This study examined the occurrence of emotion types and the contents and meanings of individual emotion types to improve the quality of life of South Korean senior patients in convalescent hospitals. This research is a sequential mixed study in which we conducted emotion frequency and content analyses with 20 elderly resident patients in a convalescent hospital. In the emotion frequency analysis, we performed emotion occurrence frequency analysis and clustering to create groups of subjects that showed similar distributions of emotions. The study results found that South Korean senior patients displayed six major emotions: joy, sorrow, anger, surprise, fear, and tranquility, including mixed emotional states. In the emotion content analysis, we used NVivo to categorize and analyze the interview contents based on emotion types. The study results show the characteristics of emotions according to patients’ treatment and recovery, life within narrow boundaries, relationships with new people and family, and the appearances of themselves that they could not easily but must accept. In addition, these characteristics appeared in health, environment, relationships, and psychological structures. Ultimately, the study results suggest that improving the quality of life of South Korean senior patients requires understanding of their emotions and examining diverse emotions in multiple dimensions. In the case of seniors, the expression of emotions is less likely to appear directly compared to other age groups . DifficuInvestigating emotions that reflect the quality of life plays a vital role in understanding and intervening in human behaviors ,3. This Convalescent hospitals are therapeutic institutions that accept geriatric and chronically ill patients and those recovering from surgery or injury ; seniorsEkman  defined All human beings appear in various figures due to diverse socialization factors . For exaStudies related to seniors’ emotions conducted in South Korea thus far include seniors’ difficulties with  expressiAccording to a study by Jeong and Kim , the anxWhen looking at study findings indicating that differences between individuals with emotion regulation disorders or social anxiety and the individuals’ circumstances affecting their quality of life , it is eRQ1.What is the frequency of emotion types of senior patients residing in convalescent hospitals?RQ2.What are the contents according to the emotions of senior patients residing in convalescent hospitals?We used the sequential mixed method among mixed research methods in this study. The senior patients in this study included those aged at least 65 years in a hospital or convalescent hospital due to illness. We used convenience sampling to select this study’s participants. In addition, we interviewed the participants face-to-face while observing the quarantine rules for COVID-19. This study received IRB approval number: DUIRB—2022108-02.n = 3), seventies (n = 8), and eighties (n = 9). From the initial recruitment, we excluded those with serious diseases that could hardly recover and those who were in a mental or emotional state in which they could not clearly express their intention despite having indicated their intention to participate in this study.As This study examined the occurrence frequency and characteristics of the basic emotions of anger, joy, sorrow, surprise, fear, tranquility, hatred, and contempt to understand the psychological and emotional states of elderly patients. According to Magai et al. , emotionTo that end, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 study subjects using semi-structured questions. We constructed the contents of the questions to examine the situations where emotions occur and their responses. For example, to identify the frequencies of emotions and analyze the situation in which the joy emotion occurred, the concrete contents of the joy emotions, and the reactions when the joy emotions happened, we asked questions such as “What makes you feel joy?”, “How did you react when you felt joy?”, and “How did you feel at that time concretely?” As with joy, we asked the following questions to learn the circumstances in which the sadness emotions occurred, the concrete contents of the sadness emotions, and the reactions when the sad feelings occurred: “What makes you feel sad?”, “How did you react when you felt sad?”, and “How did you feel at that time concretely?” We conducted interviews about other emotion types in a similar manner. After asking semi-structured questions about each emotion and depending on the study participants’ responses, we asked additional questions such as “Give me a concrete example” or “How can you express your emotions at that time concretely?” Three researchers trained to avoid ethical problems in the interview method conducted the face-to-face interviews while observing the COVID-19 quarantine rules.We improved the validity and reliability of the data in this study through inter-researcher reviews . RegardiFirst, when all three researchers’ evaluations were the same, we obtained the average of the three researchers’ evaluated emotion intensities. Then, we labeled the interview answer with the emotion type and the average. Second, when the evaluations of only two researchers were the same, we obtained the average of the two researchers’ evaluated emotion intensities and labeled the interview answer with the emotion type and the average. Third, when the evaluations of all three researchers were different, we set the interview answer as a non-determined value (nan) and replaced the value with the emotion type and emotion intensity value of the researcher who most matched the final emotion classification among the three researchers.In this study, we analyzed the collected data from the in-depth interviews through two methods.(1)Frequency AnalysisThe frequency analysis method identifies the general characteristics of study subjects . In this(2)Clustering of Survey SubjectsClustering is very effective for identifying the pattern and distribution of data . It is aAmong the clustering methods, we used k-means clustering  in this The participants in the qualitative study are the same as those in the quantitative research. We used the content analysis method for qualitative analysis to find the content provoking senior patients’ emotions. The researchers used the transcribed interview data to analyze the contents according to emotion types based on the qualitative data analysis procedure of Oh, Lee, and Jung . The resIn this study, we coded using “open coding” presented by Strauss and Glaser , which iWe used NVivo12, a qualitative data analysis program, in this study. NVivo helped us manage the entire study process by storing, coding, and analyzing the vast amount of collected data to enhance data reliability. In the data analysis process in NVivo12, there are upper categories above numerous subcategories, reducing the number of categories . In thisThe first researcher completed the primary coding, while the second reviewed and corrected the primary coding. Then the two researchers revised the codes as necessary into agreed codes through discussion and repeated this process. Finally, the coding concluded with researchers agreeing on the final codes through revisions and discussions.By repeating the process, they created 159 basic codes from the vast interview data see the  and 52 mThe analysis results of the frequency of occurrence of emotions in this study are presented in In addition, the study participants showed single and many emotions simultaneously. Therefore, we checked the ratios of simultaneous occurrences of emotions through support to identify the relationships between these emotions. The support in the association rule is the ratio of the number of items, including X and Y, to the number of the entire data. Regarding the clustering of survey subjects see , inertiaAs a result of both analyses, we identified the most appropriate classification of emotions as four—that is, clustering analysis resulted in four clusters/emotions as the most appropriate. We checked the actual data labels and found the four clusters representing joy, anger, sorrow, and tranquility. However, based on the results of the support analysis, there were a significant number of cases where the above four emotions co-occurred with fear and surprise. Therefore, six emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, tranquility, fear, and surprise—excluding hatred and contempt are the result of the classification of emotions appropriate for the expression of the survey subjects.The analysis results of the content frequency by emotion in the four dimensions of health, environment, social relations, and psychology by emotion type are presented in Then, we constructed the following emotion categories: 11 categories for joy, 14 for sorrow, nine for anger, six for tranquility, five for fear, three for surprise, three for hatred, and one for contempt. The The details of the four categories by emotion type of senior patients are below.The elderly patients showed different emotions according to their health status. The feeling of joy appeared as their health status improved, and they participated in daily life smoothly and exercised frequently. They showed feelings of joy just when they became able to walk while relying on a cane through rehabilitation: “I like going out to exercise” (Study Participant 3).On the other hand, they showed sorrow for being injured when they were not very old: “My condition seemed to have improved a little when about five or six years passed after the injury, but I fell again. I collapsed. Therefore, I made a lot of effort to recover while walking with a cane. I’m not very old yet. I’m only 78 years old. Therefore, I walk around in the hospital lounge every day ” (Study Participant 2).The senior patients regarded treatment as the most crucial element, paid attention to how their treatment was carried out and showed related emotions. However, they also showed feelings of sorrow for their missing the time of treatment: “Although I don’t know, there is something called a golden time. I missed that time. I feel as such.” (Study Participant 2).The senior patients often expressed feelings of anger about their physical pain. They showed negative emotions about their pain not being adequately treated and were upset about the hospital’s inability to solve their pain: “I wish the hospital would give me the medicine I ask for. I feel so itchy and stuffy. They don’t let me be free or scratch as I want. I felt so itchy that I put my back on the bed and move” (Study Participant 4).The two things that senior patients especially fear are ‘falls’ and ‘dementia’. They feared the experience of the moment they fell. In addition, many seniors around them get ill after they fall. In the case of ‘dementia’, patients are well aware of the aftereffects of dementia. In particular, we found that they thought dementia would cause suffering for themselves and their family members. Study Participant 8 talked about her fear of dementia as follows: “Dementia really hurts families. I thought that I should not get dementia until I die. While seeing someone with dementia, I thought I shouldn’t do that. What I fear the most is dementia” (Study Participant 8).The senior patients enjoyed eating their favorite foods even in their life within the narrow boundaries termed hospital. They felt joy when their family members brought them food they liked at ordinary times and ate it: “I feel good when my younger siblings packed and brought what I like such as bread or rice cakes because they know what I like” (Study Participant 8).In addition, as they learned new things and searched for exciting stuff through YouTube, they had feelings of joy through daily hobbies: “I watch YouTube a lot on my smartphone when I have time, and through it, I search for things I don’t know, so I spend a lot of my time watching YouTube on my own. In particular, I watch it a lot because what people are talking about is interesting. I just spend so much time on it to the extent that my time is insufficient, and the battery runs out. I learn while realizing there are things I don’t know” (Study Participant 8).Meanwhile, the senior patients showed feelings of sorrow about economic difficulties. They wanted to help others while