Emotional Volatility Research Articles

Consuming 'God Juice': Using 'ethnopharmacological-connoisseurship' to situate trenbolone use and knowledge among image and performance enhancing drug communities.

Trenbolone, a potent anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS), is used for its muscle growth benefits but poses significant health risks, including psychosocial issues. Existing research among humans is limited by lack of targeted investigation. This study addresses gaps in existing research by leveraging the ethnopharmacological expertise of trenbolone consumers. By engaging with the community's connoisseurship, we sought to enhance harm reduction strategies and foster collaboration between consumers, scholars and health practitioners. An international sample of trenbolone consumers (N = 30) were interviewed. Interviews explored trenbolone use, knowledge levels and harm reduction strategies. Analysis involved an iterative categorisation approach, incorporating the lead author's lived experience with trenbolone. Participants described trenbolone as both a physical enhancer and a source of psychological boosts, tempered by adverse effects such as emotional volatility and intrusive thoughts. Despite warnings about its dangers the drug's allure was amplified by social media and community visibility. Consumers spoke of a developing connoisseur-like knowledge about trenbolone through personal and shared experiences. Through this collective expertise, they developed harm reduction strategies such as conservative dosing and regular health monitoring. This study demonstrates the importance of integrating ethnopharmacological-connoisseurship from the image and performance enhancing drug community to develop a contextually relevant understanding of AAS use-trenbolone being one of these. By elevating community insights, we advocate for a collaborative approach to harm reduction. Ultimately, we call for partnerships between researchers, health professionals and consumers to enhance health and reduce harm in image and performance enhancing drug communities.

Fragile Egos and Broken Hearts: Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Traits Predict Reactions to Potential Infidelity

We examined the connections that narcissistic and borderline personality traits had with hypothetical responses to romantic infidelity in a sample of Israeli community members (N = 997). We distinguished between four forms of narcissism: extraverted narcissism (characterized by assertive self-enhancement), antagonistic narcissism (characterized by defensiveness and hostility), neurotic narcissism (characterized by emotional distress), and communal narcissism (characterized by attempts to emphasize superiority over others by exaggerating communal characteristics such as being extraordinarily helpful). We also measured levels of borderline personality traits. Results showed that neurotic narcissism was strongly associated with heightened negative emotional responses, particularly in high-threat infidelity scenarios, aligning with predictions regarding emotional volatility. Antagonistic and communal narcissism showed detrimental effects on relationship evaluations primarily under low-threat conditions, indicating distinct patterns of defensiveness and vulnerability. Extraverted narcissism showed no significant association with emotional responses. Borderline traits were linked to intense emotional reactions across conditions, emphasizing their broad impact on perceived relational threats. These findings suggest that while some personality traits exacerbate reactions in less severe conditions, infidelity trauma can overwhelm these differences, underscoring the potential need for personalized therapeutic approaches. Discussion is focused on the implications for understanding personality traits in relational contexts and future research directions exploring varied threat manipulations.

The influence of context on diagnostic reasoning: A narrative synthesis of experimental findings.

Contextual information which is implicitly available to physicians during clinical encounters has been shown to influence diagnostic reasoning. To better understand the psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of context on diagnostic accuracy, we conducted a review of experimental research on this topic. We searched Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus for relevant articles and looked for additional records by reading the references and approaching experts. We limited the review to true experiments involving physicians in which the outcome variable was the accuracy of the diagnosis. The 43 studies reviewed examined two categories of contextual variables: (a) case-intrinsic contextual information and (b) case-extrinsic contextual information. Case-intrinsic information includes implicit misleading diagnostic suggestions in the disease history of the patient, or emotional volatility of the patient. Case-extrinsic or situational information includes a similar (but different) case seen previously, perceived case difficulty, or external digital diagnostic support. Time pressure and interruptions are other extrinsic influences that may affect the accuracy of a diagnosis but have produced conflicting findings. We propose two tentative hypotheses explaining the role of context in diagnostic accuracy. According to the negative-affect hypothesis, diagnostic errors emerge when the physician's attention shifts from the relevant clinical findings to the (irrelevant) source of negative affect (for instance patient aggression) raised in a clinical encounter. The early-diagnosis-primacy hypothesis attributes errors to the extraordinary influence of the initial hypothesis that comes to the physician's mind on the subsequent collecting and interpretation of case information. Future research should test these mechanisms explicitly. Possible alternative mechanisms such as premature closure or increased production of (irrelevant) rival diagnoses in response to context deserve further scrutiny. Implications for medical education and practice are discussed.

