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Previous research has indicated that gratitude and affect-balance play key stress-buffering roles. However, to date there is limited research on the impact of gratitude and affect balance on cardiovascular recovery from acute psychological stress, and whether affect balance moderates the relationship between gratitude and cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress. In this study, 68 adults completed measures of state gratitude, positive and negative affect, and completed a laboratory-based cardiovascular stress-testing protocol. This incorporated a 20-minute acclimatization period, a 10-minute baseline, a 6-minute arithmetic stress task, and an 8-minute recovery period. Mixed-effects growth curve models were fit and the results indicated that state gratitude predicted lower systolic blood pressure responses throughout the stress-testing period. Affect balance was found to moderate the association between state gratitude and diastolic blood pressure responses to stress, amplifying the effects of state gratitude. These findings suggest that state gratitude has a unique stress-buffering effect on both reactions to and recovery from acute psychological stress.

Objective Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that people with power frequently put pressure on athletes to fix a match. Therefore, it is assumed that athletes may attribute their involvement to this pressure. The present study was designed to investigate the role that power, attributions and moral emotions may play in the decision to fix a match. Method Team and individual sport athletes (N = 427) competing in five European countries participated in a quasi-experimental vignette design. Participants completed eight vignettes manipulating power, source of attributions and stability of attributions. Match-fixing susceptibility and five discrete anticipated moral emotions (guilt, shame, pride, indifference, anger) were measured. Results The results of the analyses demonstrated that athletes are perceived to be most susceptible to match-fixing when the reason is related to a stable attribute of the individual (e.g., enjoying gambling, having a betting problem). However, participants reported also being susceptible to match-fixing when power is high. Anticipated emotions negatively predicted match-fixing susceptibility and mediated the effect of attributions and power on match-fixing susceptibility. Conclusion The findings provide information on the interplay between attributions, power and anticipated emotions in predicting match-fixing susceptibility, and the determinants of match-fixing susceptibility. This will be of benefit to policy makers, sporting organizations and researchers in developing policies and interventions to protect athletes from being vulnerable to match-fixing requests.

The empirical study of gratitude has experienced unprecedented growth in the past decade. As such there is now a growing body of research showing the emotional, social and psychological health benefits of being grateful. More recently, emerging research is indicating that being grateful may also positively impact physical health. However, the underlying mechanisms explaining this effect are yet to be fully explored. This research examines the relationship between dispositional gratitude and self-reported physical health symptoms, and explores whether this relationship occurs because grateful individuals have fewer experiences of loneliness. In a sample of 118 adults, gratitude significantly predicted fewer physical health symptoms (sleep disturbances, headaches, episodes of respiratory infections and gastrointestinal problems) and experiences of loneliness. Simple mediation analysis revealed that the positive effect of gratitude on self-reported physical health symptoms was significantly mediated by lower reported levels of loneliness. Therefore participants who reported higher levels of gratitude, also reported lower levels of loneliness, and this then predicted better self-reported physical health symptoms. As attention to the intervening mechanisms underlying the relationship between gratitude and physical health has only begun to be investigated, the study offers novel preliminary information regarding the psychosocial mediators accounting for this association.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) severity is associated with a lower quality of life (QOL). Given the lack of data, we sought to identify surgical and ICU factors associated with QOL scores. Patients from 8 centers who underwent Fontan procedure, TOF or TGA repair who participated in the Pediatric