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The ongoing COVID-19 epidemic has had a great impact on social activities and the economy. The usage technical analysis tools to provide a more accurate and efficient reference for epidemic control measures is of great significance. This paper analyzes the characteristics and deficiencies of the existing technical methods, such as regression model, simulation calculation, differential equation and so on. By analyzing past outbreak cases and comparing the epidemic prevention measures of different cities, we discuss the importance of early and timely prevention in controlling the epidemic, and the importance of analyzing and formulating plans in advance. We then make the key observation that the spread of the virus is related to the topology of the urban network. This paper further proposes an epidemic analysis model of the optimized PageRank model, and gives a ranking algorithm for virus transmission risk levels based on road nodes, forming a visual risk warning level map, and applies the algorithm to the epidemic analysis of Yuegezhuang area in Beijing. Finally, more in-depth research directions and suggestions for prevention and control measures are put forward. © 2023 SPIE.
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The COVID-19 pandemic created enormously difficult decisions for individuals trying to navigate both the risks of the pandemic and the demands of everyday life. Good decision making in such scenarios can have life and death consequences. For this reason, it is important to understand what drives risk assessments during a pandemic, and to investigate the ways that these assessments might deviate from ideal risk assessments. In a preregistered online study of U.S. residents (N = 841) using two blocks of vignettes about potential COVID exposure scenarios, we investigated the effects of moral judgment, importance, and intentionality on COVID infection risk assessments. Results demonstrate that risk judgments are sensitive to factors unrelated to the objective risks of infection. Specifically, activities that are morally justified are perceived as safer while those that might subject people to blame or culpability, are seen as riskier, even when holding objective risk fixed. Similarly, unintentional COVID exposures are judged as safer than intentional COVID exposures. While the effect sizes are small, these findings may have implications for public health and risk communications, particularly if public health officials are themselves subject to these biases.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has brought enormous challenges to law enforcement officials, in the sense of developing solutions for maintaining procedural progress. Although a large part of the judicial processes were already being processed in electronic format, some acts were still carried out in person, such as hearings. The National Council of Justice instituted hearings by videoconference. However, case analysis suggests the need to improve these audiences. The purpose of this article is, through the empirical analysis of some cases reported in the media, to analyze the compatibility of the instructional and trial hearings with the due constitutional process. © 2022, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. All rights reserved.
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PurposeThe paper intends to comprehend the pattern of usage of FinTech services among bank customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper also examines the factors influencing the adoption of FinTech services by using the constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM) together with highlighting the issues faced in using FinTech services in Assam.Design/methodology/approachThe research is empirical in nature. Data have been collected from 1,066 prime earners of the households having a bank account.FindingsThere has been an upsurge in the use of FinTech services in the area of study. Apart from government and private service employees, businessmen, self-employed professionals, many daily-wage earners and agriculturists have also experienced an increase in their frequency of usage of FinTech services thereby making technology-based financial services an indispensable tool in enhancing access, improving inclusivity in the times of crisis and aftermath. Government support, trust, perceived usefulness (PU), attitude and social influence have a positive influence on FinTech adoption;however, perceived risks impact respondents' trust towards FinTech services thereby requiring necessary measures to evaluate organizations' preparedness to deal with cyber threats.Originality/valueThe paper provides insight into the factors impacting the adoption of FinTech services to stimulate superior connectivity infrastructure, robust security measures and maintaining financial stability with adequate supervisory and monitoring regulations to enhance trust towards FinTech services during the crisis and aftermath.
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Although the COVID-19 pandemic impacted individuals who bet on sports, sports betting tipsters (SBTs;i.e., individuals who provide professional tips on the outcome of sporting events) were arguably among the most affected groups. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to explore how SBTs in Turkey were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including alternate forms of gambling engagement (e.g., e-sports betting). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 85 SBTs aged between 20 and 48 years. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common themes. Based on the qualitative analysis, four themes emerged: (i) the meaning and role of sports betting, (ii) the effects of the pandemic on life and sports betting, (iii) comparing e-sports betting vs. traditional sports betting, and (iv) possible sports betting behavior if the pandemic continues. SBTs reported experiencing psychological distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic's cancellation of sporting events. More specifically, SBTs reported a sense of emptiness because of the lack of sports betting. Furthermore, SBT reported suffering a loss of income and turning to e-sports betting during the pandemic. However, the majority of SBTs did not find betting on e-sports as exciting as traditional betting but reported they would continue to engage in e-sports betting if traditional sports betting was not available. The findings of this study can contribute to a better understanding of the impact of SBTs on individuals and further provide practical implications for policymakers to promote a safe, sustainable, and long-term growth of the sports betting industry in Turkey.
