Alone but flowing: The effects of autotelic personality and extraversion on solitary flow.

OBJECTIVE/BACKGROUND: Flow, a psychological state of intense engagement in and enjoyment of an activity, can arise during both solitary and socially interactive experiences. In the literature, whereas people high in extraversion have difficulty achieving flow in solitude, those with an autotelic personality-a combination of traits that make people prone to flow-readily experience flow in both solitary and interactive conditions. In this pre-registered experiment, we investigated whether autotelic personality mitigates the negative association between solitary flow and extraversion. METHOD: Participants and their romantic partners (final N = 368) played the game Perfection™ in three conditions (order was counterbalanced): alone (solitary condition), in the presence of their partner without interaction (mere-presence condition), and collaboratively (interactive condition). RESULTS: There were independent, positive main effects of extraversion and autotelic personality on flow experience in mere-presence and interactive conditions. However, the positive effect of extraversion on solitary flow was only significant among participants with high (vs. low) autotelic personality. In all conditions, flow experience was associated with greater low-arousal positive affect and lesser high-arousal negative affect. CONCLUSIONS: The findings shed light on the role of personality in promoting solitary flow experiences, and particularly how traits might interact to determine optimal and non-optimal conditions for achieving flow.

Volatility in Expectations While Awaiting Important News.

Waiting for important news is uniquely anxiety provoking, and expectations for one's outcome fluctuate throughout the wait. Emotional volatility is typically associated with negative outcomes, but little is known about volatility in expectations. In Study 1, law graduates (N = 248) estimated their chances of passing the bar exam every 2 weeks during the wait for results. Greater volatility in expectations, operationalized as the frequency with which outcome expectations changed during the wait, was associated with greater worry and more negative emotionality throughout the wait. Study 2 partially replicated these findings in a sample of Trump and Biden supporters (N = 444) awaiting the result of the 2020 presidential election. Study 2 also demonstrated a causal link between constrained (vs. volatile) expectations and worry. Our findings have implications for how best to manage one's expectations while awaiting important news, with the goal of minimizing worry and other negative emotions.

Let the Kid Speak: Dynamics of Triadic Medical Interactions Involving Pediatric Patients.

Communication in healthcare represents the complex interplay between multiple individual and contextual factors unfolding over the course of the medical encounter. Despite significant improvements in patient-centered care delivery, studies of health communication typically focus exclusively on clinical interactions between adult patients and their clinicians. Much less is known about non-dyadic interactions, such as pediatric triads involving a child patient and accompanying parent. Understanding the dynamics of triadic pediatric healthcare communication is the first step toward evaluating and ultimately optimizing these healthcare interactions. Thus, we undertook a mixed-method analysis of 28 audio-recorded triadic medical interactions between healthcare providers, pediatric asthma and allergy patients, and their parents to explore the prevalence of various features of these interactions. Our findings point to mechanisms through which healthcare providers and parents may facilitate or hinder children's involvement in their own asthma and allergy care, including interruptions, unclarified technical medical language, the flow of information exchange, and the formation of dyadic conversational partnerships (coalitions) between providers and parents. Our analyses further reveal that children's participation during their medical visits was minimal (13% of the interaction). Providers in our sample elicited input directly from pediatric patients more often than from parents, though the difference was small. Taken together, these findings provide a foundation on which to develop training and communication interventions to ensure that children have a voice in their medical care.

Links between well-being and sleep while awaiting breast biopsy results.

Poor sleep is associated with several negative consequences, including poor health, depression, anxiety, and memory deficits, among others. Although the link from sleep to health and well-being is well-established, fewer studies have examined the reverse relationship. The current study examined the role of one particular challenge to well-being, stressful uncertainty, in the association between well-being and sleep quantity and quality. Female patients (n = 120 for the purpose of analyses) awaiting the results of a breast biopsy participated in an initial interview at their biopsy appointment and then completed daily surveys at home each day until they received their results. Patients who reported poorer well-being on various measures also reported poorer and less sleep on average during the wait for biopsy results, even after controlling for individual differences and well-being at the biopsy appointment. However, when patients experienced positive emotions on a given day, they tended to sleep better that night. Our findings suggest that stressful uncertainty about one's health may have detrimental effects on sleep, but positive emotions may improve sleep during stressful waiting periods.

