19 Reasons Why (Fast Travel Links)
Consortium piece of the 19 Reasons Why series & associated COVID articles
My 2nd Dose ≠ Post-COVID Life (Yet)
19 Reasons Why
Reason 8: Women & Children First, Not Men & Children First
5 Ways To Be More Introverted
Personality & #MentalHealth
‘#Introverts are indeed less likely to be affected by COVID-19 as they are less worried than highly extraverted individuals about not being as socially active as they were before restrictions on physical meetings etc. become the new reality.’
Gruda, D., & Ojo, A. (2021). Inferring the Relationship between Anxiety and Extraversion from Tweets during COVID19–A Linguistic Analytics Approach. In Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (p. 2689).
#COVID19 data from 93,125 subjects collected from March 20–April 6, 2020 across 47 countries found that “although stringent measures generally help people to worry less and feel safer, the lifestyle associated with such measures feels more natural to introverts than to extraverts.
For introverts, the stringency of #socialdistancing measures significantly reduced depressive symptoms, whereas for extraverts the stringency of social distancing increased (albeit not significantly) depressive symptoms.”
Wijngaards, I., de Zilwa, S. C. S., & Burger, M. J. (2020). Extraversion moderates the relationship between the stringency of COVID-19 protective measures and depressive symptoms. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.
Finally, extraversion was associated with increases (i.e., positive trajectories) in perceived stressfulness between early April 2020 and early July 2020 and decreases (i.e., negative trajectories) in perceived stressfulness between early July 2020 and early September 2020.
Zacher, H. & Rudolph, C. W. (2021, in press). Big Five traits as predictors of perceived stressfulness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality and Individual Differences.
“Introverts and extraverts exhibit fundamentally different approaches to social life (Smillie, Kern, & Uljarevic, 2019; Zelenski, Sobocko, & Whelan, 2014). Even if introverts and extraverts show similar shifts in their sense of social connection, feeling connected may be a more essential source of extraverts’ overall well-being.
This idea is reflected in numerous internet memes showing introverts learning that their “normal lifestyle is called quarantine” and they should “check on extraverted friends” (see #introvertmemes on Twitter).
Given that introverts typically have fewer social interactions than extraverts (Harris et al., 2017; Lucas, Le, & Dyrenforth, 2008; Srivastava, Angelo, & Vallereux, 2008), social distancing requirements produced relatively smaller shifts in their behavior, leaving their subjective feelings of social connection & well-being unscathed relative to extraverts.”
Folk, D., Okabe-Miyamoto, K., Dunn, E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2020). Did Social Connection Decline During the First Wave of COVID-19?: The Role of Extraversion. Collabra: Psychology, 6(1), 37. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.365
Oxytocin is a hormone in the bloodstream and a neurotransmitter in the brain.
Acute oxytocin release induces many behavioral changes; it is the specific neurotransmitter of love, sexual pleasure, orgasm, bonding, empathy, attachment, and motherhood (Sayin, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017-b,c , 2018-a, 2019; Kuchinska, 2009; Carter, 1992; Lee, 2009; Magon, 2011; Kim, 2015).
The anterior cingulate and insula are activated at orgasms, but they can also be activated by painful stimuli (Pukall, 2005; Casey, 1994, 2001). There is a possibility that pain and orgasm may be using similar or the same spinothalamic pathways, a neurophysiological mechanism which can explain why some women and men enjoy mild pain and pleasure/orgasm together in BDSM sessions.
The female orgasm is analgesic (Whipple, 1985; Steinman, 1983; Komisaruk, 2006), probably due to the release of oxytocin, which has also analgesic effects, and endogenous opioids. This can also explain how mild pain and orgasmic pleasure can be interchangeable with each other.
The anti-inflammatory effect of OXT reduces inflammation, thus allowing wounds to heal more quickly.
“Oxytocin modulates inflammation by decreasing certain cytokines. Thus, the increased release of OXT via orgasm has the potential to hasten wound healing. Sexual arousal and orgasms increase the absolute number of natural killer cells & leukocytes in peripheral blood, which helps boost the immune system.” — Samantha Tojino
The kind of interactions that are worth having, worth cultivating, & worth promoting in interpersonal bonds.