Weaker Beliefs Research Articles

On Abortion: Exploring Psychological Meaning and Attitudes in a Sample of Mexican Gynecologists

Elective abortion has become an issue of ethical and political debate in many countries including Mexico. As gynecologists are directly involved in the practice of abortion, it is important to know the psychological meaning that the term 'elective abortion' has for them. This study explores the psychological meaning and attitudes toward elective abortion of one hundred and twenty-three Mexican gynecologists. We used the semantic networks technique, which analyzed the words the participants associated with the term 'elective abortion'. The defining words most frequently used by participants implied a negative sanction. There were important differences by gender and religiosity: male gynecologists, as well as those with strong religious beliefs (mainly Catholics), revealed a more negative psychological meaning and more negative attitudes than females or physicians with weak religious beliefs. A contribution of the present study is that it highlights the importance of psychology to enhancing understanding of the issue of elective abortion.

The Role of Revenge, Denial, and Terrorism Distress in Restoring Just World Beliefs: The Impact of the 2008 Mumbai Attacks on British and Indian Students

ABSTRACT Just world beliefs for students (N = 413) from India and the United Kingdom were measured. The participants then read a scenario about the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai. The participants were then assessed for terrorism distress and offered multiple strategies (revenge and denial) to restore their just world beliefs. The findings indicate that students resident in India along with those who hold strong just world beliefs felt more distress, held a greater desire for revenge, and demonstrated more denial than the British students and those who had weak beliefs in a just world. These results indicate the important role just world beliefs play in responding to the threat created by mass casualty terrorist attacks. The implications for just world theory are also discussed.

Environmental Education for Behaviour Change: Which actions should be targeted?

One aim of environmental education is to enable people to make informed decisions about their environmental behaviour; this is particularly significant with environmental problems that are believed to be both major and imminent, such as climate change resulting from global warming. Previous research suggests no strong link between a person's general environmental attitudes and knowledge, and his or her willingness to undertake pro-environmental actions, so this study focuses on some specific issues. Using survey methods to produce quantitative data about students' beliefs concerning the usefulness of specific actions and their willingness to adopt them, novel indices have been constructed that indicate the potential of education to increase students' willingness to undertake those actions. The findings imply that altering a student's belief about certain issues will have little effect on their willingness to act. This can be because most students, even those with only a weak belief in the efficacy, are prepared to take action anyway. Conversely, it can be because a majority, including those convinced about the efficacy, are not prepared to take action. Education about such actions, where there is only a weak link between believed effectiveness and willingness to act, may be ineffective in terms of changing practice, because other factors such as social norms and situational influences dominate. For such actions other strategies may be required. For another set of actions, however, the benefits of education in changing practice seemed more positive; increasing recycling, reducing the use of artificial fertilisers and planting more trees are examples.

Immunosuppressant Nonadherence in Heart, Liver, and Lung Transplant Patients

Nonadherence to immunosuppressant medication is a significant problem among solid organ transplant recipients. Previous research suggests that patients' perceptions about their medications may be a better predictor of nonadherence than demographic factors. This study aimed to further investigate the role of patients' perceptions about their transplant and medication beliefs in nonadherence. This was a cross-sectional observational study. Participants were 87 heart, 46 lung, and 193 liver transplant patients. All surviving heart, lung, and liver transplant patients from Auckland City Hospital and Greenlane Hospital older than 16 years who had received their transplant at least 3 months before study commencement were mailed questionnaires. Standardized self-report measures were used to assess illness perceptions, medication beliefs, and adherence. Nonadherent patients had lower perceptions about the necessity of medication, weaker beliefs that medication could prevent rejection, and higher concerns about its harms, than adherers. Nonadherers perceived that their transplant and immunosuppressant medication caused more symptoms and were more distressed about symptoms than adherers; they understood their transplant less, perceived their transplant had a larger impact on their lives, affected them more emotionally, and caused greater concern, than patients who were more adherent. A regression model that included these perceptions and demographic variables correctly classified 71% of patients as adherent or nonadherent. The perceptions that patients hold about their transplant and medications are associated with adherence to immunosuppressant medications. Future research could investigate whether a psychologic intervention could change patients' perceptions to improve adherence.