The role of uncertainty, worry, and control in well-being: Evidence from the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic in U.S. and China.

Uncertainty about the future often leads to worries about what the future will bring, which can have negative consequences for health and well-being. However, if worry can act as a motivator to promote efforts to prevent undesirable future outcomes, those negative consequences of worry may be mitigated. In this article, we apply a novel model of uncertainty, worry, and perceived control to predict psychological and physical well-being among four samples collected in China (Study 1; during the early COVID-19 outbreak in China) and the United States (Studies 2-4, during 4 weeks in May 2020, 4 weeks in November 2020, and cross-sectionally between April and November 2020). Grounded in the feeling-is-for-doing approach to emotions, we hypothesized (and found) that uncertainty about one's COVID-19 risk would predict greater worry about the virus and one's risk of contracting it, and that greater worry would in turn predict poorer well-being. We also hypothesized, and found somewhat mixed evidence, that perceptions of control over 1's COVID-19 risk moderated the relationship between worry and well-being such that worry was related to diminished well-being when people felt they lacked control over their risk for contracting the virus. This study is one of the first to demonstrate an indirect path from uncertainty to well-being via worry and to demonstrate the role of control in moderating whether uncertainty and worry manifest in poor well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being during the wait for breast biopsy results.

OBJECTIVE: This study is a replication and extension of previous work examining the well-being of patients at a breast biopsy appointment. Expanding on a previous study, we aim to identify predictors of well-being following the appointment (i.e. waiting for results). DESIGN: In this longitudinal study, female patients (N = 197) were surveyed at their breast biopsy appointments and then completed daily surveys assessing distress and coping during the week-long wait for results. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Surveys asked about patient characteristics, subjective health, cancer history, support availability, outcome expectations, and distress. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with the previous study, health history and demographic factors were largely unassociated with distress, this time while waiting for biopsy results. Latina ethnicity emerged one of the few predictors of coping, pointing to opportunities for differential clinical interventions that take cultural factors into account. Finally, anxiety was highest at the beginning and end of the wait for biopsy results, suggesting that interventions may be most effective following a breast biopsy and the days prior to learning one's result.

Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences of Preemptive Benefit Finding.

Waiting for important news is stressful. In four studies, we assess the utility of preemptive benefit finding, a coping strategy in which people seek silver linings in bad news before receiving news, for emotional well-being across several waiting periods (waiting for bar exam results, the outcome of political elections, and results of a fictitious health risk assessment). Our findings support the effectiveness of preemptive benefit finding while waiting, such that identifying benefits in bad news while waiting predicts more positive emotions during the wait (Studies 3 and 4) and buffers people against the emotional consequences of bad news by boosting post-news positive emotions (Studies 2-4). Importantly, engaging in preemptive benefit finding does not backfire if a person ultimately receives good news (Studies 1, 3, and 4). We discuss results from a mini meta-analysis and consider implications of our findings for interventions to improve well-being while waiting and after news arrives.

Outcomes of Physicians' Communication Goals During Patient Interactions.

During healthcare visits, physicians may set communication goals such as providing their patient with information about treatment; however, no recommendations exist regarding which goals physicians should prioritize during their often-brief interactions with patients. Two studies examined five communication goals (providing information, reducing distress, increasing patient satisfaction, increasing patient adherence, and encouraging hope) in the context of physician-patient interactions and their relationship with patient and physician outcomes. In Study 1, audio-recordings of physician-patient interactions were coded by research assistants for goal-related content. In Study 2, patients reported their physician's use of each goal during the interaction. In both studies, patients and physicians reported visit outcomes. Within-study meta-analyses suggested that the goal of reducing distress, but not the other goals, was consistently related to improved outcomes in Study 1. All goals were related to improved outcomes in Study 2. We then computed sample-size-weighted meta-analytic effects of each goal on each outcome across both studies. These results suggested that all of the goals had similar-sized positive relationships with patient and physician outcomes across studies. These findings suggest that physicians should generally approach consultations with communication goals in mind, but prioritizing efforts to reduce distress may be particularly beneficial.

