The need to belong has been proposed as the most basic need for human psychological well-being. Lack of belongingness has been associated with stress, anxiety and lack of esteem. Social and psychological functioning in the workplace has been linked to nurses' interconnection with others and their perceptions of belongingness.
The Body Acceptance by Others Scale (BAOS) measures the degree to which individuals perceive body acceptance by others, but its factor structure is questionable. Here, we developed a revision of the BAOS (i.e., the BAOS-2) by designing novel items reflective of generalised perceptions of body acceptance by others. In three studies, we examined the psychometrics of the 13-item BAOS-2. Study 1, with United Kingdom adults (N = 601), led to the extraction of a unidimensional model of BAOS-2 scores and provided evidence of 4-week test-retest reliability. Study 2, with United Kingdom adults (N = 423), indicated that the unidimensional model of BAOS-2 scores had adequate fit and that scores were invariant across gender. Study 2 also provided evidence of convergent, construct, criterion, discriminant, and incremental validity. Study 3 cross-validated the fit of the unidimensional model in adults from the United State (N = 503) and provided evidence of invariance across gender and national group. Internal consistency coefficients of BAOS-2 scores were adequate across all three studies. There were no significant gender differences in BAOS-2 scores and a significant national difference had a negligible effect size. Thus, the BAOS-2 is a psychometrically-sound measure that can be utilised in future research.
Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones-they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE's uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling-in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.
Inequalities between men and women are common and well-documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies-there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women-are-wonderful effect-that women are evaluated more positively than men overall-is also common. Cross-cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self-reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women-are-wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.
The process by which women came to use internet-facilitated peer-to-peer shared milk was explored via a written questionnaire administered to 41 peer milk recipients from five countries. Respondents were universally unable to provide some or all of the milk their infants required. Twenty-nine dyads had a medical condition that could have affected their ability to breastfeed. Many respondents had had great difficulty in finding health workers who could assist them with their breastfeeding challenges. Before obtaining peer-shared milk, respondents had tried to increase their own milk supply, used infant formula or sought donor milk from personal contacts. Health workers dealing with breastfeeding women require greater training in the recognition and treatment of conditions that adversely affect breastfeeding including a physiological incapacity to fully breastfeed. Peer-to-peer milk recipients appear to be very satisfied with the solution milk sharing provides to their problem of being unable to fully breastfeed their infants.
The objective of this paper is to assess the attitude of Malaysian stakeholders to genetically modified (GM) salmon and to identify the factors that influence their acceptance of GM salmon using a structural equation model. A survey was carried out on 434 representatives from various stakeholder groups in the Klang Valley region of Malaysia. Public attitude towards GM salmon was measured using self-developed questionnaires with seven-point Likert scales. The findings of this study have confirmed that public attitudes towards GM salmon is a complex issue and should be seen as a multi-faceted process. The most important direct predictors for the encouragement of GM salmon are the specific application-linked perceptions about religious acceptability of GM salmon followed by perceived risks and benefits, familiarity, and general promise of modern biotechnology. Encouragement of GM salmon also involves the interplay among other factors such as general concerns of biotechnology, threatening the natural order of things, the need for labeling, the need for patenting, confidence in regulation, and societal values. The research findings can serve as a database that will be useful for understanding the social construct of public attitude towards GM foods in a developing country.
The present study examined the factor structure of a Malay translation of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 among a community sample of 554 Malaysian women. Results of an exploratory factor analysis revealed the existence of four factors, two of which (Information and Internalization-Athlete) mirrored those found among Western samples. An additional factor was an amalgamation of two factors reported in the West, namely Pressure and Internalization-General. A fourth factor consisted of six items, four of which cross-loaded onto previous factors, and was consequently dropped from analyses. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the three retained factors were all above .82, and the three factors were significantly correlated with each other and with participants' body mass index. The results of this study stress the need for locally developed scales in the study of body image and a shift away from reliance on scales developed in the West.
Participants were 230 adult Malaysians who estimated their own, their parents', and their partners' overall IQs and 10 multiple intelligences. In accordance with both the previous literature and the authors' hypotheses, men rated themselves higher than did women on overall, verbal, logical-mathematical, and spatial intelligences. There were fewer gender differences in ratings of parents and in those of partners. Participants believed that they were more intelligent than both parents (but not their partners) and that their fathers were more intelligent than their mothers. Regressions indicated that participants believed that verbal intelligence and--to a lesser extent--logical-mathematical intelligence were the main predictors of overall intelligence. The authors discussed results in terms of the extant cross-cultural literature in the field.
Are we able to infer what happened to a person from a brief sample of his/her behaviour? It has been proposed that mentalising skills can be used to retrodict as well as predict behaviour, that is, to determine what mental states of a target have already occurred. The current study aimed to develop a paradigm to explore these processes, which takes into account the intricacies of real-life situations in which reasoning about mental states, as embodied in behaviour, may be utilised. A novel task was devised which involved observing subtle and naturalistic reactions of others in order to determine the event that had previously taken place. Thirty-five participants viewed videos of real individuals reacting to the researcher behaving in one of four possible ways, and were asked to judge which of the four 'scenarios' they thought the individual was responding to. Their eye movements were recorded to establish the visual strategies used. Participants were able to deduce successfully from a small sample of behaviour which scenario had previously occurred. Surprisingly, looking at the eye region was associated with poorer identification of the scenarios, and eye movement strategy varied depending on the event experienced by the person in the video. This suggests people flexibly deploy their attention using a retrodictive mindreading process to infer events.
