"I Know Just How You Feel": The Validity of Healthy Women's Perceptions of Breast-Cancer Patients Receiving Treatment

The accuracy of healthy women's perceptions of how breast-cancer patients cope with treatment was assessed in this study. Standardized questionnaires measuring distress, coping, and illness perceptions were completed by 78 women undergoing postsurgical treatment for primary breast cancer. The patients' responses were then compared with assessments made by a matched community sample. The results showed a marked incongruity between healthy women's perceptions and actual patients' experiences of the disease and its treatment. Community women overestimated patients' distress, perceived the consequences of breast cancer to be more severe, and were more likely to believe that patients used denial and disengagement strategies. The discrepancy in findings has implications for the appropriateness of the support offered to patients by healthy women.     

Prevalence of Disordered Eating Behaviors and Bulimia Nervosa in a Sample of Mexican American Female College Students

Disordered eating behaviors and bulimia nervosa were examined in a sample of female Mexican Americans. Results showed that 1.4% to 4.3% could be classified with bulimia. Just over 11% indicated regular binge eating; dieting and exercising were the primary techniques used for weight control. Implications for intervention are briefly discussed.     

The “Epidemic” of Cheating Depends on Its Definition: A Critique of Inferring the Moral Quality of “Cheating in Any Form”

The incidence and moral implications of cheating depend on how it is defined and measured. Research that defines and operationalizes cheating as an inventory of acts, that is, “cheating in any form,” has often fueled concern that cheating is reaching “epidemic proportions.” Such inventory measures appear, however, to conflate moral and administrative conceptions of the problem. Inasmuch as the immorality of behavior is a function of moral judgment, academic misconduct is immoral only when it is intentional, and the greatest moral weight should be ascribed to violations that students judge to be the most “serious.”     

Enhancing treatment effectiveness through social modelling: A pilot study

Objective: Medical treatments take place in social contexts; however, little research has investigated how social modelling might influence treatment outcomes. This experimental pilot study investigated social modelling of treatment effectiveness and placebo treatment outcomes.

Design: Fifty-nine participants took part in the study, ostensibly examining the use of beta-blockers (actually placebos) for examination anxiety. Participants were randomly assigned to observe a female confederate report positive treatment effects (reduced heart rate, relaxed, calm) or feeling no different.

Main outcome measures: Heart rate, anxiety and blood pressure were assessed, as were symptoms and attributed side effects.

Results: Heart rate decreased significantly more in the social modelling compared to control condition, p = .027 (d = .63), and there were trends towards effects in the same direction for both anxiety, p = .097 (d = .46), and systolic blood pressure, p = .077 (d = .51). Significant pre-post placebo differences in heart rate, anxiety and diastolic blood pressure were found in the social modelling group, ps < .007 (ds = .77–1.37), but not the control condition, ps > .28 (ds = .09–.59).

Conclusions: Social observation of medication effectiveness enhanced placebo effectiveness in heart rate, and showed a trend towards enhancing treatment effectiveness in both anxiety and systolic blood pressure. Social modelling may have utility in enhancing the effectiveness of many active medical treatments.     

Psychological Teaching-Learning Contracts: Academic Integrity and Moral Psychology

The psychological teaching–learning contract model of academic integrity, presented herein, features a social contract-based mechanism for moral judgment that is hypothesized to underlie the “belief–behavior incongruity,” that is, the noted frequency with which students who believe cheating is immoral still cheat. High school students (N = 493) from 11 international schools in 9 countries participated in the study. Results suggest that students often regard the cheating they do within a given context to be justifiable, that is, not immoral, implying that such behavior is not incongruous with their moral beliefs.