Showing papers by "Mark R. Leary published in 2014"

Self-compassion and reactions to serious illness: the case of HIV.

Abstract: To test the hypothesis that self-compassion buffers people against the emotional impact of illness and is associated with medical adherence, 187 HIV-infected individuals completed a measure of self-compassion and answered questions about their emotional and behavioral reactions to living with HIV. Self-compassion was related to better adjustment, including lower stress, anxiety, and shame. Participants higher in self-compassion were more likely to disclose their HIV status to others and indicated that shame had less of an effect on their willingness to practice safe sex and seek medical care. In general, self-compassion was associated with notably more adaptive reactions to having HIV.

Self-compassionate Responses to Aging

Abstract: Purpose: Evidence suggests that self-compassion may be beneficial to older adults who are struggling to cope with the aging process. The purpose of this study was to assess the thoughts of self-compassionate older adults and to determine whether self-compassionate thoughts relate to positive responses to aging. Design and Methods: Participants (n = 121, M = 76.2 years, approximately 65% female) completed measures of self-compassion and self-esteem; were randomly assigned to write about a positive, negative, or neutral age-related event; and completed questions about the event and their reactions. Responses were coded for self-compassionate themes and emotional tone. Results: Analyses indicated that self-compassion predicted positive responses to aging and that self-compassionate thoughts explained the relationship between trait self-compassion and emotional tone as well as the belief that one’s attitude helped them cope with age-related events. Implications: Although older adults who were low versus high in self-compassion experienced similar age-related events, participants high in self-compassion thought about these events in ways that predicted positive outcomes. Encouraging older adults to be more self-compassionate may improve well-being in old age.

The Pursuit of Status: A Self-presentational Perspective on the Quest for Social Value

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the ways in which people seek status in their interpersonal interactions and relationships. Our analysis conceptualizes status as the degree to which other people perceive that an individual possesses resources or personal characteristics that are important for the attainment of collective goals. That is, people have status to the degree that others perceive that they have instrumental social value. In being based on instrumental social value, status is distinguishable from interpersonal acceptance, which is based on relational value. Thus, the routes to obtaining status and respect are different from those that lead to acceptance and liking. The chapter discusses the central role that self-presentation plays in the pursuit of status, the ways in which people enhance their status through impression management, the features of social situations that moderate how people manage their public images in the pursuit of status, and the dilemma that people sometimes face in balancing their efforts to be respected and gain status with their efforts to be liked and accepted.

The Impact of Individual and Group Feedback on Environmental Intentions and Self-Beliefs:

Abstract: The present study examined how feedback regarding one’s personal impact on the environment, along with feedback regarding one’s group’s impact, influences environmental attitudes, intentions, and self-beliefs. Using a bogus carbon footprint calculator, participants received either moderately or highly negative feedback about their own environmental impact as well as feedback about the average impact of students at their university. Participants expressed the greatest intentions to behave proenvironmentally, especially with behaviors that require a high level of commitment, when their personal feedback was worse than that of their group. Impact of feedback on intentions was not mediated by attitudes, emotions, or self-evaluations, suggesting that participants were not motivated to improve their behaviors because they felt badly about themselves. Instead, people were motivated to change their behaviors when they believed their current behavior differed from that of an important reference group.

When Rejection Kills: The Central Role of Low Relational Value in School Violence Commentary on: Bullying, Romantic Rejection, and Conflicts with Teachers: The Crucial Role of Social Dynamics in the Development of School Shootings - A Systematic Review

Abstract: Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer (2014) did an admirable job of reviewing and integrating research on school shootings across a broad array of studies that relied on varied conceptualizations, operational definitions, coding strategies, and samples of shootings. Given the inherent ambiguity of retrospective case studies, the authors assembled convincing evidence to show that school shootings are consistently linked to an identifiable set of problematic social relationships at school, including bullying, rejection by peers and romantic partners, conflicts with teachers, and perceiving oneself to be marginalized or victimized. The authors suggested that these specific phenomena reflect three overriding concepts that promote school violence—conflicts and other negative interactions, social standing, and perpetrator characteristics. Although we agree with Sommer et al.’s basic conclusions, we would like to offer a broad social psychological approach that provides a way of integrating most, if not all, of their findings under a single theoretical umbrella. In our view, all of the factors that Sommer ∗Address for correspondence Mark R. Leary, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. E-mail: leary@duke.edu et al. identified as precursors of school shootings involve the perception that one has very low relational value. Human beings are highly motivated to be valued as relational partners and group members by other people, presumably because individuals who sought to be valued by other people (and, thus, established supportive social relationships) had a higher likelihood of survival and reproduction throughout human evolution relative than those who were unconcerned about being valued and accepted by other people as group members, friends, mates, and acquaintances (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Thus, a great deal of human behavior is directed toward leading others to regard their relationships with the individual as important or valuable—that is, to maintaining adequate relational value in other people’s eyes (Leary, 2001). In our view, perceptions of low relational value are a central feature of all of the categories of interpersonal problems identified by Sommer et al. Most obviously, both peer rejection and romantic rejection clearly convey that the rejector does not value having a relationship with the rejectee, whether that is a romantic relationship, a friendship, an acquaintanceship, or a group membership.