Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced | Prerequisites: All earlier PSY 320 lectures on the self, self-enhancement, goals, and self-regulation.
Big Picture
This final block of lectures broadens from the individual self to the social world. It covers how our implicit theories about traits shape judgements, how gender differences arise from biology, socialisation, and the agency/communion framework, how relationships are sustained through idealisation (and undermined by insecurity), how attachment patterns from childhood echo in adult relationships, how prejudice operates at automatic and controlled levels, how socioeconomic status gets under the skin to affect health, and what actually predicts lasting happiness. These topics tie together the course's central themes: construal, motivation, and the interplay of person and situation.
TL;DR
Entity theorists (traits are fixed) and incremental theorists (traits are malleable) differ in how they judge others, pursue goals, and respond to failure. Gender differences are smaller than most people assume and are better explained by agency and communion than by sex alone. Relationship illusions are functional: idealising a partner predicts satisfaction and can become self-fulfilling. Attachment is not destiny but a set of working models that can be primed and updated. Prejudice operates on a continuum from explicit to implicit, and even low-prejudice individuals are influenced by culturally shared stereotypes under certain conditions. SES predicts health through physical, social, and psychological pathways, with allostatic load and reserve capacity as key mechanisms. Subjective well-being has a "soft set point" that can shift with sustained life changes.
Entity vs. incremental theorists (Dweck)
Entity theorists believe traits like intelligence are fixed. Incremental theorists believe they are malleable. Entity theorists pursue performance goals (demonstrate ability); incrementalists pursue learning goals (develop ability). In simple terms, entity theorists want to prove themselves; incrementalists want to improve.
Agency and communion (Helgeson)
Agency is a focus on self, power, dominance, and separation from others. Communion is a focus on others, connection, warmth, and expressiveness. Unmitigated agency (agency without communion) and unmitigated communion (communion without agency) are the problematic extremes.
Relationship illusion (Murray and Holmes)
The tendency to see one's romantic partner more positively than the partner sees themselves. This idealisation is partly a projection of one's own ideal-partner standards onto the actual partner.
Attachment (Bowlby)
A bond between infant and caregiver characterised by proximity maintenance, secure base (safe exploration), and safe haven (comfort when threatened). Internal working models of attachment, formed through repeated caregiver interactions, shape expectations in later relationships.
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
A reaction-time measure of the strength of automatic associations between concepts (e.g. Black/white faces paired with good/bad words). Faster pairings indicate stronger implicit associations.
Allostatic load
The cumulative wear and tear on the body from chronic activation of the stress response (fight-or-flight). People low in SES tend to have higher allostatic load due to more frequent and sustained stressors.
Reserve capacity
The reservoir of tangible (money), interpersonal (social support), and personal (optimism, mastery) resources available to cope with stress. Low SES environments hinder the development of these resources and deplete them faster.
Subjective well-being (SWB)
A person's own assessment of their life, comprising three components: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Most people in most nations report being above the neutral point.
Soft set point
The updated view that each person has a baseline level of happiness influenced by genetics and early experience, but that this set point can shift with sustained life changes. It is not as rigid as the original "set point" theory suggested.
Entity vs. incremental theorists
Entity theorists believe attributes are fixed and pursue performance goals (demonstrate what you have). Incremental theorists believe attributes are malleable and pursue learning goals (develop abilities). Entity theorists do fine until they face something really difficult; then they avoid risk because hitting a limit feels permanent. Incremental theorists seek challenge and get excited by tough problems.
Butler's experimental manipulation
Students read either an entity passage ("mathematical ability does not change much throughout life") or an incremental passage ("people acquire math ability through learning"). Entity-primed students rated a student higher when scores started high (primacy), while incremental-primed students rated higher when scores ended high (recency/improvement). Entity theorists valued normative feedback ("how do I compare to others?"); incremental theorists valued temporal feedback ("am I getting better?").
