Existential questionings during the pretransplantation period: A qualitative phenomenological study

Background: Transplantation improves quality of life (kidney transplantation), and saves lives (heart, lung or liver transplantation), but few qualitative studies have explored existential questionings before transplantation. Methods: In this phenomenological qualitative study, patients registered for kidney (n¼30), liver (n¼11), lung (n¼15), or heart (n¼15) transplantation participated in a semi-structured interview. Findings: The following aspects were discussed: The dilemma of choice, the evaluation process, the endorsement of the ''good candidate's role'', the modification of objects, time and space perception, the co-existence of life and death, and the challenge of the body integrity and of the person's identity. Transplantation generates paradoxical situations, and challenges the person's life values. Discussion: Anxiety and distress may arise with awareness of existential questionings and the co-existence different worlds' life values. Transplantation further generates a broader societal and ethical debate as how to accompany existential questionings in a pragmatic medical environment.

Effects of social support on the clinical course of Crohn's disease.

BACKGROUND: Social support has been found to be protective from adverse health effects of psychological stress. We hypothesized that higher social support would predict a more favorable course of Crohn's disease (CD) directly (main effect hypothesis) and via moderating other prognostic factors (buffer hypothesis). METHODS: Within a multicenter cohort study we observed 597 adults with CD for 18 months. We assessed social support using the ENRICHD Social Support Inventory. Flares, nonresponse to therapy, complications, and extraintestinal manifestations were recorded as a combined endpoint indicating disease deterioration. We controlled for several demographic, psychosocial, and clinical variables of potential prognostic importance. We used multivariate binary logistic regression to estimate the overall effect of social support on the odds of disease deterioration and to explore main and moderator effects of social support by probing interactions with other predictors. RESULTS: The odds of disease deterioration decreased by 1.5 times (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.2-1.9) for an increase of one standard deviation (SD) of social support. In case of low body mass index (BMI) (i.e., 1 SD below the mean or <19 kg/m(2)), the odds decreased by 1.8 times for an increase of 1 SD of social support. In case of low social support, the odds increased by 2.1 times for a decrease of 1 SD of BMI. Low BMI was not predictive under high social support. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that elevated social support may favorably affect the clinical course of CD, particularly in patients with low BMI. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2010;).

Bodily perspective taking goes social: the role of personal, interpersonal, and intercultural factors

Mentally placing the self in the physical position of another person might engage social perspective taking because participants have to match their own position with that of another. We investigated the influence of personal (sex), interpersonal (siblings, parental marital status), and cultural (individualistic, collectivistic) factors on individuals' abilities to mentally take the position of front-facing and back-facing figures in an online study (369 participants). Replicating findings from laboratory studies responses were slower for front-facing than back-facing figures. Having siblings, parents' marital status, and cultural background influenced task performance in theoretically predictable ways. The present perspective-taking task is a promising experimental paradigm to assess social perspective taking and one that is free from the response biases inherent in self-report.

Conscientization of Social Cryptomnesia Reduces Hostile Sexism and Rejection of Feminists

This paper develops a hypothesis concerning the conscientization of social cryptomnesia, claiming that it is possible to reduce the rejection of minorities by reminding the population that a certain value has been promoted by a certain minority. Participants (N = 93) first reported their attitudes toward women's rights and feminist movements. They were then confronted with their higher appreciation of women's rights over feminists (social cryptomnesia) and blamed for it (conscientization) in a more versus less threatening manner. Results indicated that conscientization can be effective not only in inducing a more positive attitude toward feminists, but also in decreasing hostile sexism when the threat is lower. Implications for minority influence research are discussed.

Rates of cultural change and patterns of cultural accumulation in stochastic models of social transmission.

