Jill Murphy, Associate Editor

New research has found that a person’s mood will decrease over the course of a conversation the more they look at themselves while taking part in an online chat, according to a press release from Illinois News Bureau.

These findings strengthen the challenges of online meeting platforms and raise the issue of the psychological problems that may be occurring in people participating in online activities, such as anxiety and depression.

“We used eye-tracking technology to examine the relationship between mood, alcohol and attentional focus during virtual social interaction,” said Talia Ariss, a University of Illinois (U of I) Urbana-Champaign doctoral candidate who led the research with U of I psychology professor Catharine Fairbairn, in the press release. “We found that participants who spent more time looking at themselves during the conversation felt worse after the call, even after controlling for pre-interaction negative mood. And those who were under the influence of alcohol spent more time looking at themselves.”

Additionally, the new study adds to previous studies that suggest that people who focus more on themselves than on external realities may be susceptible to mood disorders, according to the study authors.

“The more self-focused a person is, the more likely they are to report feeling emotions that are consistent with things like anxiety and even depression,” Ariss said in the press release. “Users of the online video call platform Zoom increased 30-fold during the pandemic—burgeoning from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million by April 2020,” the researchers wrote. “The pandemic has yielded a surge in levels of depression and anxiety and, given reports of heightened self-awareness and ‘fatigue’ during virtual exchange, some have posited a role for virtual interaction in exacerbating such trends.”

The participants in the study answered questions about their emotional status before and after the online conversations, and they were instructed to discuss what they like and dislike about the local community during the chats as well as their musical preferences. Further, each participant was able to see themselves and their conversation partners on a split-screen monitor, and some consumed an alcoholic beverage before talking while others drank nonalcoholic beverages.

Although the participants stared at their conversation partners on the monitor more than themselves, there was a significant difference in the amount of time that the individual participants spent gazing at themselves.

“The cool thing about virtual social interactions, especially in platforms like Zoom, is that you can simulate the experience of looking in a mirror,” Ariss said in the press release.

The addition of alcohol in the research and using eye-tracking technology also allowed the researchers to explore how mild inebriation affected where a person focused their attention.

“In the context of in-person social interactions, there is strong evidence that alcohol acts as a social lubricant among drinkers and has these mood-enhancing properties,” Ariss said in the press release. “This did not hold true, however, in the online conversations, where alcohol consumption corresponded to more self-focus and had none of its typical mood-boosting effects.”

Fairbarn added that at this point in the pandemic, many people have come to the realization that virtual interactions are not the same as face-to-face.

“A lot of folks are struggling with fatigue and melancholy after a full day of Zoom meetings,” Fairbarn said in the press release. “Our work suggests the self-view offered in many online video platforms might make those interactions more of a slog than they need to be.”

Staring at yourself during virtual chats may worsen your mood, research finds. Illinois News Bureau. June 13, 2022. Accessed June 21, 2022. 

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/117509126

Articles

Low Moods May Arise From Staring at Yourself During Online Meetings, Calls

A new study has discovered that life circumstances during childhood, including having fewer friends and siblings, low-quality relationships with parents, bad health, and growing up in a poorer household, are all associated with a higher rate of loneliness in older age.

Sophie Guthmuller of Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, used data from the large cross-national Survey on Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which collects information from individuals across Europe 50 years of age and older on health, socioeconomic status, and social and family networks, and loneliness was measured with the R-UCLA Loneliness Scale.

Based on the data, Guthmuller observed that ill health was the primary factor correlated with loneliness in older age (43.32%). Additionally, social support in older age accounts for 27.05%, whereas personality traits (10.42%) and life circumstances during childhood (7.50%) also were found to play a role.

For people who rarely or never had close friends in childhood, the odds of loneliness at the age of 50 years or older were 1.24 times higher compared to those who had close friends in childhood. Additionally, the odds were 1.34 times higher in those who had a fair or poor relationship with their mother as a child compared to those with an excellent maternal relationship, while they were 1.21 times higher for those who grew up in a low income household versus a high income household.

Additionally, the data showed that people with neurotic personalities experienced more loneliness traits, whereas those who scored higher for conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness less frequently experienced loneliness in older age.

