Nostalgia is a social, self-relevant, and bittersweet (although mostly positive) emotion that arises when reflecting on fond past memories and serves key psychological functions. The majority of evidence concerning the prevalence, triggers, and functions of nostalgia has been amassed in samples from a handful of largely Western cultures. If nostalgia is a fundamental psychological resource, it should perform similar functions across cultures, although its operational dynamics may be shaped by culture. This study (N = 2,606) examined dispositional nostalgia, self-reported triggers of nostalgia, and functions of experimentally induced nostalgia in young adults across 28 countries and a special administrative region of China (i.e., Hong Kong). Results indicated that nostalgia is frequently experienced across cultures, albeit better valued in more-developed countries (i.e., higher national wealth and life-expectancy). Nostalgia is triggered by psychological threats (especially in warmer countries), sensory stimuli (especially in more-developed countries), and social gatherings (especially in less-developed countries). The positive or negative affect prompted by experimentally induced nostalgia varied by country, but was mild overall. More importantly, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory increased social connectedness, self-continuity, and meaning in life across cultures. In less-developed countries, recalling an ordinary memory also conferred some of these functions, reducing the effect size of nostalgia. Finally, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory augmented state satisfaction with life in countries with lower quality of living (i.e., lower life-expectancy and life-satisfaction). Overall, findings confirm the relevance of nostalgia across a wide range of cultures and indicate cultural nuances in its functioning.

Purpose: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people experience many health care disparities. We aimed to determine if medical students viewed sexual minority patients (lesbian, gay, or bisexual [LGB] men/women) as more complex than heterosexual patients, even when presenting with the same symptoms, and whether this perceived complexity affected confidence caring for LGB patients. Methods: A fictional patient with an upper respiratory infection was presented with systematic variation of the patient's sexual orientation across six experimental conditions in an online, vignette-based experimental study. Participants rated their perception of the medical, therapeutic, and social complexity of the patient, and completed a measure of stigma toward SGM people. Finally, participants indicated their confidence caring for the presented patient. Results: Overall, 665 students participated. Participants viewed the LGB patients as more complex across all domains, relative to heterosexual patients. Perceived medical and social complexity predicted lower confidence caring for the patient. Participants reported lower confidence caring for gay male patients with indirect effects of medical and social complexity. LGB identity was broadly and indirectly associated with lower confidence through social complexity. Conclusion: Our results suggest students view LGB patients as more complex compared with heterosexual patients. Medical education programs must provide training about the effects of social biases on clinical judgments and care for LGB patients, as well as build skills to ensure confidence caring for LGB patients.

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is critical for ending the HIV epidemic, and a necessary part of health professions education. We present data from a US survey study (N = 2085) about educational experiences (coursework and extracurricular), in which medical, physician assistant, nursing, and pharmacy students received training about HIV risk factors and PrEP. We found a discrepancy between the percentage of courses covering HIV risk factors (84.7%) compared to PrEP (54.6%) for all students (P < .001), and specifically among final-year students (92.0% vs. 59.7%; P < .001). Pharmacology courses were the most common exposure to PrEP (46.0%), and 61.3% of students were introduced to PrEP through an extracurricular experience. Health professions education must present HIV risk factors in conjunction with PrEP.

Purpose: Evaluating medical students' attitudes toward sexual and gender minority (SGM) people is important to identify negative attitudes early in education and to design curriculum to mitigate biases. The purpose of this study was to investigate medical students' attitudes toward SGM people as a whole as well as specific populations within the SGM community. We sought to determine whether attitudes toward SGM people differed between students' demographics and training. Methods: We conducted an online survey-based study among 1007 medical students at 12 U.S. medical schools. Participants completed the Attitudes Toward LGBT People Scale and were randomized to complete another scale specific to one group within the SGM community. We evaluated the association between student demographics and medical training and attitudes toward SGM people overall and toward specific SGM populations. This study was conducted between January and June 2020. Results: Overall, we found that medical students had positive attitudes toward SGM people and specific SGM groups. The most important factor affecting medical students' attitudes on all scales was religiosity, as very religious students held less positive attitudes toward SGM people. In addition, cisgender female students held more positive attitudes toward SGM people overall and toward specific SGM populations. Conclusion: Medical education must ensure that future physicians receive comprehensive and culturally competent training to prepare them to care for SGM patients. Based on our findings, this training should include specific content to help medical students identify potential biases toward SGM people, as well as strategies to acknowledge and confront these biases.

