scholarly journals Personality States of the Union

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Condon ◽  
Sara J. Weston

Fluctuations in the average daily personality of the United States capture both meaningful affective responses to world events (e.g., changes in anxiety or well-being) and broader psychological responses. We estimate the change in national personality in the months following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigate fluctuations in personality states during the year 2020 using data from an ongoing personality assessment project. We find significant and meaningful change in personality traits since the beginning of the pandemic, as well as evidence of instability in personality states. When evaluating changes from the first few months of 2020 to the period of social distancing related to COVID-19 restrictions, the social traits reflected an unexpected “deprivation” effect such that mean self-ratings increased in the wake of restricted opportunities for social interaction. Changes in mean levels of the affective traits were not significant over the same months, but they did differ significantly from the average levels of prior years when looking at shorter time intervals (rolling 7-day averages) around prominent national events. This instability may reflect meaningful fluctuations in national personality, as we find that daily personality states are associated with other indices of national health, including daily COVID-19 cases and the S&P index. Overall, the use of personality measures to capture responses to global events offers a more holistic picture of the U.S. psyche and of personality change at the national level.

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Gryczynski ◽  
Brian W. Ward

This study investigated the social dynamics that underlie the negative association between religiosity and cigarette use among U.S. adolescents. Using data from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the authors used a theory-based conceptual model (vicarious learning networks [VLN]) to examine the role that key reference group norms play in the religiosity—smoking relationship. This relationship is partially mediated by parents’ and close friends’ perceived disapproval for smoking. However, religiosity maintains a strong negative association with smoking. Consistent with the VLN model, cigarette use varied substantively based on reference group normative configurations. To the extent that the protective effects of religiosity arise from its influence in structuring the social milieu, some of religiosity’s benefits could potentially be leveraged through interventions that promote healthy norms among reference groups within the social network. The VLN model may be a useful tool for conceptualizing the transmission of health behavior through social learning processes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H Esposito

The association among a college degree and health is know to vary, in strength, across subsections of the United States population. Recent literature suggests that educational gradients in health are particularly dependent on contextual environments; higher-level social features, such as state of residence, have indeed been shown to modify how advanced educational credentials matters to well-being. To add resolution to this emerging insight, this study examines how \neighborhood environments, an especially salient level of geographic organization, impact educational gradients in the US. Using data from the Chicago Community Adult Health Study (n = 3,105) and Bayesian multilevel regression models, I examine how educational disparities in self-rated health and depressive symptomatology, between college and non-college degree holders, grow/shrink in response to a neighborhood-provided resource and with exposure to a neighborhood-level health challenge. Findings suggest that how tightly coupled a college degree is with well-being is strongly contingent upon one's immediate external risks, but less so on one's access to neighborhood social resources.


Author(s):  
Svetlana Nikolaevna Ispulova

The article is devoted to the main models and ways of forming social well-being as an indicator of the social state. The author draws attention to the ongoing measures of social support for economically disadvantaged citizens in Russia and the United States.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (37) ◽  
pp. 9169-9174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Chen ◽  
Dana P. Goldman ◽  
Julie Zissimopoulos ◽  
John W. Rowe ◽  

As long-term changes in life expectancy and fertility drive the emergence of aging societies across the globe, individual countries vary widely in the development of age-relevant policies and programs. While failure to adapt to the demographic transformation carries not only important financial risks but also social risks, most efforts to gauge countries’ preparedness focus on economic indicators. Using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources, we developed a multidimensional Aging Society Index that assesses the status of older populations across five specific domains, including productivity and engagement, well-being, equity, economic and physical security, and intergenerational cohesion. For 18 OECD countries, the results demonstrate substantial diversity in countries’ progress in adapting to aging. For any given domain, there are wide differences across countries, and within most countries, there is substantial variation across domains. Overall, Norway and Sweden rank first in adaptation to aging, followed by the United States, The Netherlands, and Japan. Central and eastern European countries rank at the bottom, with huge untapped potential for successful aging. The United States ranks best in productivity and engagement, in the top half for cohesion, and in the middle in well-being, but it ranks third from the bottom in equity. Only well-being and security showed significant between-domain correlation (r = 0.59, P = 0.011), strengthening the case for a multidimensional index. Examination of heterogeneity within and across domains of the index can be used to assess the need for, and effectiveness of, various programs and policies and facilitate successful adaptation to the demographic transition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 135481662093280
Author(s):  
Jen D Snowball ◽  
Geoff G Antrobus

Worldwide, the number and variety of cultural festivals have grown dramatically. Many areas see festivals as an important way to attract tourists, and their spending, to a region, resulting in a positive economic impact. While they offer important opportunities for artistic producers and audiences, there is growing pressure for festival organizers to demonstrate their value to society beyond their economic impact. Like many countries, South Africa has a strong focus on increasing diverse cultural participation, demonstrating the social, nonmarket values of events that receive public funding. Using data from two South African festivals, the article uses a valuation framework developed by the South African Cultural Observatory to demonstrate measures of audience diversity, the use of quality of life measures to gauge the impact of culture on well-being, and the use of community focus groups to assess the impact of participation on social cohesion and capacity building.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016402752096914
Author(s):  
Yingling Liu ◽  
Laura Upenieks

