A longitudinal study of children's depressive symptoms, self-perceptions, and cognitive distortions about the self

This longitudinal study examined how depressive symptoms relate to children's self-perceptions and to estimates of children's cognitive distortions about the self in a nonclinical sample of children who were followed from 4th grade (n = 248) through 6th grade (n = 227). Report card grades measured children's academic competence, and teachers' ratings of children's level of peer acceptance at school indicated social acceptance. Self-reported depressive symptoms predicted a change in children's negative views of the self. Moreover, the self-perceptions of children who exhibited more symptoms of depression appeared to reflect an underestimation of their actual competence. Children's negative self-perceptions and underestimations about the self were not associated with a subsequent change in depressive symptoms. The implications of the findings for cognitive theories of depression and future research with this population are discussed.     

Negative and Positive Emotion Responses to Daily School Problems: Links to Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms

Examining emotion reactivity and recovery following minor problems in daily life can deepen our understanding of how stress affects child mental health. This study assessed children’s immediate and delayed emotion responses to daily problems at school, and examined their correlations with psychological symptoms. On 5 consecutive weekdays, 83 fifth graders (M = 10.91 years, SD = 0.53, 51% female) completed brief diary forms 5 times per day, providing repeated ratings of school problems and emotions. They also completed a one-time questionnaire about symptoms of depression, and parents and teachers rated child internalizing and externalizing problems. Using multilevel modeling techniques, we assessed within-person daily associations between school problems and negative and positive emotion at school and again at bedtime. On days when children experienced more school problems, they reported more negative emotion and less positive emotion at school, and at bedtime. There were reliable individual differences in emotion reactivity and recovery. Individual-level indices of emotion responses derived from multilevel models were correlated with child psychological symptoms. Children who showed more negative emotion reactivity reported more depressive symptoms. Multiple informants described fewer internalizing problems among children who showed better recovery by bedtime, even after controlling for children’s average levels of exposure to school problems. Diary methods can extend our understanding of the links between daily stress, emotions and child mental health. Recovery following stressful events may be an important target of research and intervention for child internalizing problems.     

The Quality of the Social Environment at Work and Job Satisfaction1

The relation between social factors at work and job satisfaction was studied by measuring two components of a social environment: a common social environment, the social climate shared by employees in the same work setting: and an individual social environment, the individual's unique social space within that setting. An analysis of questionnaire data from 299, mostly female, bank workers indicated that there is a moderate relation between the quality of the social environment at work and individual job satisfaction. This finding held even when independent judges' (i.e., coworkers') ratings were used as the measure of the common social environment. The results were also consistent with the hypothesis that job satisfaction is more strongly linked to the quality of supervisor relations than to relationships with coworkers. Contrary to expectations, the common social environment at work was a better predictor of job satisfaction than was the individual social environment, and supervisors and coworkers appeared to contribute equally to perceptions of the common environment.     

A DEFENSE OF BUDDHISM,MEDITATION, AND FREE WILL: A THEORY OF MENTAL FREEDOM

This is my response to the criticisms of Gregg Caruso, David Cummiskey, and Karin Meyers, in their roles as members of the “Author Meets Critics” panel devoted to my book, Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom at the 2019 annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, organized by Christian Coseru. Caruso's main objection is that I am not sufficiently attentive to details of opposing arguments in Western philosophy, and Cummiskey's and Meyers’ objections, similarly, are that I am insufficiently attentive to details of Buddhism. I argue that all such objections, however putatively correct, do not rise to the level of objections that actually undermine my account of mental freedom.     

Individual and common components of the social environment at work and psychological well-being

Interpretations of correlational research on the social origins of psychological well-being are limited by the possibility of reciprocal influences between persons and their social situations and by respondent bias. These issues are addressed in a study of the relation between the social environment at work and mental health. Two components of a social environment were measured: a common social environment, the social climate shared by employees in the same work setting. The study related (a) averaged co-workers' ratings and individuals' own ratings of the social environment to (b) individuals' self-reported psychological well-being. A group of 37 bank branches represented work environments, and nonmanagerial personnel in the branches served as participants. Results indicated that the quality of the social environment at work is related to the mental health of employees. More important, the relation was confirmed with an independent measure of the social environment. Aggregate co-worker ratings of the common social environment were significantly correlated with individual depression and anxiety. However, an individual's perceptions appeared to mediate the social environment's impact. As hypothesized, well-being was more closely tied to the proximal individual social environment than to the more distal common social environment.     

Marital satisfaction, recovery from work, and diurnal cortisol among men and women.

DESIGN: Multilevel modeling was used to model relationships between salivary cortisol, daily diary ratings of work experiences, and Marital Adjustment Test scores (Locke & Wallace, 1959), in a sample of 60 adults who sampled saliva 4 times per day over 3 days. RESULTS: Among women but not men, marital satisfaction was significantly associated with a stronger basal cortisol cycle, with higher morning values and a steeper decline across the day. For women but not men, marital satisfaction moderated the within-subjects association between afternoon and evening cortisol level, such that marital quality appeared to bolster women's physiological recovery from work. For both men and women, evening cortisol was lower than usual on higher-workload days, and marital satisfaction augmented this association among women. Men showed higher evening cortisol after more distressing social experiences at work, an association that was strongest among men with higher marital satisfaction. CONCLUSION: This work has implications for the study of physiological recovery from work, and also suggests a pathway by which marital satisfaction influences allostatic load and physical health.     

Risky families: family social environments and the mental and physical health of offspring

Risky families are characterized by conflict and aggression and by relationships that are cold, unsupportive, and neglectful. These family characteristics create vulnerabilities and/or interact with genetically based vulnerabilities in offspring that produce disruptions in psychosocial functioning (specifically emotion processing and social competence), disruptions in stress-responsive biological regulatory systems, including sympathetic-adrenomedullary and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical functioning, and poor health behaviors, especially substance abuse. This integrated biobehavioral profile leads to consequent accumulating risk for mental health disorders, major chronic diseases, and early mortality. We conclude that childhood family environments represent vital links for understanding mental and physical health across the life span.