Influence of African American elders’ age stereotypes on their cardiovascular response to stress

Abstract

Although it has been shown that White elders are vulnerable to the influence of age stereotypes, it was not known whether this effect applied to African American elders. In the present study, African American elders were randomly assigned to negative or positive implicit-age-stereotype groups. Compared to participants in the positive age-stereotype group, those in the negative age-stereotype group demonstrated significantly more elevated cardiovascular response to stress, as measured by blood pressure and heart rate following mental challenges. These results suggest that negative age stereotypes generate a susceptibility to stress among African American elders, whereas positive age may provide them with a defense against this stress.     

Impact of Abuse History on Adolescent African American Women's Current HIV/STD-Associated Behaviors and Psychosocial Mediators of HIV/STD Risk

This study examined if relationship power, sex refusal self-efficacy, or fear of condom negotiation mediated the relationship between abuse history and consistent condom use (CCU) among African American female adolescents (N?=?593). Participants with an abuse history (58%) were less likely to report CCU. Women with an abuse history reported less relationship power and self-efficacy for refusing sex and more fear of condom negotiation, none of which independently or jointly mediated the association between abuse and CCU. Notably, history of abuse was associated with CCU across mediator models despite inclusion of psychosocial mediators. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding adolescents' condom use behaviors within the context of their life experiences, especially past abuse history.     

Older Mexican Americans and God-mediated control: exploring the influence of Pentecostal/Evangelical affiliation

A growing number of Mexican Americans are leaving the Catholic Church to join Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits that are associated with joining Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. A latent variable model is specified that contains the following core relationships: (1) older Mexican Americans who affiliate with Pentecostal/Evangelical congregations will attend worship services more often; (2) older Mexican Americans who attend church more often will receive more spiritual support from their fellow church members; (3) older Mexican Americans who receive more spiritual support will develop a closer relationship with God; and (4) older Mexican Americans who have a close relationship with God will develop a stronger sense of God-mediated control. Findings from a nationwide survey of older Mexican Americans provide support for each of these linkages.     

Social support,physical functioning,and cognitive functioning among older African American adults

ABSTRACT

Social support and functional ability are related to a number of outcomes in later life among African Americans, including cognitive performance. This study examined how providing and receiving social support was related to fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities among aging African American adults after accounting for functional limitations, age, education, sex, income, and self-reported health. Data from 602 African American adults (M?=?69.08, SD?=?9.74; 25% male) were analyzed using latent variable modeling. Fluid ability was a second-order factor indicated by measures that assessed verbal memory, working memory, perceptual speed, and inductive reasoning. Crystallized ability was a first-order factor indicated by three measures that assessed vocabulary (Shipley Verbal Meaning Test and parts A and B of the ETS Vocabulary Test). Results indicated that the receipt of social support was negatively related to both fluid and crystallized abilities, while the provision of support was positively related to fluid and crystallized ability. Follow-up tests found that the receipt of support was more strongly related to fluid ability than crystallized ability. There was no significant difference regarding the relationship of provision of support with fluid ability compared to crystallized ability. Results discuss the importance of considering the social context of older adults when examining cognitive ability.     

Occupational stress and mental well-being in a cohort of Black South African teachers

This study explored levels of occupational stress and mental well-being of a cohort of Black South African teachers. 200 secondary school teachers completed the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI: Boyle, Borg, Falzon, & Baglion, 1995), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28: Goldberg & Hillier, 1979 Goldberg, D. P., & Hillier, V. F. (1979). A scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire. Psychological Medicine, 9, 139–145. doi: 10.1017/S0033291700021644[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF: Keyes, 2006 Keyes, C. L. M. (2006). Mental health in adolescence: Is America's youth flourishing? American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(3), 395–402. doi: 10.1037/0002-9432.76.3.395[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Correlations and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were used to determine the levels of occupational stress and well-being of participants, and to establish the relation between these variables. A significant majority of the teachers reported high levels of mental health (flourishing) despite high levels of teacher stress. These results show teachers’ ability to withstand and cope with stress whilst maintaining their mental health. This suggests the presence of protective factors that mediate the effect of work-related stressors and, in so doing, contribute to the teachers’ levels of resilience.     

The objects of American religious studies

Disciplinary retrospectives on American religious studies have come over the last several decades to center on a single turning point, a decisive and expansive reformation of the object of scholars’ attentions. In a nutshell, somewhere between the 1970s and 1980s a vanguard among us began at last to leave off writing about white, northeastern, Protestant men and to write instead about everybody: more religions, more relations to religion, more of what counts as religion in the first place. Even as it lies at the animating heart of our disciplinary self-appraisals, however, this narrative turn from Protestantism to pluralism in American religious studies seems itself peculiarly resistant to analysis. This essay proposes that we revisit the dialectic between ‘oneness’ and ‘manyness’ in American religious history and historiography. In particular, it urges that we bring scrutiny to bear on the ways that our newer narratives of religious pluralism in America come to be spliced within a more longstanding and resilient metanarrative rooted in American Protestantism.     

Specifying the Interrelationship Between Exposure to Violence and Parental Monitoring for Younger Versus Older Adolescents: A Five Year Longitudinal Test

Five waves of longitudinal data collected from 349 African American youth living in extreme poverty were used to examine the interrelationship between exposure to violence and parenting during adolescence. Semi-parametric group based modeling was used to identify trajectories of parental monitoring and exposure to violence from T1 to T5. Results from these analyses revealed: (1) a trajectory of declining parental monitoring for 48% of youth; and (2) four distinct trajectories of exposure to violence. Multivariate findings were largely consistent with the ecological-transactional model of community violence. Youth with stable and/or increasing trajectories of exposure to violence were more likely than youth with stable-low exposure to violence to have declining parental monitoring, but additional analyses revealed a similar pattern of findings for younger adolescents (age 9–11 T1), but no evidence of linkages between trajectories of exposure to violence and parental monitoring for older adolescents (age 12–16 T1). The theoretical and policy implications of these findings as well as areas for future research are also discussed.     

The Role of Religion on the Health Practices of Mexican Americans

Twenty million Mexican Americans live in the U.S. (U.S. Census 2000 Summary File, 2000). It is vital that health care clinicians become familiar with and acknowledge the role of religion or religiosity on the health practices of Mexican Americans so that these needs may be addressed through holistic care. This paper reviews the origin and role that religion plays in the health practices of Mexican Americans. The potential benefits of addressing these client’s religious needs are examined and suggestions are offered on how health care clinicians may address these needs in a culturally sensitive manner.Josefina Lujan, MSN, RN is a first generation Mexican American who has been practicing nursing for 25 years in the Texas-Mexico border community of El Paso, Texas.Howard Campbell is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. e-mails: jlujan1@utep.edu; hcampbel@utep.edu     

Why the ‘Black Market’ Arguments against Legalizing Organ Sales Fail

One of the most widespread objections to legalizing a market in human organs is that such legalization would stimulate the black market in human organs. Unfortunately, the proponents of this argument fail to explain how such stimulation will occur. To remedy thus, two accounts of how legalizing markets in human organs could stimulate the black market in them are developed in this paper. Yet although these accounts remedy the lacuna in the anti-market argument from the black market neither of them provide reason to believe that legalizing an organ markets would stimulate the black market in organs. Despite its prevalence, then, the argument from the black market should be rejected.