Unpleasant Events Research Articles

The Power of Family? Change in Academic Achievement After Breakdown of the Biological Family

ABSTRACTThere is fairly broad consensus among scholars that divorce damages pupils’ academic achievement. However, further clarification is necessary concerning the role of pupil characteristics immediately prior to this unpleasant event, and the extent to which the changing circumstances are reflected in the decline in school achievement. In this regard, more insight is provided into the social status gradient of the test-score gap. The empirical analysis is based on a unique Hungarian administrative educational panel data set covering 3 entire school cohorts. The sample contains 88,000 pupils. Approximately 5% of them experienced a breakdown in biological family sometime between 6th and 8th grade. Classroom fixed-effect regressions reveal that it is largely derived characteristics that account for the drop in test scores, rather than the changing material environment. Ruling out individual and classroom-level differences in test scores, the remaining test-score gap between those from intact and broken biological families is interpreted as a sign of damaged emotional stability.

Unpleasant Events: the Significance of Preserving their Symbolic Monuments

AbstractThere is a basic drive to protect a society's memory by suppressing unpleasant events and their symbols in the collective memory. This prevents learning from the past and a broad and inclusive sustainable development. The theme is exemplified by the terror attack on the Norwegian government buildings, 22 July 2011. The article analyses how collective memory influences society's reactions to and tackling of unexpected critical situations. Hopefully, this will contribute to enhanced competence in tackling similar situations and an updating of the national self‐image. The analysis is based on basic theories on collective memory, by among others P. Connerton, P. Ricoeur, E. Said and J. E. Tunbridge. The study has been performed as an analysis of debates in the media, official documents and books. The conclusion is that the symbolic content of architectural monuments may change after being subject to unpleasant events. They function as documentations and reminders of our history and as important resources in a society's learning and development processes and thereby an updated national self‐image. This article will hopefully contribute to enhance competence in tackling such challenges and to secure cultural sustainability at a general level, and also in other countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Testing the fading affect bias for healthy coping in the context of death

ABSTRACTAffect fades faster for unpleasant events than for pleasant events (e.g., Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997), which is referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB; Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003). Although research has generally shown that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism, this same finding has not been demonstrated at a specific level of analysis accounting for particular event types and related individual differences (e.g., Gibbons et al., 2013). Given the strong unpleasant emotions associated with death (Rask, Kaunonen, & Paunonen-Ilmonen, 2002), the current study examined FAB in the context of death events and participant attitudes toward death. General healthy coping was shown by robust FAB across death and control (i.e., everyday) events and by a negative correlation between negative religious coping and FAB. Although healthy coping at a specific level of analysis was supported by increased FAB for participants who held accepting attitudes toward death when they recalled everyday events, it was not supported by decreased FAB for the same participants when they recalled death events. This effect was mediated by rehearsal ratings, not depression. Implications are discussed.

Being-in-the-World of the Trauma Patient: A Heideggerian Perspective.

In his analysis of the human existence, Martin Heidegger's central focus was on teasing out the complexities intrinsic in man. He employed interrelated elements that he created to explain man's inseparability from the world. For Heidegger, a human being is never isolated but embedded completely in the world. This reality, which entails experiencing undesirable life situations, such as traumatic injuries, is viewed as an inherent part of being in the world. The trauma patient, just as any other individual in the world, is not spared of the vagaries of life at any given point in time. When the unexpected and unpleasant event happens, Heidegger suggests that life should be accepted and experienced as it is. Preoccupation with what life was prior to the unfortunate incident should be shunned. Being in the present promotes healing and positions the patient to accept the future, which leads to the road to full recovery. Personal motivation, good support systems, as well as, processes of care available in the practice environment will advance this expected goal.

Being (un)moved by mental time travel.

