In-party love spreads more efficiently than out-party hate in online communities.

In this article, we present the findings of a comprehensive longitudinal social network analysis conducted on Twitter across four consecutive election campaigns in Spain, spanning from 2015 to 2019. Our focus is on the discernible trend of increasing partisan and ideological homogeneity within interpersonal exchanges on this social media platform, alongside high levels of networking efficiency measured through average retweeting. This diachronic study allows us to observe how dynamics of party competition might contribute to perpetuating and strengthening network ideological and partisan homophily, creating 'epistemic bubbles' in Twitter, yet showing a greater resistance to transforming them into 'partisan echo-chambers.' Specifically, our analysis reveals that the rise of a new radical right-wing party (RRP), Vox, has heightened ideological homogeneity among users across the entire ideological spectrum. However, this process has not been uniform. While users aligned with mainstream political parties consistently share content that reinforces in-party affinity, resulting in highly efficient 'epistemic bubbles,' the emergence of the RRP has given rise to a distinct group of users associated with the most extreme partisan positions, characterized by a notable proportion of out-partisan hostility content, which has fostered the creation of low-efficient 'partisan echo-chambers.'

Profound Love and Dialogue: Paulo Freire and Liberation Education.

Paulo Freire, Brazilian philosopher and educator, proposed an educational method for adults based on what he called "the problem posing method." This method was based on dialogue that he deemed necessary for education and was not oppressive and controlling. Freire argued that traditional educational methods were inherently oppressive because they served the interest of the elite, instituted what he called "the banking method" in hopes to turn people into better workers. In contrast to this, Freire advocated for an education that was liberating and required dialogue. Dialogue, however, could only take place with profound love. This article reflects on Freire's call for profound love and dialogue within his pedagogical framework, and its necessity for social and political change. Further, this article explores what Freire meant by profound love and dialogue, and explores how love and dialogue are applicable to current and future health literacy and health education efforts. [HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2024;8(3):e118-e120.].

A brief induction of loving kindness meditation to reduce anti-fat bias.

Weight stigma is highly prevalent. However, existing weight stigma interventions are only modestly effective at reducing anti-fat attitudes. The current research proposes a novel approach using a loving kindness meditation (LKM). Experiment 1 tests whether random assignment to the LKM intervention reduces explicit and implicit anti-fat bias and increases empathy based on the LKM recipient with higher weight (close other vs. stranger). Experiment 2 tests whether LKM outperforms an empathy intervention or control to increase empathy or reduce stigmatizing behavior. Results revealed that the LKM increased empathic care but did not reduce anti-fat bias compared to control; the LKM intervention, but not the empathy intervention, reported greater empathy compared to control in unadjusted analyses; and participants in the LKM and empathy interventions (vs. control) were more likely to engage in stigmatizing behavior. These findings suggest that the LKM may not be effective at reducing weight stigma despite increasing empathy.

The body positive or the body neutral? A content analysis of body positivity and body neutrality hashtagged videos on TikTok.

The goal of the present study was to examine how body positivity and body neutrality are presented on TikTok. Based on a grounded-theory analysis, body-positivity themes included Broadly Conceptualizing Beauty (i.e., diversity in appearance types is beautiful), Body Acceptance and Love (i.e., love for and comfort in one's body), and Critiquing Standards (i.e., rejecting strict appearance standards). Body-neutrality themes included Size Inclusivity (i.e., people's activities/preferences should be based on body size), Adaptive Self-Investment (i.e., self care focused on health), Body Appreciation (i.e., respect for what one's body can do), and No Judgment (i.e., a person's worth should not be based on appearance). Further, based on a content analysis of 394 TikTok vidoes that were hashtagged with body positivity and/or body neutrality terms, at least one body-positivity theme occurred in 35.3% (n = 141) of videos, and at least one body neutrality theme occurred in 45.0% (n = 180) of videos. Body Acceptance and Love was the most common body-positivity theme, and Size Inclusivity was the most common body-neutrality theme. Understanding how TikTok videos present body positivity and neutrality is essential to further theorizing about how they might affect social media users.

Human love: Physical and mental health from Avicenna's viewpoint.