they lived if they had enough money, but seeing themselves sick and without money, they felt sadness. In addition, concerning hospital expenses, they felt sorrow thinking about being deprived of their money. They felt sorrow and contempt at the thought that since they had no car and money, they could not go anywhere, even if they wanted to go somewhere: “Really, neither my children nor I have any money, but I think the money we had was used by the hospital as they like. It happened in other hospitals than here, too. It was really hard because of the people who took all the hospital expenses” (Study Participant 12).The uncomfortable space of the hospital per se made senior patients angry. Study Participant 17 said the hospital bed was uncomfortable because it was not his bed. Study Participant 18 hated the smell of the hospital and the smell of the people around him. The senior patients lived with negative emotions within the narrow boundaries. They also showed feelings of fear and hatred when people around them were shouting. In addition, they expressed negative emotions about the behavior of patients living together in the hospital: “Crazy persons scream so badly, and they just do it. Then I am scared. I just stay still” (Study Participant 6) and “A person next to me, there was an old woman who was strange. Whenever I said something, she shouted; whenever I said something, she said it was noisy. While she was in the room, we fought for a few days, and I went to another room” (Study Participant 20).The senior patients living in the hospital showed positive and negative emotions in new relationships with hospital staff. For instance, they experienced joy and trust when they felt that the hospital staff’s attitudes toward treating senior patients were kind and reliable: “After I was hospitalized, when there was the former department manager, he was very kind, and the nurses, the director, and the caregivers all took good care of me. So, no matter what I should do, I worked hard unconditionally. I felt good, and I laughed” (Study Participant 9).When the senior patients felt positive emotions in their relationship with hospital officials, they thought of them as their family members . When the hospital staff treated them well and nodded to them in greeting, the patients felt more joy. Among hospital staff, the nurses and caregivers often meet with senior patients in person. The patients feel joy and gratitude when these hospital staffs treat them well: “Well, the caregiver is the best” (Study Participant 13), and “The caregiver brings food to the restaurant, I just eat it, and then he cleans up everything. If I can’t go to the bathroom, he helps me now, the caregiver. I appreciate him” (Study Participant 7).However, we found that they distrust hospital staff and express dissatisfaction when the hospital staff does not satisfy their needs: “For a year, I was shaking and swinging my legs because I was sick, and they tied me up here. When I think of that, I tremble” (Study Participant 1). Study Participant 14 said, “I got angry many times I get angry because of the caregiver. Some caregivers don’t even pretend to hear when I ask for water; they just move around.” In addition, Study Participant 9 stated, “I don’t even want to think about the caregiver who was here last time.”Senior patients still showed a lot of content with their emotions about separated family members. They expressed joy when their family visited them and were living well; they expressed more joy especially when their grandchildren did well: “I am grateful that my children are living well without any problems. So, I’m happy. Our eldest son has two daughters, and our eldest granddaughter got a job at a hospital in Seoul during a difficult time like these days. My daughter-in-law and son are doing well. I am grateful to the extent that I cannot express it” (Study Participant 20). In addition, Study Participant 8 stated, “I am very happy when I see my grandson, and I appreciate it. I think that they came here despite that it should be very difficult for them to come here and go back as such.” Study Participant 10 said, “What makes me happy is just my grandchildren’s marriage, and when that happens, I’m happy and really grateful.”The senior patients expressed joy about meeting their family members and grandchildren. However, they regretted and felt sorry for not being able to see their family members properly or not having done well for their family members. They were sad when they longed for or worried about their family members or got angry due to challenging family relations: “It’s been a long time since I saw my eldest son because he did not come to see me. He does not call me even once despite that he is not busy. The second son is busy and does not come often. He has become a company manager. Since I can’t go out as I like, I gave up seeing my children. When I call, they don’t answer because they’re busy” (Study Participant 10).Some senior patients also regretted not doing well with their children: “I now feel that I was too strict to my children as their father” (Study Participant 19).Although family members give joy, some senior patients expressed anger due to sour relations with their family members: “I got divorced because I didn’t get along with my husband, and I took my two sons without preparation, but my eldest son treats me poorly as he has a foul temper” (Study Participant 4).We found that senior patients feel joy when they accept their situation and appearance in a limited environment and have a positive view of others: “Most things are fine to be. Since everything is positively made by nature and disappears, you can just leave it as it is. Because I think positively, there is nothing particularly bad or good. I am fine today too. I live without anger. If I live with anger, that will be bad for me. Therefore, why should I be angry?” (Study Participant 18).While accepting the situation, the senior patients also showed a mind to help and give something to those in need: “When there are persons in need, I hand out food trays. I am the oldest. Even though I am the oldest, I can do it, and I do it when I want to. Of course, I do it because I want to do it. There are persons who can’t walk well. Because there is no caregiver, they can’t walk, and that is why I do it” (Study Participants 18).However, we found that senior patients feel lonely when they no longer feel hope, and they feel sorrowful and get angry when they feel resentment toward others: “I don’t want to live. There will be no hope if my body goes wrong further. Well, I want to die” (Study Participant 4). In addition, Study Participant 15 said, “I want to die. Even when I’m sad, I just cry alone. I think I am miserable.”The senior patients feel that their pride is hurt; they are sad and get angry when psychological conflicts occur in their relationships with others: “There are men younger than me, and when I watch TV with them, they seem to ignore me because I am older. They didn’t talk to me openly as such, but I felt that they were talking to me as such. I don’t think that those young men do not get old! There is an order when people are born, but there is no order when people die! I think this way by myself. When patients see persons who are a little weaker than them, they despise the persons a little” (Study Participant 2).The senior patients felt lonely at their spouse’s death and more sorrow and loneliness about living alone: “When my wife died, I thought I should have died first” (Study Participants 7). In addition, Study Participant 2 stated, “About three or four months before my husband died, in fact, when he was alive, I thought that I would be comfortable if he died soon. But still, I realized that it is very important to live as a married couple relying on each other. After my husband died, I felt so lonely and solitary, and I couldn’t stand it because I didn’t have any children” (Study Participant 2).This study examined the frequency of occurrence and content characteristics of the emotion types of South Korean senior patients. Study 1 found that hatred and contempt did not occur as frequently as anger, joy, sorrow, surprise, fear, and tranquility emotions for senior patients. Therefore, senior patients feel less extreme negative emotions.In addition, the frequency of positive emotions was high even in environments where highly vulnerable seniors live, such as convalescent hospitals. According to a study by Kim and Min , the intAccording to a study by Choi and Choi , emotionIn Study 2, we examined the emotional characteristics of senior patients. Based on the preceding, we provide the following insights into the issues related to the quality of life of senior patients. First, the health status of elderly patients is an important aspect that determines their emotions. Their subjective health affects their quality of life . This fiFirst, senior patients fear “falls” and “dementia”; they fear what causes secondary physical danger in their present state. Researchers  have shoSecond, senior patients experience changes in their emotions due to the situations and events that occur because they live in the limited environment of a convalescent hospital. The hospital life of seniors means disconnection from their everyday life. They experience changes in their physical environment from where they have lived thus far and changes in their daily life patterns and social support networks . TherefoAccording to a study with Swiss seniors, Seifert and Schelling  found thWe conducted this study in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, external factors impacted the emotions of senior patients during our investigation. For instance, in a survey of the life experiences of seniors living in India under COVID-19 lockdown conditions, the researchers found that the patients experienced anxiety, fear, and mental trauma . Thus, tThird, because they were in a convalescent hospital, the senior patients made new relationships with unfamiliar doctors, nurses, nurses’ aides, and caregivers and displayed various emotions in such relationships. In supportive social interactions, the mere presence of surrounding people who are not relatives or friends is beneficially associated with the mental health of seniors regardless of the role or function of the surrounding people . This fiHowever, the senior patients still showed deep feelings toward their family members, such as longing for the family members and joy at their visits. A study with senior patients in convalescent hospitals showed that the lower the family support, the higher the death anxiety . In partFourth, the senior patients showed different emotions depending on whether they accepted their situation in the hospital. For instance, Erikson  said thaFinally, we classified the elements affecting the emotions of senior patients into health, environment, social relations, and psychology. This classification is similar to “health, social environment, economy, and emotional cognition” identified as difficulties experienced by the elderly in South Korea, developed by Kim and Lee , reflectBased on the results of this study, we offer the following suggestions.First, our study shows that South Korean seniors might feel negative emotions because they still perceive that in the convalescent hospital environment, they are not cared for by their family members. In Bowman and Singer’s  study onThis study showed the emotional characteristics of senior patients appearing in Korean culture. The results reflect that the emotions of senior patients residing in convalescent hospitals differ according to culture, thereby preparing a basis for comparison with senior patients in other cultural areas. In studies hereafter, examining the emotions of senior patients in various cultural areas is necessary by comparing them with those of senior patients in convalescent hospitals in other countries.Second, we found that, although senior patients need to adapt to new people in a convalescent hospital, their relationships with family members are still significant. The connections can only be improved when the perceptions of both parties are known. In a study on caregivers of a senior patient with a chronic illness, the researchers found that the caregivers had difficulties in areas such as the impact of caregiving