Mental imagery of events in the past or future, and of unpleasant or pleasant events, has been found to lead to spontaneous backward/forward bodily motions. Both time and emotion are represented along a spatial continuum, and activation of these representations seems to be simulated in spontaneous changes in body posture. We performed a conceptual replication and extension of an earlier study by Miles, Nind, and Macrae (2010) who reported clear postural effects when thinking of the past and the future. We additionally tested whether changes in posture appear when thinking of an emotional event. Volunteers engaged in mental imagery, involving combinations of time intervals and emotions. We simultaneously recorded center-of-pressure (COP) changes. Results revealed neither an effect of imagery of time nor of emotion on body posture. We conclude that embodied effects of imagery of abstract items on body posture may be less robust than suggested by previous literature.

Fifty shades of blue: Classification of music-evoked sadness

It has been repeatedly shown that sad music induces mainly pleasant or mixed emotions, and is particularly relevant for self-regulation goals. However, this is not entirely compatible with the view that sadness is one of the basic emotions experienced in the face of an unpleasant event or a loss. Also, a distinction between grief and sadness is often drawn, which seemingly does not have relevance in relation to musical experiences. The discrepancy between the positive accounts of emotions associated with sad music and those present in ordinary sadness may be related to the previously unacknowledged spectrum of affects associated with music-related sadness. The present study aims to expose the underlying affective experiences of music-related sadness. To examine this, a large qualitative data, consisting of open-ended answers from 363 participants, was subjected to thematic content analysis. The analysis revealed a range of emotions experienced which were classified into three themes: Grief, Melancholia, and Sweet sorrow. These themes differed depending on the valence of the overall experience and the contextual aspects. In addition, emotion induction mechanisms distinguished the themes and several previously unidentified types of affect regulation were observed. Variations in the ways people conceptualise sadness and music lead to differences in the affect regulation processes. In contrast to past research, the results suggest that truly negative emotions are relevant in association with music-related sadness. Dividing the music-evoked sadness into different categories of affective experiences helps to explain the current discrepancies and paradoxes surrounding sadness and music.

Sleep quality in healthy and mood-disordered persons predicts daily life emotional reactivity

ABSTRACTDisordered sleep has been linked to impaired emotional functioning in healthy and depressed individuals. Little is known, however, about how chronic sleep problems influence emotional reactivity in everyday life. Participants with major or minor unipolar depressive disorder (n = 60) and healthy controls (n = 35) reported on sleep and emotional responses to daily life events using a computerised Experience Sampling Method. We examined whether impaired sleep quality influenced emotional reactivity to daily events, and if this relationship was altered by unipolar mood disorders. Among healthy individuals, sleep difficulties were associated with enhanced negative affect (NA) to unpleasant events and a dulled response to neutral events. However, among mood-disordered persons, sleep difficulties were associated with higher NA across all types of everyday life events. Impaired sleep quality differentially affects daily life emotional reactions as a function of depression.

Conscious sedation for cataract surgery done under retrobulbar block – a comparative study evaluating the effects of midazolam and dexmedetomidine

