Influences of Indoor Air Temperatures on Empathy and Positive Affect.

The consequences of climate change are already visible, and yet, its effect on psychosocial factors, including the expression of empathy, affect, and social disconnection, is widely unknown. Outdoor conditions are expected to influence indoor conditions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of indoor air temperature during work hours on empathy, positive and negative affect, and social disconnection. Participants (N = 31) were exposed, in a cross-over design, to two thermal conditions in a simulated office environment. Questions on empathy and social disconnection were administered before and after the exposure to each condition, while affect was measured throughout the day. Subjective thermal sensation and objective measures of mean skin temperature were considered. The results indicated a significant difference in empathy (F(1, 24) = 5.37, p = 0.03, with an η2 = 0.126) between conditions. Participants reported increases in empathy after exposure to the warm condition compared to the cool condition, in which reductions in empathy were reported. Although the same pattern was observed for positive affect, the difference was smaller and the results were not significant. Thermal sensation had a significant effect on changes in empathy too (F(1, 54) = 7.015, p = 0.01, with an R2 = 0.115), while mean skin temperature had no effect on empathy (F(1, 6) = 0.53, p = 0.89, with an R2 = 0.81). No effects were observed for positive and negative affect and social disconnection. Longitudinal studies are needed to support these findings.

Emotion profiles of university students engaging in non-suicidal self-injury: Association with functions of self-injury and other mental health concerns.

We investigated emotion profiles among undergraduate students with lived experience of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and their associations with different NSSI functions and other dysregulated behaviors, including risky drinking, symptoms of borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and stress. A sample of 270 undergraduate students (84% female, Mage = 21.5 years) with a history of self-injury completed well-validated measures of self-injury, emotion regulation, alexithymia, coping strategies and of other dysregulated behaviors. A K-means cluster analysis was conducted to extract emotion profiles from the data. Analyses of variance were used to test associations between emotion profiles, demographic factors, functions of NSSI and comorbid dysregulated behaviors. A three-cluster solution was supported. Similar characteristics were presented regarding difficulties in emotion regulation and alexithymia between the considerate emotion difficulties and the passive moderate emotion difficulties groups, although they demonstrated different associations with the functions of NSSI and other dysregulating behaviors. This emphasizes the importance of investigating the type of coping strategies used during functional assessment to inform future treatment. The group reporting no emotion difficulties engaged in more adaptive coping strategies compared to the others. These emotion profiles and their association with NSSI functions could be used to develop more person-centered interventions for NSSI.