Predicting Role of Resilience and Meaning in Life in Perceived Stress of Frontline Health Care Workers during COVID-19 Outbreak

This paper investigates the predicting role of resilience and meaning in life on perceived stress of frontline health care workers treating patients with COVID-19. To measure the variables, a set of online questionnaires including Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSS), Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ), and Resilience Questionnaire (CD_RISC) was prepared. Presence of meaning, search for meaning, notion of personal competence, tolerance and trust in intuition, acceptance and secure relationships, control, and spiritual influences were examined as predictors of perceived stress. Several frontline health care workers were included in the final study. To analyze the data, regression analysis method was used with SPSS-20 software. The results showed that: 1) the regression model of resilience and the presence of meaning in the life of health care workers on their perceived stress was significant (F (6,229)=45.14, p<0.0001); 2) the predictive variables, in total, could explain 53% of the variance of perceived stress; 3) perceived stress correlated negatively with presence of meaning (β = −0.380, p<0.05), with acceptance and secure relationships (β = −0.620, p< 0.05), with control (β = −0.609, p<0.05), and positively correlated with spiritual influences (β = 0.465, p<0.05). Finding and maintaining meaning in life and improving acceptance, secure relationships, and sense of control would reduce perceived stress of frontline health care workers.

How Does Search for Meaning Lead to Presence of Meaning for Korean Army Soldiers? The Mediating Roles of Leisure Crafting and Gratitude

Many studies demonstrate that finding meaning in life reduces stress and promotes physical and psychological well-being. However, extant literature focuses on meaning in life among the general population (e.g., college students or office workers) in their daily lives. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the mechanisms of how individuals living in life-threatening and stressful situations obtain meaning in life, by investigating the mediating roles of leisure crafting and gratitude. A total of 465 Army soldiers from the Republic of Korea (ROK) participated in two-wave surveys with a 2-week interval. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that the direct effects between the search for meaning, presence of meaning, leisure crafting, and gratitude were significant, except for the direct relationship between the search for meaning and the presence of meaning, and between leisure crafting and the presence of meaning. We tested indirect effects using a Monte Carlo approach and found that leisure crafting and gratitude sequentially mediated the relationship between the search for meaning and the presence of meaning. Our findings highlight the importance of the motivation behind searching for meaning, the proactive use of leisure time, and gratitude for individuals in stressful situations and controlled lifestyles. Finally, we discuss the implications and limitations of this research and future research directions.

Meaning in life and its significance in emerging adulthood - literature review and preliminary study results

Transition from adolescence to adulthood and the challenges it entails are often accompanied by a feeling of anxiety and confusion. As research has shown, emerging adults may be particularly vulnerable to various mental disorders. Meaning in life is one of the protective factors that is of great importance both for the mental health and well-being of an individual. The issue of the sense of meaning in life is particularly important in emerging adulthood, as searching for meaning in life may be treated as one of the developmental tasks of this period. The aim of the article is both to review the literature on meaning in life, with particular emphasis on its two dimensions: presence of and search for, and to present the preliminary results of research. The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between the sense of meaning in life, perceived stress and mental health among emerging adults in Poland. 120 emerging adults (between 18 and 29 years of age) participated in the study. Participants completed three questionnaires: the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). There was a negative relationship between presence of meaning in life and somatic and depressive symptoms and perceived stress. Among emerging adults, the search for meaning in life was significantly higher than the presence of meaning. The role of the search for meaning in the period of emerging adulthood as well as further research directions are discussed.

Are Words the Quanta of Human Language? Extending the Domain of Quantum Cognition

In previous research, we showed that ‘texts that tell a story’ exhibit a statistical structure that is not Maxwell–Boltzmann but Bose–Einstein. Our explanation is that this is due to the presence of ‘indistinguishability’ in human language as a result of the same words in different parts of the story being indistinguishable from one another, in much the same way that ’indistinguishability’ occurs in quantum mechanics, also there leading to the presence of Bose–Einstein rather than Maxwell–Boltzmann as a statistical structure. In the current article, we set out to provide an explanation for this Bose–Einstein statistics in human language. We show that it is the presence of ‘meaning’ in ‘texts that tell a story’ that gives rise to the lack of independence characteristic of Bose–Einstein, and provides conclusive evidence that ‘words can be considered the quanta of human language’, structurally similar to how ‘photons are the quanta of electromagnetic radiation’. Using several studies on entanglement from our Brussels research group, we also show, by introducing the von Neumann entropy for human language, that it is also the presence of ‘meaning’ in texts that makes the entropy of a total text smaller relative to the entropy of the words composing it. We explain how the new insights in this article fit in with the research domain called ‘quantum cognition’, where quantum probability models and quantum vector spaces are used in human cognition, and are also relevant to the use of quantum structures in information retrieval and natural language processing, and how they introduce ‘quantization’ and ‘Bose–Einstein statistics’ as relevant quantum effects there. Inspired by the conceptuality interpretation of quantum mechanics, and relying on the new insights, we put forward hypotheses about the nature of physical reality. In doing so, we note how this new type of decrease in entropy, and its explanation, may be important for the development of quantum thermodynamics. We likewise note how it can also give rise to an original explanatory picture of the nature of physical reality on the surface of planet Earth, in which human culture emerges as a reinforcing continuation of life.

Silence and Media Encounters in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall

Silence is enfolded with voice—the two phenomena are complementary. The presence of silence inevitably points to the presence of sound, and by extension, to the presence of meaning. Still, encountered silence can be meaningful in itself. The article explores interactions between different media (TV news, painting and black box recordings) and the corresponding silences in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall: the silence of the main protagonist and his avoidance of news reporters; the silence of catastrophic art voiced by the use of ekphrasis; and the silence recorded by the black boxes. The rhetoric of each medium in question and its interaction with the corresponding silence are investigated to show that silence “speaks volumes” in the novel.

