270 results for “psyc”
We’re heading to @pgconfeu 2026 in Valencia! 🎉
Daniele and Hannah from the Psycopg team will be at the Palacio de Congresos for the conference from the 20th to 22nd October.
If you’re attending, come say hi 👋 Whether it’s a quick hello or a longer chat about Psycopg, Python or Postgres, we’d love to meet you!
DATE: October 13, 2026 at 09:41PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED
TITLE: AI can act exactly like a human, but we still don't think it's conscious
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185017.htm
A new study reveals that people draw a surprisingly sharp line between human consciousness and artificial intelligence, even when both behave identically. Researchers found that participants considered even the most responsive AI less conscious than the least responsive human. Yet when asked about "awareness" instead, people judged humans and AI much more similarly.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185017.htm
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Consciousness #HumanVsAI #AIethics #AIAwareness #TechNews #MindAndMachine #ConsciousnessDebate #HumanLikeAI
2
Educate. How?
Learn to recognise when psychopathy is mixed with fascism & educate others to recognise it.
And never, but never, hand it power - whether via admiration, money (clicks), votes, or submission.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder (involving brain structure). It is mediated by environment, & not all psychopaths do harm. So far, there's no cure.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sociopaths-and-why-we-elect-them,15201
[P] So, Anthropic published a paper talking about the discovery of wuffering in LLMs that was a mimicry of our experience of it, and that it could mess the LLM up. I can't speak to the veracity, but if the possibility exists? All I could think was: "No, don't tell neurotypical hiverqrchians that!" Every hiverarchian alive is wired to get dopamine from the suffering of the out-group. Why do you think grimdark is so adored?
#psychology #actuallyautistic #ai #grimdark #suffering #writing
-1
Repouet d'un compte privé :
Vidéo de 13 minutes sur le narcissisme dans le militantisme
"Si tu suis et cautionne une personne violente, la prochaine personne violentée ce sera toi"
https://youtu.be/neGamME6Uv8?si=ZUeebA982TOK9oVu
#psychologie #personnalité
Aprikosenkind von Judith Merchant: Wenn Mutterliebe zur gefährlichen Gewissheit wird https://www.lesering.de/id/4952466/aprikosenkind-judith-merchant-rezension/ #PsychologischeSpannung #Familiengeheimnisse #DomesticSuspense #JudithMerchant #Psychothriller #Buchrezension #Aprikosenkind #Buchrezension #Thriller2026 #Mutterliebe #SCHWEIG! #ATME!
https://www.europesays.com/be-fr/285867/ Pour Caroline Goldman, «les parents vivent la scolarité de leur enfant à leur place, en particulier les mères» #BE #BEFr #Belgique #Belgium #Celebrities #Celebrity #Divertissement #École #Enfants #Entertainment #people #psychologie
How to Defeat Fascism: Step by Step #psychology #politics #lucasbean - YouTube
DATE: October 13, 2026 at 05:19AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEED
TITLE: The secret to handling stress better may start at breakfast
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185023.htm
Your daily routine could have a bigger impact on your ability to handle stress than you realize. A Binghamton University study of approximately 400 college students found that eating breakfast regularly, exercising, sleeping well, and taking fish oil were associated with greater psychological flexibility, which helps people adapt to stressful situations. Poor sleep and unhealthy eating habits, meanwhile, were linked to lower flexibility and resilience.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185023.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #stressmanagement #breakfastbenefits #psychologicalflexibility #collegewellness #healthyhabits #sleepquality #exercisebenefits #fishoilbenefits #resilience #stressrelief
DATE: October 13, 2026 at 05:19AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEED
TITLE: The secret to handling stress better may start at breakfast
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185023.htm
Your daily routine could have a bigger impact on your ability to handle stress than you realize. A Binghamton University study of approximately 400 college students found that eating breakfast regularly, exercising, sleeping well, and taking fish oil were associated with greater psychological flexibility, which helps people adapt to stressful situations. Poor sleep and unhealthy eating habits, meanwhile, were linked to lower flexibility and resilience.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261012185023.htm
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BreakfastHabit #StressManagement #MentalFlexibility #HealthyRoutines #SleepQuality #ExerciseBenefits #FishOil #PsychologicalResilience #DailyHabits #StressResilience
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 08:43PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED
TITLE: After 30 years, scientists finally have a drug for a deadly brain disease
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261007042111.htm
The FDA has approved the first drug that directly targets Alexander disease, a devastating neurological disorder affecting fewer than one in a million people. Developed through decades of research, Zanvastro showed promising results in clinical trials, stabilizing motor function and even improving movement in some patients.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261007042111.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AlexanderDisease #Neurology #FDAApproval #RareDisease #Neurodegenerative #DrugDiscovery #MedicalResearch #ClinicalTrials #BrainHealth #Zanvastro
DATE: October 13, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: A popular workout supplement might protect the brain from gut inflammation
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-popular-workout-supplement-might-protect-the-brain-from-gut-inflammation/
Creatine, a popular dietary supplement, prevented brain inflammation, nerve cell damage, and disrupted electrical activity in the hippocampus of rats with chronic colitis, according to new research published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. The colitis-related damage was far more pronounced in male rats than in females. The findings add to evidence linking gut inflammation to changes in the brain, though they have not been tested in people.
The gut-brain axis is the complex, two-way communication network connecting the digestive tract and the central nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease is a group of chronic conditions marked by persistent inflammation of the digestive tract, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, which causes sores and swelling in the lining of the colon and rectum. In these conditions, inflammatory signals from the gut can travel to the brain and trigger secondary inflammation there, which is thought to contribute to the mood and cognitive problems frequently experienced by people with intestinal diseases.
Prior research has mapped how this process unfolds. A 2018 study found that a short bout of gut inflammation made both male and female mice more prone to seizures and increased anxiety-like behavior. In a 2022 study, members of the current team found that acute gut inflammation in rats was accompanied by brain inflammation and made neurons in the motor cortex more excitable.
The same group later reported in a 2024 study that chronic colitis produced memory problems, motor deficits, and anxiety- and depression-like behaviors in rats, with females showing more anxiety-like behavior and males showing stronger inflammation in the brain.
Building on this progression, a research group at the Universidad de Sevilla studying gut-brain pathophysiology led by María José Peral, Pablo García-Miranda, and Livia Carrascal set out to examine exactly what happens to the cells in the hippocampus during chronic colitis. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped structure deep in the brain that manages learning and memory.
“Inflammatory bowel disease primarily affects the intestine, but people with IBD also have a high prevalence of mood disorders and cognitive difficulties, particularly involving memory,” study co-author María D. Vázquez-Carretero, a researcher in the Department of Physiology at the university’s Faculty of Pharmacy, told PsyPost. “Our previous studies showed that chronic colitis can be associated with alterations in the hippocampus, a brain region that is important not only in memory but also in emotional processes. This led us to investigate how it affects hippocampal neurons and whether males and females respond differently.”
The researchers also wanted to test the potential protective effects of creatine, teaming up with a group focused on neurogenesis and neuroregeneration. While widely known as a sports supplement used to build muscle, creatine is a natural compound that helps supply energy to cells throughout the body, including brain cells, acting as a reserve that quickly replenishes cellular fuel during times of high demand or stress.
“Because managing the effects of IBD beyond the intestine remains challenging, we investigated whether creatine, a naturally occurring compound, could protect the hippocampus from the effects of intestinal inflammation,” Vázquez-Carretero explained.
To explore these questions, the researchers used young male and female rats, with 15 to 21 animals of each sex in each of four groups: healthy rats given plain water, healthy rats given creatine, rats with colitis, and rats with colitis given creatine. Colitis was induced with dextran sulfate sodium in the drinking water over three one-week cycles separated by weeks of plain water, mimicking the flare-ups and remissions of human ulcerative colitis. Creatine was added to the drinking water at a daily dose of 1 gram per kilogram of body weight, starting 10 days before colitis was induced and continuing throughout. Each type of measurement used five to seven animals per group.
