Superwoman's kryptonite: The superwoman schema and perceived barriers to weight management among U.S. Black women.

The role that the superwoman schema (SWS) plays in U.S. Black women's perceptions of barriers (biological, psychological, and sociological) to healthy weight management is unknown. This exploratory study examined whether 122 women classified as normal weight, overweight or obese differed in their perceptions of types of barriers and if the SWS predicted perceived barriers to weight management. Women classified as obese reported more barriers than those classified as normal weight. The SWS uniquely positively predicted perceived psychological and sociological barriers. Our findings suggest that the SWS may play a vital role in the self-management of weight in U.S. Black women.

Within-person relationships among daily self-esteem, need satisfaction, and authenticity.

This study examined the within-person relationships among daily self-esteem, felt authenticity (i.e., the operation of one's "true self"), and satisfaction of psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We also included measures of affect to control for the variance these constructs might share with affect. Over a 2-week period, 116 participants responded daily to measures of these variables. Multilevel random-coefficients modeling revealed that authenticity, autonomy, competence, and relatedness were all positively and significantly related to daily reports of self-esteem, even when we controlled for the contributions of pleasant and unpleasant affect. We discuss the roles of authenticity and psychological needs in daily feelings of self-worth.

Mindfulness as a means of reducing aggressive behavior: dispositional and situational evidence.

Recent research and theory suggest that mindfulness, or enhanced attention and awareness in the present moment [Brown and Ryan, 2003], may be linked to lower levels of ego-involvement and, as a result, may have implications for lowering hostility and aggressive behavior. Accordingly, we conducted two studies to examine the potential aggression-mitigating role of mindfulness. In Study 1, we found that dispositional mindfulness correlated negatively with self-reported aggressiveness and hostile attribution bias. In Study 2, participants made mindful before receiving social rejection feedback displayed less-aggressive behavior than did rejected participants not made mindful. Discussion centers on potential mechanisms by which mindfulness operates to reduce aggressive behavior.