Nuclear Anxiety and Psychological Functioning Among Young Adults

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Abstract
Theoretical speculation has been raised that living in a world potentially compromised by nuclear war and nuclear power plant accidents affects psychosocial development and may result in various types of dysfunction. This study examines the associations between nuclear anxiety and problems experienced in seven general areas of life. These areas include drug problems, psychosomatic complaints, relationship problems, emotional distress, work problems, health problems, and family problems. To control for spurious or confounding effects, the influences of social conformity and social resources were controlled. Data were obtained from 739 young adults, and latent-variable analyses were used to address these issues. Nuclear anxiety was moderately related to psychosomatic complaints and emotional distress, modestly related to subjective perceptions of health and family problems, and was not associated with drug problems, relationship problems, and work problems. Although this cross-sectional data cannot determine whether nuclear anxiety generated these problems, it can be concluded that concern about nuclear issues is differentially related to various areas of life functioning over and above the confounding influences of traditionalism (social conformity) and interpersonal connectedness (social resources).
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