Me, Myself, and Not-I: Self-Discrepancy Type Predicts Avatar Creation Style.

In video games, identification with avatars-virtual entities or characters driven by human behavior-has been shown to serve many interpersonal and intraindividual functions (like social connection, self-expression, or identity exploration) but our understanding of the psychological variables that influence players' avatar choices remains incomplete. The study presented in this paper tested whether players' preferred style of avatar creation is linked to the magnitude of self-perceived discrepancies between who they are, who they aspire to be, and who they think they should be. One-hundred-and-twenty-five undergraduate gamers indicated their preferred avatar creation style and completed a values measure from three different perspectives: their actual, ideal, and ought selves. The average actual/ideal values discrepancy was greater among those who preferred idealized avatars vs. those who preferred realistic avatars. The average actual/ought values discrepancy was greater among those who preferred completely different avatars (i.e., fantasy/role-players) vs. those who preferred realistic avatars. These results, therefore, offer additional evidence that self-discrepancy theory is a useful framework for understanding avatar preferences.

The Look that Binds: Partner-Directed Altruistic Motivation and Biased Perception in Married Couples.

A trustworthy appearance is regarded as a marker of a globally positive personality and, thus, evokes a host of benevolent responses from perceivers. Nevertheless, it is yet to be determined whether the reverse is also true, that is, whether social targets who evoke unambiguously benign motivations in perceivers are regarded as possessing a more trustworthy appearance (cf. Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). To this end, elderly long-term married couples completed measures of partner-directed altruistic motivation, accommodative behaviors, marital satisfaction, and trust in the partner. They also completed a face-processing task involving spousal and stranger faces one year later. Higher motivation to prioritize a spouse's well-being (but none of the other relationship functioning variables assessed) predicted perceiving one's spouse's emotionally neutral face as being more trustworthy-looking. Results are discussed in the context of the reciprocal relationship between higher-order motivational processes and basic perceptual mechanisms in shaping relational climates.

Shame, sexual compulsivity, and eroticizing flirtatious others: an experimental study.

Clinical observation and correlational studies with nonclinical samples suggest that a linkage between negative affective states (especially shame) and engagement in erotic pursuits typifies sexual compulsivity. The present study tested whether experimental induction of shame leads to increased interest in erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals. A total of 74 age-traditional heterosexual university students first recalled either an emotionally neutral or a shame-inducing personal experience, then completed a nonpredictive gaze-cueing task featuring flirtatious or emotionally neutral faces of the same or opposite sex. They also rated the faces' attractiveness and completed a validated sexual compulsivity scale and two control measures (executive control, sociosexuality). Higher (versus lower) sexual compulsivity predicted weaker gaze-triggered attentional orienting in response to the flirtatious opposite-sex face in the shame (versus neutral) condition, and this was accounted for by (higher) attractiveness ratings of the flirtatious opposite-sex face. Shame thus appears to increase sexualization (i.e., reduces salience of agentic features and increases appeal of physical attributes) of erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals.

More, more, more: the dark side of self-expansion motivation.

Self-expansion without regard for others' well-being may represent the dark side of an otherwise healthy motive. Guided by Amoebic Self-Theory (AST), we developed the Engulfing Self Scale (ESS) to measure acquisitive tendencies across AST's three domains of the self. Four studies revealed that bodily engulfment appeared generally benign, and that the problematic aspects of social engulfment were generally restricted to interpersonal contexts. Spatial-symbolic engulfment motivation was linked to a breadth of problematic indices such as psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychological entitlement, social dominance orientation, economic system justification, greed, and valuation of power. It also predicted reluctance to expose a cheating group leader when doing so would threaten one's own positive outcomes, greater justification of a looter's behavior when prompted take his or her perspective, and greater justification of self-serving reward allocations after defeating an ostensible competitor. Spatial-symbolic engulfment may be a motivational fountainhead for behaviors that negate others' well-being.

Preferred female body proportions among child-free men.

Based on conceptual extrapolations from sociobiological models concerning the significance of secondary sex characteristics as markers of a female's capacity to produce and nurture offspring, we reasoned that men's greater unwillingness to reproduce would be linked to preference for a female body type characterized by the relative absence of such markers. Heterosexual undergraduate men (N = 67) indicated their ideal (most arousing) female body type on-line by means of an adjustable female figure. As expected, the desire to remain childfree was linked to erotic preference for a combination of smaller breasts and larger waist-to-hip ratio. Additional research into individual factors that map onto variations in the preferred body proportions of erotic targets is thus encouraged.

The crystal globe: emotional empathy and the transformation of self.

