<p>Subconsciously processed fearful stimuli are routed via the limbic system directly from the thalamus to the amygdala and can automatically trigger physical and behavioural fear responses to prevent humans from getting injured. The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were any autonomic responses to stimuli containing positive valence and a high arousal level. The stimuli were normative pictures, picked from the IAPS that were presented subliminally in a masked condition. Reactions were measured by skin conductance responses. Changes of SCR were registered when the participants were exposed to negative, positive and neutral stimuli. Responses were strongest as the participants were exposed to the positive pictures. These findings support that there could be more functions to automatic responding than a direct survival purpose. Further research needs to be done to investigate what functions these kinds of responses constitute.</p>

No description available.

Research examining multidimensional health locus of control (MHLOC) beliefs in HIV-positive individuals is limited. While studies in numerous other medical populations have shown relationships between MHLOC and markers of protected health status, no other studies, to our knowledge, have done so in HIV. The MHLOC has four subscales: Internal, Chance, Doctors, and Other People. Each subscale measures the degree of belief that one's health is controlled by one of these four constructs. This study compared the MHLOC beliefs of a rare group of healthy HIV-positive individuals with very low CD4 cell counts (below 50) who were not taking HAART (HLC group), to a group of HIV-positive individuals in the mid-range of disease progression (matched control (MC) group). Two hundred forty-seven diverse participants with HIV completed MHLOC scales as part of a psychosocial battery. Seventy participants from a larger "control" group (N = 177) were matched one-to-one with a participant from the HLC group (N = 70) on four demographic variables (gender, education, ethnicity, and income). The HLC group was found to have significantly lower Internal control beliefs and higher Doctor beliefs in comparison to the MC group. An examination of MHLOC beliefs within each group showed that for both groups, Doctor beliefs were strongest, followed by Internal, Chance and Other People beliefs. Compared to the MC group, individuals with protected health status (HLC group) were more likely to have a combination of "high" Doctor and "low" Internal beliefs and less likely to have a combination of "low" Doctor and "high" Internal beliefs. Finally, affective depression approached significance as a mediator in the relationship between Doctor control beliefs and group status (HLC vs. MC group). Specifically, protected health status was related to higher Doctor beliefs and lower affective depression. Study limitations and implications are discussed.

Humility is widely accepted as a character strength or virtue, yet very little research has been done as to its development or benefits, partly due to the lack of a reliable and valid explicit measure or scale. Since to date no such scale has been published, the current study investigates the importance and nature of humility and develops a measure to be analyzed as to its reliability and validity. Potential scale items were derived from participants’ recollection of humbling experiences and Tangney’s (2000) definition of humility. Principal Components Analysis revealed four humility subscales: openness, self-forgetfulness, accurate self-assessment, and focus on others. Results suggest that the derived 13-item scale has good concurrent and divergent validity, and that three of the four principal components have acceptable reliability. Researchers can use information from the Humility scale to better understand how it relates to other concepts of positive psychology and how increasing humility might be advantageous to interpersonal relationships.

No description available.

Research has found that positive affect broadens attention. However, the type of positive affect previously manipulated has been low in approach motivation. High approach-motivated positive affect should reduce the breadth of attention, as organisms shut out irrelevant perceptions and cognitions while they approach and attempt to acquire desired objects. Three studies examined the attentional consequences of approach-motivated positive affect states. Consistent with predictions, participants showed less global attentional focus after viewing approach-motivating positive pictures as compared to neutral pictures (Studies 1 and 2). Specifically, Study 1 used approach-motivating pictures of appetitive desserts, while Study 2 used pictures of cute animals. Neutral pictures were of varying neutral objects. Study 3 manipulated both affect and approach motivation. Less global focus was found for participants who viewed the approach-motivating pictures and had the expectancy to obtain the items as compared to other participant groups. The results indicate that high approach-motivated positive affect reduces the breadth of attentional focus, in contrast to the broadening of attentional focus that has been found with low approach-motivated positive affect.

<p><font face="Times-Roman"> <p align="left">According to the findings of this study, childcare workers caring for HIV-positive children working in a residential care setting, have similar experiences and challenges to nurses, community-based caregivers and primary caregivers, such as coping with loss and contagion fear. Nonetheless, caring for HIV-positive children poses unique challenges for the caregiver, calling for flexibility and situation-dependent coping strategies.</p> </font></p>

An area within psychology that looks at the strengths and positive sides of human life has emerged the last decade. It is called positive psychology and one area related to that is positive adaptation. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the natural history of females’ positive extrinsic and intrinsic adaptation from childhood to adulthood, with a focus on typical positive patterns of adaptation and how these patterns develop within the same individual. The sample consisted of about 500 Swedish girls and data were taken at age 13, 15, and 43 from the longitudinal research program Individual Development and Adaptation (IDA). Variable-oriented methods were used to study basic relationships among factors both within age and between childhood and adulthood and person-oriented methods were used to study typical patterns of adaptation and how these patterns develop, using cluster analyses and cross-tabulation of clusters. The overall results show, as expected, more distinct typical positive adaptation patterns in the intrinsic than the extrinsic area in both childhood and adulthood. Significant longitudinal developmental streams between typical positive adaptation patterns in childhood and adulthood were found and these are discussed from a dynamic system perspective suggesting the interaction between factors thru reinforcing feedback processes.

Subconsciously processed fearful stimuli are routed via the limbic system directly from the thalamus to the amygdala and can automatically trigger physical and behavioural fear responses to prevent humans from getting injured. The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were any autonomic responses to stimuli containing positive valence and a high arousal level. The stimuli were normative pictures, picked from the IAPS that were presented subliminally in a masked condition. Reactions were measured by skin conductance responses. Changes of SCR were registered when the participants were exposed to negative, positive and neutral stimuli. Responses were strongest as the participants were exposed to the positive pictures. These findings support that there could be more functions to automatic responding than a direct survival purpose. Further research needs to be done to investigate what functions these kinds of responses constitute.

The current study investigated the effects of dispositional mindfulness on well-being conceptualized in two ways: as hedonic well-being and as eudaimonic well-being. These represent feeling well and functioning well, respectively. Mindfulness, a type of consciousness marked by a nonjudgmental, present centered awareness, was expected to relate more strongly with eudaimonic well-being. Data from 112 participants were collected through an online survey. The mechanisms emotion regulation, low rumination, attentive awareness to one's emotional states, and clarity and understanding of one's emotional states were examined as mediating variables between dispositional mindfulness and the two conceptualizations of well-being. Correlational analysis demonstrated that dispositional mindfulness is significantly correlated with both hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being, though more strongly related to eudaimonic well-being. Mediational analysis demonstrated that low rumination significantly mediated the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and hedonic well-being. Additionally, both low rumination and clarity and understanding of one's emotional states significantly mediated the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and eudaimonic well-being. Implications, limitations, and future directions of research are discussed.