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Purpose - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that aims to present a comprehensive view of the auditing ethics literature by unboxing 40 years of efforts in the field. Design/methodology/approach - This study combined bibliometric, social network and content analysis by analyzing 114 articles published in accounting and top business ethics journals on the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2021.Findings - The results show a rising interest in this topic and reveal auditors' ethical decision-making and moral reasoning as the most discussed topics in the literature. The work also clusters the literature according to keywords and scopes, identifying literature gaps and suggesting new avenues for future research.Practical implications - The research results assist provide an overarching image of the auditing ethics field. In addition, these results draw possible future avenues to bridge the void in the current auditing ethics literature by presenting indispensable directions for potential research. For example, future research could pay more attention to whistleblowing, fraud, personal auditor characteristics, auditor ethical sensitivity, auditor ethical conflict, ethical climate and underreporting of time. Moreover, the rapidly changing business environment necessitates the auditing ethics research to move to more practical implications to mitigate previous mistakes and avoid any future risks.Originality/value - All crises are an ideal breeding ground to motivate fraud and audit failures. In fact, auditing ethics research has been subordinated to the different economic crises. However, despite increasing awareness of the topic's relevance, no comprehensive study focuses on auditing ethics literature. Now, the devastating effects of the COVID-19 crisis are producing a new wave of financial distresses and avoiding former mistakes is timelier than ever. With this novel and integrated approach, this work goes one step forward, developing a comprehensive picture of the auditing ethics literature.
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Background: To avoid public health risks, all governments ensure monitoring and treatment of mentally ill persons if they offend and assess their level of criminal responsibility. The Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China (2013) instituted special procedures. However, there are few articles in English which explain the implementation of mandatory treatment procedures in China. Methods: We collected 5,262 qualified documents from 2013 to 2021 from the China Judgments Documents Online. We analyzed social demographic characteristics, trial-related information as well as the mandatory treatment-related content, to investigate the mandatory treatment of China's mentally ill offenders without criminal responsibility, from 2013 to 2021. Simple descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used to compare differences among several types of documents. Results: There was an overall change trend of the number of documents: increasing year by year from 2013 to 2019 after the implementation of the new law, but with sharp decrease in 2020 and 2021 during covid-19 pandemic. From 2013 to 2021, a total of 3,854 people had applications made for mandatory treatment, of whom 3,747 (97.2%) were given mandatory treatment, 107 (2.8%) had applications rejected. "Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders" was the most common diagnosis in both groups and all offenders receiving mandatory treatment (3,747, 100.0%) were considered to have no criminal responsibility. A total of 1,294 patients had applications made for relief of mandatory treatment, of whom 827 (63.9%) were subsequently approved for relief, 467 (36.1%) were rejected. A total of 118 patients had applications for relief two or more times, and 56 (47.5%) were finally relieved. Conclusion: Our study presents the Chinese model of a criminal mandatory treatment system to the international community which has been in operation since the implementation of the new law. Legislatory changes and covid-19 pandemic can have effect on the number of mandatory treatment cases. Patients, their close relatives and mandatory treatment institutions have the right to apply for relief from mandatory treatment, but the final decision in China is taken by the court.
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Development of standardized diagnostic instruments has facilitated the systematic characterization of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in clinical and research settings. However, overemphasis on scores from specific instruments has significantly detracted from the original purpose of these tools. Rather than provide a definitive "answer," or even a confirmation of diagnosis, standardized diagnostic instruments were designed to aid clinicians in the process of gathering information about social communication, play, and repetitive and sensory behaviors relevant to diagnosis and treatment planning. Importantly, many autism diagnostic instruments are not validated for certain patient populations, including those with severe vision, hearing, motor, and/or cognitive impairments, and they cannot be administered via a translator. In addition, certain circumstances, such as the need to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), or behavioral factors (e.g., selective mutism) may interfere with standardized administration or scoring procedures, rendering scores invalid. Thus, understanding the uses and limitations of specific tools within specific clinical or research populations, as well as similarities or differences between these populations and the instrument validation samples, is paramount. Accordingly, payers and other systems must not mandate the use of specific tools in cases when their use would be inappropriate. To ensure equitable access to appropriate assessment and treatment services, it is imperative that diagnosticians be trained in best practice methods for the assessment of autism, including if, how, and when to appropriately employ standardized diagnostic instruments.
