The relationship between change in routine and student mental wellbeing during a nationwide lockdown

OBJECTIVE

During March 2020, the UK entered a national lockdown, causing a sudden change in undergraduate students' routines. This study uses this event to investigate the impact routine change had on students' mental wellbeing; in particular looking at depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and eating behaviors.

METHOD

Participants reported their daily routine timings (waking, breakfast, lunch, evening meal and bedtime) and activities (e.g. exercise amount, time with friends, time studying, etc) on a typical Monday, Wednesday and Saturday during term time and lockdown. Additionally they completed the PROMIS measures of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance, and the Eating Pathology Symptom Inventory.

RESULTS

Lockdown saw small but significant shifts in routine timing (on average 1.5 h) However, there was no clear overall pattern of relationships between mental wellbeing and routine structure or magnitude of routine change. There was some evidence of changes in amount of exercise relating to reported anxiety.

DISCUSSION

These findings are consistent with the current literature reporting lockdown effects on behavior. Routine timings shifted, but this change was small and largely did not affect the mental wellbeing reported by undergraduate students. The change in amount of exercise posed by lockdown did appear to be an important factor in wellbeing, and more research should focus on the wellbeing implications of closing places for exercise.

The effects of manipulating the visual environment on thermal perception: A structured narrative review

When exposed to ambient temperatures that cause thermal discomfort, a human's behavioral responses are more effective than autonomic ones at compensating for thermal imbalance. These behavioral thermal responses are typically directed by an individual's perception of the thermal environment. Perception of the environment is a holistic amalgamation of human senses, and in some circumstances, humans prioritize visual information. Existing research has considered this in the specific case of thermal perception, and this review investigates the state of the literature examining this effect. We identify the frameworks, research rationales, and potential mechanisms that underpin the evidence base in this area. Our review identified 31 experiments, comprising 1392 participants that met the inclusion criteria. Methodological heterogeneity was observed in the assessment of thermal perception, and a variety of methods were employed to manipulate the visual environment. However, the majority of the included experiments (80%) reported a difference in thermal perception after the visual environment was manipulated. There was limited research exploring any effects on physiological variables (e.g. skin and core temperature). This review has wide-ranging implications for the broad discipline of (thermo)physiology, psychology, psychophysiology, neuroscience, ergonomics, and behavior.

Articulating guilt? The influence of guilt presumption on interviewer and interviewee behaviour

Research has repeatedly shown that accusatory questions posed during an investigative interview are indicative of biased beliefs about suspect guilt. Linguistic research has shown that the verbs used in utterances can be indicative of biased beliefs about another person. In the present study we examined question type and the verbs used in question formulation using non-police participants to explore the influence of guilt presumption on interview questions. In Study1 we used the Linguistic Category Model (LCM; Semin and Fiedler European Review of Social Psychology, 2, 1–30, 1991) and in Study 2, the Question-Answer Paradigm (QAP; Semin et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 834–841, 1995) to analyse verb abstraction and positive/ negative valence of the formulated interview questions. We also explored whether interviewers’ guilt presumptions changed over the course of the interview as well as their motivations for creating the questions they chose to ask (Study 2). We found that participants who presumed guilt were more likely to formulate accusatory questions and use a higher verb abstraction with negative valence (Study 1 and 2). Interviewers asked more questions to gather additional information overall; however, the number of questions was negligible for trying to find support for alternative scenarios or to falsify existing guilt beliefs (Study 2). Interviewers who presumed guilt were also less likely to change their views during the interview and were more likely to report using behavioural cues to solidify their guilt presumptions (Study 2). The overall findings are in line with previous research in both guilt presumptive interviewing and linguistically biased language; however, we expanded on previous research by allowing participants to come to their own conclusions regarding guilt, as well as formulating their own questions for the suspect. Finally, we conclude that there are extensive limitations for using the LCM in applied interview settings and these are discussed.

