Do Written Reports of Suicide Induce High-School Students to Believe that Suicidal Contagion Will Occur?1

To see if high-school students who read that a distressed adolescent knew about suicide thought that suicidal contagion would occur, 66 consenting high-school students read a written account of John, a high-schooler with multiple problems including knowing someone who had died (either by suicide or viral illness). They then anonymously completed the UCLA Loneliness scale and a questionnaire about what John (or they in the same situation) might do. When John knew of a sympathetic response to a viral illness death, or an unsympathetic response to suicide, he was rated as relatively more likely to make new friends and less likely to want to die. These high school students saw themselves as immune to suicidal contagion from a written report, but thought that others might be vulnerable if people were sympathetic.     

What Prevents Adolescents from Seeking Help After a Suicide Education Program?

Perceived barriers to help-seeking among adolescents attending a suicide education program were examined. A total of 854 high school students in Colorado completed one of two questionnaires, measuring barriers to help-seeking for self or friend. The most prominent barriers for self were: inability to discuss problems with adults, self-overconfidence, fear of hospitalization, and lack of closeness to school adults. The most prominent barriers for troubled friends were: friendship concerns, unapproachability of school adults, fear of friend's hospitalization, and underestimating friend's problems. Results reveal multiple constraints limiting the program's utilization, supporting the need for comprehensive system approaches to suicide prevention.     

Social Perceptions of Termination of Medical Treatment: Suicide or Rational Decision?

In two studies, college students read about a critically ill patient who died after CPR attempts failed, CPR was not attempted pursuant to a "Do-Not-Resuscitate" (DNR) order, he terminated all medical treatment, or he self-administered a lethal injection. Death resulting from treatment termination was perceived as significantly more unconventional than were death by CPR failure or DNR order. Ending treatment and lethal injection were perceived as equivalent acts of suicide, and resulted in the patient's being seen as less rational and less capable of making health care decisions. Timing of the patient's decisions regarding treatment, as indicated by the presence or absence of Living Will information, did not alter these perceptions. Results are discussed in light of opposing hypotheses regarding views of "naive" social perceivers toward actions with identical outcomes: that acts of commission are perceived as causal and rated more negatively than acts of omission (Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1991), and that acts seen as abnormal are attributed greater causal impact (Hilton & Slugoski, 1986).     

Suicide and Firearm Prevalence: Are Youth Disproportionately Affected?

The effect of firearm availability on suicide may differ among age groups. We used regression analysis to examine the relationship between suicide rates and household firearm ownership for four age groups in the nine census regions from 1979 to 1994, adjusting for regional divorce rates, education, unemployment, and urbanicity. Results showed that firearm ownership levels are correlated with suicide rates among 15- to 24-year-olds and 65- to 84-year-olds, but not among 25-to 64-year-olds. The findings suggest that if the relationship is causal, a 10% fall in regional firearm ownership levels would lead to a 3.0% decrease in suicide rates.     

Perceptions of South Florida Hispanic and Anglo Catholics: From Whom Would They Seek Help?

Hispanic and Anglo Catholics in South Florida who attended Sunday services (N = 473) were surveyed to determine their help-seeking preferences for moral concerns, mental disorders, and practical life/family problems. Respondents were asked to indicate whether they would seek help from a priest; a priest with a degree and license in one of the helping professions (clinical social work, psychology, psychiatry, or mental health counseling); a layperson with a degree and license in one of the helping professions (clinical social work, psychology, psychiatry, or mental health counseling); or if they believed they could deal with the situation without external assistance. The findings suggest that Anglo Catholics prefer assistance from a person who was credentialed in one of the helping professions, whereas Hispanic Catholics would seek help from a priest with or without a background in the helping professions.     

Social Identity and Perceptions of Media Persuasion: Are We Always Less Influenced Than Others?1

People typically perceive negative media content (e.g., violence) to have more impact on others than on themselves (a third-person effect). To examine the perceived effects of positive content (e.g., public-service advertisements) and the moderating role of social identities, we examined students' perceptions of the impact of AIDS advertisements on self, students (in-group), nonstudents (out-group), and people in general. Perceived self-other differences varied with the salience of student identity. Low identifiers displayed the typical third-person effect, whereas high identifiers were more willing to acknowledge impact on themselves and the student in-group. Further, when influence was normatively acceptable within the in-group, high identifiers perceived self and students (us) as more influenced than nonstudents (them). The theoretical and practical implications of this reversal in third-person perceptions are discussed.     