on family relationships, disruption of social relationships, disruption of personal and occupational plans, physical health-related issues, negative emotions, and dealing with the high costs of living . This stThird, according to a study  to improTherefore, an integrated approach to emotional and social support is necessary to alleviate the negative emotions felt by senior patients.The participants in this study were senior patients residing in a convalescent hospital. In selecting the participants, we used convenience sampling because of the limited accessibility to senior patients in convalescent hospitals due to COVID-19. Therefore, it is difficult to guarantee the homogeneity of characteristics, except that the subjects of this study were living in the same convalescent hospital. In addition, since we only studied the characteristics of senior patients residing in a unique environment termed convalescent hospitals, future research could focus on the emotions of senior patients living at home. Moreover, we based this study on the eight emotions regarded as basic according to the theoretical basis. Therefore, future studies could investigate more than just basic emotions. In addition, because our study included senior patients of at least 65 years old, a study that can reflect age-related characteristics is necessary for a more in-depth understanding of the emotions of elderly patients.South Korean senior patients displayed six major emotions: joy, sorrow, anger, surprise, fear, and tranquility; mixed emotional states also appeared. They described the characteristics of emotions regarding to the following: their treatment and recovery, life within narrow boundaries, relationships that began again, family members, and their appearances that they could not easily but must accept. These characteristics of emotions appeared in the structures of health, environment, relationships, and psychology. Based on this research, it is necessary to seek ways to improve seniors’ quality of life according to emotions. In particular, emotion-based healing is vital for senior patients who display negative emotions such as sorrow, surprise, and fear.


To the Editor,We thank the authors of the Letter to the Editor for their interest in our work and appreciate the opportunity to reply. Firstly, Sakatsume and O’Shea assert that by reporting on the percentage of students who had already received a COVID-19 vaccination, a “severe bias” may have been introduced into the study. We respectfully disagree: already vaccinated individuals were not included in the mixed model analysis examining the yes/no answer to the intention-to-vaccinate questionnaire. The figure in our report clearly delineates which study participants were vaccinated and which were not, and excludes the already-vaccinated from the analysis of vaccine hesitancy. Furthermore, we contend that failing to report these numbers, i.e., excluding vaccinated students from the study, would itself introduce bias. Therefore, we report vaccination status as well as intention-to-vaccinate to clearly denote these separate groups in our report.Secondly, we agree that examination of students’ education levels would be a relevant and interesting approach. We examined two secondary schools with different levels of education: one was a “Gymnasium”, which is the most academically advanced among the three types of German secondary schools and primarily prepares students for university. The second school was a “Gesamtschule”, which combines the three types of German secondary schools and enables students to learn at an appropriate individual level, preparing for an academic as well as non-academic vocation depending on the individual graduation level. Because the later school included a heterogeneous population, we could not draw direct comparisons between the two schools — some students at the Gesamtschule received a very similar education to those at the Gymnasium while others received a more vocational, work-experience-oriented curriculum. Indeed, the categorization of German secondary schools by academic strength is increasingly complex and blurry as a movement away from early sorting has taken place. Regardless, we enthusiastically endorse the call by Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea for more data on student education level and vaccine hesitancy in future studies.Lastly, Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea perceived discrepancies in the study population. To clarify, the longitudinal study we conducted began with one school in June 2020, and a second school was added in November 2020. In Paulsen et al. , we repoVaccine hesitancy is a crucial issue in controlling future epidemics, and we thank Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea for raising their points openly to promote the discussion of this important topic.Sincerely,Anna Zychlinsky Scharff, Mira Paulsen, Anette Melk.


The COVID-19 pandemic has severely challenged mental health and wellbeing. However, research has consistently reinforced the value of spending time in green space for better health and wellbeing outcomes. Factors such as an individual’s nature orientation, used to describe one’s affinity to nature, may influence an individual’s green space visitation behaviour, and thus influence the wellbeing benefits gained. An online survey in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia (n = 2084), deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2021), explores if nature experiences and nature orientation are positively associated with personal wellbeing and if increased amounts of nature experiences are associated with improvement in wellbeing in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that both yard and public green space visitation, as well as nature orientation scores, were correlated with high personal wellbeing scores, and individuals who spent more time in green space compared to the previous year also experienced a positive change in their health and wellbeing. Consistently, people with stronger nature orientations are also more likely to experience positive change. We also found that age was positively correlated to a perceived improvement in wellbeing over the year, and income was negatively correlated with a decreased change in wellbeing over the year, supporting other COVID-19 research that has shown that the effects of COVID-19 lifestyle changes were structurally unequal, with financially more established individuals experiencing better wellbeing. Such results highlight that spending time in nature and having high nature orientation are important for gaining those important health and wellbeing benefits and may provide a buffer for wellbeing during stressful periods of life that go beyond sociodemographic factors. As society moves into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 has impacted people’s lives beyond just physical health to issues of economic and social disparities that impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing . Issues Evidence from environmental and health research has consistently reinforced the value of spending time in green space for better physical health and mental health ,8,9. ThiAnother line of research is rapidly consolidating evidence to show that people with high levels of nature orientation spend more time in green spaces, and therefore gain the health and wellbeing benefits from green space ,23,24,25Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated pressures and stresses that were indirectly created through rapid lifestyle changes, presents a unique opportunity to better understand how nature orientation and nature experiences may impact on urban residents’ wellbeing during this time. Although studies have shown that urban dwellers sought out green space during restricted periods, this was not equivalent across the population ,29. WhilIn this study, we aim to understand if nature experiences and nature orientation were generally positively associated with personal wellbeing and if increased amounts of nature experiences were associated with improvements in personal wellbeing over this initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an online survey deployed across Brisbane and Sydney, Australia (n = 1050 and n = 1034 respectively), in April 2021, we test if a person’s nature orientation or nature experiences were associated with an individual’s personal wellbeing during this difficult time. Communities living in both cities had experienced lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (late-March 2020), in which individuals were only permitted to leave their places of residence for essential needs, only limited gatherings were permitted and non-essential businesses were restricted in their operations . Both ciAlthough restrictions of movement had been relaxed during the time of the survey, it is important to note that citizens were still living with a larger set of stressful conditions and unfavourable changes during that preceding year, with quarantine and home-schooling becoming a sporadic occurrence, loss of employment or working from home, as well as social isolation from loved ones due to domestic and international border restrictions ,34. We hThis study was performed in two of Australia’s largest cities, Sydney and Brisbane. Both cities are coastal cities located on the east coast of Australia, approximately 900 km apart.2 [Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and the most densely populated city in Australia. It has a population of approximately 5.35 million over an area of 12,000 km2 . Annual 2 .2 [2 per person) and tree cover (36%), both of which are spread rather evenly across the socio-economic gradient [Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. It has a population of approximately 2.6 million over an area of about 16,000 km2 . The citgradient . Annual gradient .An online survey was conducted between 15 April and 15 May 2021 for Brisbane and Sydney residents, asking about their nature experiences and nature orientation. This research was conducted in accordance with approved guidelines, and all protocols were received under Institutional Human Research Ethics Approval . Informed consent was obtained from all respondents.The survey was delivered by an online data collection company, the Online Research Unit, a general market and data analysis company well-established in Australia, to run a survey panel through their existing research databases of potential respondents in each city. The time period was chosen as it was during a time when seasonal temperatures would not affect participation in going to nature spaces. Demographic parameters were provided to the company to ensure that sampling occurred across gender, education, and income variables. A minimum high-quality sampling number was requested from the survey company (n = 1000) for each city, with a total of 1050 respondents captured from Brisbane and 1034 surveys collected from Sydney for a total of 2084 responses.To test if nature orientation and nature experience were associated with better wellbeing, participants were asked to recall how often they visited their yards  or public green space , how long they spent in their yards or public green space last week , and whether they spent more or less time in their yard or public green space over the year . We also quantified a participant’s nature orientation score and personal wellbeing, and how they perceived their health and wellbeing might have changed over the year. The descriptive statistics of these two cities are shown in For this study, a large range of questions were asked regarding a survey participant’s self-reported socio-demographic information, their use of green space, nature orientation, personal well-being, and change in perceived health and wellbeing across the year. Socio-demographic questions included information on age, gender, education level, and income level. Survey participants were asked to complete the Nature Relatedness Scale (referred to as ‘NR’ here) to assess their level of nature orientation . This scCurrent green space visits include frequency and duration of yard visits and frequency and duration of public green space visits and have been used in previous surveys ,45,46,47Frequency of yard visits: Participants were asked to recall