Running on empty
Happiness From Ordinary and Extraordinary Experiences
Amit Bhattacharjee & Cassie Mogilner
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research indicates that experiences bring greater happiness than material possessions, but which experiences result in the greatest happiness? The current investigation is one of the first to categorize types of experiences and highlights one important distinction: the extent to which an experience is ordinary (common and frequent) versus extraordinary (uncommon and infrequent). Eight studies examine the experiences individuals recall, plan, imagine, and post on Facebook finding that the happiness enjoyed from ordinary and extraordinary experiences depends on age. Younger people, who view their future as extensive, gain more happiness from extraordinary experiences; however, ordinary experiences become increasingly associated with happiness as people get older, such that they produce as much happiness as extraordinary experiences when individuals have limited time remaining. Self-definition drives these effects: although extraordinary experiences are self-defining throughout one’s lifespan, as people get older they increasingly define themselves by the ordinary experiences that comprise their daily lives.
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Alyssa Croft, Elizabeth Dunn & Jordi Quoidbach
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can experiencing adversity enhance people’s appreciation for life’s small pleasures? To examine this question, we asked nearly 15,000 adults to complete a vignette-based measure of savoring. In addition, we presented participants with a checklist of adverse events (e.g., divorce, death of a loved one) and asked them to indicate whether they had experienced any of these events and, if so, to specify whether they felt they had emotionally dealt with the negative event or were still struggling with it. Although people who were currently struggling with adversity reported a diminished proclivity for savoring positive events, individuals who had dealt with more adversity in the past reported an elevated capacity for savoring. Thus, the worst experiences in life may come with an eventual upside, by promoting the ability to appreciate life’s small pleasures.
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Racial differences in depression in the United States: How do subgroup analyses inform a paradox?
David Barnes, Katherine Keyes & Lisa Bates
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, December 2013, Pages 1941-1949
Purpose: Non-Hispanic Blacks in the US have lower rates of major depression than non-Hispanic Whites, in national household samples. This has been termed a “paradox,” as Blacks suffer greater exposure to social stressors, a risk factor for depression. Subgroup analyses can inform hypotheses to explain this paradox. For example, it has been suggested that selection bias in household samples undercounts depression in Blacks; if selection is driving the paradox, Black–White differences should be most pronounced among young men with low education.
Methods: We examined Black–White differences in lifetime major depression in subgroups defined simultaneously by sex, age, and education using data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) and the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES).
Results: In NESARC and CPES, Blacks had lower odds than Whites of lifetime major depression in 21 and 23 subgroups, respectively, of 24. All statistically significant differences were in subgroups favoring Blacks, and lower odds in Blacks were more pronounced among those with more education.
Conclusions: These results suggest that hypotheses to explain the paradox must posit global mechanisms that pertain to all subgroups defined by sex, age, and education. Results do not lend support for the selection bias hypothesis.
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Margarita Alegría et al.
Medical Care, December 2013, Pages 1114-1123
Objectives: We assess whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) varies in prevalence, diagnostic criteria endorsement, and type and frequency of potentially traumatic events (PTEs) among a nationally representative US sample of 5071 non-Latino whites, 3264 Latinos, 2178 Asians, 4249 African Americans, and 1476 Afro-Caribbeans.
Methods: PTSD and other psychiatric disorders were evaluated using the World Mental Health-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI) in a national household sample that oversampled ethnic/racial minorities (n=16,238) but was weighted to produce results representative of the general population.
Results: Asians have lower prevalence rates of probable lifetime PTSD, whereas African Americans have higher rates as compared with non-Latino whites, even after adjusting for type and number of exposures to traumatic events, and for sociodemographic, clinical, and social support factors. Afro-Caribbeans and Latinos seem to demonstrate similar risk to non-Latino whites, adjusting for these same covariates. Higher rates of probable PTSD exhibited by African Americans and lower rates for Asians, as compared with non-Latino whites, do not appear related to differential symptom endorsement, differences in risk or protective factors, or differences in types and frequencies of PTEs across groups.
Conclusions: There appears to be marked differences in conditional risk of probable PTSD across ethnic/racial groups. Questions remain about what explains risk of probable PTSD. Several factors that might account for these differences are discussed, as well as the clinical implications of our findings. Uncertainty of the PTSD diagnostic assessment for Latinos and Asians requires further evaluation.
