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AIMS: Higher quality relationships have been linked to improved outcomes; however, measurement of relationship quality often ignores its complexity and the possibility of co-occurring positivity and negativity across different contexts. The goal of this paper is to test the added benefit of including multiple dimensions, contexts, and perspectives of relationship quality from both individuals in predicting marital functioning. METHODS: The Social Relationships Index assessed positive and negative dimensions of relationship quality under neutral, positive, and support seeking-contexts for 183 heterosexual married couples. RESULTS: Models showed that the inclusion of multiple dimensions of relationship quality across all three contexts improved prediction of marital functioning for both women and men. CONCLUSION: The use of multidimensional, multi-contextual relationship quality assessments is highly recommended.

Individuals who grow up in families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to experience disproportionate rates of chronic stress. The "freeze" response, characterized by blunted cardiovascular reactivity and reduced engagement with the environment, is associated with chronic stress and may be utilized when an individual is unable to escape or overcome environmental stressors. Using a diverse community sample of 184 adolescents followed from the age of 13 to 29 years, along with their friends and romantic partners, this study examined links between family SES and stress responses in adulthood. Low family SES at the age of 13 years directly predicted blunted heart rate responding and fewer attempts to answer math problems during a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Task at the age of 29 years. Indirect effects were found from low family SES to blunted respiratory sinus arrhythmia responding and the number of words spoken during a speech task. SES at the age of 29 years mediated many of these relations. Findings held after accounting for a number of potential confounds, including adolescent academic and attachment functioning and body mass index. We interpret these findings as evidence that low familial SES may predict freezing-type responses in adulthood.

While the psychological underpinnings of social ideology are well established, less is known about the psychological underpinnings of economic ideology. In this study, I assess whether Big Five personality traits are associated with economic ideology and when personality traits are more strongly or more weakly associated with economic ideology. I hypothesize that low income attenuates the association between the Big Five traits and economic ideology. Studies conducted in Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States show that Conscientiousness is positively correlated with economic conservatism, while Agreeableness and Neuroticism are negatively correlated with economic conservatism. Moreover, low income attenuates the association between personality traits and economic ideology. I report a weaker association between Agreeableness and economic ideology among poor people compared to wealthier people in all three countries. Low income also attenuates the association between economic ideology and the traits Openness (Denmark), Extraversion (United Kingdom), and Neuroticism (United States). I contribute to the literature addressing the psychological correlates of economic ideology by showing that (1) economic ideology has a distinct set of personality correlates and (2) low income attenuates the association between some personality traits and economic ideology.

Perceived social support has been reliably related to lower rates of morbidity and mortality. However, studies modeling C-reactive protein (CRP) as an important biological pathway linking social support to health have produced inconsistent results. Given purported ethnic/racial differences in sensitivity to social resources, the present study tested if ethnicity/race moderated the link between perceived support and CRP in a diverse community sample of 300 participants from the North Texas Heart Study. Consistent with prior research, there was no overall link between social support and CRP levels. However, the association between social support and high sensitivity (hs)-CRP levels was moderated by ethnicity/race as perceived support predicted lower hs-CRP levels primarily in African Americans. These results suggest the importance of considering how ethnicity/race may inform models on the complex biological mechanisms linking social support to health.

What are the psychological roots of support for populist parties or outfits such as the Tea Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom or Germany's Left Party? Populist parties have as a common denominator that they employ an anti-establishment message, which they combine with some ‘host’ ideology. Building on the congruency model of political preference, it is to be expected that a voter's personality should match with the message and position of his or her party. This article theorises that a low score on the personality trait Agreeableness matches the anti-establishment message and should predict voting for populist parties. Evidence is found for this hypothesis in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. The relationship between low Agreeableness and voting for populist parties is robust, controlling for other personality traits, authoritarianism, sociodemographic characteristics and ideology. Thus, explanations of the success of populism should take personality traits into account.

Following Hirschman, voters who are discontent with the party they voted for have two options: exit the party and vote for another or stay loyal. The inclination to exit or stay loyal is rooted in the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. We test our argument in two panel studies in Denmark and the United Kingdom. We find that citizens open to experience are more likely to switch parties since they are more likely to think about alternatives and take risks. Extroverts identify and commit themselves to organizations and stay loyal in Denmark, but we do not confirm this pattern in the United Kingdom. Our findings demonstrate that electoral volatility is, at least partly, rooted in personality.

