Taking Care of Busyness: The Effects of a Busy Lifestyle on Optimism Across the Adult Lifespan

Greater busyness in older adults has been associated with better cognition. Varying levels of busyness may play a role in self-reported optimism at different point throughout adulthood. The amount of control one feels over their life may help to explain this relationship. This study tests the relationship of busyness and optimism in adults aged 19-66, while suggesting locus of control as a possible mediating factor. Participants (N = 127) recruited through Amazon’s MTurk program completed the busyness subscale of the Martin and Park Environmental Demands Questionnaire (MPED), the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R), and a bi-dimensional measure of locus of control. Results revealed that busyness and optimism did not account for any variation in age. A hierarchical linear regression also showed, after controlling for age, that both internal and external locus of control accounted for a significant amount of variation in busyness scores. These results help reveal the nature of busyness, with some tasks imposed on individuals and others taken on by choice. Given the prevalence of busyness in many Western societies, more research is needed to better understand the psychological effects of busyness throughout adulthood

\u3ci\u3e\u3c/i\u3eIntuitions about God and Satan: The relationship of mentalizing and imagination with the experience of supernatural good and evil

Believers in relational deities conceptualize god(s) as agents with mental states. The ability to imagine other minds may be one of the cognitive foundations of religious belief. Research on this relationship is mixed, however. This study tests this relationship across experiences of supernatural good and evil rather than abstract beliefs. Previous research has demonstrated that mentalizing significantly predicted prayer type (Edman et al., 2015; 2017). However, a multi-site replication study failed to replicate the initial results, indicating that perhaps mode of prayer is more complexly related to mentalizing than initially hypothesized. Edman (2015; 2018) extended this research by including measures of belief in agentic evil and absorption. This research supported the relationship of mentalizing with supernatural experiences, but a curious result emerged: mentalizing desires (i.e., empathy) were positively related to experiences with supernatural agents, but mentalizing abilities (i.e., scores on the Mind in the Eyes test) were negatively related. Also, experiences with agentic evil were more highly related to mentalizing scores (both positive and negative) than were experiences with a good god. A previous study related empathy and mentalizing abilities were related to supernatural experience, but the correlations were not in the hypothesized direction (Edman, 2019). The current study attempts to parse out this relationship as well as the differences between beliefs in agentic supernatural evil versus agentic supernatural good

Coping During the Time of Covid: Mental Health and Changes in Religious Practices

While rituals, particularly religious rituals, have long been the focus of anthropological research, they have only recently become a focus of psychological research. Ritual is defined as 1) predefined sequences of behavior characterized by rigidity, formality, and repetition that are 2) causally opaque, and 3) embedded in a larger system of symbolism and meaning (Hobson et al., 2017; Lawson & McCauley, 1990; Wen et al., 2020). Religious rituals appear to provide three primary regulatory functions for individuals: regulation of emotions, of the performance of goal states, and of social connections (Hobson, et al., 2017). Because of the importance of ritual in emotion regulation, one would expect 1) experiencing an emotional deficit should elicit more ritualistic behavior and 2) enacting rituals should thereby reduce emotional deficits (Hobson, et al., 2017). The current study compared self-reports of anxiety and depression before and during the Covid pandemic with type, frequency, and importance of religious ritual participation. It was hypothesized that, for those for whom religious rituals were an important facet of life, ritual participation would be negatively related to levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic. Surveys were completed by 122 students at a small, Midwestern liberal arts university. The results indicate that while participation in personal religious behavior such as private prayer and scripture reading did not change during the pandemic, participation in scripted religious rituals did decrease slightly. Both before and during the pandemic individuals rated personal devotional practices such as prayer and scripture reading as more important than participation in personal or corporate religious rituals. Inconsistent with previous research, there was not a relationship between religious belief and behavior with mental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression. Most people who reported an increase in anxiety and depression during the pandemic indicated that at least part of the reason for the increase was their inability to worship in person with others. However, overall depression and anxiety scores were not related to reported increases or decreases in religious ritual participation during the pandemic. Conversely, for those reporting that their anxiety and depression increased at least partly due to the inability to worship publicly with others, changes in depression and anxiety scores were inversely related to continued ritual practices during the pandemic, supporting the hypotheses of this study. Overall, these data indicate a complex relationship among religious ritual participation, personal devotional practices, and mental health outcomes

The scientific rationale for deployment of a long-lived geophysical network on the Moon

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