Suzannah F Williams

Publications (2)6.16 Total impact

• Article: Associations among family-of-origin food-related experiences, expectancies, and disordered eating.

  Agnes M Annus, Gregory T Smith, Sarah Fischer, Megan Hendricks, Suzannah F Williams
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  ABSTRACT: The study reported here integrates research on family-of-origin learning experiences and adult eating/thinness expectancies in the study of risk for eating disordered behavior. A sample of women manifesting a wide range of eating disordered behaviors (n = 66) were compared in their retrospective reports of family learning, current eating and dieting expectancies, and current eating disordered behaviors. History of food-related teasing from friends and family, negative maternal modeling, and friends' criticism of eating all related to both adult disordered behavior and adult eating and thinness expectancies. Tests of mediation supported the putative mediation by expectancies of the relationships between early experiences and adult disordered behavior. Family-of-origin learning experiences may influence adult eating disordered behavior by contributing to the formation of expectancies for reinforcement from eating and from thinness.
  International Journal of Eating Disorders 04/2007; 40(2):179-86. · 2.95 Impact Factor
• Article: Reactive personality-environment transactions and adult developmental trajectories.

  Gregory T Smith, Suzannah F Williams, Melissa A Cyders, Scott Kelley
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  ABSTRACT: The possibility, which is based on the concept of reactive personality-environment transactions, that individuals learn different things from the same experience as a function of personality differences may help explain individual differences in adult developmental trajectories. In an analogue, longitudinal design, business students were taught about stock market investing, and they engaged in 5 practice investment sessions. Although all participants earned the same returns on their investments, they varied in the expectancies they formed about stock investing as a function of their personality status. As anticipated, behavioral inhibition (heightened sensitivity to punishment) facilitated formation of negative investing expectancies and antagonized formation of positive investing expectancies, and behavioral activation (heightened sensitivity to reward) facilitated formation of positive investing expectancies and antagonized formation of negative investing expectancies. Differential learning in a task that approximated skill acquisition for a developmental transition implies that personality may help shape individual developmental trajectories in the adult years.
  Developmental Psychology 10/2006; 42(5):877-87. · 3.21 Impact Factor