Lawrence. W. Barsalou

Conceptual development is a fundamental feature of contemplative practice but has received little attention in contemplative science. In Buddhism, for example, the eightfold path begins with right view, which includes comprehension of interdependence, suffering, and so on. In Tibetan traditions, foundational practices introduce conceptual frames, including aphorisms and visualizations, that help access capacities for compassion and wisdom. In this article, we take a lifespan approach to examine how conceptual development supports compassion training. We focus on relational practices adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, which involve calling to mind sources of love, comfort, and safety to establish a secure base and an internal holding environment–an embodied stance of stillness, curiosity, and care for all physical and mental patterns. The theory of situated conceptualization (TSC) provides a nuanced cognitive neuroscience framework for understanding how situated and embodied experiences develop into conceptual knowledge across the lifespan, and it holds significant implications for how these practices can mature within a person over time.According to TSC, when meditations of compassion are engaged, the physical and affective qualities that occur within practice, such as warmth, care, and ease, can become part of the background conceptual knowledge for any mental pattern that arises within meditation. Over time, these qualities may increasingly emerge within the foreground of a given conceptualization. As patterns of mind are experienced and understood for what they are within an internal holding environment, the ruminative processes that fuel conceptualization can relax, and the constructed, empty nature of concepts and emotional states can more readily reveal itself–a process that supports advanced wisdom practices. Finally, because conceptualizations are situated in social and cultural contexts, the internal holding environment for patterns of mind can extend to all webs of connection that influence those patterns, becoming increasingly a capacity of compassion for the world at large.

Establishing the features associated with eustress—the positive experience of a challenging situation—is essential for understanding and fostering eustress effectively in applied settings. Using the Situated Assessment Method, we conducted a pre-registered study in which 251 UK adults evaluated eustress in 20 real-life challenging situations (e.g., “Give a public speech in front of a large audience”). Participants also evaluated nine processes that potentially influence eustress in these situations, taken from the C omprehensive H ierarchical construct of E ustress, CHE (e.g., successful outcomes, fulfilment, positive affect). Finally, in a multilevel design, participants completed unsituated trait measures for eustress, distress, and stress mindset. Reliable individual differences were observed in average eustress judgments across situations (a trait-level measure), along with substantial situation effects and a large individual by situation interaction. The nine influential processes correlated strongly with eustress across situations, indicating high construct and content validity (explaining a median variance of 83% in individual-level regressions). Individual eustress averaged across situations correlated with trait eustress and trait stress mindset but was unrelated to trait distress. Exploratory factor analyses on situated and trait measures derived from the CHE model revealed a dominant general factor of eustress, accompanied by modest multidimensional structure. These findings align with existing theories of stress, contrast different types of eustress measurement, and provide rich descriptive profiles for personalized context-sensitive interventions to foster eustress when desirable.

Young people and university students are particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of climate change due to their prolonged lifetime exposure to, and increased contact with, climate change and related information through learning. Despite this, little research exists on how university students cope with climate change from a psychological perspective. In this large qualitative study, we analysed data from an online survey to investigate how students ( N = 823) of a large UK university cope with climate change. This survey covered which climate change situations were triggering for them, preferences for support‐seeking, and specific coping strategies. Conceptual content analysis revealed that challenging situations included navigating climate change information, climate justice issues, climatic changes and environmental losses and climate change dismissal. Findings from qualitative framework analysis further showed four ways students coped with these: by reducing the mental load of climate change, doing something constructive, seeking social support and meaning and doomist thinking and behaviour. While many students highlighted the importance of social connections, a small minority considered seeking professional support. These findings partly support and expand on climate change‐related coping literature and have implications for how higher education settings communicate about and act on climate change.

Existing strategies for assessing adolescent mental health overlook the complex social and emotional contexts that young people navigate. Traditional methods focus on individuals, with less consideration of social and environmental factors. This paper presents a novel approach to understand relational and situated aspects of social systems and their influence on adolescent wellbeing.We developed data collection and analysis approaches to embed relational and situational information in remote qualitative walking interviews, participatory systems workshops, agent-based models, quantitative psychometric instruments, and social network surveys. These methods were tested on constructs of stress, loneliness, and mental health stigma in Scottish secondary schools. Mixed methods integration used system mapping software, follow the thread method, and the extended Pillar Integration Process.We integrated data from 13 interviews, 3 student-staff workshops (n=63), and 334 survey participants to determine level of support for five high level themes; pillar integration uncovered three additional themes. Stress showed greater between-situation variability than for loneliness, with little evidence for situational variability in stigma. Analysis uncovered ten stress response profiles reflecting individual differences in situation-specific stressors, and three loneliness profiles reflecting higher and lower loneliness across all situations. Integration focussed on how response profiles were patterned by friendship group, gender, and school year.A relational and situated approach to mental health can provide new insights for health promotion in schools. We present a methodological toolkit to assist researchers, intervention developers and school staff to understand influences on mental health and identify points of change tailored to specific social and spatial settings.

