There is great diversity in the natural environments that humans interact with. It is important to understand how this physical diversity influences the psychological experience of nature activities. In this study, we used a keyword search to identify Twitter posts in the United States ( N tweets = 391,577) discussing a nature-based experience. Using topic modeling to determine how people share their experiences, we examined how the resulting topics varied by the surrounding physical environment, which was determined using either visual features of images ( N tweets = 61,661) or geo-location data ( N tweets = 15,571). A myriad of themes emerged from the topic model, including photography, hunting, hiking, and family fun. All topics had an average positive valence and many reflected affective and social processes. The prevalence of topics was associated with geospatial and image properties. Overall, the results emphasize that the physical environment predicts the multi-faceted impacts of nature engagement on cognitive processes.

Research on Social Network Sites (SNS) and mental health has produced largely inconclusive findings. One reason may be that most studies either aggregate SNS use across platforms or focus on single platforms, making it difficult to systematically account for platform differences. In this paper, we integrate the literature to propose a cross-platform framework that organizes platform differences into three classes of characteristics: architecture, affordances, and socio-cultural context. Each characteristic encompasses features that vary across SNS and are theoretically linked to mental health outcomes. We outline this framework, illustrate its utility for understanding platform-specific effects, and conclude by identifying three key directions for future research: expanding the evidence base, examining the dynamics of platform-swinging, and understanding the interplay between user characteristics and platform characteristics.

The relationship between social networking sites (SNS) and mental health is influenced by individual user characteristics, making it crucial to understand the nature of this complex interaction. Despite its importance, however, there is a lack of comprehensive reviews synthesizing prior studies on how user characteristics moderate the relationship between usage of SNS and mental health. Therefore, to examine how this issue has been studied in the literature, we conducted a scoping review, focusing on quantitative evidence, including experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experience-sampling studies. We provide an overview of (a) user characteristics that have been examined as moderators of the relationship between (overall, active, or passive) SNS use and mental health (well-being or ill-being), and (b) methodological and theoretical features of these studies. After conducting a systematic database search, followed by title and abstract screening, full-text review of relevant studies, and an interrater reliability check among three authors, we found 30 journal articles examining 24 unique moderators. We then applied a narrative synthesis approach to describe the findings. Most studies were atheoretical, cross-sectional, and relied on convenience samples. Most moderators (n = 16, 67%) were examined in a single journal article only and for those examined at least twice (gender, social comparison orientation, neuroticism, extraversion, SNS use motives, Fear of missing out, self-esteem, social capital & social support, and age), results were mixed. However, experimental studies revealed that social comparison orientation was the most consistent moderator, aggravating the negative consequences of passive SNS use on mental health. We outline four recommendations for future studies on the conditional effects of SNS use on mental health to resolve existing inconsistencies and deepen our understanding of these conditional effects: (a) improving participant sampling, (b) refining the conceptualization and measurement of key variables, (c) accounting for platform diversity, and (d) incorporating theoretical frameworks.

Loneliness is a widespread issue routinely targeted by the media and public health campaigns. We propose that these efforts, though well-intentioned, may exacerbate this problem by negatively influencing a potential driver of loneliness: people’s beliefs about being alone. Supporting this thesis, we show that contemporary U.S. news articles are 10 times more likely to describe being alone as harmful than beneficial (Study 1, N = 144 articles) and that exposure to such articles causally impacts people’s beliefs about being alone (Study 2, N = 456). Further, a 2-week experience-sampling study (Study 3, N = 161) demonstrates that people with negative beliefs about being alone experience a steep increase in loneliness after spending time alone in daily life, whereas those with positive beliefs feel less lonely after spending time alone. Finally, multi-national studies demonstrate the generalizability of these results across nine countries spanning six continents (Studies 4 and 5, N = 2930). Together, these findings reveal the critical role of beliefs about being alone in shaping loneliness. Loneliness is a widespread problem that the media and public health campaigns frequently address. Here, the authors show that negative media portrayals of being alone may inadvertently make matters worse by shaping people’s beliefs, which in turn exacerbate loneliness.