Trait inferences
Entity theorists are more willing to infer what "kind of person" someone is from a single behaviour. They believe traits are fixed and diagnosable at one time. Incremental theorists make weaker trait inferences, emphasising the dynamics of behaviour. Both groups make systematic errors: entity theorists overestimate consistency, while incremental theorists underestimate it.
Cultural theories of attribution (Chiu and Hong)
The fundamental attribution error is not simply a Western phenomenon. The underlying process (overestimating the causal influence of whoever is seen as the agent) is universal. What differs across cultures is who is seen as the agent.
North Americans see the individual as the agent and overattribute behaviour to individual dispositions.
East Asians see the group as the agent and overattribute outcomes to group characteristics.
Evidence: US and Asian newspapers reported the same insider-trading scandals differently (US attributed to individuals; Asian papers attributed to the organisation). In an artificial study, Americans made more dispositional attributions about a rogue bull than a rogue herd; Hong Kong students showed the reverse. Under high time pressure (when people rely on chronically accessible heuristics), these cultural differences became even more dramatic.
Implicit theories function as heuristics: efficient, top-down tools for interpreting social events. They are most influential when we need quick closure.
Effect sizes for gender differences
Most psychological gender differences are small to moderate. The largest (throwing distance/velocity, d = 2.0) is physical, not psychological. Math ability (d = .41), verbal ability, and visual-spatial perception show small differences. Empathy differences shrink dramatically depending on the measure: large on self-report scales, small on behavioural measures, marginal on implicit measures. Generational effects also matter: a 1964 men's swimming world record was not fast enough for the women's finals 20 years later.
Eagly's integrative model
Biology and socialisation both contribute to the division of labour between sexes. This division creates gender role expectations and gender-related skills, which converge to produce sex differences in behaviour. Within each group there is substantial variability.
Agency and communion (Helgeson)
Agency: focus on self, power, dominance, separation. Communion: focus on others, connection, warmth, expressiveness.
Unmitigated agency (agency without communion): associated with manipulation, refusing help, higher mortality, heart disease, substance abuse.
Unmitigated communion (communion without agency): associated with tolerating insults, low self-esteem, higher depression.
The key insight: health problems attributed to gender are better explained by the absence of the complementary quality. Men's higher mortality is not because they are male but because of unmitigated agency. Women's higher depression is not because they are female but because of unmitigated communion.
Independent vs. interdependent self-concept
Men tend to report a more independent self-concept (distinct from others); women tend to report a more interdependent one (defined through relationships). Women are more likely to include photos of themselves with others; men are more likely to photograph themselves with objects or activities. Josephs found that negative feedback about individualism lowered high-self-esteem men's subsequent effort, while negative feedback about relational skills lowered high-self-esteem women's effort.
Moskowitz: agency and communion at work
Over 20 days of work interactions, agentic behaviour varied by role (more agentic with subordinates than supervisors) but not by gender. Communal behaviour varied by gender (women more communal) but not by role. Agency is constrained by social structure; communion may be more dispositional or socialised.
Motive-congruent goals (Brunstein)
People are happiest when making progress toward goals aligned with their implicit motives (agency or communion). Even self-reported commitment to a goal does not predict well-being if the goal does not match one's deep implicit motive.
Self-objectification (Fredrickson)
Self-objectification is when a person's body is regarded as an instrument to be evaluated by others. Cultural practices promote objectification, which can be internalised. State effects: women who tried on a swimsuit (vs. a sweater) in front of a mirror showed increased body shame, symbolic food restraint, and decreased math performance. The argument: if a brief lab manipulation produces these effects, the cumulative real-world exposure to objectifying imagery is consequential.
Levine's extension: women estimated their body size as larger after viewing sexist ads; men estimated theirs as smaller. The ads reinforced gendered body ideals in both directions.
When asked to rate their partner compared to peers' partners, 99 out of 100 people placed their partner above the 50th percentile. Married partners idealise each other: wives rate husbands higher than husbands rate themselves, and vice versa. In dating relationships, women idealise men, but dating men do not idealise women (except on physical attractiveness).