how often they usually spend more than 10 min in their own yard or on their deck. The frequency was selected from the following categories: I don’t have a yard or deck (=0), never (=0), less than once a month (=1), 2–3 times a month (=2), once a week (=3), 2–3 days a week (=4), 4–5 days a week (=5), and 6–7 days a week (=6). Participants chose “I don’t have a yard or deck were considered as zero frequency in yard visit.Duration of yard visits last week: Participants were also asked to think about the last week, how much time in total they spent in their own yard or on their deck. The duration was selected from the following categories: No time (=0), 1–30 min (=1), 31 min to 1 h (=2), 1–3 h (=3), 3–5 h (=4), 5–7 h (=5), 7–9 h (=6), more than 9 h (=7). Similar to the frequency of yard visits, participants chose “I don’t have a yard or deck were considered as zero duration of yard visit last week.Frequency of public green space visits: Participants were asked to recall how often they usually visited or passed through outdoor green spaces for any reasons. The frequency was selected from the following categories: never (=0), once a year (=1), once every three months (=2), once a month (=3), 2–3 times a month (=4), once a week (=5), 2–3 days a week (=6), 3–5 days a week (=7), and 6–7 days a week (=8).Duration of public green space visits: Participants were asked to recall over the last week what outdoor green spaces they visited or travelled through and to estimate the total time they spent there in hours. Participants who reported spending more than 168 h or less than 0 h in public green spaces were considered as error (“NA”). Participants who did not visit any public green spaces were considered as zero duration of public green space visits last week.Compared to this time last year, are you spending a different amount of time in your yard?Compared to this time last year, are you spending a different amount of time in outdoor green spaces? This includes, for example, beaches, bushland, playgrounds or picnic areas, dog off-leash areas, national parks.In order to gauge how green space use had potentially changed over the past year , we asked respondents two sets of questions:Responses were categorical and classed as: much less, less, same, more, much more. Within the analysis, change in use —coded as −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, respectively. Respondents who selected that they did not have a yard were coded as not applicable (na) within the dataset.www.acqol.com.au, accessed on 16 February 2023). This consortium research group examines quality of life as both an objective and subjective dimension, which comprises several domains. These domains together define the total construct [Personal wellbeing was assessed using the Personal Wellbeing Index developed by the Australian Centre on Quality of Life  or much better (2), we recoded the data as having positive change (including better and much better) or having negative change (including worse and much worse).The data analyses were performed using R v4.1.2 (accessed on 1 November 2022).To model the relationship between current nature experiences  and a person’s personal wellbeing, we used a linear regression model with personal wellbeing index as the response variable. Explanatory variables were duration and frequency of yard visits, and duration and frequency of public green space visits. We also included a person’s nature relatedness. The demographic factors included in the model were age, gender, income, and city. We did not detect any multi-collinearity , and the model fulfilled homoscedasticity and normality assumptions. We also ran a model without individuals not having a yard (na) as a sensitivity analysis, and the result was consistent .To investigate whether/how change in green space visits may influence the change in health or wellbeing, we ran two separate generalized linear models with binomial error structure: (1) the likelihood to have positive change and (2) the likelihood to have negative change.In the first model, we used the dataset where participants reported to have no change or positive change. The response variable was the no/positive change, which was coded as 0 or 1. Explanatory variables were the change in yard visits across a year and change in green space visits across a year. As current nature experiences may also influence the perception in the change in wellbeing, we also included time spent in the yard last week, frequency of yard visit over 10 min this year, frequency of green space visits this year, time spent in public green space last week, and nature relatedness. The demographic factors included in the model were age, gender, income, and city (Sydney or Brisbane). In the second model, we used the dataset where participants reported to have no change or negative change. The response variable is the no/negative change, which was coded as 0 or 1. The explanatory variables and covariates were the same as the first model. It is important to note that we did not run an additional model excluding individuals without a yard (as we did for the PWI model), because the change in yard use is not applicable for individuals without a yard.We found that people who visited their yards or urban green space more often had higher self-reported personal wellbeing, after adjusting for the confounding effects of age, gender, income, and city . We alsoWe analysed the change in status wellbeing and health to better understand how changes in green space use were related to an increased likelihood of reporting positive or negative change in health and wellbeing over the year. We found that individuals who spent more time in green space compared to the previous year were more likely to experience a positive change in their health and wellbeing, and they were also less likely to experience a negative change in their health and wellbeing . IndividThis study supports current research that there is a distinct effect of green space visitation for improved health and wellbeing outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals who visited a green space or private yard more often, or had a stronger nature orientation, reported a higher level of wellbeing. Additionally, over the course of the year from around April 2020 to April 2021, individuals who visited public green spaces more reported themselves as having a positive change in wellbeing over the course of the year, more so than in yard visits, although there was also a positive change. Consistently, individuals who had visited green spaces more had a lower likelihood of saying that they experienced a negative change in wellbeing. Interestingly, people with a stronger connectedness with nature also experienced a positive change in wellbeing.Based on these correlations, public green spaces appear to serve a critical role in benefiting a person’s wellbeing score during this difficult year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many cities in many countries globally would have experienced similar lockdowns and mobility restrictions that impacted on health and wellbeing ,51. As wIn addition to visiting green spaces, we also see a positive correlation between nature orientation and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are two possible mechanisms. First, people with higher nature orientation visit green spaces more often in general, and they may have already been using green spaces at a higher rate before the lockdowns . We propWe found that income is associated with personal wellbeing and likelihood to have a negative change in wellbeing. This result is consistent with previous studies. Studies from adult populations have shown that adult cohorts from lower socio-economic status households spent less time outside compared with adults from higher socio-economic status households ,55. ThisAdditionally, older individuals were less likely to have experienced a change in wellbeing compared to last year (positive or negative). This may be related to the use of public vs. private green spaces. Older individuals, who were worried about getting sick and contracting COVID-19, may have felt uncomfortable going into public green spaces due to the increased exposure to other people; however, they may in turn use private green space more often. In this case, there is a need to consider how private yards may help deliver nature interactions when public green spaces are not seen as ‘safe’ to visit by some people. A study from Brisbane in 2020 found that older people were less likely to use public green space during lockdown periods, and people with backyards or private green space were more likely to use these spaces when there were restrictions in place . AnotherThere are some limitations in this study. First, this is a correlative study; therefore, we can only speculate on the directionality of the causality based on other literature. We could not exclude the possibility that, for example, people with better health and wellbeing status chose to visit greenspace more often than people with worse health or wellbeing status. Second, we were also unable to exclude the potential confounding factors that were not captured in the survey. For example, individuals who visit greenspace more often may have more control over their time, which may lead to the better wellbeing. Third, older individuals were less likely to report a change in wellbeing over the year. Though it may be linked with green space visits, it may also be because the lockdown and mobility restriction has less impact on them as compared to working adults or students. Further research should aim to disentangle how these individual demographic factors may interact with psychological factors, such as orientation to nature, to better understand the way different populations use and engage green spaces.This combination of results indicates that nature relatedness, coupled with green space visitation, were able to help mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 stressors on human wellbeing in these two cities and allow individuals to experience a positive change in wellbeing. As COVID-19 continues to impact on the decision-making and behaviour around green space use, policies need to be considered to help individuals access green space safely in new situations, especially if we are to move toward a more inclusive and sustainable future where everyone has access to the mental health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces ,61. This


In recent years, nanodevices have attracted a large amount of attention due to their low power consumption and fast operation in electronics and photonics, as well as their high sensitivity in sensor applications. For example, following Moore’s law and the technology roadmap, the structure of transistors has been scaled down by a constant factor in order to obtain lower power consumption. Today, the scaling down of CMOS technology is focusing more on low voltages and cost-effective processes to match the requirements of mobile phone chips .2 V−1 s−1 for InGaAs (for electrons) and 1900 cm2 V−1 s−1 for Ge (for holes) compared to silicon, which has 1400 cm2 V−1 s−1 for electrons and 450 cm2 V−1 s−1 for holes [As a result of CMOS evolution, a lot of integration difficulties have been overcome, enabling the architecture of CMOS technology to change from planar or 2D to 3D. During this technology development, many issues, e.g., contact resistance, defects and reliability, have arisen and have been solved, which could affect device performance [Currently, photonic and sensor devices have also attracted a large amount of interest. For example, materials are required for emissions in the infrared and terahertz range with high responsivity and low dark currents ,6,7. TheIn this field, nanodevices are manufactured in 3D, and the emergence of electronics and photonics is inevitable. It is obvious that the complexity of our society requires technology to become more complicated in its design. In the future, electronic–photonic designs will be our ultimate goal in nanotechnology.This Special Issue presents the fabrication and characterization of group IV nanostructures, nanodevices and nanosensors and their integration with photonics. The issue also covers optoelectronic materials and defect engineering as well as characterization.


