Vaccine envy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The term vaccine envy (i.e., envy experienced when others are given the opportunity to receive a COVID-19 vaccine) was coined during the COVID-19 pandemic and has received media attention. This study is the first to systematically investigate vaccine envy. In two pre-registered online surveys conducted in May 2021 (N = 1,174) and October/November 2021 (N = 535), we collected data from vaccinated and unvaccinated German participants, including measures of vaccine envy, well-being, personal experiences during the pandemic, and various trait constructs (e.g., justice sensitivity and self-esteem). We found that in May 2021, 47% of participants experienced vaccine envy at least sometimes and that vaccine envy was connected to victim sensitivity, subjective perceptions of being threatened by the pandemic, and an increased willingness to be vaccinated. By November 2021, however, vaccine envy among unvaccinated participants had almost disappeared. Our findings advance the understanding of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The gender pay gap is smaller in occupations with a higher ratio of men: Evidence from a national panel study.

Gender differences in career success are still an issue in society and research, and men typically earn higher incomes than women do. Building on previous theorizing and findings with the Theory of Gendered Organizations and the Theory of Tokenism, we used a large sample of the adult starting cohort in the German National Educational Panel Study and a multilevel approach to test how the interaction between gender and the gender ratio in occupations was associated with income. We wanted to know whether the male advantage in terms of income would be equal in magnitude across occupations (as suggested by the Theory of Gendered Organizations) or if it would vary with the gender ratio in occupations (as suggested by the Theory of Tokenism and reasoning regarding person-job fit), such that people benefit either (a) from resembling the majority of employees in a field by working in a gender-typical occupation or (b) from standing out by working in a gender-atypical occupation. Analyses supported the hypothesis that employees' incomes may benefit if they belong to the gender minority in an occupation, but this finding applied only to women. By contrast, men did not benefit from working in a gender-atypical occupation. Thus, women earned less than men earned overall, but the gender pay gap was smaller in occupations with a higher ratio of male employees. The findings can advance the understanding of gender-related career decisions for both employers and employees.

[Knowledge and perceptions of the population on services in case of need for long-term care: A standardized telephone survey]. / Kenntnisse und Sichtweisen der Bevölkerung zu Leistungen bei Pflegebedarf.

Knowledge and perceptions of the population on services in case of need for long-term care: A standardized telephone survey Abstract. Background: In the absence of professional support, family caregivers rarely recognize their own overload situations and therefore make inadequate use of support services in the event of a need for care. Aim: The study investigates the care of people in need for care, the level of knowledge about and stress factors in the assumption of care from the point of view of informal caregivers and non-caregivers. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using standardized Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) with persons aged 18 and older in Saxony. Descriptive and bivariate statistics were calculated. Results: Care provided by an outpatient care service or by family caregivers was rated significantly better by 259 informal caregivers compared with 342 non-caregivers among 601 participants (N = 601). Further, informal caregivers and non-caregivers had different knowledge about the closest place for long-term care counseling and about compensation payments from the pension insurance. Conclusions: In individual areas of the queried counseling services and relief options, the response behavior of family caregivers differed significantly from the other participants. It can be assumed that family caregivers have a slight information advantage of family caregivers in the use of support services.

Top down or bottom up? Evidence from the longitudinal development of global and domain-specific self-esteem in adulthood.

Classical theoretical perspectives have implied that either global self-esteem has an impact on domain-specific self-esteem (top-down) or domain-specific self-esteem affects global self-esteem (bottom-up). The goal of the present research was to investigate whether classical top-down and bottom-up approaches could withstand a thorough test. To do so, we applied elaborate analytical methods in a four-wave longitudinal study across 6 years with preregistered hypotheses and data analyses. We analyzed data from N = 1,417 German participants (30.6% men, median of 12 to 13 years of education) with an average age of 47.0 years (SD = 12.4, range 18 to 88) at intake. Analyses using latent variable approaches for modeling intraindividual change provided evidence of top-down effects only. For example, participants with higher global self-esteem exhibited an increase in performance self-esteem but not vice versa. Our results also provided evidence of "vertical" associations between global and domain-specific self-esteem, that is, parallel development within the same time frame. In addition, the analyses revealed high rank order stability and a substantial trait component in global self-esteem and the self-esteem domains. The present findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the stability and development of self-esteem in adulthood and advance the understanding of global and domain-specific self-esteem in personality theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychometric properties of a self-assessment questionnaire concerning symptoms and impairment in urinary tract infections: the UTI-SIQ-8.

