British journal of health psychology
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Br J Health Psychol · Nov 2005
Attachment style and symptom reporting: examining the mediating effects of anger and social support.
Attachment style has been related to symptom reporting. The aim of this research was to examine whether social support and anger expression or experience mediate this relationship. ⋯ Results indicate that insecure attachment styles of preoccupied and fearful were associated with increased symptom reporting. Social support and anger mediated the relationship between attachment style and symptom reporting.
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Br J Health Psychol · Sep 2005
Randomized Controlled TrialThe impact of threatening information about pain on coping and pain tolerance.
This study examined the impact of threatening information on coping and pain tolerance in a healthy adult sample. Prior to engaging in a Cold Pressor Test (CPT), 121 college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a threat condition in which they read an orienting passage warning them about symptoms and consequences of frostbite (pain as a signal for nociception), a reassurance condition in which they read an orienting passage about the safety of the CPT (pain independent of nociception), or a control condition in which no orienting passage was read before the experimental task. ⋯ A path analysis indicated that the relation between threat and pain tolerance was fully mediated by catastrophizing and cognitive coping. Together, findings suggest that pain appraised as threatening contributes to a specific pattern of coping responses associated with a reduced capacity to bear pain.
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Br J Health Psychol · Nov 2004
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialEncouraging young males to perform testicular self-examination: a simple, but effective, implementation intentions intervention.
The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a simple psychological intervention known as 'implementation intentions' to promote performance of testicular self-examination (TSE) in a sample of young males. ⋯ The implementation intentions intervention procedure, which encourages the use of environmental and contextual 'cues' to prompt a desired behaviour, appears to offer a promising strategy for encouraging the performance of TSE.
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Br J Health Psychol · Sep 2004
Clinical TrialInvestigation of the interactive effects of gender and psychological factors on pain response.
There is growing evidence to suggest that certain psychological modulators of pain sensitivity are dependent on gender. The aim of the present study was to examine further whether cognitive-affective factors (with specific focus on situational anxiety) shown to modulate pain report and behaviour have differential effects on men's and women's response to experimentally induced pain. ⋯ Results from the present study suggest that there are important differences in the way cognitive-affective factors impact on the pain response of men and women. Further research is needed to explore potential psychosocial and physiological mechanisms that may underlie such differences.
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Br J Health Psychol · May 2003
Experimental evidence for interpretive but not attention biases towards somatic information in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.
This study tested whether CFS patients have an attentional information processing bias for illness-related information and a tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a somatic fashion. ⋯ CFS patients have an interpretive bias for somatic information which may play a part in the maintenance of the disorder by heightening patients' experience of physical symptoms and helping to maintain their negative illness schemas. Although patients did not show an attentional bias in this study, this may be related to the methodology employed.