Social Anger Research Articles

Development and Validation of Korean ‘COVID-blues’ Social Syndrome Scale

This study focuses on measuring the effects of COVID-19 on mental health both at cultural and individual levels. Although many COVID-19 studies used previous COVID-19 measurements such as FCV-19S, GAD-7, PHQ-9, DASS-21, CSS, CAS, or CSI, these clinical psychology measurements did not include cultural aspects as suggested by pathogen prevalence hypothesis : Pathogen prevalence argues that psychological responses of collectivists involve clinical response as well as cultural group response, driven by strong collectivism. This study developed new “COVID-blues” scale that measure individual and cultural aspects of COVID-stress in collectivistic society context. Specifically, this study developed and validated 25-items that measure individual loneliness, fear, social anger, and socioeconomic consequences. Results of this study indicated that: (1) COVID-related stress can occur at both the individual and cultural levels, and (2) COVID-blues not only increase fear but also anger; that is, the higher the score on the COVID-blues scale, the higher the fear and anger of each individual. The findings presented robust 25-item multidimensional COVID-blues scale which can be used for conducting future health communication studies using theories such as health belief model, theory of planned behavior, or social cognitive theory in collective countries such as South Korea.

Comprehensive Threats and Directions in Northeast Asia

Purpose: In Northeast Asia, not only Japan, which dominated East Asia in World War II, China, the world's second largest economy, and North Korea, a communist country that has become a religious dictatorship due to the discontinuation of the rationing system, but also Russia's military power, which was confident of taking over Kyiv, Ukraine, in three days, shows the limitations of the impact of hard power. Therefore, this study presents six threats and discussion points of Northeast Asia through case studies and suggests the direction of Northeast Asia in the future.
 Method: This study was conducted as a case study according to the purpose of the study. We selected 6 specific cases and targeted individual cases, and tried to derive phenomenological results through data collection and analysis of the collected data on social phenomena.
 Results: First, the role of governments in pandemics such as Covid-19; second, drug trafficking to finance the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un; third, internal agitation and Subversion of regimes in North Korea; fourth, the Korean Wave in Northeast Asia and the expansion of Chinese espionage; fifth, China's distortion of history, repression of the Xinjiang Uyghur region, and consolidation of Islamic culture; and sixth, election interference in neighboring countries, In Northeast Asia, in addition to the governments of North Korea, China, and Russia, liberal governments such as South Korea, Japan, and the United States are strengthening their intelligence capabilities to control uncertainty, but the personal information contained in the threat information is causing controversy in their countries, and the “social value” of the value conflict between threat information and personal information collection is presented as a discussion point.
 Conclusion: Soft power, not hard power, will play an important role in the establishment of liberalism in Northeast Asia, the Internet and travel will play an important role in cultural transmission and experience, and North Korea, like China and Russia, will gradually move towards reform and opening up. And in Northeast Asia, through Japan and Korea, now China's educated population has increased rapidly, and economic polarization is increasing relative poverty. It is expected that the violent act, which started from extreme social anger, will further disturb the Chinese people and government. The Chinese government will try to protect these problems by expanding the social surveillance network through the public security force, but we must not overlook the historical case that the expansion of the social audit network, which did not harmonize freedom and control, has led to more serious situations such as regime change. The international community has already recognized that the problems of Northeast Asia cannot be solved by hard power, and it is now necessary to pursue peace and prosperity through political and economic union systems such as the EU. In this process, China and North Korea should have the courage to move towards liberalism, and the establishment of the EU model in Northeast Asia will mean a shift from a perception of an adversarial situation to a perception of cooperative problem solving, with win-win effects on population, energy, and environmental issues.

Living with Mental Distress, Social Anger, and In-Group Commitment among Working Children: A Qualitative Study.

