Periods of solitude help older adults recharge after socialising

While plenty of past work has highlighted how social interaction improves older adults' well-being, diary study shows that periods of time alone are also important.


By Emma Young


We know that loneliness is dangerous to our physical and mental health. Older people who are lonely are at a higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke, as well as dementia. For all these reasons, efforts are being made to find ways to improve older people’s social lives, to help them to meet their fundamental human need to belong.

However, recent work also shows that it’s not a simple case of the more social contact, the better. Periods of solitude bring benefits, too. One of these benefits is that they allow us to ‘recharge’. According to a popular model, our needs for social time and solitude move in opposite directions, like the two ends of a seesaw, and we regulate what we do accordingly. Lunch with a friend, say, is good for our wellbeing, because it meets our need to belong, but it depletes our energy; after lunch, we might then feel a need for some time alone — and this might be especially true for older people, with more limited energy. As that solitude restores our energy, we then feel a growing desire to be sociable again.

Minxia Luo at the University of Zurich and colleagues investigated how that theoretical cycle might actually unfold in the daily lives of older adults. In their paper in the British Journal of Psychology, they report their study of 118 people aged over 65 who lived in German-speaking regions of Switzerland.

Over a three-week period, the participants used an app to log the duration of any instances of spoken social interaction (whether face to face, over the phone or by video chat) that lasted longer than five minutes and also any text-based conversations (via text message, email, etc). When one particular event involved interrupted conversation (such as talking occasionally while watching a 2 hour movie with a partner or friend) the total event time was logged. All other time was deemed to have been spent in solitude. This included sleep time (whether the participant slept alongside a partner or not).

All the participants also completed surveys of trait positive and negative affect (recording how generally upset or inspired they felt, for example), their life satisfaction, and also their general energy levels.

The team found that, on average, an episode of social interaction lasted 39 minutes and a bout of solitude lasted about five hours. But they also found that the length of time that a participant spent engaged in one or the other influenced what happened next.

When a bout of solitude was an hour longer than usual, the participants subsequently engaged in a social interaction that was a little longer than usual, too (though this was slight: 0.6 minutes longer, on average). When a social interaction was one hour longer than usual, they subsequently spent longer in solitude (16.8 minutes longer). These findings support the idea that older people regulate the time they spend in solitude or in interacting with others according to shifts in the levels of their need to belong and their need to conserve energy.

When the researchers compared participants with each other, they found that those who were more satisfied with their life and those who had more day-to-day energy spent even more time in a social interaction after a longer than usual period of solitude.

The team also found that people with lower scores on the positive mood items and who reported less life satisfaction tended to spend more time overall in solitude. “These findings are in line with previous evidence that trait wellbeing is associated with more time in social interactions,” they write.

There are some limitations to the study. In their analysis, the researchers did take into account several factors that might have influenced the results (including marital status and health conditions). But they didn’t consider solitude type (was a period of solitude a choice — or enforced by having no one to meet up with, for example?) or personality traits that would be likely to have an influence, especially extraversion.

As the researchers also note, solitude won’t have the same impact on everybody. For example, someone with depressive symptoms may find that they experience more negative thoughts while alone than with others, so a period of solitude could have a detrimental effect on their wellbeing, while for someone else, it may be only beneficial.

The work certainly does suggest, though, that while older adults should bear in mind all the research on the benefits of social interactions, periods of time alone (or at least not interacting with another person) are important, too. “Our findings suggest that whereas social interaction is a means to improve wellbeing, solitude is also an integral part in older adult’s daily life supporting energy recovery,” the team concludes.

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/periods-solitude-help-older-adults-recharge-after-socialising(accessed 27.10.22)

Celebrating the Women and Girls Initiative

A new film made by Leeds Animation Workshop with WGI projects

“Where she was to where she is now: Celebrating the Women and Girls Initiative” is a new animation film produced as part of the Women and Girls Initiative (WGI) Learning and Impact Services and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund. Made by Leeds Animation Workshop, the film shares words and drawings from women and girls supported by, and working for, WGI projects. Projects were funded to offer flexible, holistic support and the film illustrates the difference that specialist services for women and girls can make. It gives a moving insight into how important the Initiative has been in helping projects support women and girls to grow.

The film was created with the following seventeen WGI projects: The Angelou Centre, Aspire, A Way Out, Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid, Chayah Development Project, Leeway, The Nelson Trust, North Devon against Domestic Abuse, RISE, Saheli, SERICC, Sheffield Women & Girls Recovery & Empowerment Partnership, Southall Black Sisters, Women at the Well, Women’s Community Matters, Wild Young Parents Project and Young Women’s Outreach Project.

