Peripheral inflammation is associated with impaired sadness recognition in euthymic bipolar patients.

BACKGROUND: Inflammation impairs cognitive function in healthy individuals and people with psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder (BD). This effect may also impact emotion recognition, a fundamental element of social cognition. Our study aimed to investigate the relationships between pro-inflammatory cytokines and emotion recognition in euthymic BD patients and healthy controls (HCs). METHODS: We recruited forty-four euthymic BD patients and forty healthy controls (HCs) and measured their inflammatory markers, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and TNF-α. We applied validated cognitive tasks, the Wisconsin Card-Sorting Test (WCST) and Continuous Performance Test (CPT), and a social cognitive task for emotion recognition, Diagnostic Analyses of Nonverbal Accuracy, Taiwanese Version (DANVA-2-TW). We analyzed the relationships between cytokines and cognition and then explored possible predictive factors of sadness recognition accuracy. RESULTS: Regarding pro-inflammatory cytokines, TNF-α was elevated in euthymic BD patients relative to HCs. In euthymic BD patients only, higher TNF-α levels were associated with lower accuracy of sadness recognition. Regression analysis revealed that TNF-α was an independent predictive factor of sadness recognition in patients with euthymic BD when neurocognition was controlled for. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated that enhanced inflammation, indicated by increased TNF-α, was an independent predictive factor of impaired sadness recognition in BD patients but not in HCs. Our findings suggested a direct influence of TNF-α on sadness recognition and indicated vulnerability to depression in euthymic BD patients with chronic inflammation.

Fear of Death in Colombian Nursing Students.

Introduction: Death is a natural phenomenon inherent to the human condition and an inevitable consequence of life. As future professionals, nursing students should face the process of death and recognize their limitations, because emotional aspects can influence the quality of health care, especially in Spanish-speaking countries. This study aimed to quantify the level of fear of death among nursing students in a higher education institution in a region of Colombia. Methods: A quantitative correlational study including 258 university students selected by stratified sampling were administered the Collet-Lester Fear of Death Scale; the results were analyzed for the age, religion, marital status, number of children, and academic level of the respondents. Results: On average, the students were 22.9 years old; 83.3% of them were female, 75.6% were Catholic, 14.1% had at least one child, and 66.7% had experienced bereavement in the family. An association was found between the female gender and the fear of one's own death (p = .025). Conclusion: These findings differ from those reported in other Latin American countries where higher academic level and clinical experience are related to lower fear of death.

Personality traits and depressive symptoms among Chinese older people: A network approach.

BACKGROUND: The present study aims to investigate the network structure of depressive symptoms, the interrelationships between individual personality traits and depressive symptoms, and gender differences among Chinese older people aged 60 and above. METHOD: We performed network analyses with a regularized Graphical Gaussian Model and a case-dropping bootstrap approach. A sample of 4876 older Chinese people aged 60+ was included in the analyses. We investigated the central symptoms in the depression network and the bridge nodes that connect personality facets and depressive symptoms. Gender differences were investigated by testing the global strength, network invariance, and edge weights. RESULTS: Sadness and depressed mood were the most central depressive symptoms, while somatic symptoms such as restless sleep were the least central. Neurotic facets, particularly "worry a lot" and "get nervous easily", played significant bridging roles in the web of personality traits and depressive symptoms. Gender differences were observed in three edges among different personality traits (rude-worried, original-worried, and forgiving-nervous). LIMITATION: The study adopts a cross-sectional dataset, and therefore, cannot track the network changes over time or conclude a causal relationship. DISCUSSION: The study calls for more focus and prioritization on sadness, depressed mood and neurotic traits in the identification of depression among older Chinese people. Future researchers and practitioners should better understand of older Chinese adults' worry and nervousness to develop appropriate practices and policies.

Acaricidal activity of synthetic spilanthol derivative against ticks of medical and veterinary importance.

