Distrust Of Others Research Articles

“Would you tell under circumstances like that?”: Barriers to disclosure of child sexual abuse for men.

Although public awareness is increasing in regard to the realities of child sexual abuse (CSA) for boys, male survivors often delay disclosure of the abuse for years or even decades. Little is known about the factors that impede or obstruct disclosure for sexually abused boys/men. Because disclosure is often a prerequisite to help-seeking and accessing resources for healing, the purpose of this study was to identify barriers to disclosure of CSA for male survivors. Using content analysis, the researchers conducted a secondary analysis of data obtained from a large, nonclinical sample of men with histories of CSA (N 460) who completed an online survey. The data analyzed in this study included responses to an open-ended item on disclosure barriers. Our analyses identified 10 categories of barriers that were classified into 3 domains: sociopolitical (e.g., masculinity, limited resources), interpersonal (e.g., mistrust of others, abuser factors), and personal (e.g., internal emotions, naming the experience as sexual abuse). Based on our results, these domains were distinct yet interrelated. The implications for policy, clinical practice, and future research are discussed.

The Vitality of Embracing Changes in Literacies’ Research, Education, and Publication

The Vitality of Embracing Changes in Literacies’ Research, Education, and Publication

Height, social comparison, and paranoia: An immersive virtual reality experimental study

Mistrust of others may build upon perceptions of the self as vulnerable, consistent with an association of paranoia with perceived lower social rank. Height is a marker of social status and authority. Therefore we tested the effect of manipulating height, as a proxy for social rank, on paranoia. Height was manipulated within an immersive virtual reality simulation. Sixty females who reported paranoia experienced a virtual reality train ride twice: at their normal and reduced height. Paranoia and social comparison were assessed. Reducing a person's height resulted in more negative views of the self in comparison with other people and increased levels of paranoia. The increase in paranoia was fully mediated by changes in social comparison. The study provides the first demonstration that reducing height in a social situation increases the occurrence of paranoia. The findings indicate that negative social comparison is a cause of mistrust.

A structural model of mechanisms predicting depressive symptoms in women following childhood psychological maltreatment

Two underlying mechanisms, emotion dysregulation and negative internalized beliefs, were examined as potential mediators of the association between childhood psychological maltreatment (PM) and depression in emerging adult women. PM was assessed as a multi-faceted construct including aspects of psychological abuse (e.g., corrupting) and psychological neglect (e.g., emotional unresponsiveness) that occurred by parents. Female undergraduates (n=771) completed anonymous, retrospective, self-report surveys assessing childhood PM, current depressive symptoms, emotion dysregulation (lack of emotional clarity and regulation strategies), and negative internalized beliefs (mistrust, shame, and defectiveness). Psychological maltreatment was represented as four subtypes of psychological abuse or neglectful behavior: Emotional Non-Responsiveness, Spurning/Terrorizing, Corrupting, and Demanding/Rigid (i.e., controlling behavior). Both emotion dysregulation and negative internalized beliefs significantly mediated the link between childhood PM and depressive symptoms, accounting for approximately 68% of the variance in symptomatology. Findings suggest the importance of focusing intervention on development of emotion regulation capacity including emotional awareness and regulatory strategies, as well as a focus on core negative beliefs including shame, defectiveness, and mistrust of others. Implications for future research are discussed.

Hostility as a Predictor of Affective Changes During Acute Tobacco Withdrawal

Hostility--a personality trait reflective of cynical attitudes and a general mistrust of others--is associated with smoking status and relapse risk. Yet, the mechanisms linking hostility and smoking are not entirely clear. In this lab study, we tested a socioaffective model that purports that high-hostility individuals smoke to cope with maladaptive social mood states (i.e., anger and low friendliness), which become expressed and exacerbated during acute tobacco withdrawal. Following a baseline visit at which trait hostility was assessed, adult smokers (n = 153, ≥10 cig/day) attended two counterbalanced lab visits: a deprived session following 16 hr of deprivation, and a nondeprived session. At both lab visits, affect and withdrawal symptoms were assessed at a single time point. Higher trait hostility predicted larger deprivation-induced increases in several forms of negative affect (anxiety, depression, confusion; βs ≥ .20, ps ≤ .01) and a composite tobacco withdrawal symptom index (β = .16, p = .04) but did not predict changes in positive emotions. These effects persisted after statistically controlling for gender, nicotine dependence, and depression. Other aspects of trait aggression (i.e., verbal aggression, physical aggression, anger) did not predict deprivation-induced changes in affect and withdrawal other than state anger. High-hostility individuals appear to experience generalized exacerbations in several negative affective states during acute tobacco withdrawal. Increases in negative affect during tobacco withdrawal may motivate negative reinforcement-mediated smoking and could underlie tobacco addiction in high-hostility smokers.