How idealisation works
How we see our partner is a construction: partly based on the partner's actual self-image (the "reality path") and partly a projection of our own ideals. The more positively you see yourself, the more positive an ideal you hold, and the more positively you see your partner.
Does idealisation help?
Two hypotheses:
Projected illusion: I am happier to the extent I see my partner more positively than they see themselves.
Reflected illusion: I am happier to the extent my partner idealises me.
Both are supported. Idealisation predicts satisfaction, and being idealised by your partner also increases happiness.
Over time: three mechanisms
Buffer hypothesis: illusions help withstand negative events, a reservoir of goodwill.
Reflected appraisals: over the course of a year, partners come to see themselves as their partner sees them. If she idealises him, he eventually sees himself more positively.
Transformation hypothesis: when faults arise, people reframe them as virtues. After reading a Psychology Today article claiming that initiating disagreement is a sign of mature intimacy, people whose partners avoided conflict started finding small examples of constructive disagreement.
Low self-esteem in relationships
Low-SE individuals assume their partner's acceptance is conditional. They expect rejection and preemptively derogate the partner ("it won't hurt as much if I think he's a jerk"). When prompted to think of a time they disappointed their partner, low-SE people lost confidence in the partner's acceptance and rated the partner less positively. High-SE people showed no such drop.
The "fault-finding partner" study: participants saw their partner writing for an extended time on what they believed was a list of disliked qualities. High-SE people were unbothered. Low-SE people assumed the worst and derogated their partner.
The tragic irony: partners of low-SE individuals evaluate them just as positively as partners of high-SE individuals. The insecurity is internal, not based in the partner's actual feelings. Low-SE people have the support but cannot recognise it, and this insecurity can eventually drive the partner away.
Bowlby's framework
A critical period exists in which the infant's relationship with a caregiver is crucial for developing an internal working model of self in relation to others. Three key features: proximity maintenance (protesting separation), secure base (safe exploration), and safe haven (comfort when threatened).
Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Secure (62%): caregiver is sensitive and responsive; infant seeks comfort during reunion.
Anxious/ambivalent (15%): caregiver is inconsistent; infant is not reassured, preoccupied with caregiver availability.
Avoidant (23%): infant rejects caregiver, not distressed by separation.
Adult attachment (Hazan and Shaver)
Hazan and Shaver translated infant attachment into adult romantic relationships using self-report paragraphs. Anxiously attached adults experience jealousy, low self-esteem, obsession, indiscriminate self-disclosure, and procrastination. Avoidant adults are judged hostile, pursue uncommitted sexual relations, and use substances to reduce tension.
Coupling patterns: no anxious-anxious or avoidant-avoidant couples are typically found. Avoidant men and anxious women tend to stay in relationships despite being unhappy, possibly reflecting gender-stereotypic dynamics.
Attachment and stress
Mikulincer studied 140 Israeli students two weeks after the first Gulf War. Anxious students were most distressed across all measures. Avoidant students showed more hostility and somatisation. Secure students were most likely to seek social support. In lab studies, securely attached women sought more support from partners before a stressor, and securely attached men provided more support. Insecurely attached people showed stronger physiological stress responses.
A key difference between infant and adult attachment: the adult carries the mental model everywhere. You do not need your partner physically present; the implicit awareness that support is available reduces stress reactivity in the moment.
Bartholomew's four-category model
Crossing positive/negative self-view with positive/negative other-view creates four types: secure (positive self, positive other), preoccupied/anxious (negative self, positive other), dismissing (positive self, negative other), and fearful (negative self, negative other).
Dismissive avoidants may genuinely suppress unwanted thoughts effectively (no rebound in thought-suppression tasks), though this breaks down under heavy cognitive load.
