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This study examined whether social support can reduce cardiovascular reactivity to an acute stressor. College students gave a speech in one of three social conditions: alone, in the presence of a supportive confederate, or in the presence of a nonsupportive confederate. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured at rest, before the speech, and during the speech. While anticipating and delivering their speech, supported and alone subjects exhibited significantly smaller increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressures than did nonsupported subjects. Supported subjects also exhibited significantly smaller increases in systolic blood pressure than did alone subjects before and during the speech. Men had higher stress-related increases in blood pressures than did women; but gender did not moderate the effects of social support on cardiovascular reactivity. These results provide experimental evidence of potential health benefits of social support during acute stressors.
The authors tested the hypothesis that the response-attenuating effects of affiliation under stress are limited to conditions that involve high social threat. Ninety-six young adult women were exposed to standardized psychological challenges in one of four conditions that involved two levels of social affiliation (alone or accompanied by a close friend) and two levels of social threat (variations in the social behavior and perceived status of the experimenter). Social affiliation was associated with attenuated blood pressure responses to the challenges but only under conditions of high social threat. Affiliation was not associated with differences in self-reported emotional response to the challenges nor with alterations in cognitive task appraisal. Exploratory analyses suggested that some of these effects were stronger in hostile or socially avoidant individuals. Implications of these findings for interpreting the literature on social support and cardiovascular reactivity, and for understanding the potential role of social support in reducing stress-related disease pathogenesis, are discussed.
A required period of social service has recently been suggested as an addition to the medical school curriculum. The intent of this action is to improve the social sensitivity of physicians. If such a requirement is not placed within the appropriate context it may fail to achieve its objectives. Attention to institutional commitment, faculty experience, student selection, and supporting didactic materials are offered as suggestions to improve the utility of a social service requirement.
Family demographic characteristics, family structure, family environment, and help-seeking variables were explored through interviews with two groups of Afro-American adolescents, including 52 clients and 52 nonclients. One parent of each adolescent was also interviewed. The ratio of single-parent families in the two groups differed significantly. Using one-way analysis of variance, significant differences were found between the means of the groups on five of the ten Family Environment Scale (FES) subscales. The family groups differed significantly on only one help-seeking variable, use of formal helpers. Adolescent client families reported using formal helpers more than did adolescent nonclient families (F = 2.69; df 102; p less than 0.05).
The nursing shortage is continuing toward its projected peak in 2010. As a profession we seem unable to devise effective strategies to enhance growth and overcome this looming crisis. By focusing on predictable barriers using methods of reductionism, nurses may have forgotten the biggest barrier: the challenge of creating a holistic professional group presence and inclusive nursing stance. Without first addressing and solving internal paradoxical identity struggles, nursing will continue to try to overcome the multiple internal and external barriers that resulted in the current shortage. This article discusses the group dynamics that have fostered the cyclic loop of nursing shortage situations and explores the reflection and inquiry needed to formulate a cohesive national nursing group posture.
The study was conducted to explore what it is like for individuals and family members to live with obesity as a chronic illness. An interpretive phenomenological design was used to obtain and analyze interviews of 13 obese individuals and 5 of their family members. A convenience sample was used to recruit the subjects who participated in the audiotaped interviews. The interviews used open-ended questions. Audiotapes were transcribed and analyzed for identifying the major themes within each transcript, and patterns of meaning across narratives. The major themes and patterns were described through written essays and group discussions about the transcripts. The participants revealed frequent experiences of stigmatization and discrimination on the basis of their obesity. Those who are obese are reminded through their everyday encounters with family members, peers, healthcare providers, and strangers, that their being deviates from social norms, and that they are inferior to those who are not obese. Obese subjects experience a pattern of denigration and condemnation that is so pervasive as to constitute what Harvey has called civilized oppression. A discussion of the social construction of obesity and the elements of civilized oppression, as they are experienced by those who are obese, offers new insights into interpersonal relationships that can provide a foundation for more effective care of the obese population.
