Health behaviors are positive or negative in valence and are associated with an individual's overall health. There are two types of health behaviors: health-promoting behaviors and health-compromising behaviors. Personality traits, particularly the Big Five, show robust associations with both types of health behaviors. The pattern of associations between personality and health behaviors is discussed.

Research suggests the important role of romantic partners in shaping how individuals feel about their bodies (e.g., Markey & Markey, 2013, 2014), but the processes that result in changes in body satisfaction within relationships have rarely been examined. To investigate how partners may potentially affect body image, 72 lesbian couples and 72 gay male couples (total N = 288) completed body image assessments on their own and with the help of their partners. Multilevel modeling revealed that both men and women reported an improvement in body satisfaction after talking with their partners while completing the body image assessment together. Improvement in body satisfaction appeared to result from participants' reconsideration of their body ideals, not their appraisal of their current bodies. Implications of these findings for improving body image in the context of relationships are discussed.

The target article offers a comprehensive approach to conceptualizing psychological factors contributing to obesity. Strengths of Marks’ theory include giving body image a central focus, discussing the importance of emotional states on food reliance, and conveying avenues for interventions and treatment. Marks’ approach carefully delineates the interpersonal nature of obesity, although our work suggests that romantic partners are an especially important and understudied factor relevant to eating behaviors, body image, and obesity risk. The target article is an important step toward understanding the complex factors that contribute to obesity.

The current study uses a prospective, longitudinal design and lifespan perspective to understand how child personality relates to directly observed adult behavior during cognitive testing. Teacher assessments of child Big Five personality in elementary school were correlated with directly observed behaviors during a videotaped cognitive test four decades later. Past work suggested Openness and Conscientiousness may relate to task-relevant academic behaviors. Childhood Openness was associated with several behaviors, even after controlling for participant's cognitive performance. Childhood Conscientiousness was also related to behavior, but not as expected. Other Big Five ratings were not reliably related to behavior. The study examined personality stability in a unique way and suggests a further examination of how Openness in children manifests in later behavior.

Members of 63 lesbian and 72 gay couples reported how frequently their partners engaged in diet-related social support and control (persuasion and pressure) and how they responded behaviorally and emotionally to such attempts. Although lesbian women received more frequent diet-related social support than gay men, there were no gender differences in the receipt of diet-related social control. Results of multilevel models that controlled for body mass index revealed that all participants responded to all types of involvement with guilt and to support and persuasion with appreciation. Responses to pressure differed for lesbian women and gay men and acted as a function of relationship quality. Findings from this study may increase awareness of the importance of same-sex partners' involvement in eating behaviors.

In situation perceptions, the objective situation and its unique construal are confounded. We propose a multiple-rater approach where situations are rated by raters in situ (who experienced the situations first-hand) and raters ex situ (who read participants' factual descriptions of the situations). Two multi-wave studies (Austria: N = 176-179,3 waves; USA: N = 202,4 waves), examined associations between personality traits (Big Five OCEAN) and four sources of ratings of situation characteristics (Situational Eight DIAMONDS), namely (a) in situ (situation experience), (b) ex situ (situation contact, conservative), (c) what is shared between in situ and ex situ (situation contact, liberal), and (d) in situ controlled for ex situ (situation construal). Replicable evidence was found that personality is associated with the situations people encounter as well as their construal of them. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rauthmann et al. are to be commended for their systematic approach to defining, describing and postulating how to study situations. Their article has great potential to advance and bring coherence to the psychological assessment of situations. I argue that at least two additional considerations-the diagnosticity of situations and the repeatability of situations-are worth greater discussion and evaluation. Copyright (C) 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology.

This study examined weight status and dietary restraint among same-sex couples using Actor–Partner Interdependence Models. Body mass indices and restrained eating behaviors (i.e., cognitive dietary restraint, uncontrolled eating, and emotional eating) were assessed for members of 144 same-sex couples (72 lesbian and 72 gay couples; mean age = 33.74 years, standard deviation = 11.27 years). Results indicated that both men and women who were relatively heavy and who had relatively thin partners were at particular risk of engaging in restrained eating. These findings extend our understanding of partner comparison processes within the context of same-sex relationships in determining men and women’s eating behaviors.

Research suggests that romantic partners may benefit each other’s health, but factors contributing to partners’ involvement in eating regulation have been relatively unexplored. In this study, 104 heterosexual couples, 72 female same-sex and 72 male same-sex couples were examined in order to understand how partners’ weight statuses were related to attempts to regulate eating behaviors. Weight status was assessed via body mass index and eating regulation was assessed using the Partner Feeding Questionnaire. Actor-Partner Interdependence Models revealed that gay men were particularly likely to regulate their partners’ eating behaviors. Additionally, partners were found to regulate their significant others’ eating behaviors when their significant others were heavy. Women were most likely to attempt to regulate their partners’ eating behaviors when they were thin and their partners were heavy. These findings are discussed in the context of current obesity trends and the role of romantic partners in healthy weight management.

Taxonomies of person characteristics are well developed, whereas taxonomies of psychologically important situation characteristics are underdeveloped. A working model of situation perception implies the existence of taxonomizable dimensions of psychologically meaningful, important, and consequential situation characteristics tied to situation cues, goal affordances, and behavior. Such dimensions are developed and demonstrated in a multi-method set of 6 studies. First, the "Situational Eight DIAMONDS" dimensions Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Deception, and Sociality (Study 1) are established from the Riverside Situational Q-Sort (Sherman, Nave, & Funder, 2010, 2012, 2013; Wagerman & Funder, 2009). Second, their rater agreement (Study 2) and associations with situation cues and goal/trait affordances (Studies 3 and 4) are examined. Finally, the usefulness of these dimensions is demonstrated by examining their predictive power of behavior (Study 5), particularly vis-à-vis measures of personality and situations (Study 6). Together, we provide extensive and compelling evidence that the DIAMONDS taxonomy is useful for organizing major dimensions of situation characteristics. We discuss the DIAMONDS taxonomy in the context of previous taxonomic approaches and sketch future research directions.

•Same-sex dyads reported their interpersonal problems and relationship quality.•Global interpersonal problems were related to relationship discord.•Vindictive men and women tended to experience relationship discord.•Overly domineering women had partners who expressed relationship discord.

Using the Riverside Situational Q-Sort (RSQ), this study investigates the relationship between personality, gender and individual differences in perceptions (or construals) of four situations experienced by undergraduate participants (N = 205) in their daily lives. Results indicate that while people generally agree about the psychological characteristics of situations, they also have reliably distinctive perceptions that are related to personality and gender. Further, lay judges are fairly accurate in predicting the systematic ways in which personality and gender are related to distinctive perceptions, showing that these relationships align with prior theorizing and with common sense. The small but reliable individual differences in situational construal demonstrated by this research may accumulate into large and consequential effects over time. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.