Research snapshot

Exposure to pictures of terrorist acts increases negative emotion, especially for those more sensitive to environmental influences and higher in stress reactivity.

Terrorist attacks increase distress and fear in the general population. A British study examined the effect of media exposure to terrorism on people’s perceptions of risk of further terrorist attacks. The researchers explored whether risk perceptions were influenced by environmental sensitivity and response to stress. University students (n=95) were randomly assigned to experimental conditions of viewing terrorist-related pictures or neutral pictures. Stress was induced in participants through a stress test and they completed questionnaires and had their heart rates recorded. Viewing of the terrorism-related pictures was associated with higher levels of negative emotion and lower levels of positive emotion. Individuals high in environmental sensitivity and stress reactivity were found to be particularly affected by terrorism-related pictures. In addition, individuals high in sensitivity who viewed terrorist-related pictures compared to neutral pictures were more willing to trade off their privacy in order to increase national security. These results suggest the need to raise awareness of how media coverage of terrorism can affect people’s mental health and behaviour.

doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12292

Distress linked to tinnitus can be intensified by unhelpful healthcare consultations that emphasise ‘no cure’ rather than advice for reducing distress.

While tinnitus is a common experience and usually mild, for some people it can cause considerable distress. In a qualitative study, nine individuals with tinnitus were interviewed after receiving mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. This paper reports on their experiences living with tinnitus prior to that psychological intervention. Tinnitus can have a life-changing affect on thoughts, emotions, attention and behaviour. The experience of distress from tinnitus was heightened by unhelpful communications with health professionals and reduced by helpful consultations. With no medical cure available, tinnitus sufferers are often told “you just have to live with it”. None of the participants were given advice regarding help for tinnitus distress and none were informed that distress and intrusiveness decreases over time. Helpful consultations involved the clinician showing empathy for the patient’s experience of tinnitus, clear explanations, realistic advice and appropriate referral. The researchers suggest the need for early intervention that provides clear, helpful and realistic information about tinnitus, associated distress and its treatment.

doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12351

The use of competencies to train and assess psychologists has a long history but needs further consultation to reach consensus on its use.

Increasing emphasis is being placed in the education, training and supervision of psychologists on developing and measuring competencies. This paper is a review of the origins of the competencies movement. The emphasis on competencies began with the World War II American aviation industry and vocational training sector. The approach is considered useful for developing and assessing the basic building blocks of clinical skills. The authors argue that it requires careful consideration when used for advanced competencies and needs to emphasise applications to real-world professional activities. They state that more stakeholder consultation is required to achieve consensus about a definition of competence and the necessary sub-competencies. Agreement is needed about the milestones at which competencies should be acquired. The acquisition of competences needs to be assessed with ecologically and psychometrically valid assessment tools. According to the authors, during the later stages of training it is especially important that competences are applied to authentic clinical situations.

doi.org/10.1111/cp.12143

Strength-based parenting is good for kids and parents: a win-win!

Strength-based parenting (SBP) has been defined as an approach to parenting that seeks to deliberately identify and cultivate positive states, positive processes and positive qualities in one’s children. The effects of SBP on children, teenagers and parents have been examined in sample sizes ranging from 100 to over 11,300 using a range of different methods including survey research, vignette studies, dyadic studies, intervention studies, longitudinal studies and panel designs.

Two overarching findings have been identified: 1) SBP is a protective factor and is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress and negative emotions in children and teenagers; and 2) SBP is an enhancing factor and is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, self-confidence, subjective wellbeing and positive emotions in children and teenagers.

The research program has identified key factors that explain or mediate the relationship between SBP and youth mental health including engagement, self-efficacy and persistence. Research into the effects of SBP on parents’ mental health shows that SBP boosts parents’ self-efficacy and experience of positive emotions. Two SBP interventions with families found improvements in family happiness and family hardiness.

Athletes judged to be mentally tough perform better.

