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all awarded to Megan N. Imundo. Both authors were involved in the conception and design of the study. Megan N. Imundo oversaw the programming and running of the experiments, and analyzed and interpreted the data with input from David N. Rapp. Megan N. Imundo drafted the manuscript and David N. Rapp provided substantial manuscript edits. Both authors approved the manuscript for submission.

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Students are often advised to do all of their studying in one good place, but restudying to-be-learned material in a new context can enhance subsequent recall (e.g., Smith et al., 1978). We examined whether there are similar benefits for testing. In Experiment 1 (n = 106), participants studied a 36-word list and 48 hours later—when back in the same or a new context—either restudied or recalled the list without feedback. After another 48 hours, all participants free-recalled the list in a new context. Experiment 2 (n = 203) differed by having the testing-condition participants restudy the list before being tested. Across both experiments, testing in a new context reduced recall, which carried over to the final test, whereas restudying in a new context did not impair (and in Experiment 2, significantly enhanced) recall. These findings reveal critical interactions between contextual-variation and retrieval-practice effects, which we interpret as consistent with a distribution-of-memory-strengths framework.

Introduction: Messages encouraging women to love their bodies are common elements of positive body image movements, but there are theoretical reasons to suspect that such messages may backfire. Methods: In a sample of 293 college women, we tested the impact of mentally repeating the affirmation “I love my body” on body satisfaction. We prompted participants to think either “I love my body” (affirmation condition) or “I am [age] years old” (control condition) while they completed a five-minute writing task. Results: Relative to the control, the affirmation condition led to significantly lower body satisfaction. Additionally, 53% of affirmation condition participants counterargued the body affirmation by writing something negative about their appearance; only 6% in the control condition wrote a negative appearance comment. Discussion: Results suggest that some messages intended to promote positive body image have the potential to decrease women's body satisfaction, in part because they prompt women to think of flaws in their appearance.