HIV‐Related Behaviors Among Prison Inmates: A Theory of Planned Behavior Analysis1

Prison inmates have high prevalence rates for both HIV and AIDS, creating a great need for HIV prevention efforts. We tested the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in 3 domains: intention to engage in condom use when released, intention to not share tattoo equipment in prison, and intention to not share needles or tattoo equipment when released. A total of 478 inmates (87% male) completed TPB and sexual and needle‐use risk behavior measures. TPB constructs accounted for a significant variance in intention to use condoms among African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian inmates, though the strength of the relationships differed by ethnicity. The TPB was less successful for intention to share tattooing equipment and not to share needles or tattoo equipment after release.     

The Insufficiency of Integrity

As part of its evolving notions of self, contemporary Western culture has come to regard integrity as a preeminent public and private virtue. The meanings now given to integrity appear to cluster around its form, which is personal coherence, and its content, which is standing for something important. Building on Stephen Carter's explication of integrity, and in response to its veneration as a moral panacea, three limitations of integrity are discussed. First, integrity does not guarantee that right and wrong have actually been discerned, only that an attempt has been made, that moral reflection has occurred. Second, integrity does not necessarily engender or even preserve interpersonal peace, but instead frequently causes conflict it is then unable to resolve. Third, integrity does not always precipitate or prevent the reform of social structures and organizations, because it remains subject to the exercise of interpersonal power.     

the career wheel: an exercise for exploring and validating one's career choices

Students are often uncertain and at times misinformed about the careers they are pursuing. Thus, they often make poor career decisions that they ultimately regret. The career wheel exercise is designed to help an individual to be better informed and thus make better career‐related decisions. This article describes the career wheel exercise, which is an active career exploration device. Through this exercise, students validate or invalidate their beliefs and assumptions about the careers they are actively pursuing or contemplating. Thus, they are able to make a more informed career and job choice.     

The Beliefs About Medication Scale: Development, Reliability, and Validity

The purpose of the study was to develop and evaluate a psychometrically sound health belief measure, the Beliefs About Medication Scale (BAMS) that can be used with adolescent chronic illness populations whose prescribed treatment includes oral medication. One hundred and thirty-three adolescents (age 11–18 years) with asthma (n = 60), HIV (n = 31), or inflammatory bowel disease (n = 42) completed the BAMS and, along with their parent, a self-report medication interview. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized subscales of Perceived Threat, Positive Outcome Expectancy, Negative Outcome Expectancy, and Intent to Adhere to treatment. The subscales evidenced good internal consistency and 3-week test-retest reliability. Univariate and multivariate analyses demonstrated that the health belief constructs accounted for 22% of the variance in medication adherence beyond demographic and illness characteristics. The study provides preliminary evidence of the reliability and validity of a theoretically based measure of health beliefs for adolescents. The BAMS may be a useful tool to evaluate the psychological barriers to adherence that place teenagers at risk for nonadherence.     

Coping Resources, Perceived Stress, and Life Satisfaction Among Turkish and American University Students

This study investigated coping resources (Coping Resources Inventory for Stress), perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale), and life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale) among American and Turkish university students. Results support the use of transactional stress constructs in studying life satisfaction with students in both countries. American and Turkish students did not differ significantly in regard to perceived stress, life satisfaction, or an overall measure of coping resources; however, they did differ significantly regarding specific coping resources. Variables entering regression models for predicting life satisfaction differed for students in the two countries and for the sexes within countries, and these models accounted for between 30% and 62% of variance. Social support and a sense of financial freedom were particularly useful in predicting life satisfaction. Coping resources accounted for 54% of variance in perceived stress. There were significant sex differences for both countries, generally favoring males, in regard to specific coping resources.     

