Elderly suicide is a public health problem, especially in the presence of unipolar depression. Very few tools have been developed to assess suicide risk in the elderly. Suicidal behaviors (SB) are often associated with perturbations of emotional information processing. Recent eye-tracking evidence has indicated specific visual exploration of emotional facial expressions based on age, pathological status, or type of facial emotion expression, which encourage the development of more specific and reliable tools to help in the detection of SB in depressed elderly patients. The aim of this study was to characterize emotional facial information processing in elderly depressed patients with SB vs. patients without SB. We assessed fixation time on their facial expressions (SB n=10 and with noSB n=11). Results showed that depressed SB patients spent more time on emotional regions (i.e. eyes and mouth) of disgust, fear and neutral emotions than did depressed noSB patients. Conversely, fixation time did not differ between the groups for angry, sad and happy emotions. We discuss the difficulties in disengaging attention from emotional information congruent with the patient's emotional state. Specific visual exploration observed in suicidal depressed patients could be used as novel risk factors to more accurately assess and predict suicide risk.

This article presents a free association database containing responses to 62 stimulus words (including colour terms, emotion words, and common nouns) across seven languages: English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, and Spanish. Data were collected online from 1,439 participants (mean age 31.47 years) across 14 countries, yielding 223,786 responses. All data were cleaned, normalised, and organised for analysis, with both raw and processed datasets available on OSF. This cross-linguistic resource enables research on semantic networks, psycholinguistics, translation studies, and cross-cultural comparisons, providing insights into how meaning is constructed within and across different languages and cultures.

In everyday life, adaptive behavior depends on the ability to perceive action possibilities. The field of research on affordances has addressed how individuals perceive action possibilities through the coupling between the perceiver's capacity and environmental features. However, with the increasing digitalization of our environment, people usually need to perceive action boundaries in a 2D-cyberspace. Consequently, researchers need new tasks to operationalize action boundary perception in 2D-cyberspace. The current article aims to propose a critical review of two action boundary perception tasks: the Perception-Action Coupling Task and the Action Boundary Perception Online Task, as assessment tools of the virtual action-boundary perception in digital environment. First, we present the historical background and context of the emergence of these tasks. Then, we review the studies that have employed these tasks. Finally, we conclude by discussing the potential of these tasks, as well as providing a critical description of the limitations that future research will need to address.

Studies on the color category PURPLE yielded inconsistent category boundaries, focal colors, and color-emotion associations. In French, there are at least three color terms referring to the shades of purple, potentially weighing on these inconsistencies. Thus, we tested the semantic breadth and richness in semantic meaning of violet (basic term), lilas (non-basic), and pourpre (non-basic). We collected free associations in 274 French speakers from Algeria, France, and Switzerland, yielding 2079 responses, of which 436 were discrete and 275 were unique. Frequency analyses and semantic coding supported the basicness status of violet in French, within a hierarchically structured semantic system. Moreover, the meaning of the three terms was not synonymous. Violet had the most abstract meaning. Lilas had the narrowest meaning, mainly referring to Natural Entities. Pourpre seemed close to RED. We found no differences between the countries. Future studies should extend this approach to other languages and other color terms.

According to the ecological approach to perception, affordances (i.e., action possibilities) are perceived directly in the environment and body-scaled. Previous theoretical work has suggested that the perception of action possibilities is influenced by depression (which has sometimes been conceived as an action-related disorder). However, thus far the relationship between affordance and depression has never been investigated in an experimental study. The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between reachability perception and depressive symptoms. Participants estimated their maximum ability to reach a target with their hand (without moving). Actual motor reachability capacities were then assessed. To determine the critical point, both measures were related to the participant's arm length and converted into an intrinsic body-scaled measurement. Participants were allocated to either the healthy group or the group with depressive symptoms according to their Beck Depression Inventory-Fast Screen (BDI-FS) scores. Results showed that participants with depressive symptoms were more conservative in their estimations than healthy participants. Depressive symptoms were associated with the perception of decreased motor action possibilities in comparison with what was observed when no symptoms were reported. These data are discussed in relation to theoretical models of depression and affordance.

