PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

S Oskamp

Publications and source records attributed to S Oskamp.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

A sustainable future for humanity? How can psychology help?

The sustainability of human life on Earth in the future is in danger. Human actions are producing many harmful and possibly irreversible changes to the environmental conditions that support life on Earth. This article summarizes major threats to Earth's environment, including global warming, ozone layer destruction, exhaustion of fisheries and agricultural land, and widespread exposure to toxic chemicals. Unless they are overcome, these changes will make human life increasingly miserable and eventually may make Earth nearly uninhabitable for future generations. These threats are caused by patterns of human behavior, particularly over-population and over-consumption. Urgent changes to human lifestyles and cultural practices are required for the world to escape ecological disaster, and psychologists should lead the way in helping people adopt sustainable patterns of living. Specific steps toward that goal are proposed in this and the following four articles.

Environmental Pollution↗
PubMed1996

Health beliefs as predictors of HIV-preventive behavior and ethnic differences in prediction.

The incidence of a variety of safer-sex behaviors was predicted, using five measures from the Health Belief Model (Janz & Becker, 1984): perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, self-efficacy, social support, and perceived barriers. The participants, 424 U.S. undergraduates at six schools, completed a written questionnaire. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that perceived susceptibility, self-efficacy, and social support predicted many safer-sex behaviors. Although the Health Belief Model predicted more safer-sex behaviors for Euro-American students than for Hispanic American, African American, and Asian American students, the present data indicated few differences among these ethnic groups regarding the level of safer-sex behaviors.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Prediction of success or failure in birth planning: an approach to prevention of individual and family stress.

Following the view that individual future time perspective is an outcome of the socialization process, it was hypothesized that good contraceptors would display significantly longer future time extension than poor contraceptors. In a Planned Parenthood agency, 25 subjects from each group, constituting nearly the whole clinic population in these categories for a 3-month period, were given the Future Events Test during their clinic visits. The major hypothesis was confirmed, and also a significant tendency towards viewing future events more negatively was found among the poor contraceptors. Demographic data did not discriminate clearly between the two groups, though the poor contraceptors were somewhat younger and had a somewhat higher weekly family income. Use of personality variables in predicting birth-planning success or failure seems more promising than continued reliance solely on the sociocultural approach. Implications for screening and prevention in the interest of the individual, the family, and the community are discussed.

Adolescent↗