The ANESPSAT, a synthetic spilanthol derivative, and its nanoformulation were evaluated against Rhipicephalus microplus and Amblyomma sculptum ticks. ANESPSAT activity was compared with spilanthol and derivatives (ANESPE and others). The compound was synthesized in a gram-scale by a 2-step process, comprising a direct ester amidation and a Horner-Wadsworth- Emmons reaction. The nanoemulsions were produced by coarse homogenization followed by high-energy ultrasonication, in which hydrodynamic diameter, polydispersity index, and zeta potential remained stable. The spilanthol-eugenol hybrid derivatives did not show significant acaricidal activity. ANESPE killed 83% of the R. microplus larvae at 30 mg.mL-1, while ANESPSAT killed 97% at 0.5 mg.mL-1, showing to be the most active compound. Spilanthol and ANESPSAT had similar high mortality rates for tick larvae, with LC50 values of 0.10 and 0.14 mg.mL-1 for R. microplus larvae, and 0.04 and 0.48 mg.mL-1 for A. sculptum larvae, respectively. The efficacy of spilanthol was lower against R. microplus engorged females when compared with ANESPSAT, which was highly effective (>98%) against R. microplus engorged females. The nanoemulsion with ANESPSAT was effective against tick females, preventing egg laying and achieving 100% efficacy at 2.5 mg.mL-1. Spilanthol had only 59% efficacy at 10 mg.mL-1. The results suggest that ANESPSAT, a natural product derivative, could be used in novel formulations for tick management that might be safer and environmentally friendly.

Relationships Between Meaning in Life and Positive and Negative Spirituality in a Field Setting in Japan.

This study examined the relationships between positive/negative spirituality and meaning in life at two religious sites in Japan. Participants reported greater sadness and less meaning in life at Koyasan Okunoin, a temple with graves surrounded by nature, than at Nachi Kumano Taisha, a shrine with a waterfall. However, greater feelings of happiness protected meaning in life in the presence of sadness at Koyasan. Additionally, participants who felt a sense of awe reported greater meaning in life through self-liberation, regardless of the sites. The results provide new insights into meaning in life from the two sides of spirituality.

Not all negative emotions are equal - Sadness and anger develop differently and their adaptivity is age-graded.

We argue that a comprehensive understanding of emotional development across adulthood must go beyond broad dimensions of affect and consider discrete emotions. Current evidence focuses on sadness and anger, two negative emotions that exert contrasting age trajectories because anger has high adaptive value in young adulthood, when people have abundant resources and need to carve out a niche in society, whereas sadness has high adaptive value in old age, a time of declining resources that requires adaptation to increasingly unattainable goals. We conclude that our position about the age-graded experience and adaptive value of emotions should hold for a variety of negative and positive emotions.

When eco-anger (but not eco-anxiety nor eco-sadness) makes you change! A temporal network approach to the emotional experience of climate change.

Research on the emotional experience of climate change has become a hot topic. Yet uncertainties remain regarding the interplay between climate change-related emotions (i.e., eco-anxiety, eco-anger, eco-sadness), general emotions (i.e., regardless of climate change), and pro-environmental behaviors. Most previous research has focused on cross-sectional studies, and eco-emotions in everyday life have seldom been considered. In this preregistered study, 102 participants from the general population rated their eco-emotions (i.e., eco-anxiety, eco-anger, eco-sadness), general emotions (i.e., anxiety, anger, sadness), and pro-environmental intentions and behaviors daily over a 60-day period. Using a multilevel vector autoregressive approach, we computed three network models representing temporal (i.e., from one time-point to the next), contemporaneous (i.e., during the same time-frame), and between-subject (i.e., similar to cross-sectional approach) associations between variables. Results show that eco-anger was the only predictor of pro-environmental intentions and behaviors over time. At the contemporaneous level, the momentary experience of each eco-emotion was associated with the momentary emotional experience of the corresponding general emotion, indicating the distinctiveness of each eco-emotion and the correspondence between its experience and that of its general, non-climate-related emotion. Overall, our findings 1) emphasize the driving role of eco-anger in prompting pro-environmental behaviors over time, 2) suggest a functional and experiential distinction between eco-emotions, and 3) provide data-driven clues for the field's larger quest to establish the scientific foundations of eco-emotions.

