In this paper, university students' beliefs about different causes of drug addiction and cures for it were investigated. Principal component analysis (PCA) with Causes of Drug Abuse Scale (CADAS) revealed four components: problems and coping, sensation seeking, social environment, and disposition. PCA with Cures for Drug Abuse Scale (CUDAS) produced four components: help seeking and avoidance, ...

This meta-analysis surveyed 177 usable sources that reported data on gender differences on 21 different measures of sexual attitudes and behaviors. The largest gender difference was in incidence of masturbation: Men had the greater incidence (d = .96). There was also a large gender difference in attitudes toward casual sex: Males had considerably more permissive attitudes (d = .81). There were ...

This study evaluated the role of two cognitive vulnerability factors, anxiety sensitivity and dysfunctional attitudes, in the prediction of the manifestation and onset of social anxiety disorder relative to specific phobia and relative to healthy controls. Women, aged between 18 and 24 years, were studied at baseline and 18 months later using the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-Lifetime-AD...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate possible differences between local social insurance offices with regard to their selection of clients for vocational rehabilitation. A further aim was to determine whether social insurance officers from different local insurance offices have uniform attitudes regarding professional practice in their application of the insurance system. METHODS A...

Attitudes toward robots influence the tendency to accept or reject robotic devices. Thus it is important to investigate whether and how attitudes toward robots can change. In this pilot study we investigate attitudinal changes in elderly citizens toward a tele-operated robot in relation to three parameters: (i) the information provided about robot functionality, (ii) the number of encounters, (...

Human attitudes and preferences are susceptible to social influence. Recent social neuroscience studies, using theories and experimental paradigms from social psychology, have begun to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying how others influence our attitudes through processes such as social conformity, cognitive inconsistency and persuasion. The currently available evidence highlights the r...

Eighty-five young adults exposed to a cluster of peer suicides as adolescents completed measures of attitudes toward suicide, grief, and social support. Closeness to the peers lost to suicide was positively correlated with grief and the belief that suicide is not preventable, with grief further elevated in close individuals with high social support from friends. Overall, social support was rela...

People living with long-term functional limitations are very familiar with the influence of the environment, physical and economic structure, as well as cultural and social attitudes, on their lives. These factors can either restrict or support the individual’s full participation in society or have a neutral impact. Our understanding of disability is difficult because of the influence of these ...

A substantial body of research suggests that some news media outlets depict certain social groups stereotypically. We hypothesize that long-term exposure to such news influences viewers’ automatically activated gut feelings (i.e., implicit attitudes) toward this social group, which, in turn, may be used as a basis for overtly expressed evaluations (i.e., explicit attitudes). This prediction was...

The assumption that individual behavior has an antecedent evaluative foundation is an important component of theories in sociology, psychology, political science, and economics. In its simplest form, the antecedent evaluation is a positive or negative attitude toward an object that may affect an individual’s object-related behavior. This attitude may be influenced by the attitudes of other pers...