As people age, they tend to spend more time indoors, and the colours in their surroundings may significantly impact their mood and overall well-being. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to provide informed guidance on colour choices, irrespective of age group. To work towards informed choices, we investigated whether the associations between colours and emotions observed in younger individuals also apply to older adults. We recruited 7393 participants, aged between 16 and 88 years and coming from 31 countries. Each participant associated 12 colour terms with 20 emotion concepts and rated the intensity of each associated emotion. Different age groups exhibited highly similar patterns of colour-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient of .97), with subtle yet meaningful age-related differences. Adolescents associated the greatest number but the least positively biased emotions with colours. Older participants associated a smaller number but more intense and more positive emotions with all colour terms, displaying a positivity effect. Age also predicted arousal and power biases, varying by colour. Findings suggest parallels in colour-emotion associations between younger and older adults, with subtle but significant age-related variations. Future studies should next assess whether colour-emotion associations reflect what people actually feel when exposed to colour.

The pursuit of happiness has been an important component of philosophical thought for a long time. Traditionally, happiness could be viewed as the result of rational thinking and personal project management. We review the literature in cognitive biology and psychology revealing why happiness could complementarily be conceived as an emerging feeling, anchored in daily emotions and moods. Finally, we propose a framework in which happiness builds on distributed and dynamic bodily processes with which abstract thought interacts. Data coming from complexity science, neuroscience, psychopathology, and cognitive behavioral therapies are gathered in this chapter in order to account for the coordination between “bottom-up” and “top-down” happiness geneses.

EDITORIAL article Front. Psychol., 25 August 2023Sec. Psychopathology Volume 14 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1264864

Previous literature on lie detection abilities bears an interesting paradox. On the group level, people detect others' lies at guessing level. However, when asked to evaluate their own abilities, people report being able to detect lies (i.e., self-reported lie detection). Understanding this paradox is important because decisions which rely on credibility assessment and deception detection can have serious implications (e.g., trust in others, legal issues). In two online studies, we tested whether individual differences account for variance in self-reported lie detection abilities. We assessed personality traits (Big-Six personality traits, Dark Triad), empathy, emotional intelligence, cultural values, trust level, social desirability, and belief in one's own lie detection abilities. In both studies, mean self-reported lie detection abilities were above chance level. Then, lower out-group trust and higher social desirability levels predicted higher self-reported lie detection abilities. These results suggest that social trust and norms shape our beliefs about our own lie detection abilities.

Suicidal behaviors (SBs) are often associated with impaired performance on neuropsychological executive functioning (EF) measures that encourage the development of more specific and reliable tools. Recent evidence could suggest that saccadic movement using eye tracking can provide reliable information on EF in depressive elderly. The aim of this study was to describe oculomotor performances in elderly depressed patients with SB. To achieve this aim, we compared saccadic eye movement (SEM) performances in elderly depressed patients (N = 24) with SB and with no SB in prosaccade (PS) and antisaccade (AS) tasks under the gap, step, and overlap conditions. All participants also underwent a complete neuropsychological battery. Performances were impaired in patients with SB who exhibited less corrected AS errors and longer time to correct them than patients with no SB. Moreover, both groups had a similar performance for PS latencies and correct AS. These preliminary results suggested higher cognitive inflexibility in suicidal patients compared to non-suicidal. This inflexibility may explain the difficulty of the depressed elderly in generating solutions to the resurgence of suicidal ideation (SI) to respond adequately to stressful environments. The assessment of eye movement parameters in depressed elderly patients may be a first step in identifying high-risk patients for suicide.

This study tested the influence of mood on the perception of the sitting affordance in two experiments. The objective of Experiment 1 was to evaluate participants' perception of the sitting affordance, without mood induction. Forty-three participants assessed their maximum sitting height (SHmax) from different seat heights (perceptual SHmax) before performing the action (motor SHmax). They accurately perceived the sitting affordance, in body-scaled intrinsic units. Indeed, participants all perceived they could sit as long as the seat height did not exceed 82% (perceptual πc) of their total leg length (L), while the actual value of this intrinsic relationship was 83% (motor πc). In Experiment 2, forty participants were subjected to a mood induction procedure before performing the task employed in Experiment 1. Neutral participants accurately perceived the sitting affordance, as their perceptual πc was equivalent to their motor πc. However, both joyful and sad participants had their perceptual πc significantly lower than their motor πc. These differences between mood groups were not explained by a variation in maximal effective action capabilities. Indeed, participants had equivalent motor πc, whatever their mood. Two interpretations are offered to explain how joyful and sad moods could influence the accuracy of affordance perception. The first is based on their potential effect on organism's energy level. The second is related to the disruption of participants’ attunement to optical variables relevant for action guidance and/or to perceptual-motor calibration.

