Do egalitarians always help the disadvantaged more than the advantaged? Testing a value‐norm conflict hypothesis in Malaysia

Do egalitarians always express greater compassion toward the disadvantaged than toward the advantaged? A closer look at existing scholarship on the topic suggests that they likely do. Here, we investigated whether such tendency is also apparent within interdependent, high power distance cultures where the high‐status privilege prevails. Given the emphasis on harmony in social relations in interdependent cultures, we reasoned that egalitarians might experience a dissonance between their private equity values and a societal norm prescribing high‐status privilege, which we refer to as the value‐norm conflict. We therefore proposed and found evidence in Malaysia (N = 273) that egalitarians succumbed to the normative high‐status privilege in their culture: They displayed greater compassion towards higher than lower status victims, but only when the political cost of doing so was low. Interestingly, anti‐egalitarians displayed equitable levels of compassion for high‐ and low‐status victims, but only when the political cost for taking such action also was low. Hence, we show that even egalitarians can, at times, favor the privileged and that anti‐egalitarians can act equitably, so long as the political cost of doing so is trivial for them.     

Life Satisfaction After Spousal Loss: The Potential Influence of Age,Gender, and Leisure

Life satisfaction is considered an important part of successful aging. The purpose of this study was to examine how age, gender, and participation in leisure activities influence the life satisfaction of widowed older adults. Results suggest that age, gender, and changes in physical activity participation are possible predictors of widowed older adults’ life satisfaction. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Gender congruency effects in picture naming

The analysis of speech error corpora in various gender-marked languages has shown that noun substitutions tend to preserve grammatical gender. This result has been taken as an indication that grammatical gender could play a constraining role during the process of lexical selection. To gain insights on the status of grammatical gender in the speech production system, we discuss this hypothesis and we report three picture naming experiments. We attempted to observe gender-marked context effects in the course of error-free speech production. Participants named pictures shortly after processing a prime that was or was not gender marked and that was or was not congruent with the name of the picture. A clear congruency effect was observed, involving both facilitation in the gender congruent conditions and inhibition in gender incongruent conditions. Different interpretations of this effect and of previously reported gender context effects are discussed in the context of current models of speech production.     

Religiosity/Spirituality and Mental Health and Quality of Life of Early Pregnant Women

Journal of Religion and Health - The present study aims to investigate how religious/spiritual (R/S) beliefs are associated with depressive, anxious and stress symptoms and quality of life (QOL) of...     

Does having a pet make a difference? Highlights from the HBSC Portuguese study

Pets are part of many adolescent’s lives. Objectives: To identify in a large national representative sample of Portuguese adolescents (HSBC study), the percentage of adolescents that have pets, what kind of feelings pets provide, differences by gender and age (through school grades) and to verify whether adolescent health, well-being, life satisfaction and psychological symptoms are associated with having a pet. Methods: The 2014 study provided national data of 6026 Portuguese adolescents (52.3% of which were girls), whose mean age was 13.8 years, randomly selected from those attending 6th, 8th and 10th grades. Measures included asking the participant if he/she had pets, which pet was, and the relationship they had with the pet, ISS, perception of well-being, life satisfaction and psychological symptoms. Results: The large majority of Portuguese adolescents had a pet. Adolescents who referred having a pet reported more frequently having dogs and cats. As for positive feelings related to pets, results showed that pets give them feelings of happiness, companionship, nurturing, tranquility, security and responsibility always/almost always, especially in girls and younger boys. The results also showed that having a dog was associated with a higher socio-economic status, better perception of well-being, more life satisfaction and less psychological symptoms. Conclusion: Since research shows that young people who have pets report higher rates of well-being/health perception, that information should be used to conduct more studies and change policies in ways that benefit adults and children.     

Interpreting Survey Questions About Sexual Aggression in Cross-Cultural Research: A Qualitative Study with Young Adults from Nine European Countries

Examining equivalence in the interpretation of survey items on sexual assault by participants from different cultures is an important step toward building a valid international knowledge base about the prevalence of sexual aggression among young adults. Referring to the theoretical framework of contextualism, this study presents qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 128 young adults from nine EU countries on their understanding of survey items from the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S). The measure had previously been used to collect quantitative data on the prevalence of sexual aggression perpetration and victimization in the same countries that had yielded substantial differences in the rates of victimization and perpetration between countries. Based on the methodological approach of a mixed research design, the current study was conducted as a follow-up to the quantitative study with a new sample to explore whether systematic differences in the interpretation of the survey items in the different countries might explain part of the variation in prevalence rates. The interviews showed that participants from the nine countries interpreted the items of the SAV-S in a similar way and as intended by the authors of the scale. Systematic differences between men and women in interpreting the survey items were revealed. Implications of the findings for conducting survey research on sexual aggression across cultures are discussed.     