Working as a child can have various effects on all aspects of children's health. Investigating and identifying issues related to the health of working children can be useful in promoting their health. Therefore, in this qualitative study, we examined issues related to the mental health and behavior of working children. This qualitative study was conducted in Tehran, Iran, in 2021 with the contractual content analysis approach. The main participants (N = 32) in this study were working children aged 10 to 18 years. To collect data, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with working children, their parents, and the center officials. In addition to the interview, some field notes were also taken from interactions between working children. After each interview, they were transcribed and coded. After 27 interviews, the data were saturated, no new code was extracted, and further interviews were conducted to ensure data saturation. Data analysis was performed based on the proposed method of Lundman and Graneheim. The results revealed the three main categories of mental distress (fear and anxiety, depression, loneliness and isolation, decreased self-confidence, and decentralized mind), social anger (negative social role modeling, harassment and harm of others, reprehensible and antisocial behavior, disregard for the property of others, disrupted relationships, and violence), and in-group commitment (self-censorship outside the group, individual independence and group cohesion, and caring for the group). Most working children suffer from various forms of mental and behavioral issues, which, if not taken care of, can have irreparable consequences.

The Game of Truth in Criminal Law Enforcement Process on Corruption Crimes

The enforcement of criminal law against corruption, nowadays, increasingly shows the existence of a form of truth play through the construction of knowledge that is normalized through authority as a manifestation of the cognitive interpretation of law enforcement. The formation of the game of truth hides behind social framing, thus ignoring the provisions of existing legal norms. The power and authority possessed as capital to determine legal action are not based on the law itself. This study aims to describe a form of truth game that overrides legal provisions. This research is a legal research using the relational trichotomy approach and critical discourse analysis approach. The results of this study indicate the formation of a truth game to maintain social anger against the perpetrators of corruption, thus ignoring the legal rights of the perpetrators of corruption.
 Keywords: truth game, corruption, legal effort, relationship trichotomy

Anger and Hope in Rural American Liturgy

Sociologists and political scientists have published a number of studies recently dealing with the tumultuous and often angry ethos of rural and small-town America. However, while a number of scholars have recognized that the anger and resentment present in much of the atmosphere of rural and small-town America is multifaceted and deeper than a simple desire for policy change, very little scholarly work has focused specifically on the role of ritual in exacerbating or alleviating social anger in these contexts. This article argues that the liturgical cultivation of hope is a powerful antidote to the vitriol of the political atmosphere in rural and small-town America (which can often be cultivated in its own right by rituals such as political rallies), and examines the ways in which such cultivation of hope takes place in rural Christian liturgy.

SARKASME DI KALANGAN SANTRI PERSADA UNIVERSITAS AHMAD DAHLAN

This research is motivated by the importance of understanding the forms of sarcasm uttered by students so that the public knows the purpose of using sarcasm. The problems discussed in this study are (1) the form of sarcasm used by Persada UAD 2019/2020 students based on grammar, (2) the form of sarcasm used by Persada UAD 2019/2020 students based on the content of the speech, and (3) the factors causing Persada UAD students to use the form of sarcasm. This study aims to describe the form of sarcasm among Persada UAD students and find out the factors causing Persada students to use sarcasm among Persada UAD students. Based on the research results regarding the form of using sarcasm by Persada UAD students in 2019/2020, the following conclusions were obtained. (1) The use of sarcasm among the students of Persada UAD in 2019/2020 based on the grammatical basis was found in three forms, namely words, phrases, and clauses. (2) The use of forms of sarcasm among Persada UAD students in 2019/2020 based on the content of the speech found seven forms of sarcasm, namely words containing bitterness, bitter reproaches, expressions of anger, swearing, words that are not pleasant to hear, ridicule, and certain social varieties. (3) The factors causing the students of Persada UAD in 2019/2020 to throw sarcasm found ten factors, namely social background, habits, reflexes, anger, inappropriate place and time, inappropriate participants, goals that did not match the speaker, tone when conveying messages, media language, and norms in interaction.

Two Kinds of “Bad” Musical Performance: Musical and Moral Mistakes

AbstractThere are many ways in which a musical performance can be “bad,” but here the focus is on two: those performances that make you laugh, and those that make you angry. These forms of musical badness, however, are not primarily compositional deficits, but either (a) that the performer simply cannot competently deliver the music to their audience, inducing laughter, or (b) that the performer exhibits some form of disrespect, provoking anger. Such laughter or anger stems from failure of the expected relationship between a performer and their audience, that is, a social failure. After surveying a range of musical faults, the article examines the causes of laughter in general and in relation to some of examples of risible “bad” music. Similarly, the causes of social and moral anger in general are examined, and several cases of anger-inducing musical performances are presented. The article concludes with a consideration of the broader implications of these responses to “bad” music for theories of emotional expression in music, the relationship between aesthetic and moral judgments, and the centrality of musical performances as opposed to works in discussions of musical expression and value.