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Florence Dallo, Tiffany Kindratt & Tracy Snell
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, December 2013, Pages 1923-1930
Purpose: Serious psychological distress (SPD) is an understudied health topic. When studied, estimates for minority groups are compared to that of non-Hispanic whites. Non-Hispanic whites are heterogeneous, and comprise individuals from Europe, North Africa or the Middle East. The objectives of this study are to estimate and compare the sex- and age-adjusted prevalence of SPD first by nativity status and then by region of birth (Europe, Middle East and Russia) while controlling for potential confounders.
Methods: The sample consisted of 196,483 participants, 18 years of age or older in the National Health Interview Survey (2000–2010). To measure SPD, Kessler’s K6 Likert scale was used. Individuals with scores greater than or equal to 13 were considered to have SPD.
Results: The age- and sex- adjusted prevalence of SPD was 3 % for foreign-born non-Hispanic whites. Of this, estimates were 6 % for those from the Middle East, 3 % for Europe and 2 % for Russia (p = 0.00). In the fully adjusted multivariable model, foreign-born non-Hispanic whites from the Middle East were more likely (OR = 1.76; 95 % CI = 1.01, 3.04) to report SPD when compared to US-born non-Hispanic whites. Within the foreign-born population, non-Hispanic whites from the Middle East were more than twice as likely to report SPD (OR = 2.43; 95 % CI = 1.15, 5.14) compared to foreign-born non-Hispanic whites from Europe after controlling for confounders.
Conclusions: This study’s findings will help researchers understand which subgroups within non-Hispanic whites suffer most from SPD, which will facilitate tailored prevention intervention efforts.
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Erin Hardin & Jeff Larsen
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-discrepancy theory contends that well-being depends, in part, on the amount of overlap between one’s actual and ideal selves. There is a variety of supportive evidence, but Rabbi Hyman Schachtel’s (1954, The real enjoyment of living, New York, NY, Dutton) contention that “happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have” (p. 37) highlights that a distinction between two potential sources of overlap between one’s actual and ideal selves has been overlooked. Whereas most measures of ideal self-discrepancies index the extent to which people are who they want to be (i.e., ideal self-actualization [ISA]), others index the extent to which people want to be who they are (i.e., actual self-regard [ASR]). In several studies, we measured ideal self-actualization by asking people to identify traits they would ideally like to possess and rate the extent to which they had those traits. We also measured actual self-regard by asking participants to identify traits they possessed and indicate the extent to which they wanted those traits. In all 4 studies, ideal self-actualization and actual self-regard were distinct from one another (rs = .24 to .32) and both were distinct from self-compassion (Study 1) and global self-esteem (Study 4). Moreover, ASR consistently accounted for unique variance in aspects of well-being (e.g., subjective well-being, positive affect, psychological growth) and ISA often did so. Finally, a longitudinal study provided evidence that actual self-regard is a precursor, but not a consequence, of subjective well-being (Study 4).
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Ayalla Ruvio, Eli Somer & Aric Rindfleisch
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our research explores the amplifying effect of materialism on the experience of traumatic stress and maladaptive consumption via both an Israeli field study and a U.S. national survey. Our field study assesses the moderating impact of materialism upon both traumatic stress and maladaptive consumption among participants from an Israeli town under terrorist attack vs. participants from an Israeli town not exposed to hostilities. Our survey examines the possible underlying processes behind these effects among a nationally representative sample of Americans. The Israeli study reveals that, when faced with a mortal threat such as a terrorist attack, highly materialistic individuals report higher levels of post-traumatic stress, compulsive consumption, and impulsive buying than their less materialistic counterparts. Our U.S. study suggests that these effects are likely due to the fact that materialistic individuals exhibit lower levels of self-esteem, which reduces their ability to cope with traumatic events. Thus, our results indicate that, in addition to its well-documented harmful direct effect on psychological well-being, materialism also exerts an indirect negative effect by making bad events even worse.