Subject(s)
Autism Spectrum Disorder , Autistic Disorder , Child Behavior Disorders , Child , Humans , Autism Spectrum Disorder/diagnosis , Autism Spectrum Disorder/psychology , Autistic Disorder/diagnosis , Communication , Psychiatric Status Rating ScalesABSTRACT
Mitigating societal threats--such as climate change and pandemics--requires widespread attitudinal and behavioral changes. Yet, even in the face of imminent societal threats, people often fail to change their attitudes and behaviors enough to mitigate such risks. I suggest that failure to respond sufficiently to societal threats stems partially from inattention to some consequences of these threats. People attend primarily to proximal and vivid outcomes when making decisions;as a result, they may often not attend to consequences of societal threats that are in the future, that primarily impact others, or that accumulate across sets of events. Because attending to outcomes is key to heavily weighting and accurately judging those outcomes, such patterns of inattention may constrain people's responses to societal threats--even when they hold values and beliefs that imply a preference for aggressive risk-mitigating actions. Across three essays, I present nine studies which support hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework. In the first essay I examine the causal role of attention in temporal discounting of environmental rewards. In the second essay, I examine whether a decision analysis procedure that draws attention to unattended outcomes and values can increase intentions to mitigate risks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the third essay, I examine people's judgments of the disjunctive risk that at least one (i.e., one or more) of multiple negative events in a set will take place in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic--and whether segregating events into subsets (which should increase attention to each subset) can improve risk judgments and reduces intentions to engage in risky-behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Simulated (or standardized) patients (SPs) play a crucial role in the teaching and assessment of communication skills in healthcare. As this methodology has evolved, the SP educator has emerged as its own profession. In 2017, an international team from the Association of SP Educators (ASPE) published Standards of Best Practice (SOBPs) to guide practitioners. Investigators sought to assess the applicability of the SOBPs to the diverse contexts in which SP educators work around the world. In this study, investigators addressed two questions: 1. Are SOBPs relevant to SP educators around the world?;and 2. How can the SOBPs be enhanced or altered in future iterations? Investigators used 60-minute, semi-structured interviews with 12 respondents from 11 countries. Researchers used purposive sampling. Respondents were intentionally recruited from 6 continents. Respondents included individuals who are active SP educators, but who are not ASPE members. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data were analyzed using NVivo and investigators used thematic analysis. While respondents provided many insights into the SOBPs and SP methodology, preliminary analysis has revealed three main themes. First, respondents described the role of the SOBPs in affirming current practices and guiding the development of future practices, including domains of safety in simulation and quality control. Second, respondents described how the SOBPs enable professional development through empowering evidence-based practice and promoting scholarship. Third, respondents offered recommendations for adaptation of the SOBPs to online simulation in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Successful simulation requires the utilization of practices most likely to lead to optimal learner outcomes. This study indicates that SP educators around the world view ASPE's SOBPs as a powerful tool providing both guidance and flexibility. Results: suggest that the SOBPs serve as a valuable guide for working with SPs in diverse cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Patient Education & Counseling is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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Due to precautions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, many courses were forced to shift online, thus quickly increasing the prevalence of online courses and video-recorded lectures. Recent data on student learning indicate that student engagement suffers when courses are delivered virtually;anecdotally, this finding is an agreement with instructors' experiences. Perhaps the decrease in student engagement could be due to their involvement in other activities while they "attend" lectures online (e.g., doing dishes, folding laundry). In three experiments, I evaluated the impact of various factors that could be influencing learning online-specifically, I manipulated lecturer fluency, information modality, and feedback and measured their effect on students' metacognitive judgments and actual learning performance. All experiments were conducted online. In Experiment 1, lecturer fluency (fluent or disfluent) and information modality (audio or video) were manipulated in a repeated measures design (Time 1 and Time 2). Students in the fluent lecturer conditions not only reported higher judgments of learning (JOLs) but also performed better on a measure of actual learning compared to those in the disfluent lecturer conditions. Additionally, students performed better when they listened to the lectures rather than viewed them (i.e., an audio superiority effect was observed). Further, student-participants' reported lower JOLs and exhibited higher learning performance at Time 2 (versus Time 1). Therefore, Experiment 2 aimed to further explore the impact of instructional modality (replicating elements of Experiment 1) in addition to feedback. Participants were provided false positive feedback, false negative feedback or were not provided any feedback after being presented a video or audio lecture. As in