Comparison of social support, depression and anger in diabetic and cardiac patients

Abstract Objective: The present study explores the role of social support, depression and anger among diabetic and cardiac patients. Method: This cross sectional study comprised of 200 patients who were selected through purposive sampling strategy from outpatient departments (Cardiology and Endocrinology) of Government hospitals of Lahore (Jinnah Hospital and Services Hospital) and Muridke (Tehsil Headquarter Hospital) from April 2015- September 2015. Cardiac patients were 101(Men=51, Women=50) and diabetic type II patients were 99 (Men= 50, Women= 49). Siddiqui-Shah Depression scale (SSDS), Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL) and Trait Anger and Expression Scale (TAES) were administered on the patients. Result: The findings revealed that cardiac patients exhibit higher level of depression and receive more social support than diabetic patients. Furthermore, results reveal that low social support is a significant negative predictor of anger and depression among diabetic and cardiac patients. Conclusion: On the basis of findings, it is concluded that social support is a significant factor in the treatment of diabetes and cardiac diseases. This research is helpful for hospital administration in the counseling/management of such patients. Continuous...

A Study on the Possibility of Social Anger and Reconciliation in Look Back in Anger

A Study on the Possibility of Social Anger and Reconciliation in Look Back in Anger

Trump’s populist discourse and affective politics, or on how to move ‘the People’ through emotion

ABSTRACT Recursively in history, emotions such as social anger, moral satiety, distrust of the elite and the Establishment, among others, have all contributed to politicians’ encouragement and exploitation of a rather emotionally charged discourse (Block, E., and R. Negrine. 2017. “The Populist Communication Style: Toward a Critical Framework.” International Journal of Communication 11: 178–197). In their self-imposed capacity as mouthpiece for 'the People', populist leaders have successfully given vent to the expression of some of these emotions. The fact that emotion permeates all levels of linguistic description (Alba-Juez, L., and G. Thompson. 2014. “The Many Faces and Phases of Evaluation.” In Evaluation in Context, edited by L. Alba-Juez, and G. Thompson, 3–23. Amsterdam, PA: John Benjamins, 10–11) makes its examination a fascinating enterprise. In this paper, we discuss the role played by emotion in the production of populist discourse; to this end, we examine a very well-known example of populist rhetoric, i.e. Donald Trump, under the lens of Appraisal Theory (Martin, J. R., and P. R. R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; Bednarek, M. 2008. Emotion Talk Across Corpora. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). In particular, we employ a refined model of the affect subsystem (i.e. Benítez-Castro, M. Á., and E. Hidalgo-Tenorio. 2019. “Rethinking Martin and White’s Affect Taxonomy: A Psychologically-Inspired Approach to the Linguistic Expression of Emotion.” In Emotion in Discourse, edited by L. Mackenzie, and L. Alba-Juez, 301–332. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) to analyse seven speeches delivered by the US President in the last four years. Our study helps uncover a set of strategies and patterns showing how this unconventional politician’s emotion-driven language manages to develop a more inclusive in-group identity uniting the members of an angry, scared, frustrated and unsure audience.

