Superwoman schema and arterial stiffness in Black American women: assessing the role of environmental mastery.

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that the Superwoman Schema (SWS)-the sociocultural representation of Black women as naturally strong, independent, and nurturing-may play an important role in Black women's cardiovascular health; but findings have been relatively mixed. One interesting possibility is that environmental mastery, a sense of control over one's environment, may mitigate negative aspects of SWS.

Purpose: We investigated whether mastery moderated the association between SWS and pulse wave velocity (PWV), the gold standard measure of arterial stiffness linked to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Digital Meditation to Target Employee Stress: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Mindfulness meditation may improve well-being among employees; however, effects of digital meditation programs are poorly understood.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of digital meditation vs a waiting list condition on general and work-specific stress and whether greater engagement in the intervention moderates these effects.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This randomized clinical trial included a volunteer sample of adults (aged ≥18 years) employed at a large academic medical center who reported mild to moderate stress, had regular access to a web-connected device, and were fluent in English.

Biological, environmental, and psychological stress and the human gut microbiome in healthy adults.

Emerging research suggests that the gut microbiome plays a crucial role in stress. We assess stress-microbiome associations in two samples of healthy adults across three stress domains (perceived stress, stressful life events, and biological stress /Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia; RSA). Study 1 (n = 62; mean-age = 37.

Affect variability and cortisol in context: The moderating roles of mean affect and stress.

Positive and negative affect have been shown to have implications for hormones like cortisol but how moment to moment changes in affect (i.e., affect variability) influence cortisol secretion is less well understood.

The association of negative mood with automatic and effortful facial expression mimicry.

The natural process of mimicking the facial expressions of others is well established, as are the deficits in this reflexive behavior for individuals with clinical disorders such as depression. This study examines the extent of this deficit in non-clinical individuals with high transient negative mood, and whether it extends to both automatic and effortful emotion expression behavior. One hundred and thirty-six participants were shown happy, sad, and neutral faces, while electromyography (EMG) recorded facial muscle responses.

Psychology Meets Biology in COVID-19: What We Know and Why It Matters for Public Health.

Psychosocial factors are related to immune, viral, and vaccination outcomes. Yet, this knowledge has been poorly represented in public health initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. This review provides an overview of biopsychosocial links relevant to COVID-19 outcomes by describing seminal evidence about these associations known prepandemic as well as contemporary research conducted during the pandemic.

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration.

Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals' subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably produce facial feedback effects.

Do Positive Psychological Factors Equally Predict Resistance to Upper Respiratory Infections in African and European Americans?

Research has consistently shown that positive psychological constructs are linked to better physical health, but few studies have examined the role that race plays in this connection. We explored whether positive self-evaluations were equally protective against upper respiratory infection for 271 African American adults and 700 European American adults in a series of virus-exposure studies. Participants were assessed at baseline for psychological functioning and physical health, quarantined and exposed experimentally to a respiratory virus, and then monitored for infection and symptoms.

Comparing the Psychological Effects of Manikin-Based and Augmented Reality-Based Simulation Training: Within-Subjects Crossover Study.

Background: Patient simulators are an increasingly important part of medical training. They have been shown to be effective in teaching procedural skills, medical knowledge, and clinical decision-making. Recently, virtual and augmented reality simulators are being produced, but there is no research on whether these more realistic experiences cause problematic and greater stress responses as compared to standard manikin simulators.

Associations Between Gut Microbes and Social Behavior in Healthy 2-Year-Old Children.

Objective: Emerging research has connected abundances of specific bacteria to differences in psychosocial behaviors in animals and adult humans. However, research assessing mind-microbiome associations in children is sparse with extant work primarily focused on populations with autism, making it unclear whether links are also present in typically developing children. The current study fills this gap by examining associations between prosocial-self-regulating temperaments (effortful control; EC) and the gut microbiome in typically developing children.

How and why could smiling influence physical health? A conceptual review.

