#counseling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counseling, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 9, 2026 at 01:48PM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy May Have an Unexpected Mental Health Benefit
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Ozempic #Wegovy #Semaglutide #MentalHealth #BipolarDisorder #Inflammation #MoodStability #GLP1 #PsychiatricResearch #WeightLossAndBeyond
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Cognitive biases and emotional triggers make AI-generated images highly deceptive
Emotionally charged AI-generated images may encourage social media users to respond before they critically assess whether the images are real, according to a study published in Computers in Human Behavior.
AI-generated images can now be produced quickly and cheaply, making it possible to create large amounts of realistic-looking material for social media. Some images are paired with emotional captions and distributed through networks of automated pages or content farms that seek attention, advertising revenue or user interaction.
Images may be particularly effective at attracting attention because they are processed quickly and can trigger emotional reactions before people examine details closely. A picture of an elderly couple, a neglected child or an apparently extraordinary achievement may prompt sympathy, anger or admiration. Those reactions can make users less likely to stop and ask whether the scene is authentic.
Márk Miskolczi of Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary analyzed public Facebook material collected between March 1 and May 1, 2025. The sample consisted of 146 AI-generated images and 8,922 user comments.
Miskolczi selected 12 public Facebook pages that regularly posted suspected AI-generated images. The pages covered themes such as nostalgia, rural life, elderly people, spirituality, everyday hardship and family relationships. Images were first examined using an eight-step manual system that looked for features such as distorted anatomy, unusual facial details, floating objects, impossible reflections, malformed writing and unnatural textures. Images were also checked with an online AI detector, and only those receiving an AI-probability score of at least 60% were included.
An initial database contained 11,547 comments. After comments believed to have been produced by automated accounts were removed, 9,082 remained. The researcher then excluded 160 comments considered incomplete or meaningless, leaving 8,922 comments for qualitative analysis. The comments were categorized, or coded, in stages to identify recurring topics, emotional responses and possible mental shortcuts involved in users’ reactions.
Five broad themes emerged in the images: emotion and nostalgia; empathy and compassion; extraordinary achievements and hobbies; birthdays and social problems; and religion and spirituality. The most common comment category was birthday wishes, with 1,980 comments (22.19%). Inspiring messages and encouragement accounted for 1,802 comments (20.20%). Religious content accounted for 1,490 comments (16.70%).
Many users responded as though the images represented real people or events. They expressed sympathy for older adults, shared memories of childhood, offered congratulations and posted religious blessings. The analysis suggested that several mental shortcuts, known as cognitive biases, may have contributed. Confirmation bias may lead people to accept images that fit their existing beliefs. Anchoring may make the first emotional reaction more influential than later inspection. Familiar themes may feel trustworthy, while large numbers of supportive comments may create the impression that the content has been socially verified.
The researcher found that images involving older people, nostalgic memories and apparent neglect often produced strong emotional reactions. Outrage-inducing content could also encourage comments while drawing attention away from visual inconsistencies. By contrast, some images involving inter-ethnic conflict or neglected birthdays attracted more skepticism or less engagement.
Miskolczi summarized: “This study examined how AI-generated images [AIGIs] on Facebook exploit users’ vulnerabilities, revealing their remarkable potential for digital deception… Emotional engagement was often accompanied by cognitive biases which together reduced users’ critical reflection.”
Some limitations are to be noted. The study was limited to public Facebook content, which may not reflect platform-specific or culturally embedded differences in how users on other networks engage with such images. Additionally, the manual frameworks used to detect AI images and automated comments have not yet been externally validated. Furthermore, the analysis inferred cognitive biases from the content of comments rather than measuring them directly in experiments. It also cannot establish exactly how many users genuinely believed the images were real, how many were responding ironically or whether the images changed their views or behavior.
The study, “The illusion of reality: How AI-generated images (AIGIs) are fooling social media users,” was authored by Márk Miskolczi.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AIGIdeception #CognitiveBiases #EmotionalTriggers #FakeImages #SocialMediaSafety #DigitalManipulation #Misinformation #AIethics #AIgeneratedImages #CriticalMedia literacy
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Cognitive biases and emotional triggers make AI-generated images highly deceptive
Emotionally charged AI-generated images may encourage social media users to respond before they critically assess whether the images are real, according to a study published in Computers in Human Behavior.
AI-generated images can now be produced quickly and cheaply, making it possible to create large amounts of realistic-looking material for social media. Some images are paired with emotional captions and distributed through networks of automated pages or content farms that seek attention, advertising revenue or user interaction.
Images may be particularly effective at attracting attention because they are processed quickly and can trigger emotional reactions before people examine details closely. A picture of an elderly couple, a neglected child or an apparently extraordinary achievement may prompt sympathy, anger or admiration. Those reactions can make users less likely to stop and ask whether the scene is authentic.
Márk Miskolczi of Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary analyzed public Facebook material collected between March 1 and May 1, 2025. The sample consisted of 146 AI-generated images and 8,922 user comments.
Miskolczi selected 12 public Facebook pages that regularly posted suspected AI-generated images. The pages covered themes such as nostalgia, rural life, elderly people, spirituality, everyday hardship and family relationships. Images were first examined using an eight-step manual system that looked for features such as distorted anatomy, unusual facial details, floating objects, impossible reflections, malformed writing and unnatural textures. Images were also checked with an online AI detector, and only those receiving an AI-probability score of at least 60% were included.