In this paper, we analyse the particular phenomena of COVID-19 pandemic shaming. We examine Sartre’s account of the undifferentiated other in the experience of ‘the look’, and his insistence on shame as a foundational relational affect, in order to give a robust theoretical frame to understand how pandemic shaming circulated both online and offline, in targeted and diffuse manners. We focus on two features of pandemic shaming. First, we draw attention to the structural necessity of an audience in acts of pandemic shaming, where the shamer acts on behalf of a community of others, the audience, to perform and enforce a set of standards, values or norms. We turn to the we-experience and collective emotions literature and discuss how the shamer believes themselves to be ‘speaking’ on behalf of a community who share their outrage along with their values. Second, we discuss how the presumption of a collective emotion was frequently mistaken in acts of pandemic shaming, where shaming frequently led to shame backlashes, where the audience revealed themselves not to share the emotion and values of the shamer, consequently shaming the shamer. We argue that Jean-Paul Sartre’s voyeur example is usefully illustrative of the tripartite structure of (1) shamed, (2) shamer and (3) shamer of the shamer that occurs in iterative processes of pandemic shaming, which are accompanied by shaming backlashes. We conclude by reflecting on the socio-historical context for Sartre’s accounts of shame and ‘the look’, namely the German occupation of Paris and Sartre’s experience of the French Resistance movement, and how these yield a particular socio-historical framing that makes evident how the extraordinary pseudo-wartime conditions of COVID-19 rendered atmospheres of distrust and suspicion prevalent. I clapped originally and it was lovely and everyone turned out for it here. Last week, after a rough night with DS [dear son] I fell asleep after he went down and missed the clapping. A post went on our community Facebook group actually naming and shaming me. I was mortified. The post said everyone else turned out and I showed the street up and if I can’t spend a minute showing my appreciation I don’t deserve to use the NHS if I or my family get ill. I ignored it at the time but I can’t get it out of my head it’s really upset me  and other frontline workers, as a way to show support and solidarity for those ‘fighting’ on the ‘frontline’. The full post read:Financial Times article noted: “Awful stories circulated of people being chastised for missing it, even when the reason was they were NHS shift workers trying to catch up on sleep”  was a widely reported phenomenon during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during lockdowns. Not only was the media saturated with reports of pandemic shaming, there were numerous articles in US and UK contexts reflecting on the phenomenon, with In this paper, we turn to Jean-Paul Sartre to analyse the particular phenomenon of COVID-19 pandemic shaming. We examine Sartre’s account of the undifferentiated other in the experience of ‘the look’, and his insistence on shame as a foundational relational affect, in order to give a robust theoretical frame to understand how pandemic shaming circulated both online and offline, in targeted and diffuse manners. In particular we focus on two features of pandemic shaming. First, we draw attention to the structural necessity of an audience in acts of pandemic shaming, where the shamer acts on behalf of a community of others, the audience, to perform and enforce a set of standards, values or norms. To discuss this feature of pandemic shaming, we turn to the we-experience and collective emotions literature and discuss how the shamer believes themselves to be acting on the part of a collective who share their outrage along with their values. Second, we discuss how the presumption of a collective emotion was frequently mistaken in acts of pandemic shaming, where shaming frequently led to shame backlashes, where the audience revealed themselves not to share the emotion and values of the shamer, consequently shaming the shamer. We argue that Jean-Paul Sartre’s voyeur example is usefully illustrative of the tripartite structure of (1) shamed, (2) shamer and (3) shamer of the shamer that occurs in iterative processes of pandemic shaming, which are accompanied by shaming backlashes. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the socio-historical context for Sartre’s accounts of shame and the look, namely the German occupation of Paris and Sartre’s experience of the French Resistance movement, and how these yield a particular socio-historical framing that makes evident how the extraordinary pseudo-wartime conditions of COVID-19 rendered atmospheres of distrust and suspicion prevalent.The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented experience that disrupted the very fabric of social, personal and political life. Familiar day-to-day personal and social practices were radically disrupted by public health measures such as social distancing and lockdowns, and we were all thrown into “uncertainty and strangeness” Aho, , p.2. AsHowever, in a UK context, public health guidance often lacked clarity and precision, and also changed frequently. For instance, after the first national lockdown commenced, on 23rd March 2020, individuals were ordered to “Stay Home” in order to “Save Lives” and “Protect the NHS”. The clear injunction to “Stay Home”, changed to “Stay Alert” on 10th May 2020 as rules eased. When faced with complaints that the injunction ‘Stay Alert’ was unclear, the British prime minister Boris Johnson encouraged citizens to “apply good, solid, British common sense” to determine how and when to follow public health guidance.Hence, it is not surprising that pandemic shaming was a widespread phenomenon in the UK during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. With often muddy public health guidance coming from the government, members of the public, often neighbours, were engaged in unofficially policing the behaviour, actions and intentions of others through public, and often social-media facilitated, censure and opprobrium. While ‘curtain twitching’ has long been acknowledged as a part of British social dynamics Fox, , the unsPandemic shaming was facilitated by the formation of “techno-social niches”, to use Krueger and Osler’s term, that involve both online and offline space and are “permeated by the physical and/or virtual presence of others” , while the voyeur represents the one who is or feels shamed. When we attempt to apply this account to our Mumsnet example, however, an immediate problem arises. It would position the mum who fell asleep and missed an evening of Clap for Carers as the voyeur and her neighbour as the footsteps in the hallway. But, since the footsteps are taken to be an imagined presence, the only being-for-itself involved is the person feeling shame: the voyeur. No adequate correlative to the shamer, as a being-for-itself, exists. The problem, of course, is that Sartre’s account is not one of active shame and shaming. In contrast to shame, shaming is not a first-person shame experience, as described above, where one feels seen and judged by an ‘other’ or ‘others’ . However, the aim of shaming is usually to induce a first-person experience of shame in the one who is the recipient of the shaming act, but this is by no means a necessary outcome. Martha Nussbaum takes shaming to be a stigmatising judgement, where an individual or a group judges and condemns another or others for transgressing or failing to live up to an ideal or norm that is shared by a community, by society or by a cultural or political grouping , shaming is often presumed to serve a pro-social function; the idea is that through a moment of being shamed one recognizes that one has fallen short of the standards of one’s community and makes positive changes to bring oneself back in line with the community’s values, norms and mores, perhaps after a period of diminished social standing. This “reintegrative shaming” serves a pro-social function, reinforcing rather than severing belonging , but also the perception of what is improper or disgraceful Zahavi, , p.214, Being and Nothingness does not consider shaming and how the normative values of a community can be instilled through shared intentions and collective emotions. In fact, as Zahavi points out, Sartre’s account of intersubjective relations is “ultimately conflictual” and denies the possibility of a “we-subject” that may have shared intentions , but an aggressive redirection of shame ”  to be so Adkins, , p.82.This demonstrates a problem raised by Stanley Cavell that, “when speak[ing] for the others with whom you consent to association”, “we do not know in advance what the content of our mutual acceptance is, how far we may be in agreement” Cavell, , p.27. AThis richer account of the fraught nature of shame, shaming and ‘speaking for others’ can help us to refigure Sartre’s voyeur example as a spectacle. Here, the relation between the voyeur and their lover via the keyhole, introduced by Sartre for its explicative value, becomes a demonstration of active shaming that plays out to an audience (the footsteps). As this audience can influence the actors by booing or cajoling them, it is no longer passively in agreement but becomes instead a key agent in the shaming dynamic. As Adkins notes, “Audiences of shaming matter because shaming is a hybrid act. It is an epistemic as well as an ethical act (I judge this behavior as unworthy of this stated community norm), and to be effective relies upon a friendly social reception on both accounts” Adkins, , p.79. Wshame backlash against the shamers”  becomes the audience of the shaming. In our example, there is not just the mum and her nosy and judgemental neighbour, but also an additional layer of looking, judging and shaming, that is, the much broader censure of this shaming incident by the local and national newspapers who carried the story, and the general public who in turn used social media to shame the shamer. In short, this instance of pandemic shaming, as like many others, also involved the shaming of the shamer, or a “ Adkins, , p.76.This three layered structure, (1) the object of shame, (2) the shamer and (3) the shamer of the shamer, aligns neatly with Sartre’s three figures: the lover, the voyeur and the footsteps. It also captures the dynamics of pandemic shaming that arose during COVID-19 lockdowns, where intangible and remote audiences often had the time and interest to follow the vicissitudes of a shame-shamer interaction. While all acts of shaming are never neutral, but always “reliant … on a friendly audience” Adkins, , p.77 whAs such, when it comes to acts of shaming, the affective scaffolding that attends the blending of online and offline spaces may very well preclude attempts by autonomous individuals to assert moral standards on a community’s behalf, unless