Experiment 1, JOLs decreased while actual learning performance increased at Time 2. Additionally, there was a significant effect of false feedback on participants' JOLs. Participants that received false negative feedback demonstrated lower JOLs at Time 2 than those that did not receive any feedback. However, unlike Experiment 1, there were no significant effects of modality on JOLs or learning performance. I next sought to investigate how feedback would impact study choice. Thus, Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2, but participants were asked whether they wanted to restudy the lecture material prior to taking a test at both Time 1 and Time 2 (with feedback only preceding their Time 2 choice). While there were no significant main effects of the manipulated variables (i.e., modality or feedback), participants that chose to restudy the materials showed increased learning performance compared to those that chose not to restudy. The findings from these three experiments have important implications for online learning. For instance, feedback might be ineffective in improving students' learning unless it is individually tailored and concrete. The results also indicate that courses should be designed such that the same test format is administered consistently. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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Introduction: Till date, no proven therapy exists for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), though different types of treatment modalities are being practiced around the world. Different studies regarding Convalescent Plasma (CP) therapy from COVID-19 recovered donors have shown favorable results with fewer adverse consequences. In this systematic review, we aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of CP as a therapy for COVID-19. Material(s) and Method(s): The English language databases of PubMed, Google Scholar, and Sci-enceDirect were searched up to 22 May 2020. Eligibility for inclusion, risk of bias assessment, and data extraction from the included studies were determined and a narrative synthesis was conducted. Result(s): A total of 12 studies were selected for review. The overall risks of bias were moderate to high. The results revealed significance in the initiation of CP therapy during the early stages of viremia from a safety and efficacy viewpoint. The patients also received concomitant drugs and other supportive therapies in most cases. Some cases of mortality were reported in 3 studies. Viral loads were documented to decrease and become negative in 8 studies within 3-26 days post-transfu-sion. The improvement in clinical symptoms following CP therapy was demonstrated in 9 studies. Most of the patients experienced very few adverse effects. Conclusion(s): The rational practice of CP therapy based on a risk-benefit judgment can prove to be an efficacious therapeutic option as a last resort until the approval of any therapeutic and/or prophy-lactic agent(s). The substantial randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are necessary to validate the effectiveness of such therapy.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.
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The joint proliferation of data-driven interfaces in public life and data science in organizations makes reasoning with uncertainty in data visualizations critically important. Lay people and data analysts alike make visual judgments about data almost daily---whether relying on a deluge of Covid-19 visualizations to manage risks to personal and public health, or using exploratory data analysis to drive business decisions. In order to design data visualization software that supports statistically rigorous judgments in these contexts, the visualization community must understand how people reason with uncertainty visualizations. My dissertation addresses cognitive mechanisms that chart users rely on when reasoning with uncertainty: (1) automatic perceptual processing, through which the visual system makes intuitive inferences;(2) heuristic strategies, used to interpret visualizations and make consequential decisions;and (3) model-based thinking, whereby analysts compare observed patterns in data with counterfactual predictions from models (either mental or realized in software) that might explain the data. As a capstone to my thesis, I present Exploratory Visual Modeling (EVM), a prototype visual data analysis tool that deploys these cognitive mechanisms to support more rigorous exploratory data analysis. The tool enables analysts to express their provisional mental models of data generating process as formal statistical models and to check predictions from these models against observed patterns in data. I present insights from the design process of EVM, as well as considerations for evaluating the design hypothesis that the model checks enabled by EVM facilitate improvements in generative thinking during exploratory data analysis. EVM deploys automatic and heuristic cognitive mechanisms in service of model-based thinking, providing a proof-of-concept for new ways of designing visualization software. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Negative emotions can negatively bias social judgment. However, these emotions can be tempered when expressed, suggesting that emotional disclosure might enable fairer evaluations. Three projects confirmed this prediction. Subjects who disclosed about a past betrayal, compared to those who suppressed, felt closer to their betrayers—the first step toward forgiveness. Disclosing the emotions evoked by viewing an assault, compared with suppressing those feelings, reduced victim blaming. Disclosure did not reduce blaming of victimizers, indicating that disclosure addresses specific emotions rather than calms general arousal. A recent study showed that disclosing a personal travail of any kind promotes acceptance of COVID-19 facts among political conservatives. Collectively, these results indicate that expressing troubling thoughts and feelings can enhance social judgment. © The Author(s) 2023.
