Variations In Feelings Research Articles

Adolescents’ loneliness in European schools: a multilevel exploration of school environment and individual factors

BackgroundLoneliness has been recognized as a public health issue and has moved into a number of European countries’ policy agendas. Literature examining loneliness in young people (and especially in adolescents) is scarce, but it does show that at this age feelings of loneliness have been increasing in recent decades and are detrimental for both adolescents’ current and future well-being. In order to explain loneliness, current literature focuses generally on individual, rather than on broader, environmental characteristics. This study examines school associates of loneliness and compares their importance to those at the individual level because schools are the most important places in which adolescents are socially embedded. In addition, policy interventions on loneliness might be more feasible at the school than the individual level.MethodsThis study uses a single-item measure of adolescents’ loneliness feelings in schools and exploits rich data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2018) on 23 European countries covering 118,698 students (50.2% female) in 4,819 schools. This study applies multi-level models to investigate school level factors jointly with those at the individual level.ResultsDifferences between European schools can explain a 20% variation in feelings of loneliness, thereby indicating the importance of the school environment. Furthermore, adolescents’ bullying experiences and a bullying climate in school more than doubles incidences of loneliness. In addition, a cooperative climate as well as teacher support can considerably decrease school loneliness. Cross-level interactions do exist: being from a lower socioeconomic background for instance, while not important generally, increases loneliness feelings if most of the school peers are from a better socioeconomic background. School factors appear to be more important for explaining young people’s loneliness incidence than individual characteristics.ConclusionThis is the first study to compare school level and individual level factors relating to youth loneliness in schools throughout Europe. Results emphasizing the importance of school environment for explaining adolescents’ loneliness suggest that school level initiatives may be most appropriate in tackling loneliness when compared to wider and less contextualized national policies that focus on adolescents outside of school.

Retaining Front-Line Personnel in a Pandemic: Examining the Effects of Preparation and Capacity to Respond

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has placed significant stress on public services, including front-line personnel in a variety of core government positions like policing. Past research in law enforcement has long described challenges related to these ideas of uncertainty, stress, and situational difficulties, and the effects of those on individual and group behavior and work practices. This exploratory research focuses on the retention of these key personnel in the midst of a pandemic. Survey data were collected in 2020 and 2021 from law enforcement personnel at all departmental ranks. Results indicate that there is wide variation in feelings of preparedness and efficacy of response, and that those with stronger perceptions of organizational capacity to respond to the pandemic, increased job satisfaction, and higher organizational commitment were more likely to express an intent to remain in those positions on a short- and long-term basis.

Unraveling the Black Box of Prison Visitation: Incarcerated Individuals’ and Visitors’ Conversations and Feelings During Visitation Hour

The nature of prison visits is likely to explain differences in visitation effects, but has received little research attention. Unique survey data of the Dutch Prison Visitation Study enable us to provide a first systematic account of the nature of visits, by describing the topics of conversation and experienced feelings of both incarcerated individuals ( n = 787) and visitors ( n = 662). Results indicate much variation in feelings (positive and negative) and topics of conversation (emotional and problem-solving topics), a strong link between topics and feelings, and show that visitors have more negative visitation experiences than incarcerated individuals. These insights into the nature of visits help to uncover the black box of prison visitation and provide directions for future research.

Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

Racial and ethnic division is a mainstay of the American social structure, and today these strains are exacerbated by political binaries. Moreover, the media has become increasingly polarized whereby certain media outlets intensify perceived differences between racial and ethnic groups, political alignments, and religious affiliations. Using data from a recent psychological study of the Alt-Right, we assess the associations between perceptions of social issues, feelings of status threat, trust in conservative media, and affiliation with the Alt-Right among White Americans. We find concern over more conservative social issues along with trust in conservative media explain a large portion of the variation in feelings of status threat among White Americans. Furthermore, more conservative social issues plus feeling of status threat significantly increase the odds of Alt-Right affiliation. Most surprisingly, however, trust in conservative media mitigated, instead of amplified, these associations. Implications and calls for future research are discussed.

