Confrontational Strategies Research Articles

Reducción del miedo al entorno sanitario en niños usando espacios simulados: un ensayo controlado aleatorizado

PurposeThis study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention that involved interactions within a simulated health care space to reduce medical fear among children in infant classes. MethodsAn experimental study involving 86 children divided into an intervention group and a control group with pre- and postintervention measurements was undertaken. The intervention, known as the Health-Friendly Program, consisted of showing children various scenarios that simulated different medical contexts so that they could interact in them, experiment with the materials and ask questions. Medical fear was evaluated using the Spanish version of the revised «Child Medical Fear Scale», which provides a score of the medical fear level ranging between 0 and 34 points. The pretest and posttest levels of medical fear in the intervention and control groups were compared with Student's t test. ResultsThe children in the intervention group experienced a significant reduction in fear by 3.21 points (SD: 6.50) compared to the children in the control group. This reduction in fear was shown in all four dimensions of the scale: intrapersonal fears, procedural fears, environmental fears and interpersonal fears. ConclusionThe Health-Friendly Program provides an innovative intervention to reduce medical fear among children based on information, confrontation strategies and simulation scenarios. This study suggests the potential benefit of incorporating educational interventions in schools in collaboration with university and health care simulation centers.

Academic stress in Health Sciences university students and its influence on academic performance

Introduction: The discomfort that Health Sciences students present due to physical or emotional factors called stressors, exert a significant pressure affecting their average grades obtained in an academic period. Objectives: Characterize academic stress, its triggering factors, the influence on the academic performance of university students of Health Sciences, and coping strategies for the management of the teaching and learning process.Methods: Bibliographic review, from 2020 to 2024. The sources consulted were LILACS Regional, Scielo regional, PLOS, PubMed Central, Google Scholar, Web of Science Latin America. We considered 34/57 scientific articles found in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Systematic reviews with less than 10 articles in their analysis, duplicity, plagiarism, and paid articles were excluded. Discussion: Academic stress significantly affected students, causing emotional, behavioral, and physiological problems due to task overload and demanding evaluations. Studies revealed common symptoms such as physical pain, sadness, anxiety, with high impact in Health Sciences areas. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, highlighting the need for effective coping strategies such as physical activity to improve well-being and academic performance. Conclusions: Academic stress is a multicausal and multidimensional individual adaptive response process studied by university students of Health Sciences. Academic stressors, risk factors and protective factors, will allow guiding confrontation strategies and the creation of a protocol for academic management as part of the teaching-learning process, for its mitigation.

The Strategy of Information Confrontation of the Countries of the Collective West in the Arab Countries of the Middle East and North Africa

The Strategy of Information Confrontation of the Countries of the Collective West in the Arab Countries of the Middle East and North Africa

Navigating Conflicting Incentives: Discursive Strategies of Political Parties in Germany’s Cooperative Federalism

Abstract Federal systems create complex institutional settings that foster and encourage cooperation while also enabling self-serving and even opportunistic political behavior. Focusing on parliamentary discourses, we argue that political parties can navigate these conflicting incentives skillfully, employing a set of five distinct discursive strategies that integrate both the need for cooperation and the possibility of self-interest. Leveraging a qualitative content analysis of 212 German parliamentary debates and 4,524 manually coded statements, we demonstrate that the use of these discursive strategies is shaped by parties’ level of integration into federal institutions. The data reveal that parties which are more strongly involved in intergovernmental bodies uphold a more cooperative discourse, while refraining from confrontational strategies toward federal institutions and actors. We also find that the linkage between the vertically integrated party system, which incentivizes co-partisans to stick together across levels and constituent units, and multiparty coalition governments, counteracts federal blame games.

Confrontational strategies and tactics as a means of representing speech aggression in political communication (based on Olaf Scholz’s speech)

Confrontational strategies and tactics as a means of representing speech aggression in political communication (based on Olaf Scholz’s speech)

African Academics in Norway: Experiences of Inclusion and Exclusion and Impact on Mental Wellbeing

This study explored the experiences of inclusion and exclusion of African academics in Norway in various sectors of the society and their participation in these sectors. Using a mixed method research approach, 166 African academics completed a 20-item questionnaire entitled Perceived Exclusion Scale (PES) and two open-ended questions about their mental effects and coping mechanisms of exclusion. Descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis procedures were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the participants experienced exclusion in almost all the sectors of the Norwegian society with concomitant effects of depression and insomnia for most of the participants. Participants mentioned acceptance, confrontational strategy, avoidance strategy, theological group discussion and positive attitudes as key coping mechanisms to exclusion and discrimination. This study could be used as a baseline for future research on the psychological and mental health effects of discrimination of Africans and African- Norwegians. The study is a pointer to the public discourses on the positive sides of immigration in general and the role of migrants’ contribution to the Norwegian society. Keywords: Norway, African academics, inclusion and exclusion, mental wellbeing, minorities

