Objective: Cognitive strategies like finding benefits during adversity may facilitate coping during collective stressors (like COVID-19) by reducing distress or motivating health protective behaviors.
Method: We explored relationships between benefit finding, collective- and individual-level adversity exposure, psychological distress, and health protective behaviors using longitudinal data collected during the COVID-19 era from a representative, probability-based sample of U.S.
Background: Individuals confronting health threats may display an optimistic bias such that judgments of their risk for illness or death are unrealistically positive given their objective circumstances.
Purpose: We explored optimistic bias for health risks using k-means clustering in the context of COVID-19. We identified risk profiles using subjective and objective indicators of severity and susceptibility risk for COVID-19.
Background: Caregiver self-efficacy is thought to be a key component for successful family-based treatment (FBT) for individuals with eating disorders. As such, interventions aimed at enhancing caregiver self-efficacy, often measured via the Parents Versus Anorexia scale, have been a focal point of FBT literature. However, studies looking at the relationship between caregiver self-efficacy and treatment outcomes have been mixed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen an individual or group trauma becomes a shared public experience through widespread media coverage (e.g., mass violence, being publicly outed), sharing a social identity with a targeted individual or group of victims may amplify feelings of personal vulnerability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past two decades of research, increased media consumption in the context of collective traumas has been cross-sectionally and longitudinally linked to negative psychological outcomes. However, little is known about the specific information channels that may drive these patterns of response. The current longitudinal investigation uses a probability-based sample of 5,661 Americans measured at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to identify a) distinct patterns of information-channel use (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFood Insecurity (FI) is associated with a myriad of mental health concerns in children and adolescents. Eating disorder (ED) risk is higher in youth experiencing FI, and FI in childhood is associated with ED diagnoses later in life. Although a growing body of research has shown that FI is associated with a heightened risk for ED-related symptoms, little is known about how experiencing FI may impact ED treatment, particularly in youth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The COVID-19 pandemic has generated debate as to whether community-level behavioral restrictions are worth the emotional costs of such restrictions. Using a longitudinal design, we juxtaposed the relative impacts of state-level restrictions and case counts with person-level direct and media-based exposures on distress, loneliness, and traumatic stress symptoms (TSS) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
Method: From March 18, 2020 to April 18, 2020 and September 9, 2020 to October 16, 2020, a representative probability sample of U.
Astronomical events such as solar eclipses have played a transformative role in human social collectives as sources of collective wonder, inspiration, and reconciliation. Do celestial phenomena systematically shape individuals and their groups? Guided by scientific treatments of awe as an experience that helps individuals form into collectives, we used Twitter data ( = 2,891,611 users) to examine the social impact of a historic, awe-inspiring celestial event: the 2017 solar eclipse. Relative to individuals residing outside the eclipse's path, individuals inside it exhibited more awe and expressed less self-focused and more prosocial, affiliative, humble, and collective language (Study 1).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: During the protracted collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, lay of distorted perceptions of time (e.g., time slowing, days blurring together, uncertainty about the future) have been widespread.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Coronavirus (COVID-19) disproportionately affects people of color (e.g., Black and Latinx individuals) in the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The prevalence of medical misinformation on the Internet has received much attention among researchers concerned that exposure to such information may inhibit patient adherence to prescriptions. Yet, little is known about information people see when they search for medical information and the extent to which exposure is directly related to their decisions to follow physician recommendations. These issues were examined using statin prescriptions as a case study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudying the community impact of mass violence using a Big Data approach from social media data (e.g., Twitter) offers traumatic stress researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study and clarify theoretical assumptions using large-scale, observational, ecologically valid data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe accuracy of emergency management alerts about dangerous threats to public safety is key for the protection of life and property. When alerts of imminent threats are believed to be real, uncontrollable, and impossible to escape, people who receive them often experience fear and anxiety, especially as they await the threat's arrival (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe established link between trauma-related media exposure and distress may be cyclical: Distress can increase subsequent trauma-related media consumption that promotes increased distress to later events. We tested this hypothesis in a 3-year longitudinal study following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre using a national U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the wake of collective traumas and acts of terrorism, media bring real graphic images and videos to TV, computer, and smartphone screens. Many people consume this coverage, but who they are and why they do so is poorly understood. Using a mixed-methods design, we examined predictors of and motivations for viewing graphic media among individuals who watched a beheading video created by the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
October 2017
During crisis events, people often seek out event-related information to stay informed of what is happening. However, when information from official channels is lacking or disseminated irregularly, people may be at risk for exposure to rumors that fill the information void. We studied information-seeking during a university lockdown following an active-shooter event.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudying communities impacted by traumatic events is often costly, requires swift action to enter the field when disaster strikes, and may be invasive for some traumatized respondents. Typically, individuals are studied after the traumatic event with no baseline data against which to compare their postdisaster responses. Given these challenges, we used longitudinal Twitter data across 3 case studies to examine the impact of violence near or on college campuses in the communities of Isla Vista, CA, Flagstaff, AZ, and Roseburg, OR, compared with control communities, between 2014 and 2015.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Community Psychol
September 2016
Traditional and new media inform and expose the public to potentially distressing graphic content following disasters, but predictors of media use have received limited attention. We examine media-use patterns after the Boston Marathon bombings (BMB) in a representative national U.S.
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