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Social support and social norms: do both contribute to predicting leisure-time exercise?

OBJECTIVE: To clarify the contribution of social support and social norms to exercise behavior. METHODS: A sample of 363 college students completed a questionnaire that assessed social support and social negativity from friends, descriptive and injunctive social norms related to friends, perceived behavioral control, attitude, intention, and leisure-time exercise. RESULTS: Esteem social support was the strongest predictor of total and strenuous leisure-time exercise (P < .001), and descriptive norm was a significant (P < .01 predictor of strenuous leisure-time exercise. CONCLUSION: Social support and social norms contribute independently to our understanding of variation in the frequency of strenuous leisure-time exercise.

Adolescent↗

Early experience and social processes in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta): II. Complex social interaction.

Differences in simple and complex social behavior were examined between monkeys reared with either animate, though nonconspecific, or inanimate surrogate mothers. In the first experiment, members of each rearing condition were formed into 6-member social groups for ten 5.5-hr trials. In the second experiment, members of each rearing condition were formed into social groups twice daily, one formation comprising all 6 group-members and one comprising 5 group-members, with a different individual excluded each day. Although members of both groups displayed deficient forms of social behavior, individuals reared with animate companions were able to use their limited social repertoires in more sophisticated ways, depending upon the social context. The results are discussed in terms of two "tasks" of social ontogeny, the acquisition of behavioral and social competences.

Aggression↗

Social dominance orientation and opinions about what is America's most serious social problem.

This study tested whether a measure of Social Dominance Orientation was associated with opinions about America's most serious social problem. 150 undergraduates enrolled in social problems classes responded to the 14-item scale and to an open-ended question, "In your opinion, what is the most serious social problem in our country today?". Analysis shows that mean scale scores differed significantly across social problem responses. Correspondence analysis, plotting association between scale scores and social problem responses, was interpreted as support for social dominance theory. Higher scale scores were associated with problems of crime and negative values and lower scores with problems of education and racism.

Adolescent↗

How schoolchildren propose to negotiate: the role of social withdrawal, social anxiety, and locus of control.

The role of social anxiety, social withdrawal, and locus of control in the developmental level of interpersonal negotiation strategies (INS) when resolving hypothetical conflicts was examined in a short-term longitudinal study (fall and spring). Applying a balanced design, 96 children aged 8 and 11 from 8 classes participated in the study. At both assessments, results indicated that sociable children were more likely to exhibit greater competence in INS than socially withdrawn children. However, both concurrent and longitudinal analyses indicated that degree of social anxiety tended to influence this relation. Among less socially anxious children, the sociable children did exhibit greater INS competence than those more socially withdrawn, but this relation was not revealed among the more socially anxious children. Finally, on the whole, children who showed internal locus of control were more competent at INS than children with external locus of control.

Anxiety↗

Social status, social context, and arterial blood pressure.

As social change and economic development have proceeded, the prevalence of chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases, has increased in the developing world. In part this is due to the adoption of diets and other health behaviors characteristics of industrialized nations; in part it is a function of changing social and economic circumstances. In this paper, we describe the development and testing of a model designed to account for social and economic effects on cardiovascular disease risk. The model incorporates the fact that global economic processes have made a lifestyle characterized by the consumption of Euroamerican material goods and information a basis for the assignment of social status in local communities. But economic change at the local level is rarely sufficient to provide a foundation for individuals' status aspirations. Hence, many individuals attempt to maintain lifestyle inconsistent with their economic standing, a variable we term lifestyle incongruity. Here we described how this factor is associated with higher blood pressure in a variety of settings and also how the effects of lifestyle incongruity can be modified in local contexts by social class and social role processes. This latter process, contextual modification, is illustrated by data from American Samoa. In this example, the association of lifestyle incongruity with blood pressure is examined in 30 male household heads and 26 spouses. After an examination of Samoan ethnography focused attention on the importance of age and gender differences as defining social contexts of intracultural variation, the model was modified to assess interactions between age and gender as they affect the association of lifestyle incongruity and blood pressure. Lifestyle incongruity is strongly associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure for the younger household heads, minimally associated with blood pressure for older household heads, and only slightly associated with blood pressure of their spouses. The regression coefficients for the lifestyle incongruity by age by sex interaction term was significant at P < or = 0.01 for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The consistency of these results with expectations based on the ethnographic record is emphasized in the interpretation. We feel that the lifestyle incongruity model represents and empirically successful attempt to link global political-economic processes, local social structure, and biological outcomes.

