Bewältigung des unerfüllten Kinderwunsches

The article reviews current research in relation to two aspects of involuntary childlessness; firstly, the extent to which involuntary childlessness can be considered a critical life-event and secondly, the short-term effects of childlessness on life-satisfaction and well-being. A study is reported in which 68 middle-aged women (45 to 65 years) who are long term childless because of infertility, are investigated. The study focuses on the extent to which unfilled desire for a child has long term effects on well-being and life-satisfaction. The control group comprised 68 women who did not suffer from fertility problems and became pregnant spontaneously. Life-satisfaction and well-being were assessed using the life-satisfaction questionaire (FLZ; Fahrenberg et al. 2000) and the SCL-90-R (Symptome-Checklist, Derogatis, the German version of Franke 1995). The study shows clearly that psychological well-being is significantly lower in childless middle-aged women compared to women of the same mean age, who have a child. No significant differences were found in social well-being and health. The results support the view that unwanted childlessness may become a chronic stressor. Unintentionally childless middle-aged women do not constitute a clinical group whose need for psychotherapy is urgent. However, the development of specific counselling for women who fail to conceive and those who remain childless in the long term is recommended.     

Behavioural coherence in violent group activity: An interpersonal model of sexually violent gang behaviour

This study provides an analysis of offender‐victim interactions in 223 cases of sexual violence committed in gangs. Cases were derived from archival sources such as law reports. A multivariate analysis revealed four interpersonal themes (dominance, submission, co‐operation, and hostility) previously identified in studies of lone sexual assault [Alison and Stein, Vicious Circles: Accounts of stranger sexual assault reflect abusive variants of conventional interactions. J Forensic Psychiatry 12:515–538, 2001]. These themes have also been identified in many other forms of human relating [Wiggins, An informal history of the interpersonal circumplex tradition. J Pers Assess 66:217–233, 1996] and conform to a structure known as the interpersonal circumplex. The circumplex has previously been used to conceptualise the relationships between individuals in terms of dynamic interactions that are mutually influencing. Thus, dominance elicits submission and submission elicits dominance. Each interpersonal style could be further subdivided according to the use of either verbally or physically abusive strategies. Point‐Biserial correlations with other aspects of the offence (e.g., mobility of the group, post‐offence treatment of the victim) provided additional support for these conceptually different themes and demonstrated that gang rape represents a distorted and violent form of interpersonal relating. Further, this dynamic interaction emerges not just at an individual level, but at a group level, suggesting that the thematic concepts underpinning the interpersonal circumplex can be extended to group activity and sexually aggressive behaviour. Aggr. Behav. 30:449–468, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Forgiveness and mental health variables: Interpreting the relationship using an adaptational-continuum model of personality and coping

The present paper uses an adaptational-continuum model of personality, based on Ferguson’s (2001) health psychology model integrating Eysenck personality factors and coping style, to provide a context for examining the relationship between forgiveness and mental health. Three hundred and twenty respondents completed measures of personality, coping style, forgiveness (forgiveness of self, others, likelihood, presence of positive forgiveness, absence of negative forgiveness), general health, stress, positive and negative affect and life satisfaction. Among respondents, all measures of forgiveness, bar one, load negatively on a neuroticism-coping factor. The remaining measure of forgiveness (presence of positive forgiveness) loaded on an extraversion-coping factor. The relationship of the neuroticism-coping-forgiveness factor was associated with poorer mental health, suggesting forgiveness is associated with better mental health within the context of this personality-coping factor. Significant positive relationships were found between the extraversion-coping-forgiveness factor and two measures of positive mental health outcomes (positive affect and life satisfaction) suggesting forgiveness is associated with some aspects of mental health within the context of this personality-coping factor. The present findings suggest that forgiveness, or failure to forgive, can be conceptualised within an adaptational-continuum model of personality.     

Prospective Prediction of Alternative High School Graduation Status at Emerging Adulthood1

Most studies that examine the prediction of graduation status among teens have examined those who attend regular high schools. The present study reports the prediction of high school graduation status 5 years later among 646 youth who attended alternative (continuation) high schools at baseline. Those youth at baseline who: (a) reported less intention to use soft drugs (cigarettes, alcohol, or marijuana) during the next year; (b) suffered relatively few drug‐related consequences during the last year; (c) were relatively less likely to have carried a weapon (knife or gun) in the last year; (d) reported feeling relatively hopeful about the future; and (e) were older were more likely to self‐report having graduated continuation high school 5 years later. These results suggest that the consequences of drug use, not drug use per se, other illegal behavior, and a sense of well‐being are important predictors of graduation among groups of high‐risk teens. Problem behavior and resiliency theories are offered as potential explanations of these findings.     

Different measures of risk perceptions yield different patterns of interaction for combinations of hazards: smoking,family history and cardiac events

Some combinations of hazards yield disease rates greater than would be expected from the risk attributable to each hazard in isolation. However, perceptions are often more consistent with the combined risk being seen as less than the sum of the individual factors, raising concerns over the validity of some measures of risk perception. Here, 249 adults estimated the risk of cardiac events for four hypothetical men, described as having high or low levels of smoking and family history of heart disease. Three distinct measures were used. A 9‐point scale produced a strong sub‐additive interaction, a 101‐point scale produced a weaker sub‐additive interaction, and an unbounded scale produced no interaction. In this study, as in all previous research, scales with relatively few points (here a 9‐point scale) yield sub‐additive interactions. Given the consistency of results yielded by such scales, irrespective of context, it is concluded that these scales are not valid for perceptions of multiple risk factors. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When,why, and how do People Deviate from Physical Distancing Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study

