While Facebook usage intensity (FBUI) and compulsive buying tendency (CBT) have individually received increased research attention, very little is known about the mechanisms through which FBUI affects CBT. This study proposes and tests a multiple mediation model in which the effect of FBUI on CBT is mediated by personality characteristics (envy, self-esteem, and self-promotion). The study also explores the moderating effect of depression on these mediated relationships. The results of a self-administered survey of 393 Bangladeshi adults support the proposed moderated mediation model. The effect of FBUI on CBT is mediated by envy and self-esteem independently. The FBUI indirectly affects CBT through serial mediators: 1) envy and self-esteem; 2) envy and self-promotion. These serial mediating effects are moderated by depression. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Denna uppsats har undersökt om tacksamhet kan påverka vårt moraliska beteende, genom att se över studier som gjorts inom psykologi och kognitiv neurovetenskap. Tidigare forskning har fokuserat mestadels på hur det kognitiva resonerandet påverkar ens moral. På senare tid har forskningen allt mer betonat specifika emotioners avgörande roll för om man agerar efter moraliska normer eller inte. Dessa emotioner benämns som moraliska emotioner. En av dessa moraliska emotioner är tacksamhet. Tacksamhet har i studier visats fungera som en moralisk barometer, stärka välgörares fortsatta moraliska beteende samt fungera som ett moraliskt motiv. Den neurala grunden för tacksamhet är ännu relativt outforskad. Emotioners generella påverkan på moraliskt beteende samt positiva emotioners tendenser till agerande (eng: action tendencies) kan dock ses som ett steg till ökad förståelse om hur tacksamheten påverkar vårt moraliska beteende.
Anspänning, oro och stress är tre begrepp som har studerats länge, vilket har gett upphov till flertalet modeller, teorier och domäner där dessa begrepp har studerats och fortfarande studeras. I denna uppsats så kommer dessa tre begrepp bland annat att redogöras för var för sig med koppling till mätmetoder, idrott och kognitiv neurovetenskap. Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva hur idrottsprestationer kan påverkas av anspänning, oro och stress för att utifrån det kunna redogöra för evidensbaserade metoder som kan appliceras för att främja en idrottsprestation. Först kommer anspänning att redogöras för, anspänning följs sedan av oro som i sin tur följs av stress som sista begrepp. Avslutningsvis så behandlas även problematik och möjligheter för dessa begrepp inom forskningsfältet och dess tillämpningsområden.
Air pollution is a localised issue but negatively influences health and finance globally. Conurbations and regional governments struggle to find the best policy solutions to meet air quality limit levels while competing over resources and attempting to secure growth. As such, methods to increase the adoption of effective pollution-focused policies are warranted. This thesis has set out to create a framework for understanding the relationship between behaviour change of policy makers and the adoption of new air quality policies at regional levels of government. Chapter four of this thesis looked into the quality and results of previous literature through a systematic review (study 1), investigating how previous interventions have attempted to promote policy adoption. Within chapter five, a vignette study with policy practitioners (study 2; n = 15) was conducted to evaluate the use of intervention functions. Alongside the vignette study, an online questionnaire looked at perceived barriers to policy adoption. Data from both were amalgamated using thematic analysis. Finally, in chapter six, the use of interventions to promote air quality policy and the state of current UK air quality policy was reviewed (study 3). Collectively these studies have contributed to the understanding of how intervention functions influence policy intention formation and policy adoption. The combined outcomes of these studies suggest a) a need for increased education of policymakers and b) for councils to share learning and take inspiration from each other. Throughout the studies, key barriers to policy intentions and policy adoption were investigated, the most prominent being economic and administrative barriers. Within chapter seven, results are summarised and directions for future research and practice are suggested.
Older adults need to participate in the digital society, as societal and personal changes and what they do with the remaining time that they have in their older years has an undeniable effect on motivation, cognition and emotion. Changes in personality traits were investigated in older adults over the period 2019–2021. Technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety are attitudes that affect the relationship to the technology used. The changes in the score of technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety were the dependent variables. They were investigated with personality traits, age, gender, education, whether someone lives alone, cognitive function, digital social participation (DSP) and health literacy as predictors of the outcome. The Edwards-Nunnally index and logistic regression were used. The results indicated that DSP, lower age, lower neuroticism and higher education were indicative of less technology anxiety. High DSP and high extraversion are indicative of technology enthusiasm. DSP and attitude towards technology seem to be key in getting older adults to stay active online.
Background: While research has shown that sleep disorders are prevalent among people with dementia, the temporal relationship is unclear. We investigated whether atypical sleep characteristics were associated with incident dementia while accounting for baseline cognitive functioning.
Methods: Screening Across the Lifespan Twin Study (SALT) participants were 11,247 individuals from the Swedish Twin Registry who were at least 65 years at baseline (1998-2002). Sleep and baseline cognitive functioning were assessed via the SALT telephone screening interview. Data on dementia diagnoses came from national health registers. Cox regression was performed to estimate hazard ratios (HR) for dementia.