Adult↗

Are there more than cross-sectional relationships of social support and support networks with functional limitations and psychological distress in early rheumatoid arthritis? the European Research on Incapacitating Diseases and Social Support Longitudinal Study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether greater social support and support network are cross-sectionally associated with less functional limitations and psychological distress in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA); whether this association is constant over time; and whether increases in social support or support network are associated with less functional limitations and psychological distress. METHODS: Subjects were from the European Research on Incapacitating Diseases and Social Support cohort and had early RA. Social support, support network, functional limitations (Health Assessment Questionnaire), and psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire) were assessed annually. Variance and covariance analyses with repeated measures were performed. RESULTS: A total of 542 subjects were assessed for 3 years. On average, patients with a greater amount of specific social support or a stronger specific support network experienced less functional limitation and less psychological distress. Changes in a given subject's functional limitations and psychological distress did not depend on his or her baseline social support or support network. Neither social support nor support network change over time. CONCLUSION: There may be a cross-sectional link between specific social support or support network and functional limitations and psychological distress, but no longitudinal association could be evidenced.

Adult↗

Social network, social support and acute chest complaints among young and middle-aged patients in an emergency department--a case-control study.

The risk of developing non-specific chest complaints was higher among young and middle-aged persons with a weak social network and low social support, when comparing cases with controls at a hospital emergency department (ED). The study was comprised of 62 cases; two different control groups were recruited from other patients at the medical ED (n = 67) and from patients at the surgical ED with urolithiasis or cholecystitis (n = 31). Relative risks for non-specific chest complaints were 2.3-3.4 for patients with a low score on two of the social network factors (an overall index and social anchorage) and two social support factors (emotional esteem support and support by a confidant). These results could be used for developing guidelines for a more adequate clinical management of these patients, as well as for the prevention of stress-related conditions in general. An analysis was made of the conceptual validity of the instrument used for assessing social network and social support. It was concluded that structural elements, such as social network factors, represented a more valid measurement that was less affected by subjectivity. Future research is of importance for finding overbridging concepts, rather than to further continue the dissection of presently used indices into even more 'specific' variables.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Ethnicity, social class and health. A population-based study on the influence of social factors on self-reported illness in 223 Latin American refugees, 333 Finnish and 126 south European labour migrants and 841 Swedish controls.

This article shows the influence of ethnicity and social class on self-rated illness compared with social factors and lifestyle. We were particularly interested in health differences between refugees and labour migrants. The study population consisted of 223 Latin American refugees domiciled in Lund, 333 Finnish and 126 South European labour migrants and 841 Swedish controls. The data were analysed unmatched with logistic regression (multivariate analyses) in main effect models. The strongest independent risk indicator for long-term illness was being a Latin American refugee, with an estimated odds ratio of 2.78 (1.95-3.81), or a South European 1.80 (1.17-2.71). Low social class, low material standard, age 45-64 years and overweight were significantly associated with long-term illness. There was a strong association between being a Latin American refugee and ill-health, followed by a weaker association for South European labour migrants and no association for Finlanders and Swedes when controlled for other social factors in logistic regression. Low social class, age 45-64 years, poor social network, not feeling secure in daily life and not taking regular exercise were associated with ill-health. South Europeans were the only ethnic group who showed an association to working impairment and disability. Latin Americans were significantly associated with acute illness with an estimated odds ratio of 2.00 (1.32-2.94). In conclusion, ethnicity was shown to be an independent powerful social dimension compared with social class in relation to self-rated illness.

Adolescent↗

Association between amygdala hyperactivity to harsh faces and severity of social anxiety in generalized social phobia.

BACKGROUND: Previous functional brain imaging studies of social anxiety have implicated amygdala hyperactivity in response to social threat, though its relationship to quantitative measures of clinical symptomatology remains unknown. The primary aim of this study was to examine the association between response to emotionally harsh faces in the amygdala, a region implicated in social and threat-related processing, and severity of social anxiety symptoms in patients with generalized social phobia (GSP). METHODS: Ten subjects with GSP naive to psychotropic medications and without psychiatric comorbidity and ten healthy comparison subjects matched on age, gender, ethnicity, and education completed the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale and underwent high-field (4Tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing blocks of emotionally salient faces. RESULTS: Relative to happy faces, activation of the amygdala in response to harsh (angry, disgusted, fearful) faces was greater in GSP patients than in controls, and the extent of amygdala activation was positively correlated with severity of social anxiety symptoms, but not general state or trait anxiety levels. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that amygdala activation to interpersonal threat can be specifically linked to the severity of social anxiety symptoms of individual GSP patients, and thus, may serve as a useful functional marker of disease severity.

