Bummer
Karol Jan Borowiecki
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The importance of creativity is being increasingly recognized by economists; however, the possibility that emotional factors determine creative processes is largely ignored. Building on 1,400 letters written by three famous music composers, I obtain wellbeing indices that span their lifetimes. The validity of this methodology is shown by linking the indices with biographical information and through estimation of the determinants of well-being. I then exploit the data and provide quantitative evidence on the existence of a causal impact of negative emotions on outstanding creativity, an association hypothesized across several disciplines since the Antiquity, but that has not yet been convincingly established.
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Billboard Hot 100 Songs: Self-Promoting Over the Past 20 Years
Pam McAuslan & Marie Waung
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that an increase in narcissism and individualism in contemporary Western society corresponds with greater self-focus depicted in cultural products (Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). However, little attention has been given to popular music within this context (DeWall, Pond, Campbell, & Twenge, 2011). The current study examines changes in self-promotion (e.g., references to self, bragging, demands for respect), and the sociodemographic characteristics of both artists and audiences as they relate to self-promoting tendencies in popular music. Data were obtained using Billboard Hot 100 songs for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. The most popular music in 2010 contained significantly more types of self-promotion than music from previous decades. This change reflects characteristics of genres (e.g., rap/hip-hop, pop, dance) that have gained popularity among younger audiences, but also corresponds to larger societal changes in individualism. Songs by male artists and African American artists were more likely to contain self-promotion than those by female or Caucasian artists. These differences are considered within the context of past theory and research related to socialization across groups more generally. Implications for parents, educators, and consumers are discussed.
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Does Variety Among Activities Increase Happiness?
Jordan Etkin & Cassie Mogilner
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does variety increase happiness? Eight studies examine how the variety among the activities that fill people’s day-to-day lives affects subsequent happiness. The studies demonstrate that whether variety increases or decreases happiness depends on the perceived duration of the time within which the activities occur. For longer time periods (like a day), variety does increase happiness. However, for shorter time periods (like an hour), variety instead decreases happiness. This reversal stems from people’s sense of stimulation and productivity during that time. Whereas filling longer time periods with more varied activities makes the time feel more stimulating (which increases happiness), filling shorter time periods with more varied activities makes the time feel less productive (which decreases happiness). These effects are robust across actual and perceived variety, actual and perceived time duration, and multiple types of activities (work and leisure, self-selected and imposed, social and solo). Together the findings confirm that “variety is the spice of life” — but not of an hour.
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Tara Bishop et al.
Health Affairs, July 2016, Pages 1271-1277
Abstract:
A large proportion of the US population suffers from mental illness. Limited access to psychiatrists may be a contributor to the underuse of mental health services. We studied changes in the supply of psychiatrists from 2003 to 2013, compared to changes in the supply of primary care physicians and neurologists. During this period the number of practicing psychiatrists declined from 37,968 to 37,889, which represented a 10.2 percent reduction in the median number of psychiatrists per 100,000 residents in hospital referral regions. In contrast, the numbers of primary care physicians and neurologists grew during the study period. These findings may help explain why patients report poor access to mental health care. Future research should explore the impact of the declining psychiatrist supply on patients and investigate new models of care that seek to integrate mental health and primary care or use team-based care that combines the services of psychiatrists and nonphysician providers for individuals with severe mental illnesses.
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Good day for Leos: Horoscope's influence on perception, cognitive performances, and creativity
Magali Clobert et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, October 2016, Pages 348–355
Abstract:
Do people treat horoscopes as mere entertainment, or does reading horoscopes have more substantial consequences? Building upon research on the expectancy effect as well as on literature highlighting the influence of astrology on individuals, we hypothesized that reading positive versus negative horoscopes would affect people's perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and creativity. Across three experiments, reading positive versus negative astrological forecasts increased positive interpretation of ambiguous events (Experiment 1, N = 195), cognitive performance (Experiment 2, N = 189), and creativity (Experiment 3, N = 193). Furthermore, positive (versus negative) horoscopes decreased negative emotions among people who believe in astrology and the effects of horoscopes on cognitive performances and creativity were stronger among people with a low internal locus of control. Opening newspapers and searching for daily horoscopes have more consequences than one may initially think.
