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This is a repository copy of The effect of short-term exposure to the natural environment on depressive mood: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

There have been considerable methodological developments of Bayes factors for hypothesis testing in the social and behavioral sciences, and related fields. This development is due to the flexibility of the Bayes factor for testing multiple hypotheses simultaneously, the ability to test complex hypotheses involving equality as well as order constraints on the parameters of interest, and the interpretability of the outcome as the weight of evidence provided by the data in support of competing scientific theories. The available software tools for Bayesian hypothesis testing are still limited however. In this paper we present a new R package called BFpack that contains functions for Bayes factor hypothesis testing for the many common testing problems. The software includes novel tools for (i) Bayesian exploratory testing (e.g., zero vs positive vs negative effects), (ii) Bayesian confirmatory testing (competing hypotheses with equality and/or order constraints), (iii) common statistical analyses, such as linear regression, generalized linear models, (multivariate) analysis of (co)variance, correlation analysis, and random intercept models, (iv) using default priors, and (v) while allowing data to contain missing observations that are missing at random.

Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine). We further tested whether cross-societal variation in institutions and ecologies theorized to impact cooperation were associated with prosocial COVID-19 responses, including institutional quality, religiosity, and historical prevalence of pathogens. We found substantial variation across societies in prosocial COVID-19 responses, stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations. However, we found no consistent evidence to support the idea that cross-societal variation in cooperation and trust among strangers is associated with these outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These results were replicated with another independent cross-cultural COVID-19 dataset ( N = 112,136), and in both snowball and representative samples. We discuss implications of our results, including challenging the assumption that managing the COVID-19 pandemic across societies is best modeled as a public goods dilemma.

This four-year, multi-informant longitudinal study (N=480, initial age: 15) investigated the interplay between parental support, behavioral- and psychological control, and adolescents’ emotion regulation development. We examined reciprocal effects between parents and children, mothers' versus fathers’ unique roles in emotion regulation development, and sex differences. Multi-informant data allowed us to compare effects of adolescent-perceived and parent-reported parenting. Finally, innovative analyses allowed us to disentangle between-family differences from within-family predictive processes. Parenting and emotion regulation were associated at the between-family and within-family levels, especially according to adolescent reports. Support primarily played a role between mothers and adolescents, and perceived behavioral control between fathers and adolescents. Sex moderation revealed that support played a more prominent role in mother-daughter than mother-son relationships, and that daughters experienced greater behavioral control. Child effects outnumbered parent effects, which might reflect the increasing equality of adolescent-parent relationships. Finally, adolescent-perceived parenting was a stronger correlate of emotion regulation than parent-reports, suggesting that adolescents' perceptions are a relevant source of information for research and practice. Consistent with the self-determination theory perspective on parenting, emotion regulation flourished when adolescents felt like mothers provided support, and fathers loosened behavioral control. These results are in line with the notion that mother-child relationships are supportive attachment relationships, whereas fathers provide "activation" relationships, challenging adolescents to regulate emotions autonomously by providing less explicit structure.

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Rationale Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are considered first-line medication for anxiety-like disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Fear learning plays an important role in the development and treatment of these disorders. Yet, the effect of SSRIs on fear learning are not well known. Objective We aimed to systematically review the effect of six clinically effective SSRIs on acquisition, expression, and extinction of cued and contextual conditioned fear. Methods We searched the Medline and Embase databases, which yielded 128 articles that met the inclusion criteria and reported on 9 human and 275 animal experiments. Results Meta-analysis showed that SSRIs significantly reduced contextual fear expression and facilitated extinction learning to cue. Bayesian-regularized meta-regression further suggested that chronic treatment exerts a stronger anxiolytic effect on cued fear expression than acute treatment. Type of SSRI, species, disease-induction model, and type of anxiety test used did not seem to moderate the effect of SSRIs. The number of studies was relatively small, the level of heterogeneity was high, and publication bias has likely occurred which may have resulted in an overestimation of the overall effect sizes. Conclusions This review suggests that the efficacy of SSRIs may be related to their effects on contextual fear expression and extinction to cue, rather than fear acquisition. However, these effects of SSRIs may be due to a more general inhibition of fear-related emotions. Therefore, additional meta-analyses on the effects of SSRIs on unconditioned fear responses may provide further insight into the actions of SSRIs.

There has been a tremendous methodological development of Bayes factors for hypothesis testing in the social and behavioral sciences, and related fields. This development is due to the flexibility of the Bayes factor for testing multiple hypotheses simultaneously, the ability to test complex hypotheses involving equality as well as order constraints on the parameters of interest, and the interpretability of the outcome as the weight of evidence provided by the data in support of competing scientific theories. The available software tools for Bayesian hypothesis testing are still limited however. In this paper we present a new R-package called BFpack that contains functions for Bayes factor hypothesis testing for the many common testing problems. The software includes novel tools (i) for Bayesian exploratory testing (null vs positive vs negative effects), (ii) for Bayesian confirmatory testing (competing hypotheses with equality and/or order constraints), (iii) for common statistical analyses, such as linear regression, generalized linear models, (multivariate) analysis of (co)variance, correlation analysis, and random intercept models, (iv) using default priors, and (v) while allowing data to contain missing observations that are missing at random.