Designing around NATO’s deterrence: Russia’s Nordic information confrontation strategy

ABSTRACT This article examines Russia’s evolving information confrontation strategy in the Nordic region between 2022–2023. It assesses Russia’s approaches toward NATO members Norway, new member Finland, and prospective member Sweden. Despite decreased regional influence, the article finds that Russia persists with sub-threshold information confrontation tactics to bypass NATO deterrence. The strategy aims to shape NATO’s presence, undermine Western cohesion, and reduce support for Ukraine. These sub-threshold activities underscore the coercive utility of Russia’s information confrontation strategy in Russian strategic thinking. As tensions escalate due to the Ukraine conflict, Moscow will continue seeking to influence domestic debates in Nordic and European countries.

Language taboos in Poland: the role of situational context and topic group in the response to taboos

Contemporary taboo manifests itself mainly on the language surface and is linked to socio-cultural conventions; it is based on issues that should not be addressed. Taboos change over time and differ between cultures. It is a pilot of the author’s questionnaire examining the role of situational context and topic group in response to taboos. Three situational contexts were identified (family, friends, work), and four topic groups (finance, values, sexuality, diseases). Furthermore, five types of responses to taboo were distinguished; avoidance, lecturing, confrontation, discretion, and lack of taboo. People taking part in experiment were tasked with reading twelve scenes and selecting for each of them one of five proposed answers. The study was conducted online using Qualtrics. 83 people were surveyed, including 66 women, 12 men, and 5 non-binary people. The results were subjected to statistical analyses, mostly Paired- Samples T Test. Statistical analysis confirmed both hypotheses; there are statistically significant differences between the strategies of responding to taboos depending on situational context and topic group. The most frequent differences occurred between work context and the contexts of family and friends. The average number of responses based on lack of taboo was more common in scenes about sexuality, scenes dealing with the topic of values were more often responded to with avoidance strategy and confrontation strategy. Discretion was used less frequently in scenes about diseases, and lecturing was chosen more often. This is one of the first studies to address the role of situational context in responses to taboos in Poland.

"I completely shut down": A mixed methods evaluation of the fear-avoidance model for young adults with a recent concussion and anxiety.

The fear-avoidance model is a well-established framework for understanding the transition from acute to chronic pain. However, its applicability to concussions is not yet well understood. Here, we conduct the first mixed methods analysis of the fear-avoidance model in young adults with a recent concussion and co-occurring anxiety and assess the model's alignment with their lived experience. We conducted a mixed methods analysis using a cross-sectional parallel design. Seventeen participants completed questionnaires corresponding with the elements in the fear-avoidance model (e.g., pain catastrophizing, avoidance, disability, anxiety, depression, etc.) and participated in semistructured interviews probing their experiences following their concussion between March 2021 and February 2022. We calculated bivariate correlations for quantitative data and analyzed the qualitative data using hybrid inductive-deductive thematic analysis. Quantitative results demonstrated strong and medium-sized correlations among theorized relationships within the fear-avoidance model (rs = .40-.85) with the majority being statistically significant. Qualitative results provided substantial convergent and complementary support (e.g., bi-directionality of some relationships, associations between nonadjacent model components, centrality of anxiety in symptom persistence) for the application of the fear-avoidance model to concussions. Findings highlighted additional factors (social factors and post-injury endurance patterns) relevant to this population. The fear-avoidance model is a useful lens for understanding the lived experience of young adults with a recent concussion and co-occurring anxiety. Psychosocial treatment for this population would benefit from focusing on the interplay of concussion symptoms, anxiety, depression, disability, and pain-related fear, offering adaptive confrontation strategies, and addressing the interpersonal impact of concussion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stressful Situations and Confrontation Strategies That Modify Mental Health in Secondary School Students

Stressful Situations and Confrontation Strategies That Modify Mental Health in Secondary School Students

