Self-control mediates age-related differences in psychological distress

Physical health problems, views on ageing, and emotional distress among older Chinese population: a moderated mediation model

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to investigate the mediation effect of negative views on ageing (VoA) between physical health problems and emotional distress, and the moderation effect of urban/rural residence ('hukou').

METHODS

We adopted a sample of 936 older Chinese people aged 60 and above from the China General Social Survey (CGSS). A structural equation model (SEM) approach was adopted to test the measurement model of latent variables and the structural model examining the hypothesized pathway. The bootstrapping bias-corrected approach (5000 bootstrap samples) was adopted.

RESULTS

The SEM shows that negative VoA mediates physical health problems and emotional distress (β = 0.041, B = 0.063, 95% CI [0.029, 0.102], p = 0.001). The relationship between negative VoA and emotional distress is more pronounced among urban than rural older residents (β = 0.181, B = 0.168, 95% CI [0.004, 0.377], p = 0.076), which may suggest that being dependent on others is less desirable among urban older people.

CONCLUSION

This study underscores the importance of having positive VoA, especially for urban older residents. More studies on the formation and impacts of older people's expectations of their own ageing are warranted.

Sex and Gender Differences in Psychosocial Risk Profiles Among Patients with Coronary Heart Disease - the THORESCI-Gender Study

BACKGROUND

Psychosocial factors tend to cluster and exhibit differences associated with sex assigned at birth. Gender disparities, though, remain uncharted so far. The current study aimed to first explore the clustering of eight established psychosocial risk factors among patients with coronary heart disease (CHD), followed by examining how sex and gender differences characterize these psychosocial risk profiles, while adjusting for the effect of age.

METHOD

In total, 532 patients with CHD (Mage = 68.2 ± 8.9; 84% male) completed the comprehensive psychosocial screener and questionnaires to gauge gender identity, traits, and sociocultural norm scores. A three-step latent profile analysis (LPA) was performed to identify latent profiles and their correlates.

RESULTS

LPA revealed six psychosocial risk profiles: (1) somewhat distressed overall (32%); (2) low distress (27%); (3) anger, hostility, and Type D (15%); (4) emotional distress and trauma (11%); (5) anxiety (9%); and (6) high overall distress (7%). Masculine traits and older age increased the odds to belong to the low distress profile (#2), while feminine traits and a feminine gender norm score increased the chance to belong to profiles with moderate to high distress. The effects of gender identity and feminine traits were sex dependent.

CONCLUSION

The current study's findings explain heterogeneity among patients with CHD by considering the joint occurrence of psychosocial risk factors, and the role of sex, age, and gender within those profiles. Being more sensitive to the roles that sex, gender, and an integrated set of risk factors play may ultimately improve treatment and adherence.

Self-control as a mediator of age on students' compulsive buying

Prior research on compulsive buying addresses a negative association with dispositional self-control and a decreasing effect of age. However, there is currently no sufficient explanation for the observation that older individuals show a reduced risk for compulsive buying patterns. Our empirical contribution is to test the assumption of a reducing effect of dispositional self-control on compulsive buying in a cross-cultural sample of Chinese (n = 268) and German (n = 247) college students with the Short Form of the Self-Control Scale and the Compulsive Buying Scale. We observed that females show a higher proneness to compulsive buying and older participants show decreased compulsive buying. Mediation analysis reveals that age has a reducing effect on compulsive buying that is fully mediated by dispositional self-control. According to the last observation, our study delivers an explanation of the reduced compulsive buying proneness of older individuals. We discuss limitations and alternative explanations of our study.