The role of illness uncertainty on coping with fibromyalgia symptoms.

This study examined the role of illness uncertainty in pain coping among women with fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain condition of unknown origin. Fifty-one FM participants completed initial demographic and illness uncertainty questionnaires and underwent 10-12 weekly interviews regarding pain, coping difficulty, and coping efficacy. Main outcome measures included weekly levels of difficulty coping with FM symptoms and coping efficacy. Multilevel analyses indicated that pain elevations for those high in illness uncertainty predicted increases in coping difficulty. Furthermore, when participants had more difficulty coping, they reported lower levels of coping efficacy. Results were consistent with hypothesized effects. Illness uncertainty accompanied by episodic pain negatively influenced coping efficacy, an important resource in adaptation to FM.     

Staying Together: A Bidirectional Delay–Coupled Approach to Joint Action

To understand how individuals adapt to and anticipate each other in joint tasks, we employ a bidirectional delay–coupled dynamical system that allows for mutual adaptation and anticipation. In delay–coupled systems, anticipation is achieved when one system compares its own time‐delayed behavior, which implicitly includes past information about the other system’s behavior, with the other system’s instantaneous behavior. Applied to joint music performance, the model allows each system to adapt its behavior to the dynamics of the other. Model predictions of asynchrony between two simultaneously produced musical voices were compared with duet pianists’ behavior; each partner performed one voice while auditory feedback perturbations occurred at unpredictable times during live performance. As the model predicted, when auditory feedback from one musical voice was removed, the asynchrony changed: The pianist’s voice that was removed anticipated (preceded) the actions of their partner. When the auditory feedback returned and both musicians could hear each other, they rapidly returned to baseline levels of asynchrony. To understand how the pianists anticipated each other, their performances were fitted by the model to examine change in model parameters (coupling strength, time‐delay). When auditory feedback for one or both voices was removed, the fits showed the expected decrease in coupling strength and time‐delay between the systems. When feedback about the voice(s) returned, the coupling strength and time‐delay returned to baseline. These findings support the idea that when people perform actions together, they do so as a coupled bidirectional anticipatory system.     

The Role of Status in Producing Depressed Entitlement in Women's and Men's Pay Allocations

Extensive empirical evidence confirms a depressed entitlement effect wherein women pay themselves less than men for comparable work and believe the allocation fair. The present study tests the hypothesis that status subordination linked to being female underlies at least some of this effect. A 2 × 3 design crossed 180 undergraduates' gender with a control condition, which successfully established the depressed entitlement effect, and two experimental conditions. In one, women's status was enhanced through legitimation of women's task abilities; in the other, both women's and men's status was enhanced by adding educational credentials relevant to task ability. Follow-up analyses of the significant interaction revealed that the gap in self-pay demonstrated in the control condition disappeared when women's status was enhanced such that higher-status women's self-pay equaled that of men and exceeded that of control women. Although these findings confirm that status plays a role in producing depressed entitlement in self-pay, ancillary analyses of participants' perceptions point to the persistence of shifting standards and men's resistance to status threats.     

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.     

Persistent alterations in biological profiles in women with abuse histories: influence of premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

OBJECTIVE: To examine dysregulation in biological measures associated with histories of abuse in women and whether women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) differ in their dysregulation. DESIGN: Twenty-five women meeting prospective criteria for PMDD and 42 non-PMDD controls underwent structured interview to determine abuse histories and lifetime Axis I diagnoses, excluding those with current Axis I disorders or using medications. MAJOR OUTCOME MEASURES: Plasma cortisol and norepinephrine (NE), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and vascular resistance index (VRI) were assessed at rest and in response to mental stress. RESULTS: A greater proportion of PMDD women had prior abuse compared with non-PMDD women. Regardless of PMDD status, all abused women had lower plasma NE and higher HRs and tended to have lower plasma cortisol at rest and during stress. Abused women also reported more severe daily emotional and physical symptoms. Greater VRI and BP at rest and during stress were seen only in PMDD women with abuse. CONCLUSION: There is persistent dysregulation in stress-responsive systems in all abused women that cannot be accounted for by current psychiatric illness or medications, and PMDD women may be differentially more vulnerable to the impact of abuse on measures reflecting alpha-adrenergic receptor function.