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A key challenge in conducting paid internet-based studies is that individuals may feign eligibility to participate. This case series describes three examples where people attempted to fake being locals with health vulnerabilities to participate in paid internet-mediated studies. In two cases, individuals pretended to have serious cancer diagnoses to participate in a randomized controlled trial. In the third case, an individual pretended to be nine restaurant workers at high risk of occupational COVID-19 exposure to participate in an online survey. Key red flags among individuals feigning eligibility are noted. Ethical and practical methodologic implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine whether adults with cancer view affective forecasting as important for treatment decisions, and to examine these perceptions among key subgroups. Adults with cancer (N = 376) completed a cross-sectional survey that included demographic and clinical characteristics, the IPIP five-factor personality measure, and a rating of the perceived importance of affective forecasting for cancer treatment decisions. Descriptive statistics characterized the importance of affective forecasting. Multivariate analyses examined whether health and personality variables were associated with affective forecasting importance. Most participants (89.6%) identified affective forecasting as important for treatment decisions. Affective forecasting was more likely to be rated as important among patients with prostate cancer (p <.001), patients lower in neuroticism (p =.02), and patients higher in agreeableness (p =.004). Conclusions/Implications: Patients believe it is important to understand how treatments will impact their emotional well-being. Oncology clinicians should discuss with patients these consequences during healthcare decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mini International Personality Item Pool (Mini-IPIP) is a brief measure of the Five-Factor Model of personality with documented validity in healthy samples of adults and could be useful for assessing personality in patient populations such as individuals with cancer. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Mini-IPIP in 2 samples of adults with cancer. A sample of 369 (Sample 1) and a sample of 459 (Sample 2) adults with cancer completed an online survey including the Mini-IPIP. To assess criterion validity, Sample 2 completed measures of emotional distress. Analyses included internal consistency (Samples 1 and 2), confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs; Samples 1 and 2), and correlations and a structural regression model to examine the associations between the 5 personality factors and emotional distress (Sample 2 only). Results showed that the Mini-IPIP demonstrated levels of internal consistency and CFA model fit that were similar to previous validation studies conducted in the general population. Consistent with prior research and theory, this study also found that personality factors measured by the Mini-IPIP were associated with measures of emotional distress in Sample 2. These findings suggest the potential utility of the Mini-IPIP in both research and clinical settings involving individuals with cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose/Objectives: Screening for distress is a key priority in cancer care, and African American patients may experience increased distress compared to White patients. However, this question has not yet been addressed in Louisiana. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between African American race and distress at a cancer center in Louisiana. Design/Methods: This was a retrospective study of 1,544 patients who were treated at an academic cancer center in 2015. Extracted data included patient self-reports of distress using the single-item Distress Thermometer (DT) and demographic and clinical characteristics. Hypotheses were tested using logistic regression. Findings: Distress was present in 19.7% of the sample. In univariate analyses, African American patients were more likely than White patients to experience distress (OR = 1.38, p =.013). However, race was no longer associated with distress in a multivariate analysis that adjusted for the covariates of age, gender, cancer site, presence of metastases, and number of distress screenings (OR = 1.07, p =.670). Distress was more common in patients who were younger (OR = 2.26, p <.001), diagnosed with lung/bronchus cancer (OR = 5.28, p <.001), or screened more often (OR = 5.20, p <.001). Distress was less common among patients with female breast cancer (OR = 0.39, p =.015). Conclusions/Implications: This study suggests that African American individuals with cancer in Louisiana are at increased risk for distress, but that this can be attributed to African American patients being younger, more likely to have lung cancer, and screened more frequently. Implications include careful consideration of patient race, age, and cancer site during distress management in cancer care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Social support is fundamentally important to the well-being of patients with cancer, and informal caregivers often wish they had better insight into how to help. The aims of this study were to quantify the types of social support that patients qualitatively expressed as important, and examine whether demographics and mental health symptoms explained the type of support desired. Methods: A sample of 82 patients with cancer (Gender: 65.9% Male, Age: M = 57.5, Race/Ethnicity: 90.2% White, non-Latino/a) completed measures of demographics, health, anxiety, and depression, and responded to an open-ended question asking them to list three types of support that they desire from their caregivers. These responses were then reliably coded into 18 different categories. Results: Most commonly, participants expressed a desire for companionship (45%). Other common requests included empathy (33%), home care support (28%), information support (16%), being treated the same (15%), and help with appointments (13%). Patients who were more anxious were more likely to desire companionship (OR = 4.41, p =.033), and younger patients were more likely to desire home care support (OR = 7.24, p =.016). Conclusion: Findings have implications for providing individually-tailored social support to