The unprecedented outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused an economic downturn and increased the unemployment rate in China. In this context, employees face health and social economic stressors. To assess their mental health (i.e., anxiety, depression, insomnia and somatization) and work attitudes (i.e., work engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intention) as well as the associated factors, we conducted a cross-sectional study among people who resumed work after the Spring Festival holiday during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the prevalence of anxiety, depression, insomnia and somatization among these people was 12.7%, 13.5%, 20.7% and 6.6%, respectively. The major risk factor for mental health was worrying about unemployment, and the main protective factors were psychological strengths (i.e., resilience and optimism). Regarding work attitudes, the percentage of people who felt more satisfied with their job (43.8%) was larger than that of those who felt less satisfied (26.9%), while the percentage of people who thought about quitting their job more frequently (15.7%) was smaller than that of those who considered it less frequently (63.2%). However, work engagement was lower than usual. Similar to the factors associated with mental health, the major risk factor for work attitudes was also worrying about unemployment, and the main protective factors were resilience and optimism. In addition, the nature of the organization, job status, age, position and income changes were also related to these work attitudes. Our findings shed light on the need for organization administrators to be aware of the status of and factors associated with employees’ mental health and work attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policies or interventions could be developed based on our findings.

Awe is a feeling of wonder and amazement in response to experiencing something so vast that it transcends one's current frames of reference. Across three experiments (N = 557), we tested the inhibition effect of awe on aggression. We used a narrative recall task paradigm (Studies 1 and 2) and a video (Study 3) to induce the emotion of awe. After inducing awe, we first examined participants’ emotion and their sense of ‘small self’, and then the manifestation of aggressiveness in a Shooting Game (Study 1), Tangram Help/Hurt Task (Studies 2 and 3) and Aggression-IAT (Study 3), respectively. Results indicated that awe reduced aggression and increased prosociality and a sense of small self relative to neutral affect and positive emotions of happiness and amusement. Mediation analyses evidenced mixed support for a sense of small self mediating the effect of awe on aggression and prosociality.

Psychology research focuses primarily on male competition. This research, however, investigates women’s competition for love and the ideal partner in the mating market and reveals one psychological consequence for women, that is, beautification. This is demonstrated with ecologically valid, real-world archive and online search query data, a quasi-experiment, and a series of controlled experiments with random assignments. Intrasexual competition, indexed by the operational sex ratio (OSR) and income inequality (GINI), predicts women’s beautification reflected by Google search queries for cosmetic surgery terms (Study 1) and the density of certificated plastic surgeons (Study 2). Female college students from faculties with female-biased OSRs exhibit greater appearance focus than women from male-biased faculties (Study 3). A causal relationship, between women’s intrasexual competition and beautification (and even self-objectification), is subsequently demonstrated in experiments (Studies 4–6). Additionally, self-objectification due to intrasexual competition leads to women’s preference for appearance-oriented products (Study 6). Implications are discussed.

Contact with nature may benefit, not only the bodily organism, but also the psychological self. We proposed that, assuming humans' innate affinity for nature (the biophilia hypothesis), nature would be conducive to a sense of environment-self fit, which would be experienced as authenticity (being aligned with one's true self). We formulated several hypotheses: (a) nature fosters authenticity, and it does so through at least four plausible mechanisms: self-esteem, basic needs satisfaction (autonomy, competence, relatedness), mindfulness, and positive affect; (b) self-esteem is the strongest mechanism overall, and autonomy is the strongest mechanism of the three basic needs; (c) self-esteem and authenticity mediate sequentially the positive impact of nature on current psychological well-being (higher life satisfaction and meaning in life); and (d) authenticity mediates the positive influence of nature on longer term psychological well-being (higher life satisfaction and meaning in life, lower depression, anxiety, and stress). We obtained support for these hypotheses across 12 studies (N = 5,512). These were diverse in terms of setting (field, laboratory), design (cross-sectional, experimental, longitudinal), methodology (varying manipulations of nature and assessment of mediators and/or dependent measures), and sampling (university/community, East Asian/Western). The findings establish nature as a correlate and determinant of authenticity, chiefly via the mechanism of self-esteem, and further establish authenticity (preceded by self-esteem) as a mediator of the positive influence of nature on psychological well-being. The findings are also generative and have policy implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).