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Narcissism is associated with weakened frontostriatal connectivity: A DTI study
David Chester et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, July 2016, Pages 1036-1040
Abstract:
Narcissism is characterized by the search for affirmation and admiration from others. Might this motivation to find external sources of acclaim exist to compensate for neurostructural deficits that link the self with reward? Greater structural connectivity between brain areas that process self-relevant stimuli (i.e. the medial prefrontal cortex) and reward (i.e. the ventral striatum) is associated with fundamentally positive self-views. We predicted that narcissism would be associated with less integrity of this frontostriatal pathway. We used diffusion tensor imaging to assess the frontostriatal structural connectivity among 50 healthy undergraduates (32 females, 18 males) who also completed a measure of grandiose narcissism. White matter integrity in the frontostriatal pathway was negatively associated with narcissism. Our findings, while purely correlational, suggest that narcissism arises, in part, from a neural disconnect between the self and reward. The exhibitionism and immodesty of narcissists may then be a regulatory strategy to compensate for this neural deficit.
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Drawing to Distract: Examining the Psychological Benefits of Drawing Over Time
Jennifer Drake, Ingrid Hastedt & Clara James
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individuals gravitate toward the arts during times of emotional stress. We examined the benefits of drawing over several sessions to determine whether drawing improves mood and, if so, whether it does so because it allows for emotional expression or distraction. After inducing a sad mood, we asked participants (n = 40) to draw over 4 consecutive days. Half of the participants were instructed to draw as a way to express their feelings (express condition) and half were instructed to draw as a way to focus and observe (distract condition). Mood was measured after the first and final testing session and a life satisfaction scale was administered at the beginning of the first testing session and after the final session. We found that drawing to distract improved mood more than drawing to express, both after a single drawing session and after 4 sessions. These findings are consistent with previous findings on drawing, but run counter to reports on the relative health benefits of expressive writing. We suggest drawing and writing may affect mood through different mechanisms.
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David Kille et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
One way that relationship partners express positive regard – a key variable in relationship success – is through compliments. However, some people are unable to perceive positive regard through compliments. We hypothesized that low self-esteem (LSE) individuals' relatively negative self-theories conflict with the positive information conveyed in compliments. Hence, LSEs' self-verification motives (e.g., Swann, 1997, 2012) may lead LSEs to reject the positive implications of compliments. In an initial study, we demonstrated that LSEs (vs. high self-esteem individuals; HSEs) feel greater self-related concerns and negative affect after receiving compliments, which leads them to devalue those compliments. Drawing on theories of mental construal (e.g., Libby, Valenti, Pfent, & Eibach, 2011), we reasoned that the remedy for such self-theory-driven processes is to adopt a concrete (vs. abstract) mindset: LSEs should be less likely to apply their relatively negative self-theories when they process compliments in a concrete mindset. Across three studies, we used diverse methods to induce participants to experience either a concrete or abstract mindset, and asked them to recall (Studies 2 and 3) or imagine (Study 4) a partner's compliment. We then assessed their perceptions of their partners' regard. Results confirmed that the discrepancy in LSEs' and HSEs' perceptions of positive regard following a compliment from their romantic partners was significantly reduced when a concrete mindset was induced compared to when an abstract mindset (or no mindset, Study 4) was induced.