A large body of work has linked marital quality to the health and well-being of older adults, but there is a lack of agreement on how to best measure dimensions of marital quality. Drawing on a stress-process life course perspective, we construct a typology of marriage type that captures the synergistic relationship between positive and negative marital qualities and health. Using data from Wave 1 (2005/2006) and Wave 2 (2010/2011) of the NSHAP survey from the United States, we examine the association between supportive, aversive, ambivalent, and indifferent marriages for older adults that remained married over the study period on multiple indicators of well-being (depression, happiness, and self-rated health; N = 769 males and 461 females). Results suggest that older adults in aversive marriages reported lower happiness (men and women) and physical health (men). There was less evidence that those in ambivalent and indifferent marriages reported worse well-being.


Author(s):  
Samuel Raine ◽  
Amy Liu ◽  
Joel Mintz ◽  
Waseem Wahood ◽  
Kyle Huntley ◽  
...  

As of 18 October 2020, over 39.5 million cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and 1.1 million associated deaths have been reported worldwide. It is crucial to understand the effect of social determination of health on novel COVID-19 outcomes in order to establish health justice. There is an imperative need, for policy makers at all levels, to consider socioeconomic and racial and ethnic disparities in pandemic planning. Cross-sectional analysis from COVID Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research COVID Racial Data Tracker was performed to evaluate the racial and ethnic distribution of COVID-19 outcomes relative to representation in the United States. Representation quotients (RQs) were calculated to assess for disparity using state-level data from the American Community Survey (ACS). We found that on a national level, Hispanic/Latinx, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, and Black people had RQs > 1, indicating that these groups are over-represented in COVID-19 incidence. Dramatic racial and ethnic variances in state-level incidence and mortality RQs were also observed. This study investigates pandemic disparities and examines some factors which inform the social determination of health. These findings are key for developing effective public policy and allocating resources to effectively decrease health disparities. Protective standards, stay-at-home orders, and essential worker guidelines must be tailored to address the social determination of health in order to mitigate health injustices, as identified by COVID-19 incidence and mortality RQs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 95-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin J. Homan ◽  
Jan S. Greenberg ◽  
Marsha R. Mailick

Parents who have a child with a developmental problem or mental disorder often provide support and assistance to their child throughout their lives, and the burden of caregiving can have an adverse impact on parents’ mental and physical health. Using Erikson’s theory as a framework, the present study investigated generativity as a moderator of the effects of parenting a child with a disability on parents’ well-being during mid- to late life. Using data from the study of Midlife in the United States, we identified 220 parents who had a child with a disability and 3,784 parents whose children did not have a disability. Regression analyses showed that the effect of parenting a child with a disability on negative affect, positive affect, and physical health was conditional on both parental gender and generativity, with mothers experiencing greater adverse effects of parenting but showing a benefit from high levels of generativity.


1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Colin Renfrew

The role of the New Archaeology of the 1960s is recognized as decisive in the history of archaeology: an awakening from the “long sleep of archaeological theory” from about 1880 to 1960. But at the same time, limitations in the New Archaeology are responsible for corresponding defects in the present scene. The first of these is the lack of clear policy for the handling and especially the publication of data. It is argued that the outstanding defect of Cultural Resource Management, especially in the United States, is the failure to promote a clear policy that all survey work and all excavations should be adequately published. Accompanying this is the inadequate provision for the effective retrieval, at a national level, of the information which does emerge from CRM projects. The responsibility for this lies at the door of the academic archaeologists.The second defect is the failure to recognize that the New Archaeology primarily offered new and interesting problems, not ready solutions. The widespread misconception that processual archaeology has become “normal science” is partly responsible for the lack of steam in the current theoretical scene in the United States. Some alternative approaches are indicated, and it is suggested that cognitive archaeology may, in the 1980s and 1990s, take its place alongside the social archaeology of the past two decades as a significant growth area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loni Berkowitz ◽  
Marcela P. Henríquez ◽  
Cristian Salazar ◽  
Eric Rojas ◽  
Guadalupe Echeverría ◽  
...  

Abstract Emerging research has linked psychological well-being with many physiological markers as well as morbidity and mortality. In this analysis, the relationship between components of eudaimonic well-being and serum sphingolipids levels was investigated using data from a large national survey of middle-aged American adults (Midlife in the United States). Health behaviors (i.e., diet, exercise, and sleep) were also examined as potential mediators of these relationships. Serum levels of total ceramides - the main molecular class of sphingolipids previously associated with several disease conditions - were inversely linked with environmental mastery. In addition, significant correlations were found between specific ceramide, dihydroceramide, and hexosylceramides species with environmental mastery, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Using hierarchical regression and mediation analyses, health behaviors appeared to mediate these associations. However, the link between ceramides and environmental mastery was partially independent of health behaviors, suggesting the role of additional mediating factors. These findings point to sphingolipid metabolism as a novel pathway of health benefits associated with psychological well-being. In particular, having a sense of environmental mastery may promote restorative behaviors and benefit health via improved blood sphingolipid profiles.


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