Carry-over effects of tool functionality and previous unsuccessfulness increase overimitation in children

Children 'overimitate' causally irrelevant actions in experiments where both irrelevant and relevant actions involve a single common tool. This study design may make it harder for children to recognize the irrelevant actions, as the perceived functionality of the tool during the demonstration of the relevant action may be carried over to the irrelevant action, potentially increasing overimitation. Moreover, little is known how overimitation is affected by the demonstrator's expressed emotions and the child's prior success with the task. Here, 131 nine- to ten-year-old French and German children first engaged in a tool-based task, being successful or unsuccessful, and then watched an adult demonstrating the solution involving one irrelevant and one relevant action before smiling or remaining neutral. These actions were performed with the same tool or with two separate tools, testing potential carry-over effects of the functionality of the relevant action on the irrelevant action. We show that overimitation was higher when the same tool was used for both actions and when children were previously unsuccessful, but was not affected by the demonstrator's displayed emotion. Our results suggest that future overimitation research should account for the number of tools used in a demonstration and participants' previous task experience.

Functional Fear Predicts Public Health Compliance in the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the current context of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), health professionals are working with social scientists to inform government policy on how to slow the spread of the virus. An increasing amount of social scientific research has looked at the role of public message framing, for instance, but few studies have thus far examined the role of individual differences in emotional and personality-based variables in predicting virus-mitigating behaviors. In this study, we recruited a large international community sample (N = 324) to complete measures of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, fear of the virus, moral foundations, political orientation, and behavior change in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the only predictor of positive behavior change (e.g., social distancing, improved hand hygiene) was fear of COVID-19, with no effect of politically relevant variables. We discuss these data in relation to the potentially functional nature of fear in global health crises.

Dispositional Disinhibition and Alcohol Use Disorders: Personality, Risk Appraisal and Problematic Alcohol Consumption

Background: The relationship between psychopathic personality and problematic alcohol consumption could be important for understanding risk and potential interventions. This existing work on psychopathy and alcohol abuse is typically conducted in criminal and hospitalized populations and little attention has been paid to investigating the general populations' psychopathic personality and problematic consumption of alcohol. The psychopathy-focused Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the more general Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST) focus on individual differences related to low self-control and sensation seeking, and could relate to problematic alcohol consumption in non-forensic samples. The current study brings together RST and psychopathic personality traits to predict alcohol use disorders. We hypothesize that impulsivity and anxiety predict problematic alcohol consumption and related risk appraisal. Methods: We analyzed data from a sample of 349 general population participants who had completed measures of the TriPM, RST, alcohol use disorders (AUDIT), and their perceived negative outcomes of high risk behavior with the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events (CARE) measure. Results: We find some evidence that TriPM's disinhibition and RST's anxious personality traits relate to AUDIT scores. We find limited evidence that personality traits predict the negative appraisal of risky events, but alcohol use was related to increased perceptions of the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption. Conclusions: Overall this study shows that individual differences do relate to problematic alcohol consumption but not the appraisal of risks related to alcohol consumption. This has implications for the structuring of intervention for those at-risk of problematic consumption of alcohol.

It Takes Two: The Round-Robin Methodology for Investigative Interviewing Research

Investigative interviews are complex, dyadic, and social interactions typically studied by evaluating interviewers' questioning strategies. In field settings, interviewers naturally vary in their interviewing practice. Thus, it is important to conduct research reflective of idiosyncrasies in witnesses, interviewers, and the resulting unique pairings. This study explored sources of variation in an interview by using a "round-robin" design. Each session of the study involved five witnesses observing five separate events. Witnesses were then simultaneously, but independently interviewed by four different interviewers, or completed a self-administered written interview. This sequence was repeated until each witness had seen every event and had been interviewed by each interviewer. Over nine sessions (N = 45) this produced 225 total interviews. Individual interview performance (accuracy and level of detail) as well as experience (subjective ratings) were then analyzed in relation to the typical performance of the interviewer, the witness, the event, and the unique paring. We found that witnesses and interviewers could have an effect on statement quality; however, the unique interview experience variance had the greatest influence on interview performance. This study presents the round-robin methodology as a useful tool to study realistic variation in interviewer, witness, and dyad behavior. The preprint of this paper is available at psyarxiv.com/tv5gz/, and materials and data are available at osf.io/ef634/files/.