Many anecdotal cases and some clinical studies have demonstrated that formaldehyde exposure can cause multiple health-related problems and cerebral dysfunction. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has documented multiple hazards related to formaldehyde exposure. Some of this research has suggested that low levels of exposure can be very hazardous to one's health and can potentially result in heightened chemical sensitivities, seizures, and cognitive decline. Some research suggests that exposure results in long-term immunological changes, cell neurofilament protein changes, and demyelination. Symptomatically, exposure has been associated with respiratory problems, excessive fatigue, headaches, mood changes, and impaired attention, concentration, and memory functioning. This article outlines the case of a biology teacher whose chronic formaldehyde exposure resulted in heightened sensitivity to formaldehyde, three tonic-clonic seizures, and dramatic amnesia as well as other cognitive dysfunction.
This experiment assessed whether women self-handicap with alcohol consumption prior to engaging in a social evaluation task, which may be more relevant to their self-esteem than the intellectual tasks used in past self-handicapping studies on substance use. In a 2 X 2 factorial design, 113 women who were evaluated as normal drinkers performed either a solvable or an insolvable social judgment task and then received either success feedback or no feedback. Subjects received access to alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages while awaiting a retest. The study terminated before the retest. The self-handicapping hypothesis that noncontingent success would produce relatively greater alcohol consumption was not supported. Regardless of feedback, insolvable test subjects consumed more alcohol than did solvable test subjects. These findings suggest that the hypothesis may be limited as a general model of alcohol consumption in both sexes.Recent research on the determinants of human alcohol consumption has focused on the protective function alcohol may serve in maintaining self-esteem. Known as the self-handicapping hypothesis , behaviors that can serve as plausible excuses for performance failure (e.g., alcohol consumption, accentuation of physical problems, low effort) are posited to (a) protect self-esteem following failure by creating ambiguity about the causes of failure and (b) enhance selfesteem following success by increasing ability attributions because the success occurred despite the handicap. Such behaviors should be most probable when past success on tasks similar to those impending are viewed as noncontingent on ability and due to external factors such as luck, appearance, or social status.Several studies found that males self-handicap with alcohol consumption (Tucker, Vuchinich, & Sobell, 1981; cf. Isleib, Vuchinich, & Tucker, in press) and (fictitious) drug use (e.g.,
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