Rewarding valuable services and altruistic motives: gratitude and pay for essential workers during the Covid-19 pandemic

Two studies examine whether a social-cognitive model of appraisal predicts gratitude toward workers deemed "essential" by the UK government during the Covid-19 response. Gratitude was predicted by appraisals of how essential work was, how costly and whether workers were contributing out of a genuine desire to help, and in turn predicted judgments of how much workers should earn. In a second experimental study support is found for the novel prediction that gratitude is systematically higher for lower-paid workers. The data extends the model and applies it to self-reported gratitude toward remote and unidentified workers during a period of crisis.

Retrospective and Prospective Evaluations of Mammography Screening Narratives

We investigated the role of previous experience when providing summary judgments of mammography narratives. A total of 807 women who either did or did not have previous experience of a mammogram were presented with a written description of a mammography visit. We manipulated the presentation position of a negative element within the narrative to alter its accessibility in memory and determine whether the latter impacted equally on two types of summary judgments. After the narrative presentation, participants were asked to provide both retrospective and prospective evaluations, that is, summary judgments about the described event and an appraisal of the likelihood of participating in future instances of such event, respectively. A recency effect was observed only for retrospective but not for prospective evaluations. When examined only for the subset of women who had undergone a mammography visit themselves, prospective evaluations were shown to be predicted by the reported quality of the mammography participants experienced themselves. The findings support and extend the accessibility model of emotional self-report and suggest that own experience leaks into evaluations of hypothetical scenarios by selectively impacting on prospective evaluations.

Public perceptions of the effectiveness of income provision on reducing psychological distress

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand public perceptions of the role of income for improving mental health, since public perceptions shape political decision-making. Socioeconomic determinants such as poverty cause a great deal of mental ill-health, yet it is not clear whether the general public believes this to be true. Lay understandings of health often overemphasize the roles of individual habits and medical treatments and underappreciate the importance of socioeconomic determinants.

Design/methodology/approach

UK adults (n = 622) rated effectiveness of three interventions for reducing psychological distress: medication, psychotherapy, and providing sufficient income to cover necessities via a basic income. We manipulated whether participants rated effectiveness for an identified individual vs. the population in general. Participants also indicated their support for the introduction of the basic income scheme.

Findings

Increasing income was rated highly effective for reducing psychological distress. Effectiveness ratings for income provision were as high as those for psychotherapy, and higher than those for medication. There was also an interaction with framing: in the population framing, income provision was rated more effective than either of the other two interventions. There were high levels of support for introducing a universal basic income scheme in this population.

Originality/value

UK adults anticipate that income provision would be highly effective at reducing psychological distress, as or more effective than increasing access to psychotherapy or medication. Policymakers can assume that the public will be receptive to arguments for mental health interventions that tackle broader socioeconomic determinants, especially when these are framed in population terms.

Cognitive ability as a moderator of the association between social disadvantage and psychological distress: evidence from a population-based sample

BACKGROUND

Social disadvantage consistently predicts both self-reported distress and clinically diagnosed disorders such as depression. Yet, many individuals who are exposed to disadvantage do not report high levels of distress. This study extends our recent work showing that high cognitive ability may protect against the negative health consequences of exposure to disadvantaged backgrounds. We test whether this 'buffer effect' exists across clinically relevant indices of mental health in a population-representative sample.

METHODS

In total, 27 985 participants were drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society). Clinical diagnoses of depression and clinically relevant measures of psychological distress [i.e. Short Form-12 (SF-12) Mental Component, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)] and trait neuroticism were assessed. Cognitive ability was derived from performance on word recall, verbal fluency and numerical ability tasks. Early-life disadvantage was gauged using family background measures assessing parental education and occupation at age 14.

RESULTS

Background disadvantage predicted increased levels of reported psychological distress and neuroticism. These associations were moderated by cognitive ability. Across all available mental health measures, the negative association between early-life disadvantage and poor adult mental health was strongest at low (-1 s.d.) cognitive ability and was no longer evident at high (+1 s.d.) levels of cognitive ability.