A dynamic resilience evaluation method for cross-domain swarms in confrontation

As a typical Internet of Things system, unmanned swarms can execute missions efficiently, while reduce risks and ensure personnel safety during operations. Because swarms in different physical domains have different advantages, the cross-domain swarms received lots of attentions recently. Since swarm has the ability to resist damage and recover from damage through self-organization and self-reconfiguration, resilience has become an important indicator for swarm design and mission planning in adversarial environments. Existing resilience evaluation methods require a complete degradation-recovery-stabilization process of system performance, which is not proper for the cross-domain swarm under dynamic and uncertain environment. This paper proposes a dynamic resilience evaluation method for cross-domain swarms in confrontation scenario. First, a cross-domain swarm confrontation model is developed and the swarm confrontation performance indicator is proposed. Second, a dynamic resilience evaluation method is proposed for cross-domain swarm. Then, a confrontation strategy selection model is given based on the resilience measurement. A case study of air-ground swarm in confrontations is provided for illustration and analysis. As can be seen from the simulation results, the proposed dynamic resilience method can better capture the dynamic and uncertain nature of cross-domain swarms in confrontation. The proposed strategy selection model can improve the overall resilience of the swarm, and ultimately improve the winning percentage of the cross-domain swarm in confrontation.

Pathogenetic Mechanisms Underlying Major Adverse Cardiac Events in Personality Type D Patients after Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: The Roles of Cognitive Appraisal and Coping Strategies.

This paper aimed to study the association of type D personality, coping strategies, and cognitive appraisal with annual prognosis after a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). The prospective study included 111 CAD patients who underwent a PCI. All participants, before the PCI, completed questionnaires designed to collect information about type D personality, cognitive appraisal, and coping styles. Information was also collected on the clinical and demographic characteristics of the patients. After 1 year of follow-up, the presence of major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) was assessed. The presence of a MACE was noted in 38 patients, and the absence of a MACE was noted in 53 patients. In patients with type D personality, higher incidences of MACEs (54.1% versus 33.3%; p = 0.0489) and hospitalization rates (29.7% versus 7.4%; p = 0.004) were revealed. Patients with poor prognoses preferred a moderate use of the confrontation strategy than patients without a MACE (78.4% vs. 50.9%; p = 0.0082). Patients with MACEs had statistically significantly lower indicators of strong emotions (11.92 ± 5.32 versus 14.62 ± 4.83 points; p = 0.005) and future prospects (11.36 ± 3.81 versus 13.21 ± 3.41 points; p = 0.015) than patients without a MACE. In a multiple binary logistic regression model, the following factors had significant associations with MACE development: type D, moderate use of confrontation coping, moderate use of self-control coping, and strong emotions in cognitive appraisal. This study showed that not only personality type D, but also certain coping strategies and cognitive appraisals increase the likelihood of developing a MACE after a PCI. This provides a theoretical basis for understanding the mechanism underlying type D personality and MACEs in patients after a PCI.

“Teachers as conflict managers”: mapping novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers’ professional identity conflicts and confrontation strategies

Teacher professional identity has been widely investigated in second/foreign language (L2) research in the past decade. However, the identity conflicts that English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers with various teaching experiences face in their profession has been mostly neglected. Moreover, the way such conflicts shape L2 teachers’ identity and are resolved is yet under-explored. To fill these voids, this study scrutinized novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of professional identity conflicts, their influence on identity construction, and confrontation/management strategies. To this end, 30 EFL teachers (15 novice, 15 experienced) were recruited to attend a semi-structured interview and complete a narrative frame. The results of content and thematic analysis obtained by MAXQDA software revealed that both novice and experienced teachers mostly faced identity conflicts because of “teaching philosophy/ideology mismatch” and “mismatch between personal and professional self”. Novice teachers also recurrently posed interference with “clothing and physical appearance” as a source of conflict, while experienced teachers believed “unequal power relations at work”, “imposed policy mandates”, and “traditional syllabus and testing” had produced conflicts. These conflicts affected teachers’ identity construction by influencing novice teachers’ emotional and inner world, but experienced teachers’ pedagogical performance and interpersonal communication. To confront the conflicts, the participants suggested different strategies such as “negotiating conflicts with others”, “avoiding conflicts”, and “suppressing conflicts”. The study discusses the findings and their implications for L2 teachers and educators regarding common identity conflicts and resolutions.