Psychosocial aspects of coeliac disease: A cross‐sectional survey of a UK population

Coeliac disease (CD) is an autoimmune condition managed by a lifelong therapeutic gluten-free diet. Previous research suggests that the chronicity of CD, the limitations imposed by the gluten-free diet, and the risk of other associated diseases can have a negative impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and psychological well-being. The aim of this study was to explore the illness perceptions and self-efficacy beliefs of adults with CD in the United Kingdom and to report their subjective levels of HRQoL and psychological well-being. The study employed a cross-sectional postal questionnaire design. Participants (n= 288) were adults with CD recruited via Coeliac UK. Measures of well-being, HRQoL, self-efficacy, illness perceptions, and dietary self-management were analysed. Preliminary descriptive and univariate procedures were employed before bivariate tests of association or difference were carried out. Backward stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the predictive strength of variables on well-being, quality of life, and self-efficacy. Logistic regression was used to look at the influence of variables on adherence. RESULTS. Results indicate that HRQoL and psychological well-being were comparable to those found in previous related studies. Participants with weak beliefs in the serious consequences of CD and poorer emotional reactions to the condition had a greater likelihood of having enhanced HRQoL, improved psychological well-being, and higher self-efficacy. Strong beliefs in personal control and a greater perceived understanding of CD were associated with greater self-efficacy. Perceived self-efficacy and illness perceptions could play a role in informing psychological interventions for individuals with CD.

Inference about constrained parameters using the elastic belief method

Statistical inference about unknown parameter values that have known constraints is a challenging problem for both frequentist and Bayesian methods. As an alternative, inferential models created with the weak belief method can generate inferential results with desirable frequency properties for constrained parameter problems. To accomplish this, we propose an extension of weak belief called the elastic belief method. Compared to an existing rule for conditioning on constraint information, the elastic belief method produces more efficient probabilistic inference while maintaining desirable frequency properties. The application of this new method is demonstrated in two well-studied examples: inference about a nonnegative quantity measured with Gaussian error and inference about the signal rate of a Poisson count with a known background rate. Compared to several previous interval-forming methods for the constrained Poisson signal rate, the new method gives an interval with better coverage probability or a simpler construction. More importantly, the inferential model provides a post-data predictive measure of uncertainty about the unknown parameter value that is not inherent in other interval-forming methods.

Erratic Development in Kenya: Questions from the East Asian Miracle

At first sight, Kenya seems to have had more scope than other African countries to emulate the development trajectory described in the World Bank study, The East Asian Miracle. These assets did not, however, result in sustained growth – an outcome this article aims to explain using a negative turning point in the early 1990s. The most striking difference between the East Asian and Kenyan experiences was the acceptance – and even exacerbation – of socio‐economic inequality as an immutable reality of development, plus the weak belief in the integrity of Kenyan institutions. A constitutional review process is one possible political solution for this.

Autoeficacia y locus de control: variables predictoras de la autorregulación del peso en personas obesas

Objective. The present investigation aimed at determining the predictive capacity of perceived self-efficacy and locus of control in weight self-regulation of 243 obese persons in medical treatment in different private health centers. Method. A non-experimental, correlational and crsoss-sectional design was used. Weight self regulation Inventory, Perceived self-efficacy in weight regulation Inventory and Weight locus of control Inventory were individually administered, on paper and pencil format. Results. It was found that obese persons who feel capable of controlling their weight and at the same time have weak beliefs that their weight depends on their actions are the ones who report greater self-regulation of weight. Conclusion. These results suggest issues to take into account in the cognitive-behavioral treatments geared towards obesity control, specifically training self-regulation abilities and at the same time work on changes in beliefs related to weight.