Cultural variation in a population is affected by the rate of occurrence of cultural innovations, whether such innovations are preferred or eschewed, how they are transmitted between individuals in the population, and the size of the population. An innovation, such as a modification in an attribute of a handaxe, may be lost or may become a property of all handaxes, which we call "fixation of the innovation." Alternatively, several innovations may attain appreciable frequencies, in which case properties of the frequency distribution-for example, of handaxe measurements-is important. Here we apply the Moran model from the stochastic theory of population genetics to study the evolution of cultural innovations. We obtain the probability that an initially rare innovation becomes fixed, and the expected time this takes. When variation in cultural traits is due to recurrent innovation, copy error, and sampling from generation to generation, we describe properties of this variation, such as the level of heterogeneity expected in the population. For all of these, we determine the effect of the mode of social transmission: conformist, where there is a tendency for each naïve newborn to copy the most popular variant; pro-novelty bias, where the newborn prefers a specific variant if it exists among those it samples; one-to-many transmission, where the variant one individual carries is copied by all newborns while that individual remains alive. We compare our findings with those predicted by prevailing theories for rates of cultural change and the distribution of cultural variation.

When performance-approach goals predict academic achievement and when they do not: A social value approach

Research on achievement goal promotion at University has shown that performance-approach goals are perceived as a means to succeed at University (high social utility) but are not appreciated (low social desirability). We argue that such a paradox could explain why research has detected that performance-approach goals consistently predict academic grades. First-year psychology students answered a performance-approach goal scale with standard, social desirability and social utility instructions. Participants' grades were recorded at the end of the semester. Results showed that the relationship between performance-approach goals and grades was inhibited by the increase of these goals' social desirability and facilitated by the increase of their social utility, revealing that the predictive validity of performance-approach goals depend on social value.

Policy attitudes, ideological values and social representations

This article reviews research on policy attitudes and ideological values from the perspective of social representations theory. In the first part of the paper, key features of lay political thinking are presented, its pragmatic imperative, its focus on communication and the social functions of shared knowledge. Objectification transforms abstract and group-neutral ideological values into concrete and socially useful knowledge, in particular stereotypes of value-conforming and value-violating groups. Such shared understandings of intergroup relations provide citizens with common reference knowledge which provides the cognitive and cultural basis of policy attitudes. Social representations theory further suggests that lay knowledge reflects the social context in which it has been elaborated (anchoring), an aspect which allows conceptualising aggregate-level differences in policy attitudes. In the second part of the paper, a model of lay conceptions of social order is outlined which organises four shared conceptions of social order, along with the stereotype-based thinking associated with each conception: Moral order, Free Market, Social diversity and Structural inequality. We conclude by arguing that policy attitudes are symbolic devices expressed to justify or to challenge existing social arrangements.

The Social Value of Being Ambivalent: Self-Presentational Concerns in the Expression of Attitudinal Ambivalence

We tested whether individuals can exert control over the expression of attitudinal ambivalence and if this control is exerted with self-presentational concerns. Using the self-presentation paradigm, participants reported more ambivalence about Genetically Modified Organisms ("GMO") in a standard and a self-enhancement (present yourself positively) conditions than in a self-depreciation (present yourself negatively) condition, on both felt (Experiments 1a and 2a) and potential ambivalence, in its cognitive (Experiments 1b and 2b) and affective components (Experiments 1b and 2c). The role of ambivalent attitudes in conveying a positive social value was confirmed by the fact that the above effect was found on a controversial attitude object (GMOs) but the opposite appeared on a non-controversial one (e.g. tooth brushing, a truism; Experiment 3). Such a reversal was obtained by directly manipulating the perception of controversy on GMOs (Experiment 4). Attitudinal ambivalence may thus serve an adaptive function, i.e. achieving a positive social value.

Social Cognition is not Reducible to Theory of Mind. When Children use Deontic Rules to Predict Others' Behaviors

The objective of this paper is to discuss whether children have a capacity for deonticreasoning that is irreducible to mentalizing. The results of two experiments point tothe existence of such non-mentalistic understanding and prediction of the behaviourof others. In Study 1, young children (3- and 4-year-olds) were told different versionsof classic false-belief tasks, some of which were modified by the introduction of a ruleor a regularity. When the task (a standard change of location task) included a rule, theperformance of 3-year-olds, who fail traditional false-belief tasks, significantly improved.In Study 2, 3-year-olds proved to be able to infer a rule from a social situation and touse it in order to predict the behaviour of a character involved in a modified versionof the false-belief task. These studies suggest that rules play a central role in the socialcognition of young children and that deontic reasoning might not necessarily involvemind reading.