Emerging research indicates that people use multiple strategies to manage their emotions in everyday life. Yet, we know little about what these strategy combinations look like, how they function, or how individual differences influence these phenomena. We addressed these issues in two, 2-week daily diary studies performed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 422; data collected April and September 2020). Each evening, participants rated their level of COVID-19 anxiety and indicated which of 18 emotion regulation strategies they used to manage it. There was tremendous diversity in the strategy combinations people used: 74% of the combinations were unique across participants and included strategies seldom studied together (e.g., exercise, journaling, social interaction, and cognitive reframing). On average, using a given strategy predicted same-day use of another strategy with only 1% accuracy. Despite this variability, a set of features consistently predicted effective regulation: Using large and healthy repertoires of strategies in diverse ways predicted reductions in anxiety over time. Psychologically distressed individuals experienced more daily anxiety and drew on a wider but more unhealthy set of strategies. However, when they used adaptive strategy combinations, they benefited just as much as less distressed individuals. These results illuminate the anatomy of people's emotion regulatory lives, underscoring the need to develop frameworks that capture the diverse ways people manage their emotions. They also identify specific mechanisms that interventions can target to improve how people manage their emotions under ecologically valid conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Talking to oneself is a common phenomenon; yet research on spontaneous self-talk overlooks nuances in the self-perspective people adopt when engaging in this process. Laboratory research suggests that distanced (vs. immersed) self-talk has regulatory benefits, but we know little about how often and to what effect people use distanced (or immersed) self-talk in daily life, and whether this varies based on individual differences. We conducted a two-week ecological momentary assessment study (12,966 surveys from 208 participants) to examine distanced and immersed self-talk use in response to four situation types: feeling critical of oneself, needing to prepare for what to say or do, wanting to feel better, or feeling pleased with oneself. Distanced self-talk was less common than immersed self-talk across all situation types, and neither were associated with trait-level emotional distress or narcissism. Distanced (vs. immersed) self-talk was associated with improved momentary affect when implemented in the context of needing to prepare what to say or do, but results did not indicate similar functionality in other situations. These findings shed light on how people intuitively adopt different perspectives in self-talk to navigate their daily lives and suggest that distanced self-talk may have emotion regulation benefits for preparatory situations.

People spend significant time at work talking with coworkers. Yet surprisingly little is known about how these conversations impact their emotional lives. We addressed this issue across two experience sampling studies performed in 2021 and 2023 with working adults in the United States (N = 358; 26,234 observations). Time-lagged models showed that sharing positive information and sharing information to connect predicted improved emotional well-being, work energy, and connection over time, while sharing negative information and sharing information to vent predicted reductions in emotional well-being and increases in rumination. Additionally, mismatches between sharing motivations and perceived responses from listeners occurred frequently (49.2% of the time) and predicted adverse outcomes. These findings highlight the need for future research to examine whether strategically sharing personal information at work optimizes well-being and productivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Persuasion plays a crucial role in human communication. Yet, convincing someone to change their mind is often challenging. Here, we demonstrate that a subtle linguistic device, generic-you (i.e., "you" that refers to people in general, e.g., "You win some, you lose some"), is associated with successfully shifting people's pre-existing views in a naturalistic context. Leveraging Large Language Models, we conducted a preregistered study using a large (\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$N_{trials}$$\end{document} = 204,120) online debate dataset. Every use of generic-you in an argument was associated with an up to 14% percent increase in the odds of successful persuasion. These findings underscore the need to distinguish between the specific and generic uses of "you" in large-scale linguistic analyses, an aspect that has been overlooked in the literature. The robust association between generic-you and persuasion persisted with the inclusion of various covariates, and above and beyond other pronouns (i.e., specific-you, I or we). However, these findings do not imply causality. In Supplementary Experiment 2, arguments with generic-you (vs. first-person singular pronouns, e.g., I) were rated as more persuasive by open-minded individuals. In Supplementary Experiment 3, generic-you (vs. specific-you) arguments did not differentially predict attitude change. We discuss explanations for these results, including differential mechanisms, boundary conditions, and the possibility that people intuitively draw on generic-you when expressing more persuasive ideas. Together, these findings add to a growing literature on the interpersonal implications of broadening one's perspective via a subtle shift in language, while motivating future research on contextual and individual differences that may moderate these effects.