Preliminary results of the effect of music therapy treatment on anxiety, sadness, physical discomfort, mood, and quality of life in hospitalized onco-haematological patients.

BACKGROUND: Physical and psychological distress may occur in patients facing an onco-haematological diagnosis and undergoing complex therapies such as intensive chemotherapy, stem cell transplantation, and immunotherapy. Studies have shown the need for incorporating different therapeutic modalities to respond to patients' physical and psychosocial needs. AIMS: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy treatment on mood, anxiety, depression, and physical discomfort in hospitalized onco-haematological patients. METHODS: Forty patients were included in this music therapy study from November 2021 to May 2023. Treatment consisted of individual weekly music therapy sessions. Participants completed the following evaluation instruments before and after the intervention: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Profile of Mood States-Short Form A-Version (POMS-A), and European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer-Quality of Life Core Questionnaire-30 (EORTC QLQ-C30). A three-item numerical rating scale (NRS) for anxiety, sadness, and physical discomfort was administered at the beginning and end of each session (pre-/postsession). RESULTS: Differences (p < 0.05) were shown in NRS scores for anxiety, sadness, and physical discomfort before and after the music therapy sessions. Quality of life (QoL) was affected in almost all items, and patients could be anxious at a nonclinical level, but they were clinically depressed. EORTC QLQ-C30 scores for insomnia and pain related to the hospitalization process got worse after discharge. CONCLUSIONS: The interim results of our study showed that music therapy sessions can positively change emotional distress and improve the mood of haematological patients after every session. Despite the difficulties and limitations of this study, this preliminary report contributes to a greater understanding of the potential benefits of music therapy in hospitalized onco-haematological patients.

Visual metaphor of sadness in poetry comics: a socio-cognitive perspective.

Earlier literature on conceptual metaphor studies has extensively examined verbal metaphors of sadness in different text types and with cultural variations. However, there has been by far limited research on the visual metaphor of sadness. Adopting a socio-cognitive perspective, this study investigates the conceptual metaphor of sadness in the exemplary case of Chinese poetry comics drawn by Cai Zhizhong. The findings reveal that (1) BEING SAD IS BEING CONFRONTED WITH NATURAL FORCE and BEING SAD IS BEING PHYSICALLY ISOLATED are the two most frequently occurring visual metaphors across the panels; (2) all the visual metaphors at play can be explained according to the conceptual metaphor theory; (3) SADNESS IS BITTERSWEET FOOD OR DRINK and BEING SAD IS BEING PHYSICALLY ISOLATED are two additional kinds of sadness metaphors identified; and (4) the visual metaphors of sadness with Chinese cultural variations are rooted in mainstream Chinese cultural philosophies in the relevant period of history. The article also discusses the underlying mechanisms of the investigated visual metaphors in the Chinese culture by unveiling three cultural characteristics in the particular context.

The voices of youths in COVID-19 times: exploring young people's emotional representations.

Since the spread of the COVID-19 virus worldwide, the pandemic had psychological consequences for the entire population for various reasons including restrictions, isolation, and socioeconomic changes. Young people were particularly affected by these psychological consequences, which formed the focus of the mental health concerns voiced by the World Health Organization. This research aimed to analyze, first-hand, the primary emotions that COVID-19 evoked in young Spanish people after two years of the pandemic. Participants were recruited through a snowball sampling procedure using emails, virtual platforms of the schools, and social networks, and a google forms questionnaire was administered for data collection. A total of 479 Spanish young people (18-36 years) participated in this study. The questionnaire consisted of a free-association exercise based on the Grid Elaboration Method (GEM) to analyze the participants' emotional representations of COVID-19. In addition, lexical analysis was used to analyze the text corpus. As a result, it could be observed that sadness was the core emotion experienced among young people, followed by fear. Specifically, emotional breakdown, fear, fatigue, and anger figured centrally in their emotional representations. Moreover, the findings revealed new patterns of self- and onward blaming towards youths. It was concluded that results of this research provide important clues for managing the mental health of young people, particularly during future pandemics.

