SciCombinator

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits, mental health variables and media use among German students. The data of 633 participants were collected. Results indicate a positive association between general Internet use, general use of social platforms and Facebook use, on the one hand, and self-esteem, extraversion, narcissism, life satisfaction, social support and resilience, on the other hand. Use of computer games was found to be negatively related to these personality and mental health variables. The use of platforms that focus more on written interaction (Twitter, Tumblr) was assumed to be negatively associated with positive mental health variables and significantly positively with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. In contrast, Instagram use, which focuses more on photo-sharing, correlated positively with positive mental health variables. Possible practical implications of the present results for mental health, as well as the limitations of the present work are discussed.

Physical activity has been established as an important determinant of quality of life, particularly among older adults. Previous research has suggested that physical activity’s influence on quality of life perceptions is mediated by changes in self-efficacy and health status. In the same vein, spirituality may be a salient quality of life determinant for many individuals.

There is preliminary evidence for the efficacy of positive psychology interventions for pain management. The current study examined the effects of an internet-based positive psychology self-help program for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain and compared it with an internet-based cognitive behavioural program.

This study examined the effectiveness of an applied mental skills training (MST) intervention utilizing mental skills to enhance intrinsic sources of enjoyment (ISOEs) as a means of promoting self-confidence, motivational style, and athletic performance, while also decreasing trait anxiety. The intervention project was designed to increase intrinsic SOE using a systematic and individualized mental training protocol, and then examine its relationships to mental skills and soccer performance. A Division 1 collegiate women’s soccer team was randomly assigned to treatment (n = 8) and control (n = 11) groups, equally distributed by academic year, position, and pre-season coach-evaluated starters and non-starts. Results revealed that the MST intervention significantly increased intrinsic enjoyment targeted psychological and competitive outcomes, both in practice and competition within the treatment group as compared to the control group. This study’s support for the impact mental skills training may have had on ISOEs, as well as other psychosocial outcomes and athletic performance can serve to highlight a mental skill often overlooked by consultants and coaches.

Across the globe we witness the rise of populist authoritarian leaders who are overbearing in their narrative, aggressive in behavior, and often exhibit questionable moral character. Drawing on evolutionary theory of leadership emergence, in which dominance and prestige are seen as dual routes to leadership, we provide a situational and psychological account for when and why dominant leaders are preferred over other respected and admired candidates. We test our hypothesis using three studies, encompassing more than 140,000 participants, across 69 countries and spanning the past two decades. We find robust support for our hypothesis that under a situational threat of economic uncertainty (as exemplified by the poverty rate, the housing vacancy rate, and the unemployment rate) people escalate their support for dominant leaders. Further, we find that this phenomenon is mediated by participants' psychological sense of a lack of personal control. Together, these results provide large-scale, globally representative evidence for the structural and psychological antecedents that increase the preference for dominant leaders over their prestigious counterparts.

Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercise. We examined the relationship between physical activity (measured broadly) and happiness using a smartphone application. This app has collected self-reports of happiness and physical activity from over ten thousand participants, while passively gathering information about physical activity from the accelerometers on users' phones. The findings reveal that individuals who are more physically active are happier. Further, individuals are happier in the moments when they are more physically active. These results emerged when assessing activity subjectively, via self-report, or objectively, via participants' smartphone accelerometers. Overall, this research suggests that not only exercise but also non-exercise physical activity is related to happiness. This research further demonstrates how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioral, and health-related phenomena as they naturally occur in everyday life.

Social transitions are increasingly common for transgender children. A social transition involves a child presenting to other people as a member of the “opposite” gender in all contexts (e.g., wearing clothes and using pronouns of that gender). Little is known about the well-being of socially transitioned transgender children. This study examined self-reported depression, anxiety, and self-worth in socially transitioned transgender children compared with 2 control groups: age- and gender-matched controls and siblings of transgender children.

The rising number of young people going to university has led to concerns about an increasing demand for student mental health services. We aimed to assess whether provision of mindfulness courses to university students would improve their resilience to stress.

More effective models of care delivery are needed, but their successful implementation depends on effective care teams and good management of local operations (clinical microsystems). Clinicians influence both, and local clinician leaders will have several key tasks.

To examine risk and resilience factors that affect health, lifetime stress exposure histories, dispositional forgiveness levels, and mental and physical health were assessed in 148 young adults. Greater lifetime stress severity and lower levels of forgiveness each uniquely predicted worse mental and physical health. Analyses also revealed a graded Stress × Forgiveness interaction effect, wherein associations between stress and mental health were weaker for persons exhibiting more forgiveness. These data are the first to elucidate the interactive effects of cumulative stress severity and forgiveness on health, and suggest that developing a more forgiving coping style may help minimize stress-related disorders.