Personality in monkeys: Factor analyses of rhesus social behaviour

Three factor analyses were performed on social interaction data from 168 juvenile macaques. Animals were tested in stable quadrad peer groups; in newly-formed dyads with infant, juvenile, and adult stimulus monkeys; and in similar triads with the stimulus animal plus a familiar cage-mate. Factors emerged, most strongly in the most stable condition, which were interpreted as affiliative, hostile and fearful. These factors were almost entirely independent and resembled the extraversion, psychoticism, and emotionality factors frequently found in humans.     

Sexual Communication in Relationships: When Words Speak Louder Than Actions

Sexual communication for expressing sexual desires and gathering HIV risk information were examined as interpersonal constructs related to HIV risk reduction. Community women (n = 816) with at least one heterosexual HIV risk factor (79% Euro-American, 86% some college) completed surveys assessing assertive communication with a sexual partner, HIV risk, and demographic, sexual history, interpersonal negative, and cognitive/attitudinal constructs which formed a hierarchical predictor model. In relationship context comparisons, women with a known partner HIV risk responded more negatively on most measures. Multiple regressions suggested communication is part of an overall cognitive/attitudinal approach to HIV risk, although specific predictors differ by type of communication and partner risk level. Implications for interventions considering relational context, interpersonal power, and counteracting silence are discussed.     

Discriminating famous from fictional names based on lifetime experience: evidence in support of a signal-detection model based on finite mixture distributions

It is widely accepted that signal-detection mechanisms contribute to item-recognition memory decisions that involve discriminations between targets and lures based on a controlled laboratory study episode. Here, the authors employed mathematical modeling of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) to determine whether and how a signal-detection mechanism contributes to discriminations between moderately famous and fictional names based on lifetime experience. Unique to fame judgments is a lack of control over participants' previous exposure to the stimuli deemed "targets" by the experimenter; specifically, if they pertain to moderately famous individuals, participants may have had no prior exposure to a substantial proportion of the famous names presented. The authors adopted established models from the recognition-memory literature to examine the quantitative fit that could be obtained through the inclusion of signal-detection and threshold mechanisms for two data sets. They first established that a signal-detection process operating on graded evidence is critical to account for the fame judgment data they collected. They then determined whether the graded memory evidence for famous names would best be described with one distribution with greater variance than that for the fictional names, or with two finite mixture distributions for famous names that correspond to items with or without prior exposure, respectively. Analyses revealed that a model that included a d' parameter, as well as a mixture parameter, provided the best compromise between number of parameters and quantitative fit. Additional comparisons between this equal-variance signal-detection mixture model and a dual-process model, which included a high-threshold process in addition to a signal-detection process, also favored the former model. In support of the conjecture that the mixture parameter captures participants' prior experience, the authors found that it was increased when the analysis was restricted to names in occupational categories for which participants indicated high exposure.     

Co-morbid pain conditions and feelings of invalidation and isolation among women with vulvodynia

Many women with vulvodynia also suffer from other chronic co-morbid pain conditions. Alone, these pain conditions are associated with feeling invalidated by others and feeling socially isolated. It is unclear, however, how the presence of additional pain co-morbidities are associated with the psychosocial wellbeing of women with vulvodynia. We used data from a survey administered by the National Vulvodynia Association. Women reported clinician-diagnosed vulvodynia, presence of co-morbid pain, and how often they felt that they felt no one believed their pain existed (invalidated) and isolated. Analyses determined prevalence of feeling invalidated or isolated, and the difference in prevalence when co-morbidities existed. Forty-five percent of these 1847 women with vulvodynia reported having at least one of the following five chronic pain conditions, chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, or irritable bowel syndrome. Adjusted baseline prevalence among all women of feeling invalidated was 9% and of feeling isolated was 14%. Having a co-morbid condition with vulvodynia, as well as having an increasing number of co-morbid conditions with vulvodynia, was significantly associated with the presence of feeling both invalidated and isolated. Chronic fatigue syndrome was the co-morbidity most strongly associated with feelings invalidation and isolation. One or more co-morbid pain conditions in addition to vulvodynia were significantly associated with psychosocial wellbeing. However, the temporality of the association could not be elucidated and therefore we cannot conclude that these pain conditions cause poor psychosocial wellbeing. Despite this, future studies should explore the utility of promoting validation of women's pain conditions and reducing social isolation for women with chronic pain.     

Life events and substance use among adolescents: mediating effects of perceived loss of control and meaninglessness in life

Throughout history, alcohol and other drugs have been used to provide relief in times of stress and frustration. Research has confirmed this association between disruptive life change events and substance use. It was hypothesized that two psychological constructs facilitate and mediate this relation between stress and substance use. Uncontrollable stress (negative life change events) was assumed to create a sense of loss of control, which in turn engendered a decreased level of meaning in life. This meaninglessness in life, experienced as distressful and uncomfortable, is then treated or medicated with various drug substances. This theoretical sequential model was tested in two separate studies with independent samples of adolescents (one sample collected by the Rutgers University and the other collected by the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA]) using latent variable structural models. The Rutgers sample was cross-sectional, whereas the UCLA sample provided longitudinal data. Results supported the theoretical hypothesis that Perceived Loss of Control and Meaninglessness mediate the relation between Uncontrollable Stress and Substance Use. In the Rutgers data, the association between stress and drug use was clearly accounted for by the mediating constructs; in other words, no direct path was necessary to explain the relation between stress and general drug use. However, in the UCLA data there remained a direct influence of Uncontrollable Stress on Substance Use after accounting for the significant impact of the mediating constructs. Five other competing models were tested; four were rejected empirically, and the other was accepted, although it was less theoretically based than the mediational model.     

Recipient need and efficacious caring as moderators of helpers’ reactions to rejection and acceptance

Two experiments support and extend the thesis that rejection of their help is stressful for would-be helpers, and that it leads to “damage controlling” reactions whose eventual goal is to restore their self-image of being efficacious at helping and caring. American college students were invited to offer help, if they wished, to a poorly performing (confederate) recipient who then either rejected or accepted it. Rejected helpers expressed relatively negative affect, biased postdictions of low acceptance, claims of low decision control, recipient- and self-devaluation, and less desire for further association. Individual differences in self-perceived “efficacious caring” and manipulated level of recipient need were shown to moderate some of these outcome reactions. Violated expectancy of acceptance was shown to mediate some of these reactions. Studies were cited showing the generalizability of these findings and theoretical framework to applied contexts and across cultural settings.     

Intervention Effects on Stage of Change Membership and Transitions among Adolescent Energy Balance Behaviors

The transition from childhood to adolescence is a crucial period for the development of healthy behaviors to be sustained later in life. With obesity a leading public health problem, the promotion of healthy behaviors has the potential to make a huge impact. The current study evaluated Stage of Change progression in a large (N = 4158) computer-delivered, Transtheoretical Model-tailored intervention focusing on physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption (FV). Markov models were used to explore stage transitions and patterns of discrete change from sixth to ninth grade. Nested model comparisons examined the consistency of these patterns across time and intervention condition. Major findings supported models in which participants were free to transition forward and backward to any of the stages, but higher probabilities were observed for remaining in the same stage or for transitioning one or two stages forward. Participants in the intervention group had higher probabilities of transitioning toward Maintenance, with more change occurring relative to the comparison group during transitions from grades six to eight but not for grades eight to nine.