they have enough loyal followers to drown out dissident voices, or the financial resources to harness trolls or bots to do the same thing. As Osler and Szanto observe of interpersonal atmospheres at a party, “the festivity of the party is not located in one individual, it is not just one person’s happiness, rather the festivity arises from and between those present” , uses the door and the keyhole, as equipment to serve their moral regard. Like footsteps in the corridor, the unintended audience response to this performance of moral regard produces essential modifications in the curtain twitcher’s structures. Indeed, here it seems entirely in keeping with other famous instances of online, public shaming that begin from an ill-considered social media update: if the effects on the individual are pernicious and long-lasting, in part the trauma comes from the message’s intended meaning being obscured, almost entirely, by the way it is taken up by its audience.Given the amplified effect of these blended spaces, we might then reassess another standard line in criticism of Sartre, which complains about the reductive negativity in his look. Martin Jay criticises Sartre’s account of the look for being “described in the most frighteningly negative terms” Jay, , p.276, A social media landscape can sometimes be experienced as a ‘universe of threatening gazes’. If being-on-the-internet is always a being-before-others, or a being before an ‘audience’, to use Adkins term, then we are always at risk, in those techno-social niches that we share with others, of having our expressions taken up and re-interpreted or re-worked by those others. In other words, the shamer is always at risk of being shamed. When this reworking leads to social exclusion, then we can see how a Sartrean account of shame becomes particularly pertinent.Being and Nothingness was published. Although such references can, of course, be threaded together, we turn to a more compelling description of the atmosphere under which the book was written: Sartre’s 1945 essay, “Paris under Occupation” . Sartre locates this interruption of habit in the physical absences of the city: “Paris was dead. No more cars, no more pedestrians … the skeleton of the city remained, fatuous and immobile and too big for us: the streets stretched out endlessly and were too wide, the distances too great, the perspectives too vast” Sartre, , p.5–6. We continued to live […] we could work, eat, talk, sleep sometimes even laugh […] the horror seemed to be outside, within things” . Under the affective climates of occupation, it is not surprising that Sartre’s world of social relations in  Sartre, , p.355.  Sartre, , p.2 as  Sartre, , p.116 a Sartre,  that the Sartre, . In thisBy April 2020, some ninety countries had instituted lockdowns, meaning more than 3.9 billion people were asked or ordered to stay at home. Such conditions should, seemingly, have produced uniform experiences of pandemic shaming, if Sartre’s point were universally applicable. As yet, no such uniformity has appeared. Certainly, a wide range of confounding factors may explain why no single form of pandemic shaming occurred: cultural, social, and infrastructural concerns meant that pandemic lockdowns could affect households on the same street differently, let alone people in different countries. But the case of pandemic shaming in the UK is particularly useful in illustrating the potential consequences of poor public health guidance when combined with the atmospheres of vulnerability generated in lockdowns and under occupations. Lockdowns (or occupations) are circumstances where individuals, because they are faced with their own bodily vulnerability, are more prone to feeling shame and are more likely to shame others. Policies that obscure the terms of these lockdowns, it seems, heighten this sense of vulnerability, and, concomitantly, shame proneness and the potential for shaming. Of course, clearer policies do not, in themselves, produce less shame or shaming. For Sartre, the problem of life under Occupation is not a lack of clarity about specific guidance; it is the proliferation of an atmosphere of distrust and shame whose connection to the actual German soldiers remains vague and indefinite. If the UK example shows the need for policies that are clear in their protocols, it is even more important that they be sensitive to their shame-producing potential.In this article, we have established the circumstances that gave rise to a distinct form of pandemic shaming. We have shown how the role of the audience was key to the initial impulses to shame and to the shame backlashes that occurred when these shaming bids went wrong. Turning to Sartre’s account of the look gave us phenomenological tools for examining the agents at work in these circumstances. But we also returned this analysis to its historical context, to show corollaries between Sartre’s affective atmospheres under the Occupation and those generated during lockdowns. As a consequence, we can say that under lockdown conditions, particular self-other relations emerge that are predisposed to shame and shaming. For this reason, future planning about pandemic preparedness demands a shame-sensitivity attuned to phenomenological method.


As grandparents’ involvement in parenting becomes more common, it is valuable to understand the differences between grandparenting and parenting and how these differences affect children. To elucidate the differences between grandparenting and parenting and their effects on children’s creativity performance, children’s performance on creativity tasks after grandparent–child interactions and parent–child interactions were compared, and the behavioral differences between grandparents and parents when interacting with children were discussed. In this study, grandparents and parents were asked to interact with children separately, and creativity performance was measured before and after adult-child interactions. The results showed that children’s creative performance improved significantly after parent–child interactions, while there was little change after grandparent–child interactions. In addition, according to parental investment theory, parents provided children with more cognitive and interpersonal resources during the interaction compared to grandparents. Family environment is usually considered to be an important factor influencing children’s creativity , and preNowadays, grandparenting is increasingly being adopted as a preferred solution to reduce the need for formal child care and to free mothers from child care on behalf of working parents , which hOn the one hand, help from grandparents, both past and present, is highly associated with maternal fertility success. A review by However, on the other hand, according to other studies, grandparenting is detrimental to children’s cognitive development. Although there are plenty of studies on the effects of intergenerational parenting on children’s cognitive, emotional, and ability development, few studies have focused on the effects of intergenerational parenting on children’s creativity. Creativity is often defined as the development of original ideas that are useful or influential . ResearcIn order to foster children’s creativity, both nuclear and intergenerational families should try to create a harmonious family atmosphere and provide more opportunities for children to engage in creative activities . MeanwhiRealistically, the current trend of intergenerational parenting is difficult to change, yet given the possible drawbacks of grandparenting, such as overindulgence  that mayFrom the perspective of parental investment theory , the atmAccording to Hertwig et al., there are at least three types of family resources: (1) material resources, such as money for food, health care, and higher education; (2) cognitive resources, such as intellectual stimulation, training, and guidance; and (3) interpersonal resources, such as attention, time, love, affection, and general encouragement. The three types of resources can be distinguished as follows. Material resources aim to provide a good living and educational environment for children, cognitive resources are reflected in children’s intellectual development through parents’ intellectual and time investment, and interpersonal resources are reflected in parents’ support for children at the level of non-intellectual factors . In view of this, parents’ economic base, cognitive level, personality traits, and emotional values can be considered as resources. when parents and grandparents interact with children separately, parents can provide significantly more cognitive and interpersonal resources than grandparents.In the parental investment framework, grandparents’ participation is also recognized as a kind of family resource. Intergenerational comparative studies on child rearing have shown that there are several differences in child rearing between grandparents and parents, and such differences can have different effects on children. A study that examined differences in attitudes and perceptions of child-rearing among grandparents and parents showed that grandparents placed more emphasis on behavioral training and traditional filial education for their children, while parents placed more emphasis on their children’s independence, autonomy, and creativity . China FIt is therefore clear that parents and grandparents have their own priorities in terms of parenting concepts and behaviors. Relatively, parents are more flexible and treat them with more equality and respect, which is certainly more conducive to the development of children’s creativity, while grandparents’ parenting behaviors are more dogmatic and stricter, but more doting, which does not seem to be as conducive to the development of creativity.In terms of the family resources involved in intergenerational parenting, a family’s material resources are not likely to change much as most Chinese grandparents consider themselves to be child-rearing assistants and the primary responsibility for child rearing still lies with the parents . ConsideParticipants were 74 pairs of elementary school students and their parents and grandparents, including 35 girls (47.3%), from three public elementary schools in Fengxian District, Shanghai. The mean age of the participants was 9.51 years, with a standard deviation of 1.19 years. Among all families participating in the experiment, 72.9% of the parents had college or higher education, but only 6.8% of the grandparents had college or higher education, mostly in elementary (43.2%) and junior high school (20.3%). 