Are Ethicality Perceptions of Different Counterproductive Behaviors Affected by Workplace Dependencies?1

Dependency theory posits that relationships in organizations are affected by perceived dependencies. The present paper investigated whether the perceived ethicality of various counterproductive behaviors depends on perceived dependencies. Falsifying time reports and using organizational resources for personal use were considered to be more unethical by individuals who scored low on dependency, whereas concealing one's errors was considered to be more unethical by individuals who scored high on dependency. These results were not attributable to social desirability bias. Implications are elaborated.     

Suicide Terrorists: Are They Suicidal?

Are suicide terrorists suicidal? A review of the worldwide literature on suicide terrorism uncovered five published empirical studies describing data collected from potential suicide terrorists or the surviving friends and families of deceased terrorists. The many discrepancies uncovered between suicide terrorists and other suicides on key factors known to underpin suicidality, suggest that such terrorists are not truly suicidal and should not be viewed as a subgroup of the general suicide population. Nonetheless, methods developed by suicidologists, such as the psychological autopsy, will help increase our understanding of the individual and group factors that underpin suicide terrorism.     

Primary and Secondary Caregiver Reports of Quality of Life in Pediatric Asthma: Are they Comparable?

This study aimed to compare primary and secondary caregiver QOL within families of children with asthma and determine the potential importance of including secondary caregiver QOL in clinical and research settings. Participants included 118 families of children with asthma that had primary and secondary caregivers. Families completed measures in a single research session. Caregivers reported on QOL, psychological functioning, and family burden; children completed a measure of QOL. Child lung function was determined from objective spirometry. Adherence to prescribed controller medication was measured for 6 weeks following the research visit. Primary caregiver QOL was significantly lower than secondary caregiver QOL (Mean overall QOL of 5.85 versus 6.17, p < .05). Better medication adherence was associated with higher primary caregiver QOL (ρ = .22, p = .02); secondary caregiver QOL, not primary caregiver QOL, was positively associated with child QOL (ρ = .20, p = .03). Families with discrepant QOL scores between caregivers (difference in scores of at least .50) were characterized by more family burden and primary caregiver psychological symptoms. Differences in QOL scores between caregivers may be a reflection of primary caregivers’ greater investment in daily asthma management. In families reporting low burden and few psychological difficulties in the primary caregiver, QOL assessments from either caregiver may may be informative and representative of how parents are adapting to child asthma. In families experiencing high levels of burden or more primary caregiver psychological difficulties, QOL reports from secondary caregivers may not be as clinically meaningful.     

When the Going Gets Tough, Do the Tough Ask for Help? Help Seeking and Power Motivation in Organizations

Individuals do not seek help, even when help is needed and available, because help seeking implies incompetence and dependence, and therefore is related to powerlessness. It was hypothesized that gender, status, and organizational norms affect the importance of maintaining and accruing power, which in turn affect help seeking behaviors. A laboratory and a field study showed that there was more help seeking between equal-status than unequal-status individuals. Further, both studies revealed that males sought more help in collective than individualistic organizational norms, though the trend was not apparent for females. These results shed light on the psychological mechanisms underlying help seeking behaviors and have practical implications for developing steps to foster help seeking in organizations.     

Suicide and the contemporary woman: Are male and female suicide rates converging?

Nationwide statistics on White suicide rates for the years 1960–1978 are examined to assess whether the suicide rates of women are increasing relative to those of men. This is accomplished by calculating for the total population and for several age groupings the sex differential (SD), which is defined as the percentage of suicides which are female after adjustments are made for the sex distribution in the population. The data reveal that the SD narrowed from 1960–1967, held steady from 1968–1972, and then widened slightly from 1973–1978. The most important aspects of these trends are that (a) the narrowing of the SD is due more to declining suicide rates among older (over-40) males than to increasing female suicide rates, and (b) the narrowing of the SD and the small increases in female suicide rates occurred prior to 1970 and thus were earlier than would be expected on the basis of changing sex-role expectations. Post hoc explanations of these patterns refer to methodological factors and to changes in social integration resulting from a variety of sociohistorical factors.     