Outgroup primes induce unpredictability tendencies under conditions of distrust

The present research provides novel insights into people's automatic reactions to outgroup members. Specifically, three experiments examine the unpredictability tendencies that can arise from mere primes of outgroups and the circumstances that produce these tendencies. In Studies 1 and 2, participants reported stronger unpredictability tendencies (Study 1) and were rated by independent coders as more unpredictable (Study 2) after being subliminally primed with a racial outgroup than a racial ingroup, but only if they had a chronically high distrust of others. Study 3 replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 by using a different ingroup/outgroup context (university affiliation) and experimentally manipulating distrust. Together, these studies reveal that people's unpredictability tendencies emerge upon being reminded of outgroup members and when distrust is high, which ironically may make understanding and trust between parties all the more difficult to achieve.

Sexual coercion: Time to rise to the challenge

Byline: T. Sathyanarayana Rao, Mehak. Nagpal, Chittaranjan. Andrade Much has been said, discussed, and reported in the media in the wake of the December 16, 2012, Delhi rape and murder incident, and a myriad other incidents of sexual crime in the country. It is therefore important for mental health professionals to re-examine psychosocial issues related to sexual coercion in the context of the current public debates on the subject. Sexual coercion is the act of being physically, psychologically, financially or otherwise forced or tricked into engaging in sexual activity; victims are most commonly women and children. Women run the risk of sexual abuse and violence across their whole life span. The risk of partner violence and rape, including dating violence and domestic violence; begins in late adolescence, peaks by middle age, and may even continue in the elderly. These acts are not a distinct phenomena and have a degree of overlap that can be viewed along a continuum of sexual violence as they have common causes and methods of prevention. [sup][1],[2] It is commonly believed that sexual coercion is perpetrated by the male sex against the female sex. However, this gender effect is less pronounced in child sexual abuse where women represent a large proportion of perpetrators and children of both sexes are subjected to sexual advances from adolescents and adults. Childhood sexual abuse includes three important elements: (1) Age and size difference between the child and perpetrator; (2) presence of sexual behaviors such as nudity, fondling, and penetration; and (3) gratification to the perpetrator. [sup][3],[4] Sequelae of coercive sexuality in children include subsequent development of sexual disorders, emotional instability, interpersonal withdrawal, and maladaptive coping in new situations. In young women, self-blame, guilt, shame, poor self-esteem, mistrust of others, and other repercussions get reflected in relationships and can be enduring. In any case of child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, or elder abuse; there is a common thread of betrayal, vulnerability, and ambivalence in the social norms that tolerate the abuse and the abuser. Role of Mental Health Practitioners and Physicians As is with all forms of sexual assault, the most serious health effects of rape are not physical but psychological. While some acts may traumatize the survivor immediately, other acts may additively manifest many years later, making it more difficult over time to resist overt acts of aggression. Long-term clinical problems include hypervigilance, anxiety and phobias, somatic complaints, dissociative disorders, depression, substance abuse, suicide attempts, and risk of revictimization. [sup][5] While most abuse associated with fatality occurs to young children, adolescent abuse can lead to risk taking behavior that, in turn, increases the risk of current and later morbidity and mortality. [sup][6] Clinicians must therefore recognize that recurrent injury at each stage of a woman's life cycle is predictable; and it requires safety planning in order to address the intratraumatic stress responses. [sup][2] There is also an urgent need to target the commonplace barriers to physician involvement, such as lack of training and awareness about community services, time constraints, and unresolved personal issues that would facilitate a nonjudgmental and supportive safe encounter with the victim. [sup][7] The role of a physician is not just to evaluate, document, and treat women who have been sexually assaulted. They also serve as an educator to guide the victim, her family, and those who become involved in her care. Here, it may be noted that it is important to address a common misperception in society that if women avoid certain behaviors they are not vulnerable to sexual assault. This belief and the subsequent tendency to blame; especially by the main supportive caregivers of the victim, needs to be addressed openly. …

Pregnancy and Motherhood Among Adolescent Girls in Child Protective Services: A Meta-Synthesis of Qualitative Research

The objective of the current study was to produce a meta-synthesis of the existent qualitative research on pregnant or mothering adolescents who have been in the custody of child protective services. Seven overarching themes emerged from analyzing 17 qualitative studies: (1) infant filling an emotional void; (2) lack of consistent education and lack of sexual education; (3) motherhood adversities; (4) mistrust of others and social stigma; (5) perception of motherhood as positive and stabilizing; (6) internal strengths and wanting to do better; and (7) supports as contributing to positive motherhood experience. Findings are discussed in the context of the risk and resilience framework. Implications for research and practice are addressed.

