Reappraisal, social support, and parental burnout.

OBJECTIVES: Parental burnout is a prevalent condition that affects parents' functioning and health. While various protective factors have been examined, little is known about their interplay. In the current study, we examined the joint effect of two protective factors against parental burnout (one external-social support and one internal-cognitive reappraisal). We were specifically interested in whether the presence of one factor could compensate for the lack of the other. METHODS: To address this question, 1835 participants were drawn from five countries: United States, Poland, Peru, Turkey and Belgium. RESULTS: Results suggested that both social support and cognitive reappraisal were associated with lower parental burnout. An interaction was also found between the resource factors, such that the presence of cognitive reappraisal compensated for the absence of social support. CONCLUSIONS: These findings point to ways in which parental burnout could be reduced, especially in situations where social support is not easily available.

How seasons, weather, and part of day influence baseline affective valence in laboratory research participants?

Many people believe that weather influences their emotional state. Along similar lines, some researchers in affective science are concerned whether testing individuals at a different time of year, a different part of the day, or in different weather conditions (e.g., in a cold and rainy morning vs. a hot evening) influences how research participants feel upon entering a study; thus inflating the measurement error. Few studies have investigated the link between baseline affective levels and the research context, such as seasonal and daily weather fluctuation in temperature, air pressure, and sunshine duration. We examined whether individuals felt more positive or negative upon entering a study by clustering data across seven laboratory experiments (total N = 1108), three seasons, and daily times ranging from 9 AM to 7 PM. We accounted for ambient temperature, air pressure, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind speed, and sunshine duration. We found that only ambient temperature was a significant predictor of valence. Individuals felt more positive valence on days when it was cooler outside. However, the effect was psychologically negligible with differences between participants above c.a. 30 degrees Celsius in ambient temperature needed to generate a difference in affective valence surpassing one standard deviation. Our findings have methodological implications for studying emotions by suggesting that seasons and part of the day do not matter for baseline affective valence reported by participants, and the effects of ambient temperature are unlikely to influence most research.