Affective Science - Special Issue on Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being and Population Health
Affective Science introduces the Special Issue on Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being and Population Health. Browse articles from the Special Issue below.
Guest Editors: Eric Kim, PhD., University of British Columbia, Canada; Judith Tedlie Moskowitz, PhD., Northwestern University, USA; Laura Kubzansky, PhD., Harvard University, USA.
Psychological ill-being is on the rise, with 1 in 5 Americans suffering from a mental disorder in any given year. Additional evidence demonstrates that psychological well-being has also decreased over time. These trends may be a harbinger of what is to come for population health given the substantial and growing body of evidence demonstrating that psychological ill-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, anger) is associated with elevated risk of developing chronic diseases and premature mortality, while aspects of psychological well-being (e.g., sense of purpose and meaning, optimism, life satisfaction) are independently associated with better physical health. Thus, strategies for improving population mental health are urgently needed. An underexplored, but promising approach to enhancing both psychological and physical health is through developing a set of tools that specifically target psychological well-being. In fact, there is increasing demand for such tools. Employers, healthcare systems, school districts, and governments have begun to recognize the importance of well-being, and are seeking programs, and initiatives that can improve the psychological well-being of people within their organizations and of those they serve. However, we have not yet identified clear strategies for improving psychological well-being in meaningful, durable, and scalable ways that are powerful enough to also have downstream effects on physical health. To develop and refine these strategies successfully we will need to address three critical questions regarding existing or newly developed interventions including: 1) do these interventions work? 2) for whom do these interventions work? and 3) why or how do these interventions work? To further explore the exciting possibility of psychological well-being interventions that can improve physical health at-scale, we partnered with Affective Science to produce a Special Issue covering work at the scientific forefront of the topic. With this call, we invited scholars to share new and interdisciplinary thinking in this area. This collection of articles begins to address our knowledge gaps by bringing together cutting-edge conceptual frameworks, critical examination of key constructs, and novel empirical evidence needed to identify and examine interventions that can modify psychological well-being, particularly those that have the potential to be scaled at the population level.
Articles will undergo all of the journal's standard peer review and editorial processes outlined in its submission guidelines.
Part I: Conceptual Frameworks
Emotional Well-Being: What It Is and Why It Matters
Crystal Park
Well-being: Strengthening and Broadening a Key Psychological Construct
Belinda Campos
Why Definitional Clarity Matters: Implications for the Operationalization of Emotional Well-Being
Elizabeth Necka
Describing Broad Categories with Narrow Terms: the Problems with Emotional Well-Being
Richard Lucas
Fulfilling the Promise of Well-Being Science: the Quest for Conceptual and Measurement Precision
Michelle Shiota
Terminology and the Well-being Literature
Tyler VanderWeele
The Benefits and Challenges of a Unifying Conceptual Framework for Well-being Constructs
Emily Willroth
Considerations for Advancing the Conceptualization of Well-being
Nancy Sin
Flotsam, Jetsam, and Forward-Moving Vessels on the Sea of Well-Being
Carol Ryff
A Perfect Storm to Set the Stage for Ontological Exploration: Response to Commentaries on “Emotional Well-Being: What It Is and Why It Matters”
Crystal Park
Part II: Intervention Frameworks and Empirical Articles
Positive Psychology Interventions in Medical Populations: Critical Issues in Intervention Development, Testing, and Implementation
Jeff Huffman
Are Some Ways of Expressing Gratitude More Beneficial Than Others? Results From a Randomized Controlled Experiment
Annie Regan
What is the Optimal Way to Give Thanks? Comparing the Effects of Gratitude Expressed Privately, One-to-One via Text, or Publicly on Social Media
Lisa Walsh
What is Unique About Kindness? Exploring the Proximal Experience of Prosocial Acts Relative to Other Positive Behaviors
Annie Regan
Does an Online Positive Psychological Intervention Improve Positive Affect in Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Caitlin DuPont
Exploring Retention, Usage, and Efficacy of Web-Based Delivery of Positive Emotion Regulation Skills During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Elizabeth Addington
Longitudinal Associations Between Arts Engagement and Flourishing in Young Adults: A Fixed Effects Analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Jessica Bone
Religious and Existential Determinants of Affective Response to a Brief Mindfulness Intervention
Micheline Anderson
Feasibility of Passive ECG Bio-sensing and EMA Emotion Reporting Technologies and Acceptability of Just-in-Time Content in a Well-being Intervention, Considerations for Scalability and Improved Uptake
Peter Cummings
The Catalyst Model of Change: Gratitude Interventions with Positive Long-Term Effects
Y Wong
Positive Psychological Intervention Effects on Depression: Positive Emotion Does Not Mediate Intervention Impact in a Sample with Elevated Depressive Symptoms
Judith Moskowitz
Part III: Conclusions and Future Directions
Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being: Progress, Promises, and an Agenda for Future Research
Eric Kim
Abstracts from SAS Conference
Abstracts from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science_Emotion Expression
Hongbo Yu
Abstracts from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science_Emotion Regulation
Hongbo Yu
Abstracts from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science_Experience of Emotion
Hongbo Yu
Abstracts from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science_Health
Hongbo Yu
Abstracts from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science Emotion Expression_Social Decision Making
Hongbo Yu