Title: Misdiagnosis in young females – Autism versus Borderline Personality Disorders

IntroductionThe diagnostic overlap between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD), commonly referred to as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), presents a considerable challenge in psychiatric practice, particularly for young females. These complexities are amplified by gender biases in the healthcare system and can lead to misdiagnosis, affecting both treatment planning and long-term outcomes.ObjectivesThere are differences and similarities between ASD and EUPD/BPD which encompass its own challenges in diagnosis and treatmentThe presentation seeks to: 1.Offer an in-depth overview of the relationship between ASD and EUPD/BPD in young females.2.Evaluate the diagnostic challenges associated with distinguishing between these two conditions.3.Discuss the practical implications of misdiagnosis on treatment and quality of life. MethodsDrawing from a rich corpus of evidence, including longitudinal studies (e.g., Kerns et al., 2015; Gunderson et al., 2018), meta-analyses, and patient case studies, the presentation adopts a multidisciplinary approach. It utilises clinical interviews, validated diagnostic tools such as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5), as well as direct observation to provide a nuanced understanding of ASD and EUPD/BPD characteristics.ResultsShared Characteristics: Both ASD and EUPD/BPD manifest challenges in social functioning and mood regulation, supported by studies indicating sensory sensitivities and affective dysregulation in both conditions (Zanarini et al., 2019; Happé et al., 2019).Differentiating Factors: ASD individuals often struggle with verbal and non-verbal communication, whereas those with EUPD/BPD may excel in these areas but display emotional volatility and unstable relationships, substantiated by differing neurobiological markers (King-Casas et al., 2008; Minshew & Williams, 2007).Misdiagnosis Risks: The failure to correctly diagnose these conditions may lead to ineffective or potentially harmful treatment plans (Zanarini et al., 2013; Solomon et al., 2012).Necessity for Comprehensive Assessment: A multimodal and culturally sensitive diagnostic approach is essential for accurate clinical evaluation (Mandy et al., 2012; Betancur et al., 2009).ConclusionsThe complexities surrounding the accurate diagnosis of ASD and EUPD/BPD in young females necessitate a thorough and multifaceted approach. An incorrect diagnosis could have long-lasting implications, affecting not just the efficacy of therapeutic interventions but also the overall well-being and quality of life of the individual. This presentation underscores the critical importance of drawing from a robust body of evidence and utilising comprehensive diagnostic approaches to differentiate these conditions.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Is social support beneficial after a breakup? A moderation model of social support, depression, emotional volatility and gender for college students during COVID-19

The current study focused on those who had recently experienced a relationship breakup, which add extra stressors to college students who have already suffered from negative influences of COVID-19. Social support could act as a coping resource to alleviate the negative consequences of breakup and COVID-19 on mental health. Although social support has long been found to have a protective role on mental health, several studies indicated that social support could have differential effects, and even harmful effects on people with high negative emotionality. To understand the roles social support play, we used a longitudinal design to study potential moderators (negative emotionality [or neuroticism] and gender) in the relationship between social support and depression. For students who experienced a relational disruption, our research questions were (1) what are the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between social support and depression before and during COVID-19, and (2) are these relationships moderated by negative emotionality and gender? Participants 361 students ( M age = 23.3, 64% female) from Argentina and the USA who had experienced recent relationship breakups. Participants completed pre-pandemic questionnaires, and were followed up on depression level six months later, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicated that social support and negative emotionality were significantly related to concurrent depression. Pre-pandemic social support showed a weak correlation with depression levels during COVID-19. Negative emotionality and gender were not significant moderators in both the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations. Results supported the concurrent effects of social support on depression and indicated the potential value of targeting social support during COVID-19. The study also offered several directions for future research.