Adult↗

Social interpretation bias and generalized social phobia: the influence of developmental experiences.

Patients with generalized social phobia (N = 42) and non-phobic community controls (N = 42) engaged in a social interaction with an experimental assistant whose behavior was used to create either a positive or an ambiguous social environment. Participants then rated their own performance and their partner's behavior. As a group, social phobic patients displayed negatively biased self-judgments, but failed to display biased social interpretations. Among the social phobia group, a social developmental history marked by parental hostility was associated with negative interpretations of partner behavior and a history of parental overprotection was associated with less sensitivity to partner behavior. The results supported cognitive models of social phobia, which implicate negative learning experiences in the development of information processing biases.

Adult↗

Social functioning, theory of mind and neurocognition in outpatients with schizophrenia; mental state decoding may be a better predictor of social functioning than mental state reasoning.

Few studies have directly investigated the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) deficits and social functioning in schizophrenia. At the same time, the impact of mental state decoding tasks on social dysfunction has also not yet been investigated. In this study, the relationship between theory of mind deficits and social functioning was investigated among 50 patients with schizophrenia. A mental state decoding task known as 'The Eyes test' and a mental state reasoning task 'The Hinting test' were applied to assess ToM abilities, while the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) was used to assess social functioning. Non-ToM neurocognitive tests were also given to the patients. Results of the study show how theory of mind and working memory performances of patients with good functional outcome proved to be significantly better than those of inadequately functioning patients. Results also indicate that performance on the Eyes test was the best predictor of social functioning and that negative symptoms also contributed to poor social functioning. It is concluded in this study that mental state decoding skills appear to be the most important cognitive mediator of social functioning.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Defeat is a major stressor in males while social instability is stressful mainly in females: towards the development of a social stress model in female rats.

Social stress models appear useful in elucidating the interrelationship between stress, mood disorders, and drug efficacy. However, reliable social stress models for females are virtually lacking. The aim of this study was to determine stress-related consequences of (a) defeat in aggressive encounters and (b) social instability, in male and female rats. Defeat in male and female subjects was induced by aggressive male residents and female residents made aggressive by surgery (mediobasal hypothalamic lesion [MBHL]), respectively. Aggressiveness of resident males and resident MBHL females was remarkably similar. Alternating isolation and mixed-sex crowding phases with membership rotation were used to induce social instability. Aggression was kept low in the latter paradigm by manipulating crowding group composition. Defeat stress reduced weight gain, and increased both adrenals and plasma corticosterone in males. Only adrenal weight was affected in females. Social instability reduced weight gain, and induced thymus involution, adrenal hypertrophy and elevated plasma corticosterone levels in females. Only weight gain and thymus weights were affected in males. It is concluded that defeat stresses males more than females, while social instability is more stressful for females than for males, if aggressive contacts are low. It is suggested that the social instability model is a good model of social stress in females.

Aggression↗

The pharmacologic and expectancy effects of alcohol on social anxiety in individuals with social phobia.

Individuals with social phobia are at an increased risk for alcohol problems. Individuals with social phobia could increase their risk for pathological alcohol use if they drink as a means of coping with anxiety-provoking social situations. Providing a circumscribed test of this view, we evaluate the effect of alcohol on the intensity of social phobia anxiety responses. Sixty-one individuals with social phobia gave two speech challenges in front of a group ('social anxiety challenge'), one occurring before and one after they consumed either: (a) an alcoholic drink they were told contained alcohol ('alcohol group'), (b) a non-alcoholic drink they were told contained alcohol ('placebo group'), or, (c) a non-alcoholic drink they were told contained no alcohol ('control group'). Both the alcohol group and the placebo group showed greater reduction in performance anxiety from the first to the second speech challenge than did the control group. Further, there was a strong trend in the data for the alcohol group to show greater reduction in performance anxiety from the first to the second speech challenge than did the placebo group. We concluded from these findings that the pharmacologic effects of alcohol and the belief that one consumed alcohol decrease social performance anxiety in an additive fashion. These results provide direct support for the negatively reinforcing properties of alcohol and are consistent with the view that symptom reduction may motivate alcohol use among socially phobic individuals.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Generalized social phobia versus avoidant personality disorder: differences in psychopathology, personality traits, and social and occupational functioning.

