Resilience Predicts the Trajectories of College Students’ Daily Emotions During COVID-19: A Latent Growth Mixture Model

The objective of this study was to examine the association between resilience and trajectories of college students’ negative and positive affect during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 391 college students recruited from China completed a daily online negative and positive affect scale for 1 week, and their resilience was also measured. Profiles of brief trajectories of negative and positive affect over time were identified using the latent growth mixture model, and the effect of resilience on these trajectories was further explored. Two latent profiles of negative affect were found: a constant high negative affect profile and a slowly decreasing low negative affect profile, while three latent profiles of positive affect were identified: a slowly increasing high positive affect profile, a rapidly decreasing medium positive affect profile, and a constant medium positive affect profile. The optimism dimension of resilience predicted the membership in the various profiles significantly, whereas the prediction of tenacity and strength dimensions of resilience was not significant. Activities that promote resilience, especially optimism, should be included to improve the daily emotions of college students during COVID-19.

The Effects and Implications of Mood on Moral Judgements

Vladimir A. Lefebvre [1, 2] proposed an algebraic model of self-reflection that predicts individuals will judge ambiguous stimuli positively with a proportional frequency of .618. While a number of studies have empirically supported this prediction [3, 4], Anderson and colleagues [5] found only partial support for Lefebvre’s model. They moreover suggested that Schwartz and Garmoni’s States of Mind (SOM; [7]) model could potentially explain the disparate findings as well as the variability of positive judgements seen across individuals. Consequently, this study explored whether ratios of psychological functioning posited by the SOM model correspond with proportions of positive judgements of ambiguous stimuli (viz., pairs of pinto beans). Results revealed that, while Lefebvre’s predicted proportion of positive judgments was again replicated, individuals with relatively high positive affect were not more likely to rate greater proportions of the ambiguous stimuli positively.

The Costs of the COVID-19 on Subjective Well-Being: An Analysis of the Outbreak in Spain

The COVID-19 outbreak entailed radical shifts to individuals’ daily habits that challenged their subjective well-being (SWB). Knowledge about the impact of COVID-19 on SWB is paramount for developing public policies to tackle mental health during health emergency periods. Decreases in life satisfaction are likely not only due to exposure to daily negative emotions but also due to hopelessness, fear, and avoidance of social interactions. We examined in a sample of 541 Spanish adults (1) reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak and (2) the mediating role of these reactions in the associations of hope and social phobia with life satisfaction through different levels of positive and negative affect. A moderated mediation analysis showed that the conditional indirect effect of hope and social anxiety on life satisfaction through information depended on the participants’ having high positive affect and low negative affect. Affect seems to be a mechanism that modulates the influence of individuals’ perception about COVID-19 on their life satisfaction. Those with high positive affect might see the “general picture” and search for adequate information as they avoid focusing on the problem and on specific information that precludes preventive behaviors. Having a positive affect might help individuals to adopt information-processing strategies during the COVID-19 outbreak that will improve their life satisfaction.

Affective and Attentional States When Running in a Virtual Reality Environment

Engaging in physical exercise in a virtual reality (VR) environment has been reported to improve physical effort and affective states. However, these conclusions might be influenced by experimental design factors, such as comparing VR environments against a non-VR environment without actively controlling for the presence of visual input in non-VR conditions. The present study addressed this issue to examine affective and attentional states in a virtual running task. Participants (n = 40), completed a 21 min run on a treadmill at 70% of Vmax. One group of participants ran in a computer-generated VR environment that included other virtual runners while another group ran while viewing neutral images. Participants in both conditions showed a pattern of reduced positive affect and increased tension during the run with a return to high positive affect after the run. In the VR condition, higher levels of immersive tendencies and attention/absorption in the virtual environment were associated with more positive affect after the run. In addition, participants in the VR condition focused attention more on external task-relevant stimuli and less to internal states than participants in the neutral images condition. However, the neutral images condition produced less negative affect and more enjoyment after the run than the VR condition. The finding suggest that the effects of exercising in a VR environment will depend on individual difference factors (e.g., attention/absorption in the virtual world) but it may not always be better than distracting attention away from exercise-related cues.

Afectividad inducida e impacto en la creatividad, crecimiento personal después del cambio y ajuste percibido al narrar una experiencia emocional intensa

An experimental study contrast the effects of inducing positive affect on creativity and the mediational role of positive emotions. High and low positive affect was induced by asking subjects to write three poems Haikus about high (<em>N = </em>28) and low positive connotation stimuli (<em>N = </em>28). Then people wrote about their more intense infatuation experience and answered a scale on the emotions felt when writing the text, a measure of personal growth or benefits, and a measure of achievement of adaptive goals after the episode. In high positive affect condition was reported more positive and less negative emotions in recounting the experience, more personal growth and a better adjustment. Last poem and narration of experience were evaluated as more original in high positive condition by independent judges. A mediational analysis showed that positive emotions explain partially the influence of the manipulation on personal growth and perceived adjustment.

A Cluster Analysis of Affective States Before and During Competition

The purposes of the current study were to identify affective profiles of athletes both before and during the competition and to examine differences between these profiles on coping and attainment of sport goals among a sample of 306 athletes. The results of hierarchical (Ward’s method) and nonhierarchical (k means) cluster analyses revealed four different clusters both before and during the competition. The four clusters were very similar at the two measurement occasions: high positive affect facilitators (n = 88 and 81), facilitators (n = 75 and 25), low affect debilitators (n = 83 and 127), and high negative affect debilitators (n = 60 and 73). Results of MANOVAs revealed that coping and attainment of sport achievement goal significantly differed across the affective profiles. Results are discussed in terms of current research on positive and negative affective states.

Is Peppermint an Ergogenic Aid to Athletic Performance?

This study investigated the effects of a claimed ergogenic aid, peppermint odor inhalation, on running performance, under different experimenter-induced odor expectancy conditions. Eighteen fit, young women subjects performed 3 × ¼-mile runs, under three randomly assigned treatments: peppermint-scented mask; unscented mask; and no mask. Each subject was also given either a positive, negative, or neutral expectancy information message regarding peppermint's influence on performance. Results showed that neither peppermint inhalation nor expectancy information had any significant effect on running time. However, expectancy information did slow the running times of high positive affect subjects. Subjects receiving negative information showed significantly slower heart rates during the running task.

PERFORMANCE DURING STRESS: AFFECTIVE PERSONALITY, AGE, AND REGULARITY OF PHYSICAL EXERCISE

In order to study the role of stress upon performance as a function of age and personality type, participants were derived from three different occupational categories. Performance ability during stress and health condition of participants were studied through application of the Stroop Color and Word Test, the Stress and Energy Instrument, the Glare Pressure Test and systolic blood pressure measurements – whereas the four different personality types were derived through application of the Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) scales. It was found that self-actualization individuals (i.e. those demonstrating high positive affect and low negative affect) showed the best performance under the influence of stress whereas the high affective (i.e. high positive affect and high negative affect) showed the lowest levels of systolic blood pressure during resting. No differences in performance during stress were found between the younger and older participants encompassed by high positive affect, whereas an age difference was shown for high negative affect individuals. Regularity of exercise was associated with high positive affect and contributed to the ability of older participants to attain levels of performance comparable with those of younger participants.