Trajectories of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness during the COVID-19 pandemic: A person-oriented multi-trajectory approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented changes in the lives of many people. Although research has documented associations between concerns related to COVID-19 and poor mental health indicators, fewer studies have focused on positive factors that could help people better cope with this stressful social context. To fill this gap, the present research investigated the trajectories of self-compassion facets in times of dramatic social change. Using a longitudinal research design, we described the trajectories of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a representative sample of Canadian adults (N = 3617). Relying on a multi-trajectory group-based approach, we identified clusters of individuals following persistently low (4.0%), moderate-low (39.3%), moderate-high (46.7%), and high (10.0%) levels of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Interestingly, we found that compassionate self-responding trajectories were mainly stable over time with minor fluctuations for some groups of individuals, in line with the epidemiological situation. In terms of covariates, we observed that older women were more likely to follow trajectories of high compassionate self-responding, as compared to the other age and gender groups. In terms of mental health indicators, we demonstrated that trajectory groups with high levels of compassionate self-responding were associated with greater life satisfaction, more happiness, better sleep quality, higher sleep quantity, and fewer negative emotions, as compared to lower trajectory groups. The results supported the idea that self-compassion during the COVID-19 pandemic could have favored better mental health indicators and could possibly be promoted as a psychological intervention in the general population.

How level of understanding and type of used sources relate to adherence to COVID-19 public health measures in Canada.

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of promoting health literacy and minimizing misinformation to encourage higher adherence to key public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores how one's self-reported understanding of information and types of sources used to get information regarding COVID-19 can hinder adherence to public health measures implemented by the Canadian government. Data was collected following a longitudinal design of 11 time points for April 2020 to April 2021. The sub-sample used for this study included 2659 Canadians who completed the survey for at least four time points. Using Latent Class Growth Analysis, we modelled typical trajectories of adherence to three key public health measures: staying home, social distancing and mask wearing. Overall, a lower level of understanding was associated with lower adherence trajectories to public health measures, and vice-versa. Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) showed that the higher the level of understanding, the higher were the chances of following a high adherence trajectory. The type of used sources also showed a significant statistical association with adherence trajectories for social distancing and staying home (AOR: between 1.1 and 3.4). These results are discussed considering future policy implications.

COVID-19, economic threat and identity status: Stability and change in prejudice against Chinese people within the Canadian population.

Objectives: Previous studies found a general increase in prejudice against Chinese people during the first months of the pandemic. The present study aims to consider inter-individual heterogeneity in stability and change regarding prejudice involving Chinese people during the pandemic. The first objective is to identify and describe different trajectories of prejudice over a seven-month period during the pandemic. The second and third objectives are to test the association between trajectory group membership and antecedent variables such as: socio-demographic factors (i.e., age, gender, political affiliation) and two psychological mechanisms, namely economic threat and global citizenship identification. Methods: A representative Canadian sample (N = 3,617) according to age, gender and province of residence, was recruited for a 10-wave survey starting from April 2020 to December 2020. First, a group-based modeling approach was used to identify trajectories of prejudice. Second, a multinomial logistic regression model was used to test associations between membership in trajectories and antecedents. Results: Four trajectories were identified. The first three trajectories have a low (71.4% of the sample), high (18.5%) or very high (5.3%) level of prejudice against Chinese people which is relatively stable over time. The fourth trajectory (4.9%) reports low levels of prejudice in favor of Chinese people which become more positive throughout 2020. Regarding socio-demographic factors: gender is not associated with trajectory group membership, younger people are more likely to follow the trajectory in favor of Chinese people and conservatives are more likely to follow the highest trajectories against Chinese people. Regarding some psychological mechanisms: personal but not collective economic threat is associated with the trajectory in favor of Chinese people. Finally, the highest levels of prejudice are found when the strategy of identification is more local rather than global. Conclusion: The present study shows that Canadians differ in terms of both their level and change in prejudice against Chinese people throughout the pandemic with some socio-demographic groups being more likely than others to be associated with prejudice. The results also suggest that a promising way to tackle the major social issue of prejudice is to highlight a vision of the world where individuals are all "global citizens" facing the same challenge.

Expectant parents' emotions evoked by pregnancy: A longitudinal dyadic analysis of couples in the Swedish Pregnancy Panel.