“Where she was, to where she is now” would be of interest to:organisations working with women and girls;
policy-makers and commissioners, as it shares insights on how women and girls can best be supported; and
anyone else considering supporting or finding out more about specialist work with women and girls.

Information in the film is drawn from the Women and Girls Initiative, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund (The Fund). It is supporting 62 projects with funds raised from The National Lottery. For more information about the WGI.

The WGI Learning and Impact Services is being delivered on behalf of The Fund by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), DMSS Research (DMSS) and the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) – the partners. The partners are delivering a programme of support to projects with the aim of capturing and sharing learning and creating a stronger community of services that has greater influence on decision-making structures across the country.


Watch it on:

https://www.tavinstitute.org/news/where-she-was-to-where-she-is-now-celebrating-the-women-and-girls-initiative/





SOURCE:

https://www.tavinstitute.org/news/where-she-was-to-where-she-is-now-celebrating-the-women-and-girls-initiative/(accessed 13.10.22)

Eco-labels on food encourage people to eat more sustainably

When menu options were accompanied by eco-labels, participants were less likely to choose a beef product, instead opting for more sustainable alternatives.

By Emma Young


How can people be encouraged to eat less beef, to benefit the environment? According to the results of a new study in Behavioural Public Policy, a simple change to food labelling might help.

Katie De-loyde at the University of Bristol and colleagues created three mock-ups of menus, of the sort you might see in a food delivery app. Each of these menus featured three burritos — beef, chicken and vegetarian. For each burrito, the price (the same for each), the calorie content, a Fairtrade logo, a spice indicator and a photo of the product were all included.

In one mock-up, the team also included a ‘social nudge’ (something designed to encourage people to act according to social norms): the vegetarian burrito sported a gold star with the words ‘Most Popular’.

In another version of the menu, each burrito was instead accompanied with an ‘eco-label’, indicating its ranking on a traffic light type scale of sustainability. The beef got a red 5 rating (for unsustainable), the chicken a yellow 3 (neither sustainable nor unsustainable) and the vegetarian a green 1 (sustainable).
The three different versions of the menu presented to participants. From De-loyde et al (2022)

A total of 1399 adults, representative of the UK population in terms of age, gender and ethnicity, took part in the online study, which they were told was about food marketing. These participants were randomised to view one of the three menus. They were asked to pick a burrito option, according to how they would normally order food. Then they completed a few follow-up questions, including one about their level of motivation to act sustainably.

One third of the participants in the control condition went for the beef burrito. In the social nudge condition, this dropped slightly to 29%; in the eco-label condition, it was just 16%. The results also showed that more people chose the vegetarian burrito in the eco-label condition (14%) compared with the social nudge condition (13%), and the control condition (9%).

So overall, more people (84%) went for vegetarian or chicken (the more sustainable choices), instead of the beef burrito, in the eco-label condition, compared with the control (69%). The social nudge condition seemed to make people more likely to choose a vegetarian over a beef burrito, though not a vegetarian over a chicken burrito.

“Although both labels were effective at promoting participants to make more sustainable food choices, the eco-label was the most effective,” the team concludes.

The team also found that participants who’d reported a low motivation to act sustainably were just as likely to choose a vegetarian burrito in each of the conditions (so neither the eco-label nor social nudge label affected their choice). However, for those reporting a high motivation to act sustainably, the eco-label condition in particular increased the likelihood that they would choose the vegetarian option.

Overall, there was also strong support for the eco-label, with 90% of the participants saying that they supported the idea of food being labelled in this way. A little more than half supported the social nudge.

As the team concedes, the work does have some limitations. Most notably, this was an online study in which no money changed hands and no food was eaten. Would people shopping in a supermarket and seeing the same labels make the same choices? More research is needed to explore this — and there’s an urgent need for it.

By some estimates, the farming of livestock contributes 14.5% of human-induced global greenhouse gas emissions. Reports from various bodies, including the UK Committee on Climate Change and the United Nations, advocate reductions in the consumption of meat, particularly beef, and the movement towards a plant-based diet, to help mitigate global warming as well as to reduce the degradation of ecosystems and water resources.

As De-loyde and her team notes, eco-labels are already used on some food products. But there is no regulation of, and therefore no clear consistency in, in this labelling. They argue that this has led to consumer confusion about the sustainability of products.