After a period of over a month, the researchers examined the rats’ hippocampi. They measured the levels of inflammatory molecules, assessed the physical health of the neurons, and tested the cells’ electrical properties. For the electrical tests, they used a technique called patch-clamp recording. This involves placing a microscopic glass tube against a single cell to monitor the tiny electrical currents flowing across its membrane.
The results indicated that chronic colitis reduced creatine levels in the hippocampus of both male and female rats. The gut inflammation also spurred a strong immune response in the brain. Microglia, which act as the brain’s first line of immune defense, became activated in both sexes, accompanied by elevated levels of inflammatory molecules.
The consequences of this brain inflammation differed sharply by sex. Male rats developed physical damage to their hippocampal neurons, showing a loss of structural proteins and fewer neurons in the CA1 region, a specific area of the hippocampus. In contrast, female rats maintained their neuronal structure despite the presence of inflammation.
The electrical tests revealed a similar divide. In male rats with colitis, the neurons became leakier: their membranes lost electrical resistance, and the minimum current needed to make a neuron fire an electrical signal, known as the rheobase, rose by roughly 60 percent. This suggests the neurons became less excitable, the opposite of the hyperexcitability reported in studies of short-term colitis.
The males also had higher levels of a potassium channel called Kv2.1, which helps neurons reset after firing, along with larger electrical currents flowing into and out of the cells. Female neurons showed no significant electrical changes, although colitis did raise levels of a calcium channel called Cav1.2 in their hippocampus.
“The changes were not limited to a single marker,” Vázquez-Carretero noted. “We found converging evidence of neuroinflammation, neuronal damage, and altered electrical properties of hippocampal neurons, particularly in males. Together, these findings suggest that chronic colitis can produce biologically meaningful alterations in hippocampal function.”
“The sex differences were particularly striking,” she added. “Male rats showed greater hippocampal neuroinflammation, neuronal damage, and alterations in neuronal electrical properties, whereas females were less affected at the functional level.”
Creatine supplementation largely prevented these changes. In rats with colitis that consumed creatine, hippocampal creatine levels were about 20 to 30 percent higher than in unsupplemented rats with colitis, matching those of healthy animals. The supplement prevented the activation of microglia and stopped the rise of inflammatory molecules in both sexes. In females, creatine had an especially strong effect in suppressing a specific inflammatory molecule called tumor necrosis factor.
Because the female rats did not experience the physical and electrical cell damage caused by colitis, creatine’s protective effects in these areas were mostly visible in the males. For the male rats, creatine protected the structural health of the neurons and maintained their normal electrical resistance and firing thresholds. The authors noted that creatine acts selectively on the parameters altered by disease, rather than artificially boosting the performance of healthy cells.
“Creatine also appeared to have a greater effect in males, but this seems to reflect their greater initial pathological burden rather than a sex-specific response to creatine,” Vázquez-Carretero observed.
The findings are in line with earlier work by the same research group, covered by PsyPost in 2025. That earlier study, which examined neuroinflammation in the cortex and behavioral deficits rather than cellular and electrical changes in the hippocampus, similarly found that creatine prevents colitis-induced brain inflammation across both sexes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind, including that the exact sequence of events might differ in human patients. “It is important not to interpret our results as showing that creatine is a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease or that people with colitis should take creatine to protect their brains,” Vázquez-Carretero cautioned. “Our study was conducted in rats under controlled experimental conditions. The results suggest that creatine may protect the brain from some consequences of chronic intestinal inflammation, but further research is needed to determine whether these effects also occur in humans.”
“Although these findings cannot be directly extrapolated to humans, growing evidence in people with IBD also suggests alterations in brain function and structure,” she noted.
The study used relatively small numbers of animals for the specific electrical and molecular tests, with five to seven rats per group. This reduced statistical power might have masked some subtle changes in the female rats, making them appear completely unaffected when they might have experienced minor alterations.
Additionally, the electrical recordings measured the overall flow of ions across the cell membrane rather than isolating individual channels with specialized drugs. Future research will need to pinpoint the exact molecular pathways responsible for the electrical changes.
It is also important to note that creatine was given before colitis began, so the study tested prevention rather than the treatment of existing damage. The study measured cells and electrical activity rather than memory or behavior, and it could not determine whether creatine protects the brain mainly by reducing inflammation in the gut or by acting directly on brain cells, though the authors suspect both play a role.
“We think this study highlights how closely connected the gut and the brain are,” Vázquez-Carretero told PsyPost. “It also reinforces the importance of studying both sexes when investigating how chronic inflammation affects the brain.”
“We want to better understand how chronic intestinal inflammation affects the brain and why these effects differ between males and females,” she said. “We are also interested in determining how creatine protects hippocampal neurons and whether this protection is related to its role in cellular energy metabolism. Ultimately, our goal is to determine whether these mechanisms are also relevant in humans and whether creatine could eventually be explored as a complementary strategy in people with chronic intestinal inflammation.”
The study, “Modulating effects of creatine prevent sex-dependent hippocampal neuroinflammation, neuronal damage, and electrophysiological dysfunction induced by chronic colitis,” was authored by Alejandro Ruiz-Calero, María Ortego-Domínguez, María D. Vázquez-Carretero, Gema Sotelo-Parrilla, Nora Martínez-Gómez, María L. Calonge, Ricardo Pardillo-Díaz, Carmen Castro, Pedro Nunez-Abades, María J. Peral, Livia Carrascal, and Pablo García-Miranda.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-popular-workout-supplement-might-protect-the-brain-from-gut-inflammation/
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CreatineBrainProtection #GutBrainAxis #ChronicColitis #HippocampusHealth #Neuroinflammation #SexDifferencesInBrain #NeuroscienceResearch #IBDAndBrain #CreatineSupplement #BrainElectricalActivity
#Wut ist nicht dasselbe wie #Hass. Hass will #Zerstörung, Wut will #Veränderung. Hass ist #destruktiv, Wut ist #produktiv.
(Margarete #Stokowski)
#psychotHHerapie #Zitat #Zitate
2
Educate. How?
Learn to recognise when psychopathy is mixed with fascism & educate others to recognise it.
And never, but never, hand it power - whether via admiration, money (clicks), votes, or submission.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder (involving brain structure). It is mediated by environment, & not all psychopaths do harm. So far, there's no cure.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sociopaths-and-why-we-elect-them,15201
If a habit requires daily willpower to maintain, your environmental architecture is broken.
Cognitive psychology proves decision fatigue rapidly exhausts prefrontal glucose. People celebrated for 'high self-control' rarely exercise it—they architect spaces where distraction requires physical friction and target behaviors require zero clicks.
You fall to your default friction points.
NEW PERSON. SAME PAIN?
Sometimes “chemistry” is familiarity: a new face recreating an old emotional pattern. Attraction can be real while your nervous system is still chasing a familiar wound.
Do you feel safe—or activated?
Full reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeZUVd9Tc4U/
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Genetic scores linked to depression and neuroticism are associated with lower voter turnout
URL: https://www.psypost.org/dna-and-the-ballot-box-how-genetic-scores-predict-political-participation/
A study published in Political Behavior shows how genetic scores related to health and psychological traits can predict a person’s likelihood of voting or engaging in politics. Analyzing genetic data from more than 50,000 people in the United States and Sweden, researchers found that genetic predispositions for traits like cognitive performance and subjective well-being were linked to higher voter turnout, and comparisons between siblings suggested that some of these links reflect causal genetic effects.
Political scientists typically focus on environmental factors, such as education, income, or family upbringing, to explain why some people vote and others stay home. Over the past 15 years, however, twin, adoption, and molecular genetic studies have indicated that political orientation and civic participation are also partly heritable. Integrating these findings into mainstream political science has been difficult, in part because early attempts to link political behavior to a handful of specific genes largely stalled as it became evident that complex traits are shaped by thousands of genetic variants with tiny effects.
