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Receiving high-quality, responsive support in times of distress is highly important, yet notoriously challenging. Although emotion and relationship scholars have long extolled the value of expressing positivity (e.g., gratitude, optimism), the potential value of positive expressivity within distress-related support-seeking contexts remains largely unexplored. In a recent theoretical review (Walsh & Forest, 2021), I proposed a conceptual process model that explains why support-seekers’ positive expressivity can often elicit—but may sometimes suppress—supportive responses from partners (providers) within negative event contexts. The purpose of the current work was to test direct and indirect pathways of the conceptual model linking seeker-expressed positivity to provider support. Using a combination of correlational in-lab behavioral observation studies of romantic couples and online experiments with manipulations of seeker-expressed positivity, I examined the effects of positive expressivity on partner responsiveness. Studies considered positivity as a broad, unitary construct and also explored three different types of positivity—partner-oriented positivity (e.g., gratitude), stressor-oriented positivity (e.g., optimism), and unspecified positivity (e.g., pleasant demeanor). Findings indicated that when disclosing about a recent upsetting event via video-message (Study 1) or about their greatest fear in a face-to-face discussion (Study 4), seekers’ positive expressivity (coder-rated) was a robust predictor of provider responsiveness (coder-rated), even when controlling for seeker-expressed negativity and several other plausible third variables. Experimental work (Study 2) provided causal evidence of a support-eliciting direct effect of seeker-expressed positivity on a coded behavioral measure of provider responsiveness. Regarding the value of particular types of positivity, partner-oriented positivity showed the strongest and most consistent support-eliciting potenti

Science has opened up new hopes and fears for the future, and science fiction (SF) articulates those hopes and fears by imagining the social and human consequences of scientific developments. SF also acts back on science by critically responding to its confident pronouncements. ‘Unsettling Scientific Stories: Expertise, Narrative, and Future Histories’ is an AHRC- funded project exploring how people have thought about and envisioned their futures at different points over the course of the long technological twentieth-century. Our project frames science/fiction as a partner in the imagination and exploration of alternative futures, and explores new ways of using fiction as a relevant mode of socio-historical analysis. As part of our fieldwork, under the title ‘Prospecting Futures’, we will be working with texts, readers and reading groups to explore how contemporary science futures are being created, interpreted and navigated by SF writers and their audiences. In particular we are interested in collaborating with active SF readers as lay experts in envisioning and exploring social-scientific alternatives and in exploring how fictional narratives shape their engagement with collective futures. In anticipation of focus groups with readers to be held across 2017, we will work through some of the theoretical and epistemological resources that can help us understand SF readers as lay futurologists and asks how thinking about practices of reading and writing fiction might contribute a much-needed speculative strand to contemporary sociological analysis.

The ways in which people (targets) behave in response to romantic rivals—people who may capture their romantic partner’s interest—may have implications for important relational processes. The present study examined the effects of romantic rival threat on targets’ responsiveness toward their partners. In accordance with risk regulation theory, I predicted that targets’ levels of trait self-esteem would modulate their responsiveness when faced with rival threat: I hypothesized that when under high (vs. low) rival threat, low self-esteem targets (LSEs) —who readily detect signs of relationship threat and subsequently self-protectively distance themselves from their partners (Murray, Holmes, & Collins, 2006)—would decrease their responsiveness, whereas high self-esteem targets (HSEs)—who typically maintain or even increase their connection with their partners when under threat (Murray et al., 2006)—would behave just as (if not more) responsively. I further predicted that an increase in state jealousy would explain why LSEs would reduce their responsiveness under high (vs. low) threat. One-hundred and thirty-seven couples participated in a lab study, in which I measured targets' trait self-esteem, experimentally manipulated rival threat, and examined the effects of rival threat condition on targets' feelings of state jealousy and on targets' responsiveness (coder-rated and self-reported) to a negative disclosure from their partner. As expected, LSE targets were more likely to report feeling jealous in the high (vs. low) threat condition; HSE targets’ likelihood of jealousy was unaffected by condition. However, target self-esteem did not interact with condition to predict responsiveness. Unexpectedly, targets who received a disclosure in which their partners expressed more positivity (while discussing a negative event) tended to behave more responsively than targets who received a disclosure in which their partners expressed less positivity, but this association only emer

We have previously shown that underground railway particulate matter (PM) is rich in iron and other transition metals across coarse (PM10-2.5), fine (PM2.5), and quasi-ultrafine (PM0.18) fractions and is able to generate reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, there is little knowledge of whether the metal-rich nature of such particles exerts toxic effects in mucus-covered airway epithelial cell cultures or whether there is an increased risk posed by the ultrafine fraction. Monolayer and mucociliary air-liquid interface (ALI) cultures of primary bronchial epithelial cells (PBECs) were exposed to size-fractionated underground railway PM (1.1-11.1 µg/cm(2)) and release of lactate dehydrogenase and IL-8 was assayed. ROS generation was measured, and the mechanism of generation studied using desferrioxamine (DFX) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC). Expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) was determined by RT-qPCR. Particle uptake was studied by transmission electron microscopy. Underground PM increased IL-8 release from PBECs, but this was diminished in mucus-secreting ALI cultures. Fine and ultrafine PM generated a greater level of ROS than coarse PM. ROS generation by ultrafine PM was ameliorated by DFX and NAC, suggesting an iron-dependent mechanism. Despite the presence of mucus, ALI cultures displayed increased HO-1 expression. Intracellular PM was observed within vesicles, mitochondria, and free in the cytosol. The results indicate that, although the mucous layer appears to confer some protection against underground PM, ALI PBECs nonetheless detect PM and mount an antioxidant response. The combination of increased ROS-generating ability of the metal-rich ultrafine fraction and ability of PM to penetrate the mucous layer merits further research.