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Hindsight bias occurs when outcome information distorts people's memories of past beliefs or exaggerates perceptions of outcomes' foreseeability or inevitability. We investigated whether community and university participants in Canada and the U.S. exhibited hindsight bias for COVID-19. In Experiment 1 (N = 175), participants made original judgments about COVID-19 outcomes. Two months later, participants learned outcome information and recalled their original judgments (memory design). They also rated the foreseeability and inevitability of COVID-19. In Experiment 2 (N = 754), we used a hypothetical design. Participants learned outcome information before estimating how naive peers would have responded 2 months earlier. Participants exhibited hindsight bias in memory and hypothetical estimations. However, they rated COVID-19 as unforeseeable and avoidable and generally did not exhibit differences in foreseeability and inevitability ratings across the two timepoints. Thus, hindsight bias for COVID-19 differs across memory distortions, foreseeability, and inevitability and extends to hypothetical judgments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement Hindsight can cloud the past by biasing people's beliefs about what was known prior to an outcome. Hindsight can also bias people's beliefs about the foreseeability or inevitability of an outcome. We explored hindsight bias for COVID-19 in two experiments. In both experiments, Canadian and U.S. participants made foresight judgments about several COVID-19 outcomes (e.g., case rates in various countries). Participants also judged how foreseeable and inevitable COVID-19 was. Two months later, we recruited two groups of participants: (a) a sample that previously completed the foresight judgments and (b) a new sample. Both groups received outcome information. In Experiment 1, group (a) had to ignore their current outcome knowledge and recall their original judgments for the COVID-19 outcomes. They also rated their current perceptions of foreseeability and inevitability. In Experiment 2, group (b) had to ignore their current outcome knowledge and estimate how a naive peer would have responded to the same questions 2 months prior. We observed hindsight bias: Outcome information biased people's judgments about what they, or someone else, previously believed about various COVID-19 outcomes (e.g., death rates). Additionally, Canadian and U.S. residents perceived COVID-19 as unforeseeable ("I never could have seen this coming") and avoidable ("this didn't have to happen"). However, they generally did not demonstrate differences in foreseeability and inevitability ratings across the two timepoints. This work has applied significance for the field because it is one of the few studies to investigate hindsight bias for a real world, evolving event that is negative and self-relevant for everyone. Our results reveal the importance of studying hindsight bias for COVID-19 through various measures to determine how it affects other types of judgments (e.g., evaluations of public health authorities, vaccination tendencies, etc.);this can inform public health practices aimed at mitigating COVID-19 and future public health crises. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of public policy measures have been developed to curb the spread of the virus. However, little is known about the attitudes towards stay-at-home orders expressed on social media despite the fact that social media are central platforms for expressing and debating personal attitudes. To address this gap, we analyze the prevalence and framing of attitudes towards stay-at-home policies, as expressed on Twitter in the early months of the pandemic. We focus on three aspects of tweets: whether they contain an attitude towards stay-at-home measures, whether the attitude was for or against, and the moral justification for the attitude, if any. We collect and annotate a dataset of stay-at-home tweets and create classifiers that enable large-scale analysis of the relationship between moral frames and stay-at-home attitudes and their temporal evolution. Our findings suggest that frames of care are correlated with a supportive stance, whereas freedom and oppression signify an attitude against stay-at-home directives. There was widespread support for stay-at-home orders in the early weeks of lockdowns, followed by increased resistance toward the end of May and the beginning of June 2020. The resistance was associated with moral judgment that mapped to political divisions. © 2022 IEEE.