Stability of attachment
70% remain constant at two time points; 30% change. Statistical stability is .51, which is fair but not strong. Baldwin showed that regardless of general attachment style, the majority of specific relationships are experienced as secure (even for people who classify as generally avoidant or anxious). Attachment shifts with relationship events: securely attached people who break up drop to about 50% secure afterwards. Significant relationships move people around.
Attachment can be primed. Subliminally priming warm, supportive words reduced negative affect and improved coping in female students imagining an unplanned pregnancy, regardless of chronic attachment style. This supports Baldwin's view that we store multiple relational models and activate whichever fits the context.
Brewer's dual process model
We automatically categorise people by gender, race, age, and attractiveness without effort. The question is when we move beyond category-based (stereotype-driven) judgements to form person-based impressions. This happens when we are motivated (e.g. the person will be in your study group).
Devine: Is prejudice inevitable?
Devine argued that everyone knows culturally shared stereotypes, regardless of personal attitudes. Knowledge of stereotypes is automatically activated and available in memory. Inhibiting the use of stereotypes is a controlled process requiring motivation and cognitive resources.
Key study: parafoveal priming of stereotype-consistent words (80% vs. 20% of trials). Participants were unaware of what was being primed (accuracy was at chance). Those heavily primed rated an ambiguous target ("Donald") as more hostile, regardless of personal prejudice level. When given a thought-listing task (time to think and control responses), low-prejudice participants generated more positive thoughts about Black Americans.
Fazio: automatic attitudes
Fazio challenged Devine's distinction between knowledge and attitude. Using face primes (not word primes), he found that Black faces facilitated recognition of negative adjectives and slowed recognition of positive adjectives for white participants.
Critically, the explicit prejudice scale (Modern Racism Scale) predicted deliberative judgements (e.g. opinions about the Rodney King case), while the automatic attitude measure predicted spontaneous behaviour (non-verbal behaviour with a Black experimenter). Explicit attitudes guide what we can control; automatic attitudes leak into what we cannot.
The IAT and its variations
The standard race IAT pairs Black/white faces with good/bad words. When white names are replaced with evil white people (Hitler) and Black names with famous Black people (Jordan, Cosby), the racial bias on the IAT disappears, but the Fazio face-prime measure is harder to dampen. A personalised IAT ("I like" / "I don't like" instead of good/bad) restores the bias even with famous exemplars.
Three levels of prejudice
High prejudice: high on explicit self-report, high on automatic measures. Shows prejudice in controlled, spontaneous, and primed conditions.
Moderate: low on explicit self-report but high on automatic measures. Does not show prejudice in controlled responses (hiring decisions, jury verdicts) but does in spontaneous behaviour and when primed with stereotypes.
Low: low on both explicit and automatic. Does not show prejudice in controlled or spontaneous contexts, but culturally shared stereotypes can still be activated by contextual priming.
Suppression vs. perspective-taking (Moskowitz)
Suppression of stereotypes works in controlled responses (writing essays) but produces a rebound effect in reaction-time tasks (faster recognition of stereotype-consistent words afterwards). Perspective-taking (imagining a day in the life of an elderly person as if you were that person) reduced stereotypicality in both controlled and automatic measures, without rebound. Perspective-taking is used in diversity training.
Gender schema and sexual harassment (Rudman)
Men high on the Likelihood to Sexually Harass scale showed chronic accessibility of sexist schemas. But Rudman showed that even men low on the scale were affected by sexist advertising: after viewing sexist commercials, they asked more sexist interview questions, sat closer, remembered more about a female confederate's appearance and less about her qualifications, and exhibited more sexualised behaviour. The effects of chronic accessibility (the scale) and contextual priming (the ads) were additive, not multiplicative: everyone was affected by the prime, though high-scale men were affected more.
Optimism and health outcomes
Dispositional optimism predicts cardiologists' ratings of bypass surgery recovery. In a Dutch study of 1,000 people aged 65-85 followed over nine years, higher optimism predicted lower mortality, even controlling for smoking, alcohol, SES, and marital status. For men, the key items were about still having goals to strive for. For women, the key items were about experiencing moments of happiness.
