Todd Lucas

Michigan State University | MSU · Division of Public Health

Mistrust in the information and treatment provided by medical professionals and organizations hinders cancer screening among African Americans. However, its impact on responses to health messaging aimed at bolstering screening uptake is unknown. The present study examined the effects of medical mistrust on message framing and culturally targeted he...

Receptivity to recommended colorectal cancer (CRC) screening can be enhanced by use of loss-framed health messaging that emphasizes possible consequences of failing to act. However, a simultaneous use of culturally targeted messaging may be needed to achieve effectiveness when loss-framed messaging is used with African Americans, especially to redu...

Objective: The current study investigated whether culturally targeted message frames alter preferences for specific colorectal cancer (CRC) screening modalities among African Americans. Method: African Americans who were eligible for CRC screening (N = 457) viewed a video about CRC risks, prevention, and recommended screening options. Participan...

Lower colorectal cancer screening rates among African Americans contribute to higher colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. We tested the effects of a racially-targeted messaging intervention that used favorable behavioral norm information to increase uptake of at-home Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) Kits. We expected stronger intervention effe...

Most research on the effects of racism and discrimination on the health and well-being of African Americans utilize a deficit perspective, one that homogeneously paints African Americans as disadvantaged victims. Such approaches do little to highlight the variability in the effects of racism and discrimination on relevant outcomes, and the resource...

Thinking about justice can enhance or impede forgiveness of others. In this study, we show that these effects crucially depend on tendencies to believe in justice. We assessed beliefs about distributive and procedural justice for self and others among university students from the Midwestern United States. We then primed participants to think about...

In October 2020, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Serological Sciences Network (SeroNet) was established to study the immune response to COVID-19, and "to develop, validate, improve, and implement serological testing and associated technologies" (https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/covid-19/coronavirus-research-initiatives/serologica...

Objective Brief, culturally-tailored, and scalable stress coping interventions are needed to address a broad range of stress-related health disparities, including among African Americans. In this study, we develop two brief justice writing interventions and demonstrate a methodological approach for evaluating how prompting African Americans to thin...

Background: Global efforts are needed to elucidate the epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the underlying cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), including seroprevalence, risk factors, and long-term sequelae, as well as immune responses after vaccination across populations and the social dimensions...

Background Assumptions regarding within-race variation in the associations between measures of discrimination racism and health-related behaviors among African Americans have been largely unexplored. Methods We conducted secondary analyses of two studies to examine support for a model which describes several theoretical moderators of the effects o...

By 2030, early-onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) is expected to become the leading cancer-related cause of death for people age 20 to 49. To improve understanding of this phenomenon, we analyzed the geographic determinants of EOCRC in Utah by examining county-level incidence and mortality. We linked data from the Utah Population Database to the Utah...

Understanding how individual beliefs and societal values influence support for measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission is vital to developing and implementing effective prevention policies. Using both Just World Theory and Cultural Dimensions Theory, the present study considered how individual-level justice beliefs and country-level social valu...

Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disproportionately affects sexual minority men and is linked to discrimination-related stress. Belief in a just world is a coping strategy that can reduce stress and protect against CVD. However, these effects are unknown for sexual minorities. Here, we examine links between personal justice beliefs, discrimi...

African Americans suffer disproportionately from colorectal cancer (CRC), due in part to disparities in CRC screening. Better understanding culturally relevant psychosocial factors that impact CRC screening is therefore critical. This study examined how African Americans’ perceived cultural competency of their physician is associated with receptivi...

Objectives African Americans develop and die from colorectal cancer (CRC) more than any other racial group in the United States. Perceived barriers to screening (e.g. embarrassment and financial costs) likely exacerbate these disparities. Identifying psychological factors that can reduce the impact of perceived barriers and encourage CRC screening...