Quantitative methods for group bibliotherapy research: a pilot study

Background Bibliotherapy is under-theorized and under-tested: Its purposes and implementations vary widely, and the idea that ‘reading is good for you’ is often more assumed than demonstrated. One obstacle to developing robust empirical and theoretical foundations for bibliotherapy is the absence of analytical methods capable of providing sensitive yet replicable insights into complex textual material. This pilot study offers a proof-of-concept for new quantitative methods including VAD (valence–arousal–dominance) modelling of emotional variance and doc2vec modelling of linguistic similarity. Methods VAD and doc2vec modelling were used on conjunction with qualitative coding to analyse transcripts of reading-group discussions plus the literary texts being discussed, from two reading groups each meeting weekly for six weeks (including 9 participants [5 researchers (3 authors, 2 collaborators), 4 others] in Group 1, and 8 participants [2 authors, 6 others] in Group 2). Results In-text–discussion similarity was inversely correlated with emotional volatility in the group discussions (arousal: r = -0.25; p = ns; dominance: r = 0.21; p = ns; valence: r = -0.28; p = ns). Enjoyment or otherwise of the texts was less significant than other factors in shaping the significance and potential benefits of participation. (Texts with unpleasant or disturbing content that strongly shaped subsequent discussions of these texts were still able to sponsor ‘healthy’ discussions of this content.) Conclusions Our methods and findings offer for the field of bibliotherapy research both new possibilities for hypotheses to test, and viable ways of testing them. In particular, the use of natural language processing methods and word norm data offer valuable complements to intuitive human judgement and self-report when assessing the impact of literary materials. We also share observations on facilitation protocols, interpretative practices, and how our group reading model differs from other trials of group reading for wellbeing.

Visibility and exploitation in social networks

Abstract Social media is not a neutral channel. How visible information posted online is depends on many factors such as the network structure, the emotional volatility of the content, and the design of the social media platform. In this paper, we use formal methods to study the visibility of agents and information in a social network, as well as how vulnerable the network is to exploitation. We introduce a modal logic to reason about a social network of agents that can follow each other, post, and share information. We show that by imposing some simple rules on the system, a potentially malicious agent can take advantage of the network construction to post an unpopular opinion that may reach many agents. The network is presented both in static and dynamic forms. We prove completeness, expressivity, and model checking problem complexity results for the corresponding logical systems.

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire – Revised Short Form Neuroticism Factors and Five-Factor Model Domains and Facets

Variance in the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised Short Form’s (EPQ-RS) Neuroticism scale is divisible into a general factor (Neuroticism) and two special factors (Anxious-Tense and Worried-Vulnerable), and although all three factors are associated with poorer mental health, their associations with physical health differ: the general Neuroticism factor was associated with poorer health, the association between the Anxious-Tense factor and health was mixed, and the Worried-Vulnerable factor was associated with better health. One unanswered question is how these factors map onto the domains of the Five-Factor Model of personality, and these domains’ lower-order facets? I addressed this question by collecting data from 230 first year psychology undergraduates. These participants completed the 12-item EPQ-RS Neuroticism scale and the 30-item short form version of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2-S). The general Neuroticism factor was associated positively with higher Neuroticism and its facets of Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional volatility. This factor was also associated negatively with Extraversion and its facet Energy level, Agreeableness and its facet Trust, and with Conscientiousness. The Anxious-Tense factor was associated positively with Neuroticism and its facet Anxiety, and negatively with Extraversion and its facet Assertiveness. The Worried-Vulnerable factor was associated positively only with Neuroticism and its facet Anxiety. Future epidemiological studies should be cautious when interpreting the effects of Neuroticism when it is measured using the EPQ-RS and should seek to replicate the present findings in larger, representative samples, and with comprehensive measures of the Five-Factor Model, such as the NEO Inventories.

