Identifying subgroups that succeed or fail with three levels of physical activity intervention: the Activity Counseling Trial.

The authors used recursive partitioning methods to identify combinations of baseline characteristics that predict 2-year physical activity success in each of 3 physical activity interventions delivered in the multisite Activity Counseling Trial. The sample consisted of 874 initially sedentary primary care patients, ages 35-75 years, who were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Predictors of 2-year success were specific to each intervention and represented a range of domains, including physiological, demographic, psychosocial, health-related, and environmental variables. The results indicate how specific patient subgroups (e.g., obese, unfit individuals; high-income individuals in stable health) may respond differently to varying levels and amounts of professional assistance and support. The methods used provide a practical first step toward identifying clinically meaningful patient subgroups for further systematic investigation.     

A quantitative analysis of the relationship between the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale and traditional coronary artery disease risk factors.

One possible explanation for the association between Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Ho Scale; W. W. Cook & D. M. Medley, 1954) scores and premature coronary artery disease (CAD) morbidity and mortality is that hostile persons also have elevations on CAD risk factors. Meta-analyses with fixed and random-effects models were used to evaluate the relationship between Ho Scale scores and CAD risk factors in the empirical literature. Ho Scale scores were significantly related to body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, insulin resistance, lipid ratio, triglycerides, glucose, socioeconomic status (SES), alcohol consumption, and smoking. Although there was also heterogeneity among study outcomes, the results of conservative random effects models provide confidence in the obtained relationships. On the basis of available evidence, researchers might give attention to obesity, insulin resistance, damaging health behaviors, and SES as potential contributing factors in understanding the association between Ho Scale scores and CAD.     

The role of illness uncertainty on coping with fibromyalgia symptoms.

This study examined the role of illness uncertainty in pain coping among women with fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain condition of unknown origin. Fifty-one FM participants completed initial demographic and illness uncertainty questionnaires and underwent 10-12 weekly interviews regarding pain, coping difficulty, and coping efficacy. Main outcome measures included weekly levels of difficulty coping with FM symptoms and coping efficacy. Multilevel analyses indicated that pain elevations for those high in illness uncertainty predicted increases in coping difficulty. Furthermore, when participants had more difficulty coping, they reported lower levels of coping efficacy. Results were consistent with hypothesized effects. Illness uncertainty accompanied by episodic pain negatively influenced coping efficacy, an important resource in adaptation to FM.     

Perceived racism and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to personally relevant stress.

This study evaluated cardiovascular responses (CVR) to an active speech task with blatantly discriminatory (BRC) versus neutral (NRC) stimuli and an anger recall task in a sample of Black men (N = 73; age 18 to 47). Diastolic blood pressure scores were higher for NRC versus BRC stimuli during anger recall (p = .05). Moreover, persons in the NRC group who perceived high levels of racism (vs. no racism or BRC group) during active speech showed larger increases in blood pressure across postspeech rest, anger recall, and subsequent rest (p = .03). The notable elevation in CVR in response to an ambiguous event extends current models of racism suggesting that subtle racism is a psychosocial stressor that erodes health through chronically elevated CVR.     

On Making and Keeping Promises

Do the conditions under which promises are made determine whether they ought to be kept? Philosophers have placed a number of conditions on promising which, they hold, must be met in order to make promise-keeping obligatory. In so doing, they have distinguished valid promises from invalid promises and justified promises from promises that are not justified. Considering such conditions, one by one, we argue that they are mistaken. In the first place, the conditions they lay down are not necessary for either valid or justified promise-making. In the second place, promises need not meet such conditions in order to create moral obligations. In general, such analyses of promising fail because they suffer from a confusion between promise-making and promise-keeping. Philosophers have wrongly supposed that obligations to keep promises are dependent upon, or derivable from, the quality of the promises themselves, at the time they are made, instead of focusing on conditions that must be satisfied at the time when promises are supposed to be kept. It is not the quality of a promise that determines an obligation to keep it but the rightness or wrongness of performing the promised act.