Expressive suppression tendencies, projection bias in memory of negative emotions, and well-being.

The current research extends prior research linking negative emotions and emotion regulation tendencies to memory by investigating whether (a) naturally occurring negative emotions during routine weekly life are associated with more negatively biased memories of prior emotional experiences-a bias called projection; (b) tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression are associated with greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions; and (c) greater projection bias in memory is associated with poorer future well-being. Participants (N = 308) completed a questionnaire assessing their general tendencies to engage in expressive suppression. Then, every week for 7 weeks, participants reported on (a) the negative emotions they experienced across the current week (e.g., "This week, I felt 'sad'"), (b) their memories of the negative emotions they experienced the prior week (e.g., "Last week, I felt 'sad'"), and (c) their well-being. First, participants demonstrated significant projection bias in memory: Greater negative emotions in a given week were associated with remembering emotions in the prior week more negatively than those prior emotions were originally reported. Second, projection bias in memory of negative emotions was greater for individuals who reported greater tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression. Third, greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions was associated with reductions in well-being across weeks. These 3 novel findings indicate that (a) current negative emotions bias memory of past emotions, (b) this memory bias is magnified for people who habitually use expressive suppression to regulate emotions, and (c) this memory bias may undermine well-being over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Public Beliefs about Antibiotics, Infection and Resistance: A Qualitative Study.

We aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of public views and ways of talking about antibiotics. Four focus groups were held with members of the public. In addition, 39 households were recruited and interviews, diaries of medicine taking, diaries of any contact with medication were used to explore understanding and use of medication. Discussions related to antibiotics were identified and analyzed. Participants in this study were worried about adverse effects of antibiotics, particularly for recurrent infections. Some were concerned that antibiotics upset the body's "balance", and many used strategies to try to prevent and treat infections without antibiotics. They rarely used military metaphors about infection (e.g., describing bacteria as invading armies) but instead spoke of clearing infections. They had little understanding of the concept of antibiotic resistance but they thought that over-using antibiotics was unwise because it would reduce their future effectiveness. Previous studies tend to focus on problems such as lack of knowledge, or belief in the curative powers of antibiotics for viral illness, and neglect the concerns that people have about antibiotics, and the fact that many people try to avoid them. We suggest that these concerns about antibiotics form a resource for educating patients, for health promotion and social marketing strategies.

The debate about the funding of Herceptin: a case study of 'countervailing powers'.

In December 2008 the newly elected Prime Minister of New Zealand bypassed the agency that negotiates with manufacturers about the cost of medicines and agreed to fund Herceptin for women with early stage breast cancer for a twelve months course of treatment. This paper describes the unfolding of this decision and seeks to explain it in terms of the theory of countervailing powers, which has recently been applied to understand the rapid growth of medicines and the governance of the pharmaceutical industry. We explore the role of various actors in this debate about Herceptin funding, drawing on documentary analysis based on a systematic search of journals, websites and media databases. The case of Herceptin both confirms and questions the propositions of countervailing powers theory. On the one hand the manufacturers of the drug proved to be highly influential in their attempts to get Herceptin funded and were generally supported by consumer groups. On the other hand some scientists and regulators attempted to challenge the power of the manufacturers, with the regulators not showing signs of corporate bias as one might expect. Groups did not, as has been proposed, exert power monolithically, with several groups exhibiting opposing factions. The media, ignored in this literature, are considered as a potential countervailing force in the debate. In the end the government bypassed the recommendation of its regulators, thereby undermining the latter's efforts to act as a countervailing power.

Emplacement and everyday use of medications in domestic dwellings.

To extend knowledge of relationships between people and domestic settings in the context of medication use, we conducted fieldwork in twenty households in New Zealand. These households contained a range of 'medicative' forms, including prescription drugs, traditional remedies, dietary supplements and enhanced foods. The location and use of these substances within domestic dwellings speaks to processes of emplacement and identity in the creation of spaces for care. Our analysis contributes to current understandings of the ways in which objects from 'outside' the home come to be woven into relationships, identities and meanings 'inside' the home. We demonstrate that, as well as being pharmacological objects, medications are complex, socially embedded objects with histories and memories that are ingrained within contemporary relationships of care and home-making practices.

Nutritional health, subjectivity and resistance: women's accounts of dietary practices.

Food is related to health, both directly and symbolically, in complex ways. Also, social practices around food are highly gendered, and, in the context of family life, fall largely to mothers. This study examines mothers' talk about nutritional health, and food, health and dietary practices in the context of everyday life, using a discursive analysis of the talk from focus group discussions. Findings show that discourses surrounding nutritional health offer women a variety of conflictual subjectivities. If they do not engage in 'correct' dietary practices, women are positioned as immoral, both as individuals and as mothers. Further, their ability to determine which foods are 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' is undermined through a distrust of 'facts' and scientific evidence, and they are rendered susceptible to exploitation through claims made for food as health promoting. Together, these areas of conflict perpetuate subjectivities of anxiety around dietary practices.The women seek to re-position themselves and overcome these contradictions by offering a variety of legitimations for their dietary practices. In doing so, they resist nutritional health messages and reveal how such messages can have unintended effects.

Nutritional health messages in women's magazines: a conflicted space for women readers.

Media representations of food are ubiquitous in contemporary society, and healthy eating features predominantly in such texts. This study explores the discursive construction of food and healthy eating in texts appearing in popular women's magazines, and examines the variety of positions and subjectivities offered to women readers of these texts. We find that such texts present quite complex constructions of nutritional health, based on scientific and biomedical discourses of nutrition interwoven with discourses of morality, feminine beauty and mothering. We conclude that these texts offer a conflictual space for women to traverse in efforts to position themselves as good mothers and moral and healthy eaters.