CONCLUSIONS

The results provide support for a cognitive buffering hypothesis linking high cognitive ability to a decrease in the magnitude of the social gradient in mental health. Those disadvantaged by both low socioeconomic status and low cognitive ability may benefit from targeted prevention and treatment programmes aiming to reduce socioeconomic disparities in mental health.

Does cognitive ability buffer the link between childhood disadvantage and adult health?

OBJECTIVE

Individual differences in childhood cognitive ability have been neglected in the study of how early life psychosocial factors may buffer the long-term health consequences of social disadvantage. In this study, we drew on rich data from two large British cohorts to test whether high levels of cognitive ability may protect children from experiencing the physical and mental health consequences of early life socioeconomic disadvantage.

METHOD

Participants from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS; N = 11,522) were followed from birth to age 42, and those from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS; N = 13,213) were followed from birth to age 50. Childhood social disadvantage was indexed using 6 indicators gauging parental education, occupational prestige, and housing characteristics (i.e., housing tenure and home crowding). Standardized assessments of cognitive ability were completed at ages 10 (BCS) and 11 (NCDS) years. Psychological distress, self-rated health, and all-cause mortality were examined from early adulthood to midlife in both cohorts.

RESULTS

Early social disadvantage predicted elevated levels of psychological distress and lower levels of self-rated health in both cohorts and higher mortality risk in the NCDS. Childhood cognitive ability moderated each of these relationships such that the link between early life social disadvantage and poor health in adulthood was markedly stronger at low (-1 SD) compared to high (+1 SD) levels of childhood cognitive ability.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides evidence that high childhood cognitive ability is associated with a decrease in the strength of socioeconomic status-driven health inequalities. (PsycINFO Database Record

Sleep spindles during a nap correlate with post sleep memory performance for highly rewarded word-pairs

The consolidation of new associations is thought to depend in part on physiological processes engaged during non-REM (NREM) sleep, such as slow oscillations and sleep spindles. Moreover, NREM sleep is thought to selectively benefit associations that are adaptive for the future. In line with this, the current study investigated whether different reward cues at encoding are associated with changes in sleep physiology and memory retention. Participants' associative memory was tested after learning a list of arbitrarily paired words both before and after taking a 90-min nap. During learning, word-pairs were preceded by a cue indicating either a high or a low reward for correct memory performance at test. The motivation manipulation successfully impacted retention such that memory declined to a greater extent from pre- to post sleep for low rewarded than for high rewarded word-pairs. In line with previous studies, positive correlations between spindle density during NREM sleep and general memory performance pre- and post-sleep were found. In addition to this, however, a selective positive relationship between memory performance for highly rewarded word-pairs at posttest and spindle density during NREM sleep was also observed. These results support the view that motivationally salient memories are preferentially consolidated and that sleep spindles may be an important underlying mechanism for selective consolidation.

Nap sleep preserves associative but not item memory performance

Many studies have shown that sleep improves memory performance, and that even short naps during the day are beneficial. Certain physiological components of sleep such as spindles and slow-wave-sleep are thought to be particularly important for memory consolidation. The aim of this experiment was to reveal the role of naps for hippocampus-dependent associative memory (AM) and hippocampus-independent item memory (IM) alongside their corresponding ERP old/new effects. Participants learnt single words and word-pairs before performing an IM- and an AM-test (baseline). One group was subsequently allowed to nap (∼90min) while the other watched DVDs (control group). Afterwards, both groups performed a final IM- and AM-test for the learned stimuli (posttest). IM performance decreased for both groups, while AM performance decreased for the control group but remained constant for the nap group, consistent with predictions concerning the selective impact of napping on hippocampus-dependent recognition. Putative ERP correlates of familiarity and recollection were observed in the IM posttest, whereas only the later recollection-related effect was present in the AM test. Notably, none of these effects varied with group. Positive correlations were observed between spindle density during slow-wave-sleep and AM posttest performance as well as between spindle density during non-REM sleep and AM baseline performance, showing that successful learning and retrieval both before and after sleep relates to spindle density during nap sleep. Together, these results speak for a selective beneficial impact of naps on hippocampus-dependent memories.