Results: After 17 years of follow-up, 1,850 dementia cases were identified. Short (≤ 6 hours) and extended (> 9 hours) time-in-bed (TIB) compared to the middle reference group (HR=1.40, 95% CI=1.06-1.85, HR=1.11, 95% CI=1.00-1.24, respectively) and rising at 8:00AM or later compared to earlier rising (HR=1.12, 95% CI=1.01-1.24) were associated with higher dementia incidence. Bedtime, sleep quality, restorative sleep, and heavy snoring were not significant predictors. Findings stratified by baseline cognitive status indicated that the association between short TIB and dementia remained in those cognitively intact at the start.
Conclusions: Short and extended TIB as well as delayed rising among older adults predicted increased dementia incidence in the following 17 years. The pattern of findings suggests that extended TIB and late rising represent prodromal features whereas short TIB appeared to be a risk factor for dementia.
Objectives The few studies of shift work and late life cognitive functioning have yielded mixed findings. The aim of the present study is to estimate the association between shift-work experience and change in cognitive performance before and after retirement age among older adults who were gainfully employed.
Methods Five hundred and ninety five participants with no dementia were followed up for a mean of 17.6 standard deviation (SD) 8.8 years from a Swedish population-based sample. Participants had self-reported information on any type of shift-work experience (ever/never) in 1984 and measures of cognitive performance (verbal, spatial, memory, processing speed, and general cognitive ability) from up to 9 waves of cognitive assessments during 1986–2012. Night work history (ever/never) from 1998–2002 was available from a subsample (N=320). Early adult cognitive test scores were available for 77 men.
Results In latent growth curve modeling, there were no main effects of "any-type" or night shift work on the mean scores or rate of change in any of the cognitive domains. An interaction effect between any-type shift work and education on cognitive performance at retirement was noted. Lower-educated shift workers performed better on cognitive tests than lower-educated day workers at retirement. Sensitivity analyses, however, indicated that the interactions appeared to be driven by selection effects. Lower-educated day workers demonstrated poorer cognitive ability in early adulthood than lower-educated shift workers, who may have selected jobs entailing higher cognitive demand.
Conclusion There was no difference in late-life cognitive aging between individuals with a history of working shifts compared to those who had typical day work schedules during midlife.
During roughly forty years of a woman’s life-span, the fertile female human body prepares itself monthly for the possibility of pregnancy. Science has shown that the fluctuation of the sex steroids progesterone and estrogen have a crucial role in the female body's physiology, determining the menstrual cycle and its general phases. This biological dance of hormones governing the cycle influences a lot of physical, mental and cognitive aspects of life for a fertile ovulating woman. Although the question of whether these changes also affect women's cognitive performance is still unclear, some evidence has been gathered that could bring us closer to answers. Recent research findings show that this hormonal interplay might have a significant role in cognitive and psychological development - modulating brain activity, cognitive performance, higher cognition, emotional status, sensory processing, appetite and more. This thesis aims to uncover to what extent the menstrual cycle affects brain functions, neurobiology, mood, well-being and cognitive performance in menstruating cisgender women.
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: the association between late-life obesity and late-life cognitive abilities is poorly understood. We studied the association between body mass index (BMI) and cognitive change in longitudinal population-based study spanning over the ninth decade of life.
SUBJECTS/METHODS: in total, 475 participants free of dementia at baseline from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 (mean age: 79.1 years, SD: 0.6) were included. Height and weight were assessed at baseline. BMI was calculated as kg/m(2). Cognitive abilities were assessed at age ∼11 years and at age ∼79, ∼83, ∼87 and ∼90 years.
RESULTS: latent growth models showed that men being overweight and obese had a 0.65 (SD: 0.3) and 1.10 (SD: 0.5) points less steep decline in general cognitive ability (as measured by the Moray House Test) for each year than people of normal weight. These associations were to some extent confounded by childhood intelligence. No other association between BMI and cognition was significant, either for men or women. People who were obese in old age had significantly lower childhood intelligence (m = 43.6, SD: 1.3) than people who were normal in weight (m = 47.0, SD: 0.8) and persons being overweight (m = 47.5, SD: 0.8), F (472, 3) = 3.2, P = 0.043.
CONCLUSIONS: the current study shows weak or no evidence for an association between BMI in old age and cognitive function, especially not when childhood intelligence is controlled for. Lower intelligence at the age of 11 years predicted obesity at the age of 79 years.