Furthermore, Guthmuller pointed out that the findings of the study confirm the importance of social networks and support in older age, in addition with the role of personality traits and childhood circumstances. In conclusion, she noted that early interventions are key to targeting later loneliness, and specifically interventions aimed at increasing social support in later life should be modified to support all personality types.

"The study finds, as expected, that health status and social support at older ages are the 2 main factors correlated with loneliness at age 50+. Interestingly, the study reveals that personality traits and life circumstances during childhood are significantly associated with loneliness later in life, after controlling for a large set of later life conditions,” Guthmuller said in the press release. “In light of the trend of increasing childhood loneliness, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's life, the findings of this study confirm the importance of early life interventions to tackle long term effects on loneliness."

Childhood circumstances and personality traits are associated with loneliness in older age. EurekAlert! May 18, 2022. Accessed May 31, 2022.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220518140714.htm

Based on the data, Guthmuller observed that ill health was the primary factor correlated with loneliness in older age.

Loneliness in Older Age Associated With Childhood Circumstances, Personality Traits

A new analysis found that the organizational performance during the COVID-19 pandemic may be reflected in the nursing workforce retention as the risk for workforce attrition appears high, according to a study published in 

The purpose of the study was to get a better glimpse of the perspective of nurses working in the United States on the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave. The impact of the pandemic on nurses’ roles, professional relationships, and the organizational cultures of their employers were a focus as well.

The research team conducted an online qualitative study through social networking recruitment to find frontline nurses across the country to participate. The participants provided long form, text-based responses to 4 questions designed to capture their experiences between the first COVID-19 wave between May and July 2020.

In total, 318 nurses participated from 29 out of 50 states, with 242 nurses completing all of the questions. The findings from the study suggest that the place of work mattered significantly in terms of the frontline working experience. Role changes, risk assumption, interprofessional teamwork experiences, and likelihood to leave their jobs or the profession altogether were major influences.

Although it was known that the working conditions varied during the pandemic, nurses shared that they experienced high levels of occupational risk to their health and were observed to be seen as threats to patient outcomes.

The data emphasized that nurses showed several signals about the potential impact to the stability and sustainability of the United States nursing workforce that are now manifesting, including a massive loss to the frontline of the US nursing workforce stemming from high rates of burnout. 

A. Squires, M. Clark-Cutaia, M. Henderson, et al., "Should I stay or should I go?” Nurses’ Perspectives AboutWorking During the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United States: A Summative Content Analysis Combined with Topic Modelling (2022), 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2022.104256

The purpose of the study was to get a better glimpse of the perspective of nurses working in the United States on the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave. 

Study: Potential Threats to Stability, Sustainability for US Nursing Workforce

A small animal study found that female rats exposed to the sound of a scream may have diminished ovarian reserve and reduced fertility, according to research published in the Endocrine Society’s journal 

According to the study authors, ovarian reserve is the reproductive potential left within a woman’s 2 ovaries based on the number and quality of eggs. For each woman, they are born with a limited number of eggs and her body is not able to create more, although diminished ovarian reserve can also occur over time. However, the cause of the diminished quality and quantity of eggs in the ovaries has remained unknown for some time.

To assess one potential source of diminished ovarian reserve, the researchers looked to the potential role of stress in this process.

“We examined the effect of stress on ovarian reserve using a scream sound model in rats,” said Wenyan Xi, PhD, of the Second Affiliation Hospital of Xi’an Jiao Tong University in Xian, China, in a press release. “We found that female rats exposed to the scream sound had diminished ovarian reserve and decreased fertility.”

The research team used a scream sound model to investigate the effect of stress on ovarian reserve in female rats, and they exposed the female rats to a scream sound for 3 weeks and analyzed the effect on their sex hormones, the number and quality of their eggs, and their ability to get pregnant and have babies after mating.

The analysis found that the scream sound decreased the rats’ estrogen and Anti-Mullerian hormone levels. The Anti-Mullerian hormone is a hormone made by the ovaries which helps build reproductive organs, whereas estrogen is a group of hormones that play an important role in growth and reproductive development.

Furthermore, the investigators observed that the scream sound appeared to lower the number and quality of the rats’ eggs and resulted in smaller litters.