An initial database contained 11,547 comments. After comments believed to have been produced by automated accounts were removed, 9,082 remained. The researcher then excluded 160 comments considered incomplete or meaningless, leaving 8,922 comments for qualitative analysis. The comments were categorized, or coded, in stages to identify recurring topics, emotional responses and possible mental shortcuts involved in users’ reactions.
Five broad themes emerged in the images: emotion and nostalgia; empathy and compassion; extraordinary achievements and hobbies; birthdays and social problems; and religion and spirituality. The most common comment category was birthday wishes, with 1,980 comments (22.19%). Inspiring messages and encouragement accounted for 1,802 comments (20.20%). Religious content accounted for 1,490 comments (16.70%).
Many users responded as though the images represented real people or events. They expressed sympathy for older adults, shared memories of childhood, offered congratulations and posted religious blessings. The analysis suggested that several mental shortcuts, known as cognitive biases, may have contributed. Confirmation bias may lead people to accept images that fit their existing beliefs. Anchoring may make the first emotional reaction more influential than later inspection. Familiar themes may feel trustworthy, while large numbers of supportive comments may create the impression that the content has been socially verified.
The researcher found that images involving older people, nostalgic memories and apparent neglect often produced strong emotional reactions. Outrage-inducing content could also encourage comments while drawing attention away from visual inconsistencies. By contrast, some images involving inter-ethnic conflict or neglected birthdays attracted more skepticism or less engagement.
Miskolczi summarized: “This study examined how AI-generated images [AIGIs] on Facebook exploit users’ vulnerabilities, revealing their remarkable potential for digital deception… Emotional engagement was often accompanied by cognitive biases which together reduced users’ critical reflection.”
Some limitations are to be noted. The study was limited to public Facebook content, which may not reflect platform-specific or culturally embedded differences in how users on other networks engage with such images. Additionally, the manual frameworks used to detect AI images and automated comments have not yet been externally validated. Furthermore, the analysis inferred cognitive biases from the content of comments rather than measuring them directly in experiments. It also cannot establish exactly how many users genuinely believed the images were real, how many were responding ironically or whether the images changed their views or behavior.
The study, “The illusion of reality: How AI-generated images (AIGIs) are fooling social media users,” was authored by Márk Miskolczi.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AIGIdeception #CognitiveBiases #EmotionalTriggers #FakeImages #SocialMediaSafety #DigitalManipulation #Misinformation #AIethics #AIgeneratedImages #CriticalMedia literacy
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Cognitive biases and emotional triggers make AI-generated images highly deceptive
Emotionally charged AI-generated images may encourage social media users to respond before they critically assess whether the images are real, according to a study published in Computers in Human Behavior.
AI-generated images can now be produced quickly and cheaply, making it possible to create large amounts of realistic-looking material for social media. Some images are paired with emotional captions and distributed through networks of automated pages or content farms that seek attention, advertising revenue or user interaction.
Images may be particularly effective at attracting attention because they are processed quickly and can trigger emotional reactions before people examine details closely. A picture of an elderly couple, a neglected child or an apparently extraordinary achievement may prompt sympathy, anger or admiration. Those reactions can make users less likely to stop and ask whether the scene is authentic.
Márk Miskolczi of Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary analyzed public Facebook material collected between March 1 and May 1, 2025. The sample consisted of 146 AI-generated images and 8,922 user comments.
Miskolczi selected 12 public Facebook pages that regularly posted suspected AI-generated images. The pages covered themes such as nostalgia, rural life, elderly people, spirituality, everyday hardship and family relationships. Images were first examined using an eight-step manual system that looked for features such as distorted anatomy, unusual facial details, floating objects, impossible reflections, malformed writing and unnatural textures. Images were also checked with an online AI detector, and only those receiving an AI-probability score of at least 60% were included.
An initial database contained 11,547 comments. After comments believed to have been produced by automated accounts were removed, 9,082 remained. The researcher then excluded 160 comments considered incomplete or meaningless, leaving 8,922 comments for qualitative analysis. The comments were categorized, or coded, in stages to identify recurring topics, emotional responses and possible mental shortcuts involved in users’ reactions.
Five broad themes emerged in the images: emotion and nostalgia; empathy and compassion; extraordinary achievements and hobbies; birthdays and social problems; and religion and spirituality. The most common comment category was birthday wishes, with 1,980 comments (22.19%). Inspiring messages and encouragement accounted for 1,802 comments (20.20%). Religious content accounted for 1,490 comments (16.70%).
Many users responded as though the images represented real people or events. They expressed sympathy for older adults, shared memories of childhood, offered congratulations and posted religious blessings. The analysis suggested that several mental shortcuts, known as cognitive biases, may have contributed. Confirmation bias may lead people to accept images that fit their existing beliefs. Anchoring may make the first emotional reaction more influential than later inspection. Familiar themes may feel trustworthy, while large numbers of supportive comments may create the impression that the content has been socially verified.
The researcher found that images involving older people, nostalgic memories and apparent neglect often produced strong emotional reactions. Outrage-inducing content could also encourage comments while drawing attention away from visual inconsistencies. By contrast, some images involving inter-ethnic conflict or neglected birthdays attracted more skepticism or less engagement.
Miskolczi summarized: “This study examined how AI-generated images [AIGIs] on Facebook exploit users’ vulnerabilities, revealing their remarkable potential for digital deception… Emotional engagement was often accompanied by cognitive biases which together reduced users’ critical reflection.”