patients with cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective forecasting often drives decision-making. Although affective forecasting research has often focused on identifying sources of error at the event level, the present investigation draws upon the “realistic paradigm” in seeking to identify factors that similarly influence predicted and actual emotions, explaining their concordance across individuals. We hypothesised that the personality traits neuroticism and extraversion would account for variation in both predicted and actual emotional reactions to a wide array of stimuli and events (football games, an election, Valentine's Day, birthdays, happy/sad film clips, and an intrusive interview). As hypothesised, individuals who were more introverted and neurotic anticipated, correctly, that they would experience relatively more unpleasant emotional reactions, and those who were more extraverted and less neurotic anticipated, correctly, that they would experience relatively more pleasant emotional reactions. Personality explained 30% of the concordance between predicted and actual emotional reactions. Findings suggest three purported personality processes implicated in affective forecasting, highlight the importance of individual-differences research in this domain, and call for more research on realistic affective forecasts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Expanded Access program allows patients with life-threatening diagnoses, such as advanced cancer, to use experimental medications without participating in clinical research (colloquially, “Compassionate Use”). Sixteen U.S. states recently passed “right-to-try” legislation aimed at promoting Expanded Access. Acknowledging popular support, Expanded Access could undermine clinical trials that benefit public health. Moreover, existing norms in oncologic care, for example, often lead patients to pursue intense treatments near the end of life, at the expense of palliation, and improved communication about the risks and benefits of Expanded Access would more often discourage its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bipolar disorder is characterised by impulsivity, and recent research suggests it is important to consider more specific forms of impulsivity. In two student samples, we examined associations of self-reported impulsivity with mania risk (Hypomanic Personality Scale, HPS). We hypothesised that mania risk would relate to impulsivity in the context of opportunities for rewarding activities (Delaying Gratification Inventory, DGI), reward pursuit (Fun-Seeking subscale of the Behavioural Activation Scale, BAS), and when experiencing positive affect (Positive Urgency Measure, PUM). In Study 1 (N=823), the HPS was uniquely related to Fun-Seeking and PUM scores. Study 2 (N=482) replicated the correlation of HPS scores with PUM while documenting positive associations between PUM and trait-like responses to positive affect. Findings across both studies stress the importance of considering the role of positive emotion in driving the impulsivity among persons at risk for mania. These findings have implications for refining our understanding of the aetiology of bipolar disorder and for treatment development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To examine the effects of age and depressive symptom severity on changes in positive affect among older adults randomly assigned to a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or a Waitlist Control group. Drawing from the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, we hypothesized that lower levels of depressive symptom severity and older age would be associated with greater positive affect in response to the MBSR intervention. Methods: Data were collected from a sample of community-dwelling English-speaking adults (n = 200) aged ≥ 65, randomly assigned to an eight-week MBSR program or a Waitlist Control group. Our main outcome variable was a five-item measure of positive affect, which was measured at study entry as well as eight weeks and six months later. Results: At the six-month follow-up, we observed group by baseline depressive symptom severity (β = −.17, p =.02) and group by baseline depressive symptom severity by age (β = −.14, p =.05) interactions. Among MBSR participants, greater baseline depressive symptom severity was also associated with less improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up (β = −.30, p =.003). Findings were qualified by a significant depressive symptom severity by age interaction (β = −.25, p =.01), such that MBSR participants who were 70 and over with lower baseline depressive symptom severity having the greatest improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up. Conclusion: MBSR improves positive affect for older adults with lower depressive symptom severity, perhaps because it capitalizes on naturalistic changes in control strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging research has examined individual differences in affective forecasting; however, we are aware of no published study to date linking psychopathology symptoms to affective forecasting problems. Pitting cognitive theory against depressive realism theory, we examined whether dysphoria was associated with negatively biased affective forecasts or greater accuracy. Participants (n=325) supplied predicted and actual emotional reactions for three days surrounding an emotionally evocative relational event, Valentine's Day. Predictions were made a month prior to the holiday. Consistent with cognitive theory, we found evidence for a dysphoric forecasting bias—the tendency of individuals in dysphoric states to overpredict negative emotional reactions to future events. The dysphoric forecasting bias was robust across ratings of positive and negative affect, forecasts for pleasant and unpleasant scenarios, continuous and categorical operationalisations of dysphoria, and three time points of observation. Similar biases were not observed in analyses examining the independent effects of anxiety and hypomania. Findings provide empirical evidence for the long-assumed influence of depressive symptoms on future expectations. The present investigation has implications for affective forecasting studies examining information-processing constructs, decision making, and broader domains of psychopathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]