What is the key to culturally competent care: Reducing bias or cultural tailoring?

Objective: To gain a better understanding as to whether disparities in patient–provider relationships arise from ethnic minority patients being treated differently than European American patients while they would prefer to be treated the same, or whether disparities arise when ethnic minority patients are treated the same as European American patients while they would prefer to be treated differently.

Method: African-American, Latina/Latino and European American community members were recruited to participate in one of 27 focus group discussions. Topics included what made a good or bad relationship with a doctor and what led one to trust a doctor. A thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 10.

Results: Patients of all groups described experiences that reflected the concepts of patient-centred care, such as wanting a clinician who is attentive to patients’ needs. African-American patients reported experiences they viewed as discriminatory. Some African-American patients felt it was appropriate to racially/ethnically contextualise their care, and most Latina/Latino patients preferred language/culturally concordant clinicians.

Conclusion: Health care disparities might be reduced through a patient-centred approach to cultural competency training, general knowledge of the cultural context of clinicians’ patient population, and attention to the effects of racial bias and discrimination among both clinicians and non-clinical staff.     

From women to objects: Appearance focus, target gender, and perceptions of warmth, morality and competence

Most literally, objectification refers to perceiving a person as an object, and consequently, less than fully human. Research on perceptions of humanness and the stereotype content model suggests that humanness is linked to perceptions of warmth, morality and competence. Merging these insights with objectification theory, we hypothesized that focusing on a woman's, but not a man's, appearance should induce objectification, and thus reduce perceptions of these characteristics. In three studies, females, but not males, were perceived as less competent (Studies 2 and 3) and less warm and moral (Studies 1, 2 and 3) when participants were instructed to focus on their appearance. These findings support our position and help rule out stereotype activation as an alternative explanation to dehumanization. Further, they generalized to targets of different races, familiarity, physical attractiveness and occupational status. Implications for gender inequity and the perpetuation of objectification of women are discussed.     

Personal attitudes toward time: The relationship between temporal focus,space‐time mappings and real life experiences

What influences how people implicitly associate “past” and “future” with “front” and “back?” Whereas previous research has shown that cultural attitudes toward time play a role in modulating space‐time mappings in people's mental models (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache & Casasanto, 2014), we investigated real life experiences as potential additional influences on these implicit associations. Participants within the same single culture, who are engaged in different intermediate‐term educational experiences (Study 1), long‐term living experiences (Study 2), and short‐term visiting experiences (Study 3), showed their distinct differences in temporal focus, thereby influencing their implicit spatializations of time. Results across samples suggest that personal attitudes toward time related to real life experiences may influence people's space‐time mappings. The findings we report on shed further light on the high flexibility of human conceptualization system. While culture may exert an important influence on temporal focus, a person's conceptualization of time may be attributed to a culmination of factors.     

小学生调节聚焦对生活满意度的影响:压力应对方式的中介作用

采用调节聚焦问卷、压力应对方式问卷和生活满意度问卷对北京市五所学校1174名小学生进行调查, 考察调节聚焦对小学生压力应对方式、生活满意度的影响, 并检验应对方式在调节聚焦和生活满意度之间的中介作用。结果发现:(1)促进定向对小学生生活满意度有显著正向预测作用, 预防定向对生活满意度有显著负向预测作用;(2)积极应对和促进定向更相关, 消极应对和预防定向更相关;(3)积极应对在促进定向和生活满意度之间起着完全中介的作用, 积极应对、消极应对均在预防定向和生活满意度之间起着部分中介的作用。     

Motivations for promotion and prevention and the role of trust and commitment in interpersonal forgiveness

Granting forgiveness demands self-regulation. Distinct modes of self-regulation might therefore produce distinct routes to forgiveness. Self-regulation focused on advancement (or promotion) could motivate forgiveness through the perceived benefits to be attained by repairing a relationship, i.e., one’s trust that a partner will provide such benefits rather than further betrayal. In contrast, self-regulation focused on security (or prevention) could motivate forgiveness through the perceived costs of further relationship deterioration, i.e., one’s commitment to maintain a relationship upon which one depends and protect against the loss of this relationship. These hypotheses were supported across two studies that: (a) measured and manipulated promotion-focused versus prevention-focused self-regulation, (b) included real and imagined offenses in casual and close relationships, and (c) assessed forgiveness immediately following an offense and after a two-week delay. Trust in a relationship partner more strongly predicted forgiveness among promotion-focused individuals, whereas commitment to this partner more strongly predicted forgiveness among prevention-focused individuals.     

控制幻觉的研究方法、形成机制和影响因素

控制幻觉是指在完全不可控或部分不可控的情境下, 个体由于不合理地高估自己对环境或事件结果的控制力而产生的一种判断偏差。控制幻觉普遍存在于博彩游戏、医疗保健、心理健康、投资决策等实践领域。控制幻觉的研究方法主要包括间接测量方法、自我报告方法和实验室任务方法。控制启发式理论和调节定向理论则对控制幻觉的产生原因进行了解释。控制幻觉的影响因素包括人格因素、动机、权力、反馈、事件与个体的关联性、指导语等。未来的研究可从控制幻觉的多变量及交互作用研究、跨文化研究、调控策略研究等方面做进一步探讨。