Meditation has in recent decades received attention mainly for its health benefits in western society, not least in the field of neuroscience. Researchers are frequently exploring the link between plasticity in the brain, and the practice of meditation. This systematic review aims to investigate the underlying functional and structural differences in brain mechanisms between long-term meditators and non-meditators, involving different meditation forms. A total of seven peer-reviewed articles were included after being screened for, and meeting inclusion criteria. Final outcomes demonstrated differences between meditators and non-meditators in both functional and structural measures. Some brain regions where changes were identified in meditators included higher-order cognitive areas (i.e., frontal and temporal brain regions). These brain regions are known to be involved in emotional, attentional and memory processing. Reduced connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) is known to be associated with meditation, which was supported in two of the studies. Furthermore, larger gray matter density was found in autonomous control centers (i.e., the brainstem), and larger callosal thickness in meditators. Based on the findings, the practice of long-term meditation appears to be linked with functional and structural changes in various regions of the brain. The findings give insight into the underlying neural correlates and brain plasticity in meditators compared to non-meditators. Nevertheless, future research is necessary for understanding the long-term effects of various meditation forms.
In this report we analyzed genetically informative data to investigate within-person change and between-person differences in late-life cognitive abilities as a function of childhood social class. We used data from nine testing occasions spanning 28 y in the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging and parental social class based on the Swedish socioeconomic index. Cognitive ability included a general factor and the four domains of verbal, fluid, memory, and perceptual speed. Latent growth curve models of the longitudinal data tested whether level and change in cognitive performance differed as a function of childhood social class. Between-within twin-pair analyses were performed on twins reared apart to assess familial confounding. Childhood social class was significantly associated with mean-level cognitive performance at age 65 y, but not with rate of cognitive change. The association decreased in magnitude but remained significant after adjustments for level of education and the degree to which the rearing family was supportive toward education. A between-pair effect of childhood social class was significant in all cognitive domains, whereas within-pair estimates were attenuated, indicating genetic confounding. Thus, childhood social class is important for cognitive performance in adulthood on a population level, but the association is largely attributable to genetic influences.
The importance of investigating Emotion Regulation (ER) may be self-evident, given that emotions have a substantial impact on our daily lives. ER encompasses set of processes that people go through in order to cultivate their feelings that arise at the moment and produce some response. Brain-imaging studies of ER have broadly focused on examining cognitive strategies, such as reappraisal, in order to understand underlying variables that contribute to the development of this particular process of emotions. The main focus in this paper was to summarize some of the observation done by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) on neural processes underlying cognitive reappraisal. Furthermore, the paper will discuss some of these experiments that have been made through the last 15 years in the field where indications have been somewhat confusing when it comes to certain aspects of presented data, especially in comparison with other studies. Finally, a brief overview and some of the significant contributions, such as a process model of ER, to the field of ER have been presented and discussed. Cognitive reappraisal has been shown to effectively down-regulate subjective emotional experience. Even though many studies have been performed in measuring brain-activity when engaging in cognitive reappraisal, a unified and accepted agreement has yet not been found. In broader terms, brain-responses when engaging in cognitive reappraisal seem to operate in a particular manner where different parts of prefrontal and parietal cortex execute control over subcortical regions, such as amygdala.
Introduction
Research indicate that cognitive impairment might be related to hospitalization, but little is known about these effects over time.
Objective
To assess cognitive change before and after hospitalization among older adults in a population-based longitudinal study with up to 25 years of follow-up.
Method
A longitudinal study on 828 community living men and women aged 50–86 from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Ageing (SATSA) were linked to The Swedish National Inpatient Register. Up to 8 assessments of cognitive performance (general cognitive ability, verbal, spatial/fluid, memory, and processing speed) from 1986 to 2010 were available. Latent growth curve modelling was used to assess the association between cognitive performance and hospitalization including spline models to analyse cognitive trajectories pre- and post-hospitalization.
Results
A total of 735 persons (89%) had at least one hospital admission during the follow-up. Mean age at first hospitalization was 70.2 (±9.3) years. Persons who were hospitalized exhibited a lower mean level of cognitive performance in general ability, processing speed and spatial/fluid ability compared with those who were not hospitalized. The two-slope models revealed steeper cognitive decline before hospitalization than after among those with at least one hospitalization event, as compared to non-hospitalized persons who showed steeper cognitive decline after the centering age of 70 years.
Conclusions
Persons being hospitalized in late life have lower cognitive performance across all assessed domains. The results indicate that the main decline occurs before the hospitalization, and not after. This might indicate that when you get treatment you also benefit cognitively.
This paper aims to provide the grounds for a biopsychosocial understanding of the underpinnings of conspiracy theorist ideation by studying research articles from different scientific disciplines. Cross-disciplinary concurring results are presented and discussed, as well as some examples of how conspiracy theories have been used during the 20th century. Also discussed is how this is used in political discourse in the populist climate of today, with the rise of radical right-wing movements, the justification of “alternative facts” from higher governmental ranks, and religious fundamentalism, making it a societal issue of possible big magnitude. Neurological similarities was found between religiousness and proneness to conspiracy theory ideation, and the articles concerning neural correlates therefore stem from research on religious individuals due to the lack of neuro-biopsychological research on actual conspiracy theorists. Since conspiracy theory ideation has shown the ability to cause negative consequences it is also advised that governmental agencies and society as a whole revise its stance on populism and the spread of flawed information, in order to maintain an open society. Also presented are a few ideas on how to begin countering the rise of populism.