Morality: An Evolutionary Account

ABSTRACT— Refinements in Darwin's theory of the origin of a moral sense create a framework equipped to organize and integrate contemporary theory and research on morality. Morality originated in deferential, cooperative, and altruistic "social instincts," or decision-making strategies, that enabled early humans to maximize their gains from social living and resolve their conflicts of interest in adaptive ways. Moral judgments, moral norms, and conscience originated from strategic interactions among members of groups who experienced confluences and conflicts of interest. Moral argumentation buttressed by moral reasoning is equipped to generate universal and impartial moral standards. Moral beliefs and standards are products of automatic and controlled information-processing and decision-making mechanisms. To understand how people make moral decisions, we must understand how early evolved mechanisms in the old brain and recently evolved mechanisms in the new brain are activated and how they interact. Understanding what a sense of morality is for helps us understand what it is.     

Hebb repetition effects in visual memory: the roles of verbal rehearsal and distinctiveness

A version of the Hebb repetition task was used with faces to explore the generality of the effect in a nonverbal domain. In the baseline condition, a series of upright faces was presented, and participants were asked to reconstruct the original order. Performance in this condition was compared to another in which the same stimuli were accompanied by concurrent verbal rehearsal to examine whether Hebb learning is dependent on verbal processing. Baseline performance was also compared to a condition in which the same faces were presented inverted. This comparison was used to determine the importance in Hebb learning of being able to visually distinguish between the list items. The results produced classic serial position curves that were equivalent over conditions with Hebb repetition effects being in evidence only for upright faces and verbal suppression as having no effect. These findings are interpreted as posing a challenge to current models derived from verbal-domain data.     

What Do Sex, Twins, Spotted Hyenas, ADHD, and Sexual Orientation Have in Common?

ABSTRACT— The otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) measured in a collection of special populations of humans and certain nonhuman species suggest that OAEs may provide a window into some processes of human prenatal development and sexual differentiation. For reasons that are unclear, OAEs appear to be highly sensitive to events occurring during prenatal development that seem to be related to the degree of exposure to androgens a fetus receives. The (largely circumstantial) evidence for a relationship between androgen exposure and OAE strength comes from a series of studies of twins, children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, people of differing sexual orientations, and spotted hyenas, among others. Some conclusions are bolstered by parallel studies using auditory evoked potentials (AEPs). OAEs and AEPs are simple, objective, noninvasive measures that appear to have potential as tools of value to researchers working on a wide variety of basic and applied topics beyond audition.     

Effects of psychopathy traits on unprovoked aggression

Research has demonstrated that risk of violent behavior is high in individuals who display psychopathic traits. However, prediction of general aggression, and in particular unprovoked aggression, in nonforensic men who possess such traits has received little experimental attention to date. This study examined the role of psychopathic traits in the prediction of unprovoked aggression in a nonforensic sample. One hundred and five men completed the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scales and competed in a sham aggression paradigm. These men were identified as unprovoked aggressors, provoked aggressors, and provoked nonaggressors contingent on their responses to the experimental paradigm. Findings indicated that men with high levels of psychopathic traits had a 30% greater probability of becoming aggressive in the absence of provocation relative to those with lower psychopathic traits. Results also indicated that unprovoked aggressors evinced more general aggression when provocation was initiated. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of trait-based risk factors in the prediction of seemingly random, unprovoked aggression.     

Effects of aging on the neural correlates of successful item and source memory encoding

To investigate the neural basis of age-related source memory (SM) deficits, young and older adults were scanned with fMRI while encoding faces, scenes, and face-scene pairs. Successful encoding activity was identified by comparing encoding activity for subsequently remembered versus forgotten items or pairs. Age deficits in successful encoding activity in hippocampal and prefrontal regions were more pronounced for SM (pairs) as compared with item memory (faces and scenes). Age-related reductions were also found in regions specialized in processing faces (fusiform face area) and scenes (parahippocampal place area), but these reductions were similar for item and SM. Functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the rest of the brain was also affected by aging; whereas connections with posterior cortices were weaker in older adults, connections with anterior cortices, including prefrontal regions, were stronger in older adults. Taken together, the results provide a link between SM deficits in older adults and reduced recruitment of hippocampal and prefrontal regions during encoding. The functional connectivity findings are consistent with a posterior-anterior shift with aging previously reported in several cognitive domains and linked to functional compensation.