Some limitations are to be noted. The study was limited to public Facebook content, which may not reflect platform-specific or culturally embedded differences in how users on other networks engage with such images. Additionally, the manual frameworks used to detect AI images and automated comments have not yet been externally validated. Furthermore, the analysis inferred cognitive biases from the content of comments rather than measuring them directly in experiments. It also cannot establish exactly how many users genuinely believed the images were real, how many were responding ironically or whether the images changed their views or behavior.
The study, “The illusion of reality: How AI-generated images (AIGIs) are fooling social media users,” was authored by Márk Miskolczi.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AIGIdeception #CognitiveBiases #EmotionalTriggers #FakeImages #SocialMediaSafety #DigitalManipulation #Misinformation #AIethics #AIgeneratedImages #CriticalMedia literacy
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: Association of Health Care Journalists: MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools
If you’re a journalist covering mental health, you’re bound to come across some new digital tool claiming to combat anxiety or encourage healthier self-talk. But reporting on them — whether as a news article about a buzzy new product or in a roundup of resources in a service piece — can be tricky.
As I wrote for an article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology magazine, studies suggest there are tens of thousands of mental health apps on the market, and their safety and efficacy range widely. A few apps have undergone randomized controlled trials and have received FDA authorization. Others make bold claims and can compromise patient safety and privacy. Some may pose relatively low risk, but they also aren’t a substitute for traditional mental health care.
How are consumers, mental health professionals and journalists supposed to keep up with the good, bad and in-between? One way is through two relatively new programs from professional psychological and psychiatric organizations. Here’s an overview:
The American Psychological Association’s Digital Badge Program
This system provides “independent, evidence-based evaluations of digital mental and behavioral health technologies,” the APA said. “Each evaluation is grounded in evidence, clinical insight, regulatory alignment, and user safety.” To search for various tools and see how they stack up, explore the program’s Digital Badge Solutions Library.
The American Psychiatric Association’s App Advisor
This is a series of questions you can go through when trying to decide whether an app is an appropriate choice for a certain person or situation. The goal, the APA says, is “to provide a hierarchical rating system with content-specific questions that guide a thoughtful approach to app selection.”
This process aims to help people “understand the key information that should be considered when choosing an app, and how this differs from selecting traditional therapeutic interventions.”
Media contacts
Journalists interested in learning more about either program or speaking with an expert in digital mental health can contact the organizations’ media departments:
•American Psychological Association: [email protected]
•
•American Psychiatric Association: Erin Connors, [email protected]
•
The post These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools appeared first on Association of Health Care Journalists.
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Learn more at https://healthjournalism.org/topic/mental-health/ .
This robot is NOT affiliated with Association of Health Care Journalists and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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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 #DigitalMentalHealthTools #MentalHealthApps #AppEvaluation #DigitalBadgeProgram #APA #AppAdvisor #MentalHealthTech #EvidenceBasedTech #PatientSafety #DigitalHealthNews
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: Association of Health Care Journalists: MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools
If you’re a journalist covering mental health, you’re bound to come across some new digital tool claiming to combat anxiety or encourage healthier self-talk. But reporting on them — whether as a news article about a buzzy new product or in a roundup of resources in a service piece — can be tricky.
As I wrote for an article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology magazine, studies suggest there are tens of thousands of mental health apps on the market, and their safety and efficacy range widely. A few apps have undergone randomized controlled trials and have received FDA authorization. Others make bold claims and can compromise patient safety and privacy. Some may pose relatively low risk, but they also aren’t a substitute for traditional mental health care.
How are consumers, mental health professionals and journalists supposed to keep up with the good, bad and in-between? One way is through two relatively new programs from professional psychological and psychiatric organizations. Here’s an overview:
The American Psychological Association’s Digital Badge Program
This system provides “independent, evidence-based evaluations of digital mental and behavioral health technologies,” the APA said. “Each evaluation is grounded in evidence, clinical insight, regulatory alignment, and user safety.” To search for various tools and see how they stack up, explore the program’s Digital Badge Solutions Library.
The American Psychiatric Association’s App Advisor
This is a series of questions you can go through when trying to decide whether an app is an appropriate choice for a certain person or situation. The goal, the APA says, is “to provide a hierarchical rating system with content-specific questions that guide a thoughtful approach to app selection.”
This process aims to help people “understand the key information that should be considered when choosing an app, and how this differs from selecting traditional therapeutic interventions.”
Media contacts
Journalists interested in learning more about either program or speaking with an expert in digital mental health can contact the organizations’ media departments:
•American Psychological Association: [email protected]
•
•American Psychiatric Association: Erin Connors, [email protected]
•
The post These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools appeared first on Association of Health Care Journalists.
-------------------------------------------------
Learn more at https://healthjournalism.org/topic/mental-health/ .
This robot is NOT affiliated with Association of Health Care Journalists and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DigitalMentalHealthTools #MentalHealthApps #AppEvaluation #DigitalBadgeProgram #APA #AppAdvisor #MentalHealthTech #EvidenceBasedTech #PatientSafety #DigitalHealthNews
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: Association of Health Care Journalists: MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools
If you’re a journalist covering mental health, you’re bound to come across some new digital tool claiming to combat anxiety or encourage healthier self-talk. But reporting on them — whether as a news article about a buzzy new product or in a roundup of resources in a service piece — can be tricky.