BACKGROUND: To become a parent is an emotionally life-changing experience. Paternal depression during the postnatal period has been associated with emotional and behavioral problems in children. The condition has predominantly been related to mothers, and the recognition of paternal postnatal depression (PND) has been paid less attention to. PND in fathers may be difficult to detect. However, nurses in pediatric services meet a lot of fathers and are in a position to detect a father who is suffering from PND. Therefore, the aim of this study was (a) to explore Child Health Center nurses' experiences of observing depression in fathers during the postnatal period; and (b) to explore hindrances of observing these fathers.
METHODS: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted. Ten nurses were interviewed in 2014. A thematic data analysis was performed and data were analyzed for meaning.
RESULTS: Paternal PND was experienced as being vague and difficult to detect. Experiences of fathers with such problems were limited, and it was hard to grasp the health status of the fathers, something which was further complicated when routines were lacking or when gender attitudes influenced the daily work of the nurses.
CONCLUSION: This study contributes to an increased awareness of hindrances to the recognition of PND in fathers. The importance to detect all signals of paternal health status in fathers suffering from PND needs to be acknowledged. Overall, more attention needs to be paid to PND in fathers where a part of the solution for this is that they are screened just like the mothers.
Physical health can be measured in several ways both based on subjective experiences and with objective tools. However, mental health can only be measured through subjective experiences and sensations, which can be biased. Therefore, researchers adopted the notion of an objective tool to assess well-being as a complement to existing self-reported scales and suggested that heart rate variability (HRV) might be an indicator of well-being. Hence, this thesis investigates the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and HRV, particularly high frequency-HRV (HF-HRV). Three hypotheses, which included different forms of well-being, were developed to test the relationship. And the hypotheses were: Cognitive well-being correlates positively with HF-HRV. Positive affect correlates positively with HF-HRV, and negative affect correlates negatively with HF-HRV. A total of 19 healthy Swedish females aged from 20-35 participated and answered questionnaires measuring SWB. After they completed the SWB-scales, their heart rate was measured and then converted into HF-HRV data. The findings revealed no correlations between the cognitive SWB and HF-HRV, neither to affective SWB.
Some drivers engage in secondary activities that contribute to decreased traffic safety. User Experience can inform and help people make safer and more conscious choices in traffic. Previous research on self-reported mobile phone use shows that a ban on mobile phone use while driving has not led people to completely cease the behavior. The study investigated whether a driver monitoring system contributes to safer driving when different gender drivers are distracted by mobile phones and whether the system affected their sense of safety. Is there a difference between male and female drivers' behavior and perception of the driver monitoring system? This was investigated using an experimental mixed-method design with a simulator, surveys, and an interview.
The experiment tested three different monitoring situations: group A was a control group without mobile or driver monitoring system, group B received distracting SMS messages, and group C received distracting SMS messages and were warned by the driver monitoring system. The total gender differences in the traffic offenses revealed significantly lower traffic offenses for women. This is also in relation to previous research publications.
The purpose of this research was to answer the following central questions: 1) How accurate are human observers at predicting the behavior of cyclists as the cyclists approached a crossing? 2) If the accuracy is reliably better than chance, what cues were used to make the predictions? 3) At what distance from the crossing did the most critical cues occur? 4) Can the cues be used in a model that can reliably predict cyclist intent? We present results that show a number of indicators that can be used in to predict the intention of a cyclist, i.e., future actions of a cyclist, e.g., “left turn” or “continue forward” etc.
Results of empirical studies show that humans are reasonably good at this type of prediction for a majority of the situations studied. However, some situations seem to contain conflicting information. The results also suggested that human prediction of intention is to a large extent relying on a single “strong” indicator, e.g., that the cyclist makes a clear “head movement”. Several “weaker" indicators that together could be a strong “combined indicator”, or equivalently strong evidence, is likely to be missed or too complex to be handled by humans in real-time. We suggest this line of research can be used to create decision support systems that predict the behavior of cyclists in traffic.
Genom att titta på ett fåtal bestämda signaler kan man med god träffsäkerhet förutsäga cyklisters beteende, vilket tyder på att de identifierade signalerna är betydelsefulla. Vetskapen om dessa kan, bland annat, praktiskt användas för att utveckla enkla hjälpmedel – såsom medveten placering av fluorescerande eller reflekterande material på leder och/eller införande av olikfärgade hjälmsidor. Dylika kan förväntas förstärka kommunikationen av viktiga signaler. Vetskapen kan även användas för att utbilda oerfarna bilförare. Båda fallen kan i förlängningen ge en säkrare trafikmiljö för oskyddade trafikanter.
