Biomedical subjects

Etienne Mullet

Publications and source records attributed to Etienne Mullet.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Stress and the urge to drink.

OBJECTIVE: Understanding why people drink alcohol is important for the health and safety of individuals and the public. The aim of this study was to examine from a cognitive point of view the hypothesized link between drinking and stress. METHODS: 25 scenarios were constructed by combining two items, either two life-change events or a social situation and an emotional state. In the initial three experiments, 159 male and 43 female alcoholics and 157 male and 93 female nonalcoholics in France judged the degree to which these scenarios were stressful and subsequently the degree to which they stimulated an urge to drink. In the final experiment, 126 of the male alcoholics were studied at the beginning and end of an inpatient alcohol rehabilitation program. RESULTS: The alcoholics and nonalcoholics, regardless of gender, assigned similar stress values to the scenarios and used the same cognitive rules for combining the stress associated with two items (disjunctive rules for two life-change events and additive ones for a personal emotion combined with a social situation). They differed, however, in how they judged the urge to drink. The nonalcoholics reported little stimulus to drink from any combination of items, whereas the alcoholics not only perceived the individual items as stimulating an urge to drink but also used the same cognitive rule in judging the combined urge to drink of two items as they used in judging the combined stress. After completing rehabilitation, the alcoholics judged the combinations of life-change events as stimulating less stress and less urge to drink. Nevertheless, they continued to use a disjunctive combination rule. CONCLUSIONS: Stress and drinking are linked at a fundamental cognitive level among alcoholics, though not among nonalcoholics. Alcoholics should be helped to recognize this link, to reduce their feelings of stress, and to find outlets other than drink.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Religious involvement and the forgiving personality.

The relationship between religious involvement and forgiveness was assessed in three samples of Western Europeans living in a social environment dominated by the Catholic tradition. The samples comprised nonbelievers/nonattendees, believers/nonattendees, believers/regular attendees, and religious people. Age and religious involvement were shown to affect the willingness to forgive in an interactive way: The effect of religious involvement was stronger for the elderly group. We also found that what made the difference in the willingness to forgive was mainly the social commitment to religion (attendance in church and the taking of vows), not mere personal beliefs. In addition, age and religious involvement were found to affect blockage towards forgiveness in an additive way.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Risk target: an interactive context factor in risk perception.

The effect of specification of the target on risk evaluation was examined. A whole set of hazards, covering most of the domains, were considered: common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, public transportation, energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, and addictions. Three human targets were introduced: personal health risk (including personal risk of death), health risk for people in the country, and health risk for people in the world. The basic design was a between-subjects design. The first hypothesis was that risk judgments made in the "world" condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "country" condition, and risk judgments made in this condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "personal" condition. This is what was observed. The second hypothesis was that the target effect should differ as a function of the kind of hazards considered. This also is what was observed. In two domains--pollutants, and deviance, sex, and addictions--the target effect was important. It corresponded to about one-tenth of the response scale. In the four remaining domains, the target effect was unimportant or absent.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Misconceptions regarding hepatitis C in the French public.

BACKGROUND: Knowing the facts and displaying the proper attitudes and behaviors are critical in preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Hepatitis C is a common infection, but the public's understanding of it has not been studied. METHODS: A convenience sample of 431 French adults, ages 18 to 81 years, completed a questionnaire designed to assess knowledge of hepatitis C and acquired immune deficiency syndrome. A group of nine medical experts also answered the hepatitis C questions. RESULTS: The lay participants had many uncertainties about hepatitis C, and their beliefs frequently differed from medical understanding about hepatitis C. Their responses were correlated more closely with their own responses to the AIDS questions than with the experts' understanding of hepatitis C. CONCLUSIONS: Information regarding hepatitis C should emphasize the distinctions between hepatitis C and AIDS as well as between hepatitis C and hepatitis B and between seropositivity and infection. People should also be informed that blood donation is safe, that using injected drugs is the main risk factor for hepatitis C, that alcohol aggravates hepatitis C, that hepatitis C can cause cancer, that an effective treatment for hepatitis C exists, and that they are not put at risk by mere causal contact with people ill with hepatitis C.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

PubMed2002

Aging and intuitive physics.