OBJECTIVES: To validate the urinary tract infection-Symptom and Impairment Questionnaire (UTI-SIQ-8), a questionnaire that consists of four items to assess the symptom severity for dysuria, urgency, frequenc, and low abdominal pain and four items to assess the resulting impairment of activity by UTIs. DESIGN: Prospective observation study. SETTING: German primary care practices. PARTICIPANTS: An unselected population of women with UTI. Women could participate online via a web application for smartphones, smartwatches and tablets or use a paper-and-pencil version. MAIN OUTCOMES: Psychometric properties of the UTI-SIQ-8 regarding reliability, validity and sensitivity to change by using factor analysis and multilevel and network analysis. RESULTS: Data from 120 women with a total of 769 symptom reports across 7 days of measurement were analysed. The majority of the participating patients (87/120) used the web application via smartphones or other devices. The reliability of the UTI-SIQ-8 was high, with Cronbach's alpha of .86 at intake; convergent and discriminant validity was satisfactory. Intraclass correlation demonstrated high sensitivity to change, with 68% of the total variance being due to time differences. These daily changes in an individual's symptoms moved parallel with daily changes in the EQ-5D-5L (b=1.68, SE=0.12, p<0.001) and the visual analogue scale (b=0.03, SE=0.003, p<0.001), also highlighting convergent validity with respect to daily changes in symptom severity. CONCLUSIONS: The present findings support the UTI-SIQ-8 questionnaire as an economic, reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of symptom severity and symptom change in women with uncomplicated UTI. The web application helped patients to report symptoms on a daily basis. These findings may encourage primary care physicians to use the UTI-SIQ-8 in their daily practice and researchers to apply it to studies involving patients with uncomplicated UTI.

Management of urinary tract infections: what do doctors recommend and patients do? An observational study in German primary care.

BACKGROUND: Uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs) in women are usually managed in primary care with antibiotics. However, many women seem to prefer to handle UTI symptoms with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and other remedies. The aim of this study was to compare UTI management as recommended by physicians with the patients' management at home. METHODS: This prospective cohort study in German primary care is based on clinical data from local practices and patient questionnaires. Participating women completed a baseline data sheet in the practice; their urine sample was tested by a dipstick in the practice and cultured by a laboratory. The women reported treatment and symptom-related impairment on an eight-item symptom questionnaire daily for 7 days. Using growth curve models, we analysed the influence of time on the total severity score to examine how symptoms changed across days. We then examined whether symptom severity and symptom course differed between patients who took antibiotics or NSAIDs. RESULTS: A total of 120 women (mean age of 43.3 ± 16.6 years) were enrolled. The urine dipstick was positive for leucocytes in 92%, erythrocytes in 87%, and nitrites in 23%. Physicians prescribed antibiotics for 102 (87%) women and recommended NSAIDs in 14 cases. According to the women's reports, only 60% (72/120) took antibiotics, while the remainder took NSAIDs and other remedies. Symptoms declined from day 0 to day 6, irrespective of whether women decided to take an antibiotic, NSAIDs, none or both, as confirmed by a significant curvilinear time effect (B = 0.06, SE = 0.005, p < .001). The symptom course, however, was moderated by taking antibiotics so that the change in symptom severity was somewhat more pronounced in women taking antibiotics (B = 0.06) than in the remainder (B = 0.04). CONCLUSION: A substantial proportion of women did not follow their physicians' treatment recommendations, and many used NSAIDs. All women had a good chance of recovery irrespective of whether they decided to take antibiotics. A sensitive listening to patient preferences in the consultation may encourage physicians to recommend and prescribe symptomatic treatment with NSAID more often than antibiotic medicines.

Assessment of Different Dimensions of Shame Proneness: Validation of the SHAME.

A large body of research revealed that shame is associated with adaptive and maladaptive correlates. The aim of this work was to validate a new dimensional instrument (SHAME), which was developed to disentangle adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of shame proneness. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the three-factorial structure (bodily, cognitive, and existential shame) in American (n = 502) and German (n = 496) community samples, using invariance testing. Bifactor model analyses exhibited distinct associations of adaptive (bodily and cognitive shame) and maladaptive (existential shame) dimensions of shame with psychopathology and social functioning. Network analyses highlighted the role of existential shame in psychopathology, especially for a clinical sample of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (n = 92). By placing shame pronenesss into a network of similar and dissimilar constructs, the current findings serve as a foundation for drawing conclusions about the adaptive and maladaptive nature of shame.

Accuracy and bias in the social perception of envy.