NEED FOR THE STUDY: 1. Cataract surgeries were carried out under local anesthesia, 2. A comfortable co-operative stationary patient is a key to achieve good result with these patients, 3. Hence in this study conscious sedation supplemented with Peribulbar block has been carried out and results were observed for; • better patient cooperation, • anxiolysis and patient comfortness, • surgeons satisfaction, • Stable hemodynamics, • Lack of complication, AIM AND OBJECTIVES: 1. To study the effects of conscious sedation in cataract surgery. 2. In this study we compare the effect of midazolam with dexmedetomidine and with that of control group. Method of Collection of Data: Prospective randomised double blind clinical control trial METHODOLOGY: 1. After obtaining informed written consent, patients will be randomly divided into 3 groups by draw of lots. 2. Group M-patients receiving midazolam, Loading dose-0.03mg/kg, Maintenance dose-0.05mg/kg/hr. 3. Group D-patients receiving dexmedetomidine, Loading dose-0.3mcg/kg over ten min, Maintenance dose-0.3mcg/kg/hr. 4. Group C-control. Loading dose – plain 0.9% N.S, Maintenance dose- plain 0.9% N.S. 5. Loading dose is followed by peri bulbar block after 10 min. 6. Maintenance dose is given in infusion throughout the procedure and infusion is stopped at the end of surgery. 7. Supplemental oxygen will not be provided except in case of desaturation (SPO2-95%). PARAMETERS MONITORED: Baseline B.P, Pulse rate, SPO2. Blood pressure, pulse rate, SPO2, R.S, S every 2 min from the time of loading dose to the time the surgery was started. Wong Baker Facial pain rating scale at the time of retrobulbar block. Intra op vitals-B.P, pulse rate, E.C.G, SPO2 every 5 min Ramsay sedation score every 1 min from the time of loading dose till they attain the Ramsay sedation score of 3 and every 5 min there after Patient movement scale during surgery. Aldrete recovery score every min after the end of surgery and time to attain the score of 10 was recorded. Patient was shifted to recovery room after they attain a Aldrete recovery score of 10. Likert like verbal rating of surgeon’s satisfaction at the end of surgery. Patient will be asked whether they were aware of ‘unpleasant intraoperative events’ in the post operative period. Post op vitals and Ramsay sedation score every 10 min for 2hrs in the post op period. RESULTS: We found that conscious sedation was safe and effective in the case of cataract surgery and was associated with greater patient’s comfort and surgeon’s satisfaction when compared to the surgeries which was done only with retro bulbar block alone. Midazolam in a loading dose of 0.05mg/kg and in a maintenance dose of 0.03mg/kg was equally effective to dexmedetomidine in the aspect of patient’s co- operation during retro bulbar block and during surgery which was assessed by facial pain scale, patient movement scale and surgeon satisfaction scale and recall of intra op events. Midazolam was slightly better to dexmedetomidine in the aspect of better hemodynamic profile. However mean time to reach RSS of 3 was rapid with dexmedetomidine when compared to midazolam. But time to reach Aldrete recovery score 10 was prolonged in dexmedetomidine when compared to midazolam. Both the drugs had no significant complications in the peri operative period. CONCLUSION: We conclude that conscious sedation is safe and effective to practise in the case of cataract surgeries and is associated with better patient co operation and surgeon comfort when compared to the surgeries which are done with retrobulbar block alone. Midazolam and dexmedetomidine are equally effective in the aspects of patient co operation and surgeon’s comfort but midazolam is slightly superior to dexmedetomidine in the aspect of better hemodynamic profile.

Cross-modal and modality-specific expectancy effects between pain and disgust.

Pain sensitivity increases when a noxious stimulus is preceded by cues predicting higher intensity. However, it is unclear whether the modulation of nociception by expectancy is sensory-specific (“modality based”) or reflects the aversive-affective consequence of the upcoming event (“unpleasantness”), potentially common with other negative events. Here we compared expectancy effects for pain and disgust by using different, but equally unpleasant, nociceptive (thermal) and olfactory stimulations. Indeed both pain and disgust are aversive, associated with threat to the organism, and processed in partly overlapping brain networks. Participants saw cues predicting the unpleasantness (high/low) and the modality (pain/disgust) of upcoming thermal or olfactory stimulations, and rated the associated unpleasantness after stimuli delivery. Results showed that identical thermal stimuli were perceived as more unpleasant when preceded by cues threatening about high (as opposed to low) pain. A similar expectancy effect was found for olfactory disgust. Critically, cross-modal expectancy effects were observed on inconsistent trials when thermal stimuli were preceded by high-disgust cues or olfactory stimuli preceded by high-pain cues. However, these effects were stronger in consistent than inconsistent conditions. Taken together, our results suggest that expectation of an unpleasant event elicits representations of both its modality-specific properties and its aversive consequences.

Evidências de Validação de uma Medida de Características Pessoais de Regulação das Emoções

This article presents the Emotion Regulation Profile (ERP) as an instrument for measuring individual differences in the regulation of emotions. The ERP consists of 15 vignettes that portray everyday life situations describing pleasant (nine vignettes) and unpleasant (six vignettes) events. Each vignette assesses the number of adaptive/functional and maladaptive/dysfunctional responses chosen by the participants. The instrument was administered to a sample of 686 people between the ages of 18 and 51. The sample was divided into two groups of 343 participants each so that exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis could be conducted. Results from the principal component analysis (first sample) corroborated the bifactorial structure identified in the original study of the measure, that is, a regulation of negative emotion factor (down regulation) and a regulation of positive emotion factor (up regulation). Furthermore, a set of confirmatory factor analysis (second sample) revealed that the proposed bifactorial structure showed good fit indices. Finally, it was possible to propose a reduced version of the ERP with six vignettes (three describing pleasant events and three describing unpleasant events) to adequately assess the different strategies people use when regulating their emotions.