The present study was aimed at comparing the judgment capacities manifested by young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly people in an everyday life setting implying the consideration of direct as well as inverse relationships between the cues and the criterion. The chosen situation was borrowed from elementary physics and concerned the relationships between mass, volume and density. In forming their estimations of mass, all elderly people were able to use volume and density information. In addition, most of them were able to combine these pieces of information in a correct, multiplicative way. In forming their estimations of volume, all elderly people were able to use mass and density information but a majority of them used the density information in a direct way. By contrast, most young and middle-aged adults correctly used the density information in an inverse way. The findings strengthen and extend the case made by Chasseigne et al. [Acta Psychologica 97 (1997) 235] as regards the trouble elderly people face in using inverse relationships in a judgment situation. The difficulty elderly people face is not confined to learning settings. It may also be observed in ecological, non-learning environments, where the relationships considered do not entirely depend on the experimenter's choice.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Age, religious beliefs, and sexual attitudes.

Age effects on sexual attitudes were examined using the Hendrick and Hendrick (1987a) Sexual Attitude Scale. The study was cross-sectional, including people from various age groups, from young adults to older adults. The religious beliefs variable, which covaries substantially both with age and sexual attitudes, was controlled. Three main questions guided the study: (a) Is the four-factor structure (Permissiveness, Instrumentality, Communion, and Sexual Practices) previously identified in a sample of young students able to accurately account for data gathered over a full range of adult ages, (b) are older adults much less permissive and less instrumentalist than young people, and (c) to what extent are believers less permissive and instrumentalist than young people when age is taken into account? Factor analyses showed that at least five correlated factors were needed to account for the data; the fourth factor, Sexual Practices, divided itself into two distinct factors: Pleasure and Responsibility. Older adults and believers were shown to be less permissive than young people and nonbelievers, and this result held regardless of the participants educational level. As regards to instrumentality, however, the pattern of differences was extremely complex.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Learning the relationship between smoking, drinking alcohol and the risk of esophageal cancer.

This study examined the effect of outcome feedback on learning the multiplicative relationship between daily intakes of tobacco and alcohol, and the risk of esophageal cancer. In the first of two experiments, 65 French adults judged the risk of esophageal cancer associated with combinations of five levels of intake of tobacco and five of wine. They made these judgments both before and after learning sessions in which they were shown the actual risk for each vignette. In the second experiment, 35 French adults underwent the same testing and learning, and were re-tested twice 1 month later. The study hypotheses were supported. First, prior to the learning sessions, the participants used a subadditive rule to combine the perceived risk of esophageal cancer from smoking and drinking. Second, they learned after only one training session to change to the multiplicative rule that is consistent with epidemiological data. Third, this learning persisted for 1 month. This methodology may prove useful in correcting people's underestimation of their health risks.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Do parents and physicians differ in making decisions about acute otitis media?

OBJECTIVES: We wanted to discover how parents differ from physicians in making decisions about how to treat a child who may have acute otitis media (AOM). STUDY DESIGN: We used questionnaires that required participants to judge the probability of AOM or choose treatment for 2 sets of 46 paper scenarios of hypothetical children aged 15 months who might have AOM, and they subsequently rated the importance of individual cues and described their attitudes and opinions related to health care and AOM. POPULATION: Convenience samples of 19 US family physicians, 35 French generalists, 21 French pediatricians, 52 US parents, and 86 French parents were included. OUTCOMES MEASURED: The primary outcomes were the judgment policies-the weights placed on each of the scenario cues when making decisions-that were derived for each individual and each group by multiple linear regression. RESULTS: The mean judged probabilities of AOM were nearly the same for all groups: 50% for the US physicians, 51% for the US parents, 52.5% for the French physicians, and 52% for the French parents. The percentages of cases treated with antibiotics did not differ: 53% for US physicians, 45% for US parents, 53% for French physicians, and 51% for French parents. All groups gave greatest weight to the physical examination cues for decisions about both diagnosis and treatment. The parents paid little attention to the cues that reflected parental concerns. CONCLUSIONS: US and French parents were very similar to physicians in their judgments and treatment choices regarding AOM. They appear to be able to adopt the physician's point of view and to be selective in the use of antibiotics.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed2002

Aging and rule learning: the case of the multiplicative law.

