Does counting emotion words on online social networks provide a window into people's subjective experience of emotion? A case study on Facebook.

Psychologists have long debated whether it is possible to assess how people subjectively feel without asking them. The recent proliferation of online social networks has recently added a fresh chapter to this discussion, with research now suggesting that it is possible to index people's subjective experience of emotion by simply counting the number of emotion words contained in their online social network posts. Whether the conclusions that emerge from this work are valid, however, rests on a critical assumption: that people's usage of emotion words in their posts accurately reflects how they feel.

Third-Person Self-Talk Reduces Ebola Worry and Risk Perception by Enhancing Rational Thinking.

Background: During the fall of 2014, the threat of an Ebola outbreak gripped the United States (Poll, 8-12 October 2014; see Harvard School of Public Health & SSRS, 2014), creating a unique opportunity to advance basic knowledge concerning how emotion regulation works in consequential contexts and translate existing research in this area to inform public health and policy.

Method: We addressed these issues by examining whether third-person self-talk, a simple technique that promotes emotion regulation, could nudge people into reasoning about Ebola more rationally. In all, 1,257 people from across the United States were asked to write about their feelings about Ebola using their name or I (i.

Effects of stress on pain threshold and tolerance in children with recurrent abdominal pain.

Models of stress-induced hyperalgesia state that exposure to stress can exaggerate subsequent pain experiences. Studies using both animal and human subjects have shown evidence for hyperalgesia as a function of stress [e.g.

Latent variable analysis of coping, anxiety/depression, and somatic symptoms in adolescents with chronic pain.

Reports of adolescents' coping with recurrent pain, symptoms of anxiety/depression, and somatic complaints were obtained from a sample of 164 adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain and their parents. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that coping consisted of 3 nonorthogonal factors: Primary Control Engagement Coping (problem solving, emotional expression, and emotional regulation), Secondary Control Engagement Coping (positive thinking, cognitive restructuring, acceptance, and distraction), and Disengagement Coping (denial, avoidance, and wishful thinking). Structural equation modeling using latent variables revealed that secondary control engagement coping predicted lower levels of anxiety/depression symptoms and somatic complaints, and disengagement coping was related to higher levels of anxiety/depression and somatic complaints.

Attentional biases to pain and social threat in children with recurrent abdominal pain.

Objectives: To test whether children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) exhibit subliminal (nonconscious) and supraliminal (conscious) attentional biases to pain-related words, and to determine correlates of these biases. Previous research indicates that individuals attend to disorder-relevant threat words, and in this study, attentional biases to disorder-relevant threat (pain), alternative threat (social threat), and neutral words were compared.

Methods: Participants were 59 children with RAP who completed a computer-based attentional bias task.

Parent reports of coping and stress responses in children with recurrent abdominal pain.

Objective: To examine relationships among coping, stress responses, pain, somatic symptoms, and anxious/depressed symptoms in a sample of children and adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP).

Method: We assessed parents' reports of coping and involuntary responses to stress in relation to pain, somatic symptoms, and symptoms of anxiety and depression in a sample of 174 children and adolescents with RAP.

Results: Based on parent reports, children's primary control engagement coping (e.