Self-recovery in schizophrenia: Insight from autobiographical narratives of patients

The self or identity is often seriously challenged by the emergence of psychotic symptoms. A first reason for that is most likely due to the traumatic experience caused by the sudden emergence of hallucinations or persecutory ideas that challenge both the representation of oneself and that of the world and others. A second reason is linked to the social consequences of having a mental illness and of being assigned with the label of “mentally ill or disabled person”. A third relates to the patients’ cognitive impairment that alters their ability to take distance from these self-challenging events, to give a meaning to these experiences and to build coherent narratives of their life that integrate a great variety of personal experiences such as turning points or unpleasant events. For these reasons, recovering from a severe mental illness is a process through which the self evolves by integrating the lessons of past personal events, building new representations of oneself and looking to new directions for future projects. Excerpts of patients’ narratives collected in experimental setting will be presented in order to illustrate how indexes of recovery can be measured in self-narratives and how they help identifying the steps of self-recovery that have been identified in qualitative research on patients with schizophrenia .

Self-compassion, pain, and breaking a social contract.

Self-compassion is the ability to respond to one's failures, shortcomings, and difficulties with kindness and openness rather than criticism. This study, which might be regarded as a proof-of-concept study, aimed to establish whether self-compassion is associated with expected emotional responses and the likelihood of responding with problem solving, support seeking, distraction, avoidance, rumination, or catastrophizing to unpleasant self-relevant events occurring in 3 social contexts. Sixty chronic pain patients were presented with 6 vignettes describing scenes in which the principal actor transgressed a social contract with negative interpersonal consequences. Vignettes represented 2 dimensions: (1) whether pain or a nonpain factor interrupted the fulfillment of the contract and (2) variation in the social setting (work, peer, and family). The Self-Compassion Scale was the covariate in the analysis. Higher levels of self-compassion were associated with significantly lower negative affect and lower reported likelihood of avoidance, catastrophizing, and rumination. Self-compassion did not interact with pain vs nonpain factor. Work-related vignettes were rated as more emotional and more likely to be associated with avoidance, catastrophizing, and rumination and less likelihood of problem solving. The findings suggest that self-compassion warrants further investigation in the chronic pain population both regarding the extent of its influence as a trait and in terms of the potential to enhance chronic pain patients' ability to be self-compassionate, with a view to its therapeutic utility in enhancing psychological well-being and adjustment. Limitations regarding the possible criterion contamination and the generalizability of vignette studies are discussed.

Hypnosis for Awake Surgery of Low-grade Gliomas: Description of the Method and Psychological Assessment.

Awake craniotomy with intraoperative electric stimulation is a reliable method for extensive removal of low-grade gliomas while preserving the functional integrity of eloquent surrounding brain structures. Although fully awake procedures have been proposed, asleep-awake-asleep remains the standard technique. Anesthetic contraindications are the only limitation of this method, which is therefore not reliable for older patients with high-grade gliomas. To describe and assess a novel method for awake craniotomy based on hypnosis. We proposed a novel hypnosedation procedure to patients undergoing awake surgery for low-grade gliomas in our institution between May 2011 and April 2015. Surgical data were retrospectively recorded. The subjective experience of hypnosis was assessed by 3 standardized questionnaires: the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale, the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist Scale, the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experience Questionnaire, and a fourth questionnaire designed specifically for this study. Twenty-eight questionnaires were retrieved from 43 procedures performed on 37 patients. The Peritraumatic Dissociative Experience Questionnaire revealed a dissociation state in 17 cases. The Perceived Stress Scale was pathological in 8 patients. Two patients in this group stated that they would not accept a second hypnosedation procedure. The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist Scale revealed 1 case of posttraumatic stress disorder. Burr hole and bone flap procedures were the most frequently reported unpleasant events during opening (15 of 52 events). The main findings of our study are the effectiveness of the technique, which in all cases allowed resection of the tumor up to functional boundaries, and the positive psychological impact of the technique in most of the patients.

