Anxiety and Asthma Symptoms in Urban Adolescents with Asthma: The Mediating Role of Illness Perceptions

Twenty to 40% of adolescents with asthma experience significant symptoms of anxiety. This study examined the mediational role of illness perceptions in the relationship between anxiety and asthma symptoms in adolescents. One hundred fifty-one urban adolescents (ages 11–18) with asthma completed measures of illness perceptions, and anxiety and asthma symptoms. Using the Baron and Kenny approach and Sobel tests, we examined whether illness perceptions mediated the anxiety-asthma symptom relationship. Three illness perceptions significantly mediated the relationship between anxiety and asthma symptoms, z = 1.97–2.13, p < .05; adjusted R ² = 0.42–0.51, p < .05. Greater anxiety symptoms were associated with perceptions that asthma negatively impacted one’s life and emotions and was difficult to control. These negative illness perceptions were, in turn, related to greater asthma symptoms. Illness perceptions helped explain the anxiety-asthma symptoms link in adolescents. Results suggest that targeting illness perceptions in adolescents with asthma and anxiety may help reduce asthma symptoms.     

GLOBAL OBLIGATIONS AND THE AGENCY OBJECTION

Many authors hold that collectives, as well as individuals can be the subjects of obligations. Typically these authors have focussed on the obligations of highly structured groups, and (less often) of small, informal groups. One might wonder, however, whether there could also be collective obligations which fall on everyone – what I shall call ‘global collective obligations’. One reason for thinking that this is not possible has to do with considerations about agency: it seems as though an entity can only be the subject of obligations if it is an agent. In this paper, I try to show that the argument from agency is not a good reason for being sceptical about the existence of global collective obligations: it derives whatever plausibility it has from the idea that claims about obligation need to be addressable to some agent. My suggestion is that we should accept this principle about the addressability of obligations, but deny that the addressee of an obligation need be the subject of that obligation. The collective obligations of unstructured collections of individuals, including global collective obligations, meet the addressability requirement insofar as they require something of the individuals who make up the collective.     

Winds of time and place: How context has affected a 50–year marriage

To examine the effects of contexts on a relationship, we consider the case of our own 50–year marriage and its preliminaries. We employ a three–level conception of a couple's environment. The macrocontext refers to the prevailing cultural winds in a society that affect all its residents during any given historical era. The mesocontext pertains to the settings in which a particular relationship operates, such as its family and other social networks, physical habitats, work settings, or institutional associations, often chosen by the partners themselves. The microcontext is the pair's own intimate environment, constructed over time by the partners’ unique interactions. Each of these contexts has affected us. We describe and analyze instances of luck, choice, and dyadic interaction in our 52–year relationship.     

Attitudes Toward Prostitution and Acceptance of Rape Myths1

Rape myths and prostitution myths are a component of culturally supported attitudes that normalize violence against women. Prostitution myths justify the existence of prostitution, promote misinformation about prostitution, and contribute to a social climate that exploits and harms not only prostituted women, but all women. This study investigated the relationship between prostitution myth acceptance and rape myth acceptance in a sample of university undergraduates. Rape myth acceptance was positively correlated with prostitution myth acceptance among 783 university undergraduates from California, Iowa, Oregon, and Texas. College men were significantly more accepting of prostitution myths than were college women. Results suggest that acceptance of prostitution myths are a component of attitudes that justify violence against women.     

Growth to Freedom or Support for Life?

This article reviews the recent contributions of Amartya Sen and John McMurtry to theory of international development and social justice. The author argues that both fail to give an adequate account of the current transformation of collective life and the provision of collective goods. Without such an analysis, theories of justice are incomplete. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The attribute selection process in pattern perception: The effect of constraint redundancy and stimulus exposure time on the classification of spatially represented Markov patterns

A transfer paradigm was used to study the effect of constraint redundancy (Rc) and stimulus exposure time (ET) on the “same-different” classifications of pairs of spatially represented Markov patterns (Vargus 7 stimuli; Evans & Mueller, 1966). In the training phase, each S classified, without feedback, pairs of Vargus 7 stimuli generated as deviations from three prototypes (i.e., most probable sequences). Each S received stimuli generated at one of three levels of Rc and exposed for one of three durations. In the test phase, all Ss classified different deviations from the same three prototypes at a single Rc level and a single ET level. Unsupervised classification performance was above chance in both training and transfer and increased slightly over trials. Significant Rc and ET effects were found. These results supported two models of attribute selection and utilization; discussions of these models and their relationships to the findings were directed toward the analysis of the “schema plus correction” hypothesis.     

Personality and politics: introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Journal of Personality brings together 10 original articles addressing the intersection of personality and politics. Articles build on classic traditions in political psychology by presenting both idiographic and nomothetic work on the motivational, cognitive, ideological, attitudinal, and identity correlates of many different aspects of political behavior. This work is used to understand political activism and leadership as well as everyday political behavior. We hope this collection of articles will inspire our readers to explore new investigations in personality and political psychology.     

The Contents of Perception and the Contents of Emotion

Several philosophers think there are important analogies between emotions and perceptual states. Furthermore, considerations about the rational assessibility of emotions have led philosophers—in some cases, the very same philosophers—to think that the content of emotions must be propositional content. If one finds it plausible that perceptual states have propositional contents, then there is no obvious tension between these views. However, this view of perception has recently been attacked by philosophers who hold that the content of perception is object‐like. I shall argue for a view about the content of emotions and perceptual states which will enable us to hold both that emotional content is analogous to perceptual content and that both emotions and perceptual states can have propositional contents. This will involve arguing for a pluralist view of perceptual content, on which perceptual states can have both contents which are proposition‐like and contents which are object‐like. I shall also address two significant objections to the claim that emotions can have proposition‐like contents. Meeting one of these objections will involve taking on a further commitment: the pluralist account of perceptual content will have to be one on which the contents of perception can be non‐conceptual.     

New perspectives on career and identity in the contemporary world

For much of the 20th century, career and identity have been intimately interwoven: to know about work has been to know about the self. But meanings for both are differently constructed at different times in different discourses.This article re-examines the meaning of the concept of 'identity' under late modern conditions. It draws on discourses ranging from neuro-physiology to autobiography. The primary purpose of the piece is to set up some signposts for alignment of the careers-work field to the demands of our time. In particular, the article concludes that much of policy-directed development in this field takes too little account of emerging and significant relationships between career and identity.     

Normative warrant in diagnostic criteria: the case of DSM-IV-TR personality disorders

This article focuses on the kinds of evaluative judgments made when applying DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria within the diagnostic interview between clinician and patient. The authors name these kinds of value judgments in diagnosis "normative warrant" because they involve one or more justifications (warrants) for standard-bearing (normative) elements involved in applying diagnostic criteria to actual patients. Seven types of normative warrant judgments are described (Type 1, Semantic-Phenomenal Matching; Type 2, Solicitation Choice; Type 3, Sociocultural Context; Type 4, Performance-Context Matching; Type 5, Deviance Threshold; Type 6, Threshold Characterization; Type 7, Disvalue characterization) and the typology is illustrated by applying it to various DSM-IV-TR personality disorder criteria. A research and clinical understanding of normative warrant may well contribute to the refinement of criteria sets as well as the refinement of the clinical use of criteria sets.