Objective

Stressful life events experienced during childhood and as an adult negatively impact mental and physical health over the life span. This study examined polymorphisms from 2 hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis-related genes previously associated with posttraumatic stress disorder-FKBP5 and CRHR1-as moderators of the impact of child abuse and adult stress on physical health.

Method

A national, community-based subsample of non-Hispanic European American respondents (n = 527) from a prospective longitudinal 3-year study of stress and coping (N = 2,729) provided saliva for genotyping.

Results

FKBP5 (rs1360780) and CRHR1 (rs12944712) polymorphisms significantly interacted with child abuse and adult stress to predict increases in physical health ailments over 3 years. Child abuse and adult stress were strongly related to physician-diagnosed physical ailments among individuals with the risk alleles of both single nucleotide polymorphisms. Individuals carrying the low-risk homozygotic genotypes were protected from the long-term negative health implications of experiencing both child abuse and adult stress.

Conclusion

Consistent with theories linking the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis with stress-related disease, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis polymorphism genotypes moderated the association between exposure to child abuse/adult stress and long-term physical health outcomes in a national sample.

Previous findings have shown both beneficial and adverse effects of parents' attempts to influence adolescents' eating habits. The current study examined the differential effect of parents' persuasion (e.g., encouragement, giving information) and pressure tactics (e.g., guilt induction, ridicule) and the moderating influence of parental warmth on older adolescents' emotional and behavioral responses. An ethnically diverse sample of 336 older adolescents (M age = 18.6; SD = 1.1; 58.0% female) were surveyed. Adolescents who reported higher levels of pressure tactics by parents reported more negative affect and behavioral resistance. Perceived parental warmth moderated the influence of persuasion tactics, but not pressure tactics. For adolescents with low parental warmth, high levels of persuasion were associated with more negative emotional and behavioral responses; persuasion had the opposite associations for adolescents with high parental warmth. These results suggest that parental warmth plays an important role in how older adolescents respond to parents' persuasion tactics. However, when parents use more forceful pressure tactics to influence eating habits, adolescents react negatively regardless of the overall quality of the parent-adolescent relationship.

Anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in entitled attitudes and behaviors of youth in school and college settings. Using a newly developed scale to assess "academic entitlement" (AE), a construct that includes expectations of high grades for modest effort and demanding attitudes towards teachers, this research is the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically. In two separate samples of ethnically diverse college students comprised largely of East and Southeast Asian American, followed by Caucasians, Latinos, and other groups (total N = 839, age range 18-25 years), we examined the personality, parenting, and motivational correlates of AE. AE was most strongly related to exploitive attitudes towards others and moderately related to an overall sense of entitlement and to narcissism. Students who reported more academically entitled attitudes perceived their parents as exerting achievement pressure marked by social comparison with other youth and materially rewarding good grades, scored higher than their peers in achievement anxiety and extrinsic motivation, and engaged in more academic dishonesty. AE was not significantly associated with GPA. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Previous personality research (e.g., Campbell et al., 2004) has described the sense of entitlement as an unifactorial construct. In this study, we examined characteristics of two potential facets of entitlement: exploitive entitlement, characterized by exploitive interactions and expectations of special treatment, and non-exploitive entitlement, or entitled beliefs that rest on notions of self-worth and fairness. 466 college students (mean age = 20.5) completed a questionnaire consisting of unifactorial and two-factor measures of entitlement and other personality dispositions and attitudes. As expected, both exploitive and non-exploitive entitlement were positively related to the Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES; r = .51 and r = .43, respectively), an unifactorial measure of entitlement. In other respects, exploitive and non-exploitive entitlement had quite distinct correlates. Exploitive entitlement was uniquely related to higher levels of psychopathy and neuroticism, and lower levels of work orientation, social commitment, and self-esteem; whereas non-exploitive entitlement was uniquely associated with higher self-esteem.

The present research reveals the bi-directional relationship between career-related control beliefs and strivings, and their predictive relationship with hours of gainful employment. Three waves of data of a longitudinal study of 532 graduating high school seniors from four ethnically diverse schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show individuals' career-related personal control beliefs in effort and social connections, but not in ability or luck, were significantly predictive of career-related control strivings 1 year later. Thus, only personal control beliefs in causal factors that are contingent on an individual's primary control strivings to enact effects are predictive of active motivational engagement in pursuit of career-related goals. Regarding the inverse direction of influence (i. e., strivings predict beliefs), career-related control strivings were significantly predictive of career-related personal control beliefs in ability, effort, and social connections, but not luck, 1 year later. These results support the idea that active goal engagement creates an implemental mindset that optimistically biases individuals' beliefs in their personal control over causal factors relevant to attaining a pursued career-related goal. In addition, the results show that career-related control strivings, but not career-related personal control beliefs, are significantly positively associated with the number of hours of gainful employment worked 1-year later, supporting a beliefs-strivings-outcome sequential relationship. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

High school students with high long-term educational expectations attain higher levels of education than those with lower expectations. Less studied is the role of students' short-term college enrollment expectations for the year after high school graduation. The purpose of the current study was to examine the costs and benefits of ambitious short-term expectations and the impact of falling short of these expectations on mental health, motivation, and educational outcomes. Over 1000 youth with expectations to attend college were surveyed during their senior year of high school, one year later, and four years later. Participants who did not achieve their short-term expectations had lower educational attainment four years later but were not less satisfied with their educational progress. The negative consequences of falling short of one's expectations were restricted to individuals with less ambitious short-term expectations. Thus, the benefits of ambitious short-term expectations for youth may outweigh the costs.

