dotlah! dotlah!
  • Cities
  • Technology
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Society
  • Science
  • About
Social Links
  • zedreviews.com
  • citi.io
  • aster.cloud
  • liwaiwai.com
  • guzz.co.uk
  • atinatin.com
0 Likes
0 Followers
0 Subscribers
dotlah!
  • Cities
  • Technology
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Society
  • Science
  • About
  • People

The Perks Of Positivity May Depend On Race And Culture

  • September 1, 2022
positivity_1600
Total
0
Shares
0
0
0

The supposedly universal benefits of positivity may not generalize across races, research indicates.

Studies have consistently shown that positive psychological factors are linked to better physical health, including increased resistance to infectious illnesses such as the flu and the common cold. The new study examines the role that race plays in this connection, comparing the results of African American and European American participants in a series of landmark experimental studies from the Common Cold Project, which took place between 1993 and 2011.

The work, published in the journal Psychological Science, finds that while positive factors such as happiness are associated with reduced illness after experimental virus exposure for European Americans, positive self-assessments (e.g., reporting higher positive emotions, self-esteem, and perceived healthiness) in African Americans were unhelpful and, in some cases, were associated with a heightened risk of developing upper respiratory infections.

“One key point that we’re trying to highlight in this study is that there may be nuance in terms of what positive psychological factors protect people, depending on their race and their culture, and we need to be taking that seriously,” says corresponding author Sarah Pressman, professor of psychological science and associate dean of undergraduate education at the University of California, Irvine.

“Many positive psychology interventions are being applied broadly to try to improve health, and what this study points to is the possibility that these interventions may not be effective for certain cultural groups.”

The research team analyzed participant data from four studies led by Sheldon Cohen, professor emeritus of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the coauthors of this study: the Pittsburgh Mind-Body Center Study and Pittsburgh Cold Studies 1, 2, and 3. The analyses focused on healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55 (271 African Americans and 700 European Americans) recruited from the greater Pittsburgh region.

All subjects demonstrated good health and completed pre-viral challenge questionnaires and phone interviews to assess psychological measures (positive or negative emotional style, self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-reported health, and perceived stress) for several weeks leading up to their exposure to an upper respiratory virus via nasal drops. Participants spent six days quarantined in a local hotel, where researchers monitored them for general symptoms and objective physiological markers of illness, such as nasal mucus production and clearance.

Lead author Cameron Wiley, a doctoral student in psychological science at UC Irvine, summarizes the findings: “Higher levels of positive affect—an average of emotions like vigor, well-being, and calm—led to lower numbers of colds for European Americans, but in African Americans that effect was not nearly as strong. When we looked at other factors, we saw that higher levels of self-esteem were also related to lower incidence of colds in European Americans, but African Americans with a higher level of self-esteem actually showed a higher chance of getting a cold, which was a shocking finding, to say the least.”

Pressman adds: “We’re always trying to raise people’s self-esteem and make them feel good about themselves. But in this study, high self-esteem was actually associated with an increased likelihood of getting sick if you were African American. So this really points to the need to be conscientious when developing interventions to improve health, because what we assume is ‘good for you’ may not be good for everybody.”

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the UCI research team’s decision to revisit the data. “The pandemic has disrupted emotional well-being networks for everyone, but we still see that Black and brown populations have higher rates of COVID morbidity and mortality. To try to unpack this disparity, we explored data from a rare set of studies that involved quarantining individuals who were experimentally exposed to upper respiratory illnesses similar to the COVID-19 virus,” Wiley says.

“We still really don’t completely understand why some people are getting so sick from COVID-19 and some people aren’t—and psychological factors and perhaps some cultural factors may be part of the explanation. We hope this work will encourage researchers to further explore this direction,” Pressman says.

The findings also led the team to consider whether positive emotion is experienced the same way by African Americans and European Americans and means the same thing.

“There’s a lot of research on negative emotion and negative affect that shows there are racial differences in the expression and experience of negative emotion, so that could be going on here with positive emotion as well,” says Kennedy Blevins, a doctoral candidate on the research team.

Blevins and Wiley both plan to continue studying how physical health relates to the psychological experiences of different races and probing what factors can boost resilience in at-risk populations.

