Zero risk tolerance costs lives: loss of transplantable organs due to human immunodeficiency virus nucleic acid testing of potential donors.

Patients' deaths due to the organ donor shortage make it imperative that every suitable organ be transplanted. False-positive results of tests for infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) result in lost organs. A survey of US organ procurement organizations collected the numbers of donors and ruled-out potential donors who had a positive result on an HIV test from January 1,2006, to October 31, 2008. Sixty-two percent of US organ procurement organizations participated. Of the 12397 donor/nondonor cases, 56 (0.45%) had an initial positive result on an HIV antibody or HIV nucleic acid test, and only 8 (14.3%) of those were confirmed positive. Of the false-positive results, 50% were from HIV antibody tests and 50% were from HIV nucleic acid tests. Organs are a scarce, finite, and perishable resource. Use of HIV antibody testing has produced a remarkably safe track record of avoiding HIV transmission, with 22 years of nonoccurrence between transmissions. Because false positives occur with any test, including the HIV Ab test, adding nucleic acid testing to the standard donor testing panel doubles the number of false-positive HIV test results and thus the number of medically suitable donors lost. The required HIV antibody test is 99.99% effective in preventing transmission of the HIV virus. Adding the HIV nucleic acid test to routine organ donor screening could result in as many as 761 to 1551 unnecessary deaths of patients between HIV transmission events because medically suitable organs are wasted.

Comparing gains and losses.

Loss aversion in choice is commonly assumed to arise from the anticipation that losses have a greater effect on feelings than gains, but evidence for this assumption in research on judged feelings is mixed. We argue that loss aversion is present in judged feelings when people compare gains and losses and assess them on a common scale. But many situations in which people judge and express their feelings lack these features. When judging their feelings about an outcome, people naturally consider a context of similar outcomes for comparison (e.g., they consider losses against other losses). This process permits gains and losses to be normed separately and produces psychological scale units that may not be the same in size or meaning for gains and losses. Our experiments show loss aversion in judged feelings for tasks that encourage gain-loss comparisons, but not tasks that discourage them, particularly those using bipolar scales.

Age, affective experience, and television use.

BACKGROUND: The reasons for the reportedly high levels of TV watching among older adults despite its potential negative health consequences are not known. PURPOSE: To investigate age differences in time use and affective experience in TV use in a nationally representative sample. METHODS: Using an innovative assessment of affective experience in a nationally representative sample, several putative reasons were examined for age-related increases in TV use. A sample of 3982 Americans aged 15-98 years who were assessed using a variant of the Day Reconstruction Method, a survey method for measuring how people experience their lives, was analyzed. To understand age increases in TV use, analyses examined whether older people (1) enjoy TV more; (2) watch TV because it is less stressful than alternatives; or whether (3) TV use was related to age differences in demographics, being alone, or life satisfaction. Data were collected in 2006 and analyzed in 2008-2009. RESULTS: Adults aged >65 years spent threefold more waking time watching TV than young adults. Despite this trend, older people enjoyed TV less, in contrast to stable enjoyment with other leisure activities. Older adults did not seem to experience the same stress-buffering effects of watching TV as did young and middle-aged adults. This negative age-associated trend in how TV was experienced was not accounted for by demographic factors or in time spent alone. Greater TV use, but not time spent in other leisure activities, was related to lower life satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Older adults watch more TV but enjoy it less than younger people. Awareness of this discrepancy could be useful for those developing interventions to promote reduced sedentary behaviors in older adults.

Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion.

The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities. Moreover, the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient. We argue that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus, in part, on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others.

A population approach to the study of emotion: diurnal rhythms of a working day examined with the Day Reconstruction Method.

To date, diurnal rhythms of emotions have been studied with real-time data collection methods mostly in relatively small samples. The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), a new survey instrument that reconstructs the emotions of a day, is examined as a method for enabling large-scale investigations of rhythms. Diurnal cycles were observed for 12 emotion adjectives in 909 women over a working day. Bimodal patterns with peaks at noon and evenings were detected for positive emotions; peaks in negative emotions were found at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. A V-shaped pattern was found for tired and an inverted U-shaped pattern for competent. Several diurnal patterns from prior studies were replicated. The DRM appears to be a useful tool for the study of emotions.

A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: the day reconstruction method.

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) assesses how people spend their time and how they experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. Participants systematically reconstruct their activities and experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases. The DRM's utility is shown by documenting close correspondences between the DRM reports of 909 employed women and established results from experience sampling. An analysis of the hedonic treadmill shows the DRM's potential for well-being research.