Throughout the life span, individuals engage in affectionate touch with close others. Touch receipt promotes well-being in infancy, but the impacts of touch in adult close relationships have been largely unexplored. In this article, we propose that affectionate touch receipt promotes relational, psychological, and physical well-being in adulthood, and we present a theoretical mechanistic model to explain why affectionate touch may promote these outcomes. The model includes pathways through which touch could affect well-being by reducing stress and by promoting well-being independent of stress. Specifically, two immediate outcomes of affectionate touch receipt—relational-cognitive changes and neurobiological changes—are described as important mechanisms underlying the effects of affectionate touch on well-being. We also review and evaluate the existing research linking affectionate touch to well-being in adulthood and propose an agenda to advance research in this area. This theoretical perspective provides...

Affectionate Touch to Promote Relational, Psychological, and Physical Well-Being in Adulthood A Theoretical Model and Review of the Research

One of the greatest challenges to understanding, predicting, and preventing suicide is that we have never had the ability to observe and intervene upon them as they unfold in real-time. Recently developed real-time monitoring methods are creating new opportunities for scientific and clinical advances. For instance, recent real-time monitoring studies of suicidal thoughts show that they typically are episodic, with quick onset and short duration. Many known risk factors that predict changes in suicidal thoughts over months/years (e.g. hopelessness) do not predict changes over hours/days-highlighting the gap in our abilities for short-term prediction. Current and future studies using newer streams of data from smartphone sensors (e.g. GPS) and wearables (e.g. heart rate) are further expanding knowledge and clinical possibilities.

Real-time assessment of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Emerging data suggest that during childhood, close family relationships can ameliorate the impact that adversity has on life span physical health. To explain this phenomenon, a developmental stress buffering model is proposed in which characteristics of family relationships including support, conflict, obligation, and parenting behaviors evolve and change from childhood to adolescence. Together, these characteristics govern whether childhood family relationships are on balance positive enough to fill a moderating role in which they mitigate the effects that childhood adversities have on physical health. The benefits of some family relationship characteristics are hypothesized to stay the same across childhood and adolescence (e.g., the importance of comfort and warmth from family relationships) whereas the benefits of other characteristics are hypothesized to change from childhood to adolescence (e.g., from a need for physical proximity to parents in early childhood to a need for parental availability in adolescence). In turn, close, positive family relationships in childhood operate via a variety of pathways, such as by reducing the impact that childhood stressors have on biological processes (e.g., inflammation) and on health behaviors that in turn can shape physical health over a lifetime. (PsycINFO Database Record

Childhood close family relationships and health.

In this chapter, I present a theoretical framework that is aimed at explaining the complex and seemingly paradoxical structure, dynamics, and consequences of grandiose narcissism: the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC). I first very briefly review the state of research on grandiose narcissism, showing that the content conceptually aligned with, and the measures typically applied to assess, grandiose narcissism can be sorted into more agentic and more antagonistic aspects that show unique nomological networks, dynamics, and outcomes. Then I describe a novel self-regulatory perspective, the NARC, which distinguishes between these agentic and antagonistic aspects of grandiose narcissism. According to the NARC, narcissists overarching goal to create and maintain a grandiose self can be pursued by two social strategies (narcissistic self-promotion and narcissistic self-defense) that translate into two sets of dynamics (narcissistic admiration and rivalry) with distinct affective-motivational, cognitive, and behavioral states that tend to have different social consequences (social potency and conflict). The NARC is meant to provide a clearer understanding of what grandiose narcissism is, how it works, and why it produces a rich variety of seemingly contradictory outcomes. I continue by presenting a summary of existing empirical evidence for the validity of the NARC, underlining its two-dimensional structure, the distinct mental and behavioral dynamics of narcissistic admiration and rivalry, and their unique intra- and interpersonal as well as institutional outcomes. Finally, I outline an agenda for future research that focuses on how admiration and rivalry combine, fluctuate, and develop within persons.

The Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept

Being in a happy marriage is related to better psychological and physical health. This paper describes current approaches to conceptualizing and measuring marital quality and physical health, and results from a recent meta-analysis examining associations between marital quality and physical health outcomes. To illustrate the practical significance of these findings, this paper also illustrates how the magnitude of the marital quality - physical health association is similar in size to associations between health behaviors (diet, physical activity) and health outcomes, and briefly reviews the state of the science regarding plausible biobehavioral pathways that explain how marital functioning influences health. After describing the current state of research on factors that might modify the association between marital quality and health, particularly individual differences and gender, the paper concludes with implications of the past 50 years of research on marital quality and health for marriage in the 21st century.