Avicenna is one of the most eminent and influential Persian philosophers and scientists whose philosophical and medical works are of high significance all over the world. Using descriptive analysis, the present study aims to deal with philosophical, physiological, and psychological aspects of human love and lovesickness from his perspective. His anthropology stems from his philosophical contemplation and practical experience in medicine. According to the research results, Avicenna believes that the love of noble-minded and young for external beauty, as a branch of human love, leads to the perfection of moral virtues and spiritual tendencies. Virtual love for beautiful human forms, as a representation of divine names and attributes, is a means to reach absolute perfection and true love in the mystic journey. With respect to the medical and psychological aspects, Avicenna holds that lovesickness brings disease to the soul and body of a lover. Lustful and impious love has resulted from intermingling, recurrent, and obsessive perceptions of mental forms. Since it terminates proper and moderate reasoning and disturbs the mental balance of a lover, it would lead to spiritual, mental, and even physical impairment. After explaining the features and symptoms of lovesickness, Avicenna reviews its therapeutic treatments including spiritual and physical remedies. He concludes that physical condition and temperamental health are obedient to and under the control of the mind.

How culture shapes Chinese teacher's compassionate love.

BACKGROUND: Love could play a role in motivating teachers to help students and is closely related to students' achievement and prosocial behaviour. Though influenced by culture, teachers' love is not adequately studied. PURPOSE: This study explores how Chinese teachers' compassionate love is expressed and how situational factors such as Chinese culture and history influence or motivate teachers to perceive and express compassionate love for students. METHOD: This study adopted a qualitative approach of narrative study by describing and investigating the experience of a Chinese middle school teacher and two middle school students and their parents during COVID-19 pandemic. FINDINGS: Chinese teacher's compassionate love demonstrates some universal features in terms of emotional response, cognitive understanding and behaviour. Furthermore some Chinese culture-related features are also found: Chinese teachers behave in a caring and supporting way at the cost of sacrificing their own free time and comfort; an enduring long-term teacher-student relationship is valued; the Chinese culture encourages, sustains and motivates Chinese teacher's compassionate love. DISCUSSION: Teacher's compassionate love is a multi-dimensional concept entailing some universal traits in cognition, emotion and behaviour. The perception and enactment of teacher's love is subject to situational factors. Some measures for compassionate love could be built into teacher's education programme.

Practice and Praxis: Psychoanalysis as an Act of Love.

The concept of praxis in psychoanalysis includes the way clinical practice embodies the values on which psychoanalysis is founded. As psychoanalysis evolved from a medical treatment to a process of open-ended psychic development, its underlying values evolved as well. Free-floating attention has many facets, shown in the variety of names given to it. From being a means to an end clinically, it became an implicit statement about the human value of the person being attended to. Clinical vignettes, contributions from philosophers, and examples from literature converge around the idea that the unreserved openness of free-floating attention amounts to an act of love. It is underpinned by the values, which are also virtues, of hope, and faith in the possibility of good; it can also be seen, in non-religious terms, as a form of prayer.

Vocation as tragedy: Love and knowledge in the lives of the Mills, the Webers, and the Russells.

Can love affect knowledge and knowledge affect love? John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor-Mill, Max and Marianne Weber, and Bertrand and Dora Russell had a definite vocation: they wanted to change the world. They questioned traditional gender arrangements through publications on equality, marriage, and education. They were liberal thinkers, advocating individual freedom and autonomy, vis à vis the constraints of state and society. Their partnership inspired their work, a living experiment conducted through their own unconventional relationship. Over time, their increasingly radical, avant-garde ideas on marriage complicated the ongoing negotiation over power and intimacy which typified their marriages. Building on the historiography of social science couples, and by means of an analysis of the micro-social dynamics of marriage as documented in the life writings of the Mills, the Webers, and the Russells, I analyse the connections between gender, intimacy, and creativity. These couples' experiences highlight the non-rational dimension of a most rational endeavour.

"I felt so powerful to have this love in me": A grounded theory analysis of the experiences of people living with and recovering from eating disorders while in diverse romantic relationships.

Romantic partners have the potential to influence attitudes and behaviors related to body image and disordered eating. However, the role that romantic relationships can play in eating disorder (ED) recovery has not been comprehensively investigated. The present study aimed to explore the ways that people living with and recovering from EDs experience their romantic relationships, with the specific objective of developing a novel theoretical framework, grounded in the experiences of people in diverse romantic relationships, to guide future research on the topic. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 66 people (45 cisgender women, 11 cisgender men, 9 nonbinary people, and 1 transgender man) living with and recovering from EDs while in romantic relationships. Our grounded theory analysis yielded a theoretical model of ED management in romantic relationships, revealing that Individual and Relationship Characteristics intersected with Relationship-Related Stressors and were navigated using Eating Disorder and Relationship Management Strategies. Combined with Partner Support and Tensions, these management strategies were related to Relationship and Mental Health Outcomes, which affected and were affected by Future Concerns. Future researchers should continue to build on, expand, and modify this model and further explore the role of romantic relationships in the experience of people living with EDs.

