Transparency for the Public Good: When Feeling Powerful Does and Does Not Affect Willingness to Sacrifice for the Environment.

In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that the effect of feeling powerful on willingness to sacrifice for the preservation of shared resources depends on whether such willingness is expressed publically or privately. Participants were randomly assigned to either a power priming condition or a control condition and then completed measures assessing their attitudes, future intentions, and willingness to sacrifice for environmental conservation. Consistent with our hypothesis, the psychological experience of power decreased people's environmental attitudes and willingness to sacrifice for the environment, but only when these responses were made privately. These findings suggest that a sense of power, when experienced in private, influences the way individuals feel about and intend to engage in pro-environmental sacrifice. The findings also suggest that this effect may be eliminated when judgments are made transparently, in public view.

Eyes on the prize: The longitudinal benefits of goal focus on progress toward a weight loss goal.

Past research suggests that focusing on what has not yet been accomplished (goal focus) signals a lack of progress towards one's high commitment goals and inspires greater motivation than does focusing on what has already been accomplished (accomplishment focus). The present investigation extends this research to a longitudinal, important domain by exploring the consequences of focusing on one's goals versus accomplishments when pursuing a weight loss goal. Participants were tracked over the course of a 12-week weight loss program that utilized weekly group discussions and a companion website to direct participants' focus toward their end weight loss goal or toward what they had already achieved. Goal-focused participants reported higher levels of commitment to their goal and, ultimately, lost more weight than did accomplishment-focused and no focus control participants. Accomplishment-focused participants did not differ from controls on any measure.

High trait self-control predicts positive health behaviors and success in weight loss.

Surprisingly few studies have explored the intuitive connection between self-control and weight loss. We tracked participants' diet, exercise and weight loss during a 12-week weight loss program. Participants higher in self-control weighed less and reported exercising more than their lower self-control counterparts at baseline. Independent of baseline differences, individuals high in dispositional self-control ate fewer calories overall and fewer calories from fat, burned marginally more calories through exercise, and lost more weight during the program than did those lower in self-control. These data suggest that trait self-control is, indeed, an important predictor of health behaviors.

Family management styles and ADHD: utility and treatment implications.

A previous study identified four family management styles (FMSs) exhibited in families with children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and suggested that understanding how families deal with a child's ADHD would provide additional information from which to create effective interventions. The present study used the FMS typology with a sample of children and adolescents with ADHD with the aims of demonstrating that FMSs could be reliably identified in a different clinical sample and clarifying changes in FMS that occur with treatment. All four FMSs were reliably identified in the sample and more than half of the families (56.3%) improved to a higher functioning FMS with treatment. The findings suggest that FMSs can elicit important information about family functioning and may assist clinical understanding of the child-family interaction that in turn facilitates treatment.