What Do Women Want? A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems

Recent attempts to medicalize women’s sexual “dysfunction” are critiqued and a “New View” of women’s sexual problems is introduced. The author argues for a female-centered perspective on women’s sexual desires and problems, based on a review of the literature on women’s sexuality and her observations of young women’s sexual experiences from 25 years of teaching Human Sexuality to undergraduate women. The review suggests that a pill or a patch cannot adequately address the sexual problems commonly experienced by US women.     

Religious Appeals and Implicit Attitudes

This article explores the effects of religious appeals by politicians on attitudes and behavior. Although politicians frequently make religious appeals, the effectiveness of these appeals and the mechanisms of persuasion are unknown. This article explores the possibility that religious language can affect political attitudes through implicit processes. Because religious attachments are formed early in the lives of many Americans, religious language may influence citizens without their awareness. Implicit and explicit attitudes are related but distinct constructs, and implicit attitudes may have behavioral implications in the political realm. I test these hypotheses experimentally, relying on a widely used implicit measure, the Implicit Association Test. I find that a Christian religious appeal affects implicit attitudes and political behavior among people who currently or previously identify as Christian. Furthermore, an explicit preference for less religion in politics does not moderate implicit effects.     

An experimental approach towards the evaluation of a seat belt campaign with an inside view on the psychology behind seat belt use

A Belgian national safety belt campaign was evaluated by means of a questionnaire survey in an adolescent sample. The evaluation was done through a three group after-only design with the use of one control group and two experimental groups. The first experimental group, the attentive group, was exposed to the campaign material in a very direct, attentive way, whereas the second experimental group, the pre-attentive group, was exposed rather inattentively. The framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was applied and extended with a habit and a past behaviour variable in order to verify whether seat belt usage is to be understood as an automaticity mechanism (i.e., habitual or repeated past behaviour) or as planned behaviour. In terms of campaign effect, the comparison of the pre-attentive group and the control group revealed no significant differences. However, the attentive group and the control group differed significantly regarding two basic dimensions of perceived behavioural control (i.e., confidence and motivation), habit, past behaviour, behavioural intention and behaviour. In terms of explaining seat belt usage, linear regression models were fitted and gave most support for the repeated past behaviour approach. According to the latter, using seat belts is recycling an originally reasoned behaviour, yet without systematically going through the whole underlying reasoning every time a situation in which the decision to wear a seat belt (or not) presents itself. The practical implications of these findings are discussed more in detail.     

Multi-Level Intervention to Prevent Influenza Infections in Older Low Income and Minority Adults

In this paper we describe a successful multi-level participatory intervention grounded in principles of individual and group empowerment, and guided by social construction theory. The intervention addressed known and persistent inequities in influenza vaccination among African American and Latino older adults, and associated infections, hospitalizations and mortality. It was designed to increase resident ability to make informed decisions about vaccination, and to build internal and external infrastructure to support sustainability over time. The intervention brought a group of social scientists, vaccine researchers, geriatricians, public health nurses, elder services providers and advocates together with senior housing management and activist African American and Latino residents living in public senior housing in a small east coast city. Two buildings of equal size and similar ethnic composition were randomized as intervention and control buildings. Pre and post intervention surveys were conducted in both buildings, measuring knowledge, attitudes and peer norms. Processes and outcomes were documented at four levels: Influenza Strategic Alliance (macro and exo levels), building management (meso level), building resident committee (meso level) and individual residents. The Influenza Strategic Alliance (I.S.A.) provided ongoing resources, information and vaccine; the building management provided economic and other in-kind resources and supported residents to continue flu clinics in the building. The V.I.P. Resident Committee conducted flu campaigns with flu clinics in English and Spanish. The vaccination rate in the intervention building at post test exceeded the study goal of 70% and showed a significant improvement over the control building. The intervention achieved desired outcomes at all four levels and resulted in a significant increase in influenza vaccination, and improvements in pro-vaccination knowledge, beliefs, and understanding of health consequences.     

Contextual Sources of Ambivalence

When will people become ambivalent about politics? One possibility is that the roots of ambivalence lie within the individual, with differences in political knowledge and attitude strength predicting whether a person internalizes the conflicts of politics. Alternately, attitudinal ambivalence could result from structural differences in the way political choices are presented in the wider political environment. We explore the degree to which different environments promote or limit ambivalence using a matching approach in conjunction with a set of multilevel models. We find that campaign environments can induce candidate ambivalence. In presidential elections, campaign efforts promote ambivalence most when competition between partisan campaign efforts is high. In House elections, campaign spending has a direct effect on levels of candidate ambivalence, where a candidate's spending decreases ambivalence about that candidate and increases ambivalence about opponents.