Why do some people stably identify with a party while others do not? This study tests whether and how the direction, stability and strength of party identification are associated with big five personality traits, using panel data from a representative sample of German citizens. First, the study confirms that personality traits are related to identification with different political parties. Second, it moves beyond previous research by showing that personality traits are related to the strength and variation in party identification over time. The implications of the study for the classical perspectives on party identification, as well as the personality and politics literature, are discussed.

Provider communication styles in health encounters have links to patient health outcomes. The Social Cognitive Processing Model (SCPM) is a framework to understand how communication facilitating processing may produce different outcomes than communication directing patient behavior. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the linkages between communication behaviors and patient outcomes. Participants engaged in simulated health care interviews with either a facilitative or directive provider. Heart rate (HR), skin conductance level (SCL), communication, and participant self-report measures were analyzed. Compared with those communicating with directive providers, participants communicating with facilitative providers were more satisfied and had lower HR and SCL, indicating lowered stress response. Consistent with SCPM, findings have implications for improved processing, which may impact patient outcomes.

Personality risk factors for physical illness are typically studied individually and apart from risk factors reflecting the social environment, potentially fostering a piecemeal understanding of psychosocial influences on health. Because it can be used to describe both personality and social relationship processes, the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) provides an integrative approach to psychosocial risk. In 301 married couples we examined IPC correlates of 3 risk factor domains: anger, hostility, and aggressiveness; neuroticism; and marital adjustment. Risk factors displayed IPC locations ranging from hostile dominance (e.g., verbal aggressiveness, marital conflict) to hostility (e.g., anger) to hostile submissiveness (e.g., anxiety, depression); protective factors (marital satisfaction and support) reflected warmth or friendliness in the IPC. Similar descriptions were found using self-reports and spouse ratings of IPC dimensions, indicating that interpersonal styles associated with risk factors do not simply reflect common method variance. Findings identify interpersonal processes reflecting low affiliation or high hostility as a common component of risk and indicate distinctions among risk factors along the dominance dimension.

An important hallmark of modern social psychology is the central importance of theory and hypothesis testing. The inference structure, however, underlying such tests are rarely acknowledged and may have important implications for the field. In this study, we examine the inference patterns utilized over 20 years of published work in a leading journal of social psychology. We found that verification, in contrast to falsification and crucial tests of alternative hypotheses, was the dominant inference structure utilized. Crucial tests were conducted least of all. These trends were discussed in light of larger issues from the philosophy of science, as well as its potential implications for the field. Without doubt the current trend in social psychology is towards the objective, not speculative, study of social behavior. Watchwords are experimentalism, automatic computation, statistical reliability, replicability. Noteworthy scientific gains results form this ‘hard nosed’ approach (Allport, 1968, p. 68). One of the hallmarks of modern social psychology is the central importance of theory and hypothesis testing. As a result, a critical but often underappreciated issue for the field concerns the inferential structures utilized to test these propositions. This is important as inference patterns shape every aspect of the scientific process. It obviously influences how we interpret results, but less appreciated is its influence on how researchers design ⁄conduct studies and build theoretical frameworks. For instance, a verification perspective may encourage the testing of a dominant theoretical model. The lack of alternative perspectives, in turn, may place pressures on such a model to undergo ad hoc changes in light of novel or discrepant data (Ladyman, 2002). To our knowledge, no published article has systematically reviewed general inference patterns in social psychology. Although we suspect the results of such a review are unlikely to surprise social psychologists who specialize in philosophy of science and ⁄or scientific inference (because these individuals may have informally tracked these patterns), our aim for this review is to bring these patterns and their implications to the attention of a more general social psychological audience. In addition, given the increased technological, methodological, and statistical demands of modern social psychology (Cacioppo, Berntson, & Nusbaum, 2008; MacKinnon, 2008; Reis & Judd, 2000), we suspect that recently trained social psychologists may not have had as much exposure to these philosophical issues. We thus examined trends in inference patterns utilized over the past 20 years in a flagship journal of social psychology and discuss these patterns in light of larger issues from the philosophy of science and social psychology more generally. One potential issue to consider is that in some cases it is possible that inference strategies better reflect what social psychologists present in articles rather than the inference