There is no consensus on whether burnout constitutes a depressive condition or an original entity requiring specific medical and legal recognition. In this study, we examined burnout–depression overlap using 14 samples of individuals from various countries and occupational domains ( N = 12,417). Meta-analytically pooled disattenuated correlations indicated (a) that exhaustion—burnout’s core—is more closely associated with depressive symptoms than with the other putative dimensions of burnout (detachment and efficacy) and (b) that the exhaustion–depression association is problematically strong from a discriminant validity standpoint ( r = .80). The overlap of burnout’s core dimension with depression was further illuminated in 14 exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analyses. Given their consistency across countries, languages, occupations, measures, and methods, our results offer a solid base of evidence in support of the view that burnout problematically overlaps with depression. We conclude by outlining avenues of research that depart from the use of the burnout construct.

The colour category PURPLE is strangely heterogeneous, potentially due to the use of different cognates. We asked French speakers from Algeria, France, and Switzerland (n = 274) to produce up to three free associations with violet (basic term), pourpre, and lilas (non-basic terms). We counted 2,075 associations. We developed a coding scheme that i) covers nine major themes, and ii) shows high inter-rater reliability. Overall, the themes colour terms and natural elements and objects were most prominent showing that participants provided closely related associations. Finally, violet triggered more diverse semantic associations than pourpre or lilas. This was true for all countries. It seems that the basic term PURPLE carries more diverse associations and connotations than the non-basic terms.

Burnout has been viewed as a work-induced condition combining exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy. Using correlational analyses, an exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analysis, structural regression analyses, and a network analysis, we examined the claim that burnout should not be mistaken for a depressive syndrome. The study involved 1,258 educational staff members. Burnout was assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey and depression with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Illegitimate work tasks and work-nonwork interferences were additionally measured. We notably found that (a) on average, exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy correlated less strongly with each other than with depression; (b) exhaustion?burnout's core?was more strongly associated with depression than with either cynicism or professional inefficacy; (c) the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 did not correlate more strongly with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale than with exhaustion; (d) exhaustion and depression loaded primarily on a general distress/dysphoria factor in the exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analysis; (e) on average, burnout and depression were related to job stressors in a similar manner; (f) work-nonwork interferences were strongly linked to distress/dysphoria. Overall, burnout showed no syndromal unity and lacked discriminant validity. Clinicians should systematically assess depressive symptoms in individuals presenting with a complaint of "burnout."

A sample of 1015 educational staff members, exhibiting various levels of burnout and depressive symptoms, underwent a memory test involving incident encoding of positive and negative words and a free recall task. Burnout and depression were each found to be associated with increased recall of negative items and decreased recall of positive items. Results remained statistically significant when controlling for history of depressive disorders. Burnout and depression were not related to mistakes in the reported words, or to the overall number of recalled words. This study suggests that burnout and depression overlap in terms of memory biases toward emotional information.

