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Worry is a central process in a wide range of psychopathological and somatic conditions. Three studies (N = 856) were used to test whether a subscale composed of five items of the most commonly used trait anxiety questionnaire, Spielberger's State Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait version (STAI-T), is appropriate to measure worry. Results showed that the subscale, named the Brief Worry Scale (BWS), had excellent internal consistency and temporal stability. Convergent and divergent validity were supported by correlation analyses using worry questionnaires and measures of anxious arousal and depression. The BWS was a particularly good predictor of the pathogenic aspects of worry, including worry perseveration in daily life (study 1), measures of clinical worry (study 2) and the uncontrollability of experimentally induced worry (study 3). Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the BWS might be a valuable scale for pathological worry, for which many researchers already have data., Author(s): Bart Verkuil [sup.1] , Briana N. Brownlow [sup.2] , Michael W. Vasey [sup.2] , Jos F. Brosschot [sup.3] , Julian F. Thayer [sup.2] [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5132.5, 0000 [...]

Higher self‐reported rumination, a common form of trait perseverative cognition, is linked with lower resting heart rate variability (HRV), which indicates poorer cardiac function and greater disease risk. A meta‐analysis and systematic review indicated that in samples with fewer European Americans, the association of rumination with both heart rate and blood pressure was stronger. Thus, trait rumination may be more strongly associated with resting HRV among ethnically minoritized populations. The current study investigated whether differences in the association of self‐reported rumination with resting HRV varied by ethnicity in a sample (N = 513; Mage = 19.41; 226 Women) of self‐identified African Americans (n = 110), Asian Americans (n = 84), and European Americans (n = 319). Participants completed a five‐minute baseline period to assess resting HRV, followed by the Ruminative Responses Scale, which contains three facets of rumination including brooding, depressive, and reflective rumination. On average, Asian Americans reported higher levels of rumination relative to European Americans. African Americans had higher resting HRV than Asian Americans. Adjusting for covariates, higher self‐reported rumination was significantly associated with lower resting HRV in both African and Asian Americans, but not significantly so in European Americans. This finding was consistent for brooding and reflective, but not depressive rumination. Overall, this study lends insight into a psychological mechanism—rumination—that may impact health disparities among ethnically minoritized individuals, contributing to an understanding of how stress gets under the skin among such minoritized populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the concept of anemoia, the authors propose a new typology of nostalgia called vintage anemoia. Vintage anemoia encompasses consumers' positive and nostalgic response to vintage cues, regardless of specific historical periods or individual lived experiences. Through a series of seven studies, the authors demonstrate that vintage typography, by evoking feelings of vintage anemoia, can enhance consumer perceptions of product safety. This effect has positive downstream consequences on key marketing outcomes, including brand attitude, purchase intention, and willingness to pay. Furthermore, the effect of vintage anemoia on product safety perceptions remains unaffected by whether product safety information indicates that a product is safe or unsafe. However, the effect diminishes when an explicit indexical cue (year of establishment) is utilized or when promoting futuristic products. The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in marketing and provide insights for marketers on leveraging vintage typography as a strategic tool for creating emotional connections with consumers and enhancing perceptions of product safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a normative and ubiquitous nuisance in the service industry, customer mistreatment has received extensive attention for its profound impacts on front-line employees' (FLEs) lagged reactions. Drawing upon the Conservation of Resources theory, our results of multilevel path analysis reveal that FLEs encountering daily customer mistreatment experience poor nightly sleep quality, which in turn drives them away from next-day customer-oriented prosocial behavior. These predictions are further contingent upon the levels of service rule commitment, defined as FLEs' commitment to organizational service rules. In Study 2 and Study 3, we replicate the findings of Study 1 and expand the range of outcomes to cast FLEs' turnover intention as another consequence triggered by customer mistreatment on the previous day. Furthermore, we incorporate optimal rule control and empathetic leadership into our analyses to propose the three-way interactions. The results unpack that the aggravating effect of high service rule commitment on the relationship between customer mistreatment and nightly sleep quality is buffered when rule control is optimal or when empathetic leadership is high. Taken together, our findings uncover the spillover-depleting effects of daily customer mistreatment and how the strength of such process is bound by personal and contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiences of racial discrimination can seem to be caused by one's race, a combination of social identities, or non-social features. In other words, racial discrimination can be intersectional or attributionally ambiguous. This poses challenges for current understandings and measurement tools of racial discrimination in public health research, such as the explanation of racial health disparities. Different kinds of discriminatory experiences plausibly produce different psychological effects that mediate their negative health impacts. Thus, multiple characterizations and measurements of racial discrimination are needed. As a result, I argue that racial discrimination should be a polysemous concept (with multiple meanings). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Emotional perception of math-related information can affect an individual's attitude and professional choices, especially in the area of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions. Method: The study compared the processing of math-related words, words with negative emotional valence, and words with neutral valence, using the physiological measure of pupil dilation on a random sample of 30 adults. Pupil responses were examined during a lexical decision task (LDT). We sought to show that exposure to math-related stimuli would cause arousal of the sympathetic system leading to an increase in pupil dilation, similar to that caused by exposure to negative stimuli. Results: pupillary responses were sensitive to words with emotional valence; exposure to math-related words led to increased pupil dilation compared to neutral words; exposure to words with negative valence led to increased pupil dilation compared to neutral words; exposure to math-related words and words with negative valence led to similar pupil dilation. The study concludes math-related textual stimuli lead to increased pupil dilation, similar to negative affective valence textual stimuli. Conclusion: These findings create new possibilities for studying the cognitive and emotional effort required to process math-related information using pupillary response, with implications for researchers, educators, and leaders in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that in systematic review individuals sought to understand the effects of laughter inducing interventions on blood pressure and heart rate variability. Topics include considered that for this purpose they identified several relevant records through database searching and the results suggest that laughter is associated with a decrease in blood pressure in pre–post measurements.

The human brain exhibits the remarkable ability to categorize speech sounds into distinct, meaningful percepts, even in challenging tasks like learning non-native speech categories in adulthood and hearing speech in noisy listening conditions. In these scenarios, there is substantial variability in perception and behavior, both across individual listeners and individual trials. While there has been extensive work characterizing stimulus-related and contextual factors that contribute to variability, recent advances in neuroscience are beginning to shed light on another potential source of variability that has not been explored in speech processing. Specifically, there are task-independent, moment-to-moment variations in neural activity in broadly-distributed cortical and subcortical networks that affect how a stimulus is perceived on a trial-by-trial basis. In this review, we discuss factors that affect speech sound learning and moment-to-moment variability in perception, particularly arousal states—neurotransmitter-dependent modulations of cortical activity. We propose that a more complete model of speech perception and learning should incorporate subcortically-mediated arousal states that alter behavior in ways that are distinct from, yet complementary to, top-down cognitive modulations. Finally, we discuss a novel neuromodulation technique, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS), which is particularly well-suited to investigating causal relationships between arousal mechanisms and performance in a variety of perceptual tasks. Together, these approaches provide novel testable hypotheses for explaining variability in classically challenging tasks, including non-native speech sound learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the effects of travel on the health of travelers could have profound effects on the tourism industry and behaviors of tourists. While psychometric analyses have suggested travel has the ability to relieve stress and improve one's overall well-being, scant research has utilized physiological data to examine the effects of travel on health. The current study, guided by the cognitive activation theory of stress (CATS), compared self-reported diaries and physiological data (using heart rate monitors) to examine the effects cruising has on both perceived and actual stress. Results empirically validate the use of CATS as a theoretical framework for understanding travelers' perceived and actual stress. Findings also inform specific guidance to both cruise management, on how to engineer cruise experiences based on stress, and individuals, on how to experience positive stress while traveling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional awareness is the ability to conceptualize and describe one's own emotions and those of others. Over thirty years ago, a cognitive-developmental theory of emotional awareness patterned after Piaget's theory of cognitive development was created as well as a performance measure of this ability called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). Since then, a large number of studies have been completed in healthy volunteers and clinical populations including those with mental health or systemic medical disorders. Along the way, there have also been further refinements and adaptations of the LEAS such as the creation of a digital version in addition to further advances in the theory itself. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the evolving theoretical background, measurement methods, and empirical findings with the LEAS. The LEAS is a reliable and valid measure of emotional awareness. Evidence suggests that emotional awareness facilitates better emotion self-regulation, better ability to navigate complex social situations and enjoy relationships, and better physical and mental health. This is a relatively new but promising area of research in the domain of socio-emotional skills. The paper concludes with some recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]