BACKGROUND:Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a highly effective, pharmacologic method of HIV prevention. Despite its safety and efficacy, PrEP prescription remains low in those patients who are at highest risk for HIV infection. One possible reason for this may be the lack of inclusion of PrEP and HIV prevention discussions within the curricula of health professions education.METHODS:An online survey was administered to a cross-sectional sample of future prescribers (osteopathic/allopathic medical and physician assistant students), future nurses, and future pharmacists (n = 2085) in the United States between January and July 2019 to assess and compare awareness of PrEP, PrEP education, PrEP knowledge, and confidence in 2 areas related to PrEP.RESULTS:We show that, overall, awareness of PrEP is high among future health care providers (81.6%), with the future pharmacists reporting the greatest awareness (92.2%; P < 0.001) and more commonly reporting PrEP education (71.0%). Students had mixed knowledge of PrEP, with future pharmacists reporting the highest knowledge of PrEP. Approximately 30% of students in all disciplines reported having low confidence counseling a patient about PrEP and low confidence educating a colleague about PrEP. Knowledge of PrEP was a significant predictor of confidence counseling a patient about PrEP (P < 0.001) and educating a colleague about PrEP (P < 0.001).CONCLUSIONS:This study identifies opportunities to improve and incorporate evidence-based strategies for educating future health care providers about PrEP for HIV prevention within health professions curricula.

Background Daily, oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective and safe prevention strategy for people at risk for HIV. However, prescription of PrEP has been limited for patients at the highest risk. Disparities in PrEP prescription are pronounced among racial and gender minority patients. A significant body of literature indicates that practicing healthcare providers have little awareness and knowledge of PrEP. Very little work has investigated the education about PrEP among health professionals in training. Objective The objective of this study was to compare health professions students' awareness of PrEP and education about PrEP between regions of the US, and to determine if correlations between regional HIV incidence and PrEP use were present. Design Survey study. Participants A cross-sectional sample of health professions students (N = 1859) representing future prescribers (MD, DO, PA), pharmacists, and nurses in the US. Key Results Overall, 83.4% of students were aware of PrEP, but only 62.2% of fourth-year students indicated they had been taught about PrEP at any time during their training. Education about PrEP was most comprehensive in the Northeastern US, the area with the highest PrEP to need ratio (4.7). In all regions, transgender patients and heterosexual men and women were least likely to be presented in education as PrEP candidates, and men who have sex with men were the most frequently presented. Conclusions There are marked differences in education regarding PrEP both between academic programs and regions of the USA.

We examined symptoms of disordered eating in the context of autobiographical memory via a phenomenon termed the Fading Affect Bias (FAB). The FAB is the tendency for the affect elicited by thinking about positive past events to fade slower than the affect elicited by thinking about negative past events. In Study 1 via an online survey procedure (Event N = 714), and via a booklet laboratory procedure in both Study 2 (Event N = 916) and Study 3 (Event N = 516) each participant described six (Studies 1 & 3) and four (Study 2) autobiographical events. They rated each event's affect at occurrence, affect at recall, and event rehearsal frequency. Participants also reported their own symptoms of eating concerns. Across studies, eating, shape, and weight concerns each moderated the FAB: above-average ratings were associated with a small FAB or no FAB. In all studies, restrictive eating ratings did not moderate the FAB. These results remained while controlling for event rehearsal frequency. The results clarify the relation between subclinical disordered eating and emotion regulation via the FAB during reminiscence about ordinary life events. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings.

We propose that boredom, a state associated with a sense of meaninglessness, leads to a psychological search for meaning in life, which, in turn, elevates affirmation of heroes. This hypothesis builds on the notion that heroes function, in part, as sources of meaning in life. Using a correlational model, we found that boredom proneness predicted more positive perceptions of heroes via searches for meaning in one's own life. In addition, hero perceptions seemed to prevent boredom by offering a sense of meaning in life. These findings contribute to an understanding of the psychologically existential qualities of boredom and functions of heroes. The results are consistent with the assumption that boredom triggers the existential process of searching for meaning in life. It is this search that influences perceptions of heroes as vehicles for a sense of meaning in life. Our data suggest that heroes grant a sense of meaningfulness, and in so doing, may serve as a tool to counteract the lack of meaning signaled by boredom. These findings implicate novel avenues for future research on boredom and on heroes, and more precisely, they shed light on perception and affirmations of heroes as part of existential self-regulatory processes.

Individuals and groups of individuals are motivated to find meaning in their activities and in life, generally. That is, when events or affective states threaten or reduce a person's sense of meaning, psychological processes are mobilized to serve the goals of meaning maintenance and meaning reestablishment, respectively. We examined two avenues for meaning maintenance: First, we considered psychological resources from the enhancing, moral modelling, and protecting functions of heroes, and second, we considered engagement in heroic behavior as a means to create meaning. We addressed contemporary heroes via conceptual and empirical literatures to discuss a variety of ways that heroes derive meaning from their own actions, and the extent to which others could glean personal meaning from a hero's characteristics and actions. We present a meaning regulation framework that explains how heroes and heroic behavior each boost meaning and the meaning maintenance processes, such as heroism as a buffer against meaning threats. We synthesized relevant literatures on meaning and heroism, and offer a framework that illustrates heroic functions in the context of meaning in life: a central, superordinate psychological variable that is familiar to many individuals and groups. This framework offers many opportunities for future research and practical application of heroism.

