How Does the Economic Crisis Influence Adolescents’ Happiness? Population-Based Surveys in Iceland in 2000–2010

Macroeconomic downturns have been associated with a decrease in happiness among adults. The aim of this study was to explore the secular trend in happiness among Icelandic adolescents during a period of drastic change in the national economy as well as to identify which groups were most vulnerable and most resilient during the economic crisis. The data used in this study comes from series of population-based surveys of Icelandic adolescents in 2000, 2006, 2009, and 2010. Altogether, a total of 28.484 adolescents participated in the four surveys, representing 84 % of all 14–15 year old adolescents in Iceland. Results indicated that happiness increased by 5 % in the adolescent population from 2000 to 2010 despite the economic crisis. Nevertheless, adolescents who seldom spent time with their parents or perceived difficulties in getting emotional support from parents demonstrated a decrease in happiness. Those who found it easy to get emotional support from parents were happiest at every time point (91–93 %) while those who found it difficult were unhappiest (36–50 %). The association between socio- demographic factors and happiness was explored using multiple linear regression analyses where the year of survey, gender, age, family structure, parent’s education, time spent with parents and emotional support from parents altogether explained 13 % of the happiness variance. Emotional support from parents together with time spent with parents had the largest influence on adolescent’s happiness. An overall increase in time spent with parents was detected which might explain the increase in adolescents´ happiness over time. These results indicate that good relations with parents may protect adolescents from possible negative effect of a national economic crisis.     

A New Approach to Reducing Disorder and Improving Well-Being

ABSTRACT— Psychological science has usually approached the treatment of disorder through research on individual combinations of risk and protective factors (including life experiences, thinking styles, behaviors, social relationships and genes) and the application of interventions that focus on improvements in the individual. However, we can do better than this. Not only should we be aiming to enhance well-being rather than merely reducing disorder, but we should also be doing so for the majority of people rather than the few who have a disorder. In this article, I focus on the mental health spectrum and make the case for a broad population-based approach. I argue that a very small shift in the population mean of the underlying symptoms or risk factors can do more to enhance well-being and reduce disorder than would any amount of intervention with individuals who need help. Examples from research on alcohol abuse and psychological distress are presented to illustrate the value of a population-based approach.     

Do pulmonary function and smoking behavior predict cognitive function? findings from a british sample

Abstract

The relationship of smoking behavior, pulmonary function, and four measures of cognitive function was studied in a sample of 4,399 men and women (mean age = 44.7 f 17.1 years; age range: 18 to 94 years) randomly selected from British electoral registers. Each subject was assessed with a face-to-face structured interview (including demographic data, smoking history, and health-related questions) as well as cognitive testing [simple reaction time (SRT), choice reaction time (CRT), incidental memory, and spatial reasoning] and pulmonary function testing. Results indicated that smoking was associated with somewhat better performance on the CRT and memory tasks, and that smoking behavior was not associated with decrements in cognitive performance. Impaired pulmonary function was generally associated with poorer cognitive performance on all of the cognitive measures, suggesting that pulmonary function may be a relevant factor to consider in experimental studies of smoking and cognitive function among healthy adults.     

Emotion regulation in social anxiety: a systematic investigation and meta-analysis using self-report,subjective, and event-related potentials measures

Recent models of social anxiety disorder emphasise the role of emotion dysregulation; however, the nature of the proposed impairment needs clarification. In a replication and extension framework, four studies (N?=?193) examined whether individuals with social anxiety (HSAs) are impaired in using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Self-reports and lab-based tasks of suppression and reappraisal were utilised among individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety. A meta-analysis of these studies indicated that, compared to controls, HSAs reported less frequent and effective use of reappraisal and more frequent and effective use of suppression. Counter to most models and our hypotheses, HSAs were more successful than controls in lab-based reappraisal of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not by event-related potentials. HSAs were less successful than controls in lab-based suppression of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not by event-related potentials. The results held even when participants were under social stress (impromptu speech anticipation). Overall, subjective reports of HSAs reveal strong deficits in emotion regulation whereas lab-based measures provided less conclusive evidence of such deficits. These results suggest that individuals with social anxiety experience difficulties implementing their reappraisal abilities in daily life.     

The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory: development and validation of a short version

This article reports on the development of a revised version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI; E. B. Foa, M. J. Kozak, P. Salkovskis, M. E. Coles, & N. Amir, 1998), a psychometrically sound, theoretically driven, self-report measure. The revised OCI (OCI-R) improves on the parent version in 3 ways: It eliminates the redundant frequency scale, simplifies the scoring of the subscales, and reduces overlap across subscales. The reliability and validity of the OCI-R were examined in 215 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 243 patients with other anxiety disorders, and 677 nonanxious individuals. The OCI-R, which contains 18 items and 6 subscales, has retained excellent psychometric properties. The OCI-R and its subscales differentiated well between individuals with and without OCD. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses demonstrated the usefulness of the OCI-R as a diagnostic tool for screening patients with OCD, utilizing empirically derived cutscores.     

An aftereffect in judgment of auditory duration

Two experiments were designed to investigate the occurrence of atemporal aftereffect following auditory spatial stimulation. The task required Ss to compare by means of a motorresponse the duration of a test tone presented at a variable interval after stimulation with a standard tone. In both experiments the posttest duration was underestimated relative to the pretest duration, i.e., there was a temporal aftereffect(TAE). A control experiment which involved Ss making estimates of the duration of the test tones, without the presentation of interpolated standard tones, did not show this effect. The temporal aftereffect followed a function analogous to the “distance paradox” forspatial aftereffects.     

Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials

Little is known about psychophysiological correlates of interpretation bias in social anxiety. To address this issue, the authors measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in high and low socially anxious individuals during a task wherein ambiguous scenarios were resolved with either a positive or negative ending. Specifically, the authors examined modulations of the P600, an ERP that peaks approximately 600 ms following stimulus onset and indexes violations of expectancy. Low-anxious individuals were characterized by an increased P600 to negative in comparison with positive sentence endings, suggesting a positive interpretation bias. In contrast, the high-anxious group evidenced equivalent P600 magnitude for negative and positive sentence endings, suggesting a lack of positive interpretation bias. Similar, but less reliable results emerged in earlier time windows, that is, 200-500 ms poststimulus. Reaction time, occurring around 900 ms poststimulus, failed to show a reliable interpretation bias. Results suggest that ERPs can detect interpretation biases in social anxiety before the emission of behavioral responses.