Does Age-Related Stereotype Threat Affect Older Adults' Recognition of Emotion?

Emotion recognition is a cognitive ability that has been demonstrated to decline with age. Older adults (aged over 60) are consistently poorer than young adults (aged 18-30) at recognising anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. However, it is possible that such age differences have been exaggerated by a phenomenon known as age-related stereotype threat, whereby raising negative stereotypes about aging leads older adults to perform worse on relevant tasks. For instance, reminding older adults of stereotypes about age-related cognitive decline impairs their memory recall performance. There is reason to think that older adults’ recognition of emotions might be another cognitive ability that is compromised by stereotype threat. This idea was tested over three studies. In Study 1, young and older adults were exposed to a stereotype threat manipulation that implied either that 1) older adults or 2) young adults are expected to have inferior emotion recognition ability. A control condition (3) involved no allusion to age differences in emotion recognition. Participants completed a basic facial emotion recognition task and a task that involved identifying mental states expressed by eyes, in addition to measures of self-reported threat concerns and state anxiety. It was hypothesised that stereotype threat would lead older adults (but not young adults) to experience increased stereotype threat concerns and anxiety, which in turn, would impair older adults’ emotion recognition performance. Contrary to expectations, the stereotype threat manipulation did not lead older adults to experience increased threat concerns or state anxiety. Interestingly, young adults did report feeling more stereotype-threatened and anxious by the implication that their age group is typically worse at recognising emotions. Neither age group experienced impairments in their recognition of facial expressions or mental states. These findings raised questions about whether or not lay people actually believe that emotion recognition declines with age. Study 2 aimed to explore the current stereotypes about young and older adults’ emotion recognition abilities, in addition to their cognitive and social competencies. The results showed that, contrary to empirical evidence, lay people believe that older adults are equal to, or even better, than young adults at recognising emotions. Further, whereas participants believe older adults’ social competency to be comparable to that of young adults, they believe older adults’ cognitive ability to be inferior. Consequently, Study 3 involved framing an emotion recognition task as assessing either cognitive ability (believed to decline with age), social ability (believed to remain stable with age), or general abilities. It was hypothesised that older adults (but not young adults) would experience the greatest threat concerns when the task was framed as assessing cognitive ability, which, in turn, would impair their emotion recognition accuracy. Indeed, there was no effect of condition on young adults’ threat concerns or emotion recognition. As expected, older adults reported significantly greater threat concerns when the emotion recognition task was framed as assessing cognitive ability, compared to the other conditions. However, older adults’ emotion recognition accuracy remained unchanged, suggesting that the recognition of emotions may be one cognitive ability that is unaffected by stereotype threat effects

Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women’s political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women’s (rather than men’s) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men’s higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men’s leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed

Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 Countries

Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women’s political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women’s (rather than men’s) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men’s higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men’s leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed.Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions: Evidence from 37 CountriespublishedVersio

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID-19: The PAN-COVID study

Objective To assess perinatal outcomes for pregnancies affected by suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Prospective, web-based registry. Pregnant women were invited to participate if they had suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st January 2020 and 31st March 2021 to assess the impact of infection on maternal and perinatal outcomes including miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal growth restriction, pre-term birth and transmission to the infant. Results Between April 2020 and March 2021, the study recruited 8239 participants who had suspected or confirmed SARs-CoV-2 infection episodes in pregnancy between January 2020 and March 2021. Maternal death affected 14/8197 (0.2%) participants, 176/8187 (2.2%) of participants required ventilatory support. Pre-eclampsia affected 389/8189 (4.8%) participants, eclampsia was reported in 40/ 8024 (0.5%) of all participants. Stillbirth affected 35/8187 (0.4 %) participants. In participants delivering within 2 weeks of delivery 21/2686 (0.8 %) were affected by stillbirth compared with 8/4596 (0.2 %) delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection (95 % CI 0.3–1.0). SGA affected 744/7696 (9.3 %) of livebirths, FGR affected 360/8175 (4.4 %) of all pregnancies. Pre-term birth occurred in 922/8066 (11.5%), the majority of these were indicated pre-term births, 220/7987 (2.8%) participants experienced spontaneous pre-term births. Early neonatal deaths affected 11/8050 livebirths. Of all neonates, 80/7993 (1.0%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions Infection was associated with indicated pre-term birth, most commonly for fetal compromise. The overall proportions of women affected by SGA and FGR were not higher than expected, however there was the proportion affected by stillbirth in participants delivering within 2 weeks of infection was significantly higher than those delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection. We suggest that clinicians’ threshold for delivery should be low if there are concerns with fetal movements or fetal heart rate monitoring in the time around infection

Does Age-Related Stereotype Threat Affect Older Adults' Recognition of Emotion?

