Effect of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests on Health Behaviour and Anxiety: A Survey of Consumers and Potential Consumers

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests can be purchased over the internet. Some companies claim to provide relative genetic risks for various diseases and thus encourage healthy behaviour. There are concerns that exposure to such information may actually discourage healthy behaviour or increase health anxiety. An online survey was conducted (n?=?275). Respondents were composed of individuals who had purchased a DTC genetic test and received their results (consumers, n?=?189), as well as individuals who were either awaiting test results or considering purchasing a test (potential consumers, n?=?86). Consumers were asked if their health behaviour or health anxiety had changed after receiving their results. Respondents’ current health behaviour and health anxiety were queried and compared. In total, 27.3 % of consumers claimed a change in health behaviour, all either positive or neutral, with no reported cessation of any existing health behaviour. A change in health anxiety was claimed by 24.6 % of consumers, 85.3 % of which were a reduction. Consumers had significantly better health behaviour scores than potential consumers (p?=?0.02), with no significant difference in health anxiety. This study points towards an association between receipt of DTC genetic test results and increased adoption of healthy behaviours for a minority of consumers based on self-report, with more mixed results in relation to health anxiety.     

Eye gaze patterns reveal how we reason about fractions

ABSTRACT

Fractions are defined by numerical relationships, and comparing two fractions’ magnitudes requires within-fraction (holistic) and/or between-fraction (componential) relational comparisons. To better understand how individuals spontaneously reason about fractions, we collected eye-tracking data while they performed a fraction comparison task with conditions that promoted or obstructed different types of comparisons. We found evidence for both componential and holistic processing in this mixed-pairs task, consistent with the hybrid theory of fraction representation. Additionally, making within-fraction eye movements on trials that promoted a between-fraction comparison strategy was associated with slower responses. Finally, participants who performed better on a non-numerical test of reasoning took longer to respond to the most difficult fraction trials, which suggests that those who had greater facility with non-numerical reasoning attended more to numerical relationships. These findings extend prior research and support the continued investigation into the mechanistic links between numerical and non-numerical reasoning.     

Homelessness and the problem of containment

Homelessness is a problem that is hardly spared to any society in our modern world. Usually discussed by people concerned with social policy, sociology, public health and politics, homelessness has only quite recently begun to command the attention of professionals concerned with psychological and psychotherapeutic processes. Following from the author's experience of working therapeutically with homeless people, as well as in discussions with homeless services, the paper follows a line of thinking around homelessness that is explicitly psychodynamic in orientation. The central argument here is that homelessness is an experience that is, so to speak, waiting to happen. Homelessness is portrayed as a natural extension of an underlying experience of the sister states of uncontainment and alienation. I argue that the homeless person not only experienced a lack of containment in his earliest interactions, but has grown through life with significant difficulties in this area. Homelessness then is an extreme response to a deeper psychological reality that projects into a part of the person's life the agonies associated with uncontainment. Homelessness is the realization of an internal situation –a shifting of a personal struggle into a new and more visible stage. This view of homelessness is designed to provide an amendment to current views that privilege the roles of poverty and social exclusion in the origins of homelessness rather than as an alternative account of the origins of homelessness.     

Analysing the Simultaneous Relationship Between Life Satisfaction and Health-Related Quality of Life

This paper aims to examine whether life satisfaction and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are simultaneously related, as well as to quantify the bias that occurs if simultaneity is not accounted for. The study sample consisted of 870 respondents, representative of the Spanish adult general population. Using a simultaneous equations system —with the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) and the SF-6D index as outcome variables—, we found a simultaneous association between life satisfaction and HRQoL, although this relationship is heterogeneous in individual characteristics such as age and sex. More important, the fact of estimating the relationship between life satisfaction and HRQoL under a unidirectional approach severely underestimates the effect of life satisfaction on HRQoL and, to a lesser degree, the reverse direction effect. In consequence, policy decisions intended to improve satisfaction with life or HRQoL can be wrong if they rely on unidirectional estimates. Another relevant implication of this research is that, as a result of the simultaneous relationship between life satisfaction and HRQoL, not only health interventions may increase satisfaction with life, but also policies that improve life satisfaction can lead to positive side effects on HRQoL.     

The link between anger and admiration toward governmental actions and self-reported preventive behaviour in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, across six correlational studies in four different countries (total N = 4937), we examined the link between citizens' anger with and admiration for the government's actions and decisions (i.e., system-based anger and admiration) and engagement in preventive behaviour. The internal meta-analyses showed that individuals who admired the government's actions were more likely to adopt personal hygiene and social distancing behaviour. Yet, the link between emotions and preventive behaviour differed concerning the target of emotions, especially for anger. Specifically, anger about restrictions imposed by the government was negatively related to preventive behaviours, but this relationship was not significant when the target of anger was the government's overall handling of the pandemic. Our findings emphasise the importance of citizens' emotions and the targets of those emotions during the crisis.     

Recognition of notated melodies by possessors and nonpossessors of absolute pitch

Musically trained listeners compared a notated melody presented visually and a comparison melody presented auditorily, and judged whether they were exactly the same or not, with respect to relative pitch. Listeners who had absolute pitch showed the poorest performance for melodies transposed to different pitch levels from the notated melodies, whereas they exhibited the highest performance for untransposed melodies. By comparison, the performance of melody recognition by listeners who did not have absolute pitch was not influenced by the actual pitch level at which melodies were played. These results suggest that absolute-pitch listeners tend to rely on absolute pitch even in recognizing transposed melodies, for which the absolute-pitch strategy is not useful.     

Internalizing and Externalizing Problems as Correlates of Self-Reported Attachment Style and Perceived Parental Rearing in Normal Adolescents

The current study examined relationships between attachment style, parental rearing behaviors, and symptoms of internalizing and externalizing in a large sample of nonreferred adolescents (N = 742). Adolescents completed (a) a single-item measure of attachment style, (b) the child version of the EMBU, a questionnaire measuring perceptions of parental rearing behaviors, and (c) the Youth Self-Report, an index of severity of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Results showed that attachment style was related to internalizing as well as externalizing symptoms. More specifically, adolescents who classified themselves as avoidantly or ambivalently attached displayed higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms than adolescents who classified themselves as securely attached. Furthermore, perceived parental rearing behaviors were also associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. That is, low levels of emotional warmth and high levels of rejection and overprotection were accompanied by high levels of psychopathological symptoms. Finally, both attachment and parental rearing behaviors accounted for a unique proportion of the variance in internalizing symptoms. Yet, when predicting externalizing symptoms, only parental rearing behaviors declared a significant proportion of the variance.     

Test–Retest Reliability of Ratings of Job Performance Dimensions in Managers

This article examines the test–retest reliability of supervisory ratings for several dimensions of job performance and for overall job performance. We found that the test–retest reliability of overall job performance is .79 (SD = .08), a value very close to the one found by Viswesvaran, Ones and Schmidt (1996), and that the average test–retest reliability for specific dimensions of job performance is .57 (SD = .07). We also found that some dimensions of job performance appear to be easier to rate than others. We suggest some implications of these findings for research and practice of personnel selection.     

Self-efficacy and interest: Experimental studies of optimal incompetence

How does self-efficacy affect interest? The interest-and-interests model assumes that factors that induce interest—novelty, complexity, conflict, and uncertainty—do so non-linearly. Self-efficacy should thus affect interest quadratically, because it reflects uncertainty about an activity’s outcome. When self-efficacy is low, interest is low because the activity’s outcome is certain. When self-efficacy is moderate, the person’s success on the task seems likely, but not inevitable. But as self-efficacy becomes very high, success seems completely certain, and the task is thus uninteresting. Two experiments tested these predictions. Experiment 1 asked people to rate the interestingness of differentially difficult activities; Experiment 2 manipulated self-efficacy regarding a fuzzy dart game. In both experiments, interest was a quadratic function of self-efficacy. Implications for theories of vocational interest development and change are considered.