Belarus's Season of Discontent

Belarus's Season of Discontent Cyryl Ryzak (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Opposition rally in Minsk in August 2020 (Valery Sharifulin\TASS via Getty Images) [End Page 140] Last August, Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory over Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Belarus's presidential election, securing his sixth consecutive term since rising to the office in 1994. Belarus's central election commission said he won over 80 percent of votes. While international monitors have found election irregularities and violations in every presidential race in the country since 1994, the 2020 results spurred unprecedented street demonstrations. Lukashenko responded with violence, deploying the OMON, Belarus's special police, against protesters. The crackdown only intensified the struggle between the people and the president. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in the capital, Minsk, as well as in the provinces. Major industrial enterprises went on strike. The protest wave continued for several months, earning the admiration of many around the world. Much of the movement's momentum dissipated as winter set in, and protesters faced a savage wave of repression, including police killings and harsh sentences or loss of employment for the smallest acts of protest. An activist minority continues the struggle today both within and outside the country, but large protests are no longer taking place. Lukashenko has declared victory over what he called a "blitzkrieg." On February 11 at the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, a mass gathering of loyalist delegates held every five years, Lukashenko and his current governing team reiterated the basic theme that underpins his claim to rule. Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko warned that proposals to "reform the Belarusian economy on the liberal example" led to the "economic crash and default of many states." This is Lukashenko's claim to legitimacy: that he is the only force that stands between the employees of Belarus's state-owned industrial enterprises and mass unemployment. Belarus has virtually no poverty at the World Bank's line of $5.50 per person per day, among the post-Communist states a condition met by just Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The Soviet educational inheritance has been largely preserved, which provides the foundation for Belarus's highly competitive IT sector. State-owned enterprises, which are less [End Page 141] prone to layoffs than the private sector, employ about 40 percent of the labor force. Yet the 2020 demonstrations expressed not just opposition to an authoritarian government but a very deep social anger. Among the protesters were industrial workers from those large state-owned enterprises, who, like private-sector workers, face exploitation and repression from state managers, bureaucrats, and domestic and foreign businessmen. The level of deceit involved in the falsified elections of August 9 had insulted their intelligence, and they were repelled by the violence leveled at the early protesters. The old line repeated by Lukashenko and his loyalists—that they protect the welfare state and job security—had by then lost its propagandistic power, even if it remained partly true. While Belarus has avoided the more neoliberal course of neighboring post-Soviet states, it has generated its own antagonisms over the past thirty years. By focusing on what is distinctive about the Belarusian model, we can better understand the sources of opposition to the Lukashenko government today. ________ Capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe developed after 1989 with the support of two elite social groups: the intelligentsia, which favored a neoliberal program, and the more entrepreneurial cadre of the old communist parties, which wanted to be a really existing capitalist class. Belarus's early post-Soviet development was dominated by this latter group. When the independent Republic of Belarus replaced the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, there was little turnover of leadership. While the formal structures of the Communist Party were banned, the administrative and managerial cadre, at whose helm stood Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, remained the same. The only significant change was the appointment of Stanislav Shushkevich, a physics professor, as speaker of parliament—a move meant to appease the Minsk intelligentsia. Belarus's socioeconomic development in the early 1990s was driven almost exclusively by a gradual process of nomenklatura embourgeoisement, with a strong accent of vestigial Soviet forms. There was little incentive to...

Mobilizing collective hatred through humour: Affective-discursive production and reception of populist rhetoric.

This research examines the mobilization of populist rhetoric of the 2019 Finns Party election video. By focusing on both the FP’s election video (production) and Youtube users’ comments (reception), we examine the constructions and uses of social categories and humour as well as responses to their rhetorical deployment among like‐minded supporters and opponents. The multimodal analysis of the production of a populist campaign video demonstrates the construction of social categories and humour through the five steps of collective hate. These humorous messages are differently received by like‐minded and opposing YouTube users. Two supportive affective–discursive practices – glorification and schadenfreude – both express shared joy and laughter, but while glorification emphasizes the positive self‐understanding of the in‐group, schadenfreude belittles the ‘political Other’. Two opposing affective–discursive practices – irritation and scorn – place FP voters in subject positions of morally and intellectually inferior fascists, racists, and idiots. The populist message fosters expressions of social anger and polarization between FP supporters and opponents. Humour entangled with hatred encourages a sense of moral superiority in both groups. This study contributes to the current knowledge of mobilizing populist rhetoric and polarization, and responds to the call to broaden analysis of political communication in the field of multimodality.