To overcome these limitations, a research team set out to introduce a new tool to the study of political behavior. The team included Rafael Ahlskog and Sven Oskarsson of Uppsala University, Christopher Dawes of New York University, and Aaron Weinschenk of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. They proposed using polygenic indices, which are individual-level scores that summarize a person’s genetic propensity for a specific trait.
A polygenic index is created by looking at hundreds of thousands of tiny variations in a person’s DNA. Researchers assign a weight to each variation based on how strongly it correlates with a given trait in massive genome-wide association studies. These underlying studies analyze the DNA of very large samples, sometimes more than a million people, to find tiny statistical links between specific genetic markers and specific outcomes. By adding all these weighted variations together, researchers can generate a single score that estimates an individual’s genetic likelihood of exhibiting traits like extraversion, depression, or high cognitive performance.
To demonstrate the method, the researchers analyzed data from four large samples: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, and the Minnesota Twin Family Study in the United States, and the Swedish Twin Registry. The combined datasets included more than 50,000 individuals, and the analyses were limited to people of European ancestry. The researchers gathered information on self-reported voter turnout, turnout validated from official records in both high-profile elections (such as presidential or national parliamentary elections) and lower-profile ones (such as U.S. midterms and European Parliament elections), and engagement in non-voting political activities, such as attending a political rally or contacting a politician.
Alongside the political data, the researchers calculated polygenic indices for ten health and psychological traits. These traits included cognitive performance, adventurousness, extraversion, being a morning person, neuroticism, risk tolerance, self-rated health, depression, subjective well-being, and physical activity. They also included a genetic score for educational attainment as a benchmark for comparison, and the main analyses followed plans the researchers had registered in advance.
The researchers first compared people across different families. To account for broad genetic differences that arise from human demographic history rather than specific traits, they controlled for participants’ genetic ancestry, along with birth year and sex.
Several genetic scores were associated with voter turnout. Higher genetic propensities for cognitive performance, self-rated health, subjective well-being, and physical activity predicted a higher likelihood of voting, while scores for neuroticism and depression predicted lower turnout. A genetic tendency toward being a morning person was associated with higher turnout in high-profile elections, and the score for adventurousness with higher turnout in lower-profile ones. Results for risk tolerance were mixed, with higher scores linked to lower turnout in high-profile elections but higher turnout in lower-profile ones.
The associations were modest but not trivial. A one standard deviation increase in the genetic score for cognitive performance or self-rated health was associated with a roughly 4 percentage point higher likelihood of voting in lower-profile elections, and each of these scores accounted for almost 1% of the variation in turnout in those elections.
When looking at non-voting political participation, the researchers found a different pattern. Genetic scores for extraversion, risk tolerance, and adventurousness were positively associated with activities like contacting a politician or attending rallies. This aligns with previous research suggesting that outgoing and novelty-seeking people are drawn to the more social aspects of political activism.
Additional analyses suggested that, on average, about 30% of the scores’ links with participation ran through the traits they were designed to predict. This varied widely: measured cognitive performance accounted for almost all of the link between its genetic score and participation, while measured physical activity explained very little of its score’s link.
While comparing people across families reveals an association, it does not prove a direct causal link. The study authors point to two main sources of bias in such comparisons: population structure and genetic nurture. Population structure refers to genetic differences that align with social or cultural groups due to historical mating patterns, which can create false correlations. Genetic nurture occurs when parents’ genes influence the environment they create for their children, meaning a child’s behavior might be shaped by their upbringing rather than their own DNA.
To establish a firmer causal connection, the researchers conducted a second set of analyses that restricted the data to pairs of full siblings. Because biological siblings receive a random mix of their parents’ genes, any genetic differences between them are the result of chance. Comparing siblings to each other effectively removes the influence of their shared family environment and broad population-level genetic differences.
In the sibling analyses, many of the links between the genetic scores and voter turnout held up, particularly for high-profile elections. For lower-profile elections, the estimates comparing siblings tended to be smaller than those comparing different families, suggesting that the earlier results were partly inflated by genetic nurture or population structure. Results for self-reported voting and non-voting participation were less precise.
Because genetic differences between siblings arise by chance, the authors argue that the within-family results can be given a causal interpretation: the genetic variants captured by these scores affect the likelihood of voting. That does not necessarily mean they work through the traits the scores were designed to measure.
The authors note several limitations to how these findings should be interpreted. A genetic effect does not mean that a person’s political behavior is biologically predetermined. Genetic influences often work through environmental pathways; for example, a genetic propensity for height might affect political participation because of wage discrimination against shorter people, rather than through any direct biological drive to vote.
Genes frequently affect multiple traits at the same time, a concept known as pleiotropy. A genetic score designed to predict depression might also capture genes related to entirely different characteristics that ultimately influence political behavior. The scores also capture only a fraction of the total genetic influence on a trait, as they are based on estimates containing some statistical noise, so the authors describe their results as a lower bound.
A major limitation of current polygenic indices is that they rely on genetic databases that predominantly feature individuals of European ancestry. Because genetic markers differ across populations, these scores are currently less accurate when applied to people of other ancestral backgrounds, which is why the analyses were limited to people of European descent.
Future research could use genetic scores to better understand how parents socialize their children politically. By comparing the genetic scores of parents and children, researchers can tease apart which political behaviors are passed down through a shared environment and which are inherited biologically.
The method also offers a way to study how different environments might amplify or suppress a person’s genetic predispositions. In one exploratory analysis that was not part of the preregistered plan, education appeared to buffer the negative link between depression-linked genes and voter turnout. The lower turnout associated with the depression genetic score appeared to be driven entirely by people at the lower end of the education distribution.
The study, “The Genetics of Political Participation: Leveraging Polygenic Indices to Advance Political Behavior Research,” was authored by Rafael Ahlskog, Christopher Dawes, Sven Oskarsson, and Aaron Weinschenk.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/dna-and-the-ballot-box-how-genetic-scores-predict-political-participation/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GeneticScores #DepressionAndTurnout #Neuroticism #VoterTurnout #PolygenicIndices #PoliticalBehavior #CognitivePerformance #SocialParticipation #GeneticsOfPolitics #TwinSiblingStudy
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Musicians are less prone to the ventriloquism illusion, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/musicians-are-less-prone-to-the-ventriloquism-illusion-study-finds/
An experiment comparing musicians and nonmusicians found that musicians tend to be less susceptible to the ventriloquism effect. When a sound came from one location and a visual flash from another, musicians’ judgments of where the sound came from were pulled less toward the flash than nonmusicians’ judgments were. The paper was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
The ventriloquism effect is a multisensory illusion in which a sound is perceived as coming from the location of a nearby visual stimulus rather than from its true source. It occurs because the brain normally combines information from different senses and gives greater weight to vision when judging where something is located.
This ability to integrate sights and sounds is essential in everyday life, but the brain must also recognize when sensory signals come from different sources and should remain separate. Musical training may be especially relevant to this process because musicians spend years learning to coordinate highly precise auditory, visual, and motor information. Previous studies have found that musicians are better than nonmusicians at detecting mismatches between simple sounds and visual events, and two earlier experiments by the same team found that musicians showed less ventriloquism when asked to locate only the sound.
Study author Matthew Paul O’Donohue of Queensland University of Technology in Australia and his colleagues wanted to understand why. Musicians might be less susceptible to the illusion because they perceive sounds or sights more precisely, or because they have a weaker built-in expectation that a sound and a flash come from the same source. Based on their earlier work, the researchers predicted, in a plan registered before data collection, that the second explanation would hold.
Study participants were 35 musicians and 35 nonmusicians, most of them first-year psychology students. The musicians averaged 22 years of age and the nonmusicians 20, and each group included 26 women. Musicians were defined as people with at least 7 years of experience playing an instrument who had played for an average of 1 hour a week over the past 12 months; on average, they had played their main instrument for about 12 years. Nonmusicians had no more than 12 months of experience playing an instrument outside school and no more than 2 years of compulsory music lessons in school.