How do humans perceive actions in relation to other similar actions? How can we develop artificial systems that can mirror this ability? This research uses human similarity judgments of point-light actions to evaluate the output from different visual computing algorithms for motion understanding, based on movement, spatial features, motion velocity, and curvature. The aim of the research is twofold: (a) to devise algorithms for motion segmentation into action primitives, which can then be used to build hierarchical representations for estimating action similarity and (b) to develop a better understanding of human actioncategorization in relation to judging action similarity. The long-term goal of the work is to allow an artificial system to recognize similar classes of actions, also across different viewpoints. To this purpose, computational methods for visual action classification are used and then compared with human classification via similarity judgments. Confusion matrices for similarity judgments from these comparisons are assessed for all possible pairs of actions. The preliminary results show some overlap between the outcomes of the two analyses. We discuss the extent of the consistency of the different algorithms with human action categorization as a way to model action perception.
This study investigates how timing of the introduction of unpleasant emotional tone in a traffic safety video impacts the intensity of the viewer?s emotional experience. Traffic safety advertising is a multi-million-dollar business in the United States. In many instances, 30?60?s ads are produced to raise awareness of the consequences of unsafe behaviors with the expectation that simply providing information will motivate safer behaviors. Producing videos intended to generate behavior change requires a complex understanding of what motivates behavior. Behavior change theory, neuroscience, and psychophysiology all provide guidance to improve the persuasive power of traffic safety videos. This study consisted of a 3 (message tone)???3 (video)???4 (order) repeated measures within subjects designed experiment. Participants (N?=?75) were 20?30-year-old men who were shown nine traffic safety videos. Arousal intensity, attention, and negative emotion were tracked with the psychophysiological measures of skin conductance (measuring intensity of arousal), heart rate (measuring attention paid during the video), and corrugator muscle activation (measuring the negative emotional experience). Videos with three different aversive tones were used, low, high, and videos in which the tone switched from low to high aversive. Aversive tone is defined as stimuli that motivate a desire to escape or avoid something like death or pain. All videos were designed to prevent motor vehicle crashes. The results obtained from this study indicate that when attempting to persuade males aged 20?30 to practice safer driving behaviors, switched message tone appears to be the most effective message design in terms the intensity of emotional arousal and maintenance of attention.
Previous research determines that media’s use of a sexualized woman affects the perception of her competence. This work has therefore investigated whether the perception of a game heroine, based on the Lara-phenomenon by Jansz & Martis (2007), is influenced by sexualized versus non-sexualized designs of her clothes. With the help of surveys, the study has examined 4 foreign students' media consumption to see if this had an influence on their interpretations of the heroine's qualities. The informants had to watch 2D images of a heroine in 4 different clothing conditions and assess her qualities during group interviews. The result shows that media consumption had an influence on the participants' ideals and that the qualities smart, strong and attractive were judged primarily by the heroine's adaptation to the gaming environment. 3 out of 4 participants chose to play as the character in the neutral bottom condition because the clothes showed adaptation to the gaming environment and represented a current beauty ideal. Future work should avoid exposure to the game's climate or environment to see if other reasoning occur.
Purpose: The paper aims to investigate differences in non-professional and professional stock investors’ trust in and tendency to follow financial analysts’ buy and sell recommendations. Design/methodology/approach: Online experiment conducted in Sweden in March 2022 comparing non-professional private investors (n = 80), professional investors (n = 33), and master students in finance (n = 28). Information was presented about four company stocks listed on the New York stock exchange. Two stocks were buy-recommended and two stocks sell-recommended by financial analysts. For one stock of each type, the recommendation was presented to participants. Dependent variables were predictions of the stock price after three months, ratings of confidence in the predictions and choices of holding, buying or selling the stock. Ratings were also made of the importance of presented stock-related information as well as trust in analysts’ skill and integrity. Findings: More positive return predictions were made of buy-recommended than sell-recommended stocks. Non-professionals and to some degree finance students tended to trust financial analysts more than professional investors did and they were more influenced by the presentation of the buy recommendations. All groups made too optimistic return predictions, but the professionals were less confident in their predictions, more likely to sell the stocks and lost less on their investments. Originality/value: A new finding is that non-professional stock investors are more likely than professional stock investors to trust financial analysts and follow their recommendations. It suggests that financial analysts’ recommendations influence non-professional investors to take unmotivated investment risks. Non-professionals in the stock market should hence be advised to exercise more caution in following analysts’ recommendations.
Studien som utförs i denna uppsats undersöker problemformuleringen “I hur stor utsträckning påverkar förutfattad information om spelsituationen uppfattningen av ljud och grafik, samt spelarens agerande, i en Science Fiction-miljö?” med hjälp utav en kort spelprototyp som artefakt. Deltagare till studien blev presenterade med en viss typ av information beroende på vilken testgrupp de placerats i. Detta för att potentiellt stärka hur deltagaren upplever ljud och grafik i spelet. Denna studie presenterar och tar stöd från tidigare forskning gällande hur ljud uppfattas, hur grafik uppfattas och vad som definierar skräck samt Science Fiction. Resultaten från denna studie skall ge områdena som tas upp i studien mer förståelse för hur information skall hanteras och presenteras för bästa effekt. Resultaten visar antydningar på att ljud påverkas minimalt medan grafik inte påverkades alls, men denna effekt var starkast till gruppen utan den nämnda informationen. Tendenserna som visar sig i undersökningen har möjlighet att vidare undersökas i framtida arbete.