Naïve Theories of Emotions: Why People Might (Not) Be Uncertain or in Conflict About Felt Emotions.

Beliefs about conflict and uncertainty over felt emotions-for Joy, Pride, Sadness, Jealousy and Envy events-were studied by means of Yes/No and Why questions. Each participant (N = 1,156) judged a typical antecedent for a single emotion-e.g., Jealousy: story protagonist SP sees his or her partner kiss someone. The Yes/No results showed that SP was frequently expected to experience both phenomena, the more so the greater the event impact (Yes range: 40-86%). Beliefs associated with Yes answers (BY) were categorized into 4 categories: (BY1) reason-emotion opposition-felt emotions are unreasonable, inadequate ways of reacting; (BY2) ambivalent emotions-e.g., joy and sadness; (BY3) unclear emotions; (BY4) other causes-e.g., focused on event implications, SP's personality. No conflict or uncertainty answers (BN; range 14-60%) mirrored BY categories: (BN1) no reason-emotion opposition, (BN2) no ambivalent emotions, (BN3) clear emotions, (BN4) other causes. Attributions and beliefs about causes did not generally differ by gender. As a collective entity, expressed beliefs were complex, focusing on one or more emotion component-e.g., appraisal, regulation, expression-as well as on emotion intensity, duration, and on self-concept issues. Overall, expressed beliefs seemed to imply a malleability theory of emotions, and emotion awareness. Results overall confirmed the hypotheses that conflict and uncertainty attributions are more likely for: unpleasant experiences; when emotions are norm-incongruent for the judged event; when mixed, ambivalent emotions are felt. The study confirms that people interpret emotion processes according to their lay theories.

Differences in facial emotion recognition between bipolar disorder and other clinical populations: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Facial emotion (or expression) recognition (FER) is a domain of affective cognition impaired across various psychiatric conditions, including bipolar disorder (BD). We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis searching for eligible articles published from inception to April 26, 2023, in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE, and PsycINFO to examine whether and to what extent FER would differ between people with BD and those with other mental disorders. Thirty-three studies comparing 1506 BD patients with 1973 clinical controls were included in the present systematic review, and twenty-six of them were analyzed in random-effects meta-analyses exploring the discrepancies in discriminating or identifying emotional stimuli at a general and specific level. Individuals with BD were more accurate in identifying each type of emotion during a FER task compared to individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ) (SMD = 0.27; p-value = 0.006), with specific differences in the perception of anger (SMD = 0.46; p-value = 1.19e-06), fear (SMD = 0.38; p-value = 8.2e-04), and sadness (SMD = 0.33; p-value = 0.026). In contrast, BD patients were less accurate than individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) in identifying each type of emotion (SMD = -0.24; p-value = 0.014), but these differences were more specific for sad emotional stimuli (SMD = -0.31; p-value = 0.009). No significant differences were observed when BD was compared with children and adolescents diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. FER emerges as a potential integrative instrument for guiding diagnosis by enabling discrimination between BD and SCZ or MDD. Enhancing the standardization of adopted tasks could further enhance the accuracy of this tool, leveraging FER potential as a therapeutic target.

Facial emotion recognition in adolescent depression: The role of childhood traumas, emotion regulation difficulties, alexithymia and empathy.

Introduction: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is crucial for effective social competency, and problems in this skill are linked depression during adolescence. In this study, we aimed to find the rates of FER accuracy for negative (fearful, sad, angry, disgusted), positive (happy, surprised), and neutral emotions, and the possible predictors of FER skill for most confusing emotions. Subjects and Methods: A total of 67 drug-naive adolescents with depression (11 boys, 56 girls; 11-17 years) were recruited for the study. The facial emotion recognition test, childhood trauma questionnaire and basic empathy, difficulty of emotion regulation, and Toronto alexithymia scales were used. Results: The analysis demonstrated that adolescents have more difficulties in recognizing negative emotions when compared the positive ones. The most confusing emotion is fear (39.8% of fear was recognized as surprise). Boys have lower fear recognition skill than girls and higher childhood emotional abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect, and difficulty in describing feelings to predict lower fear recognition skill. For sadness recognition skill, emotional neglect, difficulty in describing feelings, and depression severity were the negative predictors. Emotional empathy has a positive effect on disgust recognition skill. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that impairment of FER skill for negative emotions is associated with childhood traumas, emotion regulation difficulties, alexithymia, and empathy symptoms in adolescent depression.

