Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
6 papers
Researchers studied adults aged 36–84 from the MIDUS study and found that people who reported a stronger sense of purpose in life (measured about two years earlier) showed better emotional recovery after seeing negative pictures. Recovery was measured by the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR); smaller eyeblinks after the picture ended…
This article offers a new humanities-based theory about how falling seriously ill can affect a person’s quality of life. The authors combine ideas about contingency (the feeling that life could have been different), narrative identity (how people make life stories), and quality of life to explain how people make meaning…
This study looked at emotions tied to personal meanings in 104 men in Poland who were measured for midlife crisis. Men were put into three groups by a Midlife Crisis Scale: high (27 men), medium (37), and low (40). The high-crisis group had less self-enhancing and less positive affect, and…
This study used China’s CHARLS data from 2011 and 2015 to look at people aged 45 and older. In 10,179 people at baseline, higher depressive symptom scores were linked to lower hemoglobin and to having anemia. Over 4 years (5,887 people followed), people with depressive symptoms had higher odds of…
This editorial reviews a collection of 10 articles about emotional intelligence (EI). It says EI research has grown a lot over the last two decades, but many different models and tests have created confusion. The editors note links between EI and mental health, stress, and school outcomes in several studies,…
This study followed 6,112 Chinese adults aged 45 and older across three survey waves (2011–2016). It found that people with depressive symptoms at the start, and especially those whose symptoms persisted across the first two waves, had higher odds of being diagnosed with anemia later. For example, baseline depressive symptoms…
