Blunted cardiovascular reactivity may serve as an index of psychological task disengagement in the motivated performance situations.

Challenge and threat models predict that once individuals become engaged with performance, their evaluations and cardiovascular response determine further outcomes. Although the role of challenge and threat in predicting performance has been extensively tested, few studies have focused on task engagement. We aimed to investigate task engagement in performance at the psychological and physiological levels. We accounted for physiological task engagement by examining blunted cardiovascular reactivity, the third possible cardiovascular response to performance, in addition to the challenge/threat responses. We expected that low psychological task engagement would be related to blunted cardiovascular reactivity during the performance. Gamers (N = 241) completed five matches of the soccer video game FIFA 19. We recorded psychological task engagement, heart rate reactivity, and the difference between goals scored and conceded. Lower psychological task engagement was related to blunted heart rate reactivity during the performance. Furthermore, poorer performance in the previous game was related to increased task engagement in the subsequent match. The findings extend existing literature by providing initial evidence that blunted cardiovascular reactivity may serve as the index of low task engagement

Would You Be Happier If You Looked Better? A Focusing Illusion

Some people might believe that individuals who are more satisfied with their body are also happier. However, people tend to overrate the influence of some factors (e.g. money or health) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. Our aim was to examine the focusing illusion in relation to body satisfaction. We experimentally manipulated body satisfaction and life satisfaction focus by varying the order of relevant measurement scales. Volunteers (N = 97) completed two questionnaires placed in separate envelopes to control the order of scales administration. Participants either completed the Body Satisfaction Scale followed by the Satisfaction with Life Scale or vice versa. In line with the focusing illusion the association between body satisfaction and life satisfaction was significantly stronger when participants were asked about their body satisfaction first. Body satisfaction as a focusing illusion may need to be considered by scientist as well as lay people who try to look better and be happier

Dataset for Acting on Values intervention

Individuals increase well-being by acting on their values rather than merely endorsing them. We developed a novel intervention ("Acting on Values," AoV), motivating individuals to initiate values-related behavior over four weeks. Building upon the theory of Basic Human Values, we expected that intervention recipients would increase their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being relative to a control group. We also expected the AoV intervention to cause similar effects as a mindfulness intervention. 783 volunteers (N = 268 completers) were assigned into three groups: AoV intervention, mindfulness intervention, and a waiting list. Individuals who completed the AoV intervention achieved higher satisfaction with life, positive affect, and eudaimonic well-being, and lower negative affect than the control group. The well-being effects of the AoV intervention did not differ significantly from the mindfulness intervention effects. Our findings suggest that the AoV intervention is an efficacious method of increasing hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. It contributes to the diversity of well-being facilitation methods

Dataset for What hurts, Pikachu? Physical symptoms in Pokémon Go players

455 adult Pokemon Go players reporting PG gaming time, electronic media use, problematic PG gaming, problematic smartphone use, phubbig, musculoskeletal pain, and computer vision syndrom: dry eye and focusing problems, age, sex

Dataset and R code for "Much ado about nothing - a meta-analysis of time spent playing video games and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic"

This dataset and R code underpins a comprehensive meta-analysis investigating the relationship between video gaming time and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. It encompasses data extracted from 17 studies, with 26 effects and 18,026 participants, evaluating the increase in gaming time, and 22 studies, with 100 effects and 19,752 participants, assessing the association between gaming time and mental health. This dataset is crucial for stakeholders in public health, education, and policy to develop informed strategies concerning video gaming in future pandemics

Applying a Synergistic Mindsets Intervention to an Esports Context

Affective responses during stressful, high-stakes situations can play an important role in shaping performance. For example, feeling shaky and nervous at a job interview can undermine performance, whereas feeling excited during that same interview can optimize performance. Thus, affect regulation – the way people influence their affective responses – might play a key role in determining high-stakes outcomes. To test this idea, we adapted a synergistic mindsets intervention (Yeager et al., 2022) to a high-stakes esports context. Our approach was motivated by the idea that (1) mindsets both about situations and one’s stress responses to situations can be shaped to help optimize stress responses, and (2) challenge versus threat stress responses will be associated with improved outcomes. After a baseline performance task, we randomly assigned gamers (N = 300) either to a synergistic mindsets intervention or a control condition in which they learned brain facts. After two weeks of daily gaming, gamers competed in a cash-prize tournament. We measured affective experiences before the matches and cardiovascular responses before and throughout the matches. Contrary to predictions, gamers did not experience negative affect (including stress), thus limiting the capacity for the intervention to regulate physiological responses and optimize performance. Compared to the control participants, synergistic mindsets participants did not show greater challenge responses or improved performance outcomes. Though our adaptation of Yeager and colleagues’ synergistic mindsets intervention did not optimize esports performance, our findings point to important considerations regarding the suitability of an intervention such as this to different performance contexts of varying degrees of stressfulness

Esports Performance & Synergistic Mindsets Intervention

Adaptation of Synergistic Mindsets Intervention to Esports Performance context. National Science Centre in Poland supported this project with a research grant (UMO-2020/39/B/HS6/00685)

POPANE DATASET - Psychophysiology Of Positive And Negative Emotions

Published as: Behnke, M., Buchwald, M., Bykowski, A. et al. Psychophysiology of positive and negative emotions, dataset of 1157 cases and 8 biosignals. Sci Data 9, 10 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01117-0 Subjective experience and physiological activity are fundamental components of emotion. There is an increasing interest in the link between experiental and physiological processes across different disciplines, e.g., psychology, economics, or computer science. However, the findings largely rely on sample sizes that have been modest at best (limiting the statistical power) and capture only some concurrent biosignals (e.g., making it problematic to seek specificity of some effects). We present a novel publicly available dataset of psychophysiological responses to positive and negative emotions that offers some improvement over other databases. This database involves recording of 1157 healthy participants, collected across seven studies, a continuous recordof self-reported affect along with several biosignals (electrocardiogram, impedance cardiogram, electrodermal activity, hemodynamic measures, e.g., blood pressure), respiration trace, and skin temperature. We experimentally elicited a wide range of positive and negative emotions, including amusement, anger, disgust, excitement, fear, gratitude, sadness, tenderness, and threat. Psychophysiology of positive and negative emotions (POPANE) database is currently the largest and the most comprehensive psychophysiological dataset on elicited emotions. Publication: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01117-0 Project website: https://data.psychosensing.psnc.pl/popane/index.html Cite as: Behnke, M., Buchwald, M., Bykowski, A. et al. Psychophysiology of positive and negative emotions, dataset of 1157 cases and 8 biosignals. Sci Data 9, 10 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-01117-