BACKGROUND Experiences of social pain due to social exclusion may be processed in similar neural systems that process experiences of physical pain. The present study aimed to extend the findings on social exclusion and pain by examining the impact of social exclusion on an affective (ie, heat pain tolerance) and a sensory component of pain (ie, heat pain intensity). Whether a potential effect m...

Benefit finding herein defined as "the process of deriving positive growth from adversity" has become a key construct in the evolution of positive psychology, and research suggests that it may provide the basis for a resource model of stress and coping. However, measures of benefit finding have tended to be domain specific. The current study focused on developing a more generic multidimensional...

These analyses examined the association between blood pressure reactions to acute psychological stress and subsequent hypertension status in a substantial Dutch cohort. Blood pressure was recorded during a resting baseline and during three acute stress tasks, Stroop colour word, mirror tracing and speech. Five years later, diagnosed hypertension status was determined by questionnaire. Participa...

Several methodological issues pertaining to the "law of initial values" (LIV) are explored. It is indicated that change scores, not final levels, are the appropriate measure for testing if the LIV applies, and that normalization of data is unnecessary. Heart-rate responses of infants to pacification were found to adhere to the law despite the inverse nature of the stimulus, suggesting the impor...

While empathy is typically assumed to promote effective social interactions, it can sometimes be detrimental when it is unrestrained and overgeneralized. The present study explored whether cognitive inhibition would moderate the effect of empathy on social functioning. Eighty healthy young adults underwent two assessments six months apart. Participants' ability to suppress interference from dis...

The aim of this study was to assess the error made by violating the assumption of stationarity when using Fourier analysis for spectral decomposition of heart period power. A comparison was made between using Fourier and Wavelet analysis (the latter being a relatively new method without the assumption of stationarity). Both methods were compared separately for stationary and nonstationary segme...

Electroencephalogram (EEG) reflects the brain activity and is widely used in biomedical research. However, analysis of this signal is still a challenging issue. This paper presents a hybrid approach for assessing stress using the EEG signal. It applies Multivariate Multi-scale Entropy Analysis (MMSE) for the data level fusion. Case-based reasoning is used for the classification tasks. Our preli...