Objective: This study examined how standard and culturally targeted versions of gain and loss-framed messaging affect African Americans' colorectal cancer (CRC) screening receptivity and behavior, as well as their anticipation of experiencing racism in undertaking CRC screening. Method: Screening-deficient African Americans (N = 457) viewed an i...

Perceived racism contributes to cardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities among African Americans. Psychosocial factors that protect against the effects of perceived racism therefore may be reflected by indicators of CVD risk, including C-reactive protein (CRP). The current cross-sectional study examined whether CRP is linked to religiosity and raci...

Social justice is understood by many as the extent to which resources, opportunities, benefits, and burdens are allocated fairly across a society. In health and medical contexts, these allocations readily encompass access to healthcare goods and services, as well as the distribution of desirable and undesirable health outcomes across various social...

According to the social salience hypothesis, the neuropeptide oxytocin boosts attunement to both positive and negative social cues, such that the effects of oxytocin on social beliefs and behavior are highly dependent on context. Among underserved racial minorities, oxytocin might enhance sensitivity to racial injustice. To test this hypothesis, we...

Introduction Colorectal cancer screening has been shown to prevent or detect early colorectal cancer and reduce mortality; yet, adherence to screening recommendations remains low, particularly in rural settings. Study design RCT. Setting/participants Adults (n=7,812) aged 50–75 years and due for colorectal cancer screening in a largely rural heal...

Objective: Two longitudinal studies examined whether effects of subjective norms on secondary cancer prevention behaviors were stronger and more likely to non-deliberative (i.e., partially independent of behavioral intentions) for African Americans (AAs) compared to European Americans (EAs), and whether the effects were moderated by racial identity...

This study demonstrates the potential of racial identity to moderate how gain and loss-framed messaging, as well as culturally-targeted messaging, can affect receptivity to preventive health screening. African–Americans (N = 132) who were noncompliant with recommended colorectal cancer (CRC) screening completed a measure of racial identity centrali...

High levels of uric acid are associated with greater risk of stress-related cardiovascular illnesses that occur disproportionately among African Americans. Whether hyperuricemia affects biological response to acute stress remains largely unknown, suggesting a need to clarify this potential connection. The current study examined how salivary uric ac...

Objective: Believing in justice can protect health. Among marginalized racial minorities however, both endorsing and rejecting beliefs about justice might be critical. The current research examined links between African Americans' beliefs about justice for self and for others and telomere length (TL)-an indicator of biological aging that is increa...

Objective: The extent to which positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect conjointly impact well-being is not yet well understood. Additionally, research investigating the role of affectivity in maintaining well-being among ethnic and racial minorities is scant. The current research demonstrates how polynomial regression and response surface methodolog...

This experiment demonstrates that chromosomal telomere length (TL) moderates response to injustice among African Americans. Based on worldview verification theory - an emerging psychosocial framework for understanding stress - we predicted that acute stress responses would be most pronounced when individual-level expectancies for justice were disco...

Two studies show that thinking about justice can both enhance and impede forgiveness, depending on whether thoughts about distributive and procedural justice for self and others are activated. In Study 1 (n = 197), participants expressed more forgiveness towards a prior transgressor when primed to think about justice for self or procedural justice...

Objectives: Understanding individual differences in the psychobiology of the stress response is critical to grasping how psychosocial factors contribute to racial and ethnic health disparities. However, the ways in which environmentally sensitive biological systems coordinate in response to acute stress is not well understood. We used a social-eva...

Guided by the Extended Parallel Process Model, this experiment demonstrates how perceived fairness in health resource policy decisions can influence both the protective action and denial-oriented health threat responses of policy affected individuals. Students from a large urban university in the Midwestern USA (n = 127) read about a purported illn...

Recent approaches to stress regulation have emphasized coordination among multiple biological systems. This study builds on evidence that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity should be considered in coordination with other stress-sensitive biological systems to characterize healthy responses. Healthy African-Americans (n = 115) comple...