P1841THE JOURNEY OF KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATION IN EGYPT: STILL EXTRA-MILES TO GO

Abstract Background and Aims Kidney transplantation is the renal replacement therapy of choice for patients with end-stage kidney disease. Egypt is a developing country with social, religious and demographic characteristics having enormous impact on the development and progress of its own national transplant program. Method A web-based review of relevant bibliography: articles and textbooks, reporting the progress in the transplant practice in Egypt and its legislations was conducted. Results Kidney transplantation started in Egypt about 43 years ago when the first transplant was performed at Mansoura Urology and Nephrology Center (UNC) in March 1976. The practice of kidney transplantation in Egypt has then evolved over the years. While about ten thousand transplants were performed from 1976 to 2011, the annual mean number of kidney transplantation between 2011 and 2016 increased to 1100 cases/year. The number of transplant centers has also grown from 12 in 1997 to 35 currently licensed centers. However, Egypt is still lacking a national transplant registry data. The legal framework developed over the last decade towards establishing a national transplant program. Until 2010, organ transplantation was only regulated by the professional code of ethics and conduct of the Egyptian Medical Syndicate. Representatives of the Istanbul Declaration met with the Egyptian Minister of Health and Egyptian Society of Nephrology leaders in Cairo in October 2008; since then, Egypt has been working to terminate illegal practices associated with organ transplantation, organ trafficking and transplant tourism. The first legislation for a national organ transplant program “The executive list for law number 5 of the year 2010 regarding regulating human organ transplants” was then issued after approval by the parliament. The law established “The Higher Committee for Organ Transplants” which includes 7 - 11 experts and is responsible for regulating and supervising all organ and tissue transplant procedures in the country. The new law criminalizes organ trafficking and set strict penalties for physicians, hospitals and medical facilities performing illegal organ transplant procedures. In 2017, the legislation has been further modified to make the penalties even harsher “Law number 142 of the year 2017 modification of some articles in law number 5 of the year 2010 regarding regulating human organ transplants”. Transplantation practice is still limited to live transplants. The cadaveric transplant program has not yet been put into action despite the new 2010 legislation has set the legal framework, yet lacking a clear definition of the legal death. Cadaveric transplantation was performed twice in Egypt in 1992 at Cairo (kasr El Aini hospital) from 2 criminals after execution in Alexandria. This was faced with social anger and rejection which led to legal restrictions for non-living organ procurement at that time. Barriers to establishment of a national transplant program in Egypt include cultural and religious rejection of deceased donation, organ shortage, and long waiting time in national transplant centers. Conclusion Despite the recent ameliorations in the current Egyptian transplant practice, the overall progress has been slow. This can be attributed to a complex interaction between social, religious and financial factors. Further advances are vital to reduce the burden implied by the state-funded dialysis therapy and to demolish organ trafficking and transplant tourism. As such, state efforts would continue to further improve the living donor and to implement the deceased donor transplantation programs.

Alexithymia and automatic processing of facial emotions: behavioral and neural findings

BackgroundAlexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, an externally oriented style of thinking, and a reduced inclination to imagination. Previous research has shown deficits in the recognition of emotional facial expressions in alexithymia and reductions of brain responsivity to emotional stimuli. Using an affective priming paradigm, we investigated automatic perception of facial emotions as a function of alexithymia at the behavioral and neural level. In addition to self-report scales, we applied an interview to assess alexithymic tendencies.ResultsDuring 3 T fMRI scanning, 49 healthy individuals judged valence of neutral faces preceded by briefly shown happy, angry, fearful, and neutral facial expressions. Alexithymia was assessed using the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA). As expected, only negative correlations were found between alexithymic features and affective priming. The global level of self-reported alexithymia (as assessed by the TAS-20 and the BVAQ) was found to be related to less affective priming owing to angry faces. At the facet level, difficulties identifying feelings, difficulties analyzing feelings, and impoverished fantasy (as measured by the BVAQ) were correlated with reduced affective priming due to angry faces. Difficulties identifying feelings (BVAQ) correlated also with reduced affective priming due to fearful faces and reduced imagination (TSIA) was related to decreased affective priming due to happy faces. There was only one significant correlation between alexithymia dimensions and automatic brain response to masked facial emotions: TAS-20 alexithymia correlated with heightened brain response to masked happy faces in superior and medial frontal areas.ConclusionsOur behavioral results provide evidence that alexithymic features are related in particular to less sensitivity for covert facial expressions of anger. The perceptual alterations could reflect impaired automatic recognition or integration of social anger signals into judgemental processes and might contribute to the problems in interpersonal relationships associated with alexithymia. Our findings suggest that self-report measures of alexithymia may have an advantage over interview-based tests as research tools in the field of emotion perception at least in samples of healthy individuals characterized by rather low levels of alexithymia.