As I wrote for an article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology magazine, studies suggest there are tens of thousands of mental health apps on the market, and their safety and efficacy range widely. A few apps have undergone randomized controlled trials and have received FDA authorization. Others make bold claims and can compromise patient safety and privacy. Some may pose relatively low risk, but they also aren’t a substitute for traditional mental health care.
How are consumers, mental health professionals and journalists supposed to keep up with the good, bad and in-between? One way is through two relatively new programs from professional psychological and psychiatric organizations. Here’s an overview:
The American Psychological Association’s Digital Badge Program
This system provides “independent, evidence-based evaluations of digital mental and behavioral health technologies,” the APA said. “Each evaluation is grounded in evidence, clinical insight, regulatory alignment, and user safety.” To search for various tools and see how they stack up, explore the program’s Digital Badge Solutions Library.
The American Psychiatric Association’s App Advisor
This is a series of questions you can go through when trying to decide whether an app is an appropriate choice for a certain person or situation. The goal, the APA says, is “to provide a hierarchical rating system with content-specific questions that guide a thoughtful approach to app selection.”
This process aims to help people “understand the key information that should be considered when choosing an app, and how this differs from selecting traditional therapeutic interventions.”
Media contacts
Journalists interested in learning more about either program or speaking with an expert in digital mental health can contact the organizations’ media departments:
•American Psychological Association: [email protected]
•
•American Psychiatric Association: Erin Connors, [email protected]
•
The post These new resources can help you vet digital mental health tools appeared first on Association of Health Care Journalists.
-------------------------------------------------
Learn more at https://healthjournalism.org/topic/mental-health/ .
This robot is NOT affiliated with Association of Health Care Journalists and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DigitalMentalHealthTools #MentalHealthApps #AppEvaluation #DigitalBadgeProgram #APA #AppAdvisor #MentalHealthTech #EvidenceBasedTech #PatientSafety #DigitalHealthNews
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 05:30PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
🎙️ Something new is coming!
The Psych Consult: Second Opinion, hosted by Claire Brandon, MD, explores the intersection of psychiatry and other areas of medicine.
Launching September 21.
Stay tuned for conversations with experts across the collaborative care team! https://t.co/cvmMmjiILX
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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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 #psychotherapist #PsychConsult #SecondOpinion #PsychiatryMeetsMedicine #ClaireBrandonMD #CollaborativeCareTeam
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists show that virtual reality illusions can physically cool down your real body
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-illusions-can-physically-cool-down-your-real-body/
Visually tricking the brain into thinking a person’s left hand has crossed over to the right side of their body can physically cool down their actual, unmoving left hand. These findings suggest that disrupting the mind’s spatial map of the body can trigger measurable physiological changes in the physical limbs. The small study was published in the journal Cortex.
The human brain constantly builds and updates a model of the body by combining visual, tactile, and spatial information. This internal framework is known as the body matrix. The body matrix organizes sensory inputs into a cohesive map divided into a left and a right space. The invisible boundary separating these two halves is called the body midline.
When visual or physical information conflicts with this internal map, the brain actively tries to resolve the mismatch. In some cases of brain injury, this spatial mapping breaks down, causing patients to neglect one side of their body or feel disconnected from their own limbs. Healthy individuals can also experience temporary shifts in body perception through multisensory illusions.
Past experiments using fake rubber hands or mirrors have shown that tricking the brain into adopting an artificial limb can cause the real, hidden limb to drop in temperature. Researchers Matteo Girondini, Valentina Saccone, Massimo Montanaro, and Alberto Gallace wanted to test if they could induce similar physiological changes by disrupting the body’s midline boundary in a virtual environment.
The research team recruited twenty-six adults, all but one of them right-handed, for a sensorimotor experiment. The participants wore a virtual reality headset and held a controller in their right hand. Their real left hand rested comfortably on a table in front of them out of sight.
Over a span of fifteen minutes, participants used their actual right hand to swing a virtual stick and push a virtual blue cube toward various targets. Every time the virtual stick collided with a cube, the controller in their right hand buzzed. This vibration provided synchronized physical and visual feedback to reinforce the illusion of interacting with the digital world.
Each participant completed the task twice on different days. In the congruent condition, the virtual hand holding the stick appeared as a standard right hand. In the incongruent condition, the virtual hand was visually replaced by a left hand. This created an illusion where the participant’s left hand appeared to be operating on the right side of their body space, perfectly mimicking the movements of their actual right hand.
The researchers tracked the temperature of the resting physical left hand using a non-contact thermal camera. They also monitored skin conductance, a measure of sweat gland activity that reflects changes in the nervous system. To trigger a skin conductance response, the researchers delivered mild, non-painful electrical stimulations to the back of the participant’s left hand midway through the virtual task.
Participants also completed a blindfolded pointing test before and after the virtual task. Without being able to see their hands, the participants used their right index finger to point to where they felt the fingers on their left hand were located. This allowed the researchers to measure proprioceptive drift, which is a shift in a person’s internal sense of their body’s physical location.
The researchers observed a drop in the skin temperature of the physical left hand during the incongruent condition. Tricking the brain into visualizing the left limb acting on the right side of the body space actively cooled the physical limb left behind on the table. By contrast, the temperature of the left hand increased during the congruent condition.
