Young generations' hopelessness perpetuates long-term conflicts.

Transforming long-term conflicts into peaceful intergroup relations is one of the most difficult challenges for humanity. Such meaningful social changes are often driven by young people. But do young people living in contexts of long-term conflicts believe that change is even possible? In a series of six studies (Ntotal = 119,671) over two decades and across two unrelated intractable conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Cyprus, we found that younger (compared to older) generations from both respective rival groups have less hope for peace, and consequently less conciliatory attitudes. We also show that this gradual improvement of peace-promoting emotions and attitudes with increasing age can be experimentally accelerated in young people through a virtual reality-based aging simulation. These findings provide a new perspective on the fundamental question of why long-term conflicts are so difficult to resolve and highlight the importance of instilling hope in young generations to advance peace processes.

Fertility Preservation in Endometriosis: Does Patient Symptomatology Affect the Extent of the Ovarian Response?

This study is to identify factors and patient symptomatology affecting ovarian response in women with endometriosis who seek fertility preservation. An observational cross-sectional study was conducted from July 2017 to May 2020 at a tertiary university-affiliated medical center. We included patients who were treated in the endometriosis clinic and underwent fertility preservation. Patients completed an online questionnaire that was cross-referenced with electronic charts. An analysis related to patient data and fertility preservation cycles and a mediation analysis were performed. The mean patient age at time of fertility preservation was 35.2 (± 4.9) years. The mean accumulated number of oocytes vitrified per patient was 16.7 (± 12.1) oocytes. The correlation coefficient assessed between the number of oocytes vitrified per cycle and AMH was significantly positive at +0.472, p = 0.006. The examined reported symptoms were lethargy, chronic pelvic pain, dyschezia, dyspareunia, bowel-associated symptoms, and urinary tract symptoms. The number of oocytes vitrified correlated with the number of reported symptoms and clinical characteristics at - 0.497, p = 0.0001, and - 0.442, p = 0.0001, respectively. In a mediation analysis, the potential causality of surgical intervention in the relationship between the number of symptoms and ovarian response was - 0.300 (95% CI [0.15, 1.905], p = 0.05), and the calculated proportion of mediation was estimated to be 17%. We observed a significant negative association between the number of clinical symptoms and the quantity of vitrified oocytes. This relationship was only partly associated with prior surgical intervention. AMH was found to have the highest correlation with treatment success in patients with endometriosis undergoing fertility preservation.

Using performance art to promote intergroup prosociality by cultivating the belief that empathy is unlimited.

Empathy is important for resolving intergroup conflicts. However, people often tend to feel less empathy toward people who do not belong to their social group (i.e., outgroup members). We propose that this tendency is due, in part, to the belief that empathy is a limited resource. To overcome this issue, we develop an intervention synthesizing psychology and art to increase the belief that empathy is unlimited. In six studies (n = 2118), we find that the more people believe empathy is limited, the less outgroup empathy they experience. Moreover, leading people to believe that empathy is unlimited increase outgroup empathy, leads to greater support for prosocial actions toward outgroup members, and encourages more empathic behaviors toward outgroup members in face-to-face intergroup interactions. These intervention effects are observed across various intergroup contexts involving different ethnic, national, religious, and political groups. Thus, changing beliefs about empathy may improve intergroup relations, and conveying this belief through art may promote social change.

Fertility preservation and PGT-M in women with familial adenomatous polyposis-associated desmoid tumours.

RESEARCH QUESTION: Is ovarian stimulation and pregnancy in women with familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP)-associated desmoid tumours safe? DESIGN: The study included women with FAP-associated desmoid tumours who underwent fertility treatments at the authors' tertiary medical centre between the years 2011 and 2021. Data were collected from the fertility unit's charts and from the oncological registries. The main outcome measures were the number of vitrified oocytes and embryos, and the number of live births in preimplantation genetic testing for monogenic/single gene defects (PGT-M) cycles. RESULTS: Overall, 17 women were identified suitable for this study. A total of 117 mature oocytes were vitrified for fertility preservation and 106 embryos were submitted to PGT-M. One patient returned to claim her cryopreserved oocytes, and five patients who underwent PGT-M embryo transfer reported three live births. A statistically significant decrease in selected fertility cycle parameters was observed in one woman who co-administered sorafenib (a multikinase inhibitor) during her first cycles of treatment, as the mean number of oocytes before and after was 2.7 (±1.3) versus 13.2 (±3.3) (P = 0.02), the mean number of metaphase II oocytes was 2.2 (±2.1) versus 7.7 (±2.6) (P = 0.007), and the mean number of two-pronuclei oocytes was 0.5 (±1.1) versus 3.5 (±1.7) (P = 0.09). Three patients had a median desmoid tumour growth on magnetic resonance imaging of 6.2 (2.9-7.2) cm when compared with prior ovarian stimulation imaging. CONCLUSIONS: Ovarian stimulation for women with desmoid tumours was characterized in some patients with an acceleration in tumour growth, regardless of the use of aromatase inhibitors. The use of sorafenib should be carefully considered during the course of fertility treatment.