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Overeducation and depressive symptoms: Diminishing mental health returns to education
Piet Bracke, Elise Pattyn & Olaf von dem Knesebeck
Sociology of Health & Illness, November 2013, Pages 1242–1259
Abstract:
In general, well-educated people enjoy better mental health than those with less education. As a result, some wonder whether there are limits to the mental health benefits of education. Inspired by the literature on the expansion of tertiary education, this article explores marginal mental health returns to education and studies the mental health status of overeducated people. To enhance the validity of the findings we use two indicators of educational attainment – years of education and ISCED97 categories – and two objective indicators of overeducation (the realised matches method and the job analyst method) in a sample of the working population of 25 European countries (unweighted sample N = 19,089). Depression is measured using an eight-item version of the CES-D scale. We find diminishing mental health returns to education. In addition, overeducated people report more depression symptoms. Both findings hold irrespective of the indicators used. The results must be interpreted in the light of the enduring expansion of education, as our findings show that the discussion of the relevance of the human capital perspective, and the diploma disease view on the relationship between education and modern society, is not obsolete.
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Firearms and suicides in US states
Justin Thomas Briggs & Alexander Tabarrok
International Review of Law and Economics, March 2014, Pages 180–188
Abstract:
This study investigates the relationship between firearm prevalence and suicide in a sample of all US states over the years 2000–2009. We find strong, positive effects of gun prevalence on suicide using OLS estimation, across a variety of measures for gun possession, and with several sets of controls. When using instrumental variable estimation, the effect remains significant, despite also finding significant evidence that gun ownership causes substitution towards gun-suicide rather than other methods of suicide. There is also evidence for non-linearities in the effects of guns on suicide.
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Depression and Oxidative Stress: Results From a Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies
Priya Palta et al.
Psychosomatic Medicine, forthcoming
Objective: To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis that quantitatively tests and summarizes the hypothesis that depression results in elevated oxidative stress and lower antioxidant levels.
Methods: We performed a meta-analysis of studies that reported an association between depression and oxidative stress and/or antioxidant status markers. PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for articles published from January 1980 through December 2012. A random-effects model, weighted by inverse variance, was performed to pool standard deviation (Cohen’s d) effect size estimates across studies for oxidative stress and antioxidant status measures, separately.
Results: Twenty-three studies with 4980 participants were included in the meta-analysis. Depression was most commonly measured using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria. A Cohen’s d effect size of 0.55 (95% confidence interval = 0.47–0.63) was found for the association between depression and oxidative stress, indicating a roughly 0.55 of 1-standard-deviation increase in oxidative stress among individuals with depression compared with those without depression. The results of the studies displayed significant heterogeneity (I2 = 80.0%, p < .001). A statistically significant effect was also observed for the association between depression and antioxidant status markers (Cohen’s d = −0.24, 95% confidence interval = −0.33 to −0.15).
Conclusions: This meta-analysis observed an association between depression and oxidative stress and antioxidant status across many different studies. Differences in measures of depression and markers of oxidative stress and antioxidant status markers could account for the observed heterogeneity. These findings suggest that well-established associations between depression and poor heath outcomes may be mediated by high oxidative stress.
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Joey Cheng, Jessica Tracy & Gregory Miller
Emotion, December 2013, Pages 1004-1011
Abstract:
Does narcissism provide a source of hardiness or vulnerability in the face of adversity? The present research addressed this question by testing whether narcissism is associated with increased physiological reactivity to emotional distress, among women. Drawing on the “fragile-ego” account, we predicted that narcissists would show a heightened physiological stress profile in response to everyday frustrations. Results supported this prediction; across a 3-day period, highly narcissistic individuals showed elevated output of 2 biomarkers of stress — cortisol and alpha-amylase — to the extent that they experienced negative emotions. In contrast, among those low in narcissism there was no association between these biomarkers and emotions. These findings suggest that narcissists’ stress-response systems are particularly sensitive to everyday negative emotions, consistent with the notion that narcissism comes with physiological costs.
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Susanne Vogel et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, February 2014, Pages 181–190
Abstract:
Substantial research has been conducted investigating the association between life adversity and genetic vulnerability for depression, but clear mechanistic links are rarely identified and investigation often focused on single genetic variants. Complex phenotypes like depression, however, are likely determined by multiple variants in interaction with environmental factors. As variations in the mineralocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C2) have been related to a higher risk for depression, we investigated whether NR3C2 variance is related to negative memory bias, an established endophenotype for depression, in healthy participants. Furthermore, we explored the influence of life adversity on this association. We used a set-based analysis to simultaneously test all measured variation in NR3C2 for an association with negative memory bias in 483 participants and an interaction with life adversity. To further specify this interaction, we split the sample into low and high live adversity groups and repeated the analyses in both groups separately. NR3C2 variance was associated with negative memory bias, especially in the high life adversity group. Additionally, we identified a functional polymorphism (rs5534) related to negative memory bias and demonstrating a gene x life adversity interaction. Variations in NR3C2 are associated with negative memory bias and this relationship appears to be influenced by life adversity. As negative memory bias is implicated in the susceptibility to depression, our findings provide mechanistic support for the notion that variations in NR3C2 - which could compromise the proper function of this receptor - are a risk factor for the development of mood disorders.