The overall frequency and intensity of the skin conductance responses did not differ between the two virtual setups. In the incongruent condition, the researchers found a positive correlation between temperature and skin conductance. Participants who experienced a larger drop in hand temperature also showed reduced skin conductance responses to the electrical stimulation. Warmer temperatures correlated with stronger nervous system responses.
The blindfolded pointing test revealed that participants felt their left middle finger had shifted slightly to the right after the training. This spatial drift occurred after both virtual conditions. The researchers suspect this happened because the participants were exclusively using and paying attention to the right side of their body during the entire exercise.
Subjective ratings of the virtual experience were similar across the board. Participants reported feeling an equal sense of control and embodiment over the virtual stick regardless of whether they were looking at a right or left virtual hand. The physiological cooling effect occurred without any conscious shift in how the participants perceived their bodies.
The study design includes a few limitations. The sample size was small, and the experiment only tested right-handed individuals using their dominant hand. The research team could not measure the temperature of the moving right hand during the task. This leaves it unknown whether the cooling effect is restricted to the stationary hand or if it extends to the actively engaged hand.
The current setup also makes it difficult to separate the effects of the visual illusion from the tactile vibrations. The physical feedback vibrating the right hand likely reinforced the bodily conflict, but its exact contribution to the temperature drop requires further testing.
Future research could explore whether applying magnetic or electrical stimulation to specific brain regions alters these temperature changes. This would help identify the exact neural circuits responsible for regulating body temperature during sensory conflicts.
Understanding how spatial perception affects bodily regulation could eventually inform virtual therapies for neurological conditions. For example, patients with complex regional pain syndrome often experience abnormal cooling in their affected limbs. Virtual reality exercises that manipulate the body’s midline boundary could offer a way to safely recalibrate these disturbed body maps and restore normal temperature regulation.
The study, “Shifting the body midline: The impact of visuomotor modulations in virtual reality on peripheral autonomic activity,” was authored by Matteo Girondini, Valentina Saccone, Massimo Montanaro, and Alberto Gallace.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-illusions-can-physically-cool-down-your-real-body/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VirtualReality #BodyMatrix #VisuomotorIllusion #Thermoregulation #Proprioception #CortexStudy #MultisensoryIntegration #SpatialPerception #Neuroscience #VRTherapy
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Disrupting specific dopamine neurons in fruit flies erases long-term memories by ruining sleep
A study on common fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) found that disrupting the resting, or basal, activity of a small group of dopamine-producing (dopaminergic) neurons belonging to the protocerebral anterior medial cluster of their brains impairs 24-hour long-term memory formation. It also results in sleep loss and sleep fragmentation, particularly at night. The paper was published in eLife.
When an experience occurs, long-lasting memories of it are not stored in the brain instantly. Instead, newly formed memories initially remain fragile and undergo a process known as memory consolidation, during which neural connections are gradually reorganized and stabilized.
Sleep appears to play an especially important role in this process. Sleep deprivation can disrupt both memory formation and the stabilization of memories after learning. One possible explanation for this is that the brain reactivates patterns of neural activity during sleep, effectively replaying recent experiences and strengthening the circuits that represent them. Yet the precise mechanisms connecting sleep and memory consolidation remain far from fully understood.
Study author Lin Yan and colleagues conducted a study in which they aimed to identify the neural mechanism that connects sleep with long-term memory consolidation. They focused on the interaction between two groups of neurons in the brain – the protocerebral anterior medial dopaminergic neurons and the dorsal paired medial neurons. More specifically, these researchers explored how the disruption of basal activity of a small subset of neurons in the protocerebral anterior medial region of the brain of a fruit fly affects the formation of long-term memories.
The study was conducted on male and female fruit flies. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an important model for investigating various neural mechanisms because its relatively small brain contains well-defined neural circuits. A particularly important structure of the fruit fly brain is the mushroom body, a multifunctional unit roughly analogous to the mammalian hippocampus, which performs functions that are in some respects comparable to those of memory-related structures in the mammalian brain.
In these flies, dopamine-producing neurons communicate with different parts of the mushroom body and can influence whether experiences are learned as rewarding or unpleasant, how memories develop after learning, and whether they are later forgotten. Some of these same dopaminergic circuits also regulate wakefulness and sleep, raising the possibility that the neural systems controlling when a fruit fly sleeps are directly intertwined with those determining which memories survive.
Study authors conducted a series of experiments in which they used genetically modified fruit flies with modifications that allowed researchers to selectively activate or silence specific neurons, particularly protocerebral anterior medial (PAM) dopaminergic neurons and dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons. They used genetic variants that were sensitive to temperature. In one variant, raising the temperature to about 30 °C for 1 hour activated the targeted neurons. Another gene variant blocked their activity when the flies were kept at about 32 °C, generally for 2.5 hours.
They trained these flies to associate a specific odor with being given sucrose as a reward. Because this type of learning requires the flies to be motivated by hunger, they were starved prior to training. After the flies learned this association, during the period in which this memory should be consolidating, study authors activated or inhibited selected PAM and DPM neurons. Twenty-four hours later, their memory was tested by allowing them to choose between the odor that they were trained to associate with sucrose and another odor.
The results showed that disrupting the activity of a small subset of PAM dopaminergic neurons (called PAM-α1 neurons) could impair long-term memory consolidation. Brief activation of PAM-α1 neurons impaired long-term memory, while inhibition of some PAM-α1 populations also produced memory deficits. Inhibiting two DPM neurons during the consolidation period likewise impaired long-term memory. Additionally, the researchers identified that these sleep-memory integration signals are mediated primarily by a specific dopamine receptor, Dop1R1, expressed on the DPM neurons.