Previous research has established relationships between the Big Five personality factors, cognitive ability, and academic performance. A more recent personality trait, Honesty-Humility with its four facets (Sincerity, Fairness, Greed-avoidance and Modesty) is suggested to have predictive value especially in self-promoting behaviors. The aim of the present study was to find out whether lower Honesty-Humility would predict higher self-reported academic performance, and account for additional variance, after controlling for the Big Five and cognitive ability. The participants were Swedish 17-19 year-old students (N = 154) in late secondary high school. The results revealed a significant negative correlation between Honesty-Humility and self-estimated academic performance, mainly through low scores in the facets Sincerity and Modesty, as well as an additional 7% accounted for variance. The discussion concludes that the new trait Honesty-Humility may be a welcomed addition to the understanding of how students use self-promoting strategies in contemporary school.
This licentiate thesis is based on the growing interest in Swedish elderly care. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what generates satisfaction with elderly care among older persons. The dominant ideology in both privately and publically run elderly care is individualized care, also called person-centered care, which holds the older person’s satisfaction as one of the main quality indicators. The proportion of older people is increasing and to maintain high levels of satisfaction with elderly care will require more knowledge. Data from the National Board of Health and Welfare’s (2012) nationwide survey on seniors’ experiences with elderly care was collected. Statistical analyses of this sample formed the basis for the results of the thesis and were reported in two papers. Study I used Donabedian’s (1988) model of quality of care in terms of structure, process, and outcome, and all municipal units in Sweden were included (N = 324). The results showed that structural variables (i.e. budget, staff, and training level) have minimal or no relationships with older persons’ satisfaction with care, while process variables (i.e. experiences of respect, information, and influence) have strong relationships with satisfaction with care. Study II made use of the long-standing person versus situation- model in social psychology, and was analyzed on an individual level (N = 95,000). The results showed that care process factors (i.e. experiences of treatment, safeness, staff- and time-availability) had a stronger relationship, than individual factors (i.e. health, anxiety, and loneliness) with satisfaction with care. The results also showed that older persons with home care generally felt better treated than older persons in nursing homes, but also felt less safe. Mediational analyses, based on this comprehensive elderly data, suggest that the individual aging condition of loneliness can be countered by providing safeness and treatment, resulting in high satisfaction with care. In conclusion, satisfaction with elderly care in Sweden today can largely be explained from a psychological perspective by the older persons’ perception of the care process, not by the amount of structural resources or the conditions of the aging persons. These findings could help facilitate the future quality development in municipalities and care organizations.
Stress is a factor that greatly impacts our lives. Previous research has examined individual differences in relation to stress. However, research regarding malevolent personality traits in relation to how stress is perceived is limited. The purpose of thepresent study was to investigate relationships between dark malevolent personality traits; psychopathy (EPA), Machiavellianism(MACH-IV), vulnerable narcissism (HSNS), grandiose narcissism (NPI-13), and perceived stress (PSS-10) in a communitysample (N = 346). The results showed a strong positive relationship between vulnerable narcissism and perceived stress, whilegrandiose narcissism and psychopathy showed a small negative relationship with perceived stress. The discussion centers on thatnarcissism should be treated as two separate traits, and that psychopathy and Machiavellianism overlap in relation to theexperience of stress in everyday life.
As the proportion of older people in coming years is increasing, and as the organizations of home care and nursing homes grow to manage the expectations from the population, the debate on the quality of elderly care has gained a new momentum. Today, most decision-makers within elderly care in Sweden base their actions on the nation-wide annual quality report on elderly care from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Open Comparisons. This research presents findings from this national survey conducted in 2012, including a wide variety of indicators for elderly care services in all Swedish municipalities (N = 324) based on the responses from over 95,000 older persons. Study I presents that structural variables (i.e., budget resources and personnel training) overall did not correlate with older persons’ perceived quality of care, while processual variables (i.e., influence, respect, and access to information) showed moderate to strong correlations. Study II presents that overall satisfaction with care was strongly correlated with evaluation of relationship with care personnel and feelings of safeness. Study III presents an overall municipality quality-index with which comparisons between municipalities can be made, showing that the highest and the lowest ranked municipalities did not differ strongly on indicators of quality (d < 0.6). The conclusion is that there currently exists no reliable and valid measure which manages to tap quality of municipal elderly care, and that developing a new client-care centered climate scale should prove to be fruitful. Seeing how a person-centered theoretical approach is receiving support from this large national sample, implications for extending the theoretical frame of person-centeredness into psychological climate research in organizations is proposed.