OBJECTIVES: Although cortical midline structures (CMS) are the most commonly identified neural foundations of self-appraisals, research is beginning to implicate the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) in more interdependent self-construals. The goal of this study was to extend this research in an understudied population by (a) examining both direct (first-person) and reflected (third-person) self-appraisals across 2 domains (social and academics), and (b) exploring individual differences in recruitment of the TPJ during reflected self-appraisals. METHOD: The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-appraisals in social and academic domains were examined in 16 Chinese young adults (8 males, 8 females; aged 18-23 years) using functional MRI. RESULTS: As expected, when making reflected self-appraisals (i.e., reporting what they believed others thought about them, regardless of domain), Chinese participants recruited both CMSs and the TPJ. Similar to previous research in East Asian and interdependent samples, CMSs and the TPJ were relatively more active during direct self-appraisals in the social than in the academic domain. We additionally found that, to the extent participants reported that reflected academic self-appraisals differed from direct academic self-appraisals, they demonstrated greater engagement of the TPJ during reflected academic self-appraisals. Exploratory cross-national comparisons with previously published data from American participants revealed that Chinese young adults engaged the TPJ relatively more during reflected self-appraisals made from peer perspectives. CONCLUSIONS: In combination with previous research, these findings increase support for a role of the TPJ in self-appraisal processes, particularly when Chinese young adults consider peer perspectives. The possible functional contributions provided by the TPJ are explored and discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Background

MOMS Orange County is a coordinated home visitation program in which trained paraprofessional home visitors work under the close supervision of registered nurses. This model was developed to address health disparities in birth outcomes in a Hispanic community in Orange County, CA.

Purpose

The primary objective was to test the impact of MOMS Orange County on birth outcomes. The second objective was to examine the breadth of prenatal health education topics as a mediator of the relationship between home visits and birth outcomes.

Methods

A retrospective cohort design was used. Paraprofessional home visitors collected prenatal and postnatal data during home visits. Only those whose birth outcomes were obtained were included in the analysis (N = 2,027 participants). Regression models were conducted to test the associations between prenatal home visits and birth outcomes, adjusting for 10 covariates.

Results

Number of prenatal home visits predicted higher birthweight and greater gestational age at birth. Breadth of health education topics partially mediated the associations between home visits and birthweight. The same mediation was revealed with gestational age at birth.

Clinical implications

The MOMS Orange County prenatal home visitation program may be a promising approach to decrease adverse birth outcomes in disadvantaged communities. Rigorously designed studies are needed to further test this model.

Previous research has shown inconsistent findings regarding the relations between the functional Val158Met polymorphisms of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene and individual differences in personality traits. This study attempts to overcome some of the weaknesses of previous research, namely, small sample sizes, clinical samples, ethnic stratification, wide age ranges, neglecting sex differences, and single measures of personality traits. A large sample (n = 556, 250 male, 306 female) of healthy Chinese college students (mean age = 20.5 ± 1 years) was given a battery of personality scales, including the temperament and character inventory-revised, the behavioral inhibition system and behavioral approach system scale, the Beck depression inventory, and the Beck anxiety inventory. Factor analysis of the affect-related personality traits revealed two factors that corresponded to positive (PEM) and negative emotionality (NEM). We found a consistent COMT-by-sex interaction effect on affect-related personality traits. Compared with males with Met/Met alleles, males with Val/Val alleles showed significantly higher scores on NEM, but lower scores on PEM. Females, however, showed an opposite but nonsignificant pattern. Our results supported the role of the COMT gene in personality traits for males and contributed to the growing literature on sex differences in gene-behavior connections.

Objective

This study investigated the relation between genetic variations in the dopamine system and facial expression recognition.

Methods

A sample of Chinese college students (n = 478) was given a facial expression recognition task. Subjects were genotyped for 98 loci [96 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 2 variable number tandem repeats] in 16 genes involved in the dopamine neurotransmitter system, including its 4 subsystems: synthesis (TH, DDC, and DBH), degradation/transport (COMT,MAOA,MAOB, and SLC6A3), receptors (DRD1,DRD2,DRD3,DRD4, and DRD5), and modulation (NTS,NTSR1,NTSR2, and NLN). To quantify the total contributions of the dopamine system to emotion recognition, we used a series of multiple regression models. Permutation analyses were performed to assess the posterior probabilities of obtaining such results.

Results

Among the 78 loci that were included in the final analyses (after excluding 12 SNPs that were in high linkage disequilibrium and 8 that were not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), 1 (for fear), 3 (for sadness), 5 (for anger), 13 (for surprise), and 15 (for disgust) loci exhibited main effects on the recognition of facial expressions. Genetic variations in the dopamine system accounted for 3% for fear, 6% for sadness, 7% for anger, 10% for surprise, and 18% for disgust, with the latter surviving a stringent permutation test.

Conclusions

Genetic variations in the dopamine system (especially the dopamine synthesis and modulation subsystems) made significant contributions to individual differences in the recognition of disgust faces.