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Summertime Sadness Could Be a Type of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Has the heat got you down? You’re probably not alone.

Wintertime—with its long, dark nights—is the season most associated with low mood and depression. But sun-filled summer days can also bring on the doldrums, particularly for the subset of people who experience a summertime version of seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—a type of depression with a periodic pattern.

Multiple studies have documented that heat can affect mood disorders and behavior, says Kim Meidenbauer, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, who studies heat’s psychological effects. Increases in aggression and violent crimes have been well documented on hotter days and during summertime, Meidenbauer says.

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Scientific American

How heat affects the mind

Policy and infrastructure changes are urgently needed to protect our mental health from the impact of high temperatures.

Extreme heat days are an inevitable consequence of a warming world, and things are not cooling down. Globally, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and the Met Office—the United Kingdom’s national weather service—predicts that 2024 may be worse. It could even be the first year on record to surpass 1.5°C of warming above the preindustrial era.

The physical consequences of heat, such as heat stroke and heat exhaustion, are well-known. But heat has psychological consequences as well—consequences ranging from irritability to impulsivity to trouble concentrating. The impacts can put already-vulnerable people in crisis during heat waves but may also lead to general mental health impacts and increased friction within society.

“The way we are headed right now, things are only going to get worse,” said Kim Meidenbauer, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University who studies the effect of heat stress and other environmental factors on cognition and emotion. “If we don’t even understand the scope of the effect heat is having on us, that bodes poorly for our ability to protect people from the negative psychological consequences.”

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Monitor on Psychology
MedicalXpress.com

 

 

Federal Law Makes Weed Research Complicated

Scientists want to understand how commercially available cannabis products affect users. They have to get creative to research it legally.

Dr. Carrie Cuttler, an associate professor at Washington State University and the director of its Health and Cognition Lab, has watched research participants use cannabis over Zoom for some of her studies. Her lab has investigated links between cannabis and creativity, as well as the drug’s effects on cognition, mental health, and stress. She developed her research methods with Washington State authorities, and created a procedure where she watches participants use cannabis remotely. “I just observe a legal act,” she says.

Cuttler says the Zoom method lets her avoid illegal entanglement with a Schedule I drug, but a drawback is she’s unable to take the physiological measurements, like blood draws or heart rate, that the mobile laboratory enables.

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ScienceFriday

Why do we change our minds?

As a science cat, I’ve changed my mind a lot over the years. I used to wear a fancy neck scarf called a cravat all the time. Now I’m comfy in my lab coat.

I talked about that with my friend Makita White. She’s a graduate student in the psychology department at Washington State University.

She told me that we change our minds when we get new information or insight that tells us we need to make a different choice.

It turns out that we have lots of opinions and beliefs. They’re also called attitudes. We have attitudes about what we like to eat or wear. We have attitudes about other people and how the world should be.

White told me that having attitudes helps us out.

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Ask Dr. Universe

‘Growth mindset’ improves first-generation college students’ grades

A study conducted by Washington State University (WSU) has found that notifying students of their instructors’ growth mindset results in better grades for first generation students.

Growth mindset refers to “the belief that abilities are not innate but can be improved.”

WSU psychology researcher and lead author of the study Elizabeth Canning and graduate student Makita White used an 400-student introductory biology class to conduct their research. Dividing the class evenly into an experimental and control group, Canning and White found that first-generation students who received growth mindset emails after taking their initial exams did better in the course overall than students who received standard emails without any mention of the growth mindset.

Averaging one-third of a grade higher, the research showed that first-generation students from the experimental group performed just as well as students whose parents had graduated college, which the release refers to as “continuing-generation” students.

“It’s a pretty sizable effect,” said Canning. “Many studies have shown that continuing generation students outperform first-generation students, but in the condition where we sent emails from the instructor that had growth mindset language, we saw that difference in performance completely go away.”

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Inside Higher Ed
KHQ.coxm
Phys.org
WSU Insider