"Our people has got to come to terms with that": changing perceptions of the digital rectal examination as a barrier to prostate cancer diagnosis in African-Caribbean men.

OBJECTIVE: African-Caribbean men in the United Kingdom in comparison with other ethnicities have the highest incidence rate of prostate cancer. Psychosocial aspects related to screening and presentation impact on men's behavior, with previous studies indicating a range of barriers. This study explores one such barrier, the digital rectal examination (DRE), due to its prominence within UK African-Caribbean men's accounts. METHODS: African-Caribbean men with prostate cancer (n = 10) and without cancer (n = 10) were interviewed about their perceptions of DRE. A synthetic discursive approach was employed to analyze the data. RESULTS: Findings illustrate that an interpretative repertoire of homophobia in relation to the DRE is constructed as having an impact upon African-Caribbean men's uptake of prostate cancer screening. However, the discursive focus on footing and accountability highlight deviations from this repertoire that are built up as pragmatic and orient to changing perceptions within the community. CONCLUSIONS: Health promotion interventions need to address the fear of homophobia and are best designed in collaboration with the community.

Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: a new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model.

Virtual reality technology is argued to be suitable to the simulation study of mass evacuation behavior, because of the practical and ethical constraints in researching this field. This article describes three studies in which a new virtual reality paradigm was used, in which participants had to escape from a burning underground rail station. Study 1 was carried out in an immersion laboratory and demonstrated that collective identification in the crowd was enhanced by the (shared) threat embodied in emergency itself. In Study 2, high-identification participants were more helpful and pushed less than did low-identification participants. In Study 3, identification and group size were experimentally manipulated, and similar results were obtained. These results support a hypothesis according to which (emergent) collective identity motivates solidarity with strangers. It is concluded that the virtual reality technology developed here represents a promising start, although more can be done to embed it in a traditional psychology laboratory setting.