Cerebro político en los procesos electorales: las emociones del voto en la campaña por la Presidencia de la República en México, 2018

Los procesos electorales en México durante el siglo XXI se han caracterizado por un alto nivel de incertidumbre con respecto a las motivaciones y condiciones en las que los ciudadanos emiten su voto. Cada vez resulta más evidente el papel que juegan las emociones para definir el voto que decidirá el rumbo de una jornada electoral. El objeto de la investigación es identificar el papel de las emociones en la definición políticoelectoral de los mexicanos para las elecciones de 2018, a fin de demostrar que es una elección emocional más que racional que configura el espacio público emocional de México y su gobernanza. Para lograr este propósito se decidió aplicar el enfoque metodológico cualitativo, porque se analizan las estrategias discursivas empleadas por uno de los candidatos contendientes a la presidencia de la república mexicana, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, quien estaba a la cabeza de todas las encuestas realizadas y resultó ganador. Entre los hallazgos más desatacados de la investigación, se encuentra que el candidato Andrés Manuel López Obrador ha sabido aprovechar un espacio público emocional de enojo e ira social, para dar lugar a una suerte de gobernanza emocional. Estudios recientemente realizados en el campo de las neurociencias, muestran que las decisiones tomadas por los seres humanos no son únicamente producto de la razón, sino que intervienen de manera determinante las emociones que son detonadas, entre otros actores, por los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales.

The Social Suspiciousness Scale: Development, Validation, and Implications for Understanding Social Anxiety Disorder

The Social Suspiciousness Scale (SSS) is a 24-item self-report questionnaire designed to assess suspiciousness, along with the associated constructs of anger and hostility, within a social context. The present research evaluated the psychometric properties of this newly developed scale. The sample consisted of outpatients with social anxiety disorder (SAD; n = 145), unselected undergraduate university students (n = 162), and healthy community controls (n = 46). A principal components analysis suggested a one-factor solution. Internal consistency of the scale was high, and interitem correlations indicated that items were nonredundant. Test-retest reliability was strong. SSS scores were moderately correlated with measures of social anxiety, paranoia, anger and hostility. Moreover, in the outpatient SAD sample, SSS scores decreased significantly following a 12-week cognitive-behavioral group treatment program for SAD. The SSS may be a useful tool for measuring suspiciousness, anger and hostility across a variety of social contexts, particularly in individuals with SAD. This research contributes more generally to a broader understanding of SAD, and supports the importance of considering the role of mistrust and suspiciousness in this disorder.

A proactive targeted approach to preventing adolescent aggressive behaviours

ABSTRACTThe aim of this research was to critically examine methods for reducing incidences of aggression within adolescence. To achieve this aim, a proactive intervention programme was devised and implemented aimed at changing attitudes towards physical and relational aggression through social skills education within the College’s tutorial programme. The research involved the implementation of an intervention programme that consisted of three workshops based on social skills training, problem solving and anger management techniques, the development of empathic skills, education on the role of the bystander, and victimisation prevention strategies (N = 158). Two self-report questionnaires were administered, pre-test and post-test to analyse the effectiveness of the intervention programme. The questionnaires included measures of attitude towards physical and relational aggression; victimisation; popularity and aggression; bystander and victimisation beliefs; and empathy towards victims. A control group completed the two questionnaires in the same time frame but without undertaking the intervention workshops. Post implementation, aggression scores for both physical and relational aggression significantly decreased for the intervention group against a control. Additionally, popularity was found to positively correlate with both physical and relational aggression. This study highlights the necessity for intervention programmes in educational environments in terms of the shaping of prosocial attitudes of students and to ensure the safeguarding of students.