Smiling has been a topic of interest to psychologists for decades, with a myriad of studies tying this behavior to well-being. Despite this, we know surprisingly little about the nature of the connections between smiling and physical health. We review the literature connecting both naturally occurring smiles and experimentally manipulated smiles to physical health and health-relevant outcomes.

Smile (or grimace) through the pain? The effects of experimentally manipulated facial expressions on needle-injection responses.

Smiling has been previously shown to improve stress responses. We replicated and expanded this work by testing whether smiling helps with a potent real-world stressor: a vaccination-like needle injection. We also extended past research by examining grimacing, a facial expression known to naturally occur during stress and pain and one that shares some of the same facial action units as smiling.

The subcomponents of affect scale (SAS): validating a widely used affect scale.

Objective: There is a need for a brief affect scale that also encompasses different components of affect relevant for researchers interested in physiological and health outcomes. The Subcomponents of Affect Scale (SAS) meets this need. This 18-item scale has nine positive and nine negative affect items encompassing six subscales (calm, well-being, vigour, depression, anxiety, anger).

Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress.

Although stress is a strong risk factor for poor health, especially for women, it remains unclear how stress affects the key neurohormones cortisol and oxytocin, which influence stress-related risk and resilience. Whereas cortisol mediates energy mobilization during stress, oxytocin has anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic, and analgesic effects that support social connection and survival across the lifespan. However, how these neurohormones interrelate and are associated with cognitive control of emotional information during stress remains unclear.

How Strongly Connected Are Positive Affect and Physical Exercise? Results From a Large General Population Study of Young Adults.

Background: Previous research has shown a link between low positive affect (PA) and numerous physical and psychological well-being outcomes but, recent research has raised the possibility that this relationship may be driven by physical activity. Thus, we were interested in exploring the PA-exercise connection by examining this relationship across differing levels of body mass and athleticism. We also looked at whether the item "active" that is used in many PA assessments was responsible for this effect.

Vacation's lingering benefits, but only for those with low stress jobs.

Vacationing provides potential recovery from work stress and is associated with cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. This study considered psychological variables that might change as a vacation is approaching (fade-in) or after a vacation ends (fade-out) and how these associations might vary as a function of ongoing work stress. Sixty workers eligible for paid time off were recruited from the community.

Temporal Links Between Self-Reported Sleep and Antibody Responses to the Influenza Vaccine.

Background: Growing evidence suggests that sleep plays an important role in immunological memory, including antibody responses to vaccination. However, much of the prior research has been carried out in the laboratory limiting the generalizability of the findings. Furthermore, no study has sought to identify sensitive periods prior to or after vaccination where sleep may have a stronger influence on antibody responses.

Effect of Brief Biofeedback via a Smartphone App on Stress Recovery: Randomized Experimental Study.

Background: Smartphones are often vilified for negatively influencing well-being and contributing to stress. However, these devices may, in fact, be useful in times of stress and, in particular, aid in stress recovery. Mobile apps that deliver evidence-based techniques for stress reduction, such as heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) training, hold promise as convenient, accessible, and effective stress-reducing tools.

Do vacations alter the connection between stress and cardiovascular activity? The effects of a planned vacation on the relationship between weekly stress and ambulatory heart rate.

To examine how the association between psychological stress and ambulatory heart rate varies in the weeks before and after a planned vacation. We hypothesized that the impact of stress on heart rate would weaken in the weeks leading up to the vacation and return to normal levels in the weeks following the vacation. Fifty-four workers eligible for paid vacation time were recruited; stress ratings obtained via weekly surveys and ambulatory heart rate readings obtained via a wrist-worn consumer device were collected before and after the vacation.

Contrasting Experimentally Device-Manipulated and Device-Free Smiles.

Researchers in psychology have long been interested in not only studying smiles, but in examining the downstream effects of experimentally manipulated smiles. To experimentally manipulate smiles unobtrusively, participants typically hold devices (e.g.