Nichea S. Spillane

Young adults use cannabis and experience negative consequences at high rates. Cannabis use motives include coping, conformity, enhancement, expansion, and social. Savoring involves focusing attention on positive events to intensify positive emotions. Savoring might be differentially protective or risky when considering motives in relation to cannabis outcomes. We examined the interactions between cannabis motives and savoring on cannabis frequency and consequences. Young adults (N = 154) who used cannabis at least weekly in the past month completed self-report measures. The interaction between coping and savoring was associated with cannabis use frequency (b = -0.04, p = .001), such that coping motives were positively associated with cannabis use frequency at low levels of savoring (b = 0.80, p = .002), but negatively associated with cannabis use frequency at high levels of savoring (b = -0.80, p = .002). The interaction between coping and savoring was associated with cannabis-related consequences (b = 0.01, p < .001), such that coping motives were positively associated with cannabis-related consequences at low levels of savoring (b = 0.44, p < .001), but not at high levels of savoring (b = 0.10, p = .47). Savoring may protect against the effects of coping motives on cannabis use frequency and related consequences. While these findings are preliminary, future work should explore how a savoring intervention might improve cannabis outcomes via changes in coping motives.

Bedtime procrastination is increasingly recognized as a widespread impediment to health-promoting sleep. Based on its potential malleability, bedtime procrastination is starting to be targeted for intervention using traditional health behavior models, but other cognitive and emotional factors that potentially modulate bedtime procrastination warrant more targeted intervention. The present research recruited college students (n = 93) with self-reported tendencies toward bedtime procrastination and low self-compassion early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and it examined a hybrid intervention model involving a single group meeting and home practices that focused on comprehensive sleep hygiene or intentional self-compassion practices, simultaneously leveraging social motivation and commitment. It also examined bedtime procrastination, sleep, emotion regulation, and procrastinatory cognitions. The study showed evidence for feasibility, acceptability, reduced bedtime procrastination, improved sleep, and moderated mediation whereby the relationship between increased self-compassion and decreased bedtime procrastination was mediated by improved emotion regulation for those with elevated reductions in procrastinatory cognition. Predictors of bedtime procrastination reduction and other relevant sequelae differed between self-compassion and sleep hygiene virtual trainings. Thus, the present research expands and synthesizes a burgeoning literature, suggesting that integrating effective elements into acceptable interventions may help reverse a cycle of self-criticism, emotion dysregulation, bedtime procrastination, and sleep-related difficulties for many who might benefit.