Do hotter temperatures increase the incidence of self-harm hospitalisations?

A relationship between air temperature and the incidence of suicide has been established in a number of previous studies. Interestingly, the relationship between geographical variation in temperature and suicide incidence has generally been found to be negative, while the relationship between temporal variation in temperature and suicide incidence has generally been found to be positive. It is less clear, however, how temperature relates to the incidence of self-harm. This topic is of particular importance given the presence of ongoing global warming. This study investigated the relationship between temperature and the incidence of self-harm resulting in hospitalisation in New Zealand. Self-harm hospitalisations by date and district for 1993–2009 were obtained from the Ministry of Health. Meteorological data was obtained from NIWA. Generalised linear mixed models were used to estimate the effects of three different components of variation in temperature: geographical, seasonal and irregular. Irregular (random) daily variation in temperature had a modest positive relationship with the incidence of acts of self-harm resulting in hospitalisation, with about 0.7% extra incidents for every 1 °C increase in temperature. However, there was no strong evidence for a positive effect of either seasonal or geographical variation in temperature. We conclude that temperature does appear to bear some relation to the incidence of self-harm, with irregular daily variation in temperature having a positive effect. However, inconsistencies in the effects of different components of variation in temperature make it challenging to accurately predict how global warming will influence the incidence of self-harm.     

Assessing Children’s Implicit Attitudes Using the Affect Misattribution Procedure

In the current research, we examined whether the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) could be successfully adapted as an implicit measure of children’s attitudes. We tested this possibility in 3 studies with 5- to 10-year-old children. In Study 1, we found evidence that children misattribute affect elicited by attitudinally positive (e.g., cute animals) and negative (e.g., aggressive animals) primes to neutral stimuli (inkblots). In Study 2, we found that, as expected, children’s responses following flower and insect primes were moderated by gender. Girls (but not boys) were more likely to judge inkblots as pleasant when they followed flower primes. Children in Study 3 showed predicted affect misattribution following happy-face compared with sad-face primes. In addition, children’s responses on this child-friendly AMP predicted their self-reported empathy: The greater children’s spontaneous misattribution of affect following happy and sad primes, the more children reported feeling the joy and pain of others. These studies provide evidence that the AMP can be adapted as an implicit measure of children’s attitudes, and the results of Study 3 offer novel insight into individual differences in children’s affective responses to the emotional expressions of others.