Factors Associated with Interest in Gene-Panel Testing and Risk Communication Preferences in Women from <Emphasis Type="Italic">BRCA1/2</Emphasis> Negative Families

Scientific advances have allowed the development of multiplex gene-panels to assess many genes simultaneously in women who have tested negative for BRCA1/2. We examined correlates of interest in testing for genes that confer modest and moderate breast cancer risk and risk communication preferences for women from BRCA negative families. Female first-degree relatives of breast cancer patients who tested negative for BRCA1/2 mutations (N = 149) completed a survey assessing multiplex genetic testing interest and risk communication preferences. Interest in testing was high (70 %) and even higher if results could guide risk-reducing behavior changes such as taking medications (79 %). Participants preferred to receive genomic risk communications from a variety of sources including: primary care physicians (83 %), genetic counselors (78 %), printed materials (71 %) and the web (60 %). Factors that were independently associated with testing interest were: perceived lifetime risk of developing cancer (odds ratio (OR) = 1.67: 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.06–2.65) and high cancer worry (OR = 3.12: CI 1.28–7.60). Findings suggest that women from BRCA1/2 negative families are a unique population and may be primed for behavior change. Findings also provide guidance for clinicians who can help develop genomic risk communications, promote informed decision making and customize behavioral interventions.     

Social allergies in romantic relationships: Behavioral repetition,emotional sensitization,and dissatisfaction in dating couples

A social allergy is a reaction of hypersensitive annoyance or disgust to a repeated behavior. Two studies were conducted on the social allergen categories of uncouth habits, inconsiderate acts, intrusive behaviors, and norm violations. Study 1 focused on hypothetical male and female partner behaviors at 2 and 12 months in a dating relationship. Study 2 obtained reports of social allergens performed by the individual and partner in dating couples, as well as the individual's emotional responses and relationship outcomes. Social allergens were perceived to increase in frequency over time in both studies, with some indications that men were more uncouth and norm violating and women were more inconsiderate and intrusive. Study 2 also found that the more often that the partner performed an allergenic behavior, the stronger was the individual's negative emotional reaction. Further, frequent and emotionally intense social allergens were associated with relationship dissatisfaction, and with termination assessed a year later.     

Was I Entitled or Should I Apologize? Affirmative Action Going Forward

As a U.S. civil rights policy, affirmative action commonly denotes race-conscious and result-oriented efforts by private and public officials to correct the unequal distribution of economic opportunity and education attributed to slavery, segregation, poverty and racism. Opponents argue that affirmative action (1) violates ideals of color-blind public policies, offending moral principles of fairness and constitutional principles of equality and due process; (2) has proven to be socially and politically divisive; (3) has not made things better; (4) mainly benefits middle-class, wealthy and foreign-born blacks; (4) stigmatizes its beneficiaries; and (5) compromises the self-esteem and self-respect of beneficiaries who know that they have been awarded preferential treatment. By way of a thought experiment, imagine that after decades of public policy and experimentation, the United States public finally came to agree: affirmative action is morally and legally wrong. Employing such a thought experiment, this essay by a beneficiary of affirmative action—written in response to James Sterba’s Affirmative Action for the Future (2009)—examines duties of moral repair and the possibility that the past beneficiaries of affirmative action owe apologies, compensation or some other highly personal form of corrective accountability. Beneficiaries of affirmative action have experienced woundedness and moral insecurity. Indeed, the practice of affirmative action comes with a psychology, a set of psychological benefits and burdens whose moral logic those of us who believe in our own fallibility—as much as we believe in the justice of what we have received and conferred on others—should address.     

Body Awareness: a phenomenological inquiry into the common ground of mind-body therapies

Enhancing body awareness has been described as a key element or a mechanism of action for therapeutic approaches often categorized as mind-body approaches, such as yoga, TaiChi, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, Body Awareness Therapy, mindfulness based therapies/meditation, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method, Breath Therapy and others with reported benefits for a variety of health conditions. To better understand the conceptualization of body awareness in mind-body therapies, leading practitioners and teaching faculty of these approaches were invited as well as their patients to participate in focus groups. The qualitative analysis of these focus groups with representative practitioners of body awareness practices, and the perspectives of their patients, elucidated the common ground of their understanding of body awareness. For them body awareness is an inseparable aspect of embodied self awareness realized in action and interaction with the environment and world. It is the awareness of embodiment as an innate tendency of our organism for emergent self-organization and wholeness. The process that patients undergo in these therapies was seen as a progression towards greater unity between body and self, very similar to the conceptualization of embodiment as dialectic of body and self described by some philosophers as being experienced in distinct developmental levels.     

Do university students really have difficulty in duration judgments? Comment on Okazaki and Matsuda (2008, 2010)

Reinterpretation suggests that low performance of the participants studied by Okazaki and Matsuda (2008, 2010) may have been caused by using a procedure which overloads the cognitive capacities of undergraduate students. The questions asked participants about their reasoning could have led to cognitive overload because they performed two tasks: judgment of movement duration and paying attention to what kind of knowledge should be used (alpha or beta). Some interpretations are offered referring to possible effects of training procedures for applying both kinds of knowledge.     

The relationship between attachment, personality and antisocial tendencies in a prison sample: a pilot study

This study examined the role of adult attachment and personality in relation to antisocial tendencies (i.e. convictions for violence and interpersonal problems in romantic relationships) in Norwegian prison inmates (N=92). Attachment styles and personality were measured using self-report questionnaires (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994; and NEO-FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1992a). The prison inmates scored higher on avoidant than on anxious attachment style. While age and agreeableness (negatively associated) emerged as significant predictors of violence, anxious attachment explained most of the variances in aggression in intimate relationships. The study suggests that different types of antisocial tendencies could have different attachment and general personality correlates.     

Early maladaptive schemas in Finnish adult chronic pain patients and a control sample

Engel (1959) suggested that negative physical or emotional experiences in childhood predispose to the development of chronic pain. Studies have shown that physical and sexual abuse in early life is connected with chronic pain. Emotional adversities are much less studied causes contributing to the development of chronic pain and disability. Early emotional abuse, neglect, maltreatment and other adversities are deleterious childhood experiences which, according to Young's schema theory (1990), produce early maladaptive schemas (EMSs). The primary goal of this study was to examine whether early adversities were more common in chronic pain patients than in a control group. A total of 271 (53% women) first-visit chronic pain patients and 331 (86% women) control participants took part in the study. Their socio-demographic data, pain variables and pain disability were measured. To estimate EMSs the Young Schema Questionnaire was used. Chronic pain patients scored higher EMSs reflecting incapacity to perform independently, catastrophic beliefs and pessimism. The most severely disabled chronic pain patients showed an increase in all the EMSs in the Disconnection and Rejection schema domain, namely Abandonment/Instability, Mistrust/Abuse, Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness/Shame and Social Isolation/Alienation EMSs. The results of the study suggested that chronic pain patients had suffered early emotional maltreatment.