Are Nonfatal Suicide Attempts Instrumental in Achieving Personal and Interpersonal Goals?

This study focused on the well-being of the survivors of suicide attempts and the well-being of their interpersonal relationships after the attempt. The data came from a sample of 392 college students from 10 Muslim majority countries who reported having attempted suicide in the last 4 years. Suicide was conceptualized as a goal-directed behavior embedded in a sociocultural context and motivated by personal or interpersonal goals. We tested a process that linked culturally shaped self-construal to the postsuicidal personal and interpersonal well-being. We posited that this process would operate through the attitudes towards suicide, motives for suicide, the strength of the intention to die. Our model indicated that the acceptability of suicide was positively associated with escape motives, and this association was even stronger for the individuals with interdependent self-construals. Escape motives were negatively associated with postsuicidal personal and interpersonal well-being, but communication motives were not associated with these outcomes. We also found evidence that having an interdependent self-construal might be beneficial for postsuicidal personal and interpersonal well-being. Our results further suggested that the postsuicidal personal and interpersonal well-being of highly interdependent individuals may depend on the interpretation of their act of suicide by their close others.     

Are UN Peacekeepers at Risk for Suicide?

Media reports connecting UN peacekeeping duties by Canadian soldiers to their subsequent suicide prompted this study of peacekeeping as suicide risk. In a case-control design we retrospectively compared 66 suicides in the Canadian military between 1990 and 1995 with two control groups: (a) 2,601 controls randomly selected from the electronic military database and (b) 66 matched controls with complete personnel and medical data. We found no increased risk of suicide in peacekeepers except among a subgroup of air force personnel. Here confounding individual factors, isolation from supports, and possibly inadequate preparation for deployment elucidated their suicides. Theater of deployment (e.g., Bosnia) did not affect the suicide rate. Military suicides experienced psychosocial stresses and psychiatric illness more often than their matched controls. We conclude that although peacekeeping per se does not increase overall suicide risk, military life-styles may strain interpersonal relationships, encourage alcohol abuse, and contribute to psychiatric illness and suicide in a minority of vulnerable individuals irrespective of peacekeeping assignment. Careful selection, and preparatory military training that encourages intragroup bonding and mutual support, may protect against suicide risk.     

Does the Use of Connective Words in Written Assessments Predict High School Students’ Reading and Writing Achievement?

This study examined the relationship between ninth-grade students’ use of connectives (temporal, causal, adversative, and additive) in functional writing and performance on standards-based/criterion-referenced measures of reading and writing. Specifically, structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to examine the relationship between students’ use of connectives in their functional writing and their reading and writing proficiency. Results indicated that the number of connectives used in functional writing was significantly correlated to writing test scores and reading comprehension test scores, no matter whether the effect of the common predictor was removed or not. The results provide support for future research in the study of connective words in relation to functional writing skills and reading comprehension.     

Spiritual Seeking,Narcissism, and Psychotherapy: How Are They Related?

This study used data from a long-term longitudinal study of men and women to examine the relations among spirituality, narcissism, and psychotherapy. The findings indicated that in late adulthood (age late 60s/mid 70s) spirituality was related to autonomous or healthy narcissism but was unrelated to willful (overt) or hypersensitive (covert) narcissism, two pathological forms of the construct. Autonomy in early adulthood (age 30s) was a significant predictor of spirituality in late adulthood (a time interval of close to 40 years) and this relation was mediated by involvement in psychotherapy in midlife. Autonomy was related positively, and hypersensitivity was related negatively, to concern for the welfare of future generations. These findings are discussed in light of current concerns about the social implications of the therapeutic culture.     

