The effects of psychopathology and shame on social representations of health and lifestyle behaviours via free association: a graph analysis approach

Chryssi Hatzoglou,Elena Dragioti,Nikolaos Skenteris,Evangelia Briseniou,George Tsitsas,Epaminondas Diamantopoulos,Mary Gouva

doi:10.1186/s40359-021-00671-x

Abstract

BackgroundThere is a knowledge gap in whether psychopathology aspects can shape and mark the social representations about health and lifestyle. In this work, we investigated the association of psychopathology and shame with the centrality of the words describing eight common social representations of health and lifestyle.MethodsA convenience sample of 288 adults participated with an average age of 44.7, and 62.6% were women. The participants were asked to express three consecutive words associated with eight different health and lifestyle experiences by utilizing the free association method. The participants also were completed the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Experiences of Shame Scale (ESS), and the Other as Shamer Scale (OAS). Canonical correlation analysis was applied to investigate the relationship between the set of the eight-word centralities and the psycho-demographic variables consisting of the subject's age and gender, the SCL 90 subscales, the OAS, and the ESS. Based on these findings, a structural equation explorative model was formed to test the unidimensionality of the five centralities construct.ResultsΤhe psychological characteristics of interpersonal sensitivity, depression, external shame, and hostility were found to affect the word selection process on the social representations concerning nightlife, health, diet, lifestyle, and alcohol consumption. Participants with increased levels of depression tend to choose more centrally positioned words when the stimulus word was diet and more decentralized responses when the stimulus word was health. At the same time, higher external shame corresponded to more decentralized words for the categories of health and lifestyle.ConclusionsOur results indicate that there is a potential interaction between the psychological state and how a social representation of health and lifestyle is constructed through selected words. Graph theory emerged as an additional tool to use to study these relations.

Highlights

There is a knowledge gap in whether psychopathology aspects can shape and mark the social representations about health and lifestyle
Higher external shame corresponded to more decentralized words for the categories of health and lifestyle
Our results indicate that there is a potential interaction between the psychological state and how a social representation of health and lifestyle is constructed through selected words

Summary

Introduction

There is a knowledge gap in whether psychopathology aspects can shape and mark the social representations about health and lifestyle. Considering the significant health challenges of the twenty-first century, e.g., obesity, food, alcohol consumption, etc., the study of social representations may provide a valuable orientation to understand levels of knowledge about such health challenges [5]. The peripheral elements, which are more flexible, are determined more individually based on the experience of everyday life and allow adjustment to reality enabling “content differentiation” [9]. This dual structure has been widely used in the literature because it has a purposeful and evolution role in shaping social representations [3, 10,11,12]

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