Interest on the topic ‘mental toughness in sport’ has increased exponentially since the early 2000s. Initially a term defined by anecdotal opinions of sport practitioners, today, there is general agreement that mental toughness is a construct reflective of a personal capacity to produce consistently high levels of performance despite everyday challenges and adversities. Different models of mental toughness exist, but tend to focus on the following key attributes: self-belief, emotional regulation, attention regulation, success mindset, context intelligence, optimistic thinking, and handling challenge. Research supports the view that athletes rated high in mental toughness generally participate at higher levels of competition, achieve more, and produce better performances. Key psychological mechanisms enabling mentally tough athletes to perform well under pressure include self-regulatory skills (e.g., mindfulness, self-forgiveness) and early threat detection. Traditional psychological skills training (e.g., visualisation, emotion control) and long-term culturally-informed approaches (e.g., stress-inoculation training, immersive contexts) have proven effective in developing mental toughness. There is, however, a potential dark side. Mental toughness is also associated with undesirable traits (e.g., psychoticism) and outcomes (e.g., burnout, injury).

When people realise that others share their values they feel hope for the future.

A widespread ‘tale of terror’ in Western societies is that people do not care about the common good. Instead, they focus on getting ahead in a world obsessed with money, materialism, individual success and status. Research done with 1085 New Zealand adults challenges this tale. Participants were asked to name three things they consider of ‘infinite’ value. Infinite values were defined as that which is scared, precious or special and of value for its own sake. Overwhelmingly, people’s infinite values concerned connection to people and other life forms, positive emotions, self-expression and learning, the natural world, and spirituality.

In a follow-up study, the researchers showed 121 adults a word cloud that displayed the values offered in the first part of the research, and asked them to write down the thoughts and feelings they had on seeing it. The most common responses were a sense of belonging to a human community, reassurance, and feeling uplifted and hopeful. This suggests that when people realise that others care deeply about human and ecological wellbeing, they experience a ‘tale of joy’ that gives them hope for the future and makes action for the common good seem worthwhile.

Age-related declines in thought processes influence our ability to function independently.

Consistent and inevitable changes occur in many basic cognitive processes as we age, including memory, information processing, attention to multiple stimuli, manoeuvring effectively in space, and even some aspects of language such as naming and language fluency. Marked decline in cognition occurs as dementia sets in as well. It makes sense that these changes affect our ability to function independently. However, the literature on this topic is controversial. While many studies find some relationship between age-related cognitive changes and subsequent ability to function independently, the size and even direction of those relationships is contentious, and surprisingly not strong. Research suggests that measurement issues influence this inconsistency and the weak relationships.

Multiple studies indicate that the most valid measurement of the relationship between cognition and functional independence is obtained when a performance-based evaluation of functional independence is made. When performance-based evaluations occur the relationship between age-related cognitive changes and functional independence is found to be strong. These findings should influence policy, diagnostics and evaluation of decision-making authorities when it comes to older adult assessment.

Employees with positive attitudes about accepting help from colleagues may perform better.

The willingness of American employees to accept colleagues’ offers of help was examined in four studies. Five common negative beliefs about accepting help were uncovered: finishing work with assistance may reduce their image at work, accepting help will indebt them to their coworkers, it is more satisfying to complete work without assistance, colleagues may be offering help for self-serving reasons and colleagues may not be providing high quality assistance.

The researchers found that employees with higher levels of such beliefs had poorer job performance, showed less citizenship behaviour and less creativity, and more negative job attitudes, according to their supervisors. Contrary to the negative beliefs, employees who accepted colleagues’ assistance were viewed more favourably by their supervisors than those who did not accept help.

The research suggests the need for workplace interventions to ease employee’s concerns about accepting help from colleagues.

doi.org/10.1037/apl0000300

Some men feel it is ‘unmasculine’ to ask for help and feel unmotivated to get help.

Young men are often reluctant to seek help for mental health difficulties. An Australian study conducted interviews and focus groups with 29 adolescent males with and without clinical anxiety symptoms to understand barriers to and facilitators of help-seeking.

The main barriers to help-seeking included stigma given social norms of masculinity, a preference for self-reliance, limited understanding about anxiety, a feeling that discussing emotional problems with a health professional was too confronting and finding it difficult to get motivated to put in the effort required to obtain help. Common facilitators of help-seeking were increasing the accessibility of school-based information and resources on mental health, including making these highly visible and available quickly.

The men also suggested there was a need for a wider range of formal and informal help-seeking options, including discrete help-seeking options and high speed/low effort options. They also indicated that resources should contain more informal terms and be written in a more ‘masculine’ tone.

doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12191