Examining Validity and Reliability of the Emotional Reactions Checklist with Hospitalized Children

Fear, anxiety, and emotional upset are common experiences for hospitalized children. To identify and treat children's emotional reactions, health care professionals must be able to differentiate emotional reactions from pain and other symptoms. Clinical assessment of emotions requires the use of valid and reliable instruments in acute care settings. This study examined internal consistency, construct, and concurrent validity of the Emotional Reactions Checklist (ERC). A descriptive correlational design guided the psychometric approach. Children answered a sociodemographic questionnaire and responded to self-generated scenarios of pleasant and unpleasant events using two self-report scales of emotions. The convenience sample comprised 59 children admitted to an inpatient unit in a large children's hospital or to a community hospital emergency department. Construct validity was supported by significantly different ERC mean responses to recalled pleasant prehospitalization experiences and unpleasant hospitalization experiences (p < .001) for both ERC item responses and total scale scores. Children's explanations for seemingly inconsistent item responses further supported their ability to use the ERC to convey their emotions. Concurrent validity was supported by moderate (r = 0.32) to strong (r = 0.70) correlations between the Facial Affective Scale and ERC items and scale scores. Internal consistency was better supported for the recalled unpleasant experience (α = 0.77) than for the pleasant experience (α = 0.60). Results supported construct and concurrent validity and beginning internal consistency reliability for the ERC in an acute care setting. Further research is required to establish feasibility of repeated use with ill children.

Getting Over It

Little is known about whether emotion regulation can have lasting effects on the ability of a stimulus to continue eliciting affective responses in the future. We addressed this issue in this study. Participants cognitively reappraised negative images once or four times, and then 1 week later, they passively viewed old and new images, so that we could identify lasting effects of prior reappraisal. As in prior work, active reappraisal increased prefrontal responses but decreased amygdala responses and self-reported emotion. At 1 week, amygdala responses remained attenuated for images that had been repeatedly reappraised compared with images that had been reappraised once, new control images, and control images that had been seen as many times as reappraised images but had never been reappraised. Prefrontal activation was not selectively elevated for repeatedly reappraised images and was not related to long-term attenuation of amygdala responses. These results suggest that reappraisal can exert long-lasting “dose-dependent” effects on amygdala response that may cause lasting changes in the neural representation of an unpleasant event’s emotional value.

The Frequency and Severity of Nausea and Vomiting during Pregnancy and its Association with Psychosocial Health

Background: The present study aimed to evaluate the frequency and severity of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP) and to investigate the association between psychosocial health and the severity of NVP. Methods:This cross-sectional study was performed on 200 eligible pregnant women with nausea and vomiting at three prenatal care centers in Kashan, Iran. The participants completed demographic and pregnancy-related questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory-Short Form, Winnfield Tiygmann social support questionnaire and Paykel scale of stressful life events. the severity of NVP was also recorded. ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to determine the relationship between different variables. P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The frequency of NVP was estimated at 71.5%. In total, 19%, 45.5% and 7% of these cases had mild, moderate and severe NVP, respectively. The severity of NVP was significantly associated with depression level (P=0.01). However, there was no correlation between the level of social support and unpleasant life events with severity of NVP. Conclusion: According to the results of this study women with more severe NVP experienced a higher level of depression, compared to others. However, social support and other factors were not correlated with the severity of NVP.