Objective: According to worldview verification theory, inconsistencies between lived experiences and worldviews are psychologically threatening. These inconsistencies may be key determinants of stress processes that influence cardiovascular health disparities. This preliminary examination considers how experiencing injustice can affect perceived r...

Tendencies to believe in justice are multidimensional, and some justice beliefs enhance personal well-being. These features suggest a considerable but largely overlooked potential for similarities and differences in the structure, endorsement, and wellness-promoting functions of justice beliefs across cultures. In the current research, we evaluate...

Objective: This preliminary study examined the effect of gain versus loss-framed messaging as well as culturally targeted personal prevention messaging on African Americans' receptivity to colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. This research also examined mechanistic functions of perceived racism in response to message framing. Design and methods: C...

Tendencies to believe in justice are multidimensional and include beliefs that the world is fair to one’s self (personal justice beliefs) as well as to others (general justice beliefs). Previous research suggests that personal and general justice beliefs are divergently linked to well-being and harsh social attitudes, respectively. However, whether...

Although stress is linked to mental and physical health, self-reports of stress may be operationalized using measures that emphasize cognitive appraisals of stressors or that simply record stressor exposure. Theory and research suggest that appraisal-based measures may be superior in measuring self-reports of stress. Yet, use of exposure-based meas...

Harsh treatment of others can reflect an underlying motivation to view the world as fair and just and also a dispositional tendency to believe in justice. However, there is a critical need to refine and expand existing knowledge, not only to identify underlying psychological processes but also to better understand how justice may be implicated in s...

Host-nation employers’ political affiliation and national identity both may be relevant to seeing immigrant job-seekers as employable. However, whether national identity alters differences in links between political affiliation and evaluations of immigrants is not well articulated, and this includes a potential for national identity to either bolst...

Personal happiness and well-being are associated with a dispositional tendency to believe in the existence of justice. In addition, research suggests that links between justice beliefs and well-being are best revealed when utilizing distinctions between a belief in justice for one’s self versus others, and also a belief in procedural versus distrib...

Differences among workers and workplace stressors both contribute to perceiving work as stressful. However, the relative importance of these sources to work stress is not well delineated. Moreover, the extent to which work stress additionally reflects unique matches between specific workers and particular job stressors is also unclear. In this stud...

Miller has suggested that people seek humorousness in a mate because humor connotes intelligence, which would be valuable in a spouse. Since males tend to be the competing sex, men have been more strongly selected to be humorous. To test this notion, we explored the role of humor in marriage cross-culturally, in the United States, the United Kingdo...

U.S. studies indicate that children tend to stabilize marriage but, paradoxically, to reduce marital satisfaction. To explore whether this finding exists in a similar fashion in other cultures, the authors studied the impact of number of children on spousal love in the United States, United Kingdom, and Turkey, while accounting for other marital de...

U.S. studies indicate that children tend to stabilize marriage but, paradoxically, to reduce marital satisfaction. To explore whether this finding exists in a similar fashion in other cultures, the authors studied the impact of number of children on spousal love in the United States, United Kingdom, and Turkey, while accounting for other marital de...

Both theory and research suggest that beliefs about justice for the self are distinct from beliefs about justice for others. Self-other differences, however, have not yet intersected with research on procedural and distributive justice. We examined the psychometrics and validity of a proposed four-dimensional measure of procedural and distributive...

To determine whether the relationship between organizational climate and employee mental health is consistent (ie, invariant) or differs across four large hospitals, and whether organizational efficiency mediates this relationship. Participants (total N = 5316) completed validated measures of organizational climate variables (social climate, partic...

Acts of forgiveness are linked to beliefs about justice. However, a largely unsettled issue is whether strong justice beliefs prevent or promote forgiveness. Moreover, researchers have yet to identify mechanisms that might explain both positive and negative links between justice beliefs and forgiveness. We examined whether forgiveness is differenti...