One Size Does Not Fit All: Tailoring Cognitive Reappraisal to Different Emotions.

Emotion regulation strategies have been typically studied independently of the specific emotions people try to change by using them. However, to the extent that negative emotions are inherently different from one another, people may choose different means to change them. Focusing on fear and sadness, we first mapped emotion-related content to theoretically matched reappraisal tactics. We then tested how frequently people choose such reappraisal tactics when regulating fear and sadness (Studies 1, 2, and 4a). As predicted, people were most likely to select reappraisal tactics that targeted content that was particularly relevant to the specific emotion they tried to regulate. Next, we tested whether such choices were driven by differences in the efficacy (Study 3), perceived efficacy (Study 4b), and anticipated effort (Study 4c) of regulation. Our findings demonstrate that the means people select to regulate their emotions depend on which emotions they try to regulate.

The enemy's gaze: Immersive virtual environments enhance peace promoting attitudes and emotions in violent intergroup conflicts.

Perspective-taking is essential for improving intergroup relations. However, it is difficult to implement, especially in violent conflicts. Given that immersive virtual reality (VR) can simulate various points of view (POV), we examined whether it can lead to beneficial outcomes by promoting outgroup perspective-taking, even in armed conflicts. In two studies, Jewish-Israelis watched a 360° VR scene depicting an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation from different POVs-outgroup's, ingroup's while imagining outgroup perspective or ingroup's without imagined perspective-taking. Participants immersed in the outgroup's POV, but not those who imagined the outgroup's perspective, perceived the Palestinians more positively than those immersed in the ingroup's POV. Moreover, participants in the outgroup's POV perceived the Palestinian population in general more favorably and judged a real-life ingroup transgression more strictly than those in the ingroup's POV, even five months after VR intervention. Results suggest that VR can promote conflict resolution by enabling effective perspective-taking.

When there's a will, there's a way: Disentangling the effects of goals and means in emotion regulation.

Emotion regulation involves activating an emotion goal (e.g., decrease negative emotions) and using an emotion regulation strategy (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) to pursue it. We propose that activating emotion goals and implementing means can independently affect emotion regulation. People are not always motivated to regulate emotions or to regulate them in a prohedonic manner. Therefore, activating prohedonic emotion goals is consequential. Furthermore, merely activating an emotion goal may trigger accessible means, leading to emotional changes. We tested these ideas by disentangling effects of pursuing prohedonic emotion goals and implementing cognitive reappraisal. First, we show that individuals perceive measures and manipulations of cognitive reappraisal as signaling the activation of specific emotion goals (i.e., decrease unpleasant or increase pleasant emotions) and the implementation of specific means (i.e., think differently about emotion-eliciting events). Second, we decomposed a classic measure of cognitive reappraisal to show that previously documented benefits of reappraisal might be because of the frequency of either pursuing prohedonic goals or using cognitive reappraisal. Third, in 2 empirical studies, we separately manipulated prohedonic goals (without specifying the means), cognitive reappraisal (without specifying the goal), and gave classic reappraisal instructions (specifying both the goal and the means). In both studies, activating prohedonic goals was as effective in decreasing negative emotions as was activating prohedonic goals with reappraisal instructions. Thus, activating emotion goals is essential, and sometimes even sufficient, for successful regulation. Finally, we demonstrate that the confound between goals and means is pervasive in the cognitive reappraisal literature, and offer recommendations for avoiding it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Are Liberals and Conservatives Equally Motivated to Feel Empathy Toward Others?

Do liberals and conservatives differ in their empathy toward others? This question has been difficult to resolve due to methodological constraints and common use of ideologically biased targets. To more adequately address this question, we examined how much empathy liberals and conservatives want to feel, how much empathy they actually feel, and how willing they are to help others. We used targets that are equivalent in the degree to which liberals and conservatives identify with, by setting either liberals, conservatives, or ideologically neutral members as social targets. To support the generalizability of our findings, we conducted the study in the United States, Israel, and Germany. We found that, on average and across samples, liberals wanted to feel more empathy and experienced more empathy than conservatives did. Liberals were also more willing to help others than conservatives were, in the United States and Germany, but not in Israel. In addition, across samples, both liberals and conservatives wanted to feel less empathy toward outgroup members than toward ingroup members or members of a nonpolitical group.