Talking about daily emotional events: Psychological well-being moderates the intensity–disclosure link

The intensity of distressing events predicts people’s disclosure of those events at between-person and within-person levels. Depression symptoms seem to attenuate the within-person relation, but past research has not taken a multidimensional view of depression as a moderator. The authors tested whether two constructs related to depression-general psychological well-being and life satisfaction-account for depression’s moderating effects. In a daily diary study, college students (N=116) rated the intensity of the day’s most unpleasant event and their disclosure of the event each day for 14days. Participants completed measures of disclosure tendencies, depression symptoms, well-being, and life satisfaction prior to the diary portion of the study. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed moderating effects of disclosure tendencies and depression on the within-person intensity–disclosure relation. However, when psychological well-being and life satisfaction were entered, depression was no longer a significant moderator, but well-being was. Psychological well-being therefore determines the expression of individual differences in the disclosure of daily emotional events.

On the Use of Pumped Storage for Wind Energy Maximization in Transmission-Constrained Power Systems

Owing to wind power inherent characteristics and technical constraints of power systems operation, a considerable amount of wind energy cannot be delivered to load centers and gets curtailed. Transmission congestion together with temporal mismatch between load and available wind power can be accounted as the main reasons for this unpleasant event. This paper aims to concentrate on the wind energy curtailment for which it provides a combinatorial planning model to maximize wind power utilization. Jointly operating the wind power generation system with pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), the planning procedure tries to reach schemes with the minimum level of wind energy curtailment as well as low imposed cost of transmission network reinforcement. In this regard, a well-organized posterior multi-objective (MO) optimization framework is proposed aimed to properly deal with wind energy curtailment cost, total social cost, and also storage units' revenue as some unavoidable factors in planning studies of power systems. The presented method is conducted on the modified IEEE Reliability Test System (IEEE-RTS) and the obtained results introduce its applicability and efficiency in planning procedure of the renewable-based power systems.

Grounded: The case for abolishing the United States Air Force, by Robert Farley

Robert Farley Grounded: The Case for Abolishing United States Air Force Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. 272 pp., $26.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8131-4495-5The future of US military may be in Canada's past, contends Robert Farley, who is assistant professor at Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at University of Kentucky. In his recent book, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing United States Air Force, Farley argues that an independent air force has a negative impact on US defence and security. Every branch of military has its own parochial interests, but those of US Air Force (USAF) are damaging because they are antiClausewitzian, meaning that they are likely to ignore: (1) fog of war; (2) need to disarm enemy; and (3) fact that politics always supersedes military action.According to Farley, idea of airpower as a strategic fix has helped legitimize USAF as a stand-alone service while perpetuating myth that almost any political objective can be achieved by right application of force from above. Put differently, if airpower itself makes US stronger, then appropriation of (strategic) airpower by USAF detracts from this strength by distorting proper understanding of warfare. As author notes, list of those who bought into the promise that airpower can deliver quick, cheap, decisive victories (2) is long and not exclusively American; it begins with Winston Churchill and ends, for now, with Bill Clinton and most other NATO leaders during 1999 Kosovo war (43) or, indeed, with Israeli policymakers in charge of campaigns against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2009 and 2014.Farley discusses other reasons why it would be rational for US Army and Navy to swallow up USAF's missions and assets, but Clausewitzian theory is main one. Searching for a more rational design of military institutions, he examines both Soviet and Israeli experience, but finds promise in path blazed by Canadian defence minister Paul Hellyer half a century ago that saw unification of Canada's tri-service structure. The author's policy recommendation comes in full awareness of great Canadian military reform's failures (174-179) and of fact that USAF stands no chance of actually being abolished in future, barring some unpleasant black swan event (184-187).Farley loves to provoke and polemicize, but his is not a book like Thomas P. …

Basic Science and Clinical Application of the Contrast Avoidance Model in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

The Contrast Avoidance model (Newman & Llera, 2011) proposes that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are excessively sensitive to negative emotional shifts (contrasts) in response to unpleasant events, and thus recruit a state of sustained intrapersonal negativity via worry as a defensive stance against such shifting states. Here we review the basic science related to environmental, psychological, and biological risk factors in the development of such emotional sensitivities in GAD, and present evidence supporting the position that worry and maladaptive interpersonal styles are employed as defensive strategies to protect against emotional contrasts. We present 2 case examples to elucidate these issues, as well as to introduce specific clinical recommendations for targeting and treating these behaviors. Suggestions for future avenues of research are also discussed.