Analysis of the relationships between sensitivity to injustice, principles of justice and belief in a just world

Injustice appears to be a major variable in the analysis of transgressive behaviour. Theories and studies of injustice differ according to how injustice is conceptualised: contextually or personally. In the first case, the judgement of injustice results from an evaluation of situational characteristics (inequity, inequality, arbitrariness etc.). In the second case, factors related to personality (belief in a just world, sensitivity to injustice) are assumed to modify perceptions of justice or injustice and reactions to it. Although at first glance these approaches seem to be opposed, morality may be a point in common. This study of high school students aimed to identify the relationships between the variables of contextual injustice (principles of equity, equality or need operating in the evaluation of a situation) and those of personal injustice (sensitivity to injustice and belief in a just world), with reference to the literature on morality. Ten volunteers participated in semi-structured interviews. An interview guide was developed to identify the preferred principles used to assess the injustice of a situation, the intensity of sensitivity to injustice, and the strength of the belief in a just world. The analysis showed that the equity principle was highly associated with high sensitivity to injustice on the victim dimension and a strong belief in a just world. This profile indicated a focus on personal interests and characterised self-centred morality. In contrast, equality and need principles were related to high sensitivity to injustice on the observer and beneficiary dimensions and a weak belief in a just world. These factors indicated capacities for selflessness and empathy and reflected altruistic morality.

Dempster-Shafer inference with weak beliefs

The work of A. P. Dempster in 1960s extending Fisher's fiducial infer- ence for parametric inference using multivalued mapping, and that of G. Shafer in 1970s on the assessment and combination of evidence led to what is now known as the Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory of belief functions. However, application of DS for parametric inference has been limited due, perhaps, to its computational diffi- culty, non-uniqueness, and lack of frequency properties. In this paper, we return to Dempster's original approach to constructing belief functions for parametric infer- ence, called basic DS models (BDSMs), which are usual probability models on the space of the so-called focal elements. We propose to modify BDSMs by enlarging focal elements to obtain belief functions that have desired frequency properties. We call our method Weak Belief (WB). When it enlarges the focal elements no more than necessary, the method of WB is called Maximal Belief (MB). The MB method is illustrated with two examples: (i) inference about a binomial proportion, and (ii) inference about the number of outliers (µi 6 0) based on the observed data X1, . . . , Xn with the model Xi ind » N (µi, 1).

Consumer information (in)sufficiency in relation to biofuels: determinants and impact

AbstractDespite the growing interest in biorenewable energy at society, policy, and industry level, many people still know very little about alternatives to fossil fuels, particularly biofuels. This perspective assesses and discusses the needs of citizens and future consumers for more information on biofuels. Using empirical data collected from a sample (n = 260) of fuel consumers in Flanders, Belgium, this perspective first demonstrates that information insufficiency (the gap between consumers' need for information and their perceived knowledge) is a good predictor of information‐seeking behavior, specifically in the case of biofuels. Secondly, it shows that women, older, and less educated people report higher levels of information insufficiency. This means that they have a higher a priori interest in receiving more information about biofuels, in comparison to men, younger, and more highly educated population groups, for whom greater efforts may be required to ensure that communications reach them effectively. Additionally, information insufficiency (and thus also biofuel information‐seeking behavior) increases in line with a stronger belief that biofuels are environmentally friendly, and with weaker beliefs that biofuels will have a positive impact on the local economy and can decrease foreign energy dependency. Furthermore, outcome relevant involvement (i.e. the perceived importance of the impact of biofuels on one's own life) increases information insufficiency, whereas impression relevant involvement (i.e. the importance of perceived approval by peers) and value relevant involvement (i.e. the role of personal values) are not significant. Based on these insights, and considering the wider societal context of biofuels and the limitations of the empirical data, conclusions are drawn with respect to who is (and who is not) open to receiving information about biofuels, as well as about the specific themes and benefits such information campaigns should highlight to stand the greatest chance of success in the marketplace. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Medication Adherence in Patients Taking Immunosuppressants after Kidney Transplantation

Results: Among 197 patients, 113 (57.4%) were compliant to the immunosuppressive agents, and 84 (42.6%) recipients were non-compliant. Non-compliant patients were significantly younger (P=0.004), highly educated (P=0.004), employed (P=0.005), more likely to live alone (P=0.035), and drank more (P=0.001) than the compliant patients. Regarding psychosocial factors, more barriers (P=0.015), weak beliefs about the necessity of taking medications (P=0.001), strong beliefs about specific concerns related to medications (P=0.038), and low self efficacy (P=0.003) were identified in the non-compliant group compared with the compliant group. Conclusions: This study revealed that multiple factors affected medication compliance in patients taking immunosuppressants. It would be helpful to identify potential recipients with a risk for non-compliance based on their general characteristics and psychosocial factors, so they can be provided a specialized education program to promote compliance. This strategy may help produce more favorable long-term outcomes among kidney transplant recipients.