In contrast to respiratory allergies, the epidemiology of food allergy has been little studied, and there is no strong evidence for an increasing incidence, either among infants and children or in adults. Neither are there any studies showing regional differences in prevalence. On the contrary, studies in Estonia, Iceland and Sweden indicate a similar prevalence during the first 2 years of life, both in verified food allergy and reported food intolerance. This is despite a low prevalence of respiratory allergies in the two former countries and a high prevalence in Sweden. The major problem with such epidemiological studies lies in the fact that there are no simple diagnostic criteria to verify the diagnosis. So far IgE determinations have been the only available diagnostic test, and their value is limited by poor sensitivity and the fact that at best they would only verify a small proportion of food intolerance, i.e. that caused by IgE-mediated reactions. A diagnosis of food allergy/intolerance must be based on a double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge, and not on the patient's or doctor's impression. More studies are required from different regions in order to identify similarities and differences in the patterns of food allergy. In particular, there is a need for properly conducted epidemiological studies in adults. Such studies should be interdisciplinary, as the cultural and social perceptions of food allergy and food intolerance would be expected to have a major impact on prevalence, perhaps even more than medical factors.
We examined prospectively factors influencing social and occupational disability and social adjustment among patients with major depressive disorder. The Vantaa Depression Study comprises a cohort of psychiatric inpatients and outpatients with major depressive disorder in the city of Vantaa, Finland. We prospectively interviewed 193 of 269 (72%) patients both 6 and 18 months after baseline. Axis I and II diagnoses were assessed via semistructured WHO Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry 2.0 and SCID-II interviews. Global disability and social and work adjustment were assessed. Patients' functional disability and social adjustment were alleviated concurrently with recovery from depression during the follow-up. The current level of functioning and social adjustment of a patient with depression was predicted by severity of depression, recurrence before baseline and during follow-up, lack of full remission, and time spent depressed. Comorbid psychiatric disorders, personality traits (neuroticism), and perceived social support had significant influence.
This paper reviews a recent set of behavioural studies that examine the scope and nature of the representational system underlying theory-of-mind development. Studies with typically developing infants, adults and children with autism all converge on the claim that there is a specialized input system that uses not only morphological cues, but also behavioural cues to categorize novel objects as agents. Evidence is reviewed in which 12- to 15-month-old infants treat certain non-human objects as if they have perceptual/attentional abilities, communicative abilities and goal-directed behaviour. They will follow the attentional orientation of an amorphously shaped novel object if it interacts contingently with them or with another person. They also seem to use a novel object's environmentally directed behaviour to determine its perceptual/attentional orientation and object-oriented goals. Results from adults and children with autism are strikingly similar, despite adults' contradictory beliefs about the objects in question and the failure of children with autism to ultimately develop more advanced theory-of-mind reasoning. The implications for a general theory-of-mind development are discussed.
Two studies examined the effect of Extrinsic Value Orientation (Kasser & Ryan, 1993, 1996) upon harvesting strategies and personal profit within commons dilemmas, in which individual and group interests can be at odds. At an individual or within-group level of analysis, extrinsically oriented persons (who value money, fame, and popularity) harvested more than intrinsically oriented persons (who value self-acceptance, intimacy, and community). However, a counteracting group-level effect was found such that groups with a greater number of extrinsic members harvested less on average than did groups with more intrinsic members, because their commons did not last as long. As a result, even excessive harvesters within extrinsic groups did no better than did self-restrained harvesters within intrinsic groups. Supplementary analyses indicate that extrinsic values are associated with acquisitiveness regarding resources, more so than apprehension regarding others' acquisitiveness.
