Family Members’ Abuse of Older Adults, Psychological Well-Being, and Sleep Quality Among Older Women and Men in China

Journal of Applied Gerontology, Ahead of Print.
Despite the well-documented detrimental health effects of elder abuse, scholars have rarely considered whether and how family members’ abuse of older adults is associated with sleep. Data from the 2018 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (N = 8110) were used to assess the association between elder abuse committed by family members and sleep quality, and how psychological well-being (depression and loneliness) mediates and gender moderates the above association. Results indicated that those who experienced family members’ abuse were more likely to report poor sleep quality than their non-abused counterparts. Depression and loneliness partially mediated the elder abuse–sleep relationship. Furthermore, among those who experienced one elder abuse, older women had a higher risk of poor sleep quality than their male counterparts. However, two or more elder abuse experiences had similar negative effects on older women and men. Preventing elder abuse and improving psychological well-being is critical to promoting late-life sleep.

Mood induction through imitation of full‐body movements with different affective intentions

Abstract

Theories of human emotion, including some emotion embodiment theories, suggest that our moods and affective states are reflected in the movements of our bodies. We used the reverse process for mood regulation; modulate body movements to regulate mood. Dancing is a type of full-body movement characterized by affective expressivity and, hence, offers the possibility to express different affective states through the same movement sequences. We tested whether the repeated imitation of a dancer performing two simple full-body dance movement sequences with different affective expressivity (happy or sad) could change mood states. Computer-based systems, using avatars as dance models to imitate, offer a series of advantages such as independence from physical contact and location. Therefore, we compared mood induction effects in two conditions: participants were asked to imitate dance movements from one of the two avatars showing: (a) videos of a human dancer model or (b) videos of a robot dancer model. The mood induction was successful for both happy and sad imitations, regardless of condition (human vs. robot avatar dance model). Moreover, the magnitude of happy mood induction and how much participants liked the task predicted work-related motivation after the mood induction. We conclude that mood regulation through dance movements is possible and beneficial in the work context.