Psychological and social characteristics of attenders for breast screening

Abstract

Demographic characteristics, health behaviour and knowledge of breast cancer were assessed in 183 women from a regional breast screening unit and compared with those of 182 women from a breast clinic and 41 control subjects. A questionnaire yielded information on (i) demographic characteristics and cancer-related behaviours including breast self-examination (BSE), use of screening and promptness of presentation of breast symptoms in the clinic group, (ii) the extent and effects of knowledge about breast cancer and (iii) the role of Health Belief Model dimensions. Results showed the screening unit attenders to be significantly older and to be significantly more likely to be from higher social classes. Differences between the groups in health beliefs and knowledge did not remain once the effects of age and social class were partialled out. While attitudes towards BSE and its practice related to health beliefs. only a minority of the women indicated that they practised BSE with any regularity. The results suggest that screening is failing to attract a truly representative sample of the community and raise the possibility that this failure is a consequence of sociological as much as psychological factors.     

Deliberation Versus Intuition: Decomposing the Role of Expertise in Judgment and Decision Making

What produces better judgments: deliberating or relying on intuition? Past research is inconclusive. We focus on the role of expertise to increase understanding of the effects of judgment mode. We propose a framework in which expertise depends on a person's experience with and knowledge about a domain. Individuals who are relatively experienced but have modest knowledge about the subject matter (“intermediates”) are expected to suffer from deliberation and to benefit from a more intuitive approach, because they lack the formal knowledge to understand the reasons underlying their preferences. Individuals who are high (“experts”) or low (“novices”) on both experience and knowledge are expected to do well or poorly, respectively, regardless of decision mode. We tested these predictions in the domain of art. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that intermediates performed better when relying on intuition than after deliberation. Judgments of experts and novices were unaffected. In line with previous research relating processing style to judgment mode, Experiment 3 showed that the effect of processing style (global versus local) on judgment quality is similarly moderated by expertise. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Road to the Unconscious Self: Understanding when People Gain Self‐knowledge of Implicit Disgust Sensitivity from Behavioural Cues

On the basis of an integration of dual‐process models of information processing and the lens model framework of person perception, we conducted two studies to investigate whether self‐perceivers could detect their implicit disposition from video feedback of behavioural cues and whether these cues were used for explicit dispositional inferences under conditions that maximized the presumed self‐perception process. Using an approach that differed from previous research, we used the following: (i) a more detailed and stepwise self‐perception procedure; (ii) a specific explicit measure compared with a global explicit measure; and (iii) disgust sensitivity as a domain with clear, unambiguous cues and an assumed low self‐presentation bias. The results from two studies (N = 117 and N = 130) on disgust sensitivity provide the first evidence for the assumed process with regard to bodily reaction cues but not with regard to facial expression cues. These novel findings suggest that people can get to know their unconscious selves better if supporting conditions are met and the right behavioural cues are attended to. Additional boundary conditions of this self‐perception process were investigated using display rules and need for closure in Study 2. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EDGAR MORIN'S PARADIGM OF COMPLEXITY AND GÖDEL'S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM

This article shows that in two respects, Gödel's incompleteness theorem strongly supports the arguments of Edgar Morin's complexity paradigm. First, from the viewpoint of the content of Gödel's theorem, the latter justifies the basic view of complexity paradigm according to which knowledge is a dynamic, unfinished process, and develops by way of self-criticism and self-transcendence. Second, from the viewpoint of the proof procedure of Gödel's theorem, the latter confirms the complexity paradigm's circular line of inference through which is formed the all-round knowledge of a concrete object.     

INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21 st CENTURY

Current leadership theories and business models—built around modernist assumptions about winners and losers, power and control, and local rather than global interactions—are decades out of date with what is needed to lead postindustrial and postmodern enterprises. This article calls for a collaborative and socially intelligent theory for leadership development based on Integral Science. This theory incorporates and unifies appropriate elements of current leadership research for a postmodern knowledge economy and seeks answers to questions still unanswered.     

MISSING LINKS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM: FOUR DIMENSIONS FOR CHANGE

Our society is changing at a pace hardly imagined a century, even a few decades ago. The role of education is crucial in helping prepare our young people to both cope with and take responsibility for shaping these changes in ways consistent with the values of a free society. To this end, four overarching themes for change in curriculum are examined: (1) the competencies and attitudes needed to understand and engage in systems thinking; (2) the development of self and inter-personal knowledge and skills; (3) understanding of the connectiveness of knowledge; and (4) the ability to think critically.     

Order,disorder, and the absolute: An experiment in dialogue

The first section of this dialogue is excerpted from an edited conversation between Sean Kelly and the late David Bohm, and focuses on the concepts of order, disorder, and the Absolute. The second section explores these concepts in greater depth, with Bohm maintaining the impossibility of absolute knowledge and the fundamental unintelligibility of the concept of disorder, preferring instead to speak of “orders of infinite degree” which emerge out of an “unknown ground.” Kelly responds by proposing the concept of “absolute knowing” as the cognitive process within which the concepts of order and disorder, the known and the Unknown are seen as dialectically related moments of the Absolute as complex whole. The third section is Edgar Morin's response to the preceding dialogue. He begins by outlining his views on the nature and limits of rationality, maintaining, with Bohm, the superiority of the “negative modality” of speaking about “being” or “reality.” In the second part, however, he proposes the notion of nature as “chaosmos,” which he understands as a creative “dialogic” of order, disorder, and organization.     

THE EXPLORATORY AND REFLECTIVE DOMAIN OF METAPHOR IN THE COMPARISON OF RELIGIONS

There has been a longstanding interest in discovering or uncovering resemblances among what are ostensibly diverse religious schemas by employing a range of methodological approaches and tools. However, it is generally considered a problematic undertaking. Jonathan Z. Smith has produced a large body of work aimed at explicating this and has tacitly based his model of comparison on metaphor, which is traditionally understood to connote similarity between two or more things, as based on a linguistic or pragmatic assessment. However, another possible approach is cognitive. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have championed the view of “conceptual metaphor,” which regards metaphor as being pervasive not only in language, but also in thought and action. Indeed, according to them, it basically structures our conceptual operations and hence views of the world through partially mapping knowledge across ontological domains, generally from the concrete to the abstract. I shall argue that a similar mechanism can fruitfully be applied to comparing religious schemas, as based on the postulated relationship between the domains of human and divine, physical and abstract, and as realized through expressions of journeying and reflection.     

Niveles de procesamiento: Un marco para la investigación sobre la memoria

RESUMEN

Los autores comienzan su trabajo con una exposición de diversos alegatos a favor y en contra de los modelos multialmacén, considerando la validez de las pruebas en que se basan con referencia a los conceptos de capacidad, codificación y características del olvido, centrándose respecto a este último en la función de retención. Seguidamente proponen un marco alternativo en términos de niveles de procesamiento, manteniendo que el trazo de la memoria constituye un subproducto del análisis perceptivo y que su persistencia constituye una función positiva de la profundidad con la que se analiza el estímulo. Los autores reexaminan los datos existentes respecto al aprendizaje incidental, atención selectiva y almacén sensorial, distinción almacenamiento a corto/largo plazo, curva de posición serial y efectos de repetición y repaso. El trabajo termina aclarando que el enfoque de los autores no constituye una teoría sino más bien un marco conceptual con arreglo al cual podría proceder la investigación sobre memoria.