Agency and communion are broad dimensions of personality that reflect a focus on the self and a focus on others, respectively. In this article, we distinguish unmitigated agency, a focus on the self to the exclusion of others, flom agency, and we distinguish unmitigated communion, a focus on others to the exclusion of self, from communion. We argue that it is unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion that are linked to domains of problem behavior, in particular relationship difficulties and poor health behavior. Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion are associated with a lack of support from others, a reluctance to ask others for help, and a range of poor health behaviors. The reasons for these links differ. The links to problem behavior for unmitigated communion individuals stem from their tendency to subjugate their own needs to the needs of others and their dependence on others for esteem. The links to problem behavior for unmitigated agency individuals stem from their unwillingness to attend to relationships and their negative view of others.
Traditional theories of how children acquire values or standards of behavior have emphasized the importance of specific parenting techniques or styles and have acknowledged the importance of a responsive parent-child relationship, but they have failed to differentiate among forms of responsiveness, have stressed internalization of values as the desired outcome, and have limited their scope to a small set of parenting strategies or methods. This paper outlines new directions for research. It acknowledges the central importance of parents and argues for research that (1) demonstrates that parental understanding of a particular child's characteristics and situation rather than use of specific strategies or styles is the mark of effective parenting; (2) traces the differential impact of varieties of parent responsiveness; (3) assesses the conditions surrounding the fact that parents have goals other than internalization when socializing their children, and evaluates the impact of that fact; and (4) considers a wider range of parenting strategies.
This study investigated whether children's and adolescents' judgments about exclusion of peers from peer group activities on the basis of their gender and race would differ by both age level and the context in which the exclusion occurred. Individual interviews about exclusion in several different contexts were conducted with 130 middle-class, European American children and adolescents. Younger children were expected to reject exclusion, by using judgments based on moral reasoning, regardless of the potential cost to group functioning, whereas older children were expected to condone exclusion on the basis of group membership in cases in which the inclusion of these children might interrupt effective group functioning. On measures of judgments, justifications for those judgments, and ratings of the appropriateness of exclusion, the vast majority of children used moral reasoning and rejected exclusion in contexts in which only the presence of a stereotype justified it. As expected, however, older children (13 years) were more likely to allow exclusion than younger children (7 and 10 years) when group functioning was threatened, and they justified this exclusion by using appeals to effective group functioning.
Predictors of 5-year-old kindergartners' insights into their friends, and their accounts of liking and conflict with their friends were investigated, with a focus on both the children's and their friends' social understanding during the preschool period, and the quality of their preschool friendships. Seventy children initially studied at 4 years utilizing social cognition tasks and observations of dyadic play with their friends were followed over the transition to school; at school they were interviewed about their friendships and their social understanding was assessed. One group had remained close to their preschool friends, whereas a second group had formed new friendships. Social understanding, language abilities, and prosocial characteristics of both the children and preschool friends, their successful communication and shared pretend play experiences during the preschool period, and their mothers' educational level were related to their perspectives on their current school friends. Liking of current friends was linked to relationship history and maternal educational level for both those with old and with new friends, whereas insight was related to assessments of social cognition.
The present study examined the relationship between maternal self-efficacy, dysfunctional discipline practices and child conduct problems. Specifically, three levels of self-efficacy, global, domain and task-specific self-efficacy, were assessed in mothers of 2- to 8-year-old children with conduct problems (clinic group, n=45) and non-clinic mothers from the community (non-clinic group, n=79). Measures of global, domain and task-specific self-efficacy were completed by mothers. Clinic mothers reported significantly lower self-efficacy than non-clinic mothers for all but one of the parenting tasks assessed. Both groups of mothers reported lowest self-efficacy for similar parenting tasks. In the sample as a whole self-efficacy measures were significant predictors of maternal discipline style after controlling for other parent, child and risk factors. Of the self-efficacy variables behavioural self-efficacy was the best predictor of mothers discipline style. The findings support the importance of developing parenting strategies that enable parents to generalize their parenting skills to a diverse range of diverse parenting contexts both in the home and in the community.