SES and health
The relationship between socioeconomic status and health is one of the most robust findings in health psychology. It operates at every step of the ladder, not just at the poverty line. The Whitehall study (British civil service) showed that each step up in employment status predicted better health outcomes over decades, even with universal health care.
Physical pathways: low-SES environments have more toxins, pathogens, noise, physical risks, less healthy food, and lower health care utilisation (even when access is universal).
Social pathways: more crowding, higher crime, less social support, fewer recreational facilities.
Psychological pathways: lower perceived control and mastery (perceived control accounted for half the Whitehall effect), lower optimism, higher hostility, and perception of ambiguous events as more threatening. This chronic vigilance may have a cumulative physiological cost.
Behaviour (smoking, diet, exercise) predicts mortality but has not fully accounted for the SES-health relationship. Something else is going on.
Allostatic load
Fight-or-flight is functional in the moment, but chronic activation wears the body down. People low in SES show higher allostatic load (elevated cortisol, hormone levels). The reserve capacity model explains this: low-SES environments hinder the development of tangible, interpersonal, and personal resources, and frequency of stress depletes whatever reserves exist.
Subjective SES
A simple ladder measure ("where would you place yourself?") adds predictive power above objective income and education. Self-rated health, despite being subjective, is a robust predictor of subsequent mortality.
Telomeres and chronic stress
Epel studied mothers of chronically ill children (high caregiver stress) and found shortened telomeres, the equivalent of approximately ten years of biological ageing. This was a landmark finding connecting chronic psychosocial stress to cellular ageing.
Most people are happy
84-89% of Americans report being above the neutral point. 86% of nations have national averages above neutral. SWB is assessed via life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Validity is supported by correlations with peer/family reports, recent life events, and health.
Why does happiness matter?
Functional: a positive set point means threatening events are noticed more quickly (departure from baseline). Happiness motivates action and coping.
The nun study: positive emotion expressed in autobiographies written during training predicted longevity (about seven years longer for high-emotion nuns). Those low in positive emotion had three times the risk of dying by the study's endpoint.
Fredrickson's broaden-and-build model: positive emotions (joy, interest, contentment, pride, love) broaden cognitive repertoire, build social and personal resources, and increase resilience. Meditation training that increased positive emotion also increased social support and stress resilience.
Can money buy happiness?
Wealth has increased greatly since 1950, but SWB has not increased correspondingly. However, wealth is associated with longer and healthier lives, lower depression, and fewer stressful events.
Within countries, the income-SWB correlation is weak (.13). But the effect is concentrated: stronger among the poor within a nation, stronger within poorer nations. Once basic needs are met, additional income adds almost nothing. The super-rich (Fortune 500 CEOs) are about one point higher on a seven-point scale.
Longitudinal evidence is mixed: no effect in Western Europe and North America, but significant increases in SWB as incomes rose in Russia and East Germany. Happiness also predicts future income (for non-poor families), suggesting a bidirectional relationship.
Materialism
Placing high importance on wealth acquisition is associated with slightly lower SWB, but this is driven by negative motives (proving oneself, competing with neighbours). Positive motives (security, supporting family) do not predict lower SWB.
Having money as a goal and achieving it: fine. Having the goal and not achieving it: unhappy. But achieving the goal does not make you happier than someone who never had the goal and made the same amount of money. The key is income, not the goal of income.
Heritability of happiness
Minnesota Twin Study: the correlation between MZ twins' SWB ten years apart was .48. Of the stable component of SWB (.60 stability), about 80% is heritable. But .48 squared = about 25% of total variance. The commonly cited "80% heritable" figure is misleading because it applies only to the stable portion, ignoring that 40% of SWB changes over time.
Life events
Recent events (past three months) predict SWB, but more distant events (4-24 months ago) do not. This led to the adaptation/set-point view: we return to baseline after events. But the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (3,600 adults, 1984-2000) found that while the majority were stable, 24% showed significant satisfaction changes and 10% experienced large changes. This supports a "soft set point" that can shift with sustained changes.