Study authors also examined how these disruptions affect the sleep of female fruit flies and found that they result in sleep loss and fragmentation, especially at night. Crucially, they found that this sleep disruption is highly dependent on the flies’ internal state; it predominantly occurred when the flies were subjected to starvation conditions. Interestingly, they found that if, after activating the PAM-α1 neurons in a way that causes sleep disruption, they gave these flies gaboxadol, a drug that promotes sleep, long-term memory consolidation would be restored. This finding supports the idea that the sleep disturbance contributed to the impairment of long-term memory consolidation.
The study results provide a new molecular and neural basis for the complex relationship between sleep and memory. However, the study was conducted on fruit flies, not on humans. While these flies and humans share some broad similarities in neural mechanisms, they are still widely different species. Results of a similar study on humans might be different.
The paper, “Brief disruption of activity in a subset of dopaminergic neurons during consolidation impairs long-term memory by fragmenting sleep,” was authored by Lin Yan, Litao Wu, Timothy D Wiggin, Xiaojuan Su, Wei Yan, Hailiang Li, Lei Li, Zhonghua Lu, Fang Guo, Zhiqiang Meng, Yuantao Li, Fan Li, Leslie C Griffith, and Chang Liu.
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Drosophila #sleepandmemory #dopaminergicneurons #PAMalpha1 #DPMneurons #longtermmemory #sleepdeprivation #memoryconsolidation #neuroscience #eLife
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Disrupting specific dopamine neurons in fruit flies erases long-term memories by ruining sleep
A study on common fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) found that disrupting the resting, or basal, activity of a small group of dopamine-producing (dopaminergic) neurons belonging to the protocerebral anterior medial cluster of their brains impairs 24-hour long-term memory formation. It also results in sleep loss and sleep fragmentation, particularly at night. The paper was published in eLife.
When an experience occurs, long-lasting memories of it are not stored in the brain instantly. Instead, newly formed memories initially remain fragile and undergo a process known as memory consolidation, during which neural connections are gradually reorganized and stabilized.
Sleep appears to play an especially important role in this process. Sleep deprivation can disrupt both memory formation and the stabilization of memories after learning. One possible explanation for this is that the brain reactivates patterns of neural activity during sleep, effectively replaying recent experiences and strengthening the circuits that represent them. Yet the precise mechanisms connecting sleep and memory consolidation remain far from fully understood.
Study author Lin Yan and colleagues conducted a study in which they aimed to identify the neural mechanism that connects sleep with long-term memory consolidation. They focused on the interaction between two groups of neurons in the brain – the protocerebral anterior medial dopaminergic neurons and the dorsal paired medial neurons. More specifically, these researchers explored how the disruption of basal activity of a small subset of neurons in the protocerebral anterior medial region of the brain of a fruit fly affects the formation of long-term memories.
The study was conducted on male and female fruit flies. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an important model for investigating various neural mechanisms because its relatively small brain contains well-defined neural circuits. A particularly important structure of the fruit fly brain is the mushroom body, a multifunctional unit roughly analogous to the mammalian hippocampus, which performs functions that are in some respects comparable to those of memory-related structures in the mammalian brain.
In these flies, dopamine-producing neurons communicate with different parts of the mushroom body and can influence whether experiences are learned as rewarding or unpleasant, how memories develop after learning, and whether they are later forgotten. Some of these same dopaminergic circuits also regulate wakefulness and sleep, raising the possibility that the neural systems controlling when a fruit fly sleeps are directly intertwined with those determining which memories survive.
Study authors conducted a series of experiments in which they used genetically modified fruit flies with modifications that allowed researchers to selectively activate or silence specific neurons, particularly protocerebral anterior medial (PAM) dopaminergic neurons and dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons. They used genetic variants that were sensitive to temperature. In one variant, raising the temperature to about 30 °C for 1 hour activated the targeted neurons. Another gene variant blocked their activity when the flies were kept at about 32 °C, generally for 2.5 hours.
They trained these flies to associate a specific odor with being given sucrose as a reward. Because this type of learning requires the flies to be motivated by hunger, they were starved prior to training. After the flies learned this association, during the period in which this memory should be consolidating, study authors activated or inhibited selected PAM and DPM neurons. Twenty-four hours later, their memory was tested by allowing them to choose between the odor that they were trained to associate with sucrose and another odor.
The results showed that disrupting the activity of a small subset of PAM dopaminergic neurons (called PAM-α1 neurons) could impair long-term memory consolidation. Brief activation of PAM-α1 neurons impaired long-term memory, while inhibition of some PAM-α1 populations also produced memory deficits. Inhibiting two DPM neurons during the consolidation period likewise impaired long-term memory. Additionally, the researchers identified that these sleep-memory integration signals are mediated primarily by a specific dopamine receptor, Dop1R1, expressed on the DPM neurons.
Study authors also examined how these disruptions affect the sleep of female fruit flies and found that they result in sleep loss and fragmentation, especially at night. Crucially, they found that this sleep disruption is highly dependent on the flies’ internal state; it predominantly occurred when the flies were subjected to starvation conditions. Interestingly, they found that if, after activating the PAM-α1 neurons in a way that causes sleep disruption, they gave these flies gaboxadol, a drug that promotes sleep, long-term memory consolidation would be restored. This finding supports the idea that the sleep disturbance contributed to the impairment of long-term memory consolidation.