Playing on Grassroots: The Anti-Apartheid Movement, Arthur Ashe, and the Sport Boycott

Abstract: The history of campaigns against apartheid through sport reveals messy relationships between athletes and social movements, advancing recent debates over the possibilities and constraints of sport politics. The anti-apartheid movement coalesced around a transnational sporting boycott to isolate South Africa, but the American tennis icon Arthur Ashe made a series of visits to compete there in the 1970s. Ashe believed in participation as the primary mechanism for change through sport, only later embracing the boycott. When tennis tournaments and rugby tours brought South Africans to the United States, anti-apartheid organizations mobilized their own confrontational protests to interrupt play. As the growing movement won over athletes and South African propaganda turned toward commercial sport spectacle, the special position that athletes occupied provided leverage. However, their magnified legacy also obscured how resistance to apartheid through sport found success in the first place. Despite the appeal of participation as the natural path of progress, strategies of confrontation often proved more effective in the struggle against apartheid. Questioning the politics of participation and widening the frame to consider confrontation changes our understanding of sport politics, looking beyond individual athletes and bringing everyday people off the sidelines.

Under Caesar’s Sword

Abstract In 2019, Cambridge University Press published an edited volume entitled Under Caesar’s Sword, the product of a three-year study on contemporary Christian responses to persecution in various parts of the world. As part of the overall findings, the project directors noted three primary methods of response: (1) Survival strategies (trying to avoid the attention of the persecutors); (2) Association strategies (building relationships beyond their own communities in order to create a broader network of potential support); and (3) Confrontation strategies (directly challenging the persecutors through various means including martyrdom, which Christians accept as an act of resistance). These categories provide a useful heuristic tool for reevaluating the discourse in some early Christian texts, including the apocryphal acts of the apostles and other texts related to martyrdom. This article employs the insights from Under Caesar’s Sword to explore examples of all three strategies from the earliest Christian centuries. However, not all strategies were equally appreciated in that time. Because suffering came to be so closely linked to Christian identity, survival strategies were sometimes critiqued as evidence of a lack of faith.

Self-compassion is associated with the superior longitudinal fasciculus in the mirroring network in healthy individuals

Self-compassion (SC) involves taking an emotionally positive attitude towards oneself when suffering. Although SC has positive effects on mental well-being as well as a protective role in preventing symptoms in healthy individuals, few studies on white matter (WM) microstructures in neuroimaging studies of SC has been studied. Brain imaging data were acquired from 71 healthy participants. WM regions of mirroring network were analyzed using tract-based spatial statistics. After the WM regions associated with SC were extracted, exploratory correlation analysis with the self-forgiveness scale, the coping scale, and the world health organization quality of life scale abbreviated version was performed. We found that self-compassion scale total scores were negatively correlated with the fractional anisotropy (FA) values of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) in healthy individuals. The self-kindness and mindfulness subscale scores were also negatively correlated with FA values of the same regions. These FA values were negatively correlated with the total scores of self-forgiveness scale, and self-control coping strategy and confrontation coping strategy. Our findings suggest levels of SC may be associated with WM microstructural changes of SLF in healthy individuals. These lower WM microstructures may be associated with positive personal attitudes, such as self-forgiveness, self-control and active confrontational strategies.

Autonomous confrontation strategy learning evolution mechanism of unmanned system group under actual combat in the loop

Confrontation of unmanned system group (USG) is an important combat pattern in future aerial combat, and autonomous confrontation strategy learning evolution is the pre-foundation of USG for actual combat application, researching multiple problems concerning the realization of USG autonomous confrontation strategy active learning evolution in high-dynamic actual combat scenario through continuous interaction with commander, an Autonomous Confrontation Strategy learning evolution mechanism of USG under Actual Combat in the Loop (ACS-ACL) was thence proposed. Select the Multi Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) algorithm as the baseline algorithm, introduce the Parallel Decoupling Reward Mechanism (PDRM) to make applicability improvement on MADDPG algorithm, establish the generation model of USG autonomous confrontation strategy; after generating the initial autonomous confrontation strategy, USG proactive initiation the Continuous Interaction (CI) with the commander of actual combat in the loop, and uploads the perception information of recessive battlefield situation, whereas commander makes proofreading supplement for the information of battlefield situation, and transmits them back to USG with combat intention together; USG updates replay experience pool, updates autonomous confrontation strategy according to the combat intention, and updates simultaneously interaction strategy with actual combat commander in the loop, and then establishes the autonomous confrontation strategy benign closed-loop learning evolution mechanism of USG. Assume USG execution of collaborative search moving target mission against the enemy, and a visual USG autonomous collaborative search dynamic confrontation game environment is constructed, and carry out a series of simulation validation experiments. By observation and comparison, the convergence efficiency and execution quality of autonomous confrontation strategy driven by combat intention are improved significantly, the autonomous confrontation strategy learning has the benign evolution trend, and further improves the credibility of actual combat application of autonomous confrontation strategy of USG.

