Suchergebnisse

This article lays out a middle ground between strong evolutionary-adaptationist and strong environmental-determinist positions. It acknowledges the importance of human evolution in understanding current human functions and activities while also acknowledging the powerful role of culture in shaping humans. The biological, environmental, and cultural forces that lead to generality or distinctive specificity in different groups of humans are summarized, with some consideration to principles of evolution and development from biology that apply in the psychological and cultural realm. In particular, processes such as canalization and preadaptation are applied to the cultural evolution and the transmission of culture. Many of these points are illustrated in a consideration of biological, psychological, and cultural factors that shape human food choice.

From the castigation and stigmatization of victims of AIDS to our celebration of diet, exercise and fitness, the moral categorization of health and disease reflects contemporary notions that disease results from moral failure and that health is the representation of moral triumph. Ranging across academic disciplines and historical time periods, the essays in Morality and Health offer a compelling assessment of the powerful role of moral systems for judging the complex questions of risk and responsibility for disease, the experience of illness, and social and cultural response

Attitude change is a critical component of health behavior change, but has rarely been studied longitudinally following extensive exposures to persuasive materials such as full-length movies, books, or plays. We examined changes in attitudes related to food production and consumption in college students who had read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma as part of a University-wide reading project. Composite attitudes toward organic foods, local produce, meat, and the quality of the American food supply, as well as opposition to government subsidies, distrust in corporations, and commitment to the environmental movement were significantly and substantially impacted, in comparison to students who had not read the book. Much of the attitude change disappeared after 1 year; however, over the course of 12 months self-reported opposition to government subsidies and belief that the quality of the food supply is declining remained elevated in readers of the book, compared to non-readers. Findings have implications for our understanding of the nature of changes in attitudes to food and eating in response to extensive exposure to coherent and engaging messages targeting health behaviors.

Interviews with 29 Holocaust survivors indicate wide variation in degree of aversion to Germans and activities associated with Germany. For some survivors, aversion is limited to those closest to the Nazi perpetrators; for others aversion includes anyone with German ancestry and any situation or product linked to contemprary Germany. This wide range of aversion following horrific experiences is not easily explained by known psychological mechanisms, and has important implications for understanding and ameliorating ethnopolitical conflict. Possible sources of variation in aversion are explored with measures of personality differences and differences in Holocaust experience. Results indicate that degree of trauma during the Holocaust is not significantly related to aversion, and that strong predictors of aversion are degree of blame of Germans not directly involved in the Holocaust, religiosity, and German origin. Aversion to Germans is strongly related to aversion to contemporary Arabs and Muslims,. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract
We demonstrate that natural products are more strongly preferred when used to prevent a problem than when used to cure a problem (the prevent/cure effect). This organizing principle explains variation in the preference for natural across distinct product categories (e.g., food vs. medicine), within product categories (e.g., between different types of medicines), and for the same product depending on how it is used (to prevent or to cure ailments). The prevent/cure effect is driven by two factors: lay beliefs about product attributes and importance of product attributes. Specifically, (a) consumers hold lay beliefs that natural products are safer and less potent and (b) consumers care more about safety and less about potency when preventing as compared to when curing, which leads to a stronger preference for natural when preventing. Consistent with this explanation, when natural products are described as more risky and more potent, reversing the standard inferences about naturalness, then natural products become more preferred for curing than for preventing. This research sheds light on when the marketing of "natural" is most appealing to consumers.

There is little agreement among governments, institutions, scientists and food activists as to how to best tackle the challenging issues of health and sustainability in the food sector. This essay discusses the potential of school meals as a platform to promote healthy and sustainable food behavior. School meal programs are of particular interest for improving public diet because they reach children at a population scale across socio-economic classes and for over a decade of their lives, and because food habits of children are more malleable than those of adults. Current research on the history and health implications of school meal programs is reviewed in a cross-national comparative framework, and arguments explored that speak for the need of a new developmental phase of school meals as an integrative learning platform for healthy and sustainable food behavior. Nutritional, social, practical, educational, economical, political, and cultural perspectives and challenges linked to the implementation of healthy and sustainable school meals are discussed. Finally, the need for long-term interventions and evaluations is highlighted and new research directions are proposed.