Source: UC Irvine

Original Study DOI: 10.1177/09567976221083322

Republished from Futurity

Total
0
Shares
Share
Tweet
Share
Share
Related Topics
  • Culture
  • Emotions
  • Race
dotlah.com

Previous Article
usa-reasons-for-not-buying-an-electric-vehicle-27974
  • Cities
  • Environment

High Prices, Range Anxiety Holding Back EV Adoption

  • August 12, 2022
View Post
Next Article
queen-elizabeth-ii-coronation-904669426
  • Features
  • People

Queen Elizabeth II: The end of the ‘new Elizabethan age’

  • September 8, 2022
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • People
  • Politics

Singapore PM Wong arrives in Malacañang

  • dotlah.com
  • June 4, 2025
View Post
  • Featured
  • Features
  • People

Conclave: How A New Pope Is Chosen

  • Dean Marc
  • April 25, 2025
View Post
  • People

PM Wong takes Scoot flight, fellow passengers cheer

  • dotlah.com
  • October 16, 2024
dotlah-pm-lee-lawrence-wong-9656d4cd-1fa4-40ed-905d-e19e639b8476_728802dd
View Post
  • Lah!
  • People
  • Politics

End of Lee Era for Singapore as PM Steps Down

  • dotlah.com
  • May 16, 2024
View Post
  • People
  • Politics

‘A much bigger step forward’: Lawrence Wong on his journey to becoming Singapore’s fourth PM

  • dotlah.com
  • May 15, 2024
DPM Lawrence Wong will be Singapore's fourth prime minister on May 15. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
View Post
  • Lah!
  • People
  • Politics

7 things to know about Singapore’s next prime minister Lawrence Wong

  • dotlah.com
  • May 15, 2024
When asked about his leadership style, DPM Lawrence Wong said he will be open and consultative, but he will not shirk from doing what is necessary for Singapore's future. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
View Post
  • Features
  • Lah!
  • People
  • Politics

‘We are prepared to relook everything’: Lawrence Wong on a changing society and his hopes for S’pore

  • dotlah.com
  • May 15, 2024
View Post
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • People

MIT Launches Working Group On Generative AI And The Work Of The Future

  • majulah
  • March 31, 2024


Trending
  • 1
    • Lah!
    Singapore Small Businesses Most Satisfied With Government-led COVID-19 Relief Measures Among Their ASEAN Peers
    • August 27, 2020
  • 2
    • Lah!
    New Facility At Interest Rate Of 0.1% To Help Banks And Finance Companies Lower Cost Of Loans To SMEs
    • April 22, 2020
  • 3
    • Lah!
    Four Evidence-Based Research Studies Confirm Contributions Of Urban Nature To Health And Well-Being
    • March 3, 2022
  • Tech Predictions 4
    • Technology
    Tech Predictions For 2025 And Beyond
    • December 17, 2024
  • 5
    • Lah!
    Asians Most Likely to Believe in Man-Made Climate Change
    • December 11, 2019
  • 6
    • Lah!
    NEA To Extend Energy Efficiency Requirements To Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Air-Conditioners
    • April 1, 2020
  • hong-kong-covid-19-elton-yung-_vtjipESqcY-unsplash 7
    • Cities
    • World Events
    Why COVID-19 Won’t Kill Cities
    • January 29, 2021
  • Medicine 8
    • People
    • Technology
    Drug Resistance: Could Global Goals Be The Answer To This Worldwide Health Crisis?
    • January 19, 2024
  • 9
    • Lah!
    • Technology
    Using AI To Screen For Gaucoma
    • September 8, 2021
  • 10
    • Technology
    Interdisciplinary Team To Develop Blueprint For Sustainable Urban Food Waste Management And Food Systems Using Black Soldier Flies
    • January 31, 2022
  • Google Cloud and EnterpriseSG 11
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Technology
    EnterpriseSG and Google Cloud Partner to Help Startups and SMEs in Singapore Accelerate AI Adoption and Innovation
    • October 6, 2024
  • 12
    • Society
    • Technology
    Singtel Named Employer Of Choice In Asia
    • October 8, 2020
Trending
  • 1
    Malaysia’s ‘ASEAN Shenzhen’ needs some significant legal reform to take off — here’s how
    • August 25, 2025
  • French Fries 2
    Air Fryer: The One Cooking Appliance to Rule Them All – Best All-Around Picks in 2025
    • August 22, 2025
  • 3
    Samsung Electronics Debuts Odyssey G7 Monitors, Showcasing Top Games on Its Displays at Gamescom 2025
    • August 20, 2025
  • 4
    HP Cranks Up the Game with Smarter Systems, Cooler Builds, and Gear That Hits Different
    • August 14, 2025
  • 5
    New Trump tariffs: early modelling shows most economies lose – the US more than many
    • August 6, 2025
  • Scuba Diving 6
    Wetsuit or Drysuit? As always, it depends. This quick guide can help you choose.
    • August 2, 2025
  • 7
    Thoughts on America’s AI Action Plan
    • July 24, 2025
  • 8
    Introducing Surface Laptop 5G: Seamless connectivity, built for business
    • July 23, 2025
  • 9
    Press Start (Or Hit Enter)! Your Go-To Loadout for Streamers and Gamers.
    • July 19, 2025
  • 10
    ESWIN Computing launches the EBC77 Series Single Board Computer with Ubuntu
    • July 17, 2025
Social Links
dotlah! dotlah!
  • Cities
  • Technology
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Society
  • Science
  • About
Connecting Dots Across Asia's Tech and Urban Landscape

Input your search keywords and press Enter.