Heroes are frequently described as both brave and courageous. Each adjective is often used interchangeably in public and academic discourse, despite historical and philosophical differences in their meaning. While research about heroes and heroism is burgeoning, little work has yet to provide a detailed analysis of specific hero features; indeed, there is a need for greater precision in our terminology and conceptual analyses of heroism. In the present article, we focus on two features of heroism, bravery and courage, and critically parse these terms and the pervasive gender stereotypes that are associated with each. We aim to spark critical discussions about the personal features, motivations, and behaviors associated with heroes and heroism, as well as to outline some directions for future heroism research. We extend our previous work on the central and peripheral features of heroism, and provide directions for considering the role of gender and gender stereotypes in developing future theory and research on heroism.

In three studies, participants remembered real-life behaviours at Time 1 and attempted to recall them at Time 2.When the recall target was the self, a positivity bias emerged: self-positivity. In Study 3, self-positivity extended to an individual (target) who was liked by the participant, but did it not extend to a disliked target. For this latter target, a negativity bias emerged. For recall targets that were participants' acquaintances, self-positivity in recall was also eliminated in Studies 1 and 3, and a negativity bias in recall emerged in Study 2.Finally, in Study 2 (but not Study 3), the favourability of participants' self-view predicted the magnitude of the self-positivity in self-recall, but it did not predict valence effects in other-recall. Taken together, the results indicate that the link between behaviour valence and recall is moderated by the recall target and the favourability of one's self-view.

Heroes are ubiquitous in literature and popular discourse, yet little is known about cognitive representations of heroes. We examined lay conceptions of heroes using a prototype approach, compared heroes with other persons of influence, and studied how individuals use hero features to identify heroes. In Study 1, participants (N = 189) generated open-ended descriptions of heroes, which were sorted by independent coders into 26 meaningful categories. In Study 2, participants (N = 365) rated the centrality of these features, and subsequently classified each feature as either central (e.g., brave, moral integrity) or peripheral (e.g., humble, proactive). In a reaction time (RT) paradigm, participants in Study 3 (N = 33) identified central features of heroes faster than peripheral features. In Study 4, participants (N = 25) remembered more central hero features than peripheral features in a surprise recall task. In Study 5 (N = 89), participants most strongly identified a hero when the target was described with central features (vs. peripheral or neutral features). In Studies 6 (N = 212) and 7 (N = 307), participants' ratings evidenced that the prototypical features of heroes did not fit conceptually as well for role models and leaders. In all, these studies contribute new ideas to existing knowledge about heroes, and contribute to a shared understanding of what a hero means to people. Our research is thus an important step in refining heroism into a scientific concept. The notion of the prototypical features of heroes provides a basis for future hero research and intervention.

The intensity of positive affect elicited by recall of positive events exceeds the intensity of negative affect elicited by recall of negative events (fading affect bias, or FAB). The research described in the present article examined the relation between the FAB and three regulatory goals of the self: esteem, continuity and meaningfulness. The extent to which an event contributed to esteem (Study 1), continuity (Study 2) or meaningfulness (Study 3) was related to positive affect at event recall provoked by positive memories and to negative affect at event recall provoked by negative memories. The relation between affect experienced at recall and the three regulatory goals was bidirectional. The results showcase how individuals use recall for self-regulatory purposes and how they implement self-regulatory goals for positive affect.

We examined memory conformity about an experience among dyads. Specifically, we tested the extent to which interpersonal familiarity and trust among dyads predicted their memory conformity to each other, and the extent to which the reminiscence mode (verbal discussion vs. nonverbal revision) moderated these relations. Participants (N = 100) in pairs (dyads = 50) either discussed verbally (discussion dyads = 25) or exchanged their written details nonverbally (revision dyads = 25) about a novel, shared experience in the laboratory. Discussing a new, shared event with a partner (vs. comparing each other’s written testimonies) predicted corrective memory conformity (personal memory improvement) and distortive memory conformity (personal memory errors). The data did not support an alternative model. Results thus suggest that familiarity and trust predict memory conformity, corrective and distortive, but only when people directly discuss their memories about an experience. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the two social psychological variables familiarity and trust in the context of memory conformity.

SummaryThe Fading Affect Bias (FAB) occurs when the affect associated with personal events fades differentially across time: Positive affect fades slower than negative affect. Three studies examined whether the magnitude of the FAB is moderated by narcissism. Results from Study 1 (diary method, N = 26) showed that low narcissism participants evidenced a large FAB, but high narcissism participants evidenced a reversed FAB. Results from Study 2 (retrospective recall method, N = 110) showed that low narcissism participants evinced a large FAB and that the FAB diminished or dissipated as narcissism increased. Results from Study 3 (retrospective recall method, N = 83) showed that high narcissists evinced a FAB when they recalled achievement‐themed autobiographical events but evinced a reversed FAB when they recalled communal‐themed events. These findings occurred independently of event rehearsal frequency. Results are discussed in terms of the idea that emotion regulation efforts may be disrupted in narcissists. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.