Using a sense-making and threat management framework in rumor psychology, the authors used an exploratory web survey (n = 169) to query members of online cancer discussion groups about informal cancer statements heard from nonmedical sources (i.e., cancer rumors). Respondents perceived that rumors helped them cope. Dread rumors exceeded wish rumors; secondary control (control through emotional coping) rumors outnumbered primary control (direct action) rumors. Rumor content focused on cancer lethality, causes, and suffering. Rumors came primarily from family or friends in face-to-face conversations. Respondents discussed rumors with medical personnel primarily for fact-finding purposes, but with nonmedical people for altruistic, emotional coping, or relationship enhancement motives. Transmitters (vs. nontransmitters) considered rumors to be more important, were more anxious, and felt rumors helped them cope better, but did not believe them more strongly or feel that they were less knowledgeable about cancer. Most respondents believed the rumors; confidence was based on trust in family or friends (disregarding source nonexpertise) and concordance with beliefs, attitudes, and experience. Results point toward the fruitfulness of using rumor theory to guide research on cancer rumors and suggest that rumors help people achieve a sense of emotional control for dreaded cancer outcomes, inform the social construction of cancer, and highlight the continuing importance of nonelectronic word of mouth.
Individuality is valued in most conceptions of personality, but is seldom operationalized. The present research used photo essays about the self as the medium for operationalizing self-construals that are unlike others (i.e., are uniquely creative, abstract, self-reflective, and multidimensional). Ratings of these photo essays from two samples (N = 183 university students) served as the measure of individuality. This measure was predicted and found to correlate in both samples with Breadth of Interest from the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI; Jackson, 1994). In Study 1, individuality also correlated with the JPI Complexity scale and with two measures of divergent thinking (unique word associations, and fluency on Wallach & Kogan's [1965] creativity tasks). In Study 2, individuality correlated with having more permeable boundaries, a nonprejudicial universal orientation, and imagining greater cultural diversity in one's future. Results suggest that individualistic persons take a broader, more complex and more creative perspective to their lives.The term individuality frequently is used in psychological scholarship, but few researchers have focused on it as a specific topic of interest. Some psychologists have equated individuality with individual differencesThe authors are grateful to Kellie Broy, Cindy Cook, Becky Cromwell, William Graham, Shellie Loretto, Faith Mealer, and Rich Yuen for their assistance with data reduction for photo essays or creativity methods. We also thank Stephanie Clancy Dollinger for her comments on the manuscript.
Individuality is valued in most theories of psychotherapy but is seldom operationalized. The present research uses the social psychological tool of autophotography (photo essays about the self) as the medium for operationalizing self-construals that are unlike others (i.e., are uniquely abstract, self-reflective, multidimensional, and creative) as a measure of individuality. This measure was found to correlate in several samples (total N = 484) with (a) having experienced counseling or therapy and (b) loneliness or social alienation. Individualists had more commonly experienced therapy and were more lonely and alienated; each finding explained variance independently of the other. These findings are dis cussed in terms of a preliminary model of individuality and compared with Snyder and Fromkin's (1 980) construct of the need for uniqueness A respect for human individuality is generally evident in all major ori entations of counseling and psychotherapy. In some cases, this reflects a desire to optimize effectiveness by individualizing treatment to the needs of the unique person; in other therapies, it involves the utiliza tion of unique talents or interests to devise treatment. In the more hu manistic and existential perspectives, there is an explicit valuing of the richness and actualization of a selfhood that is unlike that of any other person. Traditionally, researchers have equated individuality with the term individual differences (e.g., Tyler, 1974Tyler, , 1978 or personality gen erally (Brody & Ehrlichman, 1998). More recently, personality psychol ogists have made attempts to study individuality in more biographicalThe authors are grateful to
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