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Self-compassion as a predictor of interleukin-6 response to acute psychosocial stress
Juliana Breines et al.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined the hypothesis that self-compassion is associated with lower levels of stress-induced inflammation. On two consecutive days, plasma concentrations of interleukin-6 (IL-6) were assessed at baseline and at 30 and 120 min following exposure to a standardized laboratory stressor in a sample of 41 healthy young adults. Participants who were higher in self-compassion exhibited significantly lower day 1 IL-6 responses, even when controlling for self-esteem, depressive symptoms, demographic factors, and distress. Self-compassion was not related to day 2 IL-6 response but was inversely related to day 2 baseline IL-6 levels, and to increase in baseline IL-6 from day 1 to day 2. These findings suggest that self-compassion may serve as a protective factor against stress-induced inflammation and inflammation-related disease.
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Beliefs About Emotion: Links to Emotion Regulation, Well-Being, and Psychological Distress
Krista De Castella et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, November/December 2013, Pages 497-505
Abstract:
People differ in their implicit beliefs about emotions. Some believe emotions are fixed (entity theorists), whereas others believe that everyone can learn to change their emotions (incremental theorists). We extend the prior literature by demonstrating (a) entity beliefs are associated with lower well-being and increased psychological distress, (b) people's beliefs about their own emotions explain greater unique variance than their beliefs about emotions in general, and (3) implicit beliefs are linked with well-being/distress via cognitive reappraisal. These results suggest people's implicit beliefs — particularly about their own emotions — may predispose them toward emotion regulation strategies that have important consequences for psychological health.
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Affective Instability in Daily Life Is Predicted by Resting Heart Rate Variability
Peter Koval et al.
PLoS ONE, November 2013
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that being affectively unstable is an indicator of several forms of psychological maladjustment. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying affective instability. Our research aims to examine the possibility that being prone to extreme fluctuations in one’s feelings is related to maladaptive emotion regulation. We investigated this hypothesis by relating affective instability, assessed in daily life using the experience sampling method, to self-reported emotion regulation strategies and to parasympathetically mediated heart rate variability (HRV), a physiological indicator of emotion regulation capacity. Results showed that HRV was negatively related to instability of positive affect (as measured by mean square successive differences), indicating that individuals with lower parasympathetic tone are emotionally less stable, particularly for positive affect.
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Saskia Koch et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
About ten percent of people experiencing a traumatic event will subsequently develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by an exaggerated fear response which fails to extinguish over time and cannot be inhibited in safe contexts. The neurobiological correlates of PTSD involve enhanced salience processing (i.e. amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI) hyperactivity), and reduced top-down inhibitory control over this fear response (i.e. dorsal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) hypoactivity and diminished structural and functional connectivity between the vmPFC, hippocampus and amygdala). Therefore, dampening the exaggerated fear response (i.e. by reducing amygdala hyperactivity) and enhancing top-down inhibitory control (i.e. by promoting prefrontal control over the amygdala) during psychotherapy is an important target for medication-enhanced psychotherapy (MEP) in PTSD patients. Since the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been found to act on these two processes, we propose that OT is a promising pharmacological agent to boost treatment response in PTSD. Human fMRI studies indicate that intranasal OT attenuates amygdala (hyper)activity and enhances connectivity of the amygdala with the vmPFC and hippocampus, resulting in increased top-down control over the fear response. In addition, intranasal OT was found to attenuate amygdala–brainstem connectivity and to change activity and connectivity in nodes of the salience network (i.e. AI and dACC). Furthermore, OT administration may modulate hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and autonomic nervous system (ANS) function and may enhance social behaviour, which could be beneficial in the therapeutic alliance. We also discuss contextual and interindividual factors (e.g. gender and social context) which may influence the effectiveness of OT in MEP. In all, we propose that intranasal OT given prior to each psychotherapy session may be an effective additive treatment to boost treatment response in PTSD.