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, working, and life situation of employees in the Swedish hospitality industry.

Introduction: Previous studies reported that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of employees in the hospitality industry internationally, however, its effect in Sweden has not been studied. Unlike several other countries, Sweden never enforced a lockdown. Restaurants, bars, and hotels could remain open and host a limited number of guests but had to abide by certain restrictions. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was distributed among hospitality industry employees containing questions regarding the perceived effects of the pandemic on the respondents' working and life situations and their physical and psychological health. The sample consisted of 699 individuals, with a response rate of 47.9%. Results: Although several respondents had been laid off or furloughed, the majority of the sample remained at the same employer. However, more than half of the respondents reported that their economic situation had deteriorated. Compared to before the pandemic, 38.1% experienced elevated levels of stress, 48.3% experienced elevated levels of worry, and 31.4% reported worsened mood. A deteriorating personal economy and difficulty in following COVID-19-related restrictions at work were associated with the worsening of these three mental health aspects. While the fear of becoming infected with COVID-19 was related to higher levels of stress, the fear of infecting others was related to higher levels of worry. Conclusion: Although Sweden imposed less strict measures than most other countries, the personal economy and mental health of hospitality workers were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Robots with tears can convey enhanced sadness and elicit support intentions.

The behaviour of shedding tears is a unique human expression of emotion. Human tears have an emotional signalling function that conveys sadness and a social signalling function that elicits support intention from others. The present study aimed to clarify whether the tears of robots have the same emotional and social signalling functions as human tears, using methods employed in previous studies conducted on human tears. Tear processing was applied to robot pictures to create pictures with and without tears, which were used as visual stimuli. In Study 1, the participants viewed pictures of robots with and without tears and rated the intensity of the emotion experienced by the robot in the picture. The results showed that adding tears to a robot's picture significantly increased the rated intensity of sadness. Study 2 measured support intentions towards a robot by presenting a robot's picture with a scenario. The results showed that adding tears to the robot's picture also increased the support intentions indicating that robot tears have emotional and social signalling functions similar to those of human tears.

Relationship between Internet Use and Negative Affect.

While positive emotions like happiness and life satisfaction have received great attention, how to eliminate negative affect is largely neglected. This study contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between Internet use and people's negative affect. Unlike previous studies that consider only one indicator, we capture negative affect from different dimensions by considering loneliness, sadness, and life hardship. We employ an endogenous ordered probit model to address the selection bias of Internet use and analyze the 20,107 individual-level samples sourced from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies survey. The results show that Internet use significantly reduces people's loneliness, sadness, and life hardship. We also find that studying online and watching short videos would increase people's loneliness feeling and shopping online deepens people's life hardship. In contrast, using WeChat significantly reduces sadness and life hardship. Our findings confirm that guiding people to use the Internet appropriately is necessary to reduce negative affect and improve the quality of their life.

"The many faces of sorrow": An empirical exploration of the psychological plurality of sadness.

Sadness has typically been associated with failure, defeat and loss, but it has also been suggested that sadness facilitates positive and restructuring emotional changes. This suggests that sadness is a multi-faceted emotion. This supports the idea that there might in fact be different facets of sadness that can be distinguished psychologically and physiologically. In the current set of studies, we explored this hypothesis. In a first stage, participants were asked to select sad emotional faces and scene stimuli either characterized or not by a key suggested sadness-related characteristic: loneliness or melancholy or misery or bereavement or despair. In a second stage, another set of participants was presented with the selected emotional faces and scene stimuli. They were assessed for differences in emotional, physiological and facial-expressive responses. The results showed that sad faces involving melancholy, misery, bereavement and despair were experienced as conferring dissociable physiological characteristics. Critical findings, in a final exploratory design, in a third stage, showed that a new set of participants could match emotional scenes to emotional faces with the same sadness-related characteristic with close to perfect precision performance. These findings suggest that melancholy, misery, bereavement and despair can be distinguishable emotional states associated with sadness.

