spent passively using FB was positively associated with academic stress only when user authenticity was high. However, how often students passively use FB was not significantly associated with academic stress regardless of their authenticity levels. Conclusions: These findings suggest that using FB passively for longer time periods might be a way to avoid academic tasks, which in turn might be associated with greater academic stress for those students who report higher levels of authenticity.

How selves differ within and across cognitive domains: self-prioritisation, self-concept, and psychiatric traits

Background

How we build and maintain representations of ourselves involves both explicit features which are consciously accessible on reflection and implicit processes which are not, such as attentional biases. Understanding relations between different ways of measuring self-cognition both within and across such cognitive domains is important for understanding how selves may differ from one another, and whether self-cognition is best understood as largely uni-dimensional or more multi-dimensional. Further, uncovering this structure should inform research around how self-cognition relates to psychiatric and psychological conditions. This study explores the relations between different constructs of self-cognition and how variability within them relates to psychiatric traits.

Methods

Our final dataset includes within-subject (n = 288, general population) measures of explicit self-concept (using both the Self Concept Clarity Scale and Self Concept and Identity Measure), implicit self-prioritisation in a shape-label matching task (for both reaction time and sensitivity) and measurement of traits for five psychiatric conditions (autism, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety). We first test whether self-cognitive measures within and across domains are correlated within individuals. We then test whether these dimensions of self-cognition support a binary distinction between psychiatric conditions that either are or are not characterised in terms of self, or whether they support self-cognition as transdiagnostically predictive of the traits associated with psychiatric conditions. To do this we run a series of planned correlations, regressions, and direct correlation comparison statistics.

Results

Results show that implicit self-prioritisation measures were not correlated with the explicit self-concept measures nor the psychiatric trait measures. In contrast, all the psychiatric traits scores were predicted, to varying degrees, by poorer explicit self-concept quality. Specifically, borderline personality disorder traits were significantly more strongly associated with composite explicit self-concept measures than any of depression, anxiety, or autism traits scores were.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that selves can differ considerably, along different cognitive dimensions. Further, our results show that self-cognition may be a promising feature to include in future dimensional characterisations of psychiatric conditions, but care should be taken to choose relevant self-cognitive domains.

Differentiation of the self and the body and adjustment to motherhood - A latent class analysis

BACKGROUND

Self-differentiation is a recognized predictor of adjustment to transitional periods of the life cycle, such as transition to motherhood. Less, however, is known about body differentiation, its relational pattern with self-differentiation, and its effect on adjustment to motherhood. The aims of this research were to identify distinct subgroups of differentiation among pregnant women (T1) and to examine the predictive role of these classes in adjustment to motherhood, two-months postpartum (T2).

METHODS

Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, the basic clusters structure was examined among a sample of non-pregnant women (N = 583), who filled out questionnaires assessing their self- and body differentiation. In addition, stability across five months was assessed. In Study 2, the cluster classification was validated and the relational pattern to the adjustment to motherhood was tested. Three-hundred-and-ninety-four women filled out a battery of questionnaires assessing their self- and body differentiation during pregnancy (T1), and the body experience, maternal efficacy, mother-infant bonding, and depression two-months postpartum (T2).

RESULTS

Results of Study 1's latent class analysis revealed four classes:" differentiated," "moderate," "body-differentiated," and "undifferentiated," comprising women with low levels of body-self differentiation. This structure was replicated in Study 2. In addition, a series of analyses indicated that women classified as "differentiated" during their pregnancies (T1) demonstrated higher levels of adjustment to motherhood (T2), while those classified as "undifferentiated" at T1 reported the lowest levels of adjustment at T2.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest a new body-self differentiation classification and emphasize that clinical interventions for women forming their new identities as mothers should target both concepts.

Self-Role Integration: A Person-Specific Predictor of Life Satisfaction and Prosocial Behavior

We investigated whether a novel self-structural variable, self-role integration, incrementally predicts life satisfaction and prosocial behavior beyond dispositional trait predictors that are known from prior research to be linked to these outcomes. At Time 1, 223 participants (171 female) completed measures of life satisfaction, optimism, the Big Five personality traits, reward and punishment sensitivity (BIS/BAS), psychological distress, and prosocial behavior. They then completed an idiographic measure in which they selected from a list of trait terms to describe their actual self and a series of role-specific identities. At Time 2 (60 days later, N = 134), they again reported prosocial behavior. Self-role integration was computed from the linkages between actual self and role-identities derived from a Hierarchical Classes (HICLAS) analysis of each participant's self-descriptive data. Self-role integration concurrently and prospectively predictive of prosocial behavior beyond significant trait-level predictors, and was marginally significantly correlated with life satisfaction beyond a set of trait-level predictors. Results demonstrate that a self-structural variable can add predictive utility to life satisfaction and prosocial behavior beyond dispositional traits.

Explaining the curvilinear relationship between age at first birth and depression among women

Recent research suggests that the effect of age at first birth on mental health for women is curvilinear, with first births at both young (age 20 and younger) and older ages (after age 30) being positively associated with psychological distress. Scholars have theorized that accumulated disadvantages and physical health problems associated with age at first birth explain this pattern, although empirical support for these explanations has varied. Using data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this study provides evidence of an alternative explanation for this curvilinear relationship through its focus on: 1) the relationship between deviations from expected age at first birth and women's actual age at first birth, and 2) the effect deviations from expected age at first birth have on mental health. Results indicate that deviating from their expected age at first birth results in higher levels of depressive symptoms for women in midlife who transition into parenthood both earlier and later than expected. These deviations from expected birth timing account for the upward trend in depressive symptoms at older ages of first birth, but explain only a small amount of the higher levels of depressive symptoms at younger ages.