Emotion recognition is a cognitive ability that has been demonstrated to decline with age. Older adults (aged over 60) are consistently poorer than young adults (aged 18-30) at recognising anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. However, it is possible that such age differences have been exaggerated by a phenomenon known as age-related stereotype threat, whereby raising negative stereotypes about aging leads older adults to perform worse on relevant tasks. For instance, reminding older adults of stereotypes about age-related cognitive decline impairs their memory recall performance. There is reason to think that older adults’ recognition of emotions might be another cognitive ability that is compromised by stereotype threat. This idea was tested over three studies. In Study 1, young and older adults were exposed to a stereotype threat manipulation that implied either that 1) older adults or 2) young adults are expected to have inferior emotion recognition ability. A control condition (3) involved no allusion to age differences in emotion recognition. Participants completed a basic facial emotion recognition task and a task that involved identifying mental states expressed by eyes, in addition to measures of self-reported threat concerns and state anxiety. It was hypothesised that stereotype threat would lead older adults (but not young adults) to experience increased stereotype threat concerns and anxiety, which in turn, would impair older adults’ emotion recognition performance. Contrary to expectations, the stereotype threat manipulation did not lead older adults to experience increased threat concerns or state anxiety. Interestingly, young adults did report feeling more stereotype-threatened and anxious by the implication that their age group is typically worse at recognising emotions. Neither age group experienced impairments in their recognition of facial expressions or mental states. These findings raised questions about whether or not lay people actually believe that emotion recognition declines with age. Study 2 aimed to explore the current stereotypes about young and older adults’ emotion recognition abilities, in addition to their cognitive and social competencies. The results showed that, contrary to empirical evidence, lay people believe that older adults are equal to, or even better, than young adults at recognising emotions. Further, whereas participants believe older adults’ social competency to be comparable to that of young adults, they believe older adults’ cognitive ability to be inferior. Consequently, Study 3 involved framing an emotion recognition task as assessing either cognitive ability (believed to decline with age), social ability (believed to remain stable with age), or general abilities. It was hypothesised that older adults (but not young adults) would experience the greatest threat concerns when the task was framed as assessing cognitive ability, which, in turn, would impair their emotion recognition accuracy. Indeed, there was no effect of condition on young adults’ threat concerns or emotion recognition. As expected, older adults reported significantly greater threat concerns when the emotion recognition task was framed as assessing cognitive ability, compared to the other conditions. However, older adults’ emotion recognition accuracy remained unchanged, suggesting that the recognition of emotions may be one cognitive ability that is unaffected by stereotype threat effects

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID -19: coreporting of common outcomes from PAN-COVID and AAP-SONPM registries

Objective Few large cohort studies have reported data on maternal, fetal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection in pregnancy. We report the outcome of infected pregnancies from a collaboration formed early during the pandemic between the investigators of two registries, the UK and Global Pregnancy and Neonatal outcomes in COVID‐19 (PAN‐COVID) study and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Neonatal–Perinatal Medicine (SONPM) National Perinatal COVID‐19 Registry. Methods This was an analysis of data from the PAN‐COVID registry (1 January to 25 July 2020), which includes pregnancies with suspected or confirmed maternal SARS‐CoV‐2 infection at any stage in pregnancy, and the AAP‐SONPM National Perinatal COVID‐19 registry (4 April to 8 August 2020), which includes pregnancies with positive maternal testing for SARS‐CoV‐2 from 14 days before delivery to 3 days after delivery. The registries collected data on maternal, fetal, perinatal and neonatal outcomes. The PAN‐COVID results are presented overall for pregnancies with suspected or confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection and separately in those with confirmed infection. Results We report on 4005 pregnant women with suspected or confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection (1606 from PAN‐COVID and 2399 from AAP‐SONPM). For obstetric outcomes, in PAN‐COVID overall and in those with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and AAP‐SONPM, respectively, maternal death occurred in 0.5%, 0.5% and 0.2% of cases, early neonatal death in 0.2%, 0.3% and 0.3% of cases and stillbirth in 0.5%, 0.6% and 0.4% of cases. Delivery was preterm (< 37 weeks' gestation) in 12.0% of all women in PAN‐COVID, in 16.1% of those women with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and in 15.7% of women in AAP‐SONPM. Extreme preterm delivery (< 27 weeks' gestation) occurred in 0.5% of cases in PAN‐COVID and 0.3% in AAP‐SONPM. Neonatal SARS‐CoV‐2 infection was reported in 0.9% of all deliveries in PAN‐COVID overall, in 2.0% in those with confirmed infection in PAN‐COVID and in 1.8% in AAP‐SONPM; the proportions of neonates tested were 9.5%, 20.7% and 87.2%, respectively. The rates of a small‐for‐gestational‐age (SGA) neonate were 8.2% in PAN‐COVID overall, 9.7% in those with confirmed infection and 9.6% in AAP‐SONPM. Mean gestational‐age‐adjusted birth‐weight Z‐scores were −0.03 in PAN‐COVID and −0.18 in AAP‐SONPM. Conclusions The findings from the UK and USA registries of pregnancies with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection were remarkably concordant. Preterm delivery affected a higher proportion of women than expected based on historical and contemporaneous national data. The proportions of pregnancies affected by stillbirth, a SGA infant or early neonatal death were comparable to those in historical and contemporaneous UK and USA data. Although maternal death was uncommon, the rate was higher than expected based on UK and USA population data, which is likely explained by underascertainment of women affected by milder or asymptomatic infection in pregnancy in the PAN‐COVID study, although not in the AAP‐SONPM study. The data presented support strong guidance for enhanced precautions to prevent SARS‐CoV‐2 infection in pregnancy, particularly in the context of increased risks of preterm delivery and maternal mortality, and for priority vaccination of pregnant women and women planning pregnancy. Copyright © 2021 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd