Ana Teresa Martins

Gender differences in condom use prediction with Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour: the role of self-efficacy and control.

Abstract There is much evidence that demonstrates that programs and interventions based on the theoretical models of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) have been effective in the prevention of the sexual transmission of HIV. The objective of this work is to compare the effectiveness of both models in the prediction of condom use, distinguishing two components inside the variable Perceived Behavioural Control of the TPB model: self-efficacy and control. The perspective of gender differences is also added. The study was carried out in a sample of 601 Portuguese and Spanish university students. The results show that the females have a higher average in all the TPB variables than males, except in the frequency of condom use: females request the use of condoms less frequently than males. On the other hand, for both females and males the TPB model predicts better condom-use intention than the TRA. However there are no differences between the two models in relation to the prediction of condom-use behaviour. For prediction of intention, the most outstanding variable among females is attitude, while among males they are subjective norm and self-efficacy. Finally, we analyze the implications of these data from a theoretical and practical point of view.

Gender differences in HIV-related sexual behavior among college students from Spain and Portugal.

Under the perspective of the Theory of Planned Behavior, the objective of this study was to know the gender differences in the variables involved in the use of effective preventive measures in sexual relations against HIV in a sample of university students from Spain and Portugal. Furthermore, it is examined whether these factors produce different predictions concerning the adoption of safe sexual behaviour for young man and women in each country. The sample consisted of 683 university students, 319 Portuguese (64% female and 36% male) from the University of Algarve and 364 Spanish students (51% female and 49% male) from the University of Huelva. Data were obtained by means of a questionnaire. The data revealed that there are gender differences which apply in both countries, highlighting that the young women have more positive attitudes, greater perceived behavioural control and intention of condom use than young men. However, they protect themselves less that their male counterparts: the percentage of females who say using condoms as a contraceptive method is less than the percentage of males, and especially with their steady partners. The results are discussed in relation to gender role norms, to have a steady partner or not, gender relations, the associated meaning to sexual relations for men and women and their implications for the design of sexual educational programmes for them.

Changes in social emotion recognition following traumatic frontal lobe injury

Changes in social and emotional behaviour have been consistently observed in patients with traumatic brain injury. These changes are associated with emotion recognition deficits which represent one of the major barriers to a successful familiar and social reintegration. In the present study, 32 patients with traumatic brain injury, involving the frontal lobe, and 41 age- and education-matched healthy controls were analyzed. A Go/No-Go task was designed, where each participant had to recognize faces representing three social emotions (arrogance, guilt and jealousy). Results suggested that ability to recognize two social emotions (arrogance and jealousy) was significantly reduced in patients with traumatic brain injury, indicating frontal lesion can reduce emotion recognition ability. In addition, the analysis of the results for hemispheric lesion location (right, left or bilateral) suggested the bilateral lesion sub-group showed a lower accuracy on all social emotions.

Eye-Tracking Evidence of a Maintenance Bias in Social Anxiety

BACKGROUND The mechanisms and triggers of the attentional bias in social anxiety are not yet fully determined, and the modulating role of personality traits is being increasingly acknowledged. AIMS Our main purpose was to test whether social anxiety is associated with mechanisms of hypervigilance, avoidance (static biases), vigilance-avoidance or the maintenance of attention (dynamic biases). Our secondary goal was to explore the role of personality structure in shaping the attention bias. METHOD Participants with high vs low social anxiety and different personality structures viewed pairs of faces (free-viewing eye-tracking task) representing different emotions (anger, happiness and neutrality). Their eye movements were registered and analysed for both whole-trial (static) and time-dependent (dynamic) measures. RESULTS Comparisons between participants with high and low social anxiety levels did not yield evidence of differences in eye-tracking measures for the whole trial (latency of first fixation, first fixation direction, total dwell time), but the two groups differed in the time course of overt attention during the trial (dwell time across three successive time segments): participants with high social anxiety were slower in disengaging their attention from happy faces. Similar results were obtained using a full-sample, regression-based analysis. CONCLUSION Our results speak in favour of a maintenance bias in social anxiety. Preliminary results indicated that personality structure may not affect the maintenance (dynamic) bias of socially anxious individuals, although depressive personality structures may favour manifestations of a (static) hypervigilance bias.