Uptake of Breast Screening is Influenced by Current Religion and Religion of Upbringing

Research has shown that individuals with a current religious affiliation are more likely to use preventive health services. The aim of this study was to determine whether breast screening uptake in Northern Ireland is higher amongst women with a current affiliation to an organised religion and, for those with no current affiliation, to examine whether their religion of upbringing is associated with uptake of breast screening. The Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) was used to link Census and national breast screening data for 37,211 women invited for routine breast screening between 2001 and 2004. Current religious affiliation, religion of upbringing and other demographic and socio-economic characteristics were as defined on the Census form. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between religion affiliation and attendance. Uptake of breast screening is about 25% lower for those without a current religious affiliation. There are modest differences between Catholics and Protestants, with the latter about 11% more likely to attend for screening. For those with no current religion, the religion of upbringing appears to positively influence attendance rates. These differences remain after adjustment for all of the socio-demographic and socio-economic factors that have been shown to influence uptake rates of breast screening in the UK to date. Record linkage is an efficient way to examine equity across demographic characteristics that are not routinely available. The lower uptake amongst those with no religious affiliation may mean that screening services may find it difficult to maintain or improve uptake rate in an increasingly secularised society.     

Resilience and affect balance as mediators between trait emotional intelligence and life satisfaction

The current study aimed to analyze the importance of trait emotional intelligence in life satisfaction and to extend the previous literature by investigating the potential mediating effects of resilience and affect balance in this relationship. To test the study hypotheses, self-report measures of trait emotional intelligence, resilience, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction were administrated to 263 undergraduates. Correlation analysis indicated that trait emotional intelligence was positively correlated with life satisfaction. Mediational analyses showed that trait emotional intelligence exerted its indirect effect on life satisfaction through the simple mediating effect of affect balance and the three-path mediating effect of resilience–affect balance. In addition, resilience played as a partial mediator between trait emotional intelligence and affect balance. Furthermore, multi-group analyses showed that the mediational model was not moderated by gender. Therefore, this study makes a contribution to the complex nature of the association between trait emotional intelligence and subjective well-being.     

Low-Income Families With Potential Adolescent Gang Involvement: A Structural Community Family Therapy Integration Model

The purpose of this article is to propose a community structural intervention for low-income families who present to therapy with the concern of an adolescent at risk for gang involvement. Families are affected by multiple interacting systems. In congruence with systems theory, changing a part of the system will essentially affect the interrelated parts of the system. The proposed intervention utilizes structural family therapy and community family therapy as a model to impact change at the family system, its interrelated systems, and the system at which the family is embedded.     

Investigating the Effects of a Persuasive Digital Game on Immersion,Identification, and Willingness to Help

Abstract

Recent years have seen a tremendous rise in the development and distribution of persuasive games: digital games that are used to influence players’ attitudes and/or behavior. Three studies (N_{Study 1}?=?134; N_{Study 2}?=?94; N_{Study 3}?=?161) tested the effects of a persuasive game on immersion, identification, and willingness to help. The results showed that playing the persuasive game did not result in substantially stronger willingness to help, relative to the control conditions. Video and printed text resulted in more immersion than the digital game, but playing the game resulted in substantially higher perceptions of embodied presence.     

Reduced willingness to approach genuine smilers in social anxiety explained by potential for social evaluation,not misperception of smile authenticity

ABSTRACT

We investigate perception of, and responses to, facial expression authenticity for the first time in social anxiety, testing genuine and polite smiles. Experiment 1 (N?=?141) found perception of smile authenticity was unaffected, but that approach ratings, which are known to be reduced in social anxiety for happy faces, are more strongly reduced for genuine than polite smiles. Moreover, we found an independent contribution of social anxiety to approach ratings, over and above general negative affect (state/trait anxiety, depression), only for genuine smiles, and not for polite ones. We argue this pattern of results can be explained by genuine smilers signalling greater potential for interaction – and thus greater potential for the scrutiny that is feared in social anxiety – than polite smiles. Experiment 2 established that, relative to polite smilers, genuine smilers are indeed perceived as friendlier and likely to want to talk for longer if approached. Critically, the degree to which individual face items were perceived as wanting to interact correlated strongly with the amount that social anxiety reduced willingness to approach in Experiment 1. We conclude it is the potential for social evaluation and scrutiny signalled by happy expressions, rather than their positive valence, that is important in social anxiety.     

It Only Looks the Same From a Distance: How U.S., Finnish,and Irish Schools Support Struggling Readers

This study examined how U.S., Finnish, and Irish educators identified and supported struggling readers. Using Johnston's (2011) framework for evaluating reading interventions and activity theory (Engeström, 1999), we interviewed educators in four U.S., three Irish, and three Finnish schools. In the United States, the adoption of three beliefs—reductionist reading philosophy, difficulties as cognitive and remediated through instruction, and reading problems as unexpected phenomena—reinforced a skills-driven approach. Irish and Finnish educators adopted a more holistic view of reading, and teachers used formative assessment to support struggling students over extended periods while working collaboratively with other staff. Discussion focuses on how these beliefs influenced divisions of labor, roles and responsibilities, and the urgency with which difficulties were addressed.     

Contemporary MFT Models’ Alignment with Relational Common Factors

Common factors theorists believe that therapy is effective, not only because of model specific elements, but also, because of common factors that cut across various treatment models. Common factors include extra-therapeutic factors such as treatment setting, therapeutic alliance, therapist variables and client variables. Common factors researchers have proposed a set of relational common factors that are unique to the practice of marriage and family therapy, including the ability to conceptualize difficulties relationally and the ability to disrupt dysfunctional relationship patterns. In this paper, I analyze and compare relational common factors in three contemporary models: narrative therapy, solution-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Finally, I discuss significant implications for theorizing, training and supervision.     

How Sex and College Major Relate to Mental Rotation Accuracy and Preferred Strategy: An Electroencephalographic (EEG) Investigation

The Psychological Record - The electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to investigate variation in mental rotation (MR) strategies between males and females and different college majors. Beta...     

When message tailoring backfires: The role of initial attitudes in affect–cognition matching

This research explores when and how tailoring messages to attitudinal bases backfires. Study 1 demonstrated that for attitudes (toward education subsidies) that were based more on beliefs than emotions, recipients whose initial attitudes were incongruent with the message position (i.e., message opponents) showed mismatching effects, such that the affective message was more persuasive than the cognitive message. Study 2 replicated these mismatching effects among message opponents for attitudes (toward a rival university) that were primarily affective. Study 3 controlled for effects of initial attitude certainty and replicated the mismatching effects of Study 2 for affective attitudes toward an increase in tuition. Finally, Study 4 suggested a potential mechanism for mismatching effects, revealing that for attitudes (toward an online course management system) that were based more on beliefs than emotions, message opponents counter‐argued with the cognitive appeal more intensely than the affective appeal. Contrary to the notion in the extant literature that mismatching effects are relatively rare compared with matching effects, the current research suggests that mismatching effects occur for both primarily affective and cognitive attitudes when the recipient is highly opposed to the message position. The present findings also demonstrate the utility of examining attitudinal bases at the object level in the context of message tailoring. Implications for message tailoring and for affective versus cognitive attitudes are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.