The Social Relationships Index (SRI) was designed to examine positivity and negativity in social relationships. Unique features of this scale include its brevity and the ability to examine relationship positivity and negativity at the level of the specific individual and social network. The SRI's psychometric properties were examined in three studies. The SRI demonstrated good psychometric properties, including test–retest reliability for the assessment of positivity and negativity, and of relationship classifications across social networks. Additionally, discriminant and convergent validity was established with existing social relationship and personality scales. Finally, the SRI showed some generalizability across different contexts. These studies suggest that the SRI is a reliable and valid alternative measure for use in health studies that require a shorter assessment of relationships. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Participant responses were compared for cancer genetic counselor provision of information provided in a dominant versus facilitative communication style. Participants watched two different segments of genetic counseling while heart rate (HR) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were assessed. Communication style was determined by coding with the Roter interaction analysis system. Results supported a consistent contrast effect across measures, which was not moderated by trait emotional control. Individuals presented with the dominant style first exhibited a reduced HR for the facilitative segment as compared with participants who saw the facilitative style first. When viewing the dominant style first, participants rated the subsequent facilitative counselor as more friendly, submissive, and receptive and were more satisfied. An explanation for the findings is supported by positive and negative evaluative processes literature. The stress response is being increasingly examined within the context of social interactions. The interpersonal contexts of hostility and of low social support are now accepted determinants of both laboratory and naturalistic-induced stress responses and contribute to the development of coronary heart disease (e.g., Gallo, Smith, & Kircher, 2000; Uchino, 2004). A specific interpersonal context that has been less widely examined in the social psychophysiological literature is the autonomic correlates of interpersonal responses to social constraint or social dominance. According to the Social Cognitive Processing Model (SCPM; Lepore, 1992; Lepore, Evans, & Schneider, 1991; Lepore, Silver, Wortman, & Wayment, 1996), experiencing a stressful, controlling social interaction can lead to inhibition of emotions and has implications for health and psychological adjustment. From this perspective, health care providers, through their communication about a client's health or disease risk, have the potential to facilitate or hinder a client's emotional experience and response. In this analogue study, we compare acute autonomic responses to cancer genetic counselor provision of genetic risk information provided in two ways: social constraining and dominant style versus psychosocially and emotionally facilitative style. We suggest that acute cardiovascular reactivity associated with socially imposed emotional inhibition could impact the patient in two ways. First, acute cardiovascular reactivity, in the present study, is a marker for the distress associated with socially imposed emotional inhibition, which may or may not have consequences for long-term health. Second, we suggest that the acute effects may interfere with information processing and thus undermine the intended purpose of the provision of health information.

Many changes are occurring in the world's families. Some observers feel that the changes are destructive, whereas others see them as leading to new opportunities and understanding. Issues in international family studies include regional limitations and the various aspects of doing research cross-culturally. Knowledge regarding certain categories of families, inheritance, and the social psychology of families is incomplete. There are, however, some universals and universal or worldwide changes, including movement toward individual partner choice, more divorces, lower fertility, and greater opportunities for women.

Summary objective The dynamics of the plasma concentrations of various diagnostic determinants of thyroid function were analysed in children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) after the start of T4 supplementation. The description of the biochemical dynamics of TSH and free T4 (FT4) during the first period of thyroxine treatment is important to depict the practical outlines of the initial dosage of T4 and dosage adjustments for newborns with variable forms of CH. design A retrospective analysis was performed of frequent plasma TSH, total T4 (T4), FT4 and total T3 (T3) measurements in 30 CH neonates during the first weeks of treatment, treated with initial daily T4 dosages ranging from 4·8 to 11·1 µg/kg. results A 50% reduction in the initial plasma TSH concentration was achieved after 3–4 days of treatment, independent of CH severity. At a median of 32 days after the start of T4 supplementation, plasma TSH ranged between 0·4 and 4·0 mU/l. The mean interval needed for FT4 to reach the age-related normal values (12–29 pmol/l) was 3 days. The increase in plasma T3 concentrations levelled off within a few days, when T4 reached concentrations of around 100 nmol/l. conclusions Plasma T3 and FT4 concentrations reach the normal range a few days after thyroxine treatment is started. By contrast, normalization of plasma TSH concentration takes several weeks. At the time that plasma TSH is normalized, CH neonates show a higher range of plasma FT4 concentrations than the normal range. When TSH normalization is the goal of treatment in CH, the target range for plasma FT4 during treatment in the first months needs to be adapted. During the first month of treatment the plasma TSH concentration is not helpful in assessing the proper T4 supplementation dosage. Once plasma TSH has reached normal values, it becomes a reliable determinant in addition to plasma FT4.