Introduction:To limit the spread of COVID-19, many countries, including Belgium, have installed physical distancing measures. Yet, adherence to these newly installed behavioral measures has been described as challenging and effortful. Based on the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model, this study performed an in-depth evaluation of when, why, and how people deviated from the physical distancing measures.Methods:An online mixed-method study was conducted among Belgian adults (N = 2055) in the beginning of May 2020. Participants were recruited via an open call through email and social media platforms, using snowball sampling. Conditions wherein people deviated from the physical distancing measures were assessed by means of an open-ended question. HAPA determinants were assessed in a quantitative way.Results:Half of the sample reported to deviate from the measures. Further, deviation from the measures was associated with each determinant outlined by the HAPA. Findings highlight that many people deviated from the measures because of their need for social contact. The majority of the people who deviated from the measures stated that they carefully weighed the risks of their behavior.Conclusions:Need for social contact pushed people to deviate from physical distancing measures in a deliberate manner. Potential areas for future interventions aimed at promoting adherence to physical distancing measures and enhancing psychosocial well-being are discussed.     

Systematic Withdrawal

Although AGM theory contraction (Alchourrón et al., 1985; Alchourrón and Makinson, 1985) occupies a central position in the literature on belief change, there is one aspect about it that has created a fair amount of controversy. It involves the inclusion of the postulate known as Recovery. As a result, a number of alternatives to AGM theory contraction have been proposed that do not always satisfy the Recovery postulate (Levi, 1991, 1998; Hansson and Olsson, 1995; Fermé, 1998; Fermé and Rodriguez, 1998; Rott and Pagnucco, 1999). In this paper we present a new addition, systematic withdrawal, to the family of withdrawal operations, as they have become known. We define systematic withdrawal semantically, in terms of a set of preorders, and show that it can be characterised by a set of postulates. In a comparison of withdrawal operations we show that AGM contraction, systematic withdrawal and the severe withdrawal of Rott and Pagnucco (1999) are intimately connected by virtue of their definition in terms of sets of preorders. In a future paper it will be shown that this connection can be extended to include the epistemic entrenchment orderings of Gärdenfors (1988) and Gärdenfors and Makinson (1988) and the refined entrenchment orderings of Meyer et al. (2000).     

Telemetry Provides New Insights into Entrainment of Activity Wheel Circadian Rhythms and the Role of Body Temperature in the Development of Ulcers in the Activity-Stress Paradigm

Two methods of monitoring the circadian rhythm of activity in rodents: (1) an activity wheel cage, which detects the number of wheel revolutions, and (2) an internal radio transmitter, which records gross motor activity (GMA) of the animal, were compared in both normal circadian cycles and during the development of activity-stress ulcers. Rats were implanted with a biotelemetry transmitter that detected GMA and body temperature (BT) and placed in activity wheel cages. A 12 hour/12 hour light/dark cycle was maintained throughout the experiment. Subjects were subdivided into two groups: (1) unlimited access to activity wheel (AW) cages and (2) locked activity wheel (LW) cages. Following an ad-libitum habituation period, animals were allowed food access for 1 hour/day during the light. In the habituation period, the animals showed higher GMA and BT during the dark phase when housed in AW cages than in LW cages. Both GMA and number of wheel revolutions increased dramatically after the onset of food restriction for the AW animals. There was a deleterious drop in BT in AW animals as the food-restricted period continued and a significant correlation existed between severity of ulcerations and BT. The findings of this experiment demonstrate that the activity wheel imposes an alternation of the circadian cycle, which, in turn, influences rhythmicity through reentrainment. Additionally, in the activity-stress paradigm, a significant drop in BT correlates with severity of ulcerations. A disrupted circadian cycle, involving hypothermia, is proposed as the mechanism underlying the demise of animals in the activity-stress paradigm.     

Modality exclusivity norms for 423 object properties

Recent work has shown that people routinely use perceptual information during language comprehension and conceptual processing, from single-word recognition to modality-switching costs in property verification. In investigating such links between perceptual and conceptual representations, the use of modality-specific stimuli plays a central role. To aid researchers working in this area, we provide a set of norms for 423 adjectives, each describing an object property, with mean ratings of how strongly that property is experienced through each of five perceptual modalities (visual, haptic, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory). The data set also contains estimates of modality exclusivity—that is, a measure of the extent to which a particular property may be considered unimodal (i.e., perceived through one sense alone). Although there already exists a number of sets of word and object norms, we provide the first set to categorize words describing object properties along the dimensions of the five perceptual modalities. We hope that the norms will be of use to researchers working at the interface between linguistic, conceptual, and perceptual systems. The modality exclusivity norms may be downloaded as supplemental materials for this article from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/ content/supplemental.     

Effects of anxiety and attention control on processing pictorial and linguistic emotional information

This study investigated the role of executive attention control in modulating selective processing of emotional information in anxiety. It was hypothesized that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control would be associated with greater difficulty in ignoring task-irrelevant threat-related information. The study included both faces and words as stimuli. Cognitive interference effects were assessed using two emotional Stroop tasks: one with angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces, and one with threat-related, positive, and neutral words. An objective measure of attention control was obtained from the Attention network task. There were four participant groups with high/low trait anxiety and high/low attention control. Results indicated that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control was associated with greater cognitive interference by emotional faces (including angry faces), compared to neutral faces. This interference effect was not evident in participants with high anxiety and high attentional control, or in low-anxious individuals. There was no evidence of associations between anxiety, attention control, and the interference effect of emotional words. Results indicate that high anxiety and poor attention control together predict enhanced processing of emotionally salient information, such as angry facial expressions. Implications for models of emotion processing are discussed.