Social Status and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Europe: An Examination from the Perspective of Social Dominance Theory

A full test of the Social Dominance Theory model addressed immigration as one of the most prominent current intergroup conflicts in Europe. The hypothesis that members of high status groups tend to discriminate members of low status groups because they are more prone to Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and refer more to legitimising myths such as prejudice was tested using representative samples from eight European countries (N = 1000 each), considering income and migrant background as social status indicators, SDO, anti-immigrant prejudice and diversity beliefs, and the intention to discriminate immigrants. The results confirm that individuals with higher SDO are more likely to discriminate immigrants, partly because of stronger anti-immigrant prejudice and partly because they believe less in diversity. However, the results question the role of social status. Contrary to the expectations of Social Dominance Theory, individuals with lower income are more prone to SDO and have stronger anti-immigrant attitudes and weaker diversity beliefs. The impact of migrant background was weak and ambivalent. We suggest reconsidering the role of social status to stress status maintenance and enhancement as general social motives. Regardless of their social position, people seemingly try to enhance their relative position by devaluing lower status groups.

World Assumptions in Psychosis

The aim of this study was to examine the contents of world views held by patients with current persecutory beliefs. We examined whether these beliefs in a just world (BJW) were associated with the severity of psychopathology of participants. Our results showed that, compared with a healthy control group, the current persecutory beliefs group had weaker beliefs in a just world related to themselves (BJW-P), but there were no differences between both groups in their beliefs in general justice in the world (BJW-G). Regression analyses showed that BJW, particularly weaker beliefs in personal justice, significantly associated with more severe symptoms of depression and paranoia as well as with lower scores of psychological well-being. Our results support the relevance of the BJW framework in exploring world views in patients with persecutory beliefs. We discuss the implications of these results for the research and treatment of paranoid ideation.

A Model for the Integration of Prioritized Knowledge Bases Through Subjective Belief Games

Belief merging is concerned with the integration of several belief bases such that a coherent belief base is developed. Various belief merging models that use a belief negotiation game have been developed. These models often consist of two key functions, namely, negotiation and weakening. A negotiation function finds and selects the weakest belief bases among the available belief bases, while the weakening function removes the least valuable set of information from the selected belief base. This process is iteratively repeated until a consistent belief base is developed. In this paper, we extend the current game-based belief merging models by introducing the Subjective belief game model. The Subjective belief game model operates over a Subjective belief profile, which consists of belief bases with Subjectively annotated formulas. The Subjective information attached to each formula enables the proposed model to prioritize the formulas in the merging process. One of the advantages of the proposed game is that it provides room for enhancing the content of the weak belief bases, instead of enforcing their further weakening. Trustworthiness of the information sources is also considered. We provide several instantiations of the model. The Subjective belief game model can be useful for formalizing a negotiation process between the human participants of a design process in cases where discrepancies and conflicts arise. We apply this belief game model to an example case study of collaboratively designing some parts of unified modeling language (UML) class diagram for vehicle design.

Who Benefits from Religion?

Many studies have documented the benefits of religious involvement. Indeed, highly religious people tend to be healthier, live longer, and have higher levels of subjective well-being. While religious involvement offers clear benefits to many, in this paper we explore whether it may also be detrimental to some. Specifically, we examine in detail the relation between religious involvement and subjective well-being. We first replicate prior findings showing a positive relation between religiosity and subjective well-being. However, our results also suggest that this relation may be more complex than previously thought. While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion—atheists and agnostics. These results may help explain why—in spite of the well-documented benefits of religion—an increasing number of people are abandoning their faith. As commitment wanes, religious involvement may become detrimental to well-being, and individuals may be better off seeking new affiliations.