In their study, the average score on the scale that assessed the participants’ level of motivation to act sustainably was over the mid-point — and yet they reported eating meat an average of six times a week. As the team writes, “this suggests that consumer choices could further benefit from more information about their meal, via a mandatory eco-label, being presented on packaging. A regulated traffic light eco-label, similar to standardised nutritional information on food packaging, would facilitate more sustainable choices and decrease customer confusion.”

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/eco-labels-food-encourage-people-eat-more-sustainably(accessed 5.10.22)

Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children

Results suggest that pretend play provides similar social benefits to autistic children as it does to neurotypical children.

29 September 2022


By guest author Dan Carney

Imaginative, or “pretend”, play in childhood is important. It offers opportunities for social interaction as well as the chance to learn how to understand social signals and the minds of others. A common form of pretend play is the creation of an imaginary friend, and research with neurotypical children has found that children with imaginary friends tend to show better understanding of the mental and emotional states of others, greater focus on the mental states of friends, and superior communication skills.

Autism has been associated with deficits in both pretend play and social skills. But Paige Davis and colleagues have previously found that although autistic children are less inclined to create imaginary friends, when they do create them, they are similar to those of neurotypical children in terms of their social attributions (e.g. mental states, personality traits), reported function (e.g. social, comfort) and gender. Now, Davis and her team have examined whether autistic children who have imaginary friends also experience the social benefits seen among neurotypical children.

For the new study, published in Autism, the team recruited 124 parents of autistic children aged between 5 and 12, with measures administered online. The parents answered up to three questions regarding their child’s imaginary friend – whether they had one, and – if so – at what age had they created them, as well as why they thought they had done so.

They then rated their children’s communication skills, social skills, and social understanding, using established scales. For communication, parents rated the frequency of certain aspects of their child’s language use (e.g. “Produces utterances that sound babyish because they are just 2 or 3 words long, such as ‘me got ball’ instead of ‘I’ve got a ball’.”) The social understanding scale examined the children’s Theory of Mind – the ability to represent and understand others’ mental states. Subscales looked at children’s understanding of others’ beliefs, perceptions, and emotions, with parents again indicating how frequently their children behaved in certain ways (e.g. “Talks about people’s mistaken beliefs”). Finally, to measure social skills, parents answered questions on their children’s friendships, and rated their social interaction skills (e.g. “how well does your child start conversations with others?”).

The team found that autistic children with imaginary friends scored higher than those without imaginary friends on both social measures. On the social understanding scale, they scored higher on understanding others’ emotions and beliefs (although no difference was found on understanding others’ perceptions). With regard to social skills, children with imaginary friends were reported to be more interested in making friends and spending time with peers. These differences were present regardless of children’s communication ability. Surprisingly, almost 50% of parents reported their child having an imaginary friend. This is higher than the proportion (16%) in Davis and colleagues’ previous study, although the authors point out that the children in the new study were older.

These results offer interesting preliminary evidence that the link between imaginary friends and improved social competence observed in neurotypical children is also present in autistic children. The results also suggest that Theory of Mind is not a “single” skill that is impaired in autistic children – as has been claimed in the past – but something involving different areas which may vary in relation to pretend play behaviour. More generally, the findings suggest that imaginary friends represent an intriguing new way to examine the relationships between pretend play and social profiles in autism.

However, it’s important to acknowledge some limitations. Firstly, the direction of any causal relationship is not established: it’s not clear whether having an imaginary friend leads to better social skills, whether more socially skilled children are more likely to create imaginary friends, or even whether another as-yet-unidentified variable may be involved. This is important for future research to address, especially as these relationships may differ in autistic children relative to neurotypical children. Secondly, relying solely on parental reports, something the authors did due to COVID-19 restrictions, is not ideal. Children’s perspectives are lost, and parents may have forgotten, or not be aware of, their imaginary friends. The authors also mention other factors that should be examined in future research. These include whether autistic children have different kinds of imaginary friend and how this may relate to social skills, as well as how children’s imaginary friend behaviour is affected by being in an autism-specific environment, something which has been shown to decrease feelings of social isolation.
About the author

Dr. Dan Carney is a UK academic psychologist specialising in developmental disorders. He undertook his post-doctoral research fellowship at London South Bank University, and his published work has examined cognition, memory, and inner speech processes in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome, as well as savant skills in autism.

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/autistic-children-imaginary-friends-have-better-social-skills-just-neurotypical(accessed 3.10.22)