Reasonable or restrictive? Mindfulness as a moderator of reactance to environmental messages

Environmental issues are gaining global traction, as evidenced by the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. However, the changes needed to address these issues are viewed by some as threatening. Given that environmental initiatives often call for restricting behavior, they can elicit reactance—a motivational state that is thought to occur when a freedom is eliminated or threatened with elimination. In the following studies, I sought to better understand how to reduce reactance by curtailing its underlying processes. Study 1 tested the relationships among trait mindfulness, reactance, and environmentalism and revealed differences among various facets of mindfulness. Importantly, facets of trait mindfulness predicted less anger in response to environmental messages, greater intentions to behave in a pro-environmental way, and more environmental advocacy. Study 2 tested whether inducing a state of mindfulness would mitigate the formation of reactance to a pro-environmental message by increasing cognitive flexibility and decreasing emotional reactivity. While Study 2 failed to support these main hypotheses, it yielded some interesting results regarding cognitive flexibility and emotional reactivity. Specifically, inducing a state of mindfulness decreased emotional reactivity, but had no impact on cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility, however, moderated the effect of the type of environmental message (threatening vs not) in predicting reactance; people with higher cognitive flexibility were not impacted by the threat manipulation. Taken together the results of these studies offer insight into the nature of mindfulness, reactance, and environmentalism

Withdrawn and wired: Problematic internet use accounts for the link of neurotic withdrawal to sleep disturbances

Objective: Although neuroticism is the strongest personality predictor of sleep disturbance, it is not clear whether dysphoric (Withdrawal) or angry (Volatility) aspect of neuroticism is more important and whether problematic technology use plays an intervening role. To this end, this study examined distinct contributions of neurotic withdrawal and volatility in predicting self-reported sleep disturbance while testing the mediating role of problematic internet use. Methods: One-hundred and fourty-three college students completed an online survey that included measures of neuroticism, sleep quality, and problematic internet use. Results: Although both aspects of neuroticism predicted poor sleep, Withdrawal emerged as a stronger and the only unique predictor. Furthermore, problematic internet use explained a portion of Withdrawal’s relationship to worse sleep, especially nighttime and daytime disturbances. Discussion: The findings suggest that dysphoric rather than angry features of neuroticism are more important for sleep problems and that the problematic use of modern technology may be an important contributing factor

Performance of the ALICE Electromagnetic Calorimeter

International audienceThe performance of the electromagnetic calorimeter of theALICE experiment during operation in 2010–2018 at the Large HadronCollider is presented. After a short introduction into the design,readout, and trigger capabilities of the detector, the proceduresfor data taking, reconstruction, and validation are explained. Themethods used for the calibration and various derived corrections arepresented in detail. Subsequently, the capabilities of thecalorimeter to reconstruct and measure photons, light mesons,electrons and jets are discussed. The performance of thecalorimeter is illustrated mainly with data obtained with test beamsat the Proton Synchrotron and Super Proton Synchrotron or inproton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV, and compared tosimulations