Knowledge and beliefs regarding the consequences of cigarette smoking and their relationships to smoking status in a biracial sample

The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate carefully smoking-related knowledge and beliefs and their relationships to smoking status in a large, heterogeneous sample of smokers and nonsmokers in two settings: (a) a large, biracial southern city and (b) a small midwestern community. Participants were 611 (198 male, 413 female) adult respondents to a random-dialing telephone survey in Fargo, North Dakota (n = 200), and Memphis, Tennessee (n = 411). Each participant was given the Smoking Attitudes Survey, which assesses generalized health beliefs as well as health-related problems associated with smoking. Participants' knowledge of smoking-associated diseases (e.g., lung cancer) and of diseases not associated with smoking (e.g., kidney stones) was assessed. Stepwise regression analysis of composite knowledge scores revealed four independent predictors of the health consequences of smoking: education, race, smoking status, and income. Smokers, compared to nonsmokers, reported less knowledge related to the health consequences of smoking, were more likely to be male, were less concerned with the health consequences of smoking, and were more concerned about the health consequences of cholesterol. The best predictor of smokers who had never attempted cessation was their greater concern over weight control when compared to smokers with a history of smoking cessation attempts. The results are discussed in terms of smoking prevention and intervention efforts.     

The relationship among genital herpes simplex virus, stress, and social support

Despite widespread popular belief in the activation of recurrent lesions in genital herpes simplex virus (HSV) by psychosocial stress, little empirical evidence supports that contention. This study retrospectively examined the role of stress in activation of HSV lesions as mediated by social support. Participants were 59 volunteers who had self-reported culture-positive genital HSV for at least 10 months. Measures of stress proneness (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; STAI-Trait), recent stressful events (Schedule of Recent Events; SRE), and subjective appraisal of stress (global self-rating) were administered along with measures of general social support and herpes-specific social support. When retrospective reports of HSV symptoms were examined using a multiple-regression approach, duration of disease and amount of herpes-specific social support were found to be significant moderators of the relation between stress and number of HSV recurrences in the preceding 12 months. When duration of disease was short (less than 4 years), stress (SRE) and number of recurrences were positively associated; when disease duration was longer, there was no relationship. Similarly, at low levels of herpes-specific social support, a positive relation between stress (SRE) and number of recurrences was found. However, at higher levels of herpes-specific social support, no association was found. No relation was found between stress proneness (STAI-Trait) and HSV symptoms. However, subjective appraisal (global rating) of stress in the preceding 12 months was positively and significantly correlated with reported number of recurrences. Results are discussed in terms of their clinical implications.     

Race and Moral Judgment Development Scores

Black and White college students were studied to determine reactions to moral dilemmas when the race of the central character in the dilemma was changed.     

Setting the sales budget: An exploratory study

This article explores how the sales budget is set in a business organization. Findings from a longitudinal participant observation study revealed that the sales budget is considered of great importance to the organization as sales estimates serve as premises for planning of production and supply and new product developments. It was observed that the sales budget was based on a narrow, inner-directed perspective, almost looking away from important environmental driving forces such as competitors and customers. The findings also showed that individuals involved in the sales budgeting process behaved opportunistically, influencing the budgetary process and outcomes. Theoretical and normative implications are highlighted.     

Verbal conditioning of stimulus significance in the orienting response context

The manipulation of stimulus significance, by instructions from the experimenter, may be taken as an example of verbal conditioning. Consideration of such a mechanism suggested that personality effects previously found in conditioning studies should be apparent in instructional manipulations of significance in a study of the orienting response (OR) to words. Because of recent changes in dimensioning of the personality structure, some of the items originally used to define Eysenck’s extraversion (E) dimension are now used to assess the new dimension of psychoticism (P), suggesting that at least some of the established effects of E upon conditioning may be associated now with P. Hence the P scale was focused on in this study. Words differing on the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential were presented in three blocks, the first under indifferent instructions, the second under instructions to rate the words for their affective impact, and the third under indifferent instructions again. These blocks correspond to baseline, conditioning, and extinction conditions respectively. Electrodermal activity indicated enhanced conditioning, together with greater carry-over effects in the extinction phase, for low-P compared with high-P subjects. The results indicate the importance of personality effects in studies of stimulus significance and illustrate the value of the verbal conditioning mechanism in this area of the OR field. They also suggest the need to re-examine previously obtained E-effects in conditioning studies in light of changing personality tests.     

Developmental versus sensory deficit effects on perceptual processing in the reading disabled

Thirty children and 5 adults participated in two experiments designed to compare visual processing in normal and reading disabled children. The children were aged 8, 10, and 12 years. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to detect the temporal order of two briefly presented stimuli. In Experiment 2, subjects sorted cards containing bracket stimuli that did or did not produce perceptual grouping effects. Poor readers required more time to make accurate temporal order judgments and showed stronger perceptual grouping effects. For both good and poor readers, the amount of time necessary to make a correct temporal order judgment decreased, and perceptual grouping effects became weaker with age. However, the magnitude of the difference between the groups did not lessen with age. These results suggest that there are visual processing differences between good and poor readers that do not appear to correct by age 12.     

Depression and social problem solving.

Twenty depressed patients with major depressive disorder, 20 nondepressed matched control subjects, and 17 patients with anxiety disorders were compared in different measures of social problem solving. Problem solving was assessed with the Means-Ends Problem-Solving Test (Study 1), the solution of personal problems, and a problem-solving questionnaire (Study 2). Results showed that, as predicted, depressed subjects suffered from a deficit in problem solving in all three measures. The majority of these deficits were also displayed by the clinical control group rather than being specific to a diagnosis of depression. However, depressed subjects produced less effective solutions than did normal and clinical control subjects. The results suggest that depressed and anxious patients may have difficulties at different stages of the problem-solving process.     

Concrete operational thought in children with learning disabilities and children with normal achievement.

This study compared Piagetian cognitive development in normal achieving children and two groups of children with learning disabilities designated as either auditory-linguistic or visual-spatial on the basis of Verbal-Performance IQ differences on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R; 1974). The two groups with learning disabilities were matched with normal achieving controls on intelligence, socioeconomic status, sex, race, and age. Piagetian tasks measuring conservation, seriation, and classification were administered to each child to determine level of operative thought. The auditory-linguistic group scored significantly below normal controls in operativity, and significantly fewer were at a concrete operational level on a conservation of length task than were normal achieving children. The visual-spatial group did not differ significantly from normal controls. These results suggest that auditory-linguistic disabilities may be more detrimental than visual-spatial disabilities to development of operativity.