International optimism: Correlates and consequences of dispositional optimism across 61 countries.

OBJECTIVE: The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. METHOD: Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean-level differences in optimism were computed along with their relationships with individual and country-level variables. RESULTS: Worldwide, mean optimism levels were above the midpoint of the scale. Perhaps surprisingly, country-level optimism was negatively related to gross domestic product per capita, population density, and democratic norms and positively related to income inequality and perceived corruption. However, country-level optimism was positively related to projected economic improvement. Individual-level optimism was positively related to individual well-being within every country, although this relationship was less strong in countries with challenging economic and social circumstances. CONCLUSIONS: While individuals around the world are generally optimistic, societal characteristics appear to affect the degree to which their optimism is associated with psychological well-being, sometimes in seemingly anomalous ways.

Flow in the time of COVID-19: Findings from China.

In February 2020, the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) was raging in Wuhan, China and quickly spreading to the rest of the world. This period was fraught with uncertainty for those in the affected areas. The present investigation examined the role of two potential coping resources during this stressful period of uncertainty: flow and mindfulness. Participants in Wuhan and other major cities affected by COVID-19 (N = 5115) completed an online survey assessing subjective experiences of flow, mindfulness, and well-being. Longer quarantine was associated with poorer well-being; flow and mindfulness were associated with better well-being on some measures. However, flow-but not mindfulness-moderated the link between quarantine length and well-being, such that people who experienced high levels flow showed little or no association between quarantine length and poorer well-being. These findings suggest that experiencing flow (typically by engaging in flow-inducing activities) may be a particularly effective way to protect against potentially deleterious effects of a period of quarantine.

Common Academic Experiences No One Talks About: Repeated Rejection, Impostor Syndrome, and Burnout.

Academic life is full of learning, excitement, and discovery. However, academics also experience professional challenges at various points in their career, including repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. These negative experiences are rarely talked about publicly, creating a sense of loneliness and isolation for people who presume they are the only ones affected by such setbacks. However, nearly everyone has these experiences at one time or another; therefore, talking about them should be a normal part of academic life. The goal of this article is to explore and destigmatize the common experiences of rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout by sharing a collection of short personal stories from scholars at various stages of their careers with various types of academic positions. Josh Ackerman, Kate Sweeny, and Ludwin Molina discuss how they have dealt with repeated rejection. Linda Tropp, Nick Rule, and Brooke Vick share experiences with impostor syndrome. Finally, Bertram Gawronski, Lisa Jaremka, Molly Metz, and Will Ryan discuss how they have experienced burnout.

Narrating the nadir: examining personal and vicarious stories of cancer-related low points among survivors and romantic partners.

Objective: To investigate low point autobiographical narratives among cancer survivors and romantic partners.Design: Cancer survivors (Study 1) and romantic partners (Study 2) narrated the low points of their cancer experiences. Partners also narrated stories of cancer survivors' low points. Narratives were coded for their manifest content, as well as redemption (negative-to-positive arc), contamination (positive-to-negative arc), and tone (positive or negative valence).Main Outcome Measures: Self-reported measures of health and well-being (life satisfaction, cancer-related worry, impact of cancer).Results: The diagnosis moment was the most frequently recognised low point among survivors and partners. Survivors who narrated contaminated low points reported marginally less somatisation, salience of cancer recurrence, and that cancer had a marginally less positive impact, relative to survivors whose narratives did not contain contamination. Tone in partners' low points predicted marginally less worry and more somatisation. The tone of their vicarious low points negatively correlated with anxiety.Conclusion: This research contributes to the growing body of work examining, and giving voice to, the experiences of cancer survivors and those close to them. As such, it informs applied health researchers of potentially challenging cancer-related experiences, and the way(s) in which the storying of these experiences align with psychological flourishing.

Health behavior during periods of stressful uncertainty: associations with emotions, cognitions, and expectation management.

