Breast Cancer Risk Perceptions among Relatives of Women with Uninformative Negative <Emphasis Type="Italic">BRCA1/2</Emphasis> Test Results: The Moderating Effect of the Amount of Shared Information

The most common result of BRCA1/2 mutation testing when performed in a family without a previously identified mutation is an uninformative negative test result. Women in these families may have an increased risk for breast cancer because of mutations in non-BRCA breast cancer predisposition genes, including moderate- or low-risk genes, or shared environmental factors. Genetic counselors often encourage counselees to share information with family members, however it is unclear how much information counselees share and the impact that shared information may have on accuracy of risk perception in family members. We evaluated 85 sisters and daughters of women who received uninformative negative BRCA1/2 results. We measured accuracy of risk perception using a latent variable model where accuracy was represented as the correlation between perceived risk (indicators = verbal and quantitative measures) and calculated risk (indicators = Claus and BRCAPRO). Participants who reported more information was shared with them by their sister or mother about her genetic counseling session had greater accuracy of risk perception (0.707, p?=?0.000) than those who reported little information was shared (0.326, p?=?0.003). However, counselees shared very little information; nearly 20 % of family members reported their sister or mother shared nothing with them about her genetic counseling. Family members were generally not aware of the existence of a genetic counseling summary letter. Our findings underscore the need for effective strategies that facilitate counselees to share information about their genetic counseling sessions. Such communication may help their relatives better understand their cancer risks and enhance risk appropriate cancer prevention.     

The unconscious side of Facebook: Do online social network profiles leak cues to users’ implicit motive dispositions?

In this study we investigated the links between motive dispositions and online social network (OSN) profile content. We assessed the achievement, affiliation and power motives via self- and peer-report. In addition, we used a projective test and two novel, affect based measures (involving affect ratings and EMG recordings) to assess implicit motives in the three content domains. Two observers independently coded motive-specific OSN content. Results showed that self-reports were linked to OSN content for the power domain. Peer-reports and measures of implicit motives were positively linked to OSN content across motive domains. In most cases, measures of implicit motives were still linked to OSN content after adjusting for self- and peer-reports. These results indicate that OSN profiles may leak cues to users’ implicit motives, which neither users themselves nor their peers are aware of. Implications for motive theory, motive assessment, and targeted online advertising will be discussed.     

Wenn Psychotherapie schadet …

Background

The examination of the negative and harmful effects of psychotherapy has recently moved into the focus of psychotherapy research. The investigation described in the following article specifically analyzes for the first time the contents of complaints by psychotherapy patients and presents a practical category system for classification of the negative effects of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Samples and method

A total of 67 cases of complaints submitted to the Ethics Association (reg. co). Ethics in Psychotherapy during the time period from 18.02.2008 to 27.12.2010 were analyzed with respect to the content in the sense of an inductive categorization and quantitative evaluation.

Results

From the available patient complaints a reliable category system could be elucidated. The violation of therapeutic base variables and violations of sexual limitations were the most common cause of complaints against male therapists whereas for female therapists accusations of violation of medical confidentiality and documentation duty were significantly higher.

Conclusions

The results of this study allow formulation of research recommendations for extended investigation of the negative effects of psychotherapy and reveal options for the development of a targeted risk management.     

How women's sexual orientation guides accuracy of interpersonal judgements of other women

This research examines how women's sexual orientation guides the accuracy of judgements of other women. One hundred ten judges (67 straight and 43 lesbian women) watched videotapes of 9 targets (4 straight and 5 lesbian) and made judgements about the targets' thoughts, emotions, personality, and sexual orientation. Accuracy scores were created for each judge by comparing judgements to criterion data gathered about targets. Straight judges were significantly more accurate at judging thoughts and marginally more accurate at judging emotions compared to lesbian judges. There were no significant differences in judging personality. Straight targets' thoughts and personality were more easily assessed than lesbian targets' while lesbians' emotions were more easily judged than straight targets'. Lesbian judges were more accurate at judging sexual orientation regardless of their tendency to categorize women as lesbian compared to straight judges. Findings support past research on the accurate perception of sexual orientation and contribute to understanding how sexual orientation guides person perception.     