A Psychoneuroimmunological Reading of Jane Austen's Persuasion in the Context of Bodily Aging.

Jane Austen normally avoids discussing appearance throughout her works. Persuasion constitutes the exception to the rule, as the story focuses on the premature aging experienced by her protagonist, Anne Elliot, seemingly due to disappointed love. Much has been written about Anne's "loss of bloom," but never from the perspective of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that researches the interrelation between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems. In this paper, we adopt a perspective of psychoneuroimmunology to argue that Austen established a connection between psychological distress, specifically lovesickness, and the development of early senescence signs, and vice versa, since the recovery of love is associated with happiness and physical glow. From a gender perspective, we discuss how Austen brightly reflected these interrelationships through the story of Anne, when the latest psychoneuroimmunological research has actually shown that women age earlier than men as a consequence of psychological turmoil.

Love (and) ageing well: A qualitative study of sexual health in the context of ageing well among women aged 50 and over.

BACKGROUND: The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 the 'Decade of Healthy Ageing' and identified the need to strengthen the evidence base on interpretations and determinants of healthy ageing to inform policy. OBJECTIVES: This study sought to interrogate a 'policy blind spot' and examine interpretations and experiences of sexuality and sexual health within the context of ageing well among women aged 50+. DESIGN: The qualitative study design was underpinned by an interpretivist epistemology. Research was guided by principles of feminist scholarship and located in an affirmative ageing framework. METHODS: Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted between April-June 2019 with 21 English-speaking women aged 52-76. Women were recruited through community organizations in North West England. Transcripts were analysed using a framework approach to thematic analysis, applying an inductive approach to theme generation. RESULTS: Narratives encompassed six broad themes: reflections on 'ageing well'; age alone does not define sexuality and sexual health; interpretations of sexual health and sexuality; vulnerability and resistance in later-life sexual health; narratives of (in)visibility; and reimagining services to promote sexual health in later life. There was a dominant belief that sexual health represents a component of ageing well, despite a broad spectrum of sexual expression and health challenges. Sexual expression was diversely shaped by conflicting societal expectations within an evolving digitized environment. In clinical settings, however, sexual health discussions were often muted or framed from a disease-focussed lens. Women expressed a preference for holistic, person-centred sexual health provision from an orientation of wellness to support varied sexual expression, sensitive to wider health, life and relationship realities. CONCLUSION: This work strengthens calls to disentangle sexual health from disease-centred narratives and legitimize sexual health as part of the healthy ageing agenda.

The Love Problem of a Student-Revisited: A Psycho-Ethical Map for Cases of Anima Projection.

In its typical form, an "anima projection" is a psychic experience in which a heterosexual man is caught up by an intense, almost magical attraction for a woman. What sets these numinous experiences apart from a common "crush" is a pattern of specific phenomenological characteristics. Anima projections are particularly common in late adolescence and early adulthood, when they can cause a deep sense of disorientation. Little education exists for young men on how to deal with these experiences and to actualize the developmental opportunity that underlies them. In this paper, I frame anima projections as an ethical problem and outline a psycho-ethical "map" that is intended for use by disoriented young men, or by any practitioner who may be tasked with helping them navigate this challenge along the path of individuation. The map considers four solutions to the love problem: the "concretistic-literal", the "fearful-avoidant", the "rational-depressive", and the "transitional-developmental" solution, and indicates the latter as the one that is conducive to optimal psychic development. Although developed with a focus on young men, the map may apply to other relations based on projection, regardless of age, sex, gender, or sexual orientation.

Dans sa forme typique, une "projection de l'anima" est une expérience psychique dans laquelle un homme hétérosexuel est pris dans une attirance intense, presque magique, pour une femme. Ce qui distingue les expériences numineuses de simples béguins, c'est un ensemble de caractéristiques phénoménologiques spécifiques. Les projections de l'anima sont particulièrement fréquentes à la fin de l'adolescence et au début de l'âge adulte, où elles produisent un profond sentiment de désorientation. Il n'existe que peu de formation pour les jeunes hommes en ce qui concerne comment faire face à de telles expériences et comment utiliser de manière profitable l'opportunité de développement qui les sous­tend. Dans cet article, je considère les projections de l'anima comme étant un problème éthique et j'esquisse une "carte" psycho­éthique visant à aider les jeunes hommes désorientés ­ ou tout praticien dont la tâche est d'aider ces jeunes hommes ­ à relever ce défi sur le chemin de l'individuation. Cette carte envisage quatre solutions au problème de l'amour: la solution "concrète­littérale", celle de "l'évitement angoissé", la "dépressive­rationnelle" et la "transitionnelle­développementale". La carte indique que cette dernière solution est celle qui permet un développement psychique optimal. Bien que conçue pour les jeunes hommes, cette carte peut également être utilisée pour d'autres relations fondées sur la projection, quel que soit l'âge, le sexe, le genre ou l'orientation sexuelle.