To test whether emotional empathy is linked to altered perceptions of self in relation to other and/or context, participants read one of two tragic news stories and then completed a self-report empathy measure, as well as an abridged version of Hood's (1975) Mysticism scale either before or after the article. Exposure to a needy other in the story tended to result in greater self-reported mystical experience. Men with a history of mystical experience reported more empathy, but the latter was disconnected from on-line reports of mystical experience. Women's history of mystical experience did not predict empathic responding overall, but their reported empathy was linked to on-line experiences of oneness, absorption into something larger, and space-time distortion with imputed religious significance. Directions for future research, including the possible facilitative role of oxytocin, are discussed.

Through with the looking glass: escape responses to implicit mirror exposure.

Based on the assumption that confrontation with one's physical reflection can be aversive, we explored the appeal of possible "escape routes" when incidentally exposed to one's mirror image. Compared to their no-exposure peers, individuals who felt less chronically "trapped" in their bodies showed increased interest in flow experiences and decreased interest in experiences involving low-level thinking or a subjective sense of meaning when exposed to their reflection. Mirror exposure also increased overall interest in "pure consciousness events," wherein the transcendence of space and time figures centrally. The aversive effects of even implicit confrontation with one's reflection therefore seem more diverse than anticipated based on existing frameworks such as Objective Self-Awareness theory, so additional theoretical development seems warranted.

For my eyes only: gaze control, enmeshment, and relationship quality.

Perceived closeness that preserves the distinctness of each partner enhances intimate relationship quality, whereas pseudocloseness or enmeshment--reflecting an inability to distinguish one's own thoughts and emotions from a partner's--may have more negative outcomes (R. J. Green & P. D. Werner, 1996). Two studies investigated whether a dispositional inability to differentiate self from other is manifested at the attentional level as reduced capacity to inhibit following the gaze of another (A. Frischen, A. P. Bayliss, & S. P. Tipper, 2007). Among healthy elderly spouses in Study 1, superior gaze control predicted superior sociocognitive functioning, and those with poorer gaze control abilities were perceived by the partner as constricting the perceiving partner's autonomy, which in turn predicted lower relationship satisfaction among the latter. Moreover, these links were mediated by enmeshment, as indicated by the percentage of "we"-focused versus "I"- or partner-focused thoughts and emotions in the partners' independent accounts of the same relationship events. Extending these findings in a sample of Parkinson's disease patients and their spouses, Study 2 revealed a biphasic effect of self-other differentiation on relationship dynamics: In the early stages of the disease, increased couple focus promoted superior relationship quality, whereas lack of self-other differentiation predicted poorer relationship quality later. Thus, dispositional variations in fundamental social-perceptual processes predict both close relationship dynamics and long-term relationship quality.

Me, myself, and us: salient self-threats and relational connections.

Guided by their own amoebic self theory (C. T. Burris & J. K. Rempel, 2004), in 6 studies the authors explore the impact that involvement in an intimate relationship has on how a person appraises and responds to threat. They first show that people in relationship feel less constrained by their physical bodies compared with single people. In 3 subsequent studies involving physical size, blood/body donation, sexual activities, and responses to evil, they show that generalized sensitivity to bodily threat predicts self-protective reactions to specific physical threats among singles, but not among people in relationship, suggesting that intimate relationship involvement decreases the salience of the physical body. In the final pair of studies, they show that the salience of the physical body rebounds when people in relationship are primed, either subliminally or supraliminally, to think of themselves as distinct and separate from their partners. Thus, the present research shows how conceptualizing the self as "us" rather than "me" can transform an individual's response to the outside world, and highlights how physical cues in particular are affected by this process.

Push-you-pull-you: the boundaried self in close relationships.

Based on Amoebic Self Theory, the authors propose that the salience of different threats to the self affects the extent to which an intimate relationship partner is pushed away (excluded) or pulled closer (included). When social threat is salient among persons in relationships, it is hypothesized that partners will attempt to defuse the resulting sense of interpersonal vulnerability: offending partners may be pushed away, whereas offenders themselves may draw closer. When spatial-symbolic threat is salient and the relationship's capacity to function as an identity marker is jeopardized, it is hypothesized that the partner--regardless of his or her role--will be pulled closer to maintain the perception that the relationship is secure. Self-report responses to hypothetical scenarios and perceptions of behaviors during a role-play were generally consistent with these hypotheses, suggesting that both an intimate partner and the relationship with that partner can be incorporated into the self.

"It's the end of the world as we know it": threat and the spatial-symbolic self.

According to amoebic self theory, the boundary defining the self encompasses 3 levels of self-representation--bodily, social, and spatial-symbolic. Study 1 related a newly developed measure of individual differences in sensitivity to boundary threat across these 3 domains to values and disgust sensitivity. Four subsequent studies focused on spatial-symbolic threat sensitivity and related it to right-wing authoritarianism, aversive reactions to unfamiliar out-groups, and revulsion to vermin. A final experiment illustrates how a salient spatial-symbolic threat (dust mites) can elicit reactions toward out-groups that closely parallel mortality salience effects observed in research inspired by terror management theory, even though dust mites do not elicit mortality concerns. The importance of preserving the familiar in order to preserve the self is discussed.