Increased chronic stress predicts greater emotional negativity bias and poorer social skills but not cognitive functioning in healthy adults

Background and Objectives: Chronically stressed individuals report deficits spanning cognitive and emotional functioning. However, limitations to clinical populations and measures of stress have impeded the generalisability and scope of results. This study investigated whether chronic stress predicted cognitive and emotional functioning, and whether these relationships differed between males and females, in a large representative sample of healthy participants.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Method: 1883 healthy adults sampled from the Brain Resource International Database reported stress using the 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. Participants then completed a cognitive and emotional assessment battery (IntegNeuro), as well as questionnaires related to sleep, emotional functioning, and self-regulation.

Results: In contrast to previously reported results, chronic stress did not predict cognitive functioning. However, higher stress predicted a greater negativity bias and poorer social skills, confirming previous research identifying these links.

Conclusions: Cognitive deficits related to stress are absent in healthy participants when stress is measured using the 21-items Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. Identifying how chronic stress is associated with aspects of emotional functioning can lead to personalized interventions for individuals to better manage the negative outcomes resulting from stress.     

Mega-evolutions in medical education: Helpful or harmful to higher cognitive skill development?

Medicine is practiced in environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and disruption (VUCAD). Medical educators are tasked with providing an education that prepares graduates to successfully practice medicine in those types of environments. While medical education is continually evolving to incorporate new content and educational approaches, there are two mega-evolutions that have permeated medical education: increased curricular structure and content integration. Structure and integration are assumed to be positive changes; however, they may alter the development of higher cognitive skills such as information management, planning, breadth of approach, strategy, and initiative. As new graduates will practice in VUCAD environments, it seems prudent to consider the effects of medical education’s mega-evolutions on the development of higher cognitive skills critical to those types of environments. This paper explores the potential consequences of the increased curricular structure and content integration in medical education for learners who will practice in VUCAD environments and proposes a research agenda to better understand the relationship between curricular structure and integration and higher cognitive skill development.     

Hope as Grounds for Forgiveness

It is widely assumed that Christianity enjoins its followers to practice universal, unconditional forgiveness. But universal, unconditional forgiveness is regarded by many as morally problematic. Some Christian scholars have denied that Christianity in fact requires universal, unconditional forgiveness, but I believe they are mistaken. In this essay, I show two things: (1) that Christianity does enjoin universal, unconditional forgiveness of a certain sort, and (2) that Christians, and perhaps other theists, are always justified in exercising unconditional forgiveness. Though most philosophers treat forgiveness as grounded in our beliefs about the offender's current state, I argue that we might more fruitfully ground forgiveness in hope for the wrongdoer. Christianity's commitment to the existence of an omnipotent God who is concerned about the moral status of His creatures always justifies such hope and thus always justifies forgiveness.