The comparison of brief, online mindfulness and relaxation interventions to reduce stress and improve sleep-related outcomes in college students.

OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to examine whether brief online stress reduction exercises supplemented with sleep improvement strategies would reduce stress, arousal, and sleep difficulties in college students who were not required to use the sleep improvement strategies for participation. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 114 college student participants were enrolled because they were experiencing stress and/or wanted to improve their sleep. METHODS: Participants were randomized into an abbreviated progressive muscle relaxation, a mindful breathing, or a self-monitoring control condition for the 4-week intervention. Measures of physical relaxation, mindfulness, perceived stress, pre-sleep arousal, and insomnia symptom severity were collected. RESULTS: The APMR group improved on five of the six dependent measures and was significantly different than the SM group at posttest, but not different than the MB group. CONCLUSION: The results suggests promise for brief, online, scaled back stress reduction interventions to reduce stress, arousal, and sleep difficulties in college students.

Morningness-eveningness and social anxiety symptoms: the influence of depression symptoms on the indirect effect through punishment sensitivity and experiential avoidance.

Social anxiety has recently been linked to morningness-eveningness; however, the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well known. As such, the purpose of the current study is to propose a model by which morningness-eveningness is related to social anxiety symptoms through punishment sensitivity and experiential avoidance within an adult American, community sample recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). It was hypothesized that experiential avoidance and punishment sensitivity would be associated with increased social anxiety symptoms and that morningness-eveningness would be negatively related to social anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, eveningness was hypothesized to be associated with increased punishment sensitivity and in turn, greater experiential avoidance. Lastly, the relationship between morningness-eveningness and social anxiety was hypothesized to be mediated by punishment sensitivity among the group with high depression levels, but not among the group with lesser depression symptoms. The results indicated that eveningness was related to social anxiety symptoms through experiential avoidance, and that depression symptoms influenced the relationship between morningness-eveningness and punishment sensitivity such that, in those high in depression symptoms, there was a significant association between eveningness and punishment sensitivity, but not among those with lower depression levels. The study findings build upon existing chronobiological research and addresses inconsistencies in previous literature.

Emotion Regulation Moderates the Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption and the Perpetration of Sexual Aggression.

Sexual assault remains a significant problem on college campuses, and previous research identifies alcohol and emotion regulation as potential contributors to perpetration. Data were collected from 101 male undergraduates, assessing emotion regulation difficulties, sexual aggression perpetration toward women, and alcohol consumption. Results showed that emotion regulation moderated the relationship between alcohol consumption and sexual aggression, such that those with high emotion regulation difficulties were more likely to behave in a sexually aggressive manner. Thus, men with high emotion regulation difficulties may be more likely than those with low difficulties to use alcohol to overcome their inhibitions and perpetrate sexual aggression.