Purpose
Positive expectations about personal abilities and future outcomes are important in shaping human behavior and emotion, which may influence the psychological adjustment in cancer patients. We ...aimed to assess two basic kinds of perceived stress in Chinese cancer patients and to investigate their associations with demographic-clinical characteristics and positive expectations.
Methods
A multi-center, cross-sectional study was conducted in consecutive cervical, kidney, and bladder cancer inpatients from three general hospitals in Liaoning province from February 2013 to August 2014. A total of 790 patients eligible for this study completed questionnaires on demographic-clinical variables, optimism, general self-efficacy, perceived global, and cancer-related stress anonymously. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between optimism, general self-efficacy, and perceived stress, after controlling for possible covariates.
Results
Mean score of perceived global stress was 17.85 (SD 4.43). Mean score of perceived cancer-related stress was 37.15 (SD 12.66); 38.1% of the sample scored 44 and above, 20.1% scored 50 and above. Education, physical activity, cancer stage, and time since diagnosis were significantly associated with perceived stress. Optimism and general self-efficacy accounted for an additional variance in perceived global (14.9%) and cancer-related stress (16.9%), and both of them were independent and protective variables of perceived stress.
Conclusions
This study recognized cancer patients at risk for high levels of perceived stress and extended the understanding of the association between positive expectations and perceived global and cancer-related stress. Enhancing or maintaining optimism and general self-efficacy might be potential targets for future psychosocial interventions aimed at relieving perceived stress in cancer patients.
•We examine brooding as a mediator between positive fantasies and depressive symptoms.•Objectively-rated fantasy engagement associated with brooding but not reflection.•Indirect relation to ...depressive symptoms 6weeks later through brooding.•Indirect relation to difficulty generating likely positive future outcomes.
Although a positive future outlook is generally associated with psychological well-being, indulging in positive fantasies about the future has been found to exacerbate negative mood-related outcomes such as depressive symptoms. We examined rumination as a cognitive mechanism in this relationship, using an objectively coded measure of future-oriented fantasies, among 261 young adults assessed twice. Engaging in a positive fantasy about the future was associated with the brooding subtype of rumination but not with reflection at baseline. There was an indirect relationship between fantasies at baseline and depressive symptoms at six-week follow-up through brooding at average and high levels of fantasy positivity when fantasizing was consistent or increased over time but not when it decreased. Engaging in fantasies was indirectly associated with perceived difficulty anticipating likely positive future outcomes through brooding. These findings extend previous research on positive fantasies by suggesting brooding as a mechanism to explain when they are maladaptive.
Many studies have focused on the negative aspects of transition from kindergarten to school, such as bullying and difficulties adjusting to school life. Fewer studies have asked children to talk ...about both positive and negative aspects of school life across time. This study explores children's perception of positive and negative aspects of school during the last month at kindergarten, first three months and last month in Year 1. Gender differences in children's perceptions of life in Year 1 are explored. Positive and negative aspects of school included peer interactions, learning, rules, environment, school activities and teacher-child interaction. Other positive aspects of school also included parents' or siblings' engagement in school activities, teachers' praise and pupils' roles. This paper provides robust information for educators and parents to use as a reference for developing effective strategies to help children adapt to school life.
This study examines the association between positive expectations towards future and subjective well-being among adolescents. The participants of the study included a total of 233 adolescents (121 ...male and 112 female) aged between 14 and 17. The data of the study were obtained through the use of the Adolescents' Subjective Well-Being Scale and Positive Future Expectations Scale. The data were evaluated using basic linear regression analysis method. The study findings indicated that positive expectations towards future were positively correlated with adolescents' subjective well-being. Positive expectations towards future explained 24% variance of adolescents' subjective well-being. The findings of the study suggest that there is a statistically significant relationship between adolescents' subjective well-being and positive expectations towards future. Results of this study may be used in subjective well-being improvement programs.
Adolescence is seen as an important period for youth as they transition to adulthood. Required to manage multiple developmental tasks, adolescents might construct distorted expectations when thinking ...and planning their future. Therefore, it is important to determine the factors that influence adolescents’ positive and negative expectations in order to assist them with the appropriate services.
The aim of the current study is two-fold: (1) assessing the content and the extent of positive and negative expectations of adolescents from Romania on their pending transition to adulthood, and (2) exploring the hypothesis that personal variables (gender, residency, and material deprivation), psychological variables (self-confidence), and social support variables (family, peer and teacher support) predict their future expectations.
Empirical estimates were carried out using regression analysis on data collected from 3509 high school students in the 12th grade (2043 females and 1466 males). The self-report questionnaire covered several areas including demographics, psychological attributes, and family, school, and peer support.
Adolescents perceived their future mostly in positive terms. The greatest effect for positive expectations belonged to self confidence and teacher support, while negative expectations were best predicted by lower teacher support, self confidence, and peer-support.