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Nicholas Jacobson
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study sought to evaluate the current evolutionary adaptiveness of psychopathology by examining whether these disorders impact the quantity of offspring or the quality of the parent–child relationship across the life span. Using the National Comorbidity Survey, this study examined whether DSM–III–R anxiety, posttraumatic stress, depressive, bipolar, substance use, antisocial, and psychosis disorders predicted later fertility and the quality of parent–child relationships across the life span in a national sample (N = 8,098). Using latent variable and varying coefficient models, the results suggested that anxiety in males and bipolar pathology in males and females were associated with increased fertility at younger ages. The results suggested almost all other psychopathology was associated with decreased fertility in middle to late adulthood. The results further suggested that all types of psychopathology had negative impacts on the parent–child relationship quality (except for antisocial pathology in males). Nevertheless, for all disorders, the impact of psychopathology on both fertility and the parent–child relationship quality was affected by the age of the participant. The results also showed that anxiety pathology is associated with a high-quantity, low-quality parenting strategy followed by a low-quantity, low-quality parenting strategy. Further, the results suggest that bipolar pathology is associated with an early high-quantity and a continued low-quality parenting strategy. Posttraumatic stress, depression, substance use, antisocial personality, and psychosis pathology are each associated with a low-quantity, low-quality parenting strategy, particularly in mid to late adulthood. These findings suggest that the evolutionary impact of psychopathology depends on the developmental context.
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Creativity and Habitual Sleep Patterns Among Art and Social Sciences Undergraduate Students
Neta Ram-Vlasov et al.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study aimed to explore whether creativity and visual arts practice are associated with altered sleep structure, patterns, and quality. Fourteen visual arts and 16 social sciences undergraduate students participated in this home-based study. Sleep structure was measured by Polysomnography (PSG), habitual sleep patterns were monitored by Actigraphy and assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ), and creativity was measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Results indicated that for the entire sample, higher visual creativity was associated with higher sleep disturbance, daytime dysfunction, and lower overall sleep quality, and that higher verbal creativity was associated with longer sleep duration and later sleep midpoint. Group comparisons showed that art students reported increased sleep disturbance and daytime dysfunction, and later sleep midpoint and chronotype, and exhibited longer sleep duration compared with the nonart students. This observational and correlative study establishes multidimensional relationships between creativity and sleep. Possible explanations for our findings are offered, acknowledging psychobiological mechanisms that are known to regulate both creativity and sleep.
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Stitching Time: Vintage Consumption Connects the Past, Present, and Future
Gülen Sarial-Abi et al.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated a novel avenue for buffering against threats to meaning frameworks: vintage consumption. Although the appeal of vintage goods, defined as previously owned items from an earlier era, is strong and growing, this paper is among the first to examine the possible psychological ramifications of vintage consumption. Six studies found that vintage items mitigated the typical reactions to meaning threats. Four of these studies also showed that vintage consumption facilitates mental connections among the past, present, and future. As a result, people whose meaning structures had been threatened, for example by being reminded of their own eventual death, preferred vintage products more than others who had not experienced a meaning threat, and more than similar non-vintage products. These findings suggest that meaning disruptions stimulate a desire for intertemporal connections, a desire that vintage products — as existing and continuing symbols of bygone eras — seem to satisfy.
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When context matters: Negative emotions predict psychological health and adjustment
Karin Coifman, Jessica Flynn & Lavinia Pinto
Motivation and Emotion, August 2016, Pages 602-624
Abstract:
Functional theories of emotion argue for the adaptive function of negative emotions in response to specific contextual or environmental demands. However, data supporting these theories in community samples is limited and much research has suggested the opposite: negative emotions predict poor adjustment. To begin to address this discrepancy, we tested the functional association between negative emotion and psychological health and adjustment across three diverse samples: adults in intimate-partnerships, patients with chronic illness, and first-year college students. In each study we employed lab-based methods to elicit and index emotion as a multi-dimensional response system and considered contextual factors and the theorized or demonstrated function of negative emotions in that context and in relation to specific outcomes. Data analysis revealed that contextually sensitive negative emotion was adaptive, and associated with better relationship adjustment and related behaviors (Study 1), higher treatment adherence (Study 2), and adaptive responses to peer rejection (Study 3). Across samples, circumstances, and outcomes, negative emotions were positively associated with psychological health and adjustment.
