Relationships between locus of control,health value,and preventive health behaviors among women

This study examines the relationships between locus of control expectancies, rated health value, and reported participation in preventive health behaviors among a healthy sample of undergraduate women. The prediction that participation in preventive health behaviors would be a joint function of an internal health-related locus of control belief and holding health in high value was not supported. Instead, individuals who valued their health reported participating in a greater number of health-enhancing behaviors compared to those who valued their health less. Respondents' scores on a health value scale in combination with their rated health status proved to be better predictors of health behaviors than their locus of control beliefs. Limitations of locus of control research with young, healthy individuals are discussed and further investigation into the utility and validity of health value scales is recommended.     

Introduction to the special section on the future of health psychology.

Following 25 years of landmark progress, health psychology faces even greater change in the foreseeable future. Evolving patterns of health and illness and developments in medicine and related fields will shape the future of health psychology. The articles in this special section discuss these future issues in several areas: the biopsychosocial model, changes in demographics, prevention, clinical health psychology interventions, health care financing, and new technologies. In every case, the future holds a variety of important challenges and opportunities in research, practice, training, and policy.     

Affiliation Goals and Health Behaviors

People are inherently driven by the need to form and maintain relationships, and these affiliation goals can influence health behaviors in two ways: (a) indirectly, by increasing a person's attention to others and subsequently leaving them more likely to emulate the health behaviors of others (social contagion); (b) directly, by leading people to be more likely to engage in health behaviors they perceive as helping them to form and maintain relationships with others (self-initiated behavioral engagement). In this review, we discuss the evidence for the catalyzing role of affiliation goals in these two processes for a variety of positive (e.g., exercising, smoking-cessation) and detrimental health behaviors (e.g., binge drinking and eating, needle sharing). Additionally, we discuss individual difference factors that may temporarily or chronically activate affiliation goals and ultimately impact health behaviors. Affiliation goals hold many implications for future work, and for improving interventions.     

Place learning in the Morris water task: making the memory stick

Although the Morris water task has been used in hundreds of studies of place learning, there have been no systematic studies of retention of the place memory. We report that retention, as measured by selective search behavior on a probe trial, is excellent when the retention interval is short (5-10 min). However, performance rapidly deteriorates, so that by approximately 4 h the search is no longer selective. Additional experiments revealed that selective search at longer retention intervals was improved by inserting gaps between blocks of training trials, but this effect was a non-monotonic function of the interval separating trial blocks. Our experiments also revealed that the location of the first block of trials (Room A or Room B) was irrelevant to long-term retention. A memory modulation theoretical framework may provide a useful way to understand these findings.     

Context pre-exposure obscures amygdala modulation of contextual-fear conditioning

We report that post-training inactivation of basolateral amygdala region (BLA) with muscimol impaired memory for contextual-fear conditioning (as measured by freezing) and intra-BLA norepinephrine enhanced this memory. However, pre-exposure to the context eliminated both of these effects. These findings provide a likely explanation of why an earler study failed to observe that the BLA modulates contextual fear conditioning-they pre-exposed their rats to the context. These results also suggest that the amygdala modulates the storage of the context fear memory and may do so by influencing the storage of the representation of the context in which the shock occurred.     

The temporal dynamics of retention of a context memory: something is missing

We use a variation of contextual fear conditioning, called the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) to study the rat's memory for context. In this paradigm, the rat is pre-exposed to a conditioning context and later returned to that context, where it is immediately shocked. The memory context is revealed by the fact that pre-exposure to the conditioning context, but not to a different context, greatly enhances conditioned fear produced by immediate shock. We report that rat's retention of the context memory is a nonmonotonic U-shaped function of the interval separating pre-exposure and immediate shock. Retention performance decays rapidly so that within 2 min of pre-exposure there is no evidence that the rat was pre-exposed to the context. Within a few hours, however, a strong CPFE was observed that persisted for at least 28 d. Two hypotheses are discussed: (1) the descending arm of the U represents a retrieval failure, and (2) the U-shaped function represents two discontinuous memory processes initiated in parallel-short-term synaptic changes that are rapidly initiated, but also decay rapidly, and long-term synaptic processes that take time to generate but can endure for days.     

Egocentrism, event frequency, and comparative optimism: when what happens frequently is "more likely to happen to me"

Three studies investigated the role of nonmotivated egocentric processes in comparative optimism (and pessimism). According to an egocentric-processes account, when people judge their comparative likelihood of experiencing an event (e.g., "Compared to the average person, how likely are you to become wealthy?"), they consider their own chances of experiencing the event more so than the referent's chances. This should produce higher comparative estimates when an event's absolute frequency is high rather than low-a prediction supported in Study 1, which manipulated event frequency through a novel, time frame manipulation. Study 2 empirically distinguished egocentrism from a related focalism account. In Study 3, comparative estimates were related to the perceived frequency of events, independent of the events' perceived desirability and controllability. Path analyses provided additional support for egocentrism, and systematic cases of comparative pessimism were observed as predicted by the egocentric-processes account.     

Ingratiation tactics channeled by target values and threat capability1

Several hypotheses concerning the use of ingratiation tactics were tested in a paradigm where subjects believed that monetary rewards were contingent on a favorable evaluation from a supervisor. Manipulated variables in the 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design were (a) the nature of the supervisor's values (i.e., efficiency vs. sociability), (b) the level of threats issued by the supervisor (no threat vs. high threat), and (c) the extent to which the subjects were dependent on the supervisor's evaluation (low dependency vs. high dependency). The dependent variables were the extent to which the subjects used the ingratiation tactics of other-enhancement (flattery) and selective self-presentation. Findings indicate that the manipulation of the supervisor's values affected the form of other-enhancement used by subjects; more flattery in terms of efficiency occurred in the efficiency values condition, while more flattery in terms of sociability occurred in the sociability values condition. The supervisor's values also affected self-presentation; subjects claimed to hold efficiency ideals when the supervisor held efficiency values, but (in line with earlier findings) they did not claim to hold sociability ideals when the supervisor held sociability values. The manipulation of threats issued by the supervisor had a significant effect on the subjects' use of other-enhancement with respect to the target's sociability, but it had no effect on other ingratiation measures. Finally, the manipulation of dependency had no effect on other-enhancement, but it did produce a surprising “modesty effect” on self-presentation. Subjects presented themselves as both less efficient and less sociable under high dependency than under low. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research on ingratiation tactics.     

Utilization of college students to improve inner-city school children's academic behavior

A program using college students as tutor/counselors with low-achieving, inner-city, junior high school students is described and evaluated. The college students, who were primarily ethnic minorities, played a multifaceted role as tutors, counselors, and role models of academic achievement. The evaluation assessed program effects across groups (program versus control), two schools and two program administrations, using analysis of covariance. Results supported positive program impact in the students using teacher ratings of classwork effort, quality, and attitude, and in the students' self-reported attitudes toward education, educational aspirations, and expectations.