MEANING IN LIFE IN ELDERLY

Aim: Starting from the research of the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, the meaning in life proved its importance, being studied in the context of different research traditions, existential psychology, positive psychology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology. This is a pilot study targeting a group of twenty elderly Romanians who live in a Residential Center in Bucharest. Methods: The study assumes that we’ll have statistically significant correlations between independent variables (presence of meaning, search for meaning) and dependent ones (depression, anxiety, stress, life satisfaction). Method: The research uses correlation analysis for the variables: meaning presence and meaning search from M. Steger's MLQ questionnaire, defined as independent variables in the study and dependent variables: depression, anxiety, stress (DASS-21 questionnaire), and life satisfaction (Satisfaction Scale with Life, SWLS). Results: The research results highlight good internal consistency (Cronbach's coefficient α> 0.70) for the two subscales of the M.L.Q. questionnaire. The statistically significant inverse link between the level of stress and the presence of meaning in life is confirmed, the statistically significant inverse link between the total score of depression and the presence of meaning in life is confirmed; the variable life satisfaction is the only dependent variable for which statistically significant links are confirmed with both independent variables simultaneously (presence of meaning in life and search for meaning of life); Pearson correlation coefficients are statistically significant, Sig values, associated, lower than the 5% threshold, require the rejection of the null hypothesis.

Investigation of Structural Relationships of Factors Affecting Posttraumatic Growth in Women With Breast Cancer

Introduction: It is necessary to identify the factors affecting the posttraumatic growth of cancer patients to minimize the consequences of its psychological trauma. Objective: This study aimed to determine the structural relationships of coping styles, the collapse of core beliefs, social support, spirituality/religious coping with posttraumatic growth variables, and the mediating role of positive reassessment and deliberate mental rumination within a causal pattern. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed using path analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) by convenience sampling method on 213 patients with breast cancer in Mashhad, Iran, in 2019. The pattern of variables relationships was tested in a conceptual model by SEM and used the partial least squares regression method to test the measurement pattern and research hypotheses. In the measurement model section, three convergent validity indices, i.e., Average Variance Extracted (AVE), Composite Reliability (CR), and the Cronbach α, and in the structural model section, two indicators of coefficient of determination (R2) and Stone-Geisser coefficient (Q²). Results: The Mean±SD age of the patients was 52±16 years. The standardized coefficients of the overall effect of core beliefs pathways, positive religious coping, search for meaning, presence of meaning, deliberate rumination over positive re-evaluation were 0.953, 0.386, -0.250, 0.248, and 0.238, respectively (P=0.001). The direct coefficient of the positive reassessment path to posttraumatic growth was 0.085 (P=0.01). Also, the coefficient of collapse path of core beliefs to intrusive rumination was 0.687, which was significant at the level of P=0.0001. Finally, the standardized coefficients of the overall effect of all paths for negative religious coping, the collapse of core beliefs, presence of meaning, problem-based coping style, search for meaning, deliberate rumination, social support, positive religious coping, emotion-based coping, intrusive rumination over posttraumatic growth were -0.481, 0.227, 0.182, 0.146, -0.136, 0.066, 0.060, 0.059, 0.056, and -0.043, respectively (P=0.0001). Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that in addition to confirming the direct paths of independent variables to the posttraumatic growth, positive reassessment had a mediating role between pathways of the presence and search of meaning, conscious rumination, religious coping, and the collapse of core beliefs in posttraumatic growth.

Presence of Meaning in Life in Older Men and Women: The Role of Dimensions of Frailty and Social Support

Presence of meaning in life is an important component of eudemonic wellbeing while aging. While subjective health and interpersonal relationships are among important sources of meaning for older adults, less research has explored the gender differences in the potential contribution of these sources to the presence of meaning in late life. The current study aims to examine the associations of frailty dimensions (daily activities, health problems, and psychosocial functioning) and social support with the presence of meaning in late life, and whether these associations differ for older men and women. The study employs the data from the 65+ and Safe Study – a cross-sectional survey of residents of senior apartments. The data were collected in 2019 in a mid-sized Swedish municipality (N=618; age range from 64 to 106years, 60.5% female). Results showed significant associations of health problems, psychosocial functioning, and social support with the presence of meaning in life. Further, the results demonstrated no statistically significant gender differences in the associations between frailty dimensions, social support, and presence of meaning. However, since the interaction between health problems and gender approached statistical significance, this association was further explored indicating a more detrimental role of health problems in relation to the presence of meaning in life among older men than among older women. Overall, the study highlights the importance of physical and psychosocial health and social support for the presence of meaning in life among older adults and warrants further research on possible gender differences in the relation between health problems and meaning in late life.

Relationships between Cultural Adaptation and Immigrants’ Well-Being

The present study aimed to evaluate the predictive relationship of socio-demographic variables, cultural adaptation and hope on general well-being (GWB), subjective (SWB), social (SoWB) and psychological (PWB) and in the meaning of life. The participants consisted of 108 immigrants. The instruments used were: bio sociodemographic questionnaire, Mental Health Continuum - Short Form, Dispositional Hope Scale, Acculturation Measures and Meaning of Life Questionnaire. In general, only sociocultural adaptation showed a positive predictive relationship with all types of well-being studied, nonetheless this measure presented a negative predictive relationship regarding the presence of meaning in life. Psychological adaptation was predictively and positively related only to SWB. The perception of cultural distance negatively affected SoWB. The presence of meaning was also negatively predicted by the type of immigration and age. The search for meaning was negatively predicted only by income. The results are important for a better understanding of factors that influence the experience of immigrants in Brazil.