The present study examines how the use of social network sites (SNS) increases the potential of experiencing psychological, reputational and physical vulnerability online. From our theoretical perspective, concerns over the use of social network sites and online vulnerability stem from the ease with which users can amass large and diverse sets of online social connections and the associated mai...

This study examined the moderating role of two facets of appearance investment (self-evaluative salience (SES) and motivational salience (MS)) in the relationship between self-consciousness about appearance and psychological adjustment (depression, anxiety and psychological quality of life (QoL)) in a sample of 134 breast cancer patients (68 newly diagnosed patients and 66 survivors). No signif...

BACKGROUND The reported link between psychological trauma and onset of psychosis remains controversial. AIMS To examine associations between self-reported psychological trauma and psychotic symptoms as a function of prior evidence of vulnerability to psychosis (psychosis proneness). METHOD At baseline, 2524 adolescents aged 14-24 years provided self-reports on psychological trauma and psych...

The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is increasingly recognized as a potential biological marker of psychological and physical health status. Yet, the CAR literature is replete with contradictory results: both supposedly protective and vulnerability psychosocial factors have been associated with both increased and decreased CAR. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the CAR flexibility ...

CRC screening decision-making process can be conceptualized as the relationship between intention and behavior and needs to be investigated including the impact on patients’ decision of a broad range of psychological factors and personal predisposition as fear of a positive screening test, poor understanding of the procedure, psychological distress, anxiety, anticipation of pain, feelings of em...

Research has suggested that the high levels of depression and anxiety observed in Parkinson's disease are a primary consequence of its pathophysiology. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that a psychological factor, metacognitive style, is significantly associated with distress, independent of previously identified disease-related risk factors. Distress, metacognitive style and disease fac...

There is now widespread empirical evidence that child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors are at greater risk for sexual revictimization in adulthood, but less is known of the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Despite the lack of a conceptual framework to guide research, there has been a recent influx of studies examining explanatory variables, with most focusing on the psychological sequelae o...

One hundred seventy-nine adult rape victims completed a questionnaire that assessed (a) whether they reported the rape to a public agency, (b) victim vulnerability to claims of responsibility, (c) presence of understanding others, and (d) severity of the assault. The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which these variables were related to adverse psychological impacts. The impa...

Mental imagery-based interventions are receiving increasing interest for the treatment of psychological disorders in adults. This is based on evidence that mental imagery potently influences the experience of emotion in non-clinical samples, and that a number of psychological disorders are marked by syndrome-specific, distressing abnormalities in mental imagery. During childhood and adolescence...