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.     

A measurement model of women's behavioral risk taking.

The current study was designed to gain a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between substance use and sexual risk taking within a community sample of women (N = 1,004). Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors examined the factor structure of sexual risk behaviors and substance use to determine whether they are best conceptualized as domains underlying a single, higher order, risk-taking propensity. A 2 higher order factor model (sexual risk behavior and substance use) provided the best fit to the data, suggesting that these 2 general risk domains are correlated but independent factors. Sensation seeking had large general direct effects on the 2 risk domains and large indirect effects on the 4 first-order factors and the individual indicators. Negative affect had smaller, yet still significant, effects. Impulsivity and anxiety were unrelated to sexual health risk domains.     

Observing responses in rats: Support for the secondary reinforcement hypothesis

Rats' lever presses on a retractable lever earned brief presentations of discriminative stimuli signalling periods in which responding on an alternative lever was either non-reinforced (extinction) or reinforced on a random ratio schedule. The predictions of two theoretical accounts of this behaviour were tested by studying the effects of omitting either the stimulus signalling the reinforced or that signalling the non-reinforced schedule component. Under these conditions rats' behaviour is determined by the conditioned, affective properties of the stimuli rather than by their purely informational properties.     

Reducing STD/HIV Stigmatizing Attitudes Through Community Popular Opinion Leaders in Chinese Markets

Reducing STDs and HIV/AIDS incidence requires campaigns designed to change knowledge, attitudes, and practices of risky sexual behavior. In China, a significant obstacle to such changes is the stigma associated with these diseases. Thus 1 campaign intervention strategy is to train credible community leaders to discuss these issues in everyday social venues. This study tested the effectiveness of such an approach on reducing HIV/AIDS stigma, across 2 years, from a sample of over 4,500 market vendors, in 3 conditions. Results showed an increasing growth in market communication about intervention messages, and concomitant declines in stigmatizing attitudes, across time, with the greatest changes in community popular opinion leaders, significant changes in intervention nonopinion leaders, and little change in the control markets.