Longitudinal Study of Life Events,Well-Being,Emotional Regulation and Depressive Symptomatology

Etiological research regarding adolescent depression is relatively recent and longitudinal studies are needed to explicate the mechanisms by which risk and protective factors impact the development of depression. This investigation evaluated the effects of time 1 predictors (e.g., depressive symptoms, life events, subjective well-being, and emotion regulation strategies) on depressive symptoms assessed at time 2 (1 year later). The sample comprised 182 Portuguese adolescents, aged 12–16. Time 1 depressive symptoms and psychological well-being were significant predictors of time 2 depressive symptoms. Time 1 rumination predicted time 2 depressive symptoms, but time 2 brooding mediated this effect. Time 1 life events did not predict time 2 depressive symptomatology. This study identified several factors that seem to play an important role in the development of depressive symptomatology. Previous depressive symptomatology and well-being had a significant effect in this process and the relationship between rumination in time 1 and depressive symptoms at time 2 (1 year later) was fully mediated by brooding at time 2. Given these results, implications for prevention and treatment of depression include addressing risk factors like early depressive symptoms, rumination and brooding, and increasing the protective effect of psychological well-being.     

Couples' cultural values, shared parenting, and family emotional climate within Mexican American families

This study tested a model of shared parenting as its centerpiece that incorporates cultural values as predictors and family emotional climate as the outcome variable of interest. We aimed to assess the predictive power of the Mexican cultural values of familismo and simpatia over couples' shared parenting practices. We anticipated that higher levels of shared parenting would predict family emotional climate. The participants were 61 Mexican American, low income couples, with at least one child between 3 and 4 years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The predictive model demonstrated excellent goodness of fit, supporting the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered when Mexican American couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting. Empirical evidence was previously scarce on this proposition. The findings also provide evidence for the role of cultural values, highlighting the importance of family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation as a pathway to shared parenting within Mexican American couples.     

Effects of mercury chloride (HgCl2) on Betta splendens aggressive display

Mercury chloride (HgCl2) is a toxic mercury salt and a major pollutant, that can be found in soil, water and air, with influences on behavior, physiology and adaptation to the environment. In this study two experiments were designed to examine interactions and effects of HgCl2 on some behavioral patterns of Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens). In the first experiment we tested the effect of a progressive dose (five 0.04 mg) on aggressive display with exposure to a mirror, whereas in the second experiment we tested the effect of an acute dose (0.2 mg) on the aggressive display with exposure to a mirror. The experiments were performed on 5 consecutive sessions at intervals of 18 hours between sessions. Differences of performance were shown by subjects in the acute and progressive treatments when compared with a control treatment in the majority of behaviors evaluated, namely Floating, Slow Swimming, Wavy Swimming, Emerging, Bend, Square Move and Motor Display Components. Acute treatment was different from control only on Show Body, while the progressive group differed on Resting, Horizontal Display and Appropriate Display Components. Differences between Correlate Display Components and Total were also shown. Both the acute and progressive contamination with HgCl2 decrease the motor activity in the aggressive display, mirror-image test of Betta splendens, mainly on the progressive dose. This implies an impairment on feeding behavior, predator avoidance, reproductive behavior, mate choice and territoriality. These results suggest that in this fish species, the progressive dose has a greater effect on behavior in general and that both the acute and progressive contamination with mercury chloride affect many other aspects of behavior.     

Health-related quality of life in children and adolescents: subjective well being

The main objective of this study was to build a model, which includes personal and social factors, that helps to highlight factors that promote health-related quality of Life (HRQoL) in children and in adolescents. A sample of 3195 children and adolescents was acquired from 5th and 7th graders from all five Portuguese regions. In this study three independent latent variables were specified--Physical, Psychological and Social and two dependent latent variables were measured: Health behavior and Quality of Life. The integrative model was composed by different components: (1) health-related quality of life, integrated by 8 dimensions from KIDSCREEN-52; (2) health behavior, (3) variables related to physical health; (4) variables related to social health; (5) variables related to psychological health. As results were found strong correlation between psychological dimensions and self-esteem and other factors and a structural equation model was developed. The model presented a RMSEA index of .08. Similarly, adjustment levels for the CFI, NFI and IFI vary above or around .90, which suggests a good adjustment for the hypothesized model. The model presented significant qui-square. This study showed that in all the samples studied, the psychological variables were those that contributed at a superior level to HRQoL.