A model clarifying the role of mediators in the variability of mood states over time in people who stutter

PurposeElevated negative mood states such as social anxiety and depressive mood have been found in adults who stutter. Research is needed to assist in the development of a model that clarifies how factors like self-efficacy and social support contribute to the variability of negative mood states over time.MethodParticipants included 200 adults who stutter. A longitudinal design was employed to assess change in mood states over a period of five months. Hierarchical directed regression (path analysis) was used to determine contributory relationships between change in mood states and self-efficacy, social support, socio-demographic and stuttering disorder variables. Participants completed a comprehensive assessment regimen, including validated measures of mood states, perceived control (self-efficacy) and social support.ResultsResults confirmed that self-efficacy performs a protective role in the change in mood states like anxiety and depressive mood. That is, self-efficacy cushioned the impact of negative mood states. Social support was only found to contribute a limited protective influence. Socio-demographic variables had little direct impact on mood states, while perceived severity of stuttering also failed to contribute directly to mood at any time point.ConclusionsMood was found to be influenced by factors that are arguably important for a person to cope and adjust adaptively to the adversity associated with fluency disorder. A model that explains how mood states are influenced over time is described. Implications of these results for managing adults who stutter with elevated negative mood states like social anxiety are discussed.Educational Objectives: The reader will be able to describe: (a) the method involved in hierarchical (directed) regression used in path analysis; (b) the variability of mood states over a period of five months; (c) the nature of the mediator relationship between factors like self-efficacy and social support and mood states like anxiety, and (d) the contribution to mood states of socio-demographic factors like age and education and stuttering disorder variables like stuttering frequency and perceived severity.     

The Effect of Observers’ Mood on the Local Processing of Emotional Faces: Evidence from Short-Lived and Prolonged Mood States

We examined the effect of induced mood, varying in valence and longevity, on local processing of emotional faces. It was found that negative facial expression conveyed by the global level of the face interferes with efficient processing of the local features. The results also showed that the duration of involvement with a mood influenced the local processing. We observed that attending to the local level of faces is not different in short-lived happy and sad mood states. However, as the mood state is experienced for a longer period, local processing was impaired in happy mood compared to sad mood. Taken together, we concluded that both facial expressions and affective states influence processing of the local parts of faces. Moreover, we suggest that mediating factors like the duration of involvement with the mood play a role in the interrelation between mood, attention, and perception.     

Dyadic Cross-Sectional Associations Between Negative Mood,Marital Idealization,and Relationship Quality

This study aimed to evaluate (a) dyadic associations between relationship quality (RQ) and both depressive and anxious mood (DM and AM), (b) reciprocity hypotheses of negative mood within dyadic interactions, and (c) mediational role of marital idealization between negative mood and relationship quality. Actor-partner interdependence models (APIMs) were performed using data from a sample of 198 dyads. Our results showed that (a) these two facets of negative mood did not have the same weight on RQ and that they had a gender-specific effects pattern, and (b) there was no support for the mood transmission hypothesis. Men's DM displayed direct and indirect (via marital idealization) actor as well as partner effects on RQ, whereas women's DM displayed only a direct actor effect on RQ. There were no significant direct actor effects of AM on RQ, meaning that this link is fully mediated by marital idealization. However, only women's AM showed such indirect effects on RQ.     

The Data Box and Within-Subject Analyses: A Comment on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016)

Nesselroade and Molenaar suggest that it is the relationships between latent variables within subjects that are invariant across subjects and thus the appropriate unit of analysis. We disagree and take the view that between-factor correlations may differ systematically across subjects. Further, individual differences in these correlations may be an important source of information about each unique individual. Following from this premise, analyses of consistencies and differences between subjects of the within-subject pattern of interfactor correlations is a step toward an integrative science of behavior. We give several examples demonstrating how this approach has the potential to yield novel insights into personality functioning.     

In the Name of Culture and Religion: The Political Function of Blasphemy in Islamic States

ABSTRACT

This article argues that blasphemy laws and a cultural relativist approach to human rights have a political function in authoritarian states. Islamic states use a strong cultural relativist approach to justify their dismal human rights record. The main aim of this approach, however, is survival. The article shows how Islamic countries use religion for their own political survival purposes and how blasphemy laws are often used to silence critique of political, social and religious orders that infringe on basic human rights. From this perspective, blasphemy laws are tools of oppression, not a symbol of cultural and religious difference. By highlighting how blasphemy laws and a cultural relativist approach to religion have been used as tools of oppression by authoritarian regimes, the article underscores the importance of freedom of expression for any functioning democracy.     

The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states

One recent development in epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, is the notion of ‘epistemic innocence’ introduced by Bortolotti and colleagues. This concept expresses the idea that certain suboptimal cognitive processes may nonetheless have epistemic (knowledge-related) benefits. The idea that delusion or confabulation may have psychological benefits is familiar enough. What is novel and interesting is the idea that such conditions may also yield significant and otherwise unavailable epistemic benefits. I apply the notion of epistemic innocence to research on the transformative potential of psychedelic drugs. The popular epithet ‘hallucinogen’ exemplifies a view of these substances as fundamentally epistemically detrimental. I argue that the picture is more complicated and that some psychedelic states can be epistemically innocent. This conclusion is highly relevant to policy debates about psychedelic therapy. Moreover, analysing the case of psychedelics can shed further light on the concept of epistemic innocence itself.     

The Religious Context of Welfare Attitudes

This article examines the influence of three dimensions of religion—belonging (faith tradition membership), behaving (frequency of service attendance), and context (one's relationship to aggregate population characteristics)—on attitudes toward multiple forms of state‐provided social protection, or welfare attitudes. To do so, this article uses data from 17 countries surveyed in the 2006 “Role of Government” wave of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Results from mixed effects regression show that contextual effects are highly predictive of welfare attitudes. Nations that are more religiously heterogeneous are less supportive of state protection, while nations that are more homogeneous, particularly Catholic nations, are more supportive. Results hold net of fractionalization, political institutional measures, and economic characteristics. At the individual level, all three dimensions of religiosity are predictive of welfare attitudes. These patterns suggest that in rich Western democracies, religion continues to play an important role in structuring the moral economies.     

Non-response to sad mood induction: implications for emotion research

Experimental induction of sad mood states is a mainstay of laboratory research on affect and cognition, mood regulation, and mood disorders. Typically, the success of such mood manipulations is reported as a statistically significant pre- to post-induction change in the self-rated intensity of the target affect. The present commentary was motivated by an unexpected finding in one of our studies concerning the response rate to a well-validated sad mood induction. Using the customary statistical approach, we found a significant mean increase in self-rated sadness intensity with a moderate effect size, verifying the “success” of the mood induction. However, that “success” masked that, between one-fifth and about one-third of our samples (adolescents who had histories of childhood-onset major depressive disorder and healthy controls) reported absolutely no sadness in response to the mood induction procedure. We consider implications of our experience for emotion research by (1) commenting upon the typically overlooked phenomenon of nonresponse, (2) suggesting changes in reporting practices regarding mood induction success, and (3) outlining future directions to help scientists determine why some subjects do not respond to experimental mood induction.