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Marta Marchlewska & Aleksandra Cichocka
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines the role of narcissistic versus genuine self-evaluation in the retrieval of self-threatening memories. Autobiographical memories can be retrieved either from a first-person or a third-person visual perspective. Because narcissism is linked to sensitivity to psychological threats, it should predict retrieval of self-threatening memories using the third-person perspective. Genuine self-esteem, on the other hand, is resilient to threats. Therefore, it should be associated with retrieving self-relevant, even if threatening, memories from the first-person perspective. In two experiments we measured narcissism and self-esteem. Experiment 1 manipulated valence of self-relevant memories by asking participants to recall self-threatening (shameful) or self-boosting (proud) situations. Experiment 2 manipulated self-relevance of negative memories by asking participants to recall self-threatening (shameful) or negative, yet not self-threatening (sad) situations. Visual perspective of memory retrieval served as the dependent variable. In Experiment 1, narcissism predicted avoiding the first-person perspective and employing the third-person perspective in self-threatening memories, while self-esteem predicted the first-person perspective regardless of the memories being self-threatening or self-boosting. In Experiment 2, narcissism predicted the third-person perspective, while genuine self-esteem predicted the first-person perspective when self-threatening memories were recalled. Neither narcissism, nor genuine self-esteem were associated with visual perspective when participants recalled negative memories irrelevant to the self. Results shed light on the role of self-evaluation in processing autobiographical memories.
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Shannon Carson et al.
Journal of the American Medical Association, 5 July 2016, Pages 51-62
Design, Setting, and Participants: A multicenter randomized clinical trial conducted from October 2010 through November 2014 in 4 medical intensive care units (ICUs). Adult patients (aged ≥21 years) requiring 7 days of mechanical ventilation were randomized and their family surrogate decision makers were enrolled in the study. Observers were blinded to group allocation for the measurement of the primary outcomes.
Interventions: At least 2 structured family meetings led by palliative care specialists and provision of an informational brochure (intervention) compared with provision of an informational brochure and routine family meetings conducted by ICU teams (control). There were 130 patients with 184 family surrogate decision makers in the intervention group and 126 patients with 181 family surrogate decision makers in the control group.
Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale symptom score (HADS; score range, 0 [best] to 42 [worst]; minimal clinically important difference, 1.5) obtained during 3-month follow-up interviews with the surrogate decision makers. Secondary outcomes included posttraumatic stress disorder experienced by the family and measured by the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R; total score range, 0 [best] to 88 [worst]), discussion of patient preferences, hospital length of stay, and 90-day survival.
Results: Among 365 family surrogate decision makers (mean age, 51 years; 71% female), 312 completed the study. At 3 months, there was no significant difference in anxiety and depression symptoms between surrogate decision makers in the intervention group and the control group (adjusted mean HADS score, 12.2 vs 11.4, respectively; between-group difference, 0.8 [95% CI, −0.9 to 2.6]; P = .34). Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms were higher in the intervention group (adjusted mean IES-R score, 25.9) compared with the control group (adjusted mean IES-R score, 21.3) (between-group difference, 4.60 [95% CI, 0.01 to 9.10]; P = .0495). There was no difference between groups regarding the discussion of patient preferences (intervention, 75%; control, 83%; odds ratio, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.34 to 1.16; P = .14]). The median number of hospital days for patients in the intervention vs the control group (19 days vs 23 days, respectively; between-group difference, −4 days [95% CI, −6 to 3 days]; P = .51) and 90-day survival (hazard ratio, 0.95 [95% CI, 0.65 to 1.38], P = .96) were not significantly different.
Conclusions and Relevance: Among families of patients with chronic critical illness, the use of palliative care–led informational and emotional support meetings compared with usual care did not reduce anxiety or depression symptoms and may have increased posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. These findings do not support routine or mandatory palliative care–led discussion of goals of care for all families of patients with chronic critical illness.