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Intergenerational solidarity: an examination of a theoretical model.

This study provided an empirical test of a widely cited proposed model of intergenerational solidarity. The model emphasizes that association, affect, and consensus are interdependent dimensions of solidarity and offers an explanatory rationale for parent-child solidarity. Path analysis techniques were used with a sample of 279 older rural-transitional parents. The results showed little support for the model, but the data indicated that residential propinquity and mutual helping behavior were strong predictors of intergenerational association. The importance of the indirect effect of sex linkage via mutual help to associational solidarity also received strong support. The results showed that the proposed model was useful in explaining objective solidarity (association) but not subjective solidarity (consensus and affection) and that these variables were not dimensions of one construct.

Adult

Pain and depression.

This paper explores the relationship between depression and chronic intractable pain in which somatic pathology is playing a minor role. In this study, 114 patients with chronic pain were compared with 53 patients with depression. Patients with chronic pain were older, more likely to be married, more frequently attributed difficulties in activity and sleep to pain, and reported greater impairment of motor functions. They had less dysphoria and an illness behaviour profile (on the Illness Behaviour Questionnaire) suggestive of a conversion reaction. Depressed patients recalled more life events in the year prior to presentation, whilst pain patients recalled more events of nine and ten years earlier. It is concluded that the two patient groups cannot be considered identical. It is argued that the concept of abnormal illness behavior helps to distinguish the two groups.

Attitude to Health

[Higher forms of brain activity and psychology].

On the examples of comparison of the evoked potentials with a theory of signal identification (A. M. Ivanitsky) and need-informational theory of emotions (P. V. Simonov) with the "general law of human emotions" (D. Price, J. Barrell) the efficiency is demonstrated of the simultaneous study of the higher brain functions by neurophysiological and psychological methods. Recent experimental data are given on the natural-scientific bases of consciousness. Human personality is considered as an individual unique composition and internal hierarchy of his vital, social and individual needs. Acknowledgement of the supplementary nature of the objective and subjective analysis of the human behavior helps eliminate the contradiction between the determinism and subjectively sensed freedom of choice.

Animals

Alcohol and social behavior II: the helpful drunkard.

Can alcohol make people more helpful, and if so, how? We hypothesized that alcohol would increase helping when, if the person were sober, the helping response would be under high inhibitory conflict--that is, when it would be affected by strong instigating and inhibiting pressures. Alcohol's damage to inhibitory processing should then allow instigating pressures to have more influence on the response, increasing helping. We expected that under low inhibitory conflict, when either or both of these response pressures would be weak under sobriety, alcohol would have little effect on helping. In two experiments we examined this reasoning. In Study 1, a mild dose of alcohol increased helping among high-conflict subjects pressured to help with a task they did not like, but did not increase helping among low-conflict subjects who either liked the task or were weakly pressured to help. In Study 2, a somewhat stronger dose of alcohol increased helping among all high-conflict subjects pressured to help with an undesirable task, yet again had no effect among low-conflict subjects weakly pressured to help. These studies provided an experimental demonstration of the role of inhibitory response conflict in mediating alcohol's social effects, and show that this process generalizes to prosocial behavior. Additional evidence from both experiments helped to rule out alternative explanations concerning drinking expectancies, alcohol's ability to enhance mood, and its ability to make the task more bearable.

Conflict, Psychological

Intergenerational family support among blacks and whites: response to culture or to socioeconomic differences.

Factors that influence family helping behavior are examined and comparisons are made between black and white families. The question of whether family differences are due to culture or socioeconomic reasons is asked. In the analysis, tests are made for the main and interactive effects of race. Black elderly parents give and receive more help than white elderly parents after controlling for age and sex; however the greater amount of help that is received by older blacks is, to a large extent, the result of socioeconomic factors. The increased amount of help that they give to the middle and younger generations appears to be a combination of cultural and socioeconomic factors. Among black families, attitudes of respect for each generation play a part in determining family support behavior.

Black or African American

Response of faculty members to medical students' personal problems.

In the study reported here, the authors examined the interpersonal helping behaviors of medical educators. Ninety-six faculty members from 12 randomly selected medical schools completed a detailed questionnaire providing data on the nature and frequency of their interpersonal behaviors with students experiencing personal problems. The faculty members reported spending an average of 48.6 minutes a week discussing personal problems with students. Student problems reported most frequently pertained to financial concerns, emotional health, and interactions with faculty members. Medical educators used various techniques to offer help; the most commonly reported techniques were listening, asking questions to draw the student out, offering support and sympathy, and offering empathy. Most medical faculty members felt positive about their role as "helper" and rated that component of their job as extremely important. The implications of these findings, especially for staffing and personnel policy, are discussed.

Education, Medical

The use of telemarketing in the community-wide prevention of heart disease: the Pawtucket Heart Health Program.

The marketing of preventive health behaviors is typically accomplished through various broadcast, print, and other mass media channels. By making randomly-dialed telephone calls to 4,000 residents of Pawtucket, RI, volunteers of the Pawtucket Heart Health Program succeeded in registering nearly 400 individuals for risk factor reduction groups or self-help behavior change kits. Additionally, community awareness of the program was an indirect benefit of this "telemarketing." Telemarketing is an interactive and inexpensive approach to marketing preventive health behaviors.

Heart Diseases

Social networks and social support: an overview of research, practice, and policy implications.