Structure of the Basque emotion lexicon

Using a prototype approach to emotion concepts, two studies were conducted in the Basque Country, where an ancient non-Indo-European language is still spoken, to identify the mental state words that Basque speakers are most certain name emotions (emozioak) and to map the hierarchical and family resemblance structure of the most prototypical 124 emotion concepts. Cluster analysis of sorting data collected in the Basque Country revealed five basic level emotion categories similar to those found in American English and Indonesian (love, happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) as well as five other small positive emotion categories. All major categories found at the basic level contained several terms that are not traceable to Romance languages. Also in line with the American and Indonesian results, the basic level categories in Basque fell within two large superordinate categories: positive and negative emotions. Each of the five large basic level categories contained several subordinate level categories. The results suggest that the emotion lexicons, and corresponding conceptualisations of the emotion domain, in the Basque Country, Indonesia, and the US are similar, although there are some important differences.     

Opposing amygdala and ventral striatum connectivity during emotion identification

Lesion and electrophysiological studies in animals provide evidence of opposing functions for subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala and ventral striatum, but the implications of these findings for emotion identification in humans remain poorly described. Here we report a high-resolution fMRI study in a sample of 39 healthy subjects who performed a well-characterized emotion identification task. As expected, the amygdala responded to THREAT (angry or fearful) faces more than NON-THREAT (sad or happy) faces. A functional connectivity analysis of the time series from an anatomically defined amygdala seed revealed a strong anticorrelation between the amygdala and the ventral striatum/ventral pallidum, consistent with an opposing role for these regions in during emotion identification. A second functional connectivity analysis (psychophysiological interaction) investigating relative connectivity on THREAT vs. NON-THREAT trials demonstrated that the amygdala had increased connectivity with the orbitofrontal cortex during THREAT trials, whereas the ventral striatum demonstrated increased connectivity with the posterior hippocampus on NON-THREAT trials. These results indicate that activity in the amygdala and ventral striatum may be inversely related, and that both regions may provide opposing affective bias signals during emotion identification.     

When Social Perception Goes Wrong: Judging Targets’ Behavior toward Gay Versus Straight People

Accurate social perception depends on many factors, including the extent to which perceivers hold correct beliefs about how behaviors reflect the characteristic being judged. In Study 1, target participants recorded videos introducing themselves to either a gay or straight student who was ostensibly in another room. Unbeknownst to the targets, the other student was illusory and not real. Analysis of the targets’ videos revealed that they behaved more positively toward the gay than straight student. Two subsequent studies demonstrated that new perceivers were below chance in guessing the illusory student’s sexual orientation from watching the male targets’ behavior, presumably because they expected to see negative behavior toward the gay illusory student. The study documents processes whereby social perception can go awry.     

Generalization of conditioned fear-potentiated startle in humans: experimental validation and clinical relevance

Though generalization of conditioned fear has been implicated as a central feature of pathological anxiety, surprisingly little is known about the psychobiology of this learning phenomenon in humans. Whereas animal work has frequently applied methods to examine generalization gradients to study the gradual weakening of the conditioned-fear response as the test stimulus increasingly differs from the conditioned stimulus (CS), to our knowledge no psychobiological studies of such gradients have been conducted in humans over the last 40 years. The current effort validates an updated generalization paradigm incorporating more recent methods for the objective measurement of anxiety (fear-potentiated startle). The paradigm employs 10, quasi-randomly presented, rings of gradually increasing size with extremes serving as CS+ and CS−. The eight rings of intermediary size serve as generalization stimuli (GSs) and create a continuum-of-similarity from CS+ to CS−. Both startle data and online self-report ratings demonstrate continuous decreases in generalization as the presented stimulus becomes less similar to the CS+. The current paradigm represents an updated and efficacious tool with which to study fear generalization—a central, yet understudied conditioning-correlate of pathologic anxiety.