Aggravating conditions: Cynical hostility and neighborhood ambient stressors

This study is the first to investigate neighborhood clustering of a personality trait – cynical hostility (a sense of mistrust of others amplified by suspicious antagonism.) Cynical hostility increases physiological reactivity by influencing appraisal and coping when stressful events occur and that has been well established as a predictor of cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and all-cause mortality. The analysis examines the associations of a variety of neighborhood physical and social conditions (especially ambient stressors) with individual cynical hostility, controlling for individual sociodemographics. Data are from the Chicago Community Adult Health Survey, a clustered population-based study of 3105 adults. Variation by neighborhood in cynical hostility is larger than variation of other selected health outcomes, which are commonly studied using ecological methods or for other personality measures. Controlling for neighborhood context reduces the black/white cynical hostility disparity by one-third. A measure of neighborhood ambient stressors (notably noise) significantly predicts cynical hostility, even after individual characteristics are controlled, and the effect size is larger than for other contextual predictors. Health-related psychosocial and personality traits may both cluster in and be influenced by contemporaneous neighborhoods rather than mere exogenous results of genes or early life conditions. Health-relevant psychosocial characteristics may also mediate effects of neighborhood deleterious physical conditions, thereby influencing downstream health outcomes and social disparities therein. Because residential location and neighborhood physical conditions are both modifiable, research on how ambient stressors influence health psychology may be particularly fruitful for health policy and practice.

Mapping patterns of well-being and quality of life in extended Europe

In this paper, we have applied a powerful clustering procedure (the two-step cluster analysis or BIRCH algorithm) to a set of non-monetary indicators of well-being and quality of life taken from the first four waves of the European Social Survey. By employing this technique, we have identified nine clusters of people characterized by different forms of well-being and quality of life, while preserving as much as possible the multidimensional information contained in the preselected indicators. We then analyzed the distribution of the clusters among the various European countries, finding significant differences among the groups of Nordic countries, Continental European countries, Mediterranean European countries and Eastern European countries in the chances of belonging to the nine forms of well-being and quality of life previously identified. On average, citizens of the Nordic countries, but also those of Switzerland and Luxembourg, have a higher chance of belonging to cumulative clusters of well-being than countries in Continental Europe and Eastern Europe. In very concise terms, the former appear to be somewhat protected from the risk of incurring the more severe forms of material deprivation, distrust of others and of institutions, poor health and relational isolation. In contrast, Eastern Europeans are characterized by particularly pronounced levels of deprivation across multiple dimensions.

The Search for Safety, Control, and Voice for Mothers Living With the Legacy of Childhood Violence Experiences

We explored the experiences of 12 women who mothered their children while they encountered challenges stemming from the legacy of childhood violence experiences. We examined the participants' narratives through critical, feminist, and symbolic interaction lenses to locate the forces and conditions facilitating and constraining women's mothering choices and decisions. Women's stories revealed their agency in the face of enduring distrust experiences. Women were determined to "change the story." They met pervasive self-doubt with a "search for anchors" and "constant comparisons." Persistent distrust of others meant women relied on "hypervigilance" and "gatekeeping." Implications for knowledge development, research, and practice are discussed.

Attachment styles of Oregonians who request physician-assisted death

Qualitative analyses suggest that requests for physician-assisted death (PAD) may often be the culmination of a person's lifelong pattern of concern with issues such as control, autonomy, self-sufficiency, distrust of others, and avoidance of intimacy. Such characteristics may be measured by attachment style. We compared family members' reports of attachment style in Oregonians who did and did not request PAD. Eighty-four family members of terminally ill patients who requested PAD before death and 63 members of a comparison group that included family members of terminally ill Oregonians who died without requesting PAD rated their loved ones' attachment style in a one-time survey. Individuals who requested PAD were most often described as having dismissive personality styles (56%) compared to 41% of comparison individuals, and on continuous measures of relational style, the highest mean score among PAD requesters was for dismissive style. There were marginally significant differences in the proportions of each attachment style when comparing the two groups (p = 0.08). Patients' attachment styles may be an important factor in requests for PAD. Recognition of a patient's attachment style may improve the ability of the physician to maintain a constructive relationship with the patient throughout the dying process.

