Well-Being Sciences Review

How to capture moral behaviors: From laboratory to everyday life

Yumeng Sun — 2025-08-05

Morality is an eternal topic that has been contemplated and pursued by both philosophers and lay people alike for thousands of years. Psychologists have found that individuals' moral judgments, moral emotions, moral intentions, moral motivations, moral reasoning and moral behaviors are not internally consistent. Among these, moral behavior is most relevant to everyday life. Given that moral behaviors are influenced by various factors such as personality traits (e.g., virtue), social situations (e.g., time pressure), and social desirability (e.g., moral image), it is quite challenging to effectively and accurately measure moral behaviors both in the laboratory and in real-life social situations. Our current work synthesizes differing concepts of moral behaviors and their conceptual distinctions from diverse disciplinary perspectives. We then offer a selective review on differing paradigms such as scale method, laboratory experiment, virtual reality, field experiment, big data approaches and experience-sampling method. It is our hope that this work would inspire researchers to better capture and explore the complex and dynamic moral behaviors, and provide potential future prospects to the emerging trends of novel thoughts, theories, methods, paradigms and applications for unveiling moral behaviors and their underlying processes.

Health, wellness, and quality of life in volcanic communities: A comprehensive review of risks and protective strategies

Haiquan Wei — 2025-08-05

Living in volcanic regions presents unique health challenges that require comprehensive wellness approaches. Mental health, quality of life, and community resilience maybe encounter extremely dangerous situations during a volcanic crisis. It is needed to promote health and wellness alongside risk management. Volcanic eruptions bring us a series of health and environmental problems, which is determined by the different types of the volcanoes and their eruptions. The diseases caused by volcanoes and explosive eruptions can be classified into 5 categories: disease of the respiratory and digestive systems, trauma infection, abnormal cell growth and problems caused by environmental pollution after eruption. Among them, the diseases and injuries caused by volcanic ash mainly include silicosis, pulmonary inflammation, inflammatory body and cytokine diseases, changes in cell morphology, decreased cell density, obvious vacuolation of peritoneal macrophages, thyroid cancer, lung cancer, increased vulnerability to coronaviruses and other respiratory system diseases, as well as acute gastroenteritis, heavy metal poisoning, fluoride poisoning, chemical irritation, and peptic ulcers severe digestive system diseases. During extraordinary times (such as the period of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 [COVID- 19] pandemic), the disaster-causing effect of volcanic ash is more pronounced on susceptible populations, such as asthma patients, infants and the elderly. The widespread pathogenic and harmful factors are volcanic ash and toxic volcanic gases, even during the quiet period of volcanic activity. Volcanoes and volcanic eruptions bring us both wealth and disasters at the same time, which requires us to be able to coexist peacefully with volcanoes. It is of great significance for everyone to carry out popular science education on the background knowledge of volcanoes and understand the volcanoes on which we live. Volcanologists can play a greater role in volcanic education.

Trends for the development of traditional Chinese medicine in the digital & artificial intelligence era: Integration into daily wellness practices, smart digitalization, and globalization

Shengtian Hou — 2025-08-05

With the rapid development of science and technology, smart digitalization has become a salient feature of the current era. Against this backdrop, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a treasure of the Chinese nation, is facing unprecedented development opportunities. The integration of TCM into daily wellness practices, its smart digitalization, and to go global in the digital & AI era not only conform to the trend of the times but are also inevitable choices for its inheritance, innovation, and development.

Preventing vaping among Chinese youth in the digital age: Leveraging artificial intelligence to curb latent risks

Xibin Sun — 2025-08-05

We call for leveraging artificial intelligence techniques to prevent minors from experimenting with vaping in this digital era, including reducing both online transactions and information exposure.

Engagement of young Chinese adults born between 1990 and 2000 with the culture of traditional Chinese music: A quantitative study

Ming Gao — 2025-08-05

The post-90s generation faces several challenges in engaging with and being exposed to traditional Chinese music culture, particularly due to issues related to schools, families, and cultural imbalance. These challenges are becoming increasingly prominent as modern influences continue to reshape young people’s cultural preferences. This study analyzes and explores these issues and finds that post-90s individuals who have studied traditional Chinese music culture are more proactive in engaging with it. Moreover, frequent discussions about traditional Chinese music culture by their parents have helped them better understand it. These findings suggest that both formal education and family communication play significant roles in shaping cultural identity and musical engagement. In addition, this study also finds that the advancement of Western musical instruments, the lack of family financial resources, and high tuition fees are barriers to the post-90s generation’s exposure to traditional Chinese music culture. These financial and perceptual obstacles limit their opportunities to engage with and appreciate their own musical heritage. Therefore, to address these issues, we need to increase the interest of the post-90s in learning about traditional Chinese music culture and make reasonable use of media communication to promote it. This can also attract their attention through the development and evolution of traditional Chinese music culture. Addressing these barriers will help the post-90s generation better connect with traditional Chinese music culture and promote the inheritance of cultural traditions in the modern age.

Appearance is power: How different types of social media use affect appearance anxiety

Jiaxi Chen — 2025-08-05

Previous research on social media use has predominantly treated all users as homogeneous, potentially overemphasizing the severity of issues like appearance anxiety. This study conducted a survey of 461 college students, and adopted objective indicators such as the number of friends and use time to classify social media user groups into a high-frequency normal group, a low-frequency normal group, and an unusual group. The mediating role of objectification was used to explain the relationship between social media use and appearance anxiety. Results showed: (1) High-frequency social media use significantly influenced appearance anxiety, with stronger effects in the unusual group; (2) The unusual group showed significantly higher levels of appearance anxiety and objectification compared to the high- and low-frequency normal groups, with objectification partially mediating the impact of social media use on appearance anxiety in the unusual group. This study clarifies the negative effects of normal and unusual social media use patterns on appearance anxiety, offering new insights for future research.

Effects of school-based interval jump rope training on physical fitness in adolescents: A cluster randomized controlled trial

Ji Wu — 2025-08-05

Interval training in school settings has been shown to improve adolescent physical fitness; however, the optimal work-to-rest ratios (WRRs) for maximizing benefits across various fitness components remain unclear. This study aimed to assess the impact of school-based interval jump rope training (IJRT) with three different WRRs on physical fitness in adolescents aged 12 to 14 years and to identify the most effective WRRs. A cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted with 143 adolescents (mean age = 12.8 ± 0.5 years; 72 females) from a middle school in Shenzhen, China. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups based on their class: 30 seconds/30 seconds (G1, N = 48), 30 seconds/45 seconds (G2, N = 47), and 30 seconds/15 seconds (G3, N = 48) WRRs. Each group participated in IJRT three times per week for 8 weeks. Physical fitness parameters, including maximal oxygen uptake (VO_2max), grip strength, standing long jump, sit-ups, and 50-meter sprint performance, were measured pre- and post-intervention. Between-group differences were analyzed using analysis of covariance. The results demonstrated that the G2 (30 seconds/45 seconds) was more effective than the G1 (30 seconds/30 seconds) and G3 (30 seconds/15 seconds) in enhancing adolescents’ cardiorespiratory endurance and sprint performance.