Poorer decision making among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence for "pandemic-brain".

Objective: Did living through the COVID-19 pandemic cause healthy college students to experience "pandemic-brain," a phenomenon characterized by difficulties with various cognitive abilities? Did students shift from deliberative to more impulsive decision making?

Participants: We compared a pre-pandemic sample of 722 undergraduate students to 161 undergraduate students recruited in Fall 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: We compared scores on the Adult Decision Making Competence scale among participants who completed the task pre-pandemic or across two time points in Fall 2020, during the pandemic.

Results: Decision making was less consistent and more reliant on gain/loss framing during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic, but college students were no less confident in their decisions.

Who Is Less Likely to Ostracize? Higher Trait Mindfulness Predicts More Inclusionary Behavior.

Despite the pain ostracism (being excluded and ignored) causes, researchers have minimally investigated factors related to reducing its occurrence. We investigated the association between higher trait mindfulness (the tendency to be attentive to the present moment) and lower engagement in ostracism. In Study 1, employed adults scoring higher on trait mindfulness reported ostracizing coworkers less.

Are you looking my way? Ostracism widens the cone of gaze.

Ostracized individuals demonstrate an increased need for belonging. To satisfy this need, they search for signals of inclusion, one of which may be another person's gaze directed at oneself. We tested if ostracized, compared to included, individuals judge a greater degree of averted gaze as still being direct.

Atimia: A New Paradigm for Investigating How Individuals Feel When Ostracizing Others.

To date, researchers studying ostracism (being excluded and ignored) focused on examining the consequences of ostracism. However, researchers have not yet systematically investigated why individuals ostracize others. One impediment to this research is lacking multiple means to successfully induce individuals to be sources, those who ostracize others.

The Role of Burden and Deviation in Ostracizing Others.

Ostracism (being excluded and ignored) is a painful experience, so why do individuals ostracize others? Previous research suggests individuals often ostracize those who are deviate, but not always. We posit that there may be two types of deviation, burdensome and non-burdensome, and the former is most likely to be ostracized. Study 1 manipulated burdensome deviation by programming a group member to perform more slowly (8 or 16 sec.

Overgeneralizing belonging: limited exposure to baby-faced targets increases the feeling of social belonging.

We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face.

Excluded by laughter: laughing until it hurts someone else.

Can laughter cause social pain? Given the host of ways exclusion is communicated, we examined if exclusive laughter could produce the aversive consequences accordant with social exclusion. Using a validated recall paradigm, participants recounted a time of exclusive or inclusive laughter or a typical Wednesday (control condition). Participants recalling exclusive laughter felt more ostracized, increased social pain.

The influence of social norms upon behavioral expressions of implicit and explicit weight-related stigma in an interactive game.

This research explored the roles of social influence and stigma-related attitudes in how people behaved toward an overweight female in an interactive computer game. Photographs were used to manipulate whether one of the players in the game was overweight or average weight. We found that both explicit and implicit anti-fat attitudes influenced interactions with an overweight player, but only when other players ostracized the overweight player, not when they included her.

Dial a feeling: Detecting moderation of affect decline during ostracism.

Ostracism, being excluded and ignored, is a common and painful experience. Previous research has found ostracism's immediate effects robust to moderation by individual differences. However, this could be the result of using retrospective measures taken after the ostracism occurs, rather than assessing the effects of ostracism the episode.

Eye gaze as relational evaluation: averted eye gaze leads to feelings of ostracism and relational devaluation.

Eye gaze is often a signal of interest and, when noticed by others, leads to mutual and directional gaze. However, averting one's eye gaze toward an individual has the potential to convey a strong interpersonal evaluation. The averting of eye gaze is the most frequently used nonverbal cue to indicate the silent treatment, a form of ostracism.

The role of gender in mental-illness stigma: a national experiment.

The stigma of mental illness imposes substantial costs on both the individuals who experience mental illness and society at large. Understanding the psychological underpinnings of this stigma is therefore a matter of practical and theoretical significance. In a national, Web-based survey experiment, we investigated the role played by gender in moderating mental-illness stigma.

Relieving symptoms in cancer: innovative use of art therapy.

Art therapy has been used in a variety of clinical settings and populations, although few studies have explored its use in cancer symptom control. The specific aim of this study was to determine the effect of a 1-hour art therapy session on pain and other symptoms common to adult cancer inpatients. A quasi-experimental design was used (n=50).

Use of herbal therapies to relieve pain: a review of efficacy and adverse effects.

To find holistic treatment with effective pain relief and few side effects, Americans spend billions of dollars annually on complementary and alternative medicine, including herbal therapies. Despite extensive use, the lack of regulatory scrutiny of these herbal supplements contributes to the paucity of reliable clinical data assessing their efficacy and safety. This review summarizes the existing studies investigating the efficacy of herbal therapies as a treatment for pain.