Depression and anxiety correlate with disease-related characteristics and quality of life in Chinese patients with gout: a case-control study

This study aims to evaluate the prevalence of depression and anxiety and investigate the potential risk factors for depression and anxiety in Chinese gout patients. A self-report survey was administered to 226 gout patients and 232 age- and gender-matched healthy individuals. Patients were asked to complete a set of standardized self-report questionnaires. Univariate and mutiple regression were used to analyze the data. We found 15.0% of gout patients had depression, and 5.3% had anxiety. After adjusted demographic variables, the prevalence of depression was significantly higher than the healthy controls (6.0%). There were significant correlations among education, total pain, disease duration, stage of gout, functional disability, number of tophi, number of flares/last year, presence of tender joints, nephropathy comorbidity, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and psychological status. Meanwhile, logistic regression analysis identified number of tophi, functional disability, and mental component summary (MCS) as predictors of depression in gout patients. Education and MCS were significantly accounted for anxiety. In summary, the prevalence of depressive symptoms among gout patients was higher than healthy individuals. Education, disability, tophi and HRQoL were important risk factors linked to depression/anxiety in Chinese gout population.     

Mainland Chinese students’ self-appraisals of their psychological dispositions at school

This paper reports mainland Chinese students’ self-appraisals about their psychological dispositions whilst at school. Increasing interest has turned to factors such as resilience, wellbeing, flourishing, happiness and satisfaction, which in turn are predicted to be associated with factors such as emotional stability, achieving personal goals, social fulfilment and quality of life. Such psychological dispositions are developed in conjunction with the influences of social systems such as schools. Although a number of researchers have collaborated with schools to investigate students’ dispositions in English speaking countries, similar research in mainland China is in its infancy. This is particularly the case for studies that seek students’ own perspectives. We administered a questionnaire about resilience, flourishing, wellbeing, self-concept, school satisfaction, mental health, and happiness at school to 2756 students in Years 5–9 in mainland China. As expected with a non-clinical population, most students reported positively across the various scales. However, dividing the sample into subgroups enabled the creation of stratified visual profiles that showed significant differences between students with different backgrounds, such as gender, age, and mental health. This study illustrates the importance of subgroup analyses to identify potential areas of concern for different types of students, which in turn may inform differentiated school-based intervention programs to support students to flourish.     

The Happy Farmer: Self-Employment and Subjective Well-Being in Rural Vietnam

Using a unique survey data set this paper documents a positive effect of self-employment in farming on subjective well-being. This direct effect is only partly offset by negative, indirect effects working through income and other variables. These findings are interpreted as effects of self-employment in farming on perceived autonomy, competence and relatedness. The results suggest that economic transformation is associated with a psychological cost, which may contribute to explaining earnings gaps between sectors and types of employment. We also investigate other determinants of happiness, and for example find strong positive effects of own income and strong negative effects of neighbors’ income, suggesting the importance of relative rather than absolute levels of income.     

Karma or Immortality: Can Religion Influence Space‐Time Mappings?

People implicitly associate the “past” and “future” with “front” and “back” in their minds according to their cultural attitudes toward time. As the temporal focus hypothesis (TFH) proposes, future‐oriented people tend to think about time according to the future‐in‐front mapping, whereas past‐oriented people tend to think about time according to the past‐in‐front mapping (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache, & Casasanto, 2014). Whereas previous studies have demonstrated that culture exerts an important influence on people's implicit spatializations of time, we focus specifically on religion, a prominent layer of culture, as potential additional influence on space‐time mappings. In Experiment 1 and 2, we observed a difference between the two religious groups, with Buddhists being more past‐focused and more frequently conceptualizing the past as ahead of them and the future as behind them, and Taoists more future‐focused and exhibiting the opposite space‐time mapping. In Experiment 3, we administered a religion prime, in which Buddhists were randomly assigned to visualize the picture of the Buddhas of the Past (Buddha Dipamkara) or the Future (Buddha Maitreya). Results showed that the pictorial icon of Dipamkara increased participants' tendency to conceptualize the past as in front of them. In contrast, the pictorial icon of Maitreya caused a dramatic increase in the rate of future‐in‐front responses. In Experiment 4, the causal effect of religion on implicit space‐time mappings was replicated in atheists. Taken together, these findings provide converging evidence for the hypothesized causal role of religion for temporal focus in determining space‐time mappings.     

When Arousal Influences Ad Evaluation and Valence Does Not (and Vice Versa)

This research examines, across 2 studies, the interplay between the valence and arousal components of affective states and the affective tone of a target ad. In the first study, music was used to induce a pleasant or unpleasant mood, while controlling for arousal. Participants were subsequently exposed to an ad that either had a positive‐affective tone or was ambiguous in its affective tone. As predicted, the valence of the affective state colored the evaluation of the ad in a mood‐congruent direction, but this coloring effect occurred only when the ad had an ambiguous‐affective tone. In the second study, the target ad had a clear positive or negative affective tone, and the valence and arousal dimensions of the mood state were manipulated independently. As predicted, the arousal dimension, but not the valence dimension, influenced ad evaluation. Ad evaluations were more polarized in the direction of the ad's affective tone under high arousal than under low arousal. This effect was more pronounced for self‐referent evaluations (e.g., “I like the ad”) than for object‐referent evaluations (e.g., “The ad is good”), favoring an attributional explanation—the excitation transfer hypothesis—over an attention‐narrowing explanation—the dynamic complexity hypothesis. Taken together, the results of the 2 studies stress the important contingency of the affective tone of the ad, when examining the effects of the valence and arousal dimensions of a person's affective state on ad evaluation. The results also provide additional insights into how and when affect serves as information in judgment processes.     

异常反应模式的识别和分类

通过对Drasgow等人的个人适合指标l2公式的再分解,发现该指标也属于残差型类的指标。特别是和Tatsuoka的广义个人适合指标ξ指标具有类似的数学结构,除符号相反外,不同之处仅是公式中加权项。其次,该研究定义了任意两个异常反应对象的类似度,在此基础上试用多维标度法对异常反应模式进行再分类。结果说明分类是有效、实用的。     

杏仁体与情绪及感觉功能的关系

近来研究表明杏仁体与感觉、情绪和记忆关系密切。对恐惧条件反射的研究发现杏仁体是情绪活动的关键性结构;导致恐惧条件反射的细胞及分子机制研究征实杏仁体具有情绪学习与记忆机能;杏仁体在向中感觉信息的筛选和凋制中具有显著作用和重要意义。本文将综述这方面的进展。     

学龄儿童不同层次情绪理解发展及其与同伴接纳的关系

采用情绪理解测验和同伴提名法,探讨7-11岁儿童情绪理解层次发展及其与同伴接纳的关系。结果发现,儿童情绪理解随年龄增长而发展,情绪理解层次发展早晚存在差异,混合情绪和道德情绪理解发展最晚。被拒绝和被忽视儿童的情绪理解测验总分显著低于受欢迎、一般型和矛盾型儿童,矛盾型儿童的总分显著低于受欢迎儿童,他们的情绪调节、混合情绪及道德情绪理解得分也各有差异,表明同伴接纳是学龄儿童情绪理解层次发展的影响因素之一。     

论明代天师道之符箓

符箓是天师道的主要活动方式和重要的修持法术之一;明代帝王认为天师道能化导民俗,故命天师传符箓;史籍亦有不少关于符箓灵验、诸帝受箓及禁止伪造符箓的记载;明代帝王对符箓的态度,对天师道的影响甚大。