Awareness of meaning and quest for meaning: The mechanisms between future orientation and prosociality among youth during pandemic.

Introduction: The positive relationship between future orientation and prosocial tendency has been consistently reported. However, the possible mechanism has not been examined yet. Previous research revealed the positive relationship between future orientation and meaning in life, as well as between meaning in life and prosocial tendency. Hence, it is hypothesized that the two components of meaning in life (presence of meaning and search for meaning) possibly mediate the relationship between future orientation and prosocial tendency. Methods: During the first half of 2020, 430 Hong Kong youths aged 15-35 (male: 30.5%; female: 69.5%) were recruited to participate an online cross-sectional survey. The survey included three scales: (1) The Scale for Measuring Adult's Prosocialness, (2) Consideration of Future Consequence Scale, and (3) Meaning in Life Questionnaire. Results: The key findings showed that: (1) females had higher level of prosocial tendency than males, and (2) significant partial mediating effects of both presence of meaning and search for meaning on the relationship between future orientation and prosocial tendency. Nevertheless, the multi-group mediation model did not show significant gender difference. Discussion: These findings implied that future-oriented and meaning-focused interventions could possibly enhance youth's sense of meaning in everyday life and foster their meaning searching tendency, which further strengthen the positive effect of their future orientation on prosocial tendency, even during life adversities.

Facebook Intrusion as a Mediator Between Positive Capital and General Distress: A Cross-Cultural Study.

Background: Social networking sites (SNSs) play an important role in many aspects of life nowadays, and it seems to be crucial to explore their impact on human well-being and functioning. The main aim of the study was to examine the mediating role of Facebook intrusion between positive capital and general distress. Positive capital was considered as comprising self-esteem, ego-resiliency, and self-control, while general distress was seen as having three dimensions: depression, anxiety, and stress. Methods: The sample consisted of N = 4,495 participants (M = 22.96 years, SD = 5.46) from 14 countries: Australia, Cyprus, Greece, Hong Kong, Lithuania, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States. We used the following methods: the Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire (FIQ), the Self-Esteem Scale (SES), the Brief Self-Control Scale (SCS), The Ego Resiliency Revised Scale and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21). Results: We found that Facebook intrusion was a mediator between self-esteem and general distress and between self-control and general distress. Limitations: The present study was based on a cross-sectional study, and the measures used were self-report measures. The majority of the participants were recruited using convenience sampling. Conclusions: The present findings contribute to a better understanding on how the social media have impact on individual mental health. Implications for future studies are discussed.

Perception and Evaluation of 23 Positive Emotions in Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

Positive emotions are linked to numerous benefits, but not everyone appreciates the same kinds of positive emotional experiences. We examine how distinct positive emotions are perceived and whether individuals' perceptions are linked to how societies evaluate those emotions. Participants from Hong Kong and Netherlands rated 23 positive emotions based on their individual perceptions (positivity, arousal, and socially engaging) and societal evaluations (appropriate, valued, and approved of). We found that (1) there were cultural differences in judgments about all six aspects of positive emotions; (2) positivity, arousal, and social engagement predicted emotions being positively regarded at the societal level in both cultures; and (3) that positivity mattered more for the Dutch participants, although arousal and social engagement mattered more in Hong Kong for societal evaluations. These findings provide a granular map of the perception and evaluation of distinct positive emotions in two cultures and highlight the role of cultures in the understanding how positive emotions are perceived and evaluated.

Cultural Differences in the Hedonic Rewards of Recalling Kindness: Priming Cultural Identity with Language.

Recent theory suggests that members of interdependent (collectivist) cultures prioritize in-group happiness, whereas members of independent (individualist) cultures prioritize personal happiness (Uchida et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 223-239 Uchida et al., 2004). Thus, the well-being of friends and family may contribute more to the emotional experience of individuals with collectivist rather than individualist identities. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants to recall a kind act they had done to benefit either close others (e.g., family members) or distant others (e.g., strangers). Study 1 primed collectivist and individualist cultural identities by asking bicultural undergraduates (N = 357) from Hong Kong to recall kindnesses towards close versus distant others in both English and Chinese, while Study 2 compared university students in the USA (n = 106) and Hong Kong (n = 93). In Study 1, after being primed with the Chinese language (but not after being primed with English), participants reported significantly improved affect valence after recalling kind acts towards friends and family than after recalling kind acts towards strangers. Extending this result, in Study 2, respondents from Hong Kong (but not the USA) who recalled kind acts towards friends and family showed higher positive affect than those who recalled kind acts towards strangers. These findings suggest that people with collectivist cultural identities may have relatively more positive and less negative emotional experiences when they focus on prosocial interactions with close rather than weak ties. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-020-00029-3.

The relationships between self-efficacy, self-control, chronotype, procrastination and sleep problems in young adults.

The main aim of our study was to examine whether there was a relationship between psychological characteristics such as self-efficacy, self-control and chronotype as well as procrastination on the one hand and sleep problems on the other. There were 315 young adults aged between 18 and 27 years (M = 20.57). We used the General Procrastination Scale, the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), Brief Self-Control Scale, the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Our results indicated that low self-efficacy, low self-control and eveningness were positive predictors of procrastination. The reciprocal relationship exists between procrastination and sleep problems. Procrastination positively contributed to sleep problems, whereas sleep problems were a negative predictor of procrastination.

'Jumping to conclusions' data-gathering bias in psychosis and other psychiatric disorders - Two meta-analyses of comparisons between patients and healthy individuals.

There has been an increase in attention to studying shared mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders. The 'Jumping to conclusions' (JTC(1)) bias, a tendency to make decisions with certainty based on insufficient information, has been reported in patients with psychosis, and process-based treatment protocols targeting this bias have recently been developed. This review aimed to investigate to what extent the JTC bias, measured by various tasks, is associated with psychotic disorders and other psychiatric disorders using a meta-analytic approach. We examined 6864 articles published between 1990 and 2015, and meta-analysed 46 studies. The first meta-analysis included 40 effect sizes comparing patients with schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorders and healthy controls. There was a hastier data-gathering style in patients with psychosis than healthy individuals, with a moderate aggregated effect size. The second meta-analysis included 18 effect sizes comparing patients with non-psychotic disorders and healthy controls. There was marked heterogeneity in effect sizes and evidence for publication bias. After removal of outliers, the aggregated effect size for JTC was not statistically significant. A planned subgroup analysis showed no significant effect of JTC in depression. Other diagnostic subgroups yielded small non-significant results. Therefore, our findings do not support the suggestion that JTC is a transdiagnostic phenomenon beyond psychosis.