Climate change threatens mental health via increasing exposure to the social and economic disruptions created by extreme weather and large-scale climatic events, as well as through the anxiety associated with recognising the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. Considering the growing levels of climate change awareness across the world, negative emotions like anxiety and worry about climate-related risks are a potentially pervasive conduit for the adverse impacts of climate change on mental health. In this study, we examined how negative climate-related emotions relate to sleep and mental health among a diverse non-representative sample of individuals recruited from 25 countries, as well as a Norwegian nationally-representative sample. Overall, we found that negative climate-related emotions are positively associated with insomnia symptoms and negatively related to self-rated mental health in most countries. Our findings suggest that climate-related psychological stressors are significantly linked with mental health in many countries and draw attention to the need for cross-disciplinary research aimed at achieving rigorous empirical assessments of the unique challenge posed to mental health by negative emotional responses to climate change.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a source of fear around the world. We asked whether the measurement of this fear is trustworthy and comparable across countries. In particular, we explored the measurement invariance and cross-cultural replicability of the widely used Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), testing community samples from 48 countries (N = 14,558). The findings indicate that the FCV-19S has a somewhat problematic structure, yet the one-factor solution is replicable across cultural contexts and could be used in studies that compare people who vary on gender and educational level. The validity of the scale is supported by a consistent pattern of positive correlations with perceived stress and general anxiety. However, given the unclear structure of the FCV-19S, we recommend using latent factor scores, instead of raw scores, especially in cross-cultural comparisons.
All available peer-reviewed literature on humor and gender differences was screened and evaluated according to a priori defined QUALSYST criteria. The 77 papers surpassing a conservative quality criterion generated seven emergent themes around humor and gender differences. In short, men score higher in the aggressive humor style (M > F), while no other gender differences were consistently reported in humor-related traits (M = F). In the prediction of negative outcomes (stress, loneliness, depression), differential effects for humor in both genders are reported, but not consistently (M F). Gender differences exist for the appreciation of sexual humor (M > F), even in mixed target stimuli, and hostile humor (both genders appreciate opposite gender target stimuli more). Gender differences are absent in nonsense and neutral humor (M = F). For humor production, three samples showed no gender differences (M = F), while three samples suggested men are funnier (M > F) and one that women are funnier (M < F). No studies reporting differences in humor comprehension were identified (M = F). For humor use and communication, gender differences were found across methods (M F), yet, they depend on the context (e.g., workplace) and may thus resemble gender roles rather than "natural differences". Moreover, few studies provide hard data on actual humor use and communication in different domains. When exposed to humor stimuli, different neural responses of men and women in prefrontal cortex activations (or selected parts) were found (M F). Also, self-report data suggest that both genders value a sense of humor in their partner (M = F), yet women typically value the humor production abilities more than humor receptivity, while for men, the woman's receptivity of their own humor is more important than a woman's humor production abilities, in line with gender stereotypes (M F). To conclude, much progress has been achieved in the past 15 years to overcome methodological flaws in early works on humor and gender differences. Importantly, attention should be paid to disentangling actual gender differences from gender role expectations and gender stereotypes. Methodologically, designs need to be checked for potential bias (i.e. self-reports may accentuate roles and stereotypes) and more hard data is needed to substantiate claims from self-report studies.
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