Research converges on the notion that when people feel envy, they disguise it toward others. This implies that a person's envy in a given situation cannot be accurately perceived by peers, as envy lacks a specific display that could be used as a perceptual cue. In contrast to this reasoning, research supports that envy contributes to the regulation of status hierarchies. If envy threatens status positions, people should be highly attentive to identify enviers. The combination of the two led us to expect that (a) state envy is difficult to accurately perceive in unacquainted persons and (b) dispositional enviers can be accurately identified by acquaintances. To investigate these hypotheses, we used actor-partner interdependence models to disentangle accuracy and bias in the perception of state and trait envy. In Study 1, 436 unacquainted dyad members competed against each other and rated their own and the partner's state envy. Perception bias was significantly positive, yet perception accuracy was nonsignificant. In Study 2, 502 acquainted dyad members rated their own and the partner's dispositional benign and malicious envy as well as trait authentic and hubristic pride. Accuracy coefficients were positive for dispositional benign and malicious envy and robust when controlling for trait authentic and hubristic pride. Moreover, accuracy for dispositional benign envy increased with the depth of the relationship. We conclude that enviers might be identifiable but only after extended contact and discuss how this contributes to research on the ambiguous experience of being envied. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

On the Popularity of Agentic and Communal Narcissists: The Tit-for-Tat Hypothesis.

Among well-acquainted people, those high on agentic narcissism are less popular than those low on agentic narcissism. That popularity-difference figures prominently in the narcissism literature. But why are agentic narcissists less popular? We propose a novel answer-the tit-for-tat hypothesis. It states that agentic narcissists like other people less than non-narcissists do and that others reciprocate by liking agentic narcissists less in return. We also examine whether the tit-for-tat hypothesis generalizes to communal narcissism. A large round-robin study (N = 474) assessed agentic and communal narcissism (Wave 1) and included two round-robin waves (Waves 2-3). The round-robin waves assessed participants' liking for all round-robin group members (2,488 informant-reports). The tit-for-tat hypothesis applied to agentic narcissists. It also applied to communal narcissists, albeit in a different way. Compared with non-narcissists, communal narcissists liked other people more and-in return-those others liked communal narcissists more. Our results elaborate on and qualify the thriving literature on narcissists' popularity.

A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect.

Good self-control has been linked to adaptive outcomes such as better health, cohesive personal relationships, success in the workplace and at school, and less susceptibility to crime and addictions. In contrast, self-control failure is linked to maladaptive outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms by which self-control predicts behavior may assist in promoting better regulation and outcomes. A popular approach to understanding self-control is the strength or resource depletion model. Self-control is conceptualized as a limited resource that becomes depleted after a period of exertion resulting in self-control failure. The model has typically been tested using a sequential-task experimental paradigm, in which people completing an initial self-control task have reduced self-control capacity and poorer performance on a subsequent task, a state known as ego depletion Although a meta-analysis of ego-depletion experiments found a medium-sized effect, subsequent meta-analyses have questioned the size and existence of the effect and identified instances of possible bias. The analyses served as a catalyst for the current Registered Replication Report of the ego-depletion effect. Multiple laboratories (k = 23, total N = 2,141) conducted replications of a standardized ego-depletion protocol based on a sequential-task paradigm by Sripada et al. Meta-analysis of the studies revealed that the size of the ego-depletion effect was small with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) that encompassed zero (d = 0.04, 95% CI [-0.07, 0.15]. We discuss implications of the findings for the ego-depletion effect and the resource depletion model of self-control.

Self-reported emotional dysregulation but no impairment of emotional intelligence in borderline personality disorder: an explorative study.

Emotional dysfunction is a key feature of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) but emotional intelligence (EI) has rarely been investigated in this sample. This study aimed at an investigation of ability EI, general intelligence, and self-reported emotion regulation in BPD. We included 19 patients with BPD and 20 healthy control subjects in the study. EI was assessed by means of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso emotional intelligence test and the test of emotional intelligence. For the assessment of general intelligence, we administered the multidimensional "Leistungsprüfsystem-Kurzversion." The emotion regulation questionnaire and the difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale were used to assess emotion regulation. The patients with BPD did not exhibit impairments of ability EI and general intelligence but reported severe impairments in emotion regulation. Ability EI was related both to general intelligence (patients and controls) and to self-reported emotion regulation (patients). In conclusion, emotional dysfunction in BPD might primarily affect self-perceived behavior rather than abilities. Intense negative emotions in everyday life may trigger dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies in BPD although patients possess sufficient theoretical knowledge about optimal regulation strategies.