Racism in Marketing Academia: A Necessary Discussion and Call for Action

The management academy as a whole, and more specifically the marketing academy, have recently recognized the importance of discussions of race and racial issues, which were discussed in a panel at EnAnpad 2021, the most prominent Brazilian management conference and the world's second. The Panel's proposal emerged from reading Francis’ provocative work, which establishes new relationships between structural racism and academic socialization, in which the mechanisms of social exclusion are present. As a result of the Panel’s debate, this paper presents three perspectives on the racialized reality in which we live. The first indicates how much racism conveniently insists on naturalizing privileges mistakenly treated as individual merits for specific groups. The second perspective reminds us how the racialized gaze forces subjugated groups to react, fight, and establish political and legal means. Finally, the third perspective explores a racial landscape, forcing us to ask ourselves how long academics and practitioners in Brazil and abroad will take to recognize ourselves as part of the problem. As a result, we advocate that educational institutions are fundamental to the path of change. Additionally, we propose a non-exhaustive critical agenda for social transformation.

Strategies and tactics of the British parental discourse: historical perspective

This article studies verbal and non-verbal means of implementing parental discourse strategies and tactics used by representatives of the British linguistic and cultural community of the 18th and 21st centuries and establishes the changes they underwent in the speech of the father’s and the mother’s discursive personality. The research is substantiated by linguists’ growing interest in the ways communicative behaviour is formed, including its diachronic aspects. The research is aimed at establishing characteristic features of British parents and children’s communication basing on British fiction films, whose main characters are typical representatives of the Georgian era (the series “Aristocrats” and “Pride and Prejudice”) and the present (“Broadchurch”). The object of study is the strategies and tactics of the British parental discourse of the corresponding centuries, and the subject is verbal and/or non-verbal variants of their actualization. The study is based on the methods of discursive and contextual analysis, which allowed us to reveal the specifics of typical communicative strategies and tactics functioning in the British parental discourse, and comparative analysis, which contributed to identification of changes of strategies and tactics configuration in the speech of the father’s and the mother’s discursive personality of the 21st century compared to the speech of the father’s and the mother’s discursive personality of the 18th century. We claim that the speech of both the father’s and the mother’s discursive personality in both historical periods is dominated by cooperative strategies with a tendency to a moderate increase in the frequency of use, with the leading strategy for both historical periods being that of cooperation; the leading tactics vary – providing advice and instructions in the 18th century and discussion in the 21st century. Confrontation strategies do not significantly vary in terms of gender and chronological factors either: for both centuries under study, the conflict strategy is the leading one; the dominant tactics for the father’s discursive personality is order, for the mother’s discursive personality it is condemnation/reproach.

Individual-psychological characteristics and the state of psychosocial adaptation of combatants with non-psychotic mental disorders who have experienced COVID-19

The relevance of the studied subject lies in the importance of investigating the individual-psychological characteristics, coping behaviour, and the state of psychosocial adaptation of combatants who have recovered from COVID-19, to develop personalised therapeutic and rehabilitation measures The purpose of the study was to determine the pathocharacterological characteristics, coping repertoire features, and psychosocial maladaptation in individuals who participated in combat operations, have non-psychotic mental disorders, and have experienced the coronavirus infection, in a comparative aspect. A total of 132 male combatants with non-psychotic mental disorders who did not have COVID-19 and 120 military personnel with the same mental disorders who had experienced the coronavirus infection were examined using Standardised Multifactor Personality Inventory, questionnaire “Methods of coping behavior”, and the Social-Psychological Adaptation Diagnostic Method. It was found that combatants who had experienced COVID-19 exhibited specific personality characteristics that can be considered pathocharacterological transformations and signs of neuroticism. The core pathocharacterological changes included stable anxious-depressive and hyposthenic traits, while the auxiliary psychopathological constructs included stable emotionally labile, asthenic, hypochondriacal, and dysphoric manifestations. They also exhibited changes in coping repertoire with a predominance of non-constructive strategies of escape-avoidance and confrontation, along with a deactualisation of constructive coping strategies such as problem-solving planning, seeking social support, self-control, and positive reappraisal. Furthermore, pronounced manifestations of psychosocial maladaptation were observed in all key domains. COVID-19 acts as a complicating factor, exacerbating psychopathological symptoms, contributing to the formation of pathocharacterological traits, and deepening the psychosocial maladaptation of combatants with non-psychotic mental disorders. The obtained data provide an opportunity to personalise therapeutic, rehabilitation, and preventive measures, considering the pathocharacterological individual-psychological characteristics and coping behaviour, and to improve existing programmes of social-psychological adaptation for combatants