Carrie Jacobs, Psy.D, CCS

In brief: Anger is sometimes a gift, the power of suppressing unwanted thoughts, and more research
By Chris Palmer
Date created: March 1, 2024

Anger is (sometimes) a gift
While often perceived as a negative emotion, anger can sometimes help people achieve challenging goals, suggests research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers conducted five studies involving 1,020 participants in the United States and analyzed survey data from 1,405 respondents. In each experiment, researchers elicited either an emotional response (such as anger, amusement, desire, or sadness) or a neutral emotional state, and then presented participants with a challenging goal. Across all studies, anger improved participants’ ability to reach their goals compared with a neutral emotional condition in various challenging situations but had no effect when tasks were easier. In some cases, elicited anger was associated with increased scores or shorter response times. In other experiments, anger increased cheating to achieve a better outcome and motivated participants to take action to avoid a financial loss. Amusement and desire were also associated with increased goal attainment in some, but not all, challenging situations. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000350

Block it out
Suppressing unwanted thoughts may be good for people’s mental health, suggests research in Science Advances. Researchers trained 120 online participants from 16 countries to practice inhibitory control, or intentionally overriding reflexive thoughts about worrying situations. Before the training, participants described scenarios that might plausibly occur in their lives over the next 2 years—20 negative fears and 20 positive hopes—as well as associated cue words for each. When presented with the related cue word for a negative or positive scenario, participants actively blocked out or vividly imagined the scenario, respectively. Participants reported that suppressed situations were less vivid, evoked less fear, and occupied participants’ thoughts less. Participants also reported less anxiety, negative affect, and depression, with the latter benefit persisting at 3 months. Participants high in trait anxiety and pandemic-related posttraumatic stress saw the largest and longest-lasting mental health benefits. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh529

It takes a village
According to a study conducted with contemporary hunter-gatherer societies and published in Developmental Psychology, infants and toddlers may be evolutionarily primed to thrive with high levels of personal care and attention from multiple caregivers. Researchers analyzed the social connections among 18 infants in the Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherer society in the Republic of Congo. They found that infants in this society receive attentive care and physical contact for nearly 9 hours per day from up to 20 different caregivers. Caregiver-to-child ratios were often 5 to 1, although each child had just a handful of core caregivers who provided consistent attention. They also found that a mother’s support system would help respond to more than half of her baby’s crying episodes. In addition, older children and adolescents are heavily involved in caring for infants. DOI: 10.1037/dev0001601

Poor emotion regulation perpetuates depression
Research in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science indicates that while depressed people appear capable of coping with intense emotions, they often use emotion-regulation strategies that decrease pleasant feelings. In the first of two studies, researchers taught 77 adults in the United States, about half of whom had major depressive disorder, the unhealthy strategies of distraction and rumination—most often utilized by those with depression. Depressed people were more likely to independently choose distraction when recalling positive events. When instructed to pick the strategy most likely to make them feel happier, however, their choices resembled those of mentally healthy participants. In the second study with 120 participants, the researchers again found depressed individuals were more likely to distract themselves, avoiding positive emotions and instead ruminating on negative feelings. The researchers hypothesize that depressed people use nonoptimal emotion-regulation strategies for a variety of reasons, including fear of happiness, a feeling they don’t deserve happiness, and familiarity with negative moods. DOI: 10.1037/abn0000835

Emotional expression across countries
The display of emotions serves different purposes across cultures, suggests research in Emotion. In the first of two studies, researchers asked 203 Chileans, 197 Mexicans, and 198 Americans of European descent about their emotional responses to different situations. Latin Americans expressed positive socially engaging emotions that foster connections and strengthen social bonds, particularly in response to adverse events affecting others. U.S. participants conveyed positive socially disengaging emotions, such as pride, especially in reaction to personally favorable events. In the second study, the researchers administered the same questionnaire from the first study to 175 Colombians, 204 Americans of European descent, and 178 Japanese. This study replicated findings from the first study. In addition, Japanese participants were found to express positive emotions less than others but displayed a higher tendency to express negative socially engaging emotions, such as guilt and shame, compared with Colombians and European Americans. DOI: 10.1037/emo0001302

Eyeballing four items is easy, but five is hard
According to research in Nature Human Behaviour, people’s brains use one mechanism to eyeball four or fewer items and a different one for sizing up five or more—which partly explains why doing the latter is harder. Researchers recruited 17 patients undergoing epilepsy treatment in Germany. They recorded the activity of temporal lobe neurons in the patients’ brains while they viewed images of anywhere from zero to nine dots on a screen for half a second and asked them whether they had seen an odd or even number of items. Participants’ answers were much more accurate when they saw four or fewer dots. The brain activity revealed that neurons specializing in numbers of four or fewer responded very specifically and selectively to their preferred number. Neurons specializing in recognizing between five and nine items responded strongly not only when the preferred number of items was presented, but also to item numbers immediately adjacent to the neuron’s preferred number. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01709-3