Three personality facets can relate to increased academic output

We studied how personality traits relate to academic output indicators. Three-hundred Russian academic authors agreed to participate in the study. They completed the Big Five Inventory-2 online; we gathered their h-index, publication counts, and citation counts using the core Russian Science Citation Index database. Three personality facets-Creative Imagination, Productiveness, and Emotional Volatility- showed persistent incremental effects across the academic indicators. Moreover, Emotional Volatility interacted with either Creative Imagination or Productiveness meaning that the authors showed greater academic performance when their creativity or persistence in pursuing goals were accompanied by larger mood swings. Based on these findings and extant literature, we propose an emotional volatility hypothesis, which complements tenets of the normative theory of increased academic output.

"They should ask about our feelings": Mongolian women's experiences of postpartum depression.

Between 16 and 20% of perinatal women in low- and middle-income countries experience depression. Addressing postpartum depression (PPD) requires an appreciation of how it manifests and is understood in different cultural settings. This study explores postpartum Mongolian women's perceptions and experiences of PPD. We conducted interviews with 35 postpartum women who screened positive for possible depression to examine: (1) personal experiences of pregnancy/childbirth; (2) perceived causes and symptoms of PPD; and (3) strategies for help/support for women experiencing PPD. Unless extreme, depression was not viewed as a disease but rather as a natural condition following childbirth. Differences between a biomedical model of PPD and local idioms of distress could explain why awareness about PPD was low. The most reported PPD symptom was emotional volatility expressed as anger and endorsement of fear- or anxiety-related screening questions, suggesting that these might be especially relevant in the Mongolian context. Psychosocial factors, as opposed to biological, were common perceived causes of PPD, especially interpersonal relationship problems, financial strain, and social isolation. Possible barriers to PPD recognition/treatment included lack of awareness about the range of symptoms, reluctance to initiate discussions with providers about mental health, and lack of PPD screening practices by healthcare providers. We conclude that educational campaigns should be implemented in prenatal/postnatal clinics and pediatric settings to help women and families identify PPD symptoms, and possibly destigmatize PPD. Healthcare providers can also help to identify women with PPD through communication with women and families.

Volatility in Expectations While Awaiting Important News.

Waiting for important news is uniquely anxiety provoking, and expectations for one's outcome fluctuate throughout the wait. Emotional volatility is typically associated with negative outcomes, but little is known about volatility in expectations. In Study 1, law graduates (N = 248) estimated their chances of passing the bar exam every 2 weeks during the wait for results. Greater volatility in expectations, operationalized as the frequency with which outcome expectations changed during the wait, was associated with greater worry and more negative emotionality throughout the wait. Study 2 partially replicated these findings in a sample of Trump and Biden supporters (N = 444) awaiting the result of the 2020 presidential election. Study 2 also demonstrated a causal link between constrained (vs. volatile) expectations and worry. Our findings have implications for how best to manage one's expectations while awaiting important news, with the goal of minimizing worry and other negative emotions.

God is in His Heaven, All's Right With the World: Psychological Well-being and Belief in Divine Control During the Third COVID-19 Lockdown Among Anglican Clergy and Laity in England.

Drawing on data provided by 1,841 lay or ordained members of the Anglican Church residing in England during the first half of 2021, this study explores the connection between self-perceived change in psychological well-being during the pandemic and belief in divine control over the pandemic. Change in psychological well-being was assessed by The Index of Balanced Affect Change (TIBACh) that distinguishes between positive affect and negative affect, and divine control was assessed by the God in Control of the Pandemic Scale (GiCoPS). After controlling for personal factors (age and sex), psychological factors (psychological type and emotional volatility), contextual factors (education level and ordination status), and ecclesial factors (conservative doctrine and charismatic influence), the data demonstrated a positive association between belief in divine control and change in positive affect, but no association between belief in divine control and change in negative affect.