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Innovation in causal inference and implementation of electronic health record systems are rapidly transforming medical care. In this dissertation, we present three examples in which use of methods in causal inference and large electronic health record data address existing challenges in medical decision-making. First, we use principles of causal inference to examine the structure of randomized trials of biomarker targets, which have produced divergent results and controversial clinical guidelines for management of hypertension and other chronic diseases. We discuss four key threats to the validity of trials of this design. Second, we use methods in causal inference for adjustment of time-varying confounding to estimate the effect of time-varying treatment strategies for hypertension. We report the results of a study which used longitudinal electronic health record data from a prospective virtual cohort of veterans. Third, we use individual-level electronic health record data to predict the need for critical care resources during surges in COVID-19 cases, to aid hospital administrators with resource allocation in periods of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Amid a long period of deskilling in art school curricula, craft has been denigrated as inferior to art and confining for artists, but can craft liberate imagination? The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between an adult learner's self-perceived capacity for imaginative expression in representational drawing and the development of her artisanal judgment during a self-directed program of classical study, online and in-person, over a period of 22 months (mostly during the coronavirus pandemic). The researcher created, coded, and analyzed drawings, photographs, field notes, diaries, and video recordings to track cognitive events and situative factors encountered in the process of learning to draw. Rooted in Kantian philosophy and guided by Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing, an analytic interpretation of findings revealed the role of knowledge (empirical, axiomatic, tacit) and epistemically felicitous falsehoods in achieving constructive perception, a capability suited to imaginative expression in drawing and the predominant challenge of navigating complex attentional dynamics. Findings also described the role of embodied modalities, which constituted a somatic activity system, in grounding cognition and supporting learning transfer. Exploration of communities of practice served as a rite of passage, bringing to light artistic apparatus and valuable opportunities for peer learning. The inquiry exposed the author's unhelpful assumptions about imagination and identified methods for developing it that could be earned, not merely gifted: elaborative sketching, engaging with art, visual research, perceptual and recollective drawing, constructive drawing, and problem finding. This firsthand processual account of adult learning recommends a holistic approach to constructivist pedagogy over naive, or trivial conceptualizations of constructivism in drawing curricula. In addition to helping novice artists heal the breach between skill-building and imagination, the study contributes to literature, in educational psychology and social sciences generally, on adult learning and cognition in the arts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Optimal mental health is a global and increasingly pressing issue. Major events in recent times, such as the effects of global warming and the Covid-19 pandemic, have had undeniable negative effects on people's well-being. The mental health of young people is of particular importance: strategies to deal with adversity are learned and developed at this stage of life. Success aids the likelihood of being a lifelong resilient and hopefully flourishing individual, whereas difficulty may leave an individual vulnerable to slipping into persistent mental ill health. Given this, there seems an obvious and necessary role for educational institutions in promoting such strategies and thus improving the well-being of students. Positive psychology has a valuable contribution to make in this regard, as achieving optimal mental health is perhaps its primary purpose, and positive psychology interventions (PPIs) are broad-based and cost-effective to implement when compared with more traditional clinical approaches. They are also technology friendly, meaning they may be disbursed widely. The research in this thesis explores the use of several PPIs in school and university settings with the aim of building significant and lasting well-being improvements for young people. It works to find the most effective interventions and to understand what makes them so. Finally, it seeks to create real-world value by considering how such interventions may be designed and implemented in an educational context. The thesis comprises four studies. The first study used a positive diary exercise in a sample of primary school children. The exercise resulted in a significant increase in happiness and reduction in depressive symptoms during and up to three months after the intervention. A tertile split revealed interestingly different response profiles for participants depending on baseline well-being. A similar intervention in the second study found significant associated improvements in academic performance. The third study applied two PPIs in samples of undergraduates. The first part also used the diary exercise, which found there to be less convincing evidence of its effectiveness when compared with the first two studies. The second part used a signature strengths intervention, which resulted in marked and sustained improvements in self-esteem and life satisfaction. This study highlighted the differing outcomes that different interventions may have, particularly across age groups. It also raised questions as to why certain well-being markers improve more or last longer than others, suggesting that an individual's sense of autonomy or control may be a factor. These questions shaped the fourth study, which was more exploratory. It used a novel exercise-framed PPI to determine whether a sense of control, as measured by judgments of contingency, is linked with well-being, and whether positively manipulating such judgments might lead to improvements thereof. The complexity of the experimental paradigm meant that findings were inconclusive in this regard, but it opened the door to future work that might be able to distil more robust effects. Overall, this thesis finds that PPIs demonstrate huge promise for mental health improvements and that they are a feasible option for incorporation into an educational curriculum. However, it seems they are not universal aids and careful consideration needs to be given to the type of intervention used and who the target recipients are. Age and baseline well-being are two important factors, for example. If properly implemented, PPIs could be valuable tools to build resilience and enable young people to flourish now and through the rest of their lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This research investigated how mental fatigue is associated with moral judgments during the COVID-19 pandemic and studied the moderating effect of social support. We used self-report questionnaires to collect data from 4,042 people. We assessed peoples mental fatigue and social support during the pandemic, and designed nine moral dilemmas based on the background of COVID-19 to measure peoples moral judgments. The results showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic mental fatigue had a significant impact on moral judgments. Individuals with higher mental fatigue were more likely to make more utilitarian choices, while social support moderated the relationship between mental fatigue and moral judgments. When experiencing mental fatigue, individuals with low, compared to high, social support are more likely to rely on utilitarianism to make moral judgments.