Two studies (Ntotal = 1,153) investigated how adolescents reason about whether to report a transgression committed by a close friend versus distant classmate. In Study 1, sixth-ninth graders (Mage = 12.36 years, SDage = 1.14 years; 55% girls, 44% boys; 2% Asian, 63% Black, 13% Latino, 7% multiracial, 7% White; low-income urban schools) were less willing to report close friends than distant classmates, for both high- and low-severity thefts. In Study 2, seventh-eighth graders (Mage = 12.87 years, SDage = 0.07 years; 48% girls, 45% boys; 2% Asian, 2% Black, 3% Latino, 85% White, 2% multiracial; 29% free/reduced lunch) said they both actually would and morally should report close others less than distant others, but relationship affected "would" judgments more than "should" ones. In their explanations, participants most often appealed to practical outcomes, morality, and relationship to the transgressor-but frequency of these varied based on relationship to the transgressor and judgment type. These studies provide evidence that relational closeness influences both how adolescents reason about peers' transgressions and what they think is morally right to do-and that their reasoning involves both practical and moral considerations.

Research suggests that placebos administered without deception (i.e. non-deceptive placebos) may provide an effective and low-effort intervention to manage stress and improve mental health. However, whether non-deceptive placebos administered remotely online can manage distress for people at risk for developing high levels of affective symptoms remains unclear. Volunteers experiencing prolonged stress from the COVID-19 pandemic were recruited into a randomized controlled trial to examine the efficacy of a non-deceptive placebo intervention administered remotely online on affective outcomes. COVID-related stress, overall stress, anxiety, and depression were assessed at baseline, midpoint, and endpoint. Compared with the control group, participants in the non-deceptive placebo group reported significant reductions from baseline in all primary affective outcomes after 2 weeks. Additionally, participants in the non-deceptive placebo group found the intervention feasible, acceptable, and appropriate for the context. Non-deceptive placebos, even when administered remotely online, offer an alternative and effective way to help people manage prolonged stress. Future large-scale studies are needed to determine if non-deceptive placebos can be effective across different prolonged stress situations and for clinical populations.

Sense of purpose - the feeling that one has meaningful goals and directions in life - has consistently been connected to desirable well-being outcomes. Though these associations are robust, only a paucity of research explains why this connection exists and whether it differs across the adult lifespan. In a large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,666; age: M = 49.44, SD = 21.55), age showed a moderate positive association with sense of purpose and a large negative association with anxiety symptoms. Sense of purpose was negatively associated with anxiety and showed moderate to strong associations with how people regulate their emotions in anxiety-inducing situations. Sense of purpose had the strongest associations with adaptive emotion-regulation strategies connected to perspective broadening: When they feel anxious, people with a higher sense of purpose were more likely to find a silver lining, focus on the big picture, and remember that the stressor will not last. Furthermore, sense of purpose moderated the relationship between age and three maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies (eating/drinking to cope, expressive suppression, and distraction). In particular, higher levels of sense of purpose correlated with a stronger negative relationship between age and the use of these strategies. We discuss the findings regarding integrating the purpose and emotion-regulation literature.

