Big Five traits predict stress and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence for the role of neuroticism.

The rapid outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has affected citizens' daily lives in an unprecedented way. To curb the spread of the pandemic, governments have taken numerous measures such as social distancing and quarantine, which may be associated with psychological consequences, namely stress and loneliness globally. To understand differential associations of personality traits with psychological consequences of COVID-19, we utilize data from a sample of 99,217 individuals from 41 countries collected as part of the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey. Data were analyzed using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel regression models. Findings showed that while some of the associations were rather weak, Big Five personality traits were significantly associated with perceived stress and loneliness during the pandemic. Our study illustrates that neuroticism especially can be a vulnerability factor for stress and loneliness in times of crisis and can contribute to detection of at-risk individuals and optimization of psychological treatments during or after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Remembrances of parental rejection are associated with loneliness as mediated by psychological maladjustment in young Bangladeshi men but not women.

Loneliness is a significant public health issue that affects young adults. This investigation drew from interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory to understand how remembrances of parental rejection contributed to psychological maladjustment and loneliness in Bangladeshi college students (N = 300; 50% female). Students reported their remembrances of mothers' and fathers' acceptance-rejection, their current psychological maladjustment, and loneliness. Remembrances of rejection by parents in childhood were associated with psychological maladjustment (hostility/aggression, negative self-esteem, negative self-adequacy, emotional unresponsiveness, emotional instability, and negative worldview) for young adult men and women. Psychological maladjustment, in turn, was associated with feelings of loneliness in young adulthood for young men, but not women. Remembrances of parental rejection were also associated with greater hostility and aggression over and above general psychological functioning among both men and women. Findings are discussed in the context of different social and structural features of young adulthood for women and men in Bangladesh.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Remembered Parental Rejection on Media Use among Young Adults.

Problematic media use has become commonplace in recent years, especially among adolescents and young adults. This study examined the association between problematic media use and parent-child relationship quality as mediated by social intimacy with best friends. Data from 228 university students between the ages of 19 through 26 years (Mage = 22.90) were collected. Measures used were the mother and father versions of the Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ, short form), the Usage Subscale of the Media and Technology Usage and Attitude Scale, and the Miller Social Intimacy Scale. Results showed significant associations for both men and women among all the variables. This indicated that the more parental (maternal and paternal) rejection the young adults experienced in childhood the lower was their social intimacy with best friends, but the greater was their self-reported media and technology usage. Findings from hierarchical multiple regression analyses confirmed that remembered parental (both maternal and paternal) rejection had a strong direct effect on media and technology usage among both men and women. But the analyses also showed a significant indirect effect of low social intimacy with best friends on media and technology usage. The findings have implications for parents, teachers, educators, mental health professionals and policy makers.

Attention shift not memory averaging reduces foveal bias.

Two experiments examined which of two mechanisms, attention shift or memory averaging, reduces foveal bias. The target stimulus was a black dot presented for 80 ms while observers maintained fixation. The two main conditions were 'with' and 'without' vertical and horizontal bars as landmarks, which were placed on more eccentric positions than the target stimulus. To induce attention, the landmark was flashed on for 80 ms (Experiment 1) or disappeared (Experiment 2) with a stimulus onset asynchrony of 0, 106.4, or 212.8 ms in both experiments. As a control, non-flashed and non-disappeared landmark conditions were employed. The observers' task was to point to the remembered location of the target with a mouse cursor. The results showed that the magnitudes of foveal bias were significantly lower in the flashed and disappeared landmark conditions than in the without landmark condition. Furthermore, the magnitudes in the flashed and disappeared landmark conditions did not differ from their respective control conditions. The latter finding in the disappeared landmark conditions provides evidence for 'attention shift' against 'memory averaging' as the mechanism reducing foveal bias.

Differential roles of distracters in reflexive and memory-based localization.

We investigated the effects of spatial and temporal factors on manual localization of a visual target by measuring accuracy, precision, and bias. Spatial factors included manipulation of display as with or without distracters, with invariant or variant distracters, and with near or far distracters, respectively, in Experiments 1, 2, and 3. The target and distracters were of 1degrees dots differing only by luminance parameter; they were presented concurrently for 150 or 1000 ms while observers had to memorize the target location maintaining a fixed gaze. The observers' task was to reproduce the location of the target with a mouse cursor available 150 ms following stimuli offset. Results from all experiments showed that localization performance for a briefly exposed target was as accurate and precise as that for a long exposed target. Moreover, manipulation of spatial factors had no systematic effects on accuracy and precision except that near distracters yielded higher precision. Interestingly, localization performance was unbiased in 150 ms condition when there were distracters in the display, while being biased towards the fovea in 1000 ms condition regardless of their presence or absence. These results suggest a temporal dynamics in dominance-suppression between egocentric and exocentric cues in the construction of memory for location.