The study results provide a new molecular and neural basis for the complex relationship between sleep and memory. However, the study was conducted on fruit flies, not on humans. While these flies and humans share some broad similarities in neural mechanisms, they are still widely different species. Results of a similar study on humans might be different.
The paper, “Brief disruption of activity in a subset of dopaminergic neurons during consolidation impairs long-term memory by fragmenting sleep,” was authored by Lin Yan, Litao Wu, Timothy D Wiggin, Xiaojuan Su, Wei Yan, Hailiang Li, Lei Li, Zhonghua Lu, Fang Guo, Zhiqiang Meng, Yuantao Li, Fan Li, Leslie C Griffith, and Chang Liu.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Drosophila #sleepandmemory #dopaminergicneurons #PAMalpha1 #DPMneurons #longtermmemory #sleepdeprivation #memoryconsolidation #neuroscience #eLife
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Disrupting specific dopamine neurons in fruit flies erases long-term memories by ruining sleep
A study on common fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) found that disrupting the resting, or basal, activity of a small group of dopamine-producing (dopaminergic) neurons belonging to the protocerebral anterior medial cluster of their brains impairs 24-hour long-term memory formation. It also results in sleep loss and sleep fragmentation, particularly at night. The paper was published in eLife.
When an experience occurs, long-lasting memories of it are not stored in the brain instantly. Instead, newly formed memories initially remain fragile and undergo a process known as memory consolidation, during which neural connections are gradually reorganized and stabilized.
Sleep appears to play an especially important role in this process. Sleep deprivation can disrupt both memory formation and the stabilization of memories after learning. One possible explanation for this is that the brain reactivates patterns of neural activity during sleep, effectively replaying recent experiences and strengthening the circuits that represent them. Yet the precise mechanisms connecting sleep and memory consolidation remain far from fully understood.
Study author Lin Yan and colleagues conducted a study in which they aimed to identify the neural mechanism that connects sleep with long-term memory consolidation. They focused on the interaction between two groups of neurons in the brain – the protocerebral anterior medial dopaminergic neurons and the dorsal paired medial neurons. More specifically, these researchers explored how the disruption of basal activity of a small subset of neurons in the protocerebral anterior medial region of the brain of a fruit fly affects the formation of long-term memories.
The study was conducted on male and female fruit flies. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an important model for investigating various neural mechanisms because its relatively small brain contains well-defined neural circuits. A particularly important structure of the fruit fly brain is the mushroom body, a multifunctional unit roughly analogous to the mammalian hippocampus, which performs functions that are in some respects comparable to those of memory-related structures in the mammalian brain.
In these flies, dopamine-producing neurons communicate with different parts of the mushroom body and can influence whether experiences are learned as rewarding or unpleasant, how memories develop after learning, and whether they are later forgotten. Some of these same dopaminergic circuits also regulate wakefulness and sleep, raising the possibility that the neural systems controlling when a fruit fly sleeps are directly intertwined with those determining which memories survive.
Study authors conducted a series of experiments in which they used genetically modified fruit flies with modifications that allowed researchers to selectively activate or silence specific neurons, particularly protocerebral anterior medial (PAM) dopaminergic neurons and dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons. They used genetic variants that were sensitive to temperature. In one variant, raising the temperature to about 30 °C for 1 hour activated the targeted neurons. Another gene variant blocked their activity when the flies were kept at about 32 °C, generally for 2.5 hours.
They trained these flies to associate a specific odor with being given sucrose as a reward. Because this type of learning requires the flies to be motivated by hunger, they were starved prior to training. After the flies learned this association, during the period in which this memory should be consolidating, study authors activated or inhibited selected PAM and DPM neurons. Twenty-four hours later, their memory was tested by allowing them to choose between the odor that they were trained to associate with sucrose and another odor.
The results showed that disrupting the activity of a small subset of PAM dopaminergic neurons (called PAM-α1 neurons) could impair long-term memory consolidation. Brief activation of PAM-α1 neurons impaired long-term memory, while inhibition of some PAM-α1 populations also produced memory deficits. Inhibiting two DPM neurons during the consolidation period likewise impaired long-term memory. Additionally, the researchers identified that these sleep-memory integration signals are mediated primarily by a specific dopamine receptor, Dop1R1, expressed on the DPM neurons.
Study authors also examined how these disruptions affect the sleep of female fruit flies and found that they result in sleep loss and fragmentation, especially at night. Crucially, they found that this sleep disruption is highly dependent on the flies’ internal state; it predominantly occurred when the flies were subjected to starvation conditions. Interestingly, they found that if, after activating the PAM-α1 neurons in a way that causes sleep disruption, they gave these flies gaboxadol, a drug that promotes sleep, long-term memory consolidation would be restored. This finding supports the idea that the sleep disturbance contributed to the impairment of long-term memory consolidation.
The study results provide a new molecular and neural basis for the complex relationship between sleep and memory. However, the study was conducted on fruit flies, not on humans. While these flies and humans share some broad similarities in neural mechanisms, they are still widely different species. Results of a similar study on humans might be different.