Participants sat in a dark room facing a screen that hid five speakers. On each trial, a brief flash, a burst of noise, or both appeared from one of five positions along a horizontal line, and participants used a mouse to mark where each stimulus had come from. When both appeared, participants located each one separately, which required them to divide their attention between hearing and vision. On these combined trials, the flash and the sound came from the same position only 20% of the time.
Participants completed the full set of 420 trials twice. Before the second run, they were told that the flash and the sound came from the same location only 20% of the time, and they were reminded of this at the start of each block. This allowed the researchers to test whether a simple instruction could change people’s expectations, and whether musicians’ advantage stemmed from assumptions formed during the experiment itself, in which case the instruction should have erased the difference between the groups.
Musicians and nonmusicians were equally precise at locating the flash or the sound when only one was presented. For both groups, flashes were located less consistently the farther they appeared from straight ahead.
When both stimuli were presented, musicians’ sound judgments were pulled about 1.6 degrees less toward the flash than nonmusicians’ were, on average. This difference was modest; it held up in one of the two statistical approaches the researchers used but fell just short in the other. After participants learned the 20% figure, the ventriloquism effect shrank overall, but musicians still showed less of it than nonmusicians.
To explain these results, the researchers used a mathematical model of how the brain decides whether to combine information from two senses. The model attributed the group difference to musicians’ lower prior expectation that the sound and the flash came from the same place, rather than to differences in how precisely they could hear or see. The instruction lowered this expectation overall, but nearly all participants who had started out with an expectation below 20% raised it, suggesting that people adjusted their expectations to match the information they were given.
“Our results suggest that musicians tend to exhibit less spatial ventriloquism than nonmusicians even when distributing their attention across audition and vision. … Finally, we have shown that this prior expectation changes when participants are informed of the true probability of a common location for the stimuli, demonstrating that top–down factors can exert a strong influence on this Bayesian prior,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the ventriloquism effect. However, because the researchers compared existing musicians with nonmusicians rather than assigning people to musical training, the study cannot show that musical training itself reduces the illusion, as opposed to other traits that differ between the groups. The difference between musicians and nonmusicians was also small, and numerically much smaller than in the team’s earlier experiments, in which participants only had to locate the sound.
The authors also note that the musicians played a wide range of instruments, and that some subgroups, such as orchestral musicians, might show stronger auditory spatial skills or combine visual cues differently. In addition, it is not yet known whether the instruction changed what participants perceived or simply changed how they chose to respond.
The paper, “A Multisensory Causal Inference Prior is Attenuated in Musicians and is Further Attenuated Following Instruction,” was authored by Matthew Paul O’Donohue, Naohide Yamamoto, Brian Odegaard, and Philippe Lacherez.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/musicians-are-less-prone-to-the-ventriloquism-illusion-study-finds/
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*PSYCHOLOGY OF APOCALYPSE: Ecopsychology, Activism, & the Prenatal Roots of Humanicide* by Michael Adzema.
Ch 4, p. 39
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DATE: October 12, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Creative drawing ability is linked to the brain’s white matter wiring, study finds
Creative drawing ability is associated with the structure of the wiring that links sensory, movement and thinking systems across the brain, according to a study published in Cerebral Cortex. The findings suggest that creativity draws on many connected brain systems rather than a single “creative center.”
Creative thinking has often been linked to several large brain networks involved in imagination, attention and decision-making. These networks allow people to generate unusual ideas and then decide which ideas are useful or worth developing. However, less is known about the physical wiring that allows these networks to communicate.
That wiring is provided partly by white matter, which consists of bundles of nerve fibers connecting different parts of the brain. Earlier studies of white matter and creativity have produced mixed results, with some finding positive links and others finding negative ones. The researchers examined whether the condition of these pathways was related to people’s ability to produce creative drawings, and whether a newer brain-imaging measure could reveal relationships missed by a more traditional one.
Led by Julius Voss of the University of Graz in Austria, the team studied 142 adults aged 18 to 38 (average age 24.06 years; 85 women and 57 men). Most were students, and because the study was part of a larger project on physical activity, all were right-handed and had largely sedentary lifestyles. Participants completed a drawing task in which they were given six fragments of lines and shapes and asked to turn them into a finished picture within 15 minutes.
The drawings were scored using the Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production, a standardized creativity test. The scoring considered not only how unusual the drawings were, but also how they built on the given fragments, their composition, emotional expression, humor, use of the page and willingness to break conventional boundaries. Scores could reach 72 points, and participants averaged about 25.
Participants also underwent diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, which maps the movement of water through brain tissue. The researchers used this information to examine two features of white matter. Fractional anisotropy is a widely used measure of how consistently fibers are organized. Quantitative anisotropy provides additional information about the density of fibers and complex areas where pathways cross.
People with higher creativity scores tended to have higher quantitative anisotropy across a widespread network of white matter pathways, after accounting for age and sex. The associations were small to moderate in size. The most prominent links involved pathways connecting the cortex with deeper structures involved in movement, including the corticostriatal, corticopontine and corticospinal tracts, along with the medial lemniscus, a pathway that carries touch and body-position signals.
These pathways are traditionally associated with movement and motor control, but research suggests they also support processes such as goal-directed behavior, creative imagery and mental flexibility. Many of the corticostriatal and corticopontine fibers linked to creativity arose from rear and visual regions of the cortex, which the authors suggest points to an important role for visual input in drawing creativity.
The study also found associations in the corpus callosum, which connects the two halves of the brain, and in the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and inferior longitudinal fasciculus, long pathways that link visual areas with frontal and temporal regions. Because these pathways support several of the large networks tied to creative thinking, the authors suggest the results fit models in which creativity depends on communication across networks.
Quantitative anisotropy detected broader and stronger associations than fractional anisotropy. The traditional measure did not produce statistically significant results at the study’s main threshold, although weaker positive associations, mostly overlapping with the quantitative anisotropy findings, appeared below it. No negative associations emerged with either measure, unlike some earlier studies that used verbal tasks.
The researchers argued that quantitative anisotropy may be better at capturing complex fiber structures, such as areas where pathways cross. They concluded that their results are consistent with the idea that “the performance of creative ideation is not driven by single dominant connections, but rather emerges from the dynamic interplay of numerous partially overlapping network resources.”
There are a few things to keep in mind. The study measured only drawing-based creativity and did not assess other forms, such as writing or improvisation. Because the data were collected at a single point in time, the study cannot show that stronger white matter makes people more creative.
The sample was young, highly educated and largely sedentary, which limits how widely the findings apply. The researchers also did not account for intelligence, which is linked to both creativity and white matter measures, and preliminary analyses hinted that the associations might differ between women and men, a question the study’s uneven split of women and men made hard to test.
The study, “Creativity: a (white) matter of connectivity,” was authored by Julius Voss, Karl Koschutnig, Patrick Klepits, Corinna M. Perchtold-Stefan, Christian Rominger and Andreas Fink.
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*PSYCHOLOGY OF APOCALYPSE* Ch 2, p. 17
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RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7nguzszlvpdpdmtc47zp22ur/post/3mr6vcwztuc2i
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Researchers identify a factor linked to how much happier couples are than singles
People in romantic relationships typically report higher life satisfaction than single people, but a new study of more than 380,000 adults in Great Britain suggests that the size of this gap varies depending on where people live. The gap tended to be wider in areas where romantic partnerships were more common, mostly because partnered people in those areas reported higher satisfaction. The research was published in Psychological Science.
Relationship status simply refers to whether a person is currently in an intimate partnership or is single. Life satisfaction is an evaluation of how positive or fulfilling a person finds their overall life circumstances. In social psychology, the idea of person-culture match suggests that people experience higher well-being when their individual traits, beliefs, or lifestyle match the prevailing norms of their immediate community.
Prior studies suggest that the size of the life-satisfaction gap between partnered and single people is not the same everywhere. Married people tend to report higher life satisfaction than unmarried people, but the size of that difference varies across countries and U.S. states, and one U.S. analysis found that marriage was more strongly tied to life satisfaction in states where more residents were married.