Although knowledge is cumulating, very little is known about the effects of various sources of support on safety and health compliance. This study goes beyond previous research by investigating the relationships among perceived support from organizations, supervisors and co-workers, and employees' safety and health compliance behaviour at chemical and petroleum process plants. The results of this study show that the support from organizations, supervisors and co-workers was significantly related to employees' safety and health compliance. Also, the findings reveal that perceived supervisor support has the strongest influence in ensuring employees' safety and health compliance behaviour.
The increased development of hospital services in Hong Kong over the last decade has given rise in the demand for more recruits to join the nursing profession. Despite the advancement in education and the improvement in the working conditions, the problems of attracting sufficient new recruits remain critical. This study aimed to examine high school students' attitudes towards the nursing profession and to identify the contributing factors affecting shortage of nurses within the context of Hong Kong. A convenience sample of 375 high school students was recruited. A questionnaire was used to measure their knowledge, attitudes and intention to study nursing. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe their career preferences and to compare knowledge, attitudes and intention scales between gender and nursing exposure groups. Results indicated that the students were generally knowledgeable about nursing but were reluctant to pursue nursing as a career. However, students who were socially acquainted with a nurse demonstrated a slightly more positive attitude towards nursing and slightly higher intention to pursue nursing as a career compared with those having no social acquaintance with a nurse. Implications for promotion of nursing profession and limitations of the study were discussed.
This article attempts to review the criteria for the amok phenomenon since the late 15th century and how its meaning has evolved into its present day usage.
Most prior studies of the other-race categorization advantage have been conducted in predominantly monoracial societies. This limitation has left open the question of whether tendencies to more rapidly and accurately categorize other-race faces reflect social categorization (own-race vs. other-race) or perceptual expertise (frequent exposure vs. infrequent exposure). To address this question, we tested Malay and Malaysian Chinese children (9- and 10-year-olds) and adults on (a) own-race faces (i.e., Malay faces for Malay participants and Chinese faces for Malaysian Chinese participants), (b) high-frequency other-race faces (i.e., Chinese faces for Malay participants and Malay faces for Malaysian Chinese participants), and (c) low-frequency other-race faces (i.e., Caucasian faces). Whereas the other-race categorization advantage was in evidence in the accuracy data of Malay adults, other aspects of performance were supportive of either the social categorization or perceptual expertise accounts and were dependent on the race (Malay vs. Chinese) or age (child vs. adult) of the participants. Of particular significance is the finding that Malaysian Chinese children and adults categorized own-race Chinese faces more rapidly than high-frequency other-race Malay faces. Thus, in accord with a perceptual expertise account, the other-race categorization advantage seems to be more an advantage for racial categories of lesser experience regardless of whether these face categories are own-race or other-race.
This study examined the social-cognitive reasoning of 52 Chinese Malaysian preadolescents (9-12 years old; M = 11.02, SD = 0.94) and 68 adolescents (13-18 years old; M = 14.76, SD = 1.39) in resolving filial dilemmas within the personal and moral domain. Preadolescents deferred to parental authority, whereas adolescents endorsed filial obligation reasoning to justify compliance in the personal domain. Both appealed to filial obligation, pragmatic, or welfare and safety reasoning to justify compliance but fairness or rights reasoning to justify their noncompliance, for the moral issue. Distinctions between authoritarian and reciprocal filial piety reasoning were revealed. Findings demonstrated complex decision-making and cognitive reasoning processes among Chinese Malaysian adolescents as they negotiate their filial obligations and autonomy development.
BACKGROUND: Engaging and inspiring the next generation of physician-scientists at an early stage is recognised as key to ensure the future of medical research. However, little is known about medical student perceptions of research.
OBJECTIVES: We attempted to ascertain perceptions of research and research-orientated careers from medical students studying in different countries.
METHODS: An online questionnaire was developed, piloted, and promoted to medical students in various countries.
RESULTS: 1625 responses were collected from 38 countries. Analysis was restricted to data collected from countries with >100 responses (n = 890). Less than half the respondents felt their medical school provided adequate research training. Key perceived barriers to research participation as a student included lack of time and difficulty finding mentors or projects. A significant gender disparity existed in research ambitions of students with females desiring less research involvement. The importance of barriers and satisfaction with research training differed significantly between countries.
CONCLUSIONS: Students perceive a number of key barriers to research involvement and pursuit of research-orientated careers. Programmes designed to engage students with research should focus on overcoming identified barriers. Greater effort is needed to engage female students who report more significant barriers and less desire to follow research-orientated careers.
