Fibromyalgia impact and depressive symptoms: Can perceiving a silver lining make a difference?

Individuals with fibromyalgia are at greater risk for depressive symptoms than the general population, and this may be partially attributable to physical symptoms that impair day-to-day functioning. However, individual-level protective characteristics may buffer risk for psychopathology. For instance, the ability to perceive a “silver lining” in one’s illness may be related to better mental and physical health. We examined perceived silver lining as a potential moderator of the relation between fibromyalgia impact and depressive symptoms. Our sample of persons with fibromyalgia (N = 401) completed self-report measures including the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire-Revised, Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, and the Silver Lining Questionnaire. Moderation analyses covaried age, sex, and ethnicity. Supporting hypotheses, increasing impact of disease was related to greater depressive symptoms, and perceptions of a silver lining attenuated that association. Despite the linkage between impairment and depressive symptoms, identifying positive aspects or outcomes of illness may reduce risk for psychopathology. Therapeutically promoting perception of a silver lining, perhaps via signature strengths exercises or a blessings journal, and encouraging cognitive reframing of the illness experience, perhaps via Motivational Interviewing or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, may reduce depressive symptoms in persons with fibromyalgia.     

Varieties of Anger: The Relation Between Emotion Terms and Components of Anger Expressions

Component theory (C. Smith & H. Scott, 1997) predicts that presence of component movements (action units) alters the decoded meaning of a basic emotional expression. We tested whether the meaning of the basic expression of anger varied when different components were present in the expression. Participants were asked to label variants of anger from Ekman and Friesen's Pictures of Facial Affect using 15 anger terms, and invariance of labeling was tested by manipulating the judgment task. Data were analyzed using consensus analysis, multidimensional scaling, and numerical scaling. Components did not result in consensus about fine distinctions in the meanings of the anger expressions. Varying the type of task strongly affected results. We believe this occurred because language elicits different categorization processes than evaluation of facial expressions nonverbally.     

Conflict Minerals in Electronic Systems: An Overview and Critique of Legal Initiatives

The Democratic Republic of Congo has vast natural resources, many of which are regularly exploited by the electronics industry. Unfortunately, in addition to these resources, there are widespread human rights abuses committed by armed groups entrenched in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. These armed groups are using profits from these minerals as a source of funding. Their human rights abuses have led to a growing humanitarian interest in the region and prompted the international community to action. This paper explores the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, provides an understanding of the link between human rights abuses and conflict minerals, and interprets and critiques the legal actions of the international community.     

A Meta‐analytic and Conceptual Update on the Associations Between Procrastination and Multidimensional Perfectionism

The equivocal and debated findings from a 2007 meta‐analysis, which viewed perfectionism as a unidimensional construct, suggested that perfectionism was unrelated to procrastination. The present meta‐analysis aimed to provide a conceptual update and reanalysis of the procrastination–perfectionism association guided by both a multidimensional view of perfectionism and self‐regulation theory. The random‐effects meta‐analyses revealed a small to medium positive average effect size (r  = .23; k  = 43, N  = 10 000; 95% confidence interval (95% CI) [0.19, 0.27]) for trait procrastination and perfectionistic concerns and a small to medium negative average effect size (r  = ?.22; k  = 38, N  = 9544; 95% CI [?0.26, ?0.18]) for procrastination and perfectionistic strivings. The average correlations remained significant after statistically accounting for the joint variance between the two perfectionism dimensions via semi‐partial correlations. For perfectionistic concerns, but not perfectionistic strivings, the effects depended on the perfectionism measure used. All effects did not vary by the trait procrastination measure used or the respondent's sex. Our findings confirm that from a multidimensional perspective, trait procrastination is both positively and negatively associated with higher‐order perfectionism dimensions and further highlights the value of a self‐regulation perspective for understanding the cognitive, affective and behavioural dynamics that characterise these traits. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

A preliminary study of perfectionism and loneliness as predictors of depressive and anxious symptoms in Latinas: a top-down test of a model