BACKGROUND:Drinking identity (the extent to which one links the self with drinking alcohol) is a unique risk factor for college students' hazardous drinking that is not directly targeted by existing interventions. We conducted a study that aimed to decrease drinking identity among college students with hazardous drinking. We adapted a writing task about the future self and tested whether three writing sessions could decrease drinking identity and change drinking. We also investigated whether two additional factors (writing perspective and inclusion of participants' social networks) would enhance task impact. The present study evaluated whether posited proximal cognitive and motivational outcomes (drinking identity, self-efficacy, readiness to change, and drinking intentions) changed immediately after each writing session. METHOD:The study is a randomized clinical trial in which hypotheses and analyses were pre-registered. Participants were 328 college students who met hazardous drinking criteria. The study had a 2 (narrative writing topic: low-risk drinker vs. reduced smartphone use) × 2 (writing perspective: first-person vs. non-first-person) × 2 (social network instruction: instructed to include vs. not) factorial design. Proximal outcomes were drinking identity, self-efficacy, readiness to change, and drinking intentions. The clinical outcome was alcohol consumption. Participants completed three laboratory sessions at weekly intervals that included the writing task and pre- and post-task assessments. RESULTS:Results were largely null, except that readiness to reduce drinking was higher in the low-risk drinker condition and increased over the lab sessions. Time effects indicated that reductions in drinking identity, drinking intentions, and alcohol consumption, and increases in self-efficacy were observed but did not change above and beyond control conditions. CONCLUSIONS:Findings indicate the need to strengthen the writing task and select a more appropriate control task to target proposed proximal outcomes. Future studies might try personalizing the task, evaluating its efficacy with individuals motivated to change their drinking, and using a control task that does not involve imagining a future self.

Abstract Medical authorities and policymakers raise mounting concerns regarding the detrimental influence of social-media on students’ academic performance and well-being. Surprisingly, empirical evidence that supports these strong concerns is unclear. We provide a novel psychological framework that specifies fundamental elements of social-interaction to predict under which conditions social-media usage will have its most pernicious effects. Our framework argues that posting personal social-media content (relative to scrolling through others' content) elicits opportunities to receive strong social-feedback from others, which tempts individuals to procrastinate on social-media instead of studying, resulting in negative academic and well-being consequences. Three experimental studies causally test our framework using state-of-the-art methods, behavioral measures, and outcomes. Experiments 1 (Facebook) and 2 (Instagram) demonstrated that experimentally having participants post (vs scroll), leads to enhanced procrastinatory social-media usage, that in turn undermines academic performance and well-being. Experiment 3 directly demonstrated the detrimental role of opportunities to receive strong social-feedback following posting, in showing that experimentally blocking social-feedback opportunities following posting, eliminates subsequent procrastinatory social-media behavior and its maladaptive consequences. These findings advise professionals and policymakers to shift from making generic recommendations to reduce overall social-media usage, to customized warnings about the negative academic and well-being consequences of posting on social-media.

Moral norms balance the needs of the group versus individuals, and societies across the globe vary in terms of the norms they prioritize. Extant research indicates that people from Western cultures consistently choose to protect (vs. punish) close others who commit crimes. Might this differ in cultural contexts that prioritize the self less? Prior research presents two compelling alternatives. On the one hand, collectivists may feel more intertwined with and tied to those close to them, thus protecting close others more. On the other hand, they may prioritize society over individuals and thus protect close others less. Four studies (N = 2,688) performed in the United States and Japan provide self-report, narrative, and experimental evidence supporting the latter hypothesis. These findings highlight how personal relationships and culture dynamically interact to shape how we think about important moral decisions.

Intradural extramedullary cavernous hemangioma involving the nerve fiber is a rare clinical entity. Here, we report an extremely rare case of cavernous hemangioma that presented as an intradural extramedullary tumor involving the left S2 nerve fiber.A 28-year-old female presented with intractable left leg pain. Her lumbar magnetic resonance image showed an intradural and extramedullary neoplastic lesion at left S1-2 level. Because her symptoms had deteriorated, surgical treatment was performed. The neoplasm was involving the left S2 nerve fiber mimicking a schwannoma. The neoplasm was completely resected, and diagnosis of cavernous hemangioma was confirmed by the histopathological findings. The patient's symptoms improved after surgery, and there is no recurrence at the 1-year follow-up.To the best of our knowledge, this is the most caudal level of intradural extramedullary cavernous hemangioma involving the nerve fiber in the literatures. Complete resection was performed, and clinical outcome was favorable.