“Based on these findings, we suggest stress may be associated with diminished ovarian reserve,” Xi said in the press release. “It is important to determine an association between chronic stress and ovarian reserve because doing so may expand our appreciation of the limitations of current clinical interventions and provide valuable insight into the cause of diminished ovarian reserve.”

Stress may be associated with fertility issues in women. Endocrine Society. May 10, 2022. Accessed May 11, 2022. 

https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2022/stress-may-be-associated-with-fertility-issues-in-women#:~:text=Female%20rats%20exposed%20to%20a,the%20Endocrine%20Society's%20journal%2C%20Endocrinology

Study: Stress May Be Associated with Fertility Issues in Women

Several recent clinical trials demonstrated pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) can effectively reduce the risk of HIV transmission and in Europe, which led the European Center for Disease and Prevention (ECDC) to recommend the integration of PrEP into national HIV prevention programs for those most at risk of HIV infection.

A survey conducted in 2018 and 2019 investigated testing frequencies and factors associated with intermittent testing among self-funded PrEP users in Germany. This stems from existing guidelines that found PrEP users are periodically tested for HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and renal function.

There were 4848 survey participants, and between 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 did not follow the recommended testing frequencies for HIV, STI, and renal function required in the German guidelines for PrEP use. Respondents who frequently tested for STI had higher proportions of self-reported STI diagnoses during PrEP use, overall and across levels of partner numbers and condom use.

According to the study authors, the strongest factors associated with less frequent testing were that respondents did not test before they started taking PrEP, they obtained PrEP from informal sources, and they used it on-demand or occasionally. Further, they concluded that infrequent testing such as this during PrEP use “can lead to missed diagnoses,” and barriers to testing should be addressed to enable proper medical supervision.

The study authors suggest that the most likely mode of transmission was sex with a person on antiretroviral treatment who was not virally suppressed at the time of HIV transmission. They added that further promotion of adherence to antiretroviral therapy among HIV-positive individuals is an important pillar in preventing onward transmission.

As for asymptomatic men who have sex with men (MSM) who use PrEP, regular STI screening and testing is just as important in this population because previous studies found a similar predominance of asymptomatic cohorts of MSM who would have been missed without testing.

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis works but needs regular testing. EurekAlert! April 7, 2022. Accessed April 18, 2022. 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949068

Pre-exposure prophylaxis can effectively reduce the risk of HIV transmission.

Regular Testing Needed for HIV PrEP, Study Shows

A new Northwestern Medicine study found that exposure to the slightest ambient lighting during nighttime sleep harms cardiovascular function during sleep and increases insulin resistance the following morning compared to sleeping in a dimly lit room.

“The results from this study demonstrate that just a single night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation, which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” said senior study author Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician, in a press release. “It’s important for people to avoid or minimize the amount of light exposure during sleep.”

Zee added that the results indicate that a similar effect is also present when exposure to light occurs during nighttime sleep.

“We showed your heart rate increases when you sleep in a moderately lit room,” said co-first author Daniela Grimaldi, MD, research assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern, in a press release. “Even though you are asleep, your autonomic nervous system is activated. That’s bad. Usually, your heart rate together with other cardiovascular parameters are lower at night and higher during the day.”

The study authors found that insulin resistance occurred the morning after people slept in a light room, which means that the cells in the muscles, fat, and liver do not respond well to insulin and cannot use glucose from blood for energy.

“Now we are showing a mechanism that might be fundamental to explain why this happens. We show it’s affecting your ability to regulate glucose,” Zee said in a press release.

Artificial light exposure at night during sleep is very common, either from indoor light emitting devices or from sources outside the home, specifically in large urban areas. Additionally, a significant proportion of individuals sleep with a bedside lamp on, with a light on in the bedroom, and/or the television on.

“In addition to sleep, nutrition and exercise, light exposure during the daytime is an important factor for health, but during the night we show that even modest intensity of light can impair measures of heart and endocrine health,” said co-first author Ivy Mason, MD, who at the time of the study was post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern and now is a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, in a press release.

Close the blinds during sleep to protect your health. Northwestern Now. March 14, 2022. Accessed April 18, 2022. 

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/03/close-the-blinds-during-sleep-to-protect-your-health/#:~:text=Exposure%20to%20even%20moderate%20ambient,a%20new%20Northwestern%20Medicine%20study