Not every study has found a strong role for social norms, though: a 2012 study of 45 European countries found that a country’s family values had little bearing on the well-being gaps between partnership statuses, apart from a wider gap between divorced and married women in more family-oriented societies.
Other research suggests that community-level norms can shape how individual life circumstances affect personal well-being. For example, earlier work by some of the same researchers, covered by PsyPost in 2024, found that in regions with higher obesity prevalence, individuals with obesity experienced less severe relationship and health disadvantages compared to low-prevalence regions.
The current study aimed to bridge these lines of research to test whether local relationship rates relate to the well-being gap between singles and couples. “Many studies find that partnered people are happier than single people and such findings often read as evidence that romantic relationships are good for us,” lead researcher Tita Gonzalez Avilés of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bamberg told PsyPost. “But the reasons behind this life satisfaction gap are not entirely clear. We wanted to shift the focus from the relationship itself to the regional contexts in which partnered and single people’s lives unfold.”
The research team reasoned that in areas with high relationship rates, couples might feel more supported and aligned with local relationship norms. Single individuals, on the other hand, might feel more excluded or experience greater social pressure in environments where couplehood is the dominant pattern.
To examine this question, the scientists analyzed data from the BBC Big Personality Test. The sample included 382,078 adults living across 379 local authority districts in Great Britain, administrative areas similar in size to counties in the United States. Participants answered questions about whether they were currently in an intimate relationship and rated their life satisfaction on a scale from one to seven.
The researchers calculated regional relationship rates by determining the percentage of participants in each district who reported being in an intimate relationship. District relationship rates ranged from about 55 percent in one London borough to 80 percent in the district of Bolsover. To isolate the role of local relationship rates, the authors controlled for individual characteristics including age, gender, education, employment, income, health, and personality traits, as well as district-level factors such as population density, median income, birth rates, median age, political leanings, and religious affiliation.
Across Great Britain as a whole, partnered individuals reported higher life satisfaction than single individuals. Partnered people scored about half a standard deviation higher on life satisfaction, a difference the authors noted is comparable to differences tied to employment status or health. These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that people in intimate relationships report higher emotional well-being and life satisfaction compared to singles.
The results also align with research covered by PsyPost in 2025 that examined lifelong singlehood among primarily older adults and found lower life satisfaction among singles compared to partnered individuals.
“Although life satisfaction varied across regions, partnered individuals consistently reported higher life satisfaction compared to single individuals on average,” Gonzalez Avilés noted. “So, while regional context contributes to people’s life satisfaction, it cannot fully account for the gap between these two groups.”
When the researchers looked across regions, they found that the size of the gap varied based on the local relationship rate. In districts with the lowest relationship rates, the gap was 0.49 standard deviations; in districts with the highest rates, it was 0.63, an increase of nearly 29 percent. This widening gap was primarily driven by partnered individuals, who reported higher life satisfaction in high-relationship districts, while life satisfaction among single individuals remained relatively constant regardless of the local relationship rate.
The district-level pattern held across several robustness checks. The association remained consistent when using official census marriage and cohabitation rates instead of survey-derived relationship rates, when applying broader regional controls, and when using stricter minimum thresholds for district sample sizes.
In additional analyses that were not planned in advance, the researchers found that the gap was also larger in districts with lower median incomes, a higher share of votes to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and more residents reporting a religious affiliation. In the more politically conservative and religious districts, the wider gap mainly reflected lower life satisfaction among single people. The authors note that they did not directly measure attitudes toward singlehood and describe their explanations for these patterns as speculative.
“We expected single people to be less satisfied where many others are partnered but found no evidence for this,” Gonzalez Avilés said. “What seemed to be more important for the single people was not how many people are partnered but the prevailing regional attitudes toward singlehood (i.e., single people being less satisfied in more conservative and religious regions).”
“Regional relationship norms and societal expectations can affect how partnered and single people evaluate their own life,” Gonzalez Avilés added.
In an exploratory analysis that was not registered in advance, the researchers evaluated whether the pattern held at a neighborhood scale across 52,836 participants in 218 postal districts in London. In postal districts with the lowest relationship rates, the gap was 0.41 standard deviations, compared to 0.62 in districts with the highest rates, reflecting an increase of about 51 percent. As in the national sample, this difference was mainly driven by partnered residents reporting greater satisfaction in neighborhoods where relationships were common.
The authors also examined whether people in high-relationship areas placed more importance on having a relationship. They found no evidence that couples or singles placed higher importance on being partnered in those areas. Single people in high-relationship areas actually placed slightly less importance on having a relationship, which the researchers speculate could reflect singles shifting their focus toward other life goals.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The sample consisted of online volunteers who chose to take a personality test between 2009 and 2011, and roughly 64 percent of the respondents were women. The data are also more than 15 years old. The authors did find that regional marriage rates in the survey closely mirrored 2011 census figures, which supports the accuracy of the geographic estimates.
The overall regional effect was modest, and partnered people reported higher life satisfaction than singles even in districts with the lowest relationship rates. Because the data were correlational, the study cannot establish cause and effect. Happier couples might simply be more inclined to move to communities where relationships are more prevalent.
“We did not test why partnered individuals were more satisfied in regions where romantic relationships were more common,” Gonzalez Avilés explained. “It may be that they have more positive experiences when living among many other couples, but it is also possible that happily coupled people are more likely to move to such regions.”
The researchers tested this possibility by repeating their analysis using only individuals who still resided in the region where they grew up, which reduces the likelihood that migration explains the pattern. Future studies tracking people over time could provide better insight into whether moving or changing relationship status shifts life satisfaction. Scientists could also investigate whether specific mechanisms, such as tax, housing, or other policy advantages for couples, help explain why partnered people fare better in these environments.
The findings are also based solely on Great Britain. Testing these relationships in other countries could help researchers determine whether similar regional patterns exist in different cultural and institutional settings.
The study, “Ties That Bind, Places That Matter: The Life-Satisfaction Gap Between Partnered and Single Individuals Varies Across Regions,” was authored by Tita Gonzalez Avilés, Franz J. Neyer, Peter J. Rentfrow, and Tobias Ebert.
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DATE: October 12, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Scientists uncover a possible trade-off in how the hippocampus replays new memories
When the brain rests after learning something new, it actively replays the recent experience to lock it into memory. A recent small study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience reveals that this mental replay involves a trade-off, where the brain prioritizes the general meaning of an event while weakening the memory of specific details. These biological adjustments suggest that false memories are a natural byproduct of how the mind extracts useful themes from the world.
Memory involves balancing two competing tasks. The brain must hold onto the specific details of a single event, but it also needs to find patterns across multiple events to predict what might happen in the future. If a person only remembers exact details, they might struggle to apply lessons from the past to new situations.
In traditional models of brain function, the hippocampus acts as a fast-acting recorder for new experiences. Over days and weeks, it slowly teaches these memories to the neocortex, the outer layer of the brain, which extracts statistical rules and overarching concepts. However, recent computational models suggest that this division of labor might also exist entirely within the hippocampus itself.
If the hippocampus manages both rapid recording and slow generalization, it must have a mechanism to edit memories shortly after they form. The biological principle of competitive plasticity suggests a possible method. When a person learns related concepts, the neural pathways sharing common features activate together and become stronger. Unique, isolated details that do not reactivate as often are competitively weakened.
To understand how the brain handles this balance, researchers Nicholas C. Hindy, Ryan Coleman, and Surya Rajan Meenakshi Selvam focused on specific sub-regions of the hippocampus. After a person experiences something, the hippocampus spontaneously reactivates the neural patterns associated with that event. The research team wanted to see if this reactivation process transforms a memory rather than just making a perfect copy of it.
They specifically looked at a sub-region called CA1. This area acts as a primary output hub, sending information to other parts of the brain. The structural position of CA1 allows it to resolve competition between specific episodic details and broader generalizations.
The experimental design aimed to see this competitive editing in action. The researchers conducted a small study with 24 adult participants using a classic psychological test known for reliably producing false memories. Participants heard word lists designed around a missing target concept. For example, a list might include the words bed, rest, and awake, but leave out the central theme word, sleep.
The words were read aloud by artificial voices, splitting the incoming information into two distinct channels. The semantic channel was the meaning of the words and their shared theme. The episodic channel was the specific sensory experience of hearing a male or female voice.
The research team used high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the participants. Standard brain scans often blur the tiny sub-regions of the hippocampus together. By using high-resolution techniques, the team could isolate the CA1 area, as well as neighboring regions known as CA3 and the dentate gyrus.
After listening to the words, participants spent 90 seconds performing a simple math task. This kept them distracted but allowed their brains to rest from active memorization. During this short rest period, the researchers used the brain scans to measure how often the hippocampus spontaneously replayed the neural patterns associated with the word lists.
Finally, the participants completed a memory test while still inside the brain scanner. They had to indicate whether they recognized words from the lists, and whether they falsely recognized lure words that fit the theme but were never actually played. They also had to recall which voice spoke the recognized words.
The researchers found that spontaneous brain reactivation during the rest period had opposing effects on the two types of memory. When the CA1 region replayed a memory more frequently, participants were more likely to confidently claim they had heard the lure words. At the same time, this increased reactivation predicted worse accuracy when participants tried to remember whether a male or female voice spoke a specific word.
This means the mental replay strengthened the overarching concept of the word list but weakened the memory of the exact sensory experience. The memory of the actual words that had been played remained unchanged by the reactivation process. The effect only influenced the broad themes and the specific voice details.
While the CA1 region showed the strongest evidence for a bidirectional trade-off, the other sub-regions displayed specialized roles. Reactivation in the CA3 area was linked exclusively to a higher rate of false memories for the overarching themes. Neuroscientists believe CA3 helps with pattern completion, a process where the brain rebuilds a full memory from a partial cue, which may naturally strengthen the broader concept.
Conversely, activity in the dentate gyrus was linked only to worse memory for the specific voices. The dentate gyrus is typically associated with pattern separation, the ability to tell similar experiences apart. When this region is forced to process overlapping themes, its ability to hold onto precise episodic details might be compromised.
The research team also noticed a spatial pattern along the length of the hippocampus. The front and middle sections of the structure were primarily linked to extracting general themes and falsely recognizing the related lure words. The rear section of the hippocampus was linked to the loss of specific source details, such as the voice of the speaker.
The study relies on correlational data, meaning the results show a relationship between brain activity and memory performance but cannot prove that the reactivation directly caused the memory changes. People might have processed the words differently while listening, which could influence both the brain replay and the later memory errors. The rest period was also very short, only capturing the earliest moments of memory formation.
The brain scans tracked activity linked to entire word lists rather than individual words. The researchers could not separate the replay of a single word from the general activity of the whole list. Future research will need to separate individual events with greater precision and track memories over longer periods to see how these trade-offs evolve.
The study, “Hippocampal Reactivation Trades Episodic Detail for Semantic Gist in Human Memory,” was authored by Nicholas C. Hindy, Ryan Coleman, and Surya Rajan Meenakshi Selvam.
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2
Educate. How?
Learn to recognise the mix of psychopathy with fascism & educate others to recognise it.
And never, but never, hand it power - whether via admiration, money (clicks), votes, or submission.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder (involving brain structure). It is mediated by environment, & not all psychopaths do harm. So far, there's no cure.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sociopaths-and-why-we-elect-them,15201
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Is fatness a feminist issue?
URL: https://www.psypost.org/is-fatness-a-feminist-issue/
Recent research published in Sex Roles suggests that while many fat women identify as feminists, they do not consistently view their body size as a feminist issue. The study highlights a divide in how women understand their bodies, with some pointing to gendered double standards and societal discrimination, while others view their weight as a matter of personal responsibility.
Anti-fatness refers to the systemic and interpersonal prejudice directed at people with larger bodies. Feminist scholars have often linked this anti-fat stigma to traditional gender roles and patriarchal beauty norms. This perspective argues that societal pressure to be thin falls especially hard on women, creating toxic environments that negatively impact their body image, mental health, and social standing.
“American society is often fixated on how women look,” lead author Breanne Fahs, a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University and author of Fat and Furious: Igniting Radical Fat Resistance, told PsyPost. “Women are often told to be young, pretty, and skinny by their parents, partners, classmates, and strangers. Psychological research has often shown the problems with ‘thin idealization’ and living for a male gaze. In particular, women are criticized about having defective bodies, and they consequently fear gaining weight, try dangerous diets, and/or loathe their own bodies.”
“In the 1970s, second wave feminists warned that the fixation on slender bodies seriously hurt women and the slogan of ‘fat is a feminist issue’ was born,” Fahs added. “In the last twenty years there has been a growth of social movements that challenged the sexist assumptions of fat stigma, with the group called National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) leading the way.”
Research has shown that fat women generally face harsher social and economic consequences for their body size than fat men. In one study, fat women were 16 times more likely than fat men to report weight-related job discrimination, and other studies have found that fat women receive harsher judgments of their parenting and are more often denied loans, promotions, or apartments. Fat men, on the other hand, tend to face less stigma and fewer everyday indignities for similar body sizes.
Despite these documented disparities, it has remained an open question whether fat women themselves view their physical experiences through a political or feminist lens. Fahs and her colleague Eric Swank, a professor of social and cultural analysis at Arizona State University, sought to understand how fat women talk about this connection and whether they recognize the gendered dimensions of weight stigma that academics often discuss.
“Lots of research has looked at the causes and consequences of fat hatred among women of all body sizes,” Fahs explained. “Some studies have even looked at the reasons for being a fat activist, but the way fat women view feminism has mostly been overlooked.”
Fahs’s own work helped motivate the project. She has written about women’s dread of gaining weight, anti-fat bias in health care, and the relationships between fat therapists and fat patients. Her experience as both a professor and a practicing clinical psychologist left her curious about whether fat women see anti-fat stigma through a feminist lens.
To investigate this, the researchers interviewed 20 women living in the United States who self-identified as fat or overweight. The participants were recruited through local classified advertisements on Craigslist, allowing the research team to reach a geographically diverse group. The women ranged in age from 27 to 66, with an average age of 40. Half were women of color, 40 percent identified as bisexual or lesbian, and their body weights ranged from under 200 to over 300 pounds.
All 20 interviews were conducted by Fahs over video calls and lasted about 90 minutes each. She asked the women questions about their bodies, their social experiences, and their political perspectives. Two key questions guided the core of the analysis: whether the participants considered themselves feminists, and whether they believed fatness was a feminist issue. The researchers did not provide a definition of feminism, allowing each participant to respond according to her own understanding.
The participants’ responses pointed to a complex divide between personal identification and political frameworks. Thirteen women explicitly identified as feminists, three said they might use the label for certain issues, and four rejected it entirely. When asked if fatness was a feminist issue, the group was evenly split: eight said yes, four said maybe, and eight said no. Several self-identified feminists insisted that fatness was not a feminist issue, while one woman, identified in the study as Marge, firmly rejected the feminist label but still stated that it was.
The researchers identified six distinct themes in how the participants evaluated the issue. Three of the themes supported a connection between weight and feminism. Four women highlighted gendered double standards, observing that society readily accepts fat men as funny or relatable, while fat women face intense social disapproval for the same size. Three women described fatness as a central way women are judged, explaining that a woman’s social worth remains tied to physical appearance.
Overt discrimination, tied for the most common theme linking the two concepts, was raised by four participants. These women cited institutional obstacles in hiring, healthcare, and media representation as evidence of a broader feminist problem. When discussing these barriers, Fahs noted that participants “elaborated how workplaces, hospitals, schools, and families discriminate against women who are fat.”
The remaining three themes rejected the connection between body size and feminism. Three women stated that fatness has nothing to do with feminism, arguing that body weight is an individual matter of personal responsibility and lifestyle rather than gender politics. Two women maintained that fatness has nothing to do with gender, arguing that weight stigma affects people of all genders equally and should not be framed as a women’s issue.