Many of us "see red," "feel blue," or "turn green with envy." Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient r = .88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letters to the EditorFull AccessThe Trouble With Burnout: An Update on Burnout-Depression OverlapRenzo Bianchi, Ph.D., Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Ph.D., M.P.H., Eric Laurent, Ph.D.Renzo BianchiSearch for more papers by this author, Ph.D., Irvin Sam SchonfeldSearch for more papers by this author, Ph.D., M.P.H., Eric LaurentSearch for more papers by this author, Ph.D.Published Online:1 Jan 2019https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.18091026AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor: Drs. Messias and Flynn (1) wrote in the August 2018 issue of the Journal that “depression and burnout appear to be distinct constructs, the former being categorical and the latter dimensional” (p. 718). On this basis, the authors made suggestions for differentiating burnout from depression in clinical practice. The recommendations of the authors may benefit from additional data addressing the depression-burnout overlap.First, reducing depression to its clinical stage—to a nosological category—is unwarranted when examining the burnout-depression distinction. Indeed, there is strong evidence that depression is a dimensional phenomenon (2, 3). Clinical depression reflects the high end of the depression continuum, not the entire depression continuum. The reduction of depression to its clinical stage is therefore an amputation of the depression phenomenon. Such an amputation impedes investigators’ ability to consistently compare depression and burnout because burnout is typically treated dimensionally.Second, recent factor analytic studies of burnout and depression measures indicate that the discriminant validity of the burnout construct is not satisfactory (3, 4). These studies relied on advanced factor analytic techniques.Third, exhaustion—the core and only consensual characteristic of burnout—has been repeatedly found to correlate more strongly with depression (including anhedonia and depressed mood) than with the two other components of burnout (cynicism and professional inefficacy). Following the commonly accepted definition that a syndrome is a combination of co-occurring symptoms, there is no reason to consider burnout a syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy rather than a depressive syndrome. Interestingly, DSM-5 underlines that “[o]ften insomnia or fatigue is the presenting complaint [in depression]” (p. 162).Fourth, the authors listed putative differences between burnout and depression (e.g., in terms of self-esteem) based on speculations rather than on well-established empirical findings.Fifth, the notion that burnout is a useful construct because it allows investigators to examine work-induced symptoms is misleading. There is evidence that general factors such as neuroticism explain more variance in burnout than occupational-level factors, that burnout involves context-free functional alterations, and that burnout and depressive symptoms are subjectively attributed to work to a similar extent (3–5).Innovative approaches to psychopathology, such as the Research Domain Criteria project, should be helpful in the quest to best understand depressive symptoms in response to unresolvable stress (3, 6–7).Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland (Bianchi); Department of Psychology, the City College of the City University of New York, New York (Schonfeld); Laboratory of Psychology (EA 3188), University of Burgundy–Franche-Comté, Besançon, France (Laurent).Send correspondence to Dr. Bianchi ([email protected]).The authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.References1 Messias E, Flynn V: The tired, retired, and recovered physician: professional burnout versus major depressive disorder. Am J Psychiatry 2018; 175:716–719Link, Google Scholar2 Haslam N, Holland E, Kuppens P: Categories versus dimensions in personality and psychopathology: a quantitative review of taxometric research. Psychol Med 2012; 42:903–920Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar3 Bianchi R, Schonfeld IS, Laurent E: Burnout: moving beyond the status quo. Int J Stress Manag (Epub ahead of print, 2017)Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar4 Bianchi R, Laurent E, Schonfeld IS, et al.: Interpretation bias toward ambiguous information in burnout and depression. Pers Individ Dif 2018; 135:216–221Crossref, Google Scholar5 Bianchi R, Mayor E, Schonfeld IS, et al.: Burnout and depressive symptoms are not primarily linked to perceived organizational problems. Psychol Health Med 2018; 23:1094–1105Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar6 Insel TR: The NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project: precision medicine for psychiatry. Am J Psychiatry 2014; 171:395–397Link, Google Scholar7 Willner P, Scheel-Krüger J, Belzung C: The neurobiology of depression and antidepressant action. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2013; 37:2331–2371Crossref, Medline, Google Scholar FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byTroubles on troubled minds: an intensive longitudinal diary study on the role of burnout in the resilience process following acute stressor exposure4 January 2023 | European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 79Occupational Depression in a Spanish-Speaking Sample: Associations with Cognitive Performance and Work-Life CharacteristicsRevista de Psicología del Trabajo y de las Organizaciones, Vol. 38, No. 1Inventory for Early Screening of Work Addiction-Related Behaviors in High School and Undergraduate Students13 July 2022Non-Drug Addiction: Addiction to Work24 February 2022Inventory for Early Screening of Work Addiction-Related Behaviors in High School and Undergraduate Students18 October 2022Non-drug Addiction: Addiction to Work18 October 2022Work Addiction18 September 2022How Radiology Leaders Can Address BurnoutJournal of the American College of Radiology, Vol. 18, No. 5Is Parental Burnout Distinct From Job Burnout and Depressive Symptoms?1 June 2020 | Clinical Psychological Science, Vol. 8, No. 4Factors Associated With a Higher Score of Burnout in a Population of 860 French Psychiatrists7 May 2020 | Frontiers in Psychiatry, Vol. 11Professional burnout, work patterns and career satisfaction in medical oncologists in Ireland29 August 2019 | Irish Journal of Medical Science (1971 -), Vol. 189, No. 2Burnout in medical professionals working in a tertiary care hospital: A re-analysis of the dataJournal of Mental Health and Human Behaviour, Vol. 24, No. 2 Volume 176Issue 1 January 01, 2019Pages 79-79 Metrics KeywordsBurnoutDepressionMethodologyOccupational HealthOccupational PsychiatryPDF download History Accepted 22 October 2018 Published online 1 January 2019 Published in print 1 January 2019