The relationship of body image dissatisfaction to cigarette smoking in college students

This study examined the association of cigarette smoking status and body image dissatisfaction as measured by the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ), in 1575 young adult college students, 18–24 years of age. Respondents were current cigarette smokers (N = 482) or never tobacco users (N = 1093). Smoking status was found to be significantly associated with 5 of the 10 MBSRQ subscales, with current smokers having lower scores on Fitness Orientation, Health Evaluation and Health Orientation (all p < 0.001) and higher scores on Appearance Orientation (p = 0.01) and Overweight Preoccupation (p = 0.03) compared with never tobacco users. Furthermore, among current smokers, a higher number of days smoked in the last 30 days were associated with lower scores on all MBSRQ subscales, except Self-Classified Weight. In terms of clinical implications, interventions for smoking cessation among college students might benefit from inclusion of components for addressing body image dissatisfaction and improving health beliefs.     

Something from nothing: exploring dimensions of children's knowing through the repeated reading of favourite books

Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio explore some of the dimensions of knowing that children, teachers and parents may engage together during story‐time. They reflect on some of their own long‐term relationships with children and children's books, especially Phoebe Gilman's Gilman P 1992 Something from nothing (New York, NY, Scholastic Inc)  [Google Scholar] Something from nothing (published in 1992) and Simms Taback's Taback S 1999 Joseph had a little overcoat (New York, NY, Viking‐Penguin)  [Google Scholar] Joseph had a little overcoat, published in 1999. The authors probe issues such as why children ask to hear a favourite story over and over and why they suddenly abandon all interest and move on to a new book. They explore the meaning of the silences that sometimes arise during story‐time, pooling around the young listeners as the last words of the book are read. Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio remind us of the value of literature in the lives of children and they affirm that the reading and re‐reading of favourite stories enables the understanding of complex human issues and contributes significantly to social, emotional and spiritual growth.     

Norwegian versions of the Living with Asthma Questionnaire (LWAQ) and Asthma Bother Profile (ABP), validation and comparison of two asthma groups

The Living with Asthma Questionnaire (LWAQ) and the Asthma Bother Profile (ABP) were translated into Norwegian using conventional back translation procedures, and completed by 30 asthma outpatients and 30 asthma patients admitted to inpatient rehabilitation. Reliability (Cronbach's alpha and retest-reliability) was shown to be good for both scales. Validity was established by showing significantly poorer health in the rehabilitation sample, and correlations with state and trait anxiety. The Norwegian translations are reliable and valid versions of the original questionnaires.     

Emotional avoidance: an experimental test of individual differences and response suppression using biological challenge

The present study examined the affective consequences of response inhibition during a state of anxiety-related physical stress. Forty-eight non-clinical participants were selected on the basis of pre-experimental differences in emotional avoidance (high versus low) and subjected to four inhalations of 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air. Half of the participants were instructed to inhibit the challenge-induced aversive emotional state, whereas the other half was instructed to simply observe their emotional response. Participants high in emotional avoidance compared to those low in emotional avoidance responded with greater levels of anxiety and affective distress but not physiological arousal. Individuals high in emotional avoidance also reported greater levels of anxiety relative to the low emotional avoidance group when suppressing compared to observing bodily sensations. These findings are discussed in terms of the significance of emotional avoidance processes during physical stress, with implications for better understanding the nature of panic disorder.     

Unemployment, Underemployment, and Mental Health: Conceptualizing Employment Status as a Continuum

The economy is one of the most important social environments that affect well-being, and community psychologists have long studied the social costs of one key economic stressor—job loss. But economically inadequate employment has received much less research attention than unemployment in regard to mental health effects. This paper contrasts these two literatures and considers factors that might account for their differential growth including actual rates of unemployment and underemployment. Recent panel studies offer no support for another possible basis for this differential growth—the assumption that inadequate employment is more like adequate employment than unemployment. Implications of a paradigm shift from a dichotomous perspective (employment vs. unemployment) to a continuum perspective with variations of both unemployment and employment are discussed for research and prevention. Another implication is the need to expand standard labor force statistics to reflect better the degree of underemployment.     

