Prävention chronischer Krankheiten und Gesundheitsförderung

Zusammenfassung In den vergangenen 50 Jahren konnten große Fortschritte in der Entwicklung und der Umsetzung des verhaltensmedizinischen Wissens über die Gesundheit von Individuen und Populationen erzielt werden. Allerdings kamen Gesundheitsförderung und Krankheitsprävention nicht allen Bevölkerungsschichten in und zwischen den einzelnen Ländern in gleichem Maße zugute. Die Ungleichheit der sozialen, psychischen und körperlichen Gesundheit zwischen den wohlhabendsten und ärmsten Bevölkerungsgruppen ist im Wesentlichen gleichgeblieben oder sogar gewachsen. Das Wissen darüber, wie solche Unterschiede in der Gesundheit entstehen, ist allerdings erst dann von Bedeutung, wenn es dazu verwendet wird, geeignete, langfristige und nachhaltige Präventionsstrategien auf mehreren Ebenen zu erarbeiten. Bei solchen Strategien spielen verschiedene Aspekte der globalen natürlichen ökologischen Umwelt und das Streben nach einer sog. gesundheitserhaltenden Umwelt eine wichtige Rolle. Mit dem wachsenden Einfluss der Globalisierung auf die Gesundheit stellt sich die Frage, welche Folgen jenseits der traditionellen nationalen Grenzen für die Krankheitsprävention und für die Gesundheitsförderung zu erwarten sind. Sie sollte uns anregen, darüber nachzudenken, dass die Verbreitung von wirksamen Interventionen auf institutioneller oder politischer Ebene nicht nur innerhalb eines Landes, sondern auch zwischen verschiedenen Ländern von höchster Wichtigkeit ist. In Anbetracht der global und schnell voranschreitenden ökonomischen und sozialen Veränderungen und des gewaltigen Einflusses von globalen Umweltveränderungen auf die Gesundheit müssen die Bandbreite und die Praxis der Verhaltensmedizin erweitert werden.Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dipl.-Psych. Erika Nemény, Berlin und Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ehlert, Zürich     

All Brutes are Subhuman: Aristotle and Ockham on Private Negation

The mediaeval logic of Aristotelian privation, represented by Ockham's expositionof All A is non-P as All S is of a type T that is naturally P and no S is P, iscritically evaluated as an account of privative negation. It is argued that there aretwo senses of privative negation: (1) an intensifier (as in subhuman), the dualof Neoplatonic hypernegation (superhuman), which is studied in linguistics asan operator on scalar adjectives, and (2) a (often lexicalized) Boolean complementrelative to the extension of a privative negation in sense (1) (e.g., Brute). Thissecond sense, which is the privative negation discussed in modern linguistics, isshown to be Aristotle's. It is argued that Ockham's exposition fails to capture muchof the logic of Aristotelian privation due to limitations in the expressive power of thesyllogistic.     

Age Differences in Proactive Newcomer Socialization Strategies in Two Populations

We investigated the role of age as a predictor of newcomer socialization behaviors, and documented relationships between specific strategies and subsequent role-relevant outcomes. Academic and retail newcomer populations were each surveyed over three time periods. A negative relationship was found between age and covert forms of information seeking in both samples. Further, the use of covert information seeking was related to lower subsequent levels of role clarity and job satisfaction.     

Shackling the shoulders of giants

This paper informally summarizes a two-day symposium held at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., September 5–6, 2002. The issue was to what extent the progress of science and societal capacity for continued technological innovation are threatened by excessive protection of intellectual property. Excessive protection creates disadvantages not only for scientists and inventors but also for educators/students and for librarians/clientele. Speakers from a variety of disciplines and institutions agreed unanimously that scientific and technological progress is, indeed, under serious threat. Various opinions were expressed about the degree of threat, currently and prospectively, as well as what counter-measures are best suited to resist undue restrictions on creative uses of scientific and technical data and information. This summary is based entirely on the author’s notes from the symposium, and the commentary offered is his alone. My apologies to the speakers if this paper does not accurately reflect the primary intent of their presentations. The “Suggested Readings” offered at the end are not specific to the speakers’ statements but rather are offered as a general resource to aid further research. The definitive record of the symposium is planned to be available from the National Academies Press as a Proceedings publication in the summer of 2003. John Gardenier is an independent researcher, ethicist and science writer.     

Belief in good luck and psychological well-being: the mediating role of optimism and irrational beliefs

The authors examined the relationship of belief in good luck with depression and anxiety within the context of a number of cognitive and personality variables used to explain depression and anxiety. Undergraduate students (46 men, 98 women) were administered measures of belief in good luck, depression, anxiety, optimism, neuroticism, attribution style, self-esteem, and irrational beliefs. The results showed that belief in good luck was significantly related to optimism and irrational beliefs. A number of models were tested to determine whether irrational beliefs or optimism mediated the relationship between belief in good luck and depression and anxiety. The findings suggested that negative relationships between belief in good luck and both depression and anxiety are best addressed by the theory that belief in good luck engenders optimistic traits and a reduced level of irrational beliefs.     

Four studies extending the utility of the Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10)

The Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS-10; Blais et al., 1999) is a brief, cost free, and easy to administer assessment device designed to measure a broad domain of psychological health. The 4 studies using the SOS-10 reported here extend the initial reliability and validity studies beyond psychiatric patients in a hospital setting to examine (a) test-retest reliability in a college student population, (b) concurrent validity with college students using an indirect technique assessing maladjustment, (c) concurrent validity with college counseling center clients using a self-report measure of client distress, and (d) sensitivity to treatment changes with outpatient clients. These studies lend further support for using the SOS-10 as a measure of psychological well-being and as an outcome measure in varied settings.     

Transactive memory in organizational groups: the effects of content, consensus, specialization, and accuracy on group performance

Previous research on transactive memory has found a positive relationship between transactive memory system development and group performance in single project laboratory and ad hoc groups. Closely related research on shared mental models and expertise recognition supports these findings. In this study, the author examined the relationship between transactive memory systems and performance in mature, continuing groups. A group's transactive memory system, measured as a combination of knowledge stock, knowledge specialization, transactive memory consensus, and transactive memory accuracy, is positively related to group goal performance, external group evaluations, and internal group evaluations. The positive relationship with group performance was found to hold for both task and external relationship transactive memory systems.     

Trunk- and head-centred spatial coordinates do not affect free-viewing perceptual asymmetries

Turning the trunk or head to the left can reduce the severity of leftward neglect. This study sought to determine whether turning the trunk or head to the right would reduce pseudoneglect: A phenomenon where normal participants underestimate the rightward features of a stimulus. Participants made luminance judgements of two mirror-reversed greyscales stimuli. A preference for selecting the stimulus dark on the left was found. The effect of trunk-centred coordinates was examined in Expt. 1 by facing the head toward the display and turning the trunk to the left, right or toward the display. Head-centred coordinates were examined in Expt. 2 by directing the eyes toward the display and then turning the head and trunk. No effect of rotation was observed. It was concluded that the leftward bias for the greyscales task could be based on an object-centred attentional bias or left-to-right eye scanning habits.