Marriage and widowhood
Happy people are more likely to get married. The real increase in satisfaction appears in the year before marriage. After marriage, there is individual variability: most show a small initial bump that fades, some show lasting increases, and some decline. For widows, life satisfaction drops the year before death and the year after. Recovery to baseline takes about eight years for the most affected.
Profile of very happy people
Very happy people have close friends (more and better quality), strong family relationships, a romantic relationship, and spend more time with their social network. They are low in neuroticism and high in extraversion. For older adults, decent housing, physical functioning, lack of isolation, absence of chronic pain, and a sense of mastery are key. Frequency of positive events matters more than intensity: consistently being on the positive side predicts happiness better than having occasional peaks.
The peak-end rule
People evaluate experiences based on the peak moment and the ending, not on duration. A person who lives a wonderful life and dies young may be judged as having had a more desirable life than someone who lived the same wonderful years plus decades of merely good years, because the peak and the end are lower for the second person.
Students often think attachment is destiny, determined entirely by the mother in infancy. It is not. Attachment is a set of working models that can be updated by significant relationships, and multiple models coexist in memory.
"80% of happiness is genetic" is a misreading of the twin data. 80% applies only to the stable portion of SWB. Total variance accounted for by heritability is about 25%.
Gender differences in psychology are often assumed to be large. Most are small to moderate, and many shrink dramatically depending on how they are measured (especially empathy).
People assume the IAT measures personal prejudice. It may measure culturally shared associations rather than personal endorsement. The distinction between Devine (knowledge) and Fazio (attitude) matters.
"Money cannot buy happiness" is too simple. Money matters most at the bottom of the income distribution and in poorer countries. Beyond basic needs, it adds little, but below that threshold, the effects are real.
⚠️ Know entity vs. incremental theories and how they affect trait inferences, goal pursuit, and response to failure. Butler's manipulation study and the cultural attribution studies (bull vs. herd) are likely exam material.
⚠️ Understand Helgeson's agency/communion framework and how unmitigated forms explain health outcomes better than gender alone.
⚠️ Be able to explain Murray and Holmes' idealisation process (projected and reflected illusions, buffer, reflected appraisals, transformation) and the low-SE contamination hypothesis.
⚠️ Know the three infant attachment types, how they map onto adult attachment, Bartholomew's four-category model, and the evidence for and against stability.
⚠️ Be able to distinguish Devine's and Fazio's approaches to prejudice and explain the three levels (high, moderate, low). Know why suppression rebounds and perspective-taking does not.
⚠️ Understand the SES-health gradient, allostatic load, and reserve capacity. Know that behaviour alone does not account for the SES effect.
⚠️ Know the soft set point concept and be able to critique the "80% heritable" claim with the actual numbers (.48 correlation, .25 variance).
True or False: Entity theorists prefer temporal feedback ("am I improving?") over normative feedback ("how do I compare to others?").
False. Entity theorists prefer normative feedback. Incremental theorists prefer temporal feedback.
Fill in the blank: Helgeson's key argument is that health problems attributed to gender are better explained by ______ agency or ______ communion.
Unmitigated; unmitigated.
True or False: Partners of low-self-esteem individuals rate them less positively than partners of high-self-esteem individuals.
False. Partners rate them equally positively. The insecurity is internal.
Fill in the blank: In Fazio's prejudice research, the explicit measure predicted ______ behaviour, while the automatic measure predicted ______ behaviour.
Deliberative (controlled); spontaneous.
True or False: The SES-health relationship is fully explained by differences in health behaviour (smoking, diet, exercise).
False. Health behaviours contribute but do not fully account for the relationship.
Q: How does Bartholomew's four-category model of attachment differ from the original three-type model, and what does the distinction between dismissing and fearful avoidance capture?
