Smoking,self-regulation and moral positioning: A focus group study with British smokers from a disadvantaged community

Smoking in many Western societies has become a both moral aand health issue in recent years, but little is known about how smokers position themselves and regulate their behaviour in this context. In this article, we report the findings from a study investigating how smokers from an economically disadvantaged community in the East Midlands (UK) respond to concerns about the health impact of smoking on others. We conducted ten focus group (FG) discussions with mixed groups (by smoking status and gender; N?=?58 participants) covering a range of topics, including smoking norms, self-regulation, and smoking in diverse contexts. We transcribed all FG discussions before analysing the data using techniques from discourse anlysis. Smokers in general positioned themselves as socially responsible smokers and morally upstanding citizens. This position was bolstered in two main ways: ‘everyday accommodation’, whereby everyday efforts to accommodate the needs of non-smokers were referenced, and ‘taking a stand’, whereby proactive interventions to prevent smoking in (young) others were cited. We suggest that smoking cessation campaigns could usefully be informed by this ethic of care for others.     

A group comparison of those with hypertension and other chronic illness: A factor and item level analysis of anger and hostility

Abstract

A considerable body of research has suggested that essential hypertension is related to both expressed anger and suppressed hostility. This study suggests and provides some evidence that these reported results may simply have arisen as the result of a lack of proper statistical control and differential item functioning across the items on which the measures were based. Three groups of respondents were selected (a) those diagnosed as having hypertension (b) a group who admitted to having a chronic medical condition unrelated to hypertension and (c) individuals who did not have a chronic medical condition. A confirmatory factor model was used to test the structure of a measure of expressed anger and suppressed hostility. Differences were then examined across the three conditions at both the factor and item levels within a MIMIC structure and controlling for age and gender. Differential effects were found between females and males on two observed measures of expressed anger. Age had a direct effect on both the measure of expressed anger and suppressed hostility. After the effects of age and gender were controlled, no statistically significant group differences were found. Previous results indicating a difference on expressed anger and suppressed hostility may, as in the present analysis, be put down to a combination of lack of appropriate statistical control, and to ignoring the differential pattern of responding across the observed measures.     

Locating dysprosium dopant atoms in the Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oy unit cell: Direct-space chemical crystallography

The position of Dy in the unit cell of Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oy has been determined by a real-space method. This is compared with the reciprocal-space atom location by channelling-enhanced microanalysis (ALCHEMI) method.     

Enhanced orienting effects: Evidence for an interaction principle

Predictive arrow cues, as used in the classic “Posner paradigm”, that were long thought to engage and isolate voluntary attention, may in fact trigger a strong interaction between voluntary and involuntary attention (Ristic & Kingstone, 2006). This interaction produces an orienting effect that exceeds both the effects of involuntary and voluntary attention alone, and the additive combination of involuntary and voluntary orienting. The present study shows that nonpredictive peripheral cues—understood to engage and isolate involuntary attention—if made predictive, result in enhanced orienting effects similar to predictive arrows. The important contribution of these data is that they suggest an “interaction principle”: If attention cues can elicit reliable involuntary orienting, then when they are made spatially predictive, the resulting attention effect will be greater than the sum of involuntary and voluntary orienting alone.     

Against deliberative indispensability as an independent guide to what there is

Philosophical Studies - David Enoch has recently proposed that the deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative facts suffices to support their inclusion in our ontology, even if they are...     

Trait anxiety, defensiveness and selective processing of threat: an investigation using two measures of attentional bias

Attentional biases for threat were examined in a non-clinical sample (N=60), with each participant tested on both the modified Stroop colour-naming and dot probe tasks. Three groups were selected on the basis of trait anxiety and social desirability scale (SDS) scores: “low anxiety” (LA: low trait, low SDS), “repressor” (REP: low trait, high SDS) and “high anxiety” (HA: high trait, low SDS). Results from the colour-naming task suggested that high levels of defensiveness (in combination with low trait anxiety) were associated with greater avoidance of threat. The REP group showed less interference in colour-naming threat than neutral words; whereas the HA group showed increased interference due to threat words. On the dot probe task, there was a general tendency for this non-clinical sample as a whole to show avoidance of social threat relative to neutral words, but there was no bias for physical threat words. Avoidance of social threat was significant only within the REP group. No relationships were found between the measures of cognitive bias from the two tasks, suggesting different underlying mechanisms. Results are discussed in relation to previous findings and theoretical views of the effects of anxiety and defensiveness on the processing of threat.