Although increasing research examines climate anxiety, little is known about the situational factors related to it. To assess these factors, we developed and evaluated a situated psychometric instrument for assessing how much climate anxiety individuals recall experiencing in 31 situations where climate anxiety is likely (e.g., hearing about climate catastrophes on the news). Of interest was how climate anxiety is experienced in a country like the UK, where climate disasters are mostly heard about in the media and anticipated in the future, relative to countries where climate disasters are experienced directly and regularly. In an online survey ( N = 303; 50.8% female), we investigated how much climate anxiety individuals recall experiencing in situations where climate anxiety is likely to occur, along with how much they recall experiencing 13 factors potentially related to climate anxiety (e.g., threat, violation, rumination). An individual measure of climate anxiety, averaged across situations, exhibited high reliability, construct validity and content validity. Climate anxiety varied widely across situations, with individuals further varying in how much climate anxiety they remembered experiencing in each situation. As predicted, the 13 situational factors tended to correlate significantly with climate anxiety across situations, explaining a median 75% of its variance in individual regressions.

Psychometric research on eustress—the positive experience of a challenging situation—faces a variety of issues that include: What features of eustress are central to experiencing challenging situations positively? What psychometric structure best fits these features (unidimensional, multidimensional, bifactor)? How is eustress related to distress and wellbeing? Can individuals be clustered effectively into different eustress profiles? To address these issues, we developed a novel eustress instrument: the Comprehensive Hierarchical Eustress Review (CHER), motivated by a new model, the Comprehensive Hierarchical construct of Eustress (CHE). Analogous to the CHE model, the CHER instrument contains 3 subscales for CHE’s 3 sources of eustress (goal-directed action, momentary experience, stable qualities) with 47 items that reflect the 47 features of eustress that CHE extracted from the literature. To evaluate CHER and explore its potential for understanding eustress, we assessed it in a well-powered adult UK sample ( N = 260). Using confirmatory factor analyses, we found that eustress is best understood as both a unidimensional and a multidimensional construct (i.e., a bifactor model), with items from all three subscales contributing to its conceptual core. The best performing model exhibited desirable internal qualities (satisfactory reliability and item discrimination) and external qualities (eustress negatively related to distress and positively related to wellbeing). Using latent profile analysis, we identified four clusters of individuals with different eustress profiles, who differed further on sociodemographic characteristics and personality traits. Findings reported have theoretical, empirical, and interventional implications for future work on the generation of positive experiences in challenging situations.

Young people and university students are particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of climate change due to their prolonged lifetime exposure to, and increased contact with, climate change and related information through learning. Despite this, little research exists on how university students cope with climate change from a psychological perspective. In this large qualitative study, we analysed data from an online survey to investigate how students (N = 823) of a large UK university cope with climate change. This survey covered which climate change situations were triggering for them, preferences for support-seeking, and specific coping strategies. Conceptual content analysis revealed that challenging situations included navigating climate change information, climate justice issues, climatic changes and environmental losses, and climate change dismissal. Findings from qualitative framework analysis further showed four ways students coped with these: by reducing the mental load of climate change, doing something constructive, seeking social support and meaning, and doomist thinking and behaviour. While many students highlighted the importance of social connections, a small minority considered seeking professional support. These findings partly support and expand on climate change-related coping literature and have implications for how higher education settings communicate about and act on climate change.

Climate change increasingly affects mental health and wellbeing. Although recent research has begun to examine climate anxiety, little is known about the situations where it is experienced or situational factors that predict it. To help understand how climate anxiety is experienced in UK residents, we developed and evaluated a situated psychometric instrument for assessing climate anxiety in 31 relevant situations (e.g., hearing about climate catastrophes on the news). Of interest was how climate anxiety is experienced in the UK as largely the anticipation of climate disaster and environmental pollution, rather than as actually experienced climate disaster, as in it is experienced by populations in more vulnerable countries where significant climate disaster has occurred. In an online study (N = 303 UK residents), we investigated how much climate anxiety individuals experienced in each situation, along with how much they experienced 13 factors that potentially influence climate anxiety (e.g., expectation violation, threat, coping). An individual measure of climate anxiety averaged across situations exhibited high reliability, construct validity, and content validity. Large differences in climate anxiety were observed between situations, along with a large individual by situation interaction. In linear regressions for individual participants, the 13 factors tended to correlate with climate anxiety as predicted, explaining a median 75% of climate anxiety variance. By identifying factors that predict climate anxiety for individuals, our approach provides detailed understanding of climate anxiety in each individual across situations. These predictive profiles could support screening for climate anxiety, identifying situations where it occurs, and designing individualised support.