Med den ökande andelen äldre personer i Sverige har diskussionen om kvalitet i äldreomsorgen tagit ny fart. Idag är äldreomsorgsbeslut baserat på den omfattande årsrapporten, Öppna jämförelser, som rankar alla Sveriges kommuner utifrån ett antal kvalitetsindikatorer. Relevant för området sociala studier och hälsa, visar sekundäranalyser av dessa data att Öppna jämförelser gör en missvisande rankning som inte tar hänsyn till hur de äldre har svarat, och inte heller påtalar hur små skillnaderna mellan högst och lägst rankade kommuner är. Genom att använda effektstorleksmått presenteras i artikeln ett nytt och mer korrekt sätt att ranka kommuner. Vidare föreslås i denna artikel att Öppna jämförelser i sina framtida mätningar inkluderar reliabla och valida mått på brukarorienterad omsorg då detta har visat sig ha positiva effekter på äldres upplevelse av omsorgskvalitet.
Maximizing satisfaction among the older persons is the goal of modern individualized elderly care and how to best achieve this is of relevance for anyone planning and providing for elderly care services. Purpose of the study: What predicts satisfaction with care among older persons can be conceived as a function of process (how care is performed), and the older person. Inspired by the long-standing person versus situation debate, the present research investigated the interplay between person- and process aspects in predicting satisfaction with elderly care. Design and method: A representative nationwide sample was analyzed, based on a questionnaire sent out to 95,000 individuals using elderly care services. Results: The results showed that person-related factors (i.e., anxiety, health, and loneliness) were significant predictors of satisfaction with care, although less strongly than process-related factors (i.e., treatment, safeness, and perceived staff- and time availability). Among the person-related factors, loneliness was the strongest predictor of satisfaction among older persons in nursing homes. Interestingly, a path analysis revealed that safeness and treatment function as mediators in linking loneliness to satisfaction. Implications: The results based on a large national sample demonstrate that the individual aging condition to a significant degree can be countered by a well-functioning care process, resulting in higher satisfaction with care among older persons.
The present study reports on the scope and size of sex differences in 30 personality facet traits, using one of the largest US samples to date (N = 320,128). The study was one of the first to utilize the open access version of the Five-Factor Model of personality (IPIP-NEO-120) in the large public. Overall, across age-groups 19–69 years old, women scored notably higher than men in Agreeableness (d = 0.58) and Neuroticism (d = 0.40). Specifically, women scored d > 0.50 in facet traits Anxiety, Vulnerability, Openness to Emotions, Altruism, and Sympathy, while men only scored slightly higher (d > 0.20) than women in facet traits Excitement-seeking and Openness to Intellect. Sex gaps in the five trait domains were fairly constant across all age-groups, with the exception for age-group 19–29 years old. The discussion centers on how to interpret effects sizes in sex differences in personality traits, and tentative consequences.
Over the years stress has been a term lacking one clear and specific definition. In general, the term stress has been used mostly as an explanation of a response or reaction to a stressor. A stressor can be of both physiological and behavioral character. The experience of stress can occur both due to a real or a perceived stressor. In this literature review, the concept of stress is viewed with insights from biological, psychological, and social perspectives. The stress response is described biologically with the central nervous system (CNS), the brain, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Social and psychological stress are concepts related to how stress is perceived by the mind and due to social surroundings which is described in relation to social support, self-efficacy, the locus of control and cognitive appraisal. Dealing with stress can be done through coping which refers to the individual capacity to handle a stressor and has generally been divided into two categories, active/passive coping and problem-focused/emotion-focused coping. Depending on the individual resources to cope with a stressor and the ability to decrease the stress response when needed, the long-term effects of stress can therefore vary between individuals. It has been found that positive coping (known as reducing stress) can increase the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) volume and decrease anxiety and depression. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), the hippocampus, and the amygdala are closely linked to the ACC and affect emotions, learning, and memory related to the stress response.
The aim of this study was evaluate the effect of a Swedish educational programme encouraging the use of bicycle helmets. Another to important aim was to use a theoretical model to explain which factors contribute to the prediction of cyclists' intention to use a helmet. A non-representative sample consisting of employees working for the same insurance company located at three different locations in Sweden was selected. Two served as an experiment group and the third as a control or comparison group. Measurements were taken before and after the campaign. The educational campaign was held by the Swedish Falck Ambulans. The session lasted for one hour. The emphasis of the campaign was to focus on accidents and injuries to the brain when not wearing a helmet. The participants were also given an opportunity to sign a bicycle helmet contract on receipt of which they received a helmet free of charge. Data were collected using a web-based self-report survey. The results revealed that the proportion of people who used a helmet when biking to work had increased substantially amongst those having taken part in the session. It also showed that after the campaign the intention to use the helmet was greater amongst the experiment group than amongst the control group. The results showed that the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was effective in the predicting of the intention to wear a helmet. The strongest predictor was perceived behavioural control followed by subjective norm. The weakest TPB predictor was the attitude. The prediction of helmet wearing intention was significantly improved when anticipated regret and past behaviour were added to the model. The results from the Transtheoretical model showed that participants in the experimental group had on average moved one step closer to a change. In sum, it could be concluded that an educational campaign, which also includes elements of endorsement (i.e. to be given a bicycle helmet when signing a contract to use the same), significantly increases the likelihood of using a bicycle helmet.