90.5% of parents had stable jobs, with white-collar occupations predominating, while 82.4% of grandparents had retired, and the vast majority were blue-collar workers before retirement. Each group of families  signed an informed consent form prior to the start of the study, in which the students were signed by their parents, and their verbal consent was obtained. Upon completion of all study tasks, each group of families will be paid 100 RMB.A field experiment was used to control for parent–child interactions and grandparent–child interactions in a three-generation family, so as to capture the behavior of parent-child and grandparent-child interactions in a real environment and thus improve the ecological validity of this study.A 2 × 2 mixed experimental design was used. The within-group variable was “whether there was interaction” , and the between-group variable was “interaction with which family member” . The dependent variable was children’s creativity.Previous research has shown that creativity is best measured using multiple instruments , so thisCreative problem solving requires generating a variety of solutions or hypotheses through divergent thinking, but also requires individuals to select appropriate problem-solving strategies based on task requirements, rely on cognitive monitoring to break through thinking stereotypes, and ultimately generate optimal creative task solutions. Therefore, insight tasks were added as an indicator of convergent thinking in order to examine the influence of parental and grandparental factors more comprehensively on children’s creativity. The insight tasks were chosen to be as relatively simple as possible to match the cognitive ability level of elementary school students, such as “If you have black socks and brown socks in your drawer, mixed in the ratio of 4:5, how many socks will you have to take out to be sure of having a pair of the same color?” .Creativity was evaluated on the following specific indicators: originality and elaboration of TTCT-Figural, originality, and fluency of AUT, and insight problem-solving scores. Originality of TTCT-Figural, elaboration of TTCT-Figural, originality of AUT, and fluency of AUT were assessed by using Consensual Assessment Technique CAT, , obtaineIn this study, video observation and post-coding were used to measure how children interacted with their parents and grandparents. Adult-child conversations and interactions were coded through observation methods of event sampling and synthetical evaluation within the framework of parental investment theory . Coding The coding was performed independently by two trained coders, both of whom are PhD candidates in the field of creativity research. The process was as follows: (1) converting all video materials  into textual materials in the form of dialogs; (2) using parents’ investment in their children as a theoretical framework, identifying the behavioral codes to be recorded in parent–child interactions and grandparent-child interactions, and determining the operational definitions of each behavioral code; and (3) event coding, which was mainly based on what the adults  said, with the coding method being objective scoring. For example, the adult instructs or prompts the child several times during the interaction. “Think about what socks can be used for at Christmas.” “What are the little dolls made of?.” The adult scored 1 point for each reminder; (4) state coding, based primarily on nonverbal performance , was scored on a 5-point scale. The coding alpha coefficient ranged from 0.71 to 0.97, which is relatively good.A group of participants, “a child and an adult,” were experimented one-on-one by an experimenter. Each child participated in the experiment twice, one with his parents and one with his grandparents. The order of the parent and grandparent participation in the study was randomly selected based on the timing of the participants, meaning that some children participated in the experiment with their grandparents first and some children participated with their parents first, with approximately 2 weeks between two experiments.In each experiment, children were asked to complete two sets of creativity tests of equal difficulty (Form AB and Form CD). The procedure was identical for both experiments  a set of TTCT-Figural tasks and AUT tasks in Form AB or Form CD, each with a time limit of 3 min; (2) grandparent–child interaction or parent–child interaction, each with a time limit of 3 min, for a total of 3 tasks; (3) another set of TTCT-graphic tasks in Form AB or Form CD of the same difficulty TTCT-Figural task and AUT task with a time limit of 3 min each for a total of 3 tasks; (4) a set of insight problem solving in form AB or form CD with a time limit of 3 min each for a total of 4 tasks; (5) grandparent–child interaction or parent–child interaction with a time limit of 5 min; and (6) another set of insight problem solving in form AB or form CD with the same difficulty with a time limit of 3 min each for a total of 4 tasks.Both processes of grandparent-grandchild interaction or parent–child interaction were recorded in video form for later behavioral coding by the researchers. The instructions for grandparent–grandchild interaction or parent–child interaction are as follows. “Dad/Mom/Grandpa/Grandma, this is a task that your child has just completed. Please have a look or listen to what he says. You can have a conversation or interaction about this task, such as giving him/her some feedback or comments. During this process, we will take a video of up to 5 min. Thank you!” Each group of participants will be randomly divided into four experimental conditions, and the actual experimental sequence is shown in SPSS 22.0 is used to analyze the data.t-test was conducted on the resources given by parents and grandparents during the interaction , and the results showed that there were significant differences between parent–child interactions and grandparent–grandchild interactions in a family .To test hypothesis 1, a paired-samples mily see . Specifitcognitive resources in DT task = 6.180**, tinterpersonal resources in DT task = 5.024**, tcognitive resources in CT task = 5.703**, tinterpersonal resources in CT task = 4.517**, see According to parental investment theory, prompting instruction and exemplary instruction provided by adults in the interaction, as well as adults’ problem-solving skills, are cognitive resources. The sum of positive feedback, body distance, intimacy, and adult’s emotional state minus negative feedback are interpersonal resources. During the interaction, parents gave more resources to their children compared to grandparents, both in terms of cognitive and interpersonal resources , but in terms of effective duration of parent–child and grandparent–grandchild interactions, effective parent–child interactions were significantly longer than grandparent–grandchild interactions between the two divergent thinking tasks , and between the two convergent thinking tasks .F = 3.939*, p = 0.049). The interaction effect became nonsignificant when adults’ educational attainment was included in the analysis as a controlling variable. For the elaboration indicator of the TTCT-Figural task, the main effect of “whether there was interaction” was significant , whereas neither the main effect nor the interaction effect of “interaction with which family member” was significant. Similarly, when we control for educational attainment in repeated measures, the main effect of “whether there was interaction” is no longer significant. Generally, the originality  and elaboration  of the TTCT-Figural task before and after parent–child interaction were significantly higher than those before parent–child interaction, but scores on the AUT and insight problem-solving tasks did not show significant differences before and after the parent–child interaction , and children’s creativity performance, including TTCT-Figural originality, TTCT-Figural elaboration, AUT originality, AUT fluency, and insight scores, while controlling for the adults’ educational level see . The resThe present study found that parents were able to provide more cognitive and interpersonal resources to their children compared to grandparents, thus influencing their children’s creative performance.Children’s creativity performance (mainly reflected in TTCT task scores) could be improved after interaction with their parents, while did not change significantly after interaction with grandparents, suggesting that it is not the “interaction with adults,” but “interaction with whom” that really matters children’s performance on subsequent creativity tasks. Interactions between children and adults may not contribute to creativity development in and of themselves; what really matters is the quality of interactions between children and adults. Why, then, do interactions with parents promote children’s creativity, but not interactions with grandparents?Previous research has shown that both cognitive and emotional pathways may have an impact on children’s creative performance . In the We noted that the interaction effects of “whether there is interaction” and “interaction with whom” disappear when the level of education is included as a control variable. In fact, the increase in performance after the interaction may be attributed to the higher level of education of the parents. In general, there is a significant difference between parents and grandparents in terms of education level, which is also evident in the sample. Most parents had higher education , while grandparents’ education level was mainly elementary and middle school, with fewer grandparents with high school or higher education. Compared to grandparents, parents spend more time focusing on tasks in their interactions with their children. Their problem-solving skills and ability to discuss problem-solving solutions with their children are better than grandparents, which may serve as a better role model for their children. This also means that parents may have more valuable knowledge to share in their interactions with their children, thus increasing their children’s creativity. Existing research suggests that knowledge can increase the creativity of both sharers and receivers through three mechanisms. First, in the process of exploring the task, children gain a clearer understanding of the task they are doing. An individual may not be able to explain something clearly to his colleague unless he fully understands it, so knowledge sharing can develop into a good opportunity for individuals to expand their understanding of knowledge . Second,As for the emotional pathway, the results showed that the factor significantly associated with children’s creativity was the interpersonal resources provided by adults. According to the results of the study, parents have better emotional states during interactions with their children compared to grandparents, and children’s emotional states are positively correlated with adults’ emotional states. Previous research has generally concluded that positive emotions stimulate creativity more than neutral or negative emotions . For exaOn the one hand, the positive emotions that adults and children bring to children may facilitate creativity by enhancing cognitive flexibility . CognitiOn the other hand, interactions between adults and children