RATIONALE: Holistic antenatal care requires knowledge of individuals' emotional response to pregnancy. Little is known about how a pregnant woman and her partner influence each other emotionally during a pregnancy. OBJECTIVE: This study examines six discrete emotions that expectant couples experience during pregnancy, how these emotions change mid-to late-pregnancy, and whether the partners' emotional responses influence each other. METHODS: A longitudinal dyadic study where pregnant women and their partners (1432 couples) rated the extent to which the pregnancy evoked joy, strength, security, worry, shame, and anger at pregnancy week 12-19, 22-24, and 36. Latent curve models with structured residuals identify levels of and change in these emotions over time, while accounting for between- and within-couple variance. RESULTS: Pregnancy evoked mainly joy, strength, security, and worry, and lower levels of anger and shame. Pregnant women and partners felt similar levels of joy, strength, and security, but pregnant women felt more worry, shame, and anger. There was little to no mean-level change in all six measured emotions evoked by pregnancy (between-couple change), and no reciprocal effects between the partners (within-couple change). CONCLUSIONS: Emotions in mid-pregnancy were also felt in late pregnancy. Furthermore, the pregnant woman and her partner have individual emotional trajectories. The results can assist healthcare professionals and researchers target interventions to expectant mothers and partners, specifically by understanding emotional response to pregnancy as a stable confound and by not approaching the couple as one emotional unit.

Initial risk factors, self-compassion trajectories, and well-being outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: A person-centered approach.

Introduction: We investigated whether initial risk classes and heterogeneous trajectories of self-compassion over the course of the pandemic may impact well-being outcomes 1 year into the pandemic. Methods: A large, representative sample of Canadians (N = 3,613; 50.6% women) was sampled longitudinally over 11 waves (April 2020-April 2021), using a rolling cross-sectional survey design. Analyses were conducted in three steps: (1) latent class analysis to identify heterogeneity in risk factors (sociodemographic, cognitive-personality, health-related) early in the pandemic, (2) latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to identify longitudinal self-compassion trajectories, and (3) GLM to examine effects of risk factor classes and self-compassion trajectories, as well as their interaction, on later well-being (mental health, perceived control, life satisfaction). Results and Discussion: Four risk factor classes emerged, with 50.9% of participants experiencing low risk, 14.3% experiencing multiple risks, 20.8% experiencing Cognitive-Personality and Health risks, and 14.0% experiencing sociodemographic and Cognitive-Personality risks. Four self-compassion trajectories also emerged, with 47.7% of participants experiencing moderate-high self-compassion that decreased then stabilized, 32.0% experiencing moderate self-compassion that decreased then stabilized, 17.3% experiencing high and stable self-compassion across time, and 3.0% experiencing low and decreasing self-compassion. Comparisons of well-being outcomes 1 year post-pandemic indicated that higher levels of self-compassion over time may protect against the impact of initial risk on well-being outcomes. Further work is still needed on heterogeneity in experiences of risk and protective factors during stressful life events.

Pregnant under the pressure of a pandemic: a large-scale longitudinal survey before and during the COVID-19 outbreak.

BACKGROUND: One of the groups that is most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic is pregnant women. They cannot choose to refrain from care; they and their children are at risk of severe complications related to the virus; and they lose comfort and support as clinics prohibit their partners and as societal restrictions demand isolation from friends and relatives. It is urgent to study how this group is faring during the pandemic and we focus here on their health-related worries. METHODS: A longitudinal survey at a Swedish hospital starting 6 months before (16 September 2019) and continuing during the COVID-19 outbreak (until 25 August 2020). A total of 6941 pregnant women and partners of diverse social backgrounds were recruited. Ninety-six percent of birth-giving women in the city take early ultrasounds where recruitment took place. Sixty-two percent of the women with an appointment and fifty-one percent of all partners gave consent to participate. RESULTS: Pregnant women experienced dramatically increased worries for their own health, as well as for their partner's and their child's health in the beginning of the pandemic. The worries remained at higher than usual levels throughout the pandemic. Similar, but less dramatic changes were seen among partners. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need for heightened awareness of pregnant women's and partners' health-related worries as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Related feelings, such as anxiety, have been linked to adverse pregnancy outcome and might have long-term effects. The healthcare system needs to prepare for follow-up visits with these families.

Do Political and Economic Choices Rely on Common Neural Substrates? A Systematic Review of the Emerging Neuropolitics Literature.