Four groups of patients with social phobia (SP) were compared with regard to psychopathologic characteristics, personality traits, and social and occupational functioning. Fifteen persons with discrete social phobia without any personality disorder (DSP), 28 persons with generalized social phobia (GSP) without any personality disorder, 24 persons with GSP with a single diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder (APD), and 23 persons with GSP with more than one PD were included in the present study. APD had higher levels of social phobic avoidance, depressive symptoms, neuroticism, introversion, and social and occupational impairment as compared with GSP. DSP was found to be the least severe condition. OPD was the most impaired on nearly all variables. Logistic regression analyses revealed that introversion and depressive symptoms were able to predict correctly the presence or absence of an APD in 85% of those with social phobia. These findings are discussed in the light of the severity continuum hypothesis of social phobia and APD and recommendations for future research are given.

Adolescent↗

Striving to do well what comes naturally: social support, developmental psychopathology, and social policy.

Social support can have significant stress-preventive and stress-buffering benefits for troubled individuals in everyday circumstances. Consequently, it is not surprising that many therapeutic and preventive programs enlist social support to address problems of child and family psychopathology, especially in the context of "two-generation interventions" that seek to improve child well-being by strengthening parental functioning and parent-child relationships. Home visitation programs are the best known of these two-generation strategies and have become the focus of state-level and national efforts to support families and prevent harm to children. The conclusions of basic research studies on social support converge significantly with the findings of evaluation studies of the impact of home visitation programs to yield important new insights into the conditions in which formal social support is likely to be beneficial. or ineffective, in improving child and family well-being. Both basic and applied research literatures emphasize the importance of linking formal social support to informal social networks in extended families, neighborhoods, and communities, and attending to the complex reactions of the recipients of support and the needs of support providers. These studies are reviewed and evaluated to highlight the connections between social support, developmental psychopathology. and social policy.

Child↗

On the relative importance of haplodiploidy, assortative mating and social synergy on the evolutionary emergence of social behavior.

Advances in multiagent simulation techniques make it possible to study more realistic dynamics of complex systems and allow evolutionary theories to be tested. Here I use simulations to assess the relative importance of reproductive systems (haplodiploidy vs. diploidy), mate selection (assortative mating vs. random mating) and social economics (pay-off matrices of evolutionary games) in the evolutionary dynamics leading to the emergence of social cooperation in the provision of parental care. The simulations confirm that haplo-diploid organisms and organisms mating assortatively have a higher probability for fixing alleles and require less favorable conditions for their fixation, than diploids or organisms mating randomly. The simulations showed that social behavior was most likely to emerge a) when the cost for parental investment was much lower than the benefits to the offspring, b) when cooperation improved synergistically the fitness of offspring compared to the corresponding egoistic behavior and c) when alleles coding for altruistic or social behavior could be rapidly fixed in the population, thanks to mechanisms such as haplo-diploidy and/or assortative mating. Cooperative social behavior always appeared if sociality conferred much higher fitness gains compared to non cooperative alternatives suggesting that the most important factors for the emergence and maintenance of social behavior are those based on energetic or efficiency considerations. The simulations, in congruence with the scant experimental evidence available, suggest that economic considerations rather than genetic ones are critical in explaining the emergence and maintenance of sociality.

Animals↗

Social phobia treated as a problem in social functioning: a controlled comparison of two behavioural group approaches.

OBJECTIVE: Treatments for social phobia result typically in significant anxiety and avoidance reduction; the repercussions in terms of social functioning, however, are not clear. This controlled study compared two approaches designed to improve the social functioning of social phobics. METHOD: Sixty-eight socially phobic patients were randomly assigned to two treatments focused on improving interpersonal relationships either with or without social skills training or a waiting list; 60 completed treatment and 59 a 1-year follow-up. Treatment was administered in small groups, 14 sessions altogether. RESULTS: No clinically meaningful change was observed during the waiting period. A statistically significant and equivalent improvement obtained in both treatment conditions. CONCLUSION: Both treatments resulted in reduced anxiety, avoidance, general psychopathology and better social functioning that maintained over follow-up. Continuing improvement in remission rates was noted; fully 60% of the patients no longer fulfilled criteria for social phobia at the end of 1-year follow-up.

Adult↗

Social conflict, social support, and psychological distress: evidence of cross-domain buffering effects.

A longitudinal study examined the relative and joint effects of perceived social support and social conflict on psychological distress in 228 college students. Women had higher perceived social support from roommates and friends and less conflict with roommates than did men; there were no gender differences in level of conflict with friends or psychological distress. Roommate conflict predicted increases in psychological distress over time; this effect was attenuated by high levels of perceived social support from friends. Friend conflict also predicted increases in psychological distress over time; this effect was attenuated by high levels of perceived social support from roommates. These results show the importance of negative and positive aspects of social experiences to emotional functioning and the importance of compensatory social support for individuals facing social conflicts.

Adaptation, Psychological↗