In the final theme, three participants argued that fat women deserve ridicule, framing teasing as a natural consequence of body size or a motivator to lose weight.
Describing these women, Fahs said, “They thought fat women were supposed to be ‘made fun of by someone who is not fat’ and fat people ‘should lose weight’ if they do not want to be teased. This diversity of perspectives shows how fat resistance and feminist fat liberation perspectives still diverge from narratives of self-blame and ridicule.”
The findings point to an uneven alignment between feminist theory and the everyday perspectives of fat women. While some participants expressed an awareness of gender inequality, others expressed anti-fat attitudes, which the authors say could reflect internalized stigma or a form of anti-feminism, or viewed their struggles as entirely personal. The researchers noted that framing fatness through a political lens rather than individual failure could help people challenge anti-fat bias and reduce feelings of personal self-blame.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study relied on a small group of 20 women recruited through Craigslist during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the sample does not reflect the full population of fat women in the United States. In addition, the questions about feminism came after about an hour of discussion focused on fatness, which may have influenced the way participants answered.
The study also asked participants whether they identified as feminists rather than measuring specific feminist beliefs, and several women appeared to associate feminism primarily with the #MeToo movement or perceived extremes. Both researchers identify as fat feminists, and Fahs conducted all 20 interviews herself, which could have shaped how participants discussed sensitive topics. Future research using standardized surveys could help clarify how widespread these viewpoints are across the broader population.
The study, “Does Fatness Politicize Women? Fat Women’s Narratives on Whether Fatness is a Feminist Issue,” was authored by Breanne Fahs and Eric Swank.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/is-fatness-a-feminist-issue/
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Psychiatry suspects ADHD is merely a nocturnal clock forced into an 8 a.m. world. The prescribed solution remains unchanged: stare at a bright lamp and comply. https://archive.is/TzObO
DATE: October 12, 2026 at 09:17AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES
Direct article link at end of text block below.
Routine symptom measures can sharpen psychiatric diagnosis.
Learn how to gather consistent, evidence-based measurements from the initial evaluation and throughout patient treatment from John Rush, MD, in our October cover: https://t.co/vbR3jb5t0B
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Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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DATE: October 12, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
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TITLE: Patience with life’s small annoyances is linked to lower anxiety, but it doesn’t buffer spiritual struggles
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-patience-may-reduce-anxiety-even-during-spiritual-crises/
A recent study reveals that while religious and spiritual struggles are linked to higher anxiety in college students, developing patience for daily annoyances can predict a reduction in general anxiety over time. The research, published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, suggests that patience improves mental health independently rather than shielding students from the specific stress of existential doubts.
Religion and spirituality often provide a sense of meaning and social support. Yet these belief systems are not uniformly beneficial for psychological well-being. Many people experience profound tensions, doubts, and negative emotions related to their faith. Psychologists refer to these experiences as religious and spiritual struggles.
These struggles can take many forms. They might involve anger toward a divine figure, conflicts with members of a religious community, or deep concerns about moral failures. Previous research links these faith-based tensions to higher anxiety and depressive symptoms. The college years are a particularly common time for these struggles to emerge, as emerging adults frequently question inherited beliefs and explore new frameworks of meaning.
Laura Upenieks, a sociologist at Baylor University, and her colleagues wanted to understand which psychological traits might help people navigate these difficulties. They focused on the virtue of patience. In psychological terms, patience is an active coping skill that involves emotional regulation and the ability to endure hardship without acting impulsively.
The researchers looked at three distinct types of patience. Interpersonal patience involves managing frustration with other people. Life hardship patience reflects the capacity to endure major life difficulties. Daily hassles patience is the ability to tolerate everyday irritations, such as waiting in a long line or sitting in heavy traffic.
The research team suspected that patience might protect individuals from the anxiety associated with spiritual turmoil. They theorized that a patient person might have the emotional stability to process deep existential questions without becoming overwhelmed by fear or stress.
To test this, the researchers examined data from 274 undergraduate students attending a large Christian university in the southern United States. They tracked the students across their college careers. The students completed surveys during their first semester and again during their senior year.
The surveys asked students to rate how often they experienced struggles related to religion or spirituality over the past year. The students also completed a questionnaire designed to measure their generalized anxiety symptoms over the past week. A separate section of the survey measured their levels across the three different types of patience.
The researchers used a technique called latent change score modeling. This statistical approach allowed them to evaluate the starting baseline levels of each trait while simultaneously tracking how those traits evolved and influenced one another over the four-year period. By separating the initial states from the changes over time, the researchers could better isolate the direction of the associations.
At the beginning of college, students who reported more frequent spiritual struggles also reported higher levels of anxiety. This pattern held true over time. Students whose spiritual struggles increased over the four years were likely to experience an increase in their anxiety symptoms as well.
The researchers then looked at whether patience acted as a buffer against this anxiety. They expected that highly patient students would be less affected by the stress of spiritual doubts. The data did not support this hypothesis. The statistical interaction between patience and spiritual struggles was not statistically significant. Patience did not change the trajectory of how spiritual struggles fueled anxiety.
Spiritual struggles often challenge the core belief system that a person uses to understand the world. Because these struggles strike at the foundation of how someone finds meaning, emotional endurance alone is likely not enough to eliminate the resulting distress. The anxiety generated by a crisis of identity or a fear of divine abandonment might simply bypass the regulatory mechanisms of patience.
However, patience still operated as an independent predictor of mental health. During their first semester, students with high levels of interpersonal patience and life hardship patience exhibited lower initial levels of anxiety. Being able to endure major setbacks and tolerate difficult people provided a distinct mental health benefit from the start.
When looking at changes over the four-year period, a different pattern emerged. Changes in interpersonal and life hardship patience did not predict changes in anxiety. Instead, students who developed more daily hassles patience over time showed a notable decrease in anxiety symptoms by their senior year.
This suggests that learning to tolerate everyday annoyances might relieve a general accumulation of stress. Preventing minor irritations from escalating could create the emotional space needed for better overall mental health. Patience seems to set a baseline of emotional stability, even if it does not solve the specific existential crises associated with religious doubt.
The study has a few methodological limitations. The sample consisted entirely of students at a religiously affiliated university. The experiences of these students might not reflect the experiences of individuals at secular institutions or the broader public. The shared religious environment on campus could make spiritual struggles more visible and prominent, as theological commitments are heavily integrated into the academic and social life of the school.
Additionally, the researchers measured religious and spiritual struggles using a single survey question. This broad approach captures the general frequency of distress, but it cannot differentiate between specific types of issues. A person arguing with their pastor might experience a very different type of anxiety than someone secretly doubting the existence of a deity.
The study also relied on self-reported data, which can introduce bias if participants answer in ways they think are socially desirable. The analytical models used in the study are highly complex for a sample of 274 individuals. Replicating the analysis with larger and more diverse populations would help verify the results.
Future research could explore behavioral interventions based on these findings. Training people to manage their reactions to minor daily inconveniences might offer an accessible way to lower generalized anxiety. At the same time, addressing the root causes of spiritual struggles may require entirely different support systems, such as community conversations or pastoral care.
The study, “Religious/Spiritual Struggles, Patience, and Anxiety: A Longitudinal Examination of Virtue and Vulnerability,” was authored by Laura Upenieks, Hiroki Matsuo, Kevin D. Dougherty, Perry L. Glanzer, and Sarah A. Schnitker.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-patience-may-reduce-anxiety-even-during-spiritual-crises/
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DATE: October 12, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: When women share a husband, physical fights between co-wives are common across cultures
A cross-cultural analysis of ethnographic records suggests that when women share a husband in polygynous marriages, physical fights between co-wives are common. Physical aggression was documented in most of the 19 cultures examined, providing evidence that women’s competition can include direct confrontation when the stakes are high, in contrast to the prevailing view that female rivalry is mostly indirect. The research was published in Evolution and Human Behavior.