Abstract PR02: Randomized controlled trial to increase quality of life and reduce perceived stress among Korean American breast cancer survivors

Abstract Background: Despite large increases in breast cancer incidence among Korean women, there have been remarkably few empirical studies to improve survivorship among Korean American breast cancer survivors (KBCS), many of whom experience linguistic and cultural barriers. According to limited research on Asian Americans, KBCS report low quality of life (QOL) and high perceived stress (henceforth referred to as “stress”). To address this gap, we tested the effectiveness of one of the first linguistically appropriate and culturally sensitive cognitive-behavioral stress management programs that was developed to improve QOL and reduce stress in KBCS. Methods: The TOGETHER (Together Overcome and Get Empowered Through Health Education and Relationships) program consists of seven 2-hour sessions and one follow-up seven weeks post-intervention. These findings are preliminary results based on cycles one to four of the program, consisting of 66 KBCS in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area of which complete data was available for 61 participants (92.4%). The standard intervention (SI) group (n=28) received linguistically and culturally tailored health information related to breast cancer, while the enhanced intervention (EI) group (n=33) received this and additional information/practice on relaxation, stress reduction techniques, mindfulness, utilizing social support, anger management, and assertiveness training. Outcomes were measured at baseline, upon completion of the program, and at follow-up. QOL was assessed using the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B), which includes five subscales (physical well-being (PWB), social well-being (SWB), emotional well-being (EWB), functional well-being (FWB), and breast cancer subscale (BCS)), while stress was assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to examine program effects on QOL and PSS separately. Moreover, the impact of program site (Maryland vs. Virginia), cycle (one to four), and age (less than 65 vs. 65 and over) on these relationships was assessed. Results: Randomization was effective in that SI and EI participants were similar in regards to sociodemographic, breast cancer-related, and acculturation variables. Program site and cycle did not impact program effects on QOL and PSS and were thus not included in subsequent models. For QOL, the SI group had better quality of life at baseline (mean FACT-B score: 103.3) compared to the EI group (mean FACT-B score: 100.7). Changes in mean FACT-B, SWB, and FWB scores significantly differed between the SI and EI group from baseline to the end of the program. Specifically, the EI group had a 7.0 unit greater increase in mean FACT-B scores, 2.6 unit greater increase in mean SWB scores, and 2.5 unit greater increase in mean FWB scores from baseline to the end of the program as compared to the SI group on average. For stress, the EI group had a higher level of stress (mean PSS score: 18.82) than the SI group (mean PSS score: 17.25) at baseline. Changes in mean PSS scores significantly differed across time between the SI and EI groups. Those in the EI group had a 2.7 unit greater decrease in mean PSS scores from baseline to the end of the program as compared to those in the SI group on average. For age, those who were less than 65 showed overall decreases in stress from baseline to follow-up, while those 65 and over showed initial decreases from baseline to the end of the program and then increases from the end of the program to follow-up beyond the baseline values. Conclusions: The TOGETHER program is effective in increasing QOL and reducing stress among KBCS and can potentially be adapted and implemented for other socially or linguistically isolated groups in the U.S. Citation Format: Sunmin Lee, Mary Y. Jung, Jamie H. Sim. Randomized controlled trial to increase quality of life and reduce perceived stress among Korean American breast cancer survivors. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2016 Sep 25-28; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2017;26(2 Suppl):Abstract nr PR02.

How does social anger expression predict later depression symptoms? It depends on how often one is angry.

Research has suggested that there are benefits to socially sharing anger as an emotion regulation strategy. We hypothesized that these benefits may depend on the frequency with which one is experiencing anger. We used an experience sampling methodology to explore the interaction between frequency of anger and reliance on social expression of anger as a predictor of changes in depression symptoms 4 months later. We found that a strong reliance on social expression prospectively predicted lower depression symptoms when participants endorsed anger infrequently but predicted an increase in subsequent depression symptoms when anger was endorsed frequently. This interaction was specific to anger and did not extend to sadness or anxiety. These results highlight the importance of considering the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in the context of specific emotions and the frequency of the experienced emotion in everyday life. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Meditating Effects of Family Functioning and Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs in Relationships between Social Exclusion Experience and Adolescents' Anger Control

The Meditating Effects of Family Functioning and Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs in Relationships between Social Exclusion Experience and Adolescents' Anger Control