Contagious or prosocial? Perceptions of mask-wearers toward Whites and Asians: A cross-cultural comparison during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a worldwide increase in the use of face masks to prevent viral transmission. However, as mask-wearing was a new behavior in many countries, there was a limited understanding of how mask-wearers are perceived and how such perceptions impact one's own mask-wearing behavior. Mask-wearers may be seen as contagious or prosocial, and these perceptions may vary based on the race of the mask-wearer and the country of the observer, particularly given the rise in pandemic-related anti-Asian rhetoric in the U.S. In three experiments (N = 579), we investigated these questions, conducting two studies in the United States (May and July 2020), where mask-wearing was new and anti-Asian rhetoric has been prevalent, and one study in South Korea (November 2020), where mask-wearing was relatively common. Results indicate that masked individuals are perceived as less contagious and more prosocial, regardless of target race or participant nation. These perceptions were more pronounced among American political liberals, Americans who are more sensitive to infection transmission (Study 2), and Koreans who self-perceived a greater vulnerability to infection (Study 3). Especially in the U.S., perceiving the masked target as more prosocial predicted more self-reported mask-wearing, while perceiving the masked target as more contagious and less prosocial predicted less mask-wearing (Study 2). These findings provide insights into social perceptions of masks and race during the pandemic.     

Both Gender and Cohort Affect Perceptions of Forenames,but Are 25-Year-Old Standards Still Valid?

Forenames signify considerable information, not only about a person’s gender, but also about that person’s age, social class, and ethnicity, as well as characteristics such as attractiveness and intellectual competence. Kasof (1993) found that research (almost all done in the U.S.) often used gender-typed forenames to identify individuals’ sex or gender in studies of potential gender bias. However, because these forenames signified other traits unrelated to gender, results were confounded in ways often favoring male stimulus persons. To remedy this situation, Kasof identified pairs of female and male forenames that were matched on key variables such as perceived age, attractiveness, and intellectual competence. We found that since 1995, approximately one-third of researchers who manipulated the sex or gender of hypothetical women and men used Kasof’s matched female and male forenames to control for extraneous variables. However, our research with college students revealed that Kasof’s matched forename pairs are now outdated. College students rated Kasof’s forenames (which are characteristic of popular forenames of their parents’ cohort) as less attractive than their own cohort’s popular forenames. Consistent with Kasof’s results, however, popular male forenames continued to be rated as connoting greater intellectual competence than popular female forenames. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

High Tech or High Touch: Will Technology Help or Hurt Our Teaching?

Books reviewed in this article: David G. Brown, Interactive Learning: Vignettes from America's Most Wired Campuses Marc Eisenstadt and Tom Vincent, The Knowledge Web: Learning and Collaborating on the Net Pat Maier, Liz Bamett, Adam Warren, and David Brunner, Using Technology in Teaching and Learning Adam Warren, David Brunner, Pat Maier, and Liz Barnett, Using Technology in Teaching and Learning: An Introductory Guide Steve Ryan, Bernard Scott, Howard Freeman, and Daxa Patel, The Virtual University: The Internet and Resource‐Based Learning     

Male Gender Role Conflict,Depression, and Help Seeking: Do College Men Face Double Jeopardy?

To investigate the previously untested hypothesis that college men with higher levels of male gender role conflict (MGRC) experience both increased risk of depression and more negative attitudes toward seeking counseling services, this study used latent variable modeling to examine these relations. Two components of MGRC were identified: restriction-related MGRC, which predicted 25% of the variance in help-seeking attitudes, and achievement-relatedMGRC, which predicted 21% of the variance in depression. It is suggested that outreach programs designed to increase college men's willingness to use counseling services attempt to counter the option-limiting aspects of male gender roles, whereas counseling with depressed college men incorporate an examination of their perceptions of success and achievement.     

The Effect of Participating in Suicide Research: Does Participating in a Research Protocol on Suicide and Psychiatric Symptoms Increase Suicide Ideation and Attempts?

The effect of engaging in an intensive research protocol that inquired extensively about psychiatric and suicide symptoms and exposed participants to a number of images, including suicide-related content was explored. Individuals experiencing a major depressive episode were called at 1 and 3 months after the initial protocol. Participants were asked about changes in suicide ideation and the occurrence of self-harm or suicide attempts following participation. Participants reported experiencing reductions in suicide ideation at the first follow-up and no changes at the second follow-up. No participant reported having engaged in self-harm or having attempted suicide at either follow-up. Results suggest that basic science/nontreatment research can be conducted safely with suicidal participants and in a manner that does not increase suicide symptoms or suicide risk.