Clinical Practice Guidelines for Assessment and Management of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Clinical Practice Guidelines for Assessment and Management of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderline personality disorder in ICD-11 and DSM-5 – the relational nature of the criteria for the disorder

The paper illustrates the relational nature of the psychiatric category of borderline personality disorders based on the analysis of symptomatic criteria set out in the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 11th Revision (ICD-11) issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) developed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). We point to the appreciation of the relational nature of the phenomenon, which is noticeable already in a very cursory analysis, in the latest WHO and APA classification systems. The clinical manifestations of these criteria seem not only to be interconnected, but also to result from one another, suggesting a fundamentally structural nature of the phenomenon. All the described difficulties relate to interpersonal relationships – both in terms of the direct causes of disfunctions and long-term family and social consequences. This particularly applies to the borderlinetype emotionally unstable personality disorder, which is inseparably linked to emotional volatility and instability, and which is difficult to define using criteria in a way that does not give rise to diagnostic challenges. Therefore, we draw attention to difficulties with relationships, which are an important diagnostic criterion. Both ICD-11 and DSM-5 contain separate diagnostic categories for relationship problems, which, as it turns out, not necessarily coexist with other disorders. Linking relationship pathology with personality disorders may be of great importance for establishing the correct diagnosis and therefore choosing an appropriate treatment strategy.

Cosmopocalypse: From Prophetic Vision to Political Foresight in Romola

This article contends that George Eliot's higher critical approach to biblical prophecy led her to interpret prophetic knowledge about the future as a product of historical scholarship rather than supernatural revelation. This interpretation bore creative fruit in Eliot's 1862–63 novel Romola, a book that repeatedly condemns the irrational ethos of supernatural prophecy by rebuking mystical seers’ emotional volatility and their ignorance of history. As a rational alternative to supernaturalism, Romola upholds a serious, scholarly mode of prophecy whose power to predict the future derives from historical research. Recasting prophecy as a rational mode of historical scholarship enables Romola to deploy it as a method of intellectually responsible political analysis. In the process of conflating the prediction of the future with the study of history, the rational prophetic mode demands that political visionaries must temper utopian promises about a cosmopolitan future with sober-minded analyses of the intercultural violence that has plagued the past. By revealing cosmopolitan utopia's historical limitations, Eliot's prophetic mode ultimately promotes a “cosmopocalyptic” form of politics.

Prenatal Programming of Behavior Problems via Second-by-Second Infant Emotion Dynamics

Fetal adaptations to prenatal maternal stress may confer high risk for childhood behavior problems, potentially operating via dynamic fluctuations in infants’ emotions during mother–infant interactions. These fluctuations over time may give rise to behavior problems. Among a sample of 210 low-income mothers of Mexican origin and their 24-week-old infants, dynamic structural equation modeling was used to examine whether within-infant second-by-second emotion processes were predicted by maternal prenatal stress and predicted behavior problems at 36 and 54 months. The mean level around which infant negative affect fluctuated was related to prenatal stress, but not to childhood behavior problems. The volatility in infant negative affect, reflecting greater ebb and flow in infant negative affect during playful interaction, was predicted by prenatal stress and predicted enduring behavior problems in childhood. Results highlight a potential child-driven pathway linking prenatal exposure with childhood behavior problems via infant negative emotional volatility.