This work examined the effect of age on the ability to learn multiplicative combination rules. Participants learned the multiplicative relationship between daily tobacco intake, daily alcohol intake, and risk of esophageal cancer. The hypothesis was that younger adults would learn to implement a multiplicative combination rule and older adults would not, despite feedback. Among the younger adults, complete rule learning took place. Before receiving feedback, they used an underadditive rule, a result consistent with previous studies. After only a limited amount of feedback, they learned to use a multiplicative rule. Even after receiving feedback, however, the older adults still showed difficulties in using the multiplicative rule. These results strengthen the proposition by Chasseigne, Mullet, and Stewart (1997) that the differences between younger and older adults in function learning are related mainly to flexibility of functioning.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Mathematics of forgiveness.

This study was aimed at determining the integration rule--summation or averaging--underlying the forgiveness schema. The main reason for distinguishing between these structures is that they have very different practical implications regarding the influence of various factors specific to each case on the propensity to forgive. In a summative model, the impact of the different factors and the direction of the effects are constant. For example, the presence of apologies always is a positive element even when these apologies assume a very weak form. By contrast, in an averaging model, the apologies can be a positive or a negative element depending on the current level of propensity to forgive and the form of the apologies. Two experiments were conducted using the functional theory of cognition framework. Experiment 1 applied the missing information test. Experiment 2 applied the credibility of information test. In both experiments, clear evidence favored a summative rule for judging willingness to forgive from circumstantial information such as presence or absence of intent, presence of absence of apologies, and degree of cancellation of consequences.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Does choosing a treatment depend on making a diagnosis? US and French physicians' decision making about acute otitis media.

BACKGROUND: The classic sequential processing model of clinical decision making-in which the treatment choice follows and depends on the diagnostic judgment-may in some cases be replaced by a processing model in which the treatment choice depends on an independent assessment of the diagnostic and other cues. The aim of this study was to determine which processing model would better describe physicians' treatment choices in a simulated clinical task. METHODS: Seventy-five US and French primary care physicians were presented twice, in a different order, with the same set of 46 scenarios of 15-month-old children suspected of having acute otitis media (AOM). They rated in one set the probability of AOM and in the other set whether they would treat the child with antibiotics (and how confident they felt in their decision). Linear regression analyses revealed the individuals' 2 judgment policies. Hierarchical discriminant analysis was used to analyze the variance explained in the treatment choice by, 1st, the diagnostic judgment, 2nd, the cues specific to treatment, and 3rd, the cues specific to diagnosis. RESULTS: Even when choosing treatment, the participants placed greatest weight on diagnostic cues, especially the ear findings. Only 28% used the cues that reflected parental issues. For 36%, the diagnostic cues had an effect on the treatment choice independent of the effect (if any) of the diagnostic judgment. CONCLUSION: In deciding how to treat AOM, the majority of the participating US and French primary care physicians followed the classic sequential processing model, but a substantial minority used instead an independent processing model.

Acute Disease↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Why do primary care physicians in the United States and France order prostate-specific antigen tests for asymptomatic patients?

PURPOSE: To understand why many primary care physicians in the United States and France order prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests routinely for their asymptomatic male patients despite "evidence-based" recommendations. METHODS: Thirty-two U.S. general internists and family practitioners and 33 French generalists judged, for 32 hypothetical male patients seen for routine preventive care, the probability that the patients had asymptomatic prostate cancer and the likelihood that they would order PSA tests. They were also asked about beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge related to prostate cancer. RESULTS: The significant predictors of ordering more PSA tests in the scenarios were physicians' higher ratings of regret if untested patients were found to have advanced cancer, their greater discomfort if they suspected that patients had illnesses but could not know for sure, and their perceptions of official recommendations as favoring routine testing. IMPLICATIONS: Nonrational factors can impede physicians' adoption of "evidence-based" recommendations.

Aged↗