Objective: The present study examined how cognitions and emotions characteristic of awaiting uncertain news influenced healthy (diet/exercise) and unhealthy (alcohol use) behaviors in three samples of people awaiting important news.Design: Study 1 examined voting-eligible citizens during the month prior to learning the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Study 2 examined the experience of law graduates across four months while they awaited the results of their bar exam (i.e., the licensing exam they need to pass to practice law). Study 3 examined current or recent PhD students searching for a job on the academic job market.Results: Though the findings were somewhat mixed across studies, they generally suggest a relationship between positive emotions and health-promoting behaviors and between worry and alcohol use, with less consistent relationships between outcome expectations and health behaviors.Conclusion: Taken together, these results offer a promising set of initial findings to understand health behavior in the context of awaiting uncertain news and provide a foundation for future investigations on the topic.

Preemptively finding benefit in a breast cancer diagnosis.

Objective: The current mixed-method investigation seeks to discover if and how people engage in preemptive benefit finding (i.e. seeking silver linings in a potential future outcome), specifically in the context of awaiting a breast biopsy result. Design: A total of 201 patients were interviewed just prior to undergoing a breast biopsy at a county hospital. Main outcome measures and results: A qualitative analysis identified themes in women's descriptions of preemptive benefit finding. A majority of participants (76%) reported engaging in preemptive benefit finding at their appointment, a week or more before learning their result. Patients identified two categories of benefits - self- and other-focused - and eight subcategories: health benefits, personal growth, appreciation for life, physical change, strengthening relationships, spreading awareness, supporting others, and role modelling. We also identify differences between those who engaged in self-focused and other-focused preemptive benefit finding. Conclusion: Benefit finding begins long before bad news arrives, and people find a variety of benefits in even the most dire of anticipated news. Clinicians who interact with patients during the diagnostic process (e.g. mammography technicians) may find it useful to know that their patients are already grappling with the possibility of a diagnosis, including the positive reappraisal process of identifying potential silver linings.

Correlates of Physicians' and Patients' Language Use during Surgical Consultations.

A multi-method approach was used to explore correlates of technical and complex language use within 145 audio-recorded physician-patient interactions. When discussing the prospect of surgery, physicians used more technical and complex language (more jargon, larger words, longer sentences) than patients on average. Patients' demographic characteristics (education, health literacy, English fluency) and markers of health (condition severity) inconsistently predicted physicians' and patients' use of complex and technical language. Interactions with happier and more hopeful patients involved less technical and complex language, but physicians' language use was unrelated to patients' emotions following the consultation. Finally, physicians' use of more technical language predicted greater patient satisfaction following the consultation, and physicians' use of more complex language at the initial consultation predicted better adherence by patients following surgery. Our results highlight the nuanced role of language use within healthcare interactions and identifies language complexity as a novel target for health communication research.

Associations between subjective time perception and well-being during stressful waiting periods.

The passage of time is a subjective experience and can be easily distorted by concurrent emotions. Specifically, time seems to move particularly slowly when people are in a negative emotional state. The aim of the current studies was to evaluate the bidirectional relationship between subjective time perception and distress during stressful waiting periods, during which the slow passage of time may be particularly distressing. Across studies of undergraduate students awaiting a midterm exam grade (Study 1) and law graduates awaiting bar exam results (Studies 2 and 3), results revealed consistent links between distress and time perception across the waiting periods, with tentative evidence for bidirectional relationships between these experiences. That is, people who perceived time as moving slowly while they waited tended to report greater distress across the waiting period (particularly worry, anxiety, negative emotion, and poor coping), and people who reported greater distress tended to perceive time as moving more slowly. The links between distress and time perception suggest the possibility of downward spirals during stressful waiting periods, such that distress makes time seem to slow down, which then exacerbates distress. We discuss avenues for future research and potential remedies to derail the spiral of distress and time perception.

Fulfilling psychological needs predicts less sleep disruption and worry while awaiting uncertain news.

