World Kindness Day + Two Abstracts

This article discusses how loving-kindness can be used to treat traumatized refugees and minority groups, focusing on examples from our treatment, culturally adapted cognitive-behavioral therapy (CA-CBT). To show how we integrate loving-kindness with other mindfulness interventions and why loving-kindness should be an effective therapeutic technique, we present a typology of mindfulness states and the Nodal Network Model (NNM) of Affect and Affect Regulation. We argue that mindfulness techniques such as loving-kindness are therapeutic for refugees and minority populations because of their potential for increasing emotional flexibility, decreasing rumination, serving as emotional regulation techniques, and forming part of a new adaptive processing mode centered on psychological flexibility. We present a case to illustrate the clinical use of loving-kindness within the context of CA-CBT. (Hinton et al., 2013)

Respect and kindness are core principles of nursing practice, yet little is known about how they are experienced by nursing home (NH) residents at the end of life. The aim of this study was to examine the factors associated with being treated with respect and kindness in the last month of life as an NH resident. A retrospective survey of 208 bereaved family members was conducted in 21 NHs located in a city in central Canada. The majority of participants indicated that the resident had always been treated with respect or kindness. However, significant differences emerged, with not all family members believing that their loved one had always been treated with respect or kindness. The apparent lapses in care practices are troubling and indicate that steps must be taken to address them.​ (Thompson et al., 2011)

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- Hinton, D. E, Ojserkis, R. A., Jalal, B., Peou, S. & Hofmann, S. G. (2013). Loving-kindness in the treatment of traumatized refugees and minority groups: a typology of mindfulness and the nodal network model of affect and affect regulation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(8), 817-828.
- Thompson, G. N., McClement, S. E. & Chochinov, H. M. (2011). How respect and kindness are experienced at the end of life by nursing home residents. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 43(3), 96-118.
- photograph (Steve McQueen with his son Chad on the set of Le Mans, 1971) via

Sleep Disorder

Sleep and sleep disorders have gender-specific features. However, gender bias in medicine has led to women often not being diagnosed or misdiagnosed of primary sleep disorders as depression (via). There are still "significant knowledge gaps in research and a lack of awareness among the research community" for the need to account for the biology of women but also for gender differences in the way symptoms are reported (Mallampalli & Carter, 2014).

Studies of insomnia show a female predominance (via). Compared with men, women are at 40% increased risk for developing insomnia, they also show longer sleep latency (number of minutes it takes to fall asleep), more sleepiness, complain of poorer sleep quality. The male to female ratio of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in the community is 2:1 and 8:1 in sleep clinics. This discrepancy can be interpreted as the tendency to understudy and undertreat women for OSA. Other sleep disorders show similar patterns (e.g. sleep behaviour disorder with a men-women ratio of 2:1 in the community and 6:1 in sleep clinics) (Mallampalli & Carter, 2014).

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- Mallampalli, M: P. & Cater, C. L. (2014). Exploring Sex and Gender Differences in Sleep Health: A Society for Women's Health Research Report. Journal of Women's Health, 23(7), 553-562, link
- image via

Steve McQueen's Driving Licence & The Friendly Car in Ethiopia

The analogy between cars and facial shape is not a new one. Car advertisements and the entertainment media (e.g. Pixar's "Cars" or Disney's "Herbie") utilise our tendency to anthropomorphise objects. Windhager et al. (2012) assume that if there is a biologically determined overgeneralsisation from faces to cars, there would be a generalisation across cultures. The authors tested differences between Ethiopia, a culture that is not exposed to car marketing, and Austria.



Consistencies between the attributions child-adult, female-male, and submissive-dominant to cars were examined through changes in design, e.g. a manipulation of the grille (e.g. the wider and taller the grille, the more maleness, dominance and higher age were attributed). Despite differences in street scenery in Austria and Ethiopia, a high cross-cultural consisteny in child-adult, female-male and submissive-dominant attributions to cars was found which might be due to a common psychological mechanism.



However, the authors found differences between Austrian and Ethiopian ratings in items with emotional valence. In Austria, there was a high differentiation between cars ranging from negative to positive descriptions (e.g. "angry", "afraid", "happy") while in Ethiopia, all cars were judged positively (e.g. "happy", "friendly", "open"). Various reasons could explain this finding. For instance, Ethiopians are very polite and could wish to avoid negative attributions. Another explanation could be that interactions with real cars are generally positive in Ethiopia. Or: The missing traits are not perceived as they are lacking in local marketing strategies (Windhager et al., 2012). In general, it is considered as crucial to integrate cultural aspects in the design of products (Syed Mohamed et al., 2013).



Steve McQueen, "King of Cool", (1930-1980) was a motorcycle and racecar enthusiast - he even considered a professional career in race car driving. His motorcycle licence from 1964 was sold at an auction in 2009 (via).



Syed Mohamed, M. S., Shamsul, B. M. T., Rahman, R. (2013) Cultural Model in Predicting Car Center Stack Design Preferences. International Journal of Education and Research, 1(6), 1-12
Windhager, S., Bookstein, F. L., Grammer, K., Oberzaucher, E., Said, H., Slice, D. E., Thorstensen, T. & Schaefer, K. (2012) "Cars have their own faces": cross-cultural ratings of car shapes in biological (stereotypcial) terms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 109-120
Photos via and via and via and via