A Story with Characters and Action

A Story with Characters and Action

Bipolar dissociation of personality in Cruella

Human psyche is a source of wonder and mystery, and its exploration is a major concern of eminent thinkers from time immemorial. Cruella (2021), which tells the reimagined version of Cruella De Vil, a fictional villain in the book and film, 101 Dalmatians, is directed by Craig Gillespie. Cruella’s emotional volatility and eccentric nature are deviant to the point of evil. Current study explores how the mental state of the central character is portrayed in the film. With the rebellious soundtracks of ‘60s and ‘70s, the character can be seen relishing social attention through the alternate persona. The study also focuses how mental illnesses are portrayed in the film even as they cannot be pinpointed of its causes in reality is sought through the paper. Even with the constantly evolving, course-correcting and adapting research, television sets the reality for the nature of psychological illness. Disney, on the other hand, defies all of that. The real-world implications of the false knowledge on conditions like schizophrenia or depression are critical. Knowledge of pro social factors can help individual turn more pro social and the lack of the same can lead to downfall – of both the person and society.

A cross sectional survey of 504 women regarding perceived risk factors and barriers to follow healthy lifestyle and association with sociodemographic factors and menopausal symptoms

Background and aimsMidlife women undergoing menopausal transition are predisposed to weight gain. Weight gain in midlife is driven by two modifiable risk factors: menopausal symptom's severity and lifestyle practices. The independent and interactive nature of menopausal symptoms and lifestyle practices as risk factors of weight gain has not been investigated yet. This study was undertaken to study menopausal symptoms and lifestyle practices as risk factors for weight gain in midlife women and identify midlife -related barriers in managing corrective lifestyle practices. MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, menopausal symptom severity and lifestyle practices such as diet, exercise, and sleep were assessed using a pre-validated and reliable questionnaire on a convenience sample of midlife women (43–55 years) via an interview schedule. The association of lifestyle practices and its barriers with socio-demographics and menopausal symptoms were analysed. ResultA total of 504 women (mean age: 47.3 ± 4.1 years) were recruited. More than half of them followed corrective dietary practices, but only one-fourth engaged in moderate-intensity exercises. Total menopausal symptom severity was associated with increased food intake (P < 0.001), joint pain with limited physical activity and hot flashes and emotional volatility with sleep disturbances (P < 0.01). Demographic variables such as education, economic and employment status were associated with unhealthy lifestyle practices. ConclusionAssessment of menopausal symptoms and lifestyle practices as risk factors and associated barriers must be the pivotal component to devise comprehensive women-centric weight management modules. Similar studies should be carried out in future when there is no clear effect of COVID19 on lifestyle factors.

Quantitative methods for group bibliotherapy research: a pilot study.

Bibliotherapy is under-theorized and under-tested: Its purposes and implementations vary widely, and the idea that 'reading is good for you' is often more assumed than demonstrated. One obstacle to developing robust empirical and theoretical foundations for bibliotherapy is the absence of analytical methods capable of providing sensitive yet replicable insights into complex textual material. This pilot study offers a proof-of-concept for new quantitative methods including VAD (valence-arousal-dominance) modelling of emotional variance and doc2vec modelling of linguistic similarity. VAD and doc2vec modelling were used on conjunction with qualitative coding to analyse transcripts of reading-group discussions plus the literary texts being discussed, from two reading groups each meeting weekly for six weeks (including 9 participants [5 researchers (3 authors, 2 collaborators), 4 others] in Group 1, and 8 participants [2 authors, 6 others] in Group 2). In-text-discussion similarity was inversely correlated with emotional volatility in the group discussions (arousal: r = -0.25; p = ns; dominance: r = 0.21; p = ns; valence: r = -0.28; p = ns). Enjoyment or otherwise of the texts was less significant than other factors in shaping the significance and potential benefits of participation. (Texts with unpleasant or disturbing content that strongly shaped subsequent discussions of these texts were still able to sponsor 'healthy' discussions of this content.). Our methods and findings offer for the field of bibliotherapy research both new possibilities for hypotheses to test, and viable ways of testing them. In particular, the use of natural language processing methods and word norm data offer valuable complements to intuitive human judgement and self-report when assessing the impact of literary materials. We also share observations on facilitation protocols, interpretative practices, and how our group reading model differs from other trials of group reading for wellbeing.