In this dyadic study, we examined diabetes distress experienced by male and female patients and their spouses (N = 185 couples), and its association with depressive symptoms using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Diabetes-related distress reported by both patients and spouses was associated with each partner's own depressive symptoms (actor...

Provider cultural competency is often identified as an important component of effective ethnic minority healthcare. However, there is limited knowledge of the manner in which cultural competency judgments operate. This study sought to provide an initial demonstration of a hitherto overlooked methodology for examining the extent to which provider cu...

System justifying beliefs can have adaptive consequences for individuals that include enhanced coping and decreased emotional distress. The present study examined whether individual differences in two kinds of system justifying beliefs uniquely predict dispositional affect. Participants from across the United States were recruited via internet to c...

Perceived preventability of illness is an important predictor of health behaviour and response to illness. Yet, health experts remain largely unaware of the extent to which preventability attributions reflect characteristics of persons, illnesses and their interaction. Quantifying the sources of variance that compose illness preventability attribut...

Characteristics of individuals and illnesses can both influence receptivity to preventative health messages. We examined whether receptivity to health messages depends on interactions between illness characteristics and dispositional concern for justice. Participants considered the preventability of six illnesses after exposure to a message that ma...

Men and women estimated the prevalence of extra-pair paternity within the United States under exposure to two social influence manipulations. In addition, extra-pair paternity was framed to either emphasize potential harm to men (i.e., nonpaternity) or women (i.e., polygyny). Among men, perceived nonpaternity and polygyny were both lowest when esti...

Recent research suggests that a just world view may promote good health while low belief in a just world may deleteriously affect well-being. However, this research is limited in that specific components of justice beliefs that are important to health are not well articulated. Additionally, many potential pathways linking perceived fairness to phys...

To evaluate the ability of six graph formats to impart knowledge about treatment risks/benefits to low and high numeracy individuals. Participants were randomized to receive numerical information about the risks and benefits of a hypothetical medical treatment in one of six graph formats. Each described the benefits of taking one of two drugs, as w...

Health researchers have proposed that provider cultural competency may contribute to health disparities. Yet, this belief continues to lack empirical support, and this is due in part to measurement issues that have plagued the cultural competency construct. In the present research, we report on the development of a theoretically grounded, generally...

Couples assess their satisfaction with one another according to numerous culturally determined criteria. However, evolutionary perspectives on marriage emphasize that husbands and wives are also concerned with their adaptive fitness, and this suggests that some aspects of marital satisfaction may be cross-culturally homogenous. We examined whether...

Belief in a Just World Theory proposes that individuals need to believe that people get what they deserve. We suggest that individual differences in just world beliefs may reflect perceived deservedness of both procedural and distributive justice criteria. Two samples were used to analyze the reliability, factor structure, invariance and validity o...

Social support is broad term encompassing a variety of constructs, including support perceptions (perceived support) and receipt of supportive behaviors (received support). Of these constructs, only perceived support has been regarded as consistently linked to health, and researchers have offered differing assessments of the strength of the receive...

Past research has demonstrated that as tasks become more difficult, individuals tend to become more susceptible to the influence of others. This study investigates the potential of a specific self‐efficacy to moderate this effect. Participants exposed to easy maths problems were more independent of erroneous social influence on those problems than...

The effect of shyness and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) on helping behavior was examined. Eighty-three students participated in the experiment. Their individual shyness, FNE, and self-monitoring scores were collected prior to participation. During the experiment, participants had the opportunity to help a female confederate in either a social o...

Mate choice and mate retention may both depend in part on the principle of homogamy, or positive assortative mating. In humans, the more similar couples are, the happier and more stable their relationships are. However, the practice of homogamy in mate selection must be balanced against the need to select qualities in a mate that are slightly diffe...

Belief in a just world has been used to describe individual differences in the perception that people 'get what they deserve.' This research investigated the relationship of belief in a just world to health, stress, health cognition, and health behavior. In study one, evidence is presented which suggests that individuals may be described not only b...