Assessing elements of women's decisions about mammography.

We investigated motivational and cognitive processes of behavior change with respect to mammography screening. One hundred forty-two women (ages 40 and older) recruited from three worksites answered a 41-item questionnaire consisting of statements based on constructs from the transtheoretical model of behavior change. Principal-components analysis identified two factors: a six-item component representing positive perceptions of mammography (Pros) and a six-item component representing avoidance of mammography (Cons). Analysis of variance showed that Pros, Cons, and a derived Decisional Balance measure (Pros minus Cons) were associated with stage of mammography adoption. Results are consistent with applications of the model to smoking cessation. The model is also discussed as it relates to other theories of behavior change and as a general strategy for analyzing perceptual data pertinent to health-related actions and intentions for behavioral change.     

A longitudinal study of pain sensitivity and blood pressure in adolescent boys: results from a 5-year follow-up.

A growing literature has observed a significant reduction in pain sensitivity among hypertensive animals and humans. It is uncertain whether a reduced sensitivity to pain can be observed in nonnotensive individuals who go on to develop high blood pressure. Blood pressure (BP) was reassessed in one hundred fifteen 19-year-old boys initially tested at age 14, when they were also presented with a pain stimulus (mechanical finger pressure). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that information regarding pain tolerance improved prediction of changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure beyond that afforded by differences in BP at age 14, parental history of hypertension, and body mass index. These analyses suggest that pain sensitivity may be associated with physiological processes involved in the development of sustained high blood pressure.     

Normative Practical Reasoning: Christian Pillar

In the first part I discuss the thesis, advanced by John Broome, that intentions are normatively required by all-things-considered judgments about what one ought to do. I endorse this thesis, but remain sceptical about Broome's programme of grounding the correctness of reasoning in formal relations between contents of mental states. After discussing objections to the thesis, I concentrate in the second part on the relation between rational action and rational intention. I distinguish between content-related and attitude-related reasons for propositional attitudes like believing, wanting, and intending something. The former appeal to features of the content of the propositional attitude they are reasons for, the latter would be reasons for a propositional attitude because of features of the propositional attitude as a whole, for example the feature of its being beneficial to believe or to want that p . I try to show that the common philosophical reaction to attitude-related reasons, namely to claim that they are merely content-related reasons in disguise, is mistaken. In its most extreme form such a reaction would fail to respect the first-person character of reasoning which manifests itself in, among other things, the fact that a Moore-sentence and its analogue for intentions cannot be a conclusion of reasoning. In the third part I argue that there are attitude-related reasons for intentions, and, in showing how they influence practical deliberation, I find that their existence can be rendered compatible with the thesis that it is rational to intend to do what one thinks one ought to do.