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Marital Quality and Health Implications for Marriage in the 21st Century

The present study applied the interpersonal perspective in testing the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC) and examining the construct validity of the corresponding Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ). Two undergraduate samples (Sample 1: N = 290; Sample 2: N = 188) completed self-report measures of interpersonal processes based in the interpersonal circumplex (IPC), as well as measures of related constructs. In examining IPC correlates, the authors used a novel bootstrapping approach to determine if admiration and rivalry related to differing interpersonal profiles. Consistent with the authors' hypotheses, admiration was distinctly related to generally agentic (i.e., dominant) interpersonal processes, whereas rivalry generally reflected (low) communal (i.e., hostile) interpersonal processes. Furthermore, NARQ-admiration and NARQ-rivalry related to generally adaptive and maladaptive aspects of status-related constructs, emotional, personality, and social adjustment, respectively. This research provides further support for the NARC, as well as construct validation for the NARQ.

Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry: An Interpersonal Approach to Construct Validation.

A variety of aspects of personality and emotional adjustment predict the development and course of coronary heart disease (CHD), as do indications of marital quality (e.g., satisfaction, conflict, strain, disruption). Importantly, the personality traits and aspects of emotional adjustment that predict CHD are also related to marital quality. In such instances of correlated risk factors, traditional epidemiological and clinical research typically either ignores the potentially overlapping effects or examines independent associations through statistical controls, approaches that can misrepresent the key components and mechanisms of psychosocial effects on CHD. The interpersonal perspective in personality and clinical psychology provides an alternative and integrative approach, through its structural and process models of interpersonal behavior. We present this perspective on psychosocial risk and review research on its application to the integration of personality, emotional adjustment, and marital processes as closely interrelated influences on health and disease.

Personality, emotional adjustment, and cardiovascular risk: marriage as a mechanism.

Background: College students’ mental health may be disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of the abrupt shift off campus and subsequent loss of a social network and potential long-term impact on job prospects.
Objective: We sought to assess the nature of COVID-19’s mental health impact among a sample of undergraduates who were experiencing the pandemic as it occurred in real time.
Methods: In total, 140 college students completed smartphone-based ecological momentary assessments of anxiety and optimism related to COVID-19 and other generic mental health variables 6 times daily.
Results: Participants completed >23,750 surveys. Overall, >75% of these surveys indicated at least some level of anxiety about COVID-19. On average, the proportion of responses each day at the highest levels of anxiety about COVID-19 was 7 times greater than the proportion of responses at the highest levels of non–COVID-19–specific anxiety. Structural change analyses indicated a significant downward trend in COVID-19 anxiety after the first week of June, but even at the lowest point, >15% of the participants in the sample still reported high levels of COVID-19 anxiety each day. Participants felt more anxious about COVID-19 on days when the number of new cases and deaths due to COVID-19 were higher. When participants felt anxious about COVID-19, they also felt sad, anxious (in general), and had a greater desire to drink and use drugs. Participants felt more optimistic about COVID-19 when they received more support from others and from their university.
Conclusions: This study demonstrated the widespread mental health impact that COVID-19 has had on college students.

/pdf/real-time-mental-health-impact-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-3vzuwegtdc.pdf

Real-time Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

PTSD is a well-established risk factor for the full range of self-directed violence (SDV). It is also one of the few psychological conditions that distinguish those who think about suicide from those who attempt suicide. Despite considerable evidence supporting these points, very little is understood about the mechanisms by which PTSD increases the risk for SDV at the present time. This knowledge gap is largely due to the absence of research driven by empirically-supported models of suicide. More recently, this knowledge gap has been slowly filled by a growing number of studies informed by two particular conceptual models: the fluid vulnerability theory and the interpersonal psychological theory. Findings supporting each model are discussed, as are implications for future research.

Theory-driven models of self-directed violence among individuals with PTSD.

Sleep disturbance is common in borderline personality disorder (BPD), yet the reasons for this association are not clear. The present study sought to extend prior studies by testing emotion dysregulation as a mechanism underlying this association. We administered self-report measures of sleep quality (SQ), emotion dysregulation, and borderline features to two cross-sectional samples of undergraduates (sample 1: N = 293; sample 2: N = 188). In addition to replicating prior studies linking BPD features to poor SQ, analyses indicated that BPD features related to emotion dysregulation were most strongly correlated with poorer global SQ across both samples. Further, bootstrapping techniques revealed indirect associations by total score on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), as well as for several of its facets (lack of strategies, lack of emotional clarity, lack of awareness). We discuss the potential clinical relevance of emotion dysregulation in the treatment of co-occurring sleep problems in BPD.

Jeremy L Grove

Papers

Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry: An Interpersonal Approach to Construct Validation.

Personality, emotional adjustment, and cardiovascular risk: marriage as a mechanism.

Real-time Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Theory-driven models of self-directed violence among individuals with PTSD.

Preliminary Evidence for Emotion Dysregulation as a Mechanism Underlying Poor Sleep Quality in Borderline Personality Disorder