The attractiveness-leniency effect (ALE) suggests that physically attractive targets are less likely to be perceived as guilty compared to less attractive targets. Here, we tested the ALE in relation to attributions of students who have committed plagiarism. British adults (N=165) were shown one of eight vignette-photograph pairings varying in target sex (female/male), physical attractiveness (high/low), and transgression severity (serious/minor), and provided attributions of guilt and severity of punishment. Analyses of variance revealed significant interactions between attractiveness and transgression severity for both dependent measures. Attractive targets were perceived as guiltier and deserving of more severe punishments in the serious transgression condition, but there was no significant difference between attractive and less attractive targets in the minor transgression condition. These results are discussed in terms of a reverse attribution bias, in which attractive individuals are judged more negatively when they fail to live up to higher standards of conduct.
Past research tells us that individuals can infer information about a target's emotional state and intentions from their facial expressions (Frith & Frith, 2012), a process known as mentalising. This extends to inferring the events that caused the facial reaction (e.g. Pillai, Sheppard, & Mitchell, 2012; Pillai et al., 2014), an ability known as retrodictive mindreading. Here, we enter new territory by investigating whether or not people (perceivers) can guess a target's social context by observing their response to stimuli. In Experiment 1, perceivers viewed targets' responses and were able to determine whether these targets were alone or observed by another person. In Experiment 2, another group of perceivers, without any knowledge of the social context or what the targets were watching, judged whether targets were hiding or exaggerating their facial expressions; and their judgments discriminated between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Experiment 3 established that another group of perceivers' judgments of social context were associated with estimations of target expressivity to some degree. In Experiments 1 and 2, the eye movements of perceivers also varied between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Perceivers were thus able to infer a target's social context from their visible response. The results demonstrate an ability to use other minds as a window onto a social context that could not be seen directly.
OBJECTIVE: Patients suffering from stroke have a diminished ability to recognize emotions. This paper presents a review of neuropsychological studies that investigated the basic emotion processing deficits involved in individuals with interhemispheric brain (right, left) damage and normal controls, including processing mode (perception) and communication channels (facial, prosodic-intonational, lexical-verbal).
METHODS: An electronic search was conducted using specific keywords for studies investigating emotion recognition in brain damage patients. The PubMed database was searched until March 2012 as well as citations and reference lists. 92 potential articles were identified.
RESULTS: The findings showed that deficits in emotion perception were more frequently observed in individuals with right brain damage than those with left brain damage when processing facial, prosodic and lexical emotional stimuli.
CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that the right hemisphere has a unique contribution in emotional processing and provide support for the right hemisphere emotion hypothesis.
SIGNIFICANCE:
This robust deficit in emotion recognition has clinical significance. The extent of emotion recognition deficit in brain damage patients appears to be correlated with a variety of interpersonal difficulties such as complaints of frustration in social relations, feelings of social discomfort, desire to connect with others, feelings of social disconnection and use of controlling behaviors.
Background: This study examined parents' developmental concerns for their children within the context of systems of care in Malaysia. Methods: Focus groups and interviews were conducted in peninsular Malaysia and Borneo. Results: Parents' perceptions of developmental delay stemmed from three sources: the cultural, resource, and the social environments. Conclusion: There is a need to develop a medical support system in Malaysia that considers a life-course perspective, including prenatal care, screening/diagnosis, and services. This system should embrace a family-centered approach to diagnosis, referral, intervention, and support with sensitivity to cultural beliefs, family preferences, and barriers to care. Implications for Rehabilitation Parental perceptions of disability affect the strategies they use to cope. This research found that cultural conceptions of disability, available resources, and social support affect parental perceptions of disability. The resource environment in Malaysia significantly restricts parents' ability to cope with their child's disability. This research recommended that the medical system of Malaysia develops a life-course perspective to disability to provide a range of care for children with disabilities including prenatal care, screening and rehabilitation or coping services.
This paper examines the safety and efficacy of non-viral gene transfer in cartilage tissue engineering (TE) from the worldview of Islam. The first clinical trial treating adenosine deaminase deficient patients conducted in 1990 has triggered the development of gene transfer technology. The potential of gene transfer is further explored in TE field with the hope that it could prosper the regenerative medicine application. However, ethical issues become important when it comes to application of new treatment modalities, primarily in gene transfer because of genetic modification influences the basis of life - the DNA. Besides ethical issue, the application of gene transfer in treating diseases also attract views from religious context. The questions on the techniques to administer the gene in human, social acceptance of genetically modified cell and adverse effects from it are still debatable and unresolved. Apart from that dilemma, both safety and efficacy issues are raised due to the scientific uncertainty and social perception of the technology. Despite countless number of encouraging findings and recommendations by the proponents of
the technology, gene transfer is currently available only in the research setting. The established guidelines are used to complement and provide the necessary foundations in discussing the aspects involved in the incorporation of gene transfer with cartilage TE. Relevant Islamic input are identified and aligned to those particular guidelines. It is hoped that the integration of Islamic inputs in the existing guidelines could suggest the safest approach in treating cartilage degenerative disease through gene transfer and TE.