Matching social-ecological systems by understanding the spatial scale of environmental attitudes

Mismatching in the spatial scales of social structures and ecological processes complicates the management of natural resources. Here we suggest the use of variance components to determine at which spatial scale variation in feelings, environmental attitudes and value orientation is largest and hence most exposed to conflicts. We estimated the variance components of the feeling of fear for large carnivores, environmental attitudes towards large carnivores and environmental value orientation at 3 scales (municipality, county and country) in Norway and Sweden. The feeling of fear for specific carnivores had the highest variance components at the municipality level, we found no specific scale that best explained the variance in attitudes towards carnivores in general, while attitudes based on environmental value orientation showed the highest variance components at the country level. To match the social-ecological systems, we conclude that management units have to be designed as the best possible trade-off between the social and ecological scales; i.e. largest possible to maintain ecological sustainability, but small enough to maintain a low degree of social conflicts.

Weekly variations in feelings of trust predict incident STI within a prospective cohort of adolescent women from a US city

ObjectivesFeelings of intimacy, perceptions of partner concurrency (PPC) and perceptions of risk for an STD (PRSTD) are meaningful and dynamic attributes of adolescent sexual relationships. Our objective was to examine...

Sleep quality moderates the association between physical activity frequency and feelings of energy and fatigue in adolescents.

Physical activity (PA) can improve sleep quality, low energy, and fatigue. Though poor sleep quality may induce feelings of low energy and fatigue, the potential moderating effect of sleep quality on associations between PA and feelings of energy and fatigue among adolescents is unknown. Thus, this study examined the moderating effect of sleep quality on associations between PA frequency and feelings of energy and fatigue among adolescents in Ireland. Adolescents (N = 481; 281 males, 200 females) aged 15.1 ± 1.7years self-reported PA frequency, feelings of energy and fatigue, and sleep quality (September to December 2015). Two-way ANCOVAs examined variation in feelings of energy and fatigue according to the interaction of PA and sleep quality. Standardized mean difference (d) quantified the magnitude of differences. Poor sleepers with low PA reported greater feelings of fatigue compared to normal sleepers with low PA (d = 1.02; 95% CI 0.60, 1.44), and poor sleepers with moderate PA reported greater feelings of fatigue compared to normal sleepers with moderate PA (d = 0.50; 0.17, 0.82). Poor sleepers with low PA reported greater feelings of fatigue compared to both poor sleepers with moderate PA (d = 0.44; 0.05, 0.83) and poor sleepers with high PA (d = 0.87; 0.46, 1.28). Poor sleepers with moderate PA reported greater feelings of fatigue compared to poor sleepers with high PA (d = 0.52; 0.14, 0.91). Poor sleep did not moderate the association between PA and feelings of energy. Sleep quality moderates the association between PA frequency and feelings of fatigue. Fatigue symptoms improve as PA frequency increases among adolescents with poor sleep quality.

Thwarted Belongingness Mediates the Relationship between Fear of Negative Evaluation and Suicidal Ideation.

Fear of negative evaluation has been documented as a mechanism that explains variations in feelings of belongingness. According to the interpersonal theory of suicide (Joiner, 2005), feelings of thwarted belongingness, that one does not belong, can significantly increase desire and risk for suicide. We proposed that differences in thwarted belongingness may explain variations in suicidal ideation and behavior as a function of levels of fear of negative evaluation. This hypothesis was tested by examining self-reported fears of negative evaluation, thwarted belongingness, and suicidal ideation in 107 young adults, many who were explicitly targeted for recruitment due to a history of suicidal ideation and behavior (13.1% had thoughts about suicide without a previous attempt; 15.9% reported at least one previous attempt [max = 5 attempts]). Mediation analyses were conducted with suicidal ideation entered as the outcome variable. Results indicated that greater fears of negative evaluation were significantly and positively associated with levels of suicidal ideation. Differences in thwarted belongingness fully accounted for the relationship between fears of negative evaluation and suicidal ideation. We conclude with clinical implications and future directions.

Les sentiments existentiels et les expériences subjectives de la psychose : une description phénoménologique du sens de la réalité

ObjectivesThe concept of “existential feeling” has been recently suggested by M. Ratcliffe to encompass a specific range of bodily feelings, which constitute a basic sense of reality. Existential feelings play a phenomenological role in all experience, as a background structure prior to definite perceptions, emotions and judgement. Rooted in a phenomenological psychiatry perspective inspired by Husserl and Heidegger's works, this concept attempts to grasp both variations in feelings of familiarity in everyday life, and their alterations in psychopathology, through the experiences of derealization, strangeness, doubt or reference. This paper aims to explore the phenomenological definition of existential feeling, and to discuss its application to the field of psychiatry and especially to psychosis. MethodA review of the conceptual background framing the notion of “existential feeling” sheds light on its anchoring in the phenomenological tradition, linking philosophy and psychopathology. Clinical descriptions allow for the exploration of the pertinence of this concept in understanding subjective experiences and delusional phenomena in psychopathology. ResultsThe hypothesis of a pre-reflective sense of reality and presence in the world makes it possible to describe distinct levels within the broad category of “loss of reality”. The dimension of a “sense of reality”, which gives to the experience its presence and consistency, has to be carefully distinguished from the dimension of the judgement of reality, pertaining to the doxastic level of belief. DiscussionFrom a multidisciplinary perspective of philosophy and psychopathology, these distinctions invite discussion of the relevance of the concepts of “existential feeling”, “horizon” or “natural self-evidence” to shedding light on the loss of reality phenomena. In relation to psychosis, these notions can contribute to understanding the formation process of delusion and lead to criticizing its definition as a false belief. Stressing the experiential dimension and the alteration of background frameworks invites an exploration of the specificity of pre-delusional phenomena, and of delusions as attempts to restore some of these background frameworks. Regarding differential diagnosis, one key point is the possibility to point out some phenomenological criteria, relying on different kinds of existential feelings and structures of experience. This could allow clinical distinctions within the range of feelings such as depersonalization or derealization, which can occur in various clinical contexts. ConclusionsThe notion of existential feeling and the phenomenological perspective can be highly relevant, both conceptually and clinically, to studying the various phenomena of loss of a common reality. In the context of the contemporary definition of delusion as a false belief and the dimensional approach of a psychosis continuum, there is a call for the description of the specific and singular tonality of psychotic subjective experiences.

Cultural variations in sentiments

The largest in-depth cross-cultural study of the 20th Century, directed by psychologist Charles Osgood at the University of Illinois, demonstrated that the affective meanings of concepts vary along three dimensions within all 30 cultures considered in the project, and for individuals responding in more than 21 languages. I analyze data on 17 cultures from this project in order to get some insights on how cultures differ in their sentiments and how sentiments about some concepts vary across cultures. An affective map of the cultures derived with multi-dimensional scaling revealed that affective similarities and differences among cultures cannot be explained in terms of geography, nationality, or major religions. Underlying dimensions of the affective map perhaps relate to secularization and to a history of slavery/colonization. Meanwhile, sentiments about most concepts are remarkably similar across cultures, compared to the divergences of sentiments about different concepts. Thus, ubiquitous breakdowns in inter-cultural understandings must emerge from relatively small variations in feelings, or from issues where there are major differences in sentiments across cultures.

O20.4 Daily Variation in Feelings of Intimacy Predict Incident STI Within a Prospective Cohort of Urban Adolescent Females

BackgroundPrevious work has illustrated daily variation in feelings of intimacy, perceptions of partner concurrency (PPC) and STD risk perception (PRSTD), indicating these are dynamic attributes within adolescent romantic relationships. Our...

Affective Incoherence Reduces Reliance on Activated Stereotypes

The present research asked if experiences of affective coherence and incoherence regulate tendencies to respond based on activated stereotypes. Affective coherence occurs when affective feelings and activated affective concepts are in harmony, and affective incoherence occurs when such feelings and concepts are in conflict. This experiment shows that when the valence of accessible thoughts and participants' mood were affectively coherent, this promoted tendencies to respond based on activated stereotypes. When the valence of accessible thoughts and participants' mood were affectively incoherent, this inhibited tendencies to respond based on activated stereotypes. Further, results indicated that the influence of affective coherence and incoherence on stereotyping was driven by variation in feelings of positive affect. These results extend past research on affective coherence and incoherence by showing that such experiences not only influence the acquisition and organization of knowledge, but also the reliance on activated knowledge.

The Role of Feelings in Investor Decision-Making

Abstract. This paper surveys the research on the influence of investor feelings on equity pricing and also develops a theoretical basis with which to understand the emerging findings of this area. The theoretical basis is developed with reference to research in the fields of economic psychology and decision-making. Recent advancements in understanding how feelings affect the general decision-making of individuals, especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty [e.g. Loewenstein et al. (2001). Psychological Bulletin 127: 267–286], are covered by the review. The theoretical basis is applied to analyze the existing research on investor feelings [e.g. Kamstra et al. (2000). American Economic Review (forthcoming); Hirshleifer and Shumway (2003). Journal of Finance 58 (3): 1009–1032]. This research can be broadly described as investigating whether variations in feelings that are widely experienced by people influence investor decision-making and, consequently, lead to predictable patterns in equity pricing. The paper concludes by suggesting a number of directions for future empirical and theoretical research.

Physiological and psychological responses to prolonged light floor-impact sounds generated by a tapping machine in a wooden house

We investigated the physiological and psychological responses of nine normal men to the prolonged light floor-impact sounds of 60 dBA and 80 dBA generated by a tapping machine in a two-story wooden house. Blood pressure was measured, and a sensory evaluation was also conducted using the semantic differential method. The results obtained were as follows: (1) the increase in systolic blood pressure immediately after exposure to the light floor-impact sounds depended on the level of the sounds, (2) the variations in feelings due to the prolonged light floor-impact sounds were identified by factor analysis, and (3) the subjects showed no difference in “comfortable” feeling for the prolonged light floor-impact sounds of 60 dBA and 80 dBA, but differences in the variation of the systolic blood pressure were detected.

The Role of Feelings in Investor Decision-Making

This paper surveys the research on the influence of investor feelings on equity pricing, and also develops a theoretical basis with which to understand the emerging findings of this area. The theoretical basis is developed by reference to research in the fields of economic psychology and decision-making. Recent advancements in understanding how feelings affect the general decision-making of individuals, especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty (e.g. Loewenstein et al., 2001), are covered by the review. The theoretical basis is applied to analyse the existing research on investor feelings (e.g. Kamstra, Kramer and Levi, 2000; Hirshleifer and Shumway, 2003). This research can be broadly described as investigating whether variations in feelings that are widely experienced by people influence investor decision-making and, consequently, lead to predictable patterns in equity pricing. The paper concludes by suggesting a number of directions for future empirical and theoretical research.

A coefficient alpha for test-retest data.

Transient errors are caused by variations in feelings, moods, and mental states over time. If these errors are present, coefficient alpha is an inflated estimate of reliability. A true-score model is presented that incorporates transient errors for test-retest data, and a reliability estimate is derived. This estimate, referred to as the test-retest alpha, is less than coefficient alpha if transient error is present and is less susceptible to effects due to item recall than a test-retest correlation. An assumption underlying the test-retest alpha is essential tau equivalency of items. A test-retest split-half coefficient is presented as an alternative to the test-retest alpha when this assumption is violated. The test-retest alpha is the mean of all possible test-retest split-half coefficients.

Women's Experience of Power within Marriage: An Inexplicable Phenomenon?

Relatively little attention has been paid within mainstream sociology to the examination of marital power, although there is considerable disenchantment with measures of it based on replies to questions about who makes a range of decisions. Marxists and feminists have stressed the importance of economic dependence as an element in understanding power relationship within marriage, although there has been little empirical work to support/undermine their views. This paper draws on material from 60 in-depth interviews with predominantly white married women aged 20–42 years old whose oldest child was at most 15 years and who were randomly selected from general practice medical registers in North London. The paper looks at three aspects of their marital power position: first, their experience of powerfulness/powerlessness; second, their level and pattern of emotional dependence on their husband (in the context of Waller's and Hill's (1951)‘principle of least interest’); and, third, their absolute and relative levels of structural power resources (such as education, occupation, etc.) It shows that although the overwhelming majority of the respondents were partially if not totally financially dependent on their husband, only roughly one third felt powerless within their marriage. The importance of relational and structural sources of power in influencing these feelings is explored, the paper arguing that such feelings are less influenced by the respondents’ own structural resources than by factors associated with the husband's economic position and his role within the family. Hence, paradoxically, although the respondents feel less powerless than they ‘should’ in terms of their level of economic dependence, the factors associated with variation in feelings of powerlessness highlight the constrained nature of their situation.

Comparison of Multidimensional Decoding of Affect from Audio, Video and Audiovideo Recordings

Video tapes were made of six encoders portraying a warm and a cold experimenter. 60 decoders who were either exposed to the video, audio or both the video and audio portions of the stimuli rated the presentations on the Nowlis Affect Scales. The degree of consistency among judgments and the degree to which the communication channels conveyed and facilitated the differentiation of the warm and cold presentations of the experimenters were calculated. Decoders were least consistent in decoding presentations conveyed in the audio channel; combined audio-video judgments were no more consistent than judgments based on the video channel alone. While there were significant (p < .01) multivariate and univariate experimenter behavior x channel interactions on 7 of the 11 iNowlis scales, no consistent pattern across encoders was evidenced. Rather, some encoders showed variations in feelings principally through visually mediated stimuli, others through the tone of the voice. The results are discussed in the context of quantitative versus qualitative differences among the communication channels.