Following a brief overview of the stressful life events-illness model and its implications for intervention, this article highlights the role of social support as a resource for resisting stress-induced illness and disability. It identifies three different connotative meanings that have been assigned to the social support construct, and describes their empirical operationalizations in several recent studies. Specifically, the social integration/participation formulation, the social network approach, and the social intimacy measurement strategy are described and contrasted. Within the latter approach, one study that illuminated types of informal helping behaviors is discussed in greater detail. A review of possible mechanisms whereby social support accomplishes its health-protective impact is also offered, and two types of planned interventions involving the mobilization or optimization of social support are spotlighted. The article concludes with ideas about ways that professionals can safeguard the natural helping skills of citizens and achieve an appropriate balance between formal and informal systems of service delivery in the health and human services fields.

Adaptation, Psychological

The effects of family constellation and child gender on parental use of evaluative feedback.

Mothers and fathers of 43 middle-class families were observed individually interacting during a paper-folding task with either their only or middle child in order to assess parental use of evaluation and task-facilitative behaviors with preschoolers. Middle children were from 3-child families in which the older sibling was the same sex as the target child. Sibling spacing was greater than 36 months in 12 families and less than 36 months in 11 families. With total interaction, parental income, education, and age as control variables, analyses indicated that parental approvals, disapprovals, task facilitative feedback, and helping behaviors varied with parent gender, child gender, and family constellation. Children's task performance did not differ significantly among groups. It was concluded that gender effects on parental use of evaluation feedback in parent-child teaching interactions may be different for families with different types of family structure.

Adult

Support behaviors identified as helpful and desired by second-time parents over the perinatal period.

The initial transition to parenthood is well represented in theory and research, but little exists related to the addition of subsequent children to the family. In order to provide for the caring needs of expanding families, nurses need to better understand the experiences of repeat parents, their needs, and the supportive behaviors these parents find helpful in the process of adding another child to their families. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to describe the types of social support and the specific behaviors identified as helpful or desired by mothers and fathers having a second child. Consistently, over the perinatal period, both mothers and fathers found behaviors which provided material support helpful and desired more of them. Emotional support was also helpful, particularly during pregnancy. In addition, information and comparison support were helpful during the antepartum period. Clinical application of findings is discussed.

Clinical Nursing Research

Relationships among experience level and value orientation and the performance of paraprofessional telephone counselors.

The effectiveness of indigenous paraprofessional helpers is thought to be partially due to the similarity in style and values between then and their clients. However, there is a concern that as they gain experience in an agency, their identification may shift from the clients to the agency. Also, there is a question as to how effective paraprofessionals (selected due to their shared values with a target population) are with value-dissimilar clients. Truax and Carkhuff's scales of facilitative conditions as well as a technique functioning scale were used to assess the helping behavior of paraprofessional telephone counselors at three levels of experience in response to value-similar and value-dissimilar simulated calls. The results indicate that performance generally improved with training and experience and that instead of a uniform deterioration with dissimilar value calls, a complex relationship existed between performance, values, and experience level.

Adolescent

Measurement theory.

The usefulness and truthfulness of assessments, whether performed in the clinic on one patient or in the research laboratory on many subjects, depends on valid measurements. Measurement theory is the thought process and interrelated body of knowledge that form the basis of valid measurements. Translation of measurement theory to behaviors helps to ensure the integrity and relevancy of tests and the data that result from them. In the final analysis, useful and truthful data depend for their existence on scalable and detectable events being translated into pertinent, valid, and reliable measurements. The rules by which numbers are assigned to events form the basis of measurements theory.

Humans

Social supports, social networks, and schizophrenia.

This article considers the meaning of "social support" and its relationship to social networks, and discusses a structural approach to analysis of social connections in the study of schizophrenia. The concept of social supports is seen as methodologically more problematic and less strategic than the more structurally oriented concepts of social networks and social connections. It is argued that in terms of research strategy, if social connections are studied structurally as they change and develop over time, the impact of the specifically social processes can be better separated from that of the personal characteristics of the focal individual than seems possible with other approaches. Analysis of the properties of the networks around the focal individual, independently of that individual's own social behavior, can help to disentangle the interwoven complex of causes, characteristics, and consequences of schizophrenia.

Dependency, Psychological

Geriatric rigidity and its psychotherapeutic implications.

The elderly tend to be more rigid than younger adults in their attitudes and personalities, and such rigidity is correlated with poor adjustment. However, the rigidity is not the cause of the poor adjustment; rather, it is an attempted solution. One of the patterns of rigidity is an outgrowth of the lifestyle of pessimism, suspicion, self-reliance, self-discipline, determination, and endurance. Two case studies are presented illustrating how rigidity can channel thoughts and prevent the brooding which works itself into depression or anxiety, while simultaneously reinforcing self-help behavior. Geriatric psychotherapy should be problem-centered and should not launch a frontal assault on rigidity or attempt to reconstruct the patient's personality. Behavioral modification, authority, and motivation slogans can be used in conjunction with the rigidity to improve the patient's coping ability.

Adaptation, Psychological

Response of patients to participation in psychiatry board examinations.

The patient who volunteers to be a subject for Part II of the certifying examination in psychiatry and neurology is an indispensable but surprisingly invisible participant in a highly controversial process. A survey of the attitudes of 78 patients toward this experience revealed that although they experienced a significant degree of stress, the overwhelming majority viewed their participation in strongly positive terms. The patient's loyalty to the host institution and the manner in which the patient is prepared for the experience appear to be the major factors in determining a positive outcome.

Adult

Friendship patterns among older women.

This study examined the friendship patterns of older women. The participants in the study were white, middle-class, urban women, sixty-five years of age or older. Results indicated the older widowed women received more help from their friends than did married older women. In addition, significant differences in the morale of the older women were found according to the equity of helping behaviors with friends. Specifically, those equitably benefited women had a higher mean morale score than over benefited women. The under benefited women also had a higher mean morale score than the over benefited women. Discussion centered on the importance of friends in the lives of older women as well as on implications for friendship support systems in late life.

Aged