En su forma típica, una "proyección del ánima" es una experiencia psíquica en la que un hombre heterosexual se ve atrapado por una atracción intensa, casi mágica, hacia una mujer. Lo que diferencia a estas experiencias numinosas de un "flechazo" común es un patrón de características fenomenológicas específicas. Las proyecciones del ánima son especialmente frecuentes al final de la adolescencia y al principio de la edad adulta, cuando pueden causar una profunda sensación de desorientación. Existe poca educación para los hombres jóvenes sobre cómo tratar estas experiencias y dar lugar a la oportunidad de crecimiento y desarrollo que subyace a las mismas. En este artículo, planteo las proyecciones del ánima como un problema ético y esbozo un "mapa" psico­ético destinado a ser utilizado por jóvenes desorientados o por cualquier profesional que tenga la tarea de ayudarles a navegar este desafío en el camino de la individuación. El mapa considera cuatro soluciones al problema del amor: la "concreta­literal", la "temerosa­evitativa", la "racional­depresiva" y la "transicional­del desarrollo", e indica esta última como la que conduce a un desarrollo psíquico óptimo. Aunque se ha elaborado centrándose en los hombres jóvenes, el mapa puede aplicarse a otras relaciones basadas en la proyección, independientemente de la edad, el sexo, el género o la orientación sexual.

Is informal practice associated with outcomes in loving-kindness and compassion training? Evidence from pre-post and daily diary assessments.

We investigated whether informal meditation practice (i.e., self-reported application of meditative techniques outside a period of formal meditation) was associated with outcomes in smartphone-based loving-kindness and compassion training. Meditation-naïve participants (n = 351) with clinically elevated symptoms completed measures of psychological distress, loneliness, empathy, and prosociality at baseline and following a two-week intervention. Informal practice, psychological distress, and loneliness were also assessed daily. Steeper increases in informal practice had small associations with pre-post improvements in distress (r = -.18, p = .008) and loneliness (r = -.19, p = .009) but not empathy or prosociality. Using a currently recommended approach for establishing cross-lagged effects in longitudinal data (latent curve model with structured residuals), higher current-day informal practice was associated with decreased next-day distress with a very small effect size (ßs = -.06 to -.04, p = .018) but not decreased next-day loneliness. No cross-lagged associations emerged from distress or loneliness to informal practice. Findings suggest that further investigation into a potential causal role of informal practice is warranted. Future studies experimentally manipulating informal practice are needed.

The effects of loving-kindness interventions on positive and negative mental health outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Loving-kindness meditations involve sending feelings of kindness and care to a series of people including oneself, loved ones, strangers, and all beings. Loving-kindness interventions (LKIs), which include knowledge and/or practice related to loving-kindness, have been gaining attention as a potential intervention for improving mental health in adults. This meta-analysis synthesized the effects of LKIs on both positive (i.e., mindfulness, compassion, positive affect) and negative (i.e., negative affect, psychological symptoms) indices of mental health across comparison types (i.e., passive control, active control, alternative treatment) and general sample types (i.e., community, university), and explored characteristics of LKIs that may impact their effectiveness (i.e., intervention format, intervention length, presence/absence of a live facilitator). Following a systematic review of six databases in November 2023, 23 randomized controlled studies met eligibility criteria and were included in the review. Relative to passive control groups, LKIs had positive effects on mindfulness, compassion, positive affect, negative affect, and psychological symptoms; these effects were non-significant relative to active control groups and alternative therapeutic treatments. Notably, the effects of LKIs did not differ as a function of sample type, intervention format, intervention length, or the presence/absence of a live facilitator. Findings provide support for the effectiveness of LKIs relative to passive control conditions, as well as their potential comparability to alternative evidence-based therapeutic treatments, and provide insight into resource-effective approaches to the delivery of effective LKIs. However, additional studies are needed to confirm the impacts of LKIs relative to other interventions in the field.