Trust, cooperation, and equality: A psychological analysis of the formation of social capital

Research suggests that in modern Western culture there is a positive relationship between the equality of resources and the formation of trust and cooperation, two psychological components of social capital. Two studies elucidate the psychological processes underlying that relationship. Study 1 experimentally tested the influence of resource distributions on the formation of trust and intentions to cooperate; individuals receiving a deficit of resources and a surplus of resources evidenced lower levels of social capital (i.e., trust and cooperation) than did individuals receiving equal amounts. Analyses revealed the process was affective for deficit participants and cognitive for surplus participants. Study 2 provided suggestive support for the affective-model of equality and social capital using proxy variables in the 1996 General Social Survey data set. Results suggest support for a causal path of unequal resource distributions generating affective experiences and cognitive concerns of justice, which mediate disengagement and distrust of others.

Exploring Facets of Personality and Escapism in Pathological Gamblers

This study explored facets of personality between pathological gamblers (n = 69) and nonpathological gamblers (n = 55) in a convenience sample in Los Angeles, California. Pathological gamblers were more prone to mood disturbance, impulsivity, feelings of frustration, interpersonal sensitivity, vulnerability to distress, and distrust of others as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory–Revised. Pathological gamblers also reported diminished competence and self-discipline as well as tendencies toward hasty decision making when compared to nonpathological gamblers. A categorical analysis of subtypes revealed that those who gambled to escape experienced significantly greater levels of neuroticism and facets of impulsivity.

Psychological stress in childhood and susceptibility to the chronic diseases of aging: moving toward a model of behavioral and biological mechanisms.

Among people exposed to major psychological stressors in early life, there are elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases of aging. The most compelling data come from studies of children raised in poverty or maltreated by their parents, who show heightened vulnerability to vascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and premature mortality. These findings raise challenging theoretical questions. How does childhood stress get under the skin, at the molecular level, to affect risk for later diseases? And how does it incubate there, giving rise to diseases several decades later? Here we present a biological embedding model, which attempts to address these questions by synthesizing knowledge across several behavioral and biomedical literatures. This model maintains that childhood stress gets "programmed" into macrophages through epigenetic markings, posttranslational modifications, and tissue remodeling. As a consequence these cells are endowed with proinflammatory tendencies, manifest in exaggerated cytokine responses to challenge and decreased sensitivity to inhibitory hormonal signals. The model goes on to propose that over the life course, these proinflammatory tendencies are exacerbated by behavioral proclivities and hormonal dysregulation, themselves the products of exposure to early stress. Behaviorally, the model posits that childhood stress gives rise to excessive threat vigilance, mistrust of others, poor social relationships, impaired self-regulation, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. Hormonally, early stress confers altered patterns of endocrine and autonomic discharge. This milieu amplifies the proinflammatory environment already instantiated by macrophages. Acting in concert with other exposures and genetic liabilities, the resulting inflammation drives forward pathogenic mechanisms that ultimately foster chronic disease.

Violent Youth Culture in Northern Ireland: Young Men, Violence, and the Challenges of Peacebuilding

This article discusses violent male youth culture in Northern Ireland within the context of a society emerging from a prolonged period of political violence toward peacebuilding. Specifically, the article focuses on the findings from a qualitative study carried out by the Centre for Young Men’s Studies with 130 marginalized young men aged 13 to 16 from 20 different communities across Northern Ireland addressing themes of violence, conflict, and safety. Despite a changing context of peacebuilding, findings reveal that violence and paramilitary influence continue to perpetuate a male youth subculture epitomized by sectarianism and increasing racist attitudes. Underpinning this is an enduring cycle of suspicion, fear, and distrust of others and a confused state of mind that leaves these young men “stuck” somewhere between the ceasefire mentality of paramilitaries and the ambiguous messages of peacebuilding. This article concludes by stating the need for more realistic ways to engage and integrate marginalized young men into their communities.

Multi-level, cross-sectional study of workplace social capital and smoking among Japanese employees