This research yields interesting results for the Romanian context. Interventions that prepare youth for transitioning from adolescence to adulthood should focus on constructing positive and realistic expectations utilizing a range of factors from the various systems that make up the ecological model (individual, family, school, and peer relationships). However, more prospective research is needed to determine how future expectations are shaped during this period.
Through the examination of the interplay between the deepening process of European integration and the domestic politics of EU member states, this article seeks to show how the former affects the ...latter and ultimately leads to the reshaping of EU members' preferences over time. The two cases examined here (agricultural policy preference shifts in France and Germany during the MacSharry reform negotiations) illustrate that European integration over time generates institutional feedback in which European policies become not just outputs but also major inputs of the political process of EU member states. The critical factor in this preference change is the domestic policy coalition shift, which is provoked by positive expectations regarding the national benefits to be gained from deeper integration. Par l'examen de l'interaction entre le processus d'approfondissement de l'intégration européenne et la politique intérieure des États membres de l'UE, cet article cherche à montrer comment celui-là affecte cette dernière et mène en fin de compte à la réorganisation des préférences des membres de l'UE dans le temps. Les deux cas examinés ici (les changements de préférence de politique agricole en France, et en Allemagne pendant les négociations de la réforme MacSharry) illustrent comment cette intégration européenne produit avec le temps un retour d'information institutionnel par lequel les politiques de l'UE deviennent non de simples productions, mais aussi des contributions majeures dans le processus politique des États membres de l'UE. Le facteur décisif dans la modification des préférences est un changement de coalition en politique intérieure, provoqué par des convictions positives quant aux avantages nationaux d'une intégration plus importante. Este artículo examina la interacción entre el proceso de integración europea y la política interna de los estados miembros de la UE. Más concretamente, su objetivo es analizar cómo el proceso de integración europea afecta a los estados miembros, derivando últimamente en un cambio de preferencias en este respecto. Con este fin, el artículo analiza los casos de cambio de preferencias en la política de agricultura en Francia y Alemania durante las negociaciones de la reforma de MacSharry. En ambos casos, la respuesta institucional generada por los procesos de integración europea muestra que las políticas de la UE no son únicamente el resultado de la política interna de los estados miembros, sino que también éstas últimas hacen una aportación a las primeras. El estudio revela que un factor crucial en la reforma de preferencias de los estados miembros es un cambio de coalición sobre política interna, provocado por la expectación de que una integración europea más profunda puede aportar importantes beneficios a nivel nacional.
The pandemic has caused much mental, social and financial stress. Policies and standard operating procedures have helped to alleviate some stress and create systematicity, expectancy, and ...predictability. This paper aims to alleviate some of the stress through model-based social customer relationship management system, an Augmented Reality board game, and two mini tourism games. The first aims to increase collaboration among stakeholders and to increase more effective and efficient resource management. The second phases players through the preparation, recruitment, attack and observation phases at a slower pace than competitive gaming. The third and fourth project introduce places and trigger memories through mini games respectively. These provide analogical training in social customer relationship management and in developing more systematic thinking, expectations, fun and mindfulness. AI-assistance would enable personalization/intelligent context-aware recommendations.
This study focused on the factors that influence the level of expectations. In this study, three types of expectations were used: positive, normative, and ideal expectation. An empirical analysis is ...conducted to determine whether these factors have a significant impact on expectations. Influencing factors were derived based on the concept of each expectation type: satisfaction with previous policies and public services, trust in the government, and perception of the government's responsibility for social issues. By analyzing survey data, we find that the influencing factors related to positive and normative expectations were statistically significant. However, the results pertaining to ideal expectations diverge from our initial hypothesis. These findings underscore the importance of specifying the expectation type and considering the primary influencing factors when incorporating expectation variables in research.
Parkinson's disease (PD) impairs the control of movement and cognition, including the planning of action and its consequences. This provides the opportunity to study the dopaminergic influences on ...the perception and awareness of action. Here we examined the perception of the outcome of a goal-directed action made by medicated patients with PD. A visuomotor task probed the integration of sensorimotor signals with the positive expectations of outcomes (Self priors), which in healthy adults bias perception toward success in proportion to trait optimism. We tested the hypotheses that (i) the priors on the perception of the consequences of one's own actions differ between patients and age- and sex-matched controls, and (ii) that these priors are modulated by the levodopa dose equivalent (LDEs) in patients. There was no overall difference between patients and controls in the perceptual priors used. However, the precision of patient priors was inversely related to their LDE. Patients with high LDE showed more accurate priors, representing predictions that were closer to the true distribution of performance. Such accuracy has previously been demonstrated when observing the actions of others, suggesting abnormal awareness of action in these patients. These results confirm a link between dopamine and the positive expectation of the outcome of one's own actions, and may have implications for the management of PD.
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