may have an emotionally motivating effect, thereby increasing children’s intrinsic motivation in subsequent tasks, which, in turn, influences children’s creative performance. Creativity research from the field of organizational behavior suggests that employees are more psychologically secure and more likely to speak up for new ideas when leaders show affirmation of the task . When leThe second finding of the study was that the positive effects of the interactions between children and adults occurred only in divergent thinking tasks, not convergent thinking tasks. In general, researchers typically use either divergent thinking tasks (such as AUT) or convergent thinking tasks (such as insight problem solving) to measure creativity, but not both. In AUT tasks , participants need answer as multiple different ideas as possible (so it is divergent) to enhance the probability to make more novel output . In this work, children’s mean scores on the insight task were 0.45 (pre-interaction) and 0.43 (post-interaction), indicating that this type of creative task was too difficult for elementary school children, leading to poor results for the dependent variable across level conditions, suggesting a “floor effect” in the experiment. Comparatively, TTCT-Figural and AUT were more appropriate for the cognitive level of elementary school students in terms of difficulty, and children’s performance on these two divergent thinking tasks was more variable, with the dependent variable being more sensitive to the manipulation of the independent variable.First, children’s performance on divergent thinking tasks improved after interacting with parents, but not after interacting with grandparents. The interaction or main effect of the variables disappeared after controlling for adults’ education level. Comparatively, parents had much higher levels of education than grandparents, and the more educated the adults were, the more cognitive and interpersonal resources they could provide to children during the interaction. This suggests that adults’ educational attainment is an important factor influencing the quality of interactions with children, and that the quality of interactions has a positive effect on children’s subsequent creative performance.Second, the adults-children interaction only had an effect on the subsequent divergent thinking task but not on the convergent thinking task, which may be that the interaction only facilitated children’s divergent thinking, or it may be that the convergent thinking measurement instrument chosen was too difficult. For younger age groups, creativity measurement instruments should be chosen more carefully.Third, this study was unable to strip away the effects of SES on children’s creativity. Higher parental education was associated with higher quality parent–child interactions and corresponding increases in children’s subsequent creative performance. So, do children who raised by better-educated grandparents also enhance their creative performance after interacting with their grandparents? Or, is it possible to promote children’s creative performances by increasing the cognitive level of grandparents? Future research could be conducted further.The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University Committee on Human Research Protection at East China Normal University (HR: 156-2018); furthermore, written informed consents were obtained from participants prior to study onset, and the methods were carried out following the approved guidelines. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) and minor(s)’ legal guardian/next of kin, for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.YL conceived and designed the study. YL and YP performed the investigation. YL and WP conducted statistical analysis and the interpretation of article. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.Research supported by The Program for Professor of Special Appointment at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (No.TP2020013).The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


Scientists in the United States are more politically liberal than the general population. This fact has fed charges of political bias. To learn more about scientists’ political behavior, we analyze publicly available Federal Election Commission data. We find that scientists who donate to federal candidates and parties are far more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, with less than 10 percent of donations going to Republicans in recent years. The same pattern holds true for employees of the academic sector generally, and for scientists employed in the energy sector. This was not always the case: Before 2000, political contributions were more evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We argue that these observed changes are more readily explained by changes in Republican Party attitudes toward science than by changes in American scientists. We reason that greater public involvement by centrist and conservative scientists could help increase trust in science among Republicans. American academia is often accused of liberal bias, and some observers have blamed the academy’s left-wing slant for undermining trust in science  maintains a publicly accessible database of donations made by individuals to federal candidates and parties from 1979 to the present, which can be sorted according to many parameters, including professional employment. The FEC data, covering 43 years, allow us to track longitudinal as well as short-term shifts in political giving by scientists. This data set has the added advantage of including scientists working in both industry and academia.Recent years have seen a large increase in total federal donations, many of them small-dollar amounts, driven largely by online-donation platforms and social-media campaigns. This increase in political giving provides a new incentive to look at this body of data, which has previously, for example, been used to assess the political ideologies of American lawyers .To capture donations from industry, we focused on ten energy companies—Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, Valero Energy, Energy Transfer, World Fuel Services, ConocoPhillips, Exelon Corporation and Plains GP Holdings—which rank highly on the S&P 500 and employ many scientists and engineers. To determine which energy-sector donations come from executives and which from working scientists, we filter based on whether the listed occupation contains “supervisor”, “chairman,” “CEO”, “COO,” “VP,” “executive”, or “president” (to capture executives); or “engineer,” “geologist,” “chemist,” “geophysicist,” “scientist,” “professor,” or “researcher” (to capture scientists). The pipeline of the analysis can be accessed on GitHub code repository  But, from 2000–2021, donations to Republicans fell drastically, to less than 10 percent  than the professors they employ. Second, the trend of decreasing donations to Republicans holds for both sectarian and non-sectarian institutions. While the fraction of total donations to Republicans by researchers at Ivy League institutions has historically been lower than the average for colleges and universities overall, we observe a comparable trend of decreased giving to Republicans from scientists at institutions affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Third, a decrease in the fraction of donations to the Republican Party can be observed across different disciplines Fig.   of American PhD-holding scientists are employed in academia; a similar proportion are employed in the private sector (about 42 percent)  conflict with conservative views. Communism refers to the idea that results of scientific research should be the common property of the scientific community, while universalism refers to the idea that knowledge should transcend racial, class, national, or political barriers. A recent study provides empirical evidence for this hypothesis, showing that endorsement of these values was negatively associated with conservative and libertarian views  provides additional relevant evidence. The GSS has had a question about “confidence in the scientific community,” dating back to the 1970s. In these data, we see that there is both a major ideological shift and a partisan ard Fig. . In the We know of no evidence showing that the makeup of scientists, in terms of their educational levels, changed during this time. In contrast, many studies have tracked how the Republican Party has developed a more oppositional attitude toward science since the Reagan administration —especially demands for greater government regulation or new forms of taxation to address the problem. Such resistance might explain why 73 percent of Democrats believe that scientists should take an active role in policy debates, compared to 43 percent of Republicans (Kennedy and Funk, The distance that conservatives have maintained from academic science may also confer certain political advantages. By establishing intellectual networks, especially think tanks, that operate outside the confines of the academy, conservative intellectuals have avoided retreating into scholasticism and have succeeded in pushing public debate to the right Medvetz, .If the trends captured in our study continue, the increased clustering of scientists away from Republicans might further undermine the perceived legitimacy of scientists qua policy advisors in the view of conservative voters, and further decrease conservative Republicans’ trust in science. These trends might lead some people to consider that perhaps conservatives are right when they call for greater ideological diversity in academic life. However, that solution, if it can be called that, neglects the role of Republican anti-scientific positions.What might make sense, however, is to focus attention on scientists whose views are more in line with Americans in general. The data examined here pertain only to scientists who gave money subject to FEC disclosure rules. Scientists who give money to political parties likely feel strongly about political issues, and it may be that these scientists are also more likely to contribute to public conversations on contested issues. If so, it would reinforce the common impression that scientists, like other academics, are all extremely liberal.However, as discussed above, available evidence shows that most academics are actually politically moderate or only slightly left of center. There are likely many scientists of moderate or conservative political persuasion who support causes other than Republican candidates and the Republican Party, perhaps in part because they are troubled by prevailing Republican positions on evolution, climate, or Covid-19. Many of these scientists may be sitting on the sidelines, as it were, of public debate. Studies of the “trusted messenger effect” suggest that we are all more likely to trust a message if it comes from someone who we believe shares our values (Siegrist et al.,