Recency of Online Physician Ratings.

This cross-sectional study examines the association between older and more recent online physician ratings and the implications for optimizing the trade-off between reliability and incentives.

Building social identity-based groups to enhance online peer support for patients with chronic disease: a pilot study using mixed-methods evaluation.

Online peer support is increasingly important to encourage patients with chronic diseases to engage in successful self-management. However, studies mainly focus on individual-level participation and have not fully explored how to maximize the impact of online peer support through group identification. In this study, we aim to build an online social identity-based group to examine the impact of group identity on peer support.

Market segmentation of South African adolescent girls and young women to inform HIV prevention product marketing strategy: A mixed methods study.

The uptake of and adherence to HIV prevention products in South Africa has not achieved widespread success. This study aimed to develop a holistic understanding of the psychographics of adolescent girls and young women in South Africa, a primary audience for HIV prevention products, in order to inform market segmentation and marketing strategies. Extensive ethnographic analyses were complemented with a survey ( = 1,500) centered on personal care product journeys.

Socioeconomic privilege and political ideology are associated with racial disparity in COVID-19 vaccination.

Vaccine uptake is critical for mitigating the impact of COVID-19 in the United States, but structural inequities pose a serious threat to progress. Racial disparities in vaccination persist despite the increased availability of vaccines. We ask what factors are associated with such disparities.

Engagement and Outcomes Associated with Contextual Annotation Features of a Digital Health Solution.

Background: Digital health solutions targeting diabetes self-care are popular and promising, but important questions remain about how these tools can most effectively help patients. Consistent with evidence of the salutary effects of note-taking in education, features that enable annotation of structured data entry might enhance the meaningfulness of the interaction, thereby promoting persistent use and benefits of a digital health solution.

Method: To examine the potential benefits of note-taking, we explored how patients with type 2 diabetes used annotation features of a digital health solution and assessed the relationship between annotation and persistence in engagement as well as improvements in glycated hemoglobin (A1C).

Unpacking mHealth interventions: A systematic review of behavior change techniques used in randomized controlled trials assessing mHealth effectiveness.

Objective: Mobile health interventions have surged in popularity but their implementation varies widely and evidence of effectiveness is mixed. We sought to advance understanding of the diversity of behavior change techniques in mHealth interventions, especially those that leverage advanced mobile technologies.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review of articles published between 2007 and 2017 in high-impact journals in medicine, medical informatics, and health psychology to identify randomized controlled trials in which the effectiveness of an mobile health intervention was tested.

Counterfinality: On the Increased Perceived Instrumentality of Means to a Goal.

The present research investigates the counterfinality effect, whereby the more a means is perceived as detrimental to an alternative goal, the more it is perceived as instrumental to its focal goal. The results from five studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrated the counterfinality effect in an applied context: The more pain people experienced when getting tattooed, the more they perceived getting tattooed as instrumental to attaining their idiosyncratic goals (being unique, showing off, etc.

Individual differences in regulatory mode moderate the effectiveness of a pilot mHealth trial for diabetes management among older veterans.

mHealth tools to help people manage chronic illnesses have surged in popularity, but evidence of their effectiveness remains mixed. The aim of this study was to address a gap in the mHealth and health psychology literatures by investigating how individual differences in psychological traits are associated with mHealth effectiveness. Drawing from regulatory mode theory, we tested the role of locomotion and assessment in explaining why mHealth tools are effective for some but not everyone.

Shared reality as collective closure.

We draw on the theory of lay epistemics to understand how universal processes of knowledge formation drive the emergence, and determine the consequences of shared reality in groups. In particular, we highlight the role in these processes of the need for cognitive closure and credible epistemic authorities. Whereas the former construct explains why people seek a shared reality, the latter clarifies who the reality is shared with.

To the fringe and back: Violent extremism and the psychology of deviance.

We outline a general psychological theory of extremism and apply it to the special case of violent extremism (VE). Extremism is defined as motivated deviance from general behavioral norms and is assumed to stem from a shift from a balanced satisfaction of basic human needs afforded by moderation to a motivational imbalance wherein a given need dominates the others. Because motivational imbalance is difficult to sustain, only few individuals do, rendering extreme behavior relatively rare, hence deviant.

The psychology of martyrdom: making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of a cause.

Martyrdom is defined as the psychological readiness to suffer and sacrifice one's life for a cause. An integrative set of 8 studies investigated the concept of martyrdom by creating a new tool to quantitatively assess individuals' propensity toward self-sacrifice. Studies 1A-1C consisted of psychometric work attesting to the scale's unidimensionality, internal consistency, and temporal stability while examining its nomological network.

The quest for significance model of radicalization: implications for the management of terrorist detainees.

Radicalization and its culmination in terrorism represent a grave threat to the security and stability of the world. A related challenge is effective management of extremists who are detained in prison facilities. The major aim of this article is to review the significance quest model of radicalization and its implications for management of terrorist detainees.

Implementation planning and progress on physical activity goals: the mediating role of life-management strategies.

This 4-week prospective study examined whether the use of life-management strategies mediates the relationship between implementation planning and short-term progress on physical activity goals. In particular the strategies of elective selection, compensation, and loss-based selection were disentangled to assess their specific mediating effects. Results from a sample of 131undergraduate students showed that, as a composite, life-management strategies fully mediated the relationship between planning and goal progress.