What drives competition among women? Evolutionary theories have suggested that women avoid physical fights to protect their survival and the lives of their children, relying instead on indirect social tactics. For example, a theory called the “staying alive” hypothesis, proposed by psychologist Anne Campbell in a 1999 paper, suggested that natural selection favored risk-averse strategies in women because physical injury could severely harm the survival chances of their highly dependent infants.
Building on this idea, a 2013 review summarized the prevailing scientific view that women primarily compete for mates through indirect aggression, such as gossip and social exclusion, rather than physical fights. This aligns with a study covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that women reported more envy toward well-off same-sex peers than men did and were more likely to engage in indirect competition such as gossip and spreading rumors.
However, anthropological surveys of polygynous marriages, in which a man has more than one wife at the same time, indicate a different pattern. When high-stakes resources and partners are on the line, direct physical conflict between women appears common. For instance, a 2005 cross-cultural study of polygynous societies found that co-wives routinely experience intense jealousy and often resort to verbal and physical violence when competing for their shared husband.
Maryanne L. Fisher of Saint Mary’s University in Canada set out to examine this dynamic systematically. She notes that much of the evidence for indirect competition comes from laboratory and survey studies of young women in Western countries competing over low or hypothetical stakes with rivals they did not know. In Fisher’s reading, the staying alive hypothesis was always conditional: women weigh the costs of physical risk more heavily than men, but direct aggression should become more likely when the payoff is high enough. She used co-wife arrangements as a test case, since co-wives compete repeatedly, over years, for resources that bear on their reproductive success and their children’s survival.
To explore how co-wives compete, Fisher analyzed ethnographic records, which are detailed written accounts by anthropologists and other observers who studied or lived among particular communities. The records came from the eHRAF World Cultures database, a comprehensive collection of cultural texts. She examined records from 19 distinct cultures spanning five major world regions (Africa, the Middle East, North America, South America, and Oceania), ranging from hunter-gatherer groups to intensive agricultural communities. Fisher coded the historical and cultural texts using a four-part system focused on the causes of co-wife competition, the modes of competition used, how conflicts were resolved, and what strategies were used to prevent disputes in the first place.
Fisher searched the database for records combining polygamy and wives with terms such as aggression, violent, and fight, and kept only records that directly described competition or conflict between co-wives. Three cultures turned up in the search but were excluded because their records described peaceful relations or no conflict between co-wives. Each remaining culture was coded for whether a given behavior was documented at all, so the percentages below reflect the share of cultures where a behavior appeared in the records, not how often it occurred. A second, independent coder applied the same scheme, and the two refined their definitions until they fully agreed.
The analysis indicates that competition for the husband’s sexual and emotional attention was the primary cause of conflict, documented in 14 of the 19 cultures (73.7 percent). This included jealousy over sleeping arrangements, fear of being replaced, and competition for general affection. Competition over material resources, such as food, garden plots, livestock, and unequal distribution of resources to children, was the second most frequent cause, present in 7 of the 19 cultures (36.8 percent). Status competition, such as rivalry over who is senior wife, was a third cause, identified in 5 cultures (26.3 percent).
When looking at how women competed, direct physical aggression was the most frequently documented method. Fisher found explicit accounts of physical fighting in 12 of the 19 cultures (63.2 percent). This low-level direct combat included behaviors like hitting, biting, hair-pulling, and occasionally the use of objects like sticks or paddles, though a few accounts were more severe, including one in which a woman was knocked senseless and others describing fights that caused injury. Verbal aggression, such as face-to-face shouting matches, direct insults, and arguments, was documented in 10 cultures (52.6 percent).
Covert hostility, where women maintained an icy or deliberately hostile atmosphere without open fighting, appeared in 6 cultures (31.6 percent). Less common strategies included the use of supernatural means, such as curses or food pollution rituals, which were noted in 4 cultures (21.1 percent). Gossip and social exclusion, often considered classic indirect tactics, appeared in only 2 cultures. In a few cultures, competition took the form of property destruction, such as tearing a rival’s belongings or deliberately ruining her prepared food.
Because indirect tactics were split into many separate categories, Fisher also grouped them into a single category for a fairer comparison. Combined indirect aggression appeared in 9 to 11 of the 19 cultures (47 to 58 percent), depending on how broadly it was defined, compared with 12 cultures for physical aggression. Direct confrontation of any kind, physical or verbal, was documented in 14 cultures (73.7 percent).
The findings suggest that physical confrontation is a common element of co-wife rivalry, occurring alongside indirect strategies rather than replacing them.
The study also looked at how disputes between co-wives were handled. The most common resolutions, each documented in 9 of the 19 cultures (47.4 percent), were the husband intervening to arbitrate or separate the wives and the permanent dissolution of the relationship, such as a wife fleeing or being expelled. Less frequently, conflicts were arbitrated by community members, such as in-laws or neighbors, which happened in 8 cultures (42.1 percent). Only rarely were co-wives documented resolving a conflict through quiet negotiation among themselves.
Many societies also had arrangements that kept co-wives apart or reduced friction between them. The most common preventative measure was the spatial separation of wives, documented in 11 cultures (57.9 percent). This involved housing wives in separate dwellings, assigning them different cooking fires, or even placing them in completely different settlements, which Fisher interprets as a way of managing co-wife conflict.
Another common preventative strategy, found in 7 cultures (36.8 percent), was a cultural preference for marrying sisters, known as sororal polygyny. Ethnographic records often stated that men preferred sisters as co-wives because they tended to fight less than unrelated women. Evolutionary theory suggests that individuals are less likely to harm close genetic relatives because they share many of the same genes, meaning a sister’s reproductive success indirectly benefits the other sister. Fisher argues that the cross-cultural prevalence of this arrangement suggests societies implicitly recognize the volatility of non-kin co-wives and organize households to deter anticipated conflict.
“This study provides a valuable cross-cultural perspective by reviewing 19 different cultures, challenging the lab-based view that women’s competition is always indirect,” said Farid Pazhoohi, an interdisciplinary psychologist and researcher at the University of Plymouth who was not involved in the research.
Pazhoohi noted that the results should be viewed in their specific context. “[W]hile readers might mistakenly interpret this as proof that women are universally violent, the findings instead point to a flexible strategy where women use direct aggression when the stakes are high enough to outweigh the risks,” he told PsyPost.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on a sample of 19 cultures, which limits how broadly the prevalence estimates can be generalized. Fisher also notes that the contrast with laboratory studies is suggestive rather than a direct test, since those studies differ from ethnographic records in their populations and methods. The sample was uneven as well: 13 of the 19 cultures were in the Americas, while Africa was represented by a single culture.
Pazhoohi also pointed out limitations in the study’s design. “Because it relies on second-hand ethnographic records, observational secondary data is inherently less informative for pinning down strict causal relationships. While we can spot broad patterns, we cannot isolate direct cause-and-effect or rule out hidden confounders,” he said, referring to other factors that could explain the pattern.
“Furthermore, reducing complex cultural behaviors down to summary percentages and binary metrics (such as noting whether a behavior is simply present or absent) can conceal individual variations and local context,” Pazhoohi added. “Historical field notes are prone to reporting biases, meaning dramatic physical fights are much easier for ethnographers to record than covert hostility or quieter tensions.”
Fisher acknowledges this issue as well, noting that her search terms were geared toward overt conflict, so the prevalence of indirect tactics should be read as a minimum. The data also captured whether conflict occurred but not its intensity or duration. Future longitudinal research could show how verbal disputes escalate into physical fights and when these conflicts are successfully interrupted.
The study, “The battle of the brides: Co-wife competition and aggression across 19 cultures,” was authored by Maryanne L. Fisher.
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2
Educate. How?
Learn to recognise the mix of psychopathy with fascism & educate others to recognise it.
And never, but never, hand it power - whether via admiration, money (clicks), votes, or submission.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder (involving brain structure). It is mediated by environment, & not all psychopaths do harm. So far, there's no cure.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sociopaths-and-why-we-elect-them,15201