The combined relations of gender, enculturation, and depressive symptoms with health risk behaviors in Mexican-Americans: a moderated mediation analysis.

Objectives: The present study investigated the relationships of enculturation and depressive symptoms with health risk behavior engagement in Mexican-American college students and examined how these relationships differed by gender. Previous research has noted consistent gender differences in health risk behavior (e.g. alcohol use, substance use, and risky sexual behavior) among Latina/os, and emphasized the role of U.S. acculturation in this difference. Research examining the role of heritage cultural retention (i.e. enculturation), and including the added influence of mental health variables, such as depressive symptoms, is currently lacking. This study sought to address this gap.Design: A large sample (N = 677) of Mexican-American college students from four universities (located in New York, California, Florida, and Texas) completed an online questionnaire assessing health risk behaviors and corresponding variables.Results: We found that males who endorsed more behavioral enculturation and depressive symptoms were more likely to engage in health risk behavior than all others in the sample. Contrary to previous literature, no relationship was found between behavioral enculturation and health risk behavior in females.Conclusion: The current study found behavioral enculturation to be associated with depressive symptoms, and in turn with health risk behaviors among the males in our sample. Additional research will be needed to identify the mechanism underlying the relationship between enculturation and depressive symptoms as well as between depressive symptoms and risky behavior.

Low self-esteem and positive beliefs about smoking: a destructive combination for male college students.

INTRODUCTION: Men exhibit higher rates of smoking relative to women (CDC, 2014). Given the associated health and socio-economic consequences, it would be valuable to explore the psychological factors underlying this variance. We contend that positive beliefs about smoking influence this difference, and that self-esteem moderates these beliefs. METHOD: As part of a multi-institutional collaborative study funded by the American Legacy Foundation, 445 participants who reported being either steady or occasional smokers completed a series of questionnaires assessing their beliefs and behaviors involving smoking as well as several dispositional variables. Moderated mediation was used to test for conditional indirect effects. RESULTS: The total, indirect, and direct effects of gender were significant for individuals with lower, but not higher self-esteem. Males with lower self-esteem exhibited more positive beliefs and smoking behavior than females with lower self-esteem. No differences between males and females with higher self-esteem were observed. CONCLUSION: The gender gap in smoking behavior appears to occur primarily among individuals with lower self-esteem. It is a particularly detrimental risk factor for males, as it is related to higher positive views about smoking and increased tobacco consumption. These results highlight the importance of developing multifaceted gender specific belief-based preventative interventions to address smoking related behaviors.

Variation in BAS-BIS profiles across categories of cigarette use.

Cigarette smoking is a major health concern, especially among college students. Research suggests a number of individual difference variables may be useful for identifying people at risk of becoming smokers and their likelihood of successfully quitting. The current study focuses on individual differences relating to Behavioral Inhibition System sensitivity (BIS) and the fun seeking, reward responsiveness, and drive aspects of Behavioral Approach System sensitivity (BAS). The former relates to mitigation of potential threat, whereas the latter three relate to different motivations for approach. Noting that existing literature suggests the considerations influencing whether a person experiments with cigarettes differ from those influencing who becomes a habitual smoker which in turn differ from those influencing whether a person quits smoking, we hypothesized that never smokers, experimenters, smokers, and former smokers would differ from each other on BIS, fun seeking, reward responsiveness, and drive in predictable ways. Moreover, we predicted these groups would differ from each other in terms of member profiles across these four variables. We assessed these predictions in a sample of college students from geographically diverse institutions within the United States (N=1840). The profile for never smokers was characterized by high BIS and low fun seeking, that of experimenters by moderately high BIS, high fun seeking, and moderate reward responsiveness, and that of former smokers by moderate BIS, high fun seeking, high reward responsiveness, and high drive. Contrary to expectations, current smokers were low on all four of these characteristics.