Motivated Helplessness in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence for a Curvilinear Relationship Between Perceived Ability to Avoid the Virus and Anxiety

Introduction: We tested the hypothesis that feelings of helplessness — i.e., the perception that one is unable to control and prevent negative events — may serve a protective psychological function against fear and anxiety arousal in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We conducted a large scale study with participants from different countries (N = 3,632) to examine if perceived helplessness to avoid being infected with COVID-19 relates to lower levels of fear of COVID-19, and state anxiety. Results: We found a curvilinear relationship between feeling helpless to avoid being infected with COVID-19 and self-reported anxiety. Individuals who reported either low or high degrees of helplessness reported less anxiety and fear of being infected with COVID-19 compared to those who reported moderate levels of helplessness. Additional analyses within countries with adequate power (N > 160) indicated that this curvilinear effect was found among participants from the USA, UK, Poland, Estonia, and the Netherlands, but not in Argentina and Germany. Discussion: We discuss the implications for research on the psychological function of helplessness and for understanding peoples' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Structure of Affect in Types of Anxiety and Depression

Although anxiety and depression are treated as separate conditions, the literature concerning their affective functioning is inconclusive. To address this issue, we analyzed types of anxiety (arousal and apprehension) and depression (valence and anhedonic). We hypothesized that the similarities and differences in the structure of affect would be related to the specific structural components and functions (reactive or regulative) of the types. We assessed the valence (negative and positive affect) and content (specific emotions) of affect by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – Expanded Form (PANAS-X) in 1,632 participants from a general population. Regression analyses showed that the anxiety and depression types (measured by Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire) can be differentiated by the content of affect, but not its valence: Fear was characteristic for anxiety, especially the arousal anxiety. Valence depression was primarily related to hostility, while anhedonic depression was predicted by sadness, guilt, and lowered joviality. Moreover, as expected, regulative emotions (e.g., joviality) were stronger predictors of the regulative apprehension anxiety and anhedonic depression, while the more reactive fear was more strongly related to the reactive arousal anxiety than to regulative apprehension anxiety. These results confirm that the structure of affect is related to the structure and functions of anxiety and depression types.

PRECOMPETITIVE EMOTIONAL STATE OF DANCESPORT ATHLETES

Background. The paper deals with the precompetitive emotional state of dancesport athletes before competition. Research aim was to analyze pre-competition emotional state of dancesport athletes. Methods. The pre-competition emotional state of dancesport athletes was established using methods of in- depth interview and participant observation. The main reasons for different types of emotional states were identified, and finally, recommendations for athletes and coaches how to overcome immoderate anxiety interfering with good competition results were developed. Results. Precompetitive emotional state before competition may be described as a complex multi-faceted phenomenon which consists of different psychological categories such as: anxiety, arousal, stress, self-confidence, concentration. The results of the interviews and participant observation showed that precompetitive emotional states of the dancesport athletes were both positive and negative. Positive emotional state was shown by the majority of participants. There were found six reasons of positive emotional state and five reasons of negative emotional state as well. Conclusion. To overcome the negative emotional state or reinforce positive emotional state before the competitions it is suggested to listen to pleasant music, do breathing exercises or do the mental exercise. The choice depends on the personal characteristics of athletes.

Vestibulo-spinal and vestibulo-ocular reflexes are modulated when standing with increased postural threat

We investigated how vestibulo-spinal reflexes (VSRs) and vestibulo-ocular reflexes (VORs) measured through vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) and video head impulse test (vHIT) outcomes, respectively, are modulated during standing under conditions of increased postural threat. Twenty-five healthy young adults stood quietly at low (0.8 m from the ground) and high (3.2 m) surface height conditions in two experiments. For the first experiment ( n = 25) VEMPs were recorded with surface EMG from inferior oblique (IO), sternocleidomastoid (SCM), trapezius (TRP), and soleus (SOL) muscles in response to 256 air-conducted short tone bursts (125 dB SPL, 500 Hz, 4 ms) delivered via headphones. A subset of subjects ( n = 19) also received horizontal and vertical head thrusts (∼150°/s) at each height in a separate session, comparing eye and head velocities by using a vHIT system for calculating the functional VOR gains. VEMP amplitudes (IO, TRP, SOL) and horizontal and vertical vHIT gains all increased with high surface height conditions ( P < 0.05). Changes in IO and SCM VEMP amplitudes as well as horizontal vHIT gains were correlated with changes in electrodermal activity (ρ = 0.44–0.59, P < 0.05). VEMP amplitude for the IO also positively correlated with fear (ρ = 0.43, P = 0.03). Threat-induced anxiety, fear, and arousal have significant effects on VSR and VOR gains that can be observed in both physiological and functional outcome measures. These findings provide support for a potential central modulation of the vestibular nucleus complex through excitatory inputs from neural centers involved in processing fear, anxiety, arousal, and vigilance.

The Effect of Priming Pictures and Videos on a Question–Answer Dialog Scenario in a Virtual Environment

Having a free-speech conversation with avatars in a virtual environment can be desirable in virtual reality applications, such as virtual therapy and serious games. However, recognizing and processing free speech seems too ambitious to realize with the current technology. As an alternative, pre-scripted conversations with keyword detection can handle a number of goal-oriented situations, as well as some scenarios in which the conversation content is of secondary importance. This is, for example, the case in virtual exposure therapy for the treatment of people with social phobia, where conversation is for exposure and anxiety arousal only. A drawback of pre-scripted dialog is the limited scope of the user's answers. The system cannot handle a user's response that does not match the pre-defined content, other than by providing a default reply. A new method, which uses priming material to restrict the possibility of the user's response, is proposed in this paper to solve this problem. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether people can be guided to mention specific keywords with video and/or picture primings. Study 1 was a two-by-two experiment in which participants (n = 20) were asked to answer a number of open questions. Prior to the session, participants watched priming videos or unrelated videos. During the session, they could see priming pictures or unrelated pictures on a whiteboard behind the person who asked the questions. The results showed that participants tended to mention more keywords both with priming videos and pictures. Study 2 shared the same experimental setting but was carried out in virtual reality instead of in the real world. Participants (n = 20) were asked to answer questions of an avatar when they were exposed to priming material, before and/or during the conversation session. The same results were found: the surrounding media content had a guidance effect. Furthermore, when priming pictures appeared in the environment, people sometimes forgot to mention the content they typically would mention.