BACKGROUND Controversy exists concerning the roles of mammography and physical examination in the detection of local recurrence after conservation therapy for breast carcinoma. In addition, the prognostic factors for and optimal treatment of patients with local recurrence are uncertain. METHODS At eight radiotherapy institutes, two cancer institutes, and one surgical clinic in the Netherlands, regular follow-up of patients who underwent breast conservation therapy between 1980 and 1992 identified 266 patients with local recurrence in the breast. These patients exhibited no clinical signs of distant metastases at the time of diagnosis of the local recurrence. Data on the method of detection were available for 189 patients (72%). Local recurrence was diagnosed by mammography alone in 47 cases (25%). Of all patients, 85% underwent salvage mastectomy, 8% underwent local excision, 4% received systemic treatment only, and 3% remained untreated. Specimens of the primary tumor were available for review from 238 of the 266 patients (89%). RESULTS Local recurrences detected by mammography alone were smaller than those detected by physical examination (P = 0.04). At 5 years from the date of salvage treatment, the overall survival rate for all 266 patients was 61% (95% confidence interval [CI], 55–67%), and the distant recurrence free survival rate was 47% (95% CI, 40–53%). For the 25 patients with noninvasive recurrence, these figures were 95% and 94%, respectively. Skin involvement, the extent of recurrence (≤10 mm vs. >10 mm), and both lymph node status and histologic grade of the primary disease were strong predictors for distant metastases in patients with invasive recurrence. CONCLUSIONS Patients with invasive local recurrence more than 1 cm in size are at a substantial risk for distant disease. The better distant disease free survival for patients with recurrence measuring 1 cm or less may indicate that early detection can improve the treatment outcome. Recurrence with skin involvement should be considered generalized disease. Cancer 1999;85:437–46. © 1999 American Cancer Society.

Heart period, systolic time intervals, low and high frequency heart period variability, blood pressure, and respiration were measured in female subjects under three drug conditions (saline, atropine sulfate, metoprolol) while sitting and standing on three consecutive days. Following preinfusion baseline recordings, saline, metoprolol (14 mg), or atropine sulfate (2 mg) was infused for 15 min (by using a double-blind procedure). Recordings were taken during a postinfusion baseline and in response to an orthostatic stressor (standing versus sitting postures). At the end of the metoprolol session, atropine sulfate was infused and responses were monitored during the postinfusion (i.e., double blockade) baseline and during orthostatic stressor. Analyses of the blockade data revealed that the preejection period (PEP) reflected sympathetic but not vagal influences on the heart, and high frequency (HF, 0.12-0.40 Hz) heart rate variability (respiratory sinus arrhythmia) reflected vagal but not sympathetic influences on the heart. No other measure provided a specific index of the tonic sympathetic or vagal activation of the heart. Postinfusion PEP under saline predicted individual differences in postinfusion cardiac sympathetic activation, whereas postinfusion heart period (but not HF variability) under saline predicted individual differences in postinfusion cardiac vagal activation.

The Law of Initial Value (LIV) asserts that the magnitude of a phasic psychophysiological response is dependent on the initial baseline level. Although results in accord with the LIV are often observed, exceptions are frequent, especially for between-subjects analyses. A general assumption in studies of the LIV is that a given baseline difference is equivalent regardless of its functional origin. The present study examined the relationships between basal heart period variance, arising from alternate sources, and the magnitude of the chronotropic response to a speech stressor. Results reveal that baseline differences due to orthostatic manipulations, which are known to be largely of autonomic origin, yielded larger LIV effects than did individual differences in basal heart period, which include a significant nonautonomic component. The minimal LIV-like effects of baseline differences associated with non-autonomic factors, relative to variations in autonomic control, may contribute to the inconsistent appearance of between-subjects LIV effects.