A: The original model had one "avoidant" category. Bartholomew split it by crossing self-view (positive/negative) with other-view (positive/negative). Dismissing avoidants have a positive self-view but negative other-view: they are self-reliant and suppress dependency needs. Fearful avoidants have negative views of both self and others: they want closeness but are too afraid of rejection to pursue it. The distinction matters because dismissing avoidants can effectively suppress unwanted thoughts (no rebound), while fearful avoidants are more distressed and less able to cope.
Q: Explain how Devine's and Fazio's approaches to implicit prejudice differ, and what each predicts about behaviour.
A: Devine primed stereotype-related words and argued that culturally shared knowledge, not personal attitudes, is automatically activated. Everyone knows the stereotype; low-prejudice people inhibit it when they have motivation and cognitive resources. Fazio primed faces (not words) and argued the effect reflects actual automatic attitudes, not just knowledge. Fazio showed that explicit prejudice measures predict deliberative judgements, while automatic measures predict spontaneous non-verbal behaviour. Together, they suggest a two-track system: what you control vs. what leaks out.
Q: What evidence supports the "soft set point" view of subjective well-being over the original strict set-point theory?
A: The German Socio-Economic Panel Study followed 3,600 adults from 1984 to 2000. While the majority showed stable satisfaction, 24% experienced significant changes and 10% had large changes. Marriage and widowhood data showed different trajectories for different subgroups: some people showed lasting increases after marriage, while others returned to baseline or declined. Widows took about eight years to return to baseline. These findings suggest the set point exists but is "softer" than originally claimed, amenable to sustained life changes rather than rigidly fixed.
Q: Using the reserve capacity model, explain why SES affects health even in countries with universal health care.
A: Universal health care addresses access but not utilisation (low-SES people use services less and present later in pregnancy). More importantly, the reserve capacity model identifies three types of resources that buffer stress: tangible (money), interpersonal (social support), and personal (optimism, mastery, control). Low-SES environments hinder the development of all three, and chronic stress depletes whatever reserves exist. Perceived control alone accounted for half the effect in the Whitehall study. The mechanism is cumulative: chronic vigilance, elevated allostatic load, and depleted reserves compound over years.
Implicit theories connect to social comparison (entity theorists prefer normative; incrementalists prefer temporal) and to the fundamental attribution error across cultures. Agency/communion connects to promotion/prevention focus and to Brunstein's motive-congruent goals. Attachment connects to terror management theory (secure attachment buffers mortality salience effects), to rejection sensitivity (Downey's if-then signatures), and to the low-SE relationship work (Murray and Holmes). Prejudice connects to ironic processes (suppression rebounds) and to self-affirmation (which reduces prejudice). SES and health connect to positive illusions (Taylor's stress-buffer mechanism) and to construal (how we interpret our environment shapes physiological responses). Subjective well-being connects to Fredrickson's broaden-and-build model and to the entire course theme that small differences in how we construe our world can compound into large differences in outcomes over time.
Tags: implicit theories, entity theorist, incremental theorist, Dweck, Butler, performance goals, learning goals, fundamental attribution error, cultural attribution, Chiu, Hong, agency, communion, unmitigated agency, unmitigated communion, Helgeson, Eagly, gender schema, Bem, self-objectification, Fredrickson, relationship illusion, Murray, Holmes, idealisation, projected illusion, reflected illusion, buffer hypothesis, transformation hypothesis, low self-esteem, contamination hypothesis, attachment, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Hazan, Shaver, Bartholomew, secure, anxious, avoidant, dismissing, fearful, Baldwin, prejudice, Devine, Fazio, IAT, Greenwald, Banaji, automatic attitude, Modern Racism Scale, stereotype, suppression, perspective-taking, Moskowitz, Rudman, sexual harassment, gender schema, SES, socioeconomic status, allostatic load, reserve capacity, Whitehall study, telomeres, Epel, caregiver stress, subjective well-being, SWB, happiness, soft set point, heritability, materialism, Diener, peak-end rule, broaden and build, nun study, PSY 320, personality and social psychology