On the lateralization of emotional prosody: an event-related functional MR investigation

In order to investigate the lateralization of emotional speech we recorded the brain responses to three emotional intonations in two conditions, i.e., "normal" speech and "prosodic" speech (i.e., speech with no linguistic meaning, but retaining the 'slow prosodic modulations' of speech). Participants listened to semantically neutral sentences spoken with a positive, neutral, or negative intonation in both conditions and judged how positive, negative, or neutral the intonation was on a five-point scale. Core peri-sylvian language areas, as well as some frontal and subcortical areas were activated bilaterally in the normal speech condition. In contrast, a bilateral fronto-opercular region was active when participants listened to prosodic speech. Positive and negative intonations elicited a bilateral fronto-temporal and subcortical pattern in the normal speech condition, and more frontal activation in the prosodic speech condition. The current results call into question an exclusive right hemisphere lateralization of emotional prosody and expand patient data on the functional role of the basal ganglia during the perception of emotional prosody.     

Empathy, an integrative model

Empathy research has yielded various separate insights into empathy and its correlates. Yet a comprehensive theoretical account that situates these factors within a larger framework is lacking. In this paper a conception of empathy is proposed and defended, which makes it possible to provide an encompassing reconstruction of the processes that are characteristic of empathic encounters. This conception situates empathy within a context of communication. Doing so allows one to connect various treads in empathy research, but at the same time urges one to take new factors into account. It is argued that empathy is a response to a specific demand occurring in a specific context. The type of answer persons are able to provide depends on four types of factors. First, there are the psychological empathic components. We argue that empathy should be seen as a combination of (especially) parallel and reactive emotions, against a background of specific cognitive abilities. Second, it is argued that empathy is aided by a twofold control system, comprised of judgements and forms of self-control. Third, personality factors play a part in how a person responds to demands. Finally, but most importantly, it is pointed out that specific relational factors codetermine empathic reactions. In this paper we describe the theoretical background of our model and provide an elaborated account of the four factors that determine empathic acts in a given context. We illustrate the viability of our model by presenting observational data of children's empathic acts.     

Ethnicity and Social Support During Pregnancy

Data from two multi-ethnic prospective studies of African American, Latina, and non-Hispanic White pregnant women were used to examine the influence of contextual factors on social support processes during pregnancy. Multiple types of support (perceived support, received support, support satisfaction, network support) and sources of support (baby's father, family, friends) were assessed. The role of ethnicity in social support was examined after controlling for the contribution of related contextual factors (SES, marital status, age, parity, employment) to these processes. The impact of ethnicity and related contextual factors differed across sources of social support. Ethnic differences in support from family and friends, but not from the baby's father, emerged. However, marital status was a consistent predictor of support from the baby's father, and SES was a consistent predictor of support from friends. Overall, the findings of two studies suggest that although ethnicity is associated with support from friends and family, other contextual factors, such as marital status and SES, influence support processes during pregnancy.     

Drug Use Among Immigrant and Non‐immigrant Adolescents: Immigrant Paradox,Family and Peer Influences

The present study compared immigrant and Italian native adolescents with regard to drug use. Additionally, we analysed the role of family and peer risk and protective factors for drug use. Participants included 2533 Italian native and immigrant adolescents (mean age = 17.19, SD = 1.6; 66.7% male). Results showed that immigrant adolescents reported lower levels of marijuana and pharmaceutical drug abuse than non‐immigrant adolescents. These results confirm the so‐called immigrant paradox phenomenon: the counterintuitive finding that although immigrants often live under challenging conditions and reported lower economic affluence compared with nationals, some health outcomes have not always corresponded to their relative disadvantage. Immigrant adolescents also reported higher level of parental control and lower levels of affiliation with deviant peers, but lower levels of child disclosure, parental solicitation and parental knowledge. Socio‐economic status and parental monitoring showed equivalent effects on drug use for immigrant and non‐immigrant adolescents. Results have implications for preventive interventions for immigrant adolescents and families, including the need to develop programmes that leverage the benefits of the immigrant paradox for immigrant communities. Future research should analyse the processes that lead to lower levels of drug use in immigrant adolescents and investigate the influence of friendship networks on immigrant adolescent drug use behaviour. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mediational role of parenting styles in emotional intelligence of parents and aggression among adolescents

The present study was designed to examine the relationship between parents' emotional intelligence and adolescents' aggression, through the mediation of parenting styles. Two hundred and twenty five undergraduate students (113 boys & 112 girls; age 17–18 years), from four universities in Pakistan, participated with their parents. The Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 1995), and the Scale of Emotional Intelligence (Batool & Khalid, 2011) were completed by parents. The Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992) was completed by their adolescent offspring. Mediational path analysis supported our hypothesised model. Results indicate that emotional intelligence of parents indirectly links to aggression among offspring, through parenting styles. It was concluded that emotional intelligence training will help parents to improve their parenting styles, and it will lower the risk of aggression in their children.