BackgroundSocial capital is hypothesized to be relevant to health promotion, and the association between community social capital and cigarette smoking has been examined. Individual-level social capital has been found to be associated with smoking cessation, but evidence remains sparse on the contextual effect of social capital and smoking. Further, evidence remains sparse on the association between smoking and social capital in the workplace, where people are spending an increasing portion of their daily lives. We examined the association between workplace social capital and smoking status among Japanese private sector employees.MethodsWe employed a two-stage stratified random sampling procedure. Of the total of 1,800 subjects in 60 companies, 1,171 (men/women; 834/337) employees (65.1%) were identified from 46 companies in Okayama in 2007. Workplace social capital was assessed in two dimensions; trust and reciprocity. Company-level social capital was based on inquiring about employee perceptions of trust and reciprocity among co-workers, and then aggregating their responses in order to calculate the proportion of workers reporting mistrust and lack of reciprocity. Multilevel logistic regression analysis was conducted using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to explore whether individual- and company-level social capital was associated with smoking. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% credible intervals (CIs) for current smoking were obtained.ResultsOverall, 33.3% of the subjects smoked currently. There was no relationship between individual-level mistrust of others and smoking status. By contrast, one-standard deviation change in company-level mistrust was associated with higher odds of smoking (OR: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.06-1.46) even after controlling for individual-level mistrust, sex, age, occupation, educational attainment, alcohol use, physical activity, body mass index, and chronic diseases. No clear associations were found between lack of reciprocity and smoking both at the individual- and company-level.ConclusionsCompany-level mistrust is associated with higher likelihood of smoking among Japanese employees, while individual perceptions of mistrust were not associated. The link between lack of reciprocity and smoking was not supported either at the individual- or company-level. Further studies are warranted to examine the possible link between company-level trust and smoking cessation in the Japanese workplace.

Response to Letter Regarding Article, "Optimism, Cynical Hostility, and Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Mortality in the Women's Health Initiative"

We thank Drs. Lucchetti and Granero for their commentary on our work on psychological attitudes and mortality, and thank the Editors for an opportunity to respond. We agree that the biopsychosocial model,1 which incorporates psychological, religious/spiritual, and social domains, adds critical dimensions to the understanding of each individual patient’s health. As Lucchetti and Granero point out, spirituality and religiosity have been related to health in a variety of populations2 including the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI).3 Although spirituality and religiosity may probe different aspects of human experience, they are often considered together in the literature. The hypothesis that individuals who regularly attend religious services may in turn be more optimistic is a reasonable one, suggesting that the relationship between optimism and all-cause mortality may be mediated by religious attendance. In our published report of 97,253 post-menopausal women participating in the WHI, trait optimism (as measured by the Life Orientation Test4 and defined as positive future expectation) and trait cynical hostility (as measured by the Cook Medley cynicism subscale5 and defined as the general mistrust of others), and religious attendance (not at all; 1–3 times per month; > 1 time per week) were measured at baseline entry into the study. Optimism, but not cynical hostility, was related to religious attendance. The Spearman correlation between religious attendance and optimism was 0.05 in the full sample. Women scoring in the highest quartile of the LOT-R questionnaire (“optimists”) were more likely than women scoring in the lowest quartile (“pessimists”) to report attending religious services > 1 time per week (47% vs. 41%, respectively, p 1 time per week. When religious attendance was added to the multivariable Cox proportional hazard models, the adjusted hazard of total mortality over 8 years of follow up among optimists (as compared to pessimists) remained 14% lower (indicating no change from the estimate in our published paper). For completeness, we also added religious attendance to the cynical hostility analyses, but as expected, found no changes. In the full models, religious attendance itself was independently related to the outcome of total mortality, as expected based on earlier published work.3 In summary, we did not find evidence that religious attendance influenced the relationship between optimism and mortality.

A model of resilience and meaning after military deployment: Personal resources in making sense of war and peacekeeping experiences

The aim of the present study was to examine whether the specific personal resources of self-esteem, optimism and perceived control, combined in the latent variable called ‘resilience’, were associated with cognitive processing of war-zone experiences. Data were collected by questionnaires from a sample of 1.561 veterans who had participated in various war or peacekeeping operations. Structural equation modelling was performed to assess the expected relationships between the observed and latent variables. The construct of resilience was well-defined and proved to be strongly associated with both construals of meaning, comprehensibility versus personal significance, after military deployment. According to our model, higher resilience predicted less distrust in others and the world, more personal growth and less intrusions and avoidance after military deployment.

The Parent Perspective: Informing the Cultural Sensitivity of Parenting Programs in Rural Communities

Using focus group methodology, this study examined parents’ perceptions of a behavioral parenting program offered in a rural, Appalachian community to parents of children with disruptive behavior problems. Parents were asked to comment on barriers to participation, strengths and weaknesses of the parenting program, and recommendations for program improvements. Results suggest that evidence-based parenting programs offer a unique form of social support beyond that received from the kinship communities that typically characterize rural society. However, fears of being judged by mental health professionals and distrust of others are significant cultural and interpersonal barriers that must be addressed through future program modifications. Data representing the parent voice provide rich and innovative ideas that serve to advance research associated with enhancing the cultural sensitivity of evidence-based parenting programs in rural communities.