It is essential to perform disaster prevention and preparedness at the city level before a real disaster event happens. One strategy is to raise the resilience and disaster preparedness of existing key hospitals and enhance their medical treatment capability in disaster situations, thereby increasing the robustness and efficiency of the whole network. This paper aims to identify the critical hospitals in the post-disaster healthcare system. An innovative method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a network model is constructed based on modeling assumptions and selected hospitals with rescue and treatment capabilities. Secondly, four network-based criteria and three hospital parameter criteria are selected as decision-making criteria. Then, the entropy weight method (EWM) is used to calculate the criteria weights, and the VIKOR method is utilized to evaluate hospital nodes, thus obtaining the final rank of hospital importance. At last, a case study of Beijing is conducted. As the results show, the BC has the largest weight, followed by HL, and the CC has the smallest weight, and the final ranking results integrated the advantages of each criterion in different aspects of ranking and avoided the disadvantages of each criterion. It suggests that the location of the hospital plays a more critical role in the rescue process than the hospital's level. Also, the method described in this paper can systematically examine the post-disaster healthcare system and identify the critical hospitals in the system in a more comprehensive and effective way. The method provides an effective analysis tool for decision-makers in areas of urban disaster preparedness, urban medical system planning, and disaster relief decision-making.

College student drinking is prevalent and costly to public and personal health, leading to calls to identify and target novel mechanisms of behavior change. We aimed to manipulate drinking identity (a cognitive risk factor for hazardous drinking) via three sessions of narrative writing about a future self. We tested whether writing could shift drinking identity and would be accompanied by changes in alcohol consumption and problems. Participants were college students meeting hazardous drinking criteria (N = 328; Mage = 20.15; 59% women, 40% men, 1% gender-diverse; 60% white; 23% Asian; 12% multiple races; 2% other racial groups; 8% identified as Hispanic/Latino/a/x). The study had a 2 [narrative writing topic: low-risk drinker vs. reduced smartphone use] x 2 [writing perspective: first person vs. non-first-person] x 2 [social network instruction: instructed to include vs. not] factorial design. Outcomes were drinking identity, drinking refusal self-efficacy, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, and craving. Participants completed three writing sessions and online follow-up assessments at 2-, 4-, and 12-weeks. The study is a registered clinical trial; hypotheses and analyses were preregistered (https://osf.io/vy2ep/). Contrary to predictions, narrative writing about a future self as a low-risk drinker did not significantly impact outcomes. Null results extended to expected interactions with writing perspective and social network instructions. The narrative writing task did not shift drinking or alcohol-related outcomes. Future experimental work may benefit from greater flexibility in conceptualizing a future self, recruiting individuals interested in behavior change, and more sensitive measures of drinking identity.

Decades of evidence reveal intimate links between sensation and emotion. Yet, discussion of sensory experiences as tools that promote emotion regulation is largely absent from current theorizing on this topic. Here, we address this gap by integrating evidence from social-personality, clinical, cognitive-neuroscience, and animal research to highlight the role of sensation as a tool that can be harnessed to up- or downregulate emotion. Further, we review evidence implicating sensation as a rapid and relatively effortless emotion regulation modality and highlight future research directions. Notably, we emphasize the need to examine the duration of sensory emotion regulation effects, the moderating role of individual and cultural differences, and how sensory strategies interact with other strategies.

Experimental research indicates that self-distancing helps vulnerable individuals to cope with negative experiences. However, whether these findings generalize outside the laboratory is unknown. Here, we report the results of a proof-of-principle study (N = 111) that assessed whether teaching people how to self-distance during a brief (i.e., similar to 1 hr) computer-delivered, in-laboratory training session would facilitate adaptive coping in the short term and over time compared to a no treatment control and active control (relaxation) condition. Ten days following the intervention, vulnerable participants in the self-distancing group (but not the active control or no treatment control groups) displayed levels of rumination and negative affect that were on par with their less vulnerable counterparts. At 3 and 6 months after the training, vulnerable participants in both the self-distancing group and the active control group reported lower levels of depressive symptoms (but not rumination) compared to vulnerable participants in the no treatment control group. These findings provide preliminary evidence indicating that training vulnerable individuals to self-distance is beneficial. Future research is needed to replicate these findings with larger samples and to examine whether they generalize to clinical samples.