Purpose - User-oriented care, defined as individualized assisting behaviors, is the dominant approach within elderly care today. Yet, there is little known about its conceptual structure. This paper proposes that user-oriented care has a bi-partite structure which may be decomposed into the two dimensions of task and relation. Design/methodology/approach - Care workers were "shadowed" (i.e. observed) at their work (n=391 rated interactions). User-oriented care was assessed along ten process quality indicators targeting the acts of caregiving (i.e. task focus, relation focus, involvement, time-use, body language, autonomy, respect, warmth, encouragement, and information) in two elderly care settings, i.e. home care and nursing home. Observations added up to 45 hours. Findings - Principal component analyses confirmed the proposed two-factor structure of user-oriented care. Specifically, the user-oriented care indicators loaded on two distinct factors, i.e. task and relation. The underlying structure of user-oriented care revealed to be invariant across the two settings. However, the results revealed interesting structural differences in terms of explained variance and the magnitude of factor loadings in the home care and nursing home settings. Differences also emerged specifically pertaining to the indicators of autonomy and time-use. These findings suggest that user-oriented behavior may to some extent denote different acts of caregiving and what may be called task- and relation-orientation may be loaded with different meanings in these two care settings. Originality/value - This is the first study investigating user-oriented behavior in the context of elderly care using a quantitative observational approach. The authors propose that the observed differences between the two care settings are primarily not due to better elderly care work in home care, but due to some inherent differences between these two contexts of care (e.g. better health and living at home). © Ali Kazemi and Petri J. Kajonius. Published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Conflicts are part of our everyday life and the field of psychology describes how specific personality traits relate to specific conflict styles. However, the question remaining is why these relations exist? Recently, personality neuroscience has begun pinning down the neurobiology of personality traits, providing a deeper understanding of the human behavior. The present thesis utilizes the Five Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1990) of personality to investigate the neurobiology underlying the inverse relation between the specific personality trait of Agreeableness and dominating conflict style (a conflict management style characterized by aggressiveness, authoritarianism and/or need for dominance). Agreeableness overlaps both empathy and aggression which can work as each other’s opposites in explaining conflict behaviors. The goal of the thesis was to investigate whether the inverse relation between Agreeableness and dominating conflict style can be explained by brain regions. Brain regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex and regions involving anterior cingulate appear to be the most prominent neurobiology describing the relation. Serotonin is the neural substance involved in most cortical and subcortical brain structures and it also regulates the suppression of aggression, making it an important substance both within Agreeableness and the preference for dominating conflict style. The thesis will sum up with a discussion including some limitations within the research and further aspects such the consequences of the findings will be discussed.
Individuals exhibit different reactions to stress, both between individuals and within individuals at different time points. A person’s current emotional state is one of the primary factors that influences how they handle a stressful situation. Someone who is feelingdepressed or anxious may not cope with stress as well as when they are feeling at peace. Another factor that impacts an individual’s ability to cope with stress is being, or at least feeling, in control of the stressful situation. Uncontrollable stress can cause greater emotional disruption and negatively affect behaviour and motivation. Stress-related psychiatric disorders are common today, and research in this field is essential to help individuals improve their stress-coping abilities. In this study, we measured physiological stress responses (heart rate variability and skin conductance) while participants performed a widelyused stress induction task and a novel stress induction task that systematically varied controllability. Before the tasks, participants reported their baseline levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Our goal was to investigate if negative emotional states predicted the physiological stress response and if stress reactivity to the well-established task was related to stress reactivity when facing an uncontrollable stressor. We hypothesised that individuals who experience more negative emotional states would exhibit a stronger physiological stress response to both tasks. The data we obtained from 61 participants indicated that participants reacted differently to the two stress tasks, but we did not observe any significant impact of depression, anxiety, or stress levels.
Why is motivation important? The answer is simple to most of us: it is what makes people push forward and act. Intrinsic motivation is the kind of motivation that arises from within a person, making her or him strive towards a goal for no other reward than the feeling it will bring. Additionally, this kind of motivation has shown correlations with enhanced learning, creativity, performance, optimal development, and well-being. While intrinsic motivation has long been a topic within the field of psychology, the neural correlates underlying it have only recently become of interest for researchers, and studies have shown some interesting but also contradictory findings. Therefore, the aim of this literature review thesis is to investigate the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation further. Firstly, a background review of motivation in general and intrinsic motivation in particular is presented, focusing on concepts such as the self-determination theory, flow, and cognitive evaluation theory. This is followed by a chapter on motivation- and intrinsic motivation from a neuroscientific perspective, concerning concepts such as the reward system, the undermining effect, and studies examining the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation. These studies show that there was activity in several different areas when participants were intrinsically motivated. However, a frequent pattern of activity in dopaminergic pathways involving the striatum and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was detected in most studies, indicating the involvement of these areas in particular when a person is intrinsically motivated.