In the present study, we used a top-down approach to examine perfectionism and loneliness as additive sociocognitive predictors of depressive and anxious symptoms in a sample of 121 Latina college students. Consistent with expectations, we found perfectionism and loneliness to be associated with both depressive and anxious symptoms. In addition, results of conducting hierarchical regression analyses indicated that certain dimensions of perfectionism, especially doubts about actions, accounted for significant variance in both depressive and anxious symptoms. Moreover, the inclusion of loneliness as a predictor was found to predict additional unique variance in both depressive and anxious symptoms beyond what was accounted for by perfectionism. Implications of the present findings for future research on negative affective conditions in Latinas are discussed.     

Engineering with Uncertainty: Monitoring Air Bag Performance

Modern engineering is complicated by an enormous number of uncertainties. Engineers know a great deal about the material world and how it works. But due to the inherent limits of testing and the complexities of the world outside the lab, engineers will never be able to fully predict how their creations will behave. One way the uncertainties of engineering can be dealt with is by actively monitoring technologies once they have left the development and production stage. This article uses an episode in the history of automobile air bags as an example of engineers who had the foresight and initiative to carefully track the technology on the road to discover problems as early as possible. Not only can monitoring help engineers identify problems that surface in the field, it can also assist them in their efforts to mobilize resources to resolve problem.     

Researching and Teaching the Ethics and Social Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Laboratory

Ethicists and others who study and teach the social implications of science and technology are faced with a formidable challenge when they seek to address “emerging technologies.” The topic is incredibly important, but difficult to grasp because not only are the precise issues often unclear, what the technology will ultimately look like can be difficult to discern. This paper argues that one particularly useful way to overcome these difficulties is to engage with their natural science and engineering colleagues in laboratories. Through discussions and interactions with these colleagues ethicists can simultaneously achieve three important objectives. First they can get a great deal of assistance in their research into the social implications of future technologies by talking with people that are actively creating those futures. Second their presence in the lab and the discussions that result can be a very powerful method for educating not only students, but faculty about the ramifications of their work. And third, because the education is directly linked to the students’ everyday work it is likely that it will not just be a theoretical exercise, but have direct impact on their practice.

Dispositional and explanatory style optimism as potential moderators of the relationship between hopelessness and suicidal ideation

To test the hypothesis that higher levels of optimism reduce the association between hopelessness and suicidal ideation, 284 college students completed self-report measures of optimism and Beck scales for hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and depression. A statistically significant interaction between hopelessness and one measure of optimism was obtained, consistent with the hypothesis that optimism moderates the relationship between hopelessness and suicidal ideation. Hopelessness is not inevitably associated with suicidal ideation. Optimism may be an important moderator of the association. The development of treatments to enhance optimism may complement standard treatments to reduce suicidality that target depression and hopelessness.     

Evolutionary models of color categorization based on discrimination

Specifying the factors that contribute to the universality of color categorization across individuals and cultures is a longstanding and still controversial issue in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. This article approaches this issue through the simulated evolution of color lexicons. It is shown that the combination of a minimal perceptual psychology of discrimination, simple pragmatic constraints involving communication, and simple learning rules is enough to evolve color-naming systems. Implications of this result for psychological theories of color categorization and the evolution of color-naming systems in human societies are discussed.     

Threat-related processing supports prospective memory retrieval for people with obsessive tendencies

Obsessive-compulsive disorder can result in a variety of deficits to cognitive performance, including negative consequences for attention and memory performance. The question addressed in the current study concerned whether this disorder influenced performance in an event-based prospective memory task. The results from a subclinical population indicated that, relative to non-anxious controls and mildly depressed controls, people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies (washing compulsions) incur decrements in remembering to respond to cues related to a neutral intention (respond to animals). This deficit was ameliorated by giving the subclinical group an intention about a threat-related category (respond to bodily fluids) and cueing them with concepts that they had previously rated as particularly disturbing to them. Thus, their normal attentional bias for extended processing of threat-related information overcame their natural deficit in event-based prospective memory.