Dempster–Shafer Theory and Statistical Inference with Weak Beliefs

The Dempster--Shafer (DS) theory is a powerful tool for probabilistic reasoning based on a formal calculus for combining evidence. DS theory has been widely used in computer science and engineering applications, but has yet to reach the statistical mainstream, perhaps because the DS belief functions do not satisfy long-run frequency properties. Recently, two of the authors proposed an extension of DS, called the weak belief (WB) approach, that can incorporate desirable frequency properties into the DS framework by systematically enlarging the focal elements. The present paper reviews and extends this WB approach. We present a general description of WB in the context of inferential models, its interplay with the DS calculus, and the maximal belief solution. New applications of the WB method in two high-dimensional hypothesis testing problems are given. Simulations show that the WB procedures, suitably calibrated, perform well compared to popular classical methods. Most importantly, the WB approach combines the probabilistic reasoning of DS with the desirable frequency properties of classical statistics.

Correlations Between Spiritual Beliefs and Health‐Related Quality of Life of Chronic Hemodialysis Patients in Taiwan

This study evaluated the correlations between spiritual beliefs and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of hemodialysis (HD) patients in Taiwan. Participants had to complete two questionnaires: the 36-item Short Form Health Survey Questionnaire and the Royal Free Interview for Spiritual and Religious Beliefs. They were then divided into three groups according to their strength of spiritual beliefs-having no, weak, or strong beliefs. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory data among groups were compared. Correlations between spiritual beliefs and HRQOL were then determined by the analysis of covariance and the post hoc Scheffe tests. Six hundred thirty-three patients completed the study. There were more women in the group of patients with strong beliefs (P = 0.005) and more less-educated patients in the group of patients with weak beliefs (P = 0.005). Patients with no or with strong spiritual beliefs had higher role physical (P = 0.01) and social functioning (SF) (P = 0.001) scores than patients with weak beliefs. After adjustment for gender, age, marital status, education, comorbidities, and time on dialysis, patients with no or with strong spiritual beliefs were found to have higher SF scores (P = 0.02) than patients with weak beliefs. HD patients with no or strong spiritual beliefs had higher SF HRQOL than those with weak spiritual beliefs.

Assumptive Worldviews and Problematic Reactions to Bereavement

Forty-two individuals who had lost an immediate family member in the prior 2 years and 42 nonbereaved matched controls completed the World Assumptions Scale (Janoff-Bulman, 1989) and the Symptom Checklist-10-Revised (Rosen et al., 2000). Results showed that bereaved individuals were significantly more distressed than nonbereaved matched controls, and those grievers with weaker beliefs in the meaningfulness of the world and lower perceptions of self-worth had greater distress symptoms than those who perceived the world and themselves in more positive terms. Assumptive worldviews were not related to differences in psychological distress in the control group. The present findings suggest that problematic reactions to bereavement may reflect the influence of negative belief systems, which do not seem to have the same detrimental impact for individuals not dealing with a significant interpersonal loss.

Limits of learning about a categorical latent variable under prior near-ignorance

In this paper, we consider the coherent theory of (epistemic) uncertainty of Walley, in which beliefs are represented through sets of probability distributions, and we focus on the problem of modeling prior ignorance about a categorical random variable. In this setting, it is a known result that a state of prior ignorance is not compatible with learning. To overcome this problem, another state of beliefs, called near-ignorance, has been proposed. Near-ignorance resembles ignorance very closely, by satisfying some principles that can arguably be regarded as necessary in a state of ignorance, and allows learning to take place. What this paper does, is to provide new and substantial evidence that also near-ignorance cannot be really regarded as a way out of the problem of starting statistical inference in conditions of very weak beliefs. The key to this result is focusing on a setting characterized by a variable of interest that is latent. We argue that such a setting is by far the most common case in practice, and we provide, for the case of categorical latent variables (and general manifest variables) a condition that, if satisfied, prevents learning to take place under prior near-ignorance. This condition is shown to be easily satisfied even in the most common statistical problems. We regard these results as a strong form of evidence against the possibility to adopt a condition of prior near-ignorance in real statistical problems.