Resilience facilitates positive emotionality and integration of negative memories in need satisfying memory networks: An experimental study

Resilience has been associated with the capacity to experience positive emotions in the midst of negative life events or following the recall of such events. Apparently, resilient people are able to self-generate those positive emotions because they tend to integrate and associate such past negative life events with other positive past events in memory networks. However, study designs on resilience have remained either cross-sectional or longitudinal. The causal effect of resilience on these outcomes remains to be shown as a third variable or unknown factor could be at play. In this study, we used a resilience intervention from a self-help clinical program to induce resilience and compared this condition against Jacobson type relaxation and neutral music background. Results showed that the resilience intervention increased positive emotionality following the recall of a negative self-defining memory and facilitated the integration of that memory within more positive and need satisfying memory networks.     

Drug addiction finds its own niche

The evolutionary framework suggested by Müller & Schumann (M&S) can be extended further by considering drug-taking in terms of Niche Construction Theory (NCT). It is suggested here that genetic and environmental components of addiction are modified by cultural acceptance of the advantages of non-addicted drug taking and the legitimate supply of performance-enhancing drugs. This may then reduce the prevalence of addiction.