The methods of cognitive neuroscience are beginning to be applied to the study of political behavior. The neural substrates of value-based decision-making have been extensively examined in economic contexts; this might provide a powerful starting point for understanding political decision-making. Here, we asked to what extent the neuropolitics literature to date has used conceptual frameworks and experimental designs that make contact with the reward-related approaches that have dominated decision neuroscience. We then asked whether the studies of political behavior that can be considered in this light implicate the brain regions that have been associated with subjective value related to "economic" reward. We performed a systematic literature review to identify papers addressing the neural substrates of political behavior and extracted the fMRI studies reporting behavioral measures of subjective value as defined in decision neuroscience studies of reward. A minority of neuropolitics studies met these criteria and relatively few brain activation foci from these studies overlapped with regions where activity has been related to subjective value. These findings show modest influence of reward-focused decision neuroscience on neuropolitics research to date. Whether the neural substrates of subjective value identified in economic choice paradigms generalize to political choice thus remains an open question. We argue that systematically addressing the commonalities and differences in these two classes of value-based choice will be important in developing a more comprehensive model of the brain basis of human decision-making.

Lateral orbitofrontal cortex links social impressions to political choices.

Recent studies of political behavior suggest that voting decisions can be influenced substantially by "first-impression" social attributions based on physical appearance. Separate lines of research have implicated the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the judgment of social traits on the one hand and economic decision-making on the other, making this region a plausible candidate for linking social attributions to voting decisions. Here, we asked whether OFC lesions in humans disrupted the ability to judge traits of political candidates or affected how these judgments influenced voting decisions. Seven patients with lateral OFC damage, 18 patients with frontal damage sparing the lateral OFC, and 53 matched healthy participants took part in a simulated election paradigm, in which they voted for real-life (but unknown) candidates based only on photographs of their faces. Consistent with previous work, attributions of "competence" and "attractiveness" based on candidate appearance predicted voting behavior in the healthy control group. Frontal damage did not affect substantially the ability to make competence or attractiveness judgments, but patients with damage to the lateral OFC differed from other groups in how they applied this information when voting. Only attractiveness ratings had any predictive power for voting choices after lateral OFC damage, whereas other frontal patients and healthy controls relied on information about both competence and attractiveness in making their choice. An intact lateral OFC may not be necessary for judgment of social traits based on physical appearance, but it seems to be crucial in applying this information in political decision-making.

Does relative out-group size in neighborhoods drive down associational life of Whites in the U.S.? Testing constrict, conflict and contact theories.

We test whether a larger percentage of non-Whites in neighborhoods decreases associational involvement and build on earlier research in three ways. First, we explicitly consider the ethnic composition of organizations, distinguishing involvement in bridging (with out-group members) and bonding (only in-group members) organizations. Second, we start from constrict theory and test competing sets of predictions derived from conflict and contact theories to explain these relationships. Third, we examine whether relative out-group size affects involvement in different types of voluntary organizations equally. Using data from the 2005 U.S. 'Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' survey, the percentage of non-Whites in neighborhoods is largely unrelated with associational involvement or perceived ethnic threat. However, perceiving ethnic threat is consistently negatively related with involvement in bridging organizations. Simultaneously, a larger percentage of non-Whites fosters intergroup contact, which is negatively related with perceptions of ethnic threat and involvement in bonding leisure organizations. Our results shed more light on the relationship between the relative out-group size in neighborhoods and associational involvement as well as underlying explanations for this link.

Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice.

We assessed evidence for a contextual effect of positive intergroup contact, whereby the effect of intergroup contact between social contexts (the between-level effect) on outgroup prejudice is greater than the effect of individual-level contact within contexts (the within-level effect). Across seven large-scale surveys (five cross-sectional and two longitudinal), using multilevel analyses, we found a reliable contextual effect. This effect was found in multiple countries, operationalizing context at multiple levels (regions, districts, and neighborhoods), and with and without controlling for a range of demographic and context variables. In four studies (three cross-sectional and one longitudinal) we showed that the association between context-level contact and prejudice was largely mediated by more tolerant norms. In social contexts where positive contact with outgroups was more commonplace, norms supported such positive interactions between members of different groups. Thus, positive contact reduces prejudice on a macrolevel, whereby people are influenced by the behavior of others in their social context, not merely on a microscale, via individuals' direct experience of positive contact with outgroup members. These findings reinforce the view that contact has a significant role to play in prejudice reduction, and has great policy potential as a means to improve intergroup relations, because it can simultaneously impact large numbers of people.

What do women know about government services and benefits?

This article examines how much women know about government services and benefits and discusses why this type of knowledge matters. Using data from a survey as well as focus groups conducted in Montreal and Toronto, we show that the women who are most likely to need information about these programs are often the least likely to be aware of them. This is especially true of low-income women, older women, and women who came to Canada as immigrants. We end by suggesting some steps that could be taken to address these knowledge gaps.