Fatty foods’ rewarding texture
Research in the Journal of Neuroscience indicates that a brain region involved in reward processing helps guide eating behavior by responding to fatty foods’ smooth texture. Researchers assessed the smoothness of milkshakes with varying sugar and fat content by placing samples between pig tongues and measuring the friction generated while sliding the tongues across each other. They then asked 22 participants in the United Kingdom to sample the same shakes and report how much they would pay for each. Functional MRI brain scans revealed that activity patterns in the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex reflected both the drinks’ textures and the values that participants assigned to them. These results can drive the design of low-calorie fat-replacement foods that mimic the mouthfeel of dietary fat and the brain’s reward circuitry. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1473-23.2023

Schizophrenia and substance use
According to a study in JAMA Psychiatry, people without a history of psychotic disorders had a significantly higher risk of developing a schizophrenia spectrum disorder after an emergency department (ED) visit for substance use, especially cannabis, with and without accompanying psychosis. Researchers analyzed health records of 9.8 million individuals without a history of psychosis or schizophrenia who were 14 to 65 years old and living in Canada from 2008 to 2022. There were 407,737 individuals with first-time ED visits for substance use, of which 13,784 (3.4%) visits were for substance-induced psychosis. Individuals with substance-induced psychosis were at a 163-fold increased risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia within 3 years compared with the general population. Individuals with an ED visit for substance use without psychosis had a 9.8-fold increased relative risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Cannabis use was associated with the highest risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia among individuals with an ED visit for substance use with psychosis (241.6-fold increased risk) and the third-highest risk among individuals with an ED visit for substance use without psychosis (14.3-fold increased risk). Younger males had the highest risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia, particularly those who had been using cannabis. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.3582

Short sleep, more depression
People who sleep 5 hours or less each night face a 2.5-fold higher chance of developing depression, according to a study in Translational Psychiatry. Researchers compared genetic and health data from 7,146 adults in the United Kingdom with an average age of 65 to genome-wide association studies identifying thousands of genetic variants linked to a higher likelihood of developing depression and short (less than 5 hours) or long (more than 9 hours) sleep. They found that people sleeping 5 hours or less were 2.5 times more likely to develop depressive symptoms over a 4- to 12-year period than those who slept 5 to 9 hours, while people with depressive symptoms were more likely to suffer from short sleep. The researchers also found a link between sleeping long and developing depressive symptoms, with participants sleeping longer than 9 hours being 1.5 times more likely to develop depressive symptoms than those who sleep an average of 7 hours. However, depressive symptoms were not associated with sleeping longer 4 to 12 years later. DOI: 10.1038/s41398-023-02622-z

Parents worried about internet addiction
Research in JAMA Network Open suggests that twice as many parents of adolescents are concerned about internet addiction compared with substance addiction. Researchers surveyed 1,005 parents of children and adolescents ages 9 to 15 in the United States in June 2022 about daily internet use as well as perceived benefits and concerns of internet use. They found that more than half of parents were concerned about exposure to harmful content (64%) and online bullying (53%). Despite those concerns, about half of parents said the internet improved connectedness among immediate (47%) and extended families (56%). However, 22% of parents expressed specific concerns about internet addiction in their children, with social media followed by online gaming representing the highest risks. When asked to compare worries about their child developing an internet addiction and a substance addiction, twice as many parents reported being more worried about internet addiction. About half of parents thought that the government and service providers should be more involved with regulating internet content. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.39851

Engage your mind
According to research in the Journal of Affective Disorders, mentally passive sedentary activities such as watching TV increase the risk of developing depression, while mentally active sedentary behaviors like sitting at work do not. Researchers analyzed data from 4,607 participants born in the United Kingdom in 1958. At age 44, participants reported time spent watching TV and sitting at a desk during work or driving. The researchers also measured participants’ waist circumference, blood glucose levels, and an indicator of inflammation called C-reactive protein. Depression diagnosis was self-reported at ages 44, 46, 50, and 55. The researchers found that mentally passive sedentary behavior was associated with a 43% higher risk of depression, while mentally active sedentary behavior was not associated with a measurable risk of depression. Waist circumference and C-reactive protein (but not blood glucose) partly explained the association with depression, suggesting that activities like watching TV may increase depression risk by promoting obesity and inflammation. DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2023.07.053

Smash that snooze button
Hitting the snooze button has no adverse effects on cortisol awakening response, mood, or cognitive function, suggests research in the Journal of Sleep Research. In the first of two studies, researchers asked 1,732 individuals in Sweden about their waking habits. They found that 69% of respondents reported sometimes engaging in snoozing, the average duration of which was 22 minutes. Snoozers tended to be younger, more likely to be evening types, experience morning drowsiness, and get less sleep than nonsnoozers. In the second study, 31 habitual snoozers spent two nights in a sleep lab. The researchers found that 30 minutes of snoozing improved or did not affect performance on cognitive tests directly upon rising compared with waking up abruptly with an alarm. Snoozing resulted in about 6 minutes of lost sleep, but it prevented awakening from slow-wave sleep, as measured with polysomnography. There were no apparent effects of snoozing on stress hormone levels, morning sleepiness, mood, or overnight sleep structure. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.14054

Link to article: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/03/anger-suppressing-unwanted-thoughts

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