Research on self-determination theory suggests that people have fundamental needs to feel autonomous, competent, and socially connected and that fulfilling these needs is critical for well-being. In the present study, we examined whether fulfilling psychological needs is associated with physical and psychological well-being-specifically sleep disruption and worry, two key indicators of well-being during waiting periods-while managing the unique stress of awaiting uncertain news. In a study of law graduates during the 4 months while they awaited their California bar exam (the exam one is required to pass before practicing law) results, personal increases in need fulfilment related to temporally congruent reductions in sleep disruption and worry. In addition, those whose needs were most fulfilled during the waiting period responded less negatively to failing the bar exam. The picture for need frustration was mixed; only autonomy frustration was associated with concurrent increases in worry, although those whose needs were more frustrated in general also experienced greater worry and sleep disruption on average. On the whole, our findings suggest that self-determination theory needs may be a fruitful target for interventions that can protect well-being while people wait and even once their uncertainty is resolved.

A better distraction: Exploring the benefits of flow during uncertain waiting periods.

A worrisome period of uncertainty frequently precedes important life events, and many of the coping strategies people employ during such waiting periods are ineffective. Distraction can be efficacious, but individuals awaiting uncertain news often fail to lose themselves in a sufficiently diverting activity. Across three studies-two observational and one experimental-we test whether flow-inducing activities provide a better distraction and improve the waiting experience. In Study 1, law graduates (N = 125) who experienced more flow while awaiting their bar exam results reported less worry, fewer negative emotions, and more positive emotions. However, they were often unable to accurately identify personally relevant flow-inducing activities. Study 2 replicated these findings in a longitudinal study of doctoral-level students in the academic job market (N = 141). Study 3 experimentally tested the effects of engaging in a flow activity (via an adaptive Tetris game) on undergraduate participants (N = 309) waiting for peers to rate their physical attractiveness. Study 3 successfully replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 with a measure of subjective flow experiences, but the manipulation was only effective for bolstering positive emotion and mitigating negative emotions; it did not reduce worry. Our findings point to challenges in moving people toward flow but suggest that engaging in flow may boost well-being during a period of uncertainty and make waiting a little easier. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Psychological Experience of Awaiting Breast Diagnosis.

BACKGROUND: Each year, over 1 million women in the USA undergo diagnostic breast biopsies, many of which culminate in a benign outcome. However, for many patients, the experience of awaiting biopsy results is far from benign, instead provoking high levels of distress. PURPOSE: To take a multifaceted approach to understanding the psychological experience of patients undergoing a breast biopsy. METHOD: Female patients (N = 214) were interviewed at an appointment for a breast biopsy, just prior to undergoing the biopsy procedure. Pertinent to the current investigation, the interview assessed various patient characteristics, subjective health and cancer history, support availability, outcome expectations, distress, and coping strategies. RESULTS: The findings revealed a complex set of interrelationships among patient characteristics, markers of distress, and use of coping strategies. Patients who were more distressed engaged in more avoidant coping strategies. Regarding the correlates of distress and coping, subjective health was more strongly associated with distress and coping than was cancer history; perceptions of support availability were also reliably associated with distress. CONCLUSION: Taken together, the results suggest that patients focus on their immediate experience (e.g., subjective health, feelings of risk, perceptions of support) in the face of the acute moment of uncertainty prompted by a biopsy procedure, relative to more distal considerations such as cancer history and demographic characteristics. These findings can guide clinicians' interactions with patients at the biopsy appointment and can serve as a foundation for interventions designed to reduce distress in this context.

Perceptions of romantic partners' responsiveness during a period of stressful uncertainty.

Whether awaiting biopsy results, a grade on a midterm, or a decision from a journal editor, people feel distressed as they wait for uncertain news. In the present study, we investigated how people's perceptions of their romantic partner, specifically their partner's responsiveness to their support needs, corresponds with key aspects of the waiting experience. In a longitudinal study of 184 law students awaiting their result on the California bar exam, we examined changes in perceived responsiveness over time and associations between perceived responsiveness and expectation management strategies, health, and well-being. Results revealed temporal patterns in perceived responsiveness, with the greatest responsiveness perceived at the start and end of the wait. Perceived responsiveness was also intertwined with efforts to manage one's expectations while awaiting uncertain news and was associated with more positive emotions, better subjective coping, and greater self-reported sleep quality during the wait. (PsycINFO Database Record