Predictors and outcomes associated with the growth curves of self-efficacy beliefs in regard to anger and sadness regulation during adolescence: a longitudinal cross-cultural study.

Introduction: This longitudinal study examined unique and joint effects of parenting and negative emotionality in predicting the growth curves of adolescents' self-efficacy beliefs about regulating two discrete negative emotions (anger and sadness) and the association of these growth curves with later maladjustment (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems). Methods: Participants were 285 children (T1: M age = 10.57, SD = 0.68; 53.3% girls) and their parents (mothers N = 286; fathers N = 276) from Colombia and Italy. Parental warmth, harsh parenting, and internalizing and externalizing problems were measured in late childhood at T1, whereas early adolescents' anger and sadness were measured at T2 (T2: M age = 12.10, SD = 1.09). Adolescent self-efficacy beliefs about anger and sadness regulation were measured at five time-points from T2 to T6 (T6: M age = 18.45, SD = 0.71), and internalizing and externalizing problems were measured again at T6. Results: Multi-group latent growth curve models (with country as the grouping variable) demonstrated that in both countries there was on average a linear increase in self-efficacy about anger regulation and no change or variation in self-efficacy about sadness regulation. In both countries, for self-efficacy about anger regulation (a) T1 harsh parenting and T1 externalizing problems were negatively associated with the intercept, (b) T2 anger was negatively associated with the slope, and (c) the intercept and the slope were associated with lower T6 internalizing and externalizing problems, controlling for T1 problems. For self-efficacy about sadness regulation, (a) T1 internalizing problems were negatively associated with the intercept only in Italy, (b) T2 sadness was negatively associated with the intercept only in Colombia, and (c) the intercept negatively predicted T6 internalizing problems. Discussion: This study advances knowledge of the normative development of self-efficacy beliefs about anger and sadness regulation during adolescence across two countries, highlighting the predictive value of pre-existing family and individual characteristics on this development and prediction by the development of self-efficacy beliefs on later adjustment.

Youth baseline and state pain-related injustice appraisals are associated with emotional responses of anger and sadness: An experimental study.

Background: Youth pain-related injustice appraisals are associated with adverse functioning; however, mechanisms by which injustice appraisals exert their impact have yet to be elucidated. Adult injustice literature suggests anger, sadness, and attention bias to anger (AB) as potential mechanisms. This study examined the effects of injustice appraisals in a healthy youth sample by applying a justice violation manipulation. We hypothesized the justice violation condition to lead to worse pain outcomes with effects mediated by anger, sadness, and AB as compared to the control condition. We further explored associations between both baseline and state injustice appraisals and anger, sadness, and AB across conditions. Methods: A 2 × 2 time by condition design was used to test hypotheses. 133 healthy youth aged 9-16 years old completed two cold pressor tasks (CPTs). In the experimental (i.e., justice violation) group, participants were initially told to complete one CPT, but were told afterwards to perform it again due to experimenter negligence. In the control group, no justice violation occurred. Baseline injustice appraisals and pain catastrophizing were assessed with the Injustice Experience Questionnaire and Pain Catastrophizing Scale for Children; state outcomes (i.e., injustice, catastrophizing, anger, sadness) were assessed after CPTs. AB was indexed using a dot-probe task. Results: Findings indicated no effects of the justice violation on pain outcomes or associated mechanisms, nor on injustice appraisals, suggesting manipulation failure. However, across conditions, baseline and state injustice appraisals were positively associated with anger and sadness, but not with AB. Conclusions: Despite the experimental justice violation failing to elicit differential injustice appraisals across conditions, the current study supports both anger and sadness as key emotional responses associated with pain-related injustice appraisals in a healthy youth sample.