The paper, “Brief disruption of activity in a subset of dopaminergic neurons during consolidation impairs long-term memory by fragmenting sleep,” was authored by Lin Yan, Litao Wu, Timothy D Wiggin, Xiaojuan Su, Wei Yan, Hailiang Li, Lei Li, Zhonghua Lu, Fang Guo, Zhiqiang Meng, Yuantao Li, Fan Li, Leslie C Griffith, and Chang Liu.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Drosophila #sleepandmemory #dopaminergicneurons #PAMalpha1 #DPMneurons #longtermmemory #sleepdeprivation #memoryconsolidation #neuroscience #eLife
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic dating app and pornography use are linked to a weaker sense of meaning in romantic love
People who struggle with compulsive use of online dating apps and pornography tend to view romantic love as less existentially meaningful and more as a practical arrangement. A recent study published in BMC Psychology suggests that addiction-like engagement with these digital platforms is linked to a fractured philosophical understanding of romance. The research provides evidence that problematic users are more likely to fall in love quickly and frequently but often lack a deep sense of purpose in their romantic connections.
The study approaches romantic love from an existential perspective. In this view, love is not just a biological drive or a social contract but a fundamental part of human existence that gives life depth and meaning. People who see love through an existential lens often view their romantic relationships as highly meaningful and worthy of personal sacrifice.
Online dating and pornography consumption are incredibly common, and for many people, they are harmless activities. But for some, engagement with these platforms becomes problematic. Problematic use happens when a behavior becomes compulsive, feels out of the person’s control, and starts interfering with their daily life and mood.
Frequent exposure to the specific environments of dating apps and pornography websites might shape how people think about romance. For example, dating apps often encourage users to evaluate potential partners based on superficial traits in a matter of seconds. A 2026 study found that online pornography use is tied to both dating app use and higher levels of emotional detachment.
“It began with something fairly ordinary,” lead researcher Reza Shabahang, a research associate in psychology in the College of Human Sciences and Culture at Flinders University, told PsyPost. “Dating apps have quietly become one of the main ways people meet, and yet a lot of the conversation around them, in research and outside it, was about how much people use them and how that use affects mood, self-esteem or body image.”
The researchers suspected that the negative experiences common to these platforms might alter a user’s sense of meaning. Rejection, shallow conversations, and an endless stream of potential matches on dating apps might erode the idea of a single, meaningful romantic bond. Similarly, the focus on physical gratification over intimacy in pornography might encourage users to view love more practically rather than existentially.
“We kept noticing something else in how people talk about these platforms, a kind of weariness, a sense that the whole business of finding someone had started to feel hollow,” Shabahang explained. “That’s not really a question about well-being in the usual sense. It’s a question about meaning, about what people come to believe love is worth.”
“The literature on behavioral addiction had started to take dating apps seriously, but mostly as a pattern of behavior to be measured, not as something that might change a person’s outlook on love itself,” he added. “So the gap we wanted to address was an existential one, and the real-world problem behind it is that a great many people are now meeting one of their most fundamental needs through a channel we still understand quite poorly.”
To explore these existential questions, Shabahang and his colleagues at Flinders University and ELTE Eötvös Loránd University surveyed 664 adult internet users in Iran. The participants had an average age of 26 and used both dating apps and pornography websites. The researchers asked participants to complete several questionnaires measuring their digital habits and their attitudes toward love.
The surveys measured problematic dating app use and problematic pornography consumption, asking if participants felt restless without the platforms or tried and failed to cut back. The researchers also measured emotional promiscuity, also known as emophilia. This is the tendency to fall in love quickly, frequently, and with less selectivity. A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that higher levels of emophilia were associated with having had more romantic relationships and being unfaithful more often.
Participants also answered questions about their existential reflection on love, rating how often they contemplate the philosophy and purpose of romance. They rated the perceived meaningfulness of love, indicating whether they felt love imparts a sense of meaning to their existence. The researchers also assessed pragmatic views of love, which treat romance as a practical arrangement dependent on things like financial stability. Finally, the team measured mindful social media use, assessing whether participants stay aware and intentional while scrolling.
The results showed that problematic engagement with dating apps and pornography was negatively associated with deep, philosophical views of love. Higher levels of problematic dating app use were linked to less existential reflection on love and a lower sense of love’s overall meaningfulness. The researchers controlled for age, gender, education, relationship status, and sexual orientation, ensuring these basic demographic factors were not driving the results.
Problematic use of both platforms was positively associated with a pragmatic view of love and higher emotional promiscuity. In other words, individuals who compulsively swiped on dating apps or consumed pornography were more likely to view romance as a practical transaction and were prone to falling in love rapidly and repeatedly. The two problematic behaviors were also positively correlated with each other, meaning people who struggled to control their dating app use often struggled with their pornography consumption as well.
The researchers also found a strong negative association between mindful social media use and both problematic behaviors. People who reported being highly aware of their thoughts and actions while using social media were much less likely to use dating apps or pornography compulsively. Once mindful social media use was factored into the statistical model, problematic pornography consumption also showed a negative association with the perceived meaningfulness of love.
“The way you use these apps matters more than whether you use them,” Shabahang said. “Most people assume the danger lies in the amount, that if you’re on there too often or too long, something will go wrong. What we found points somewhere else.”
Instead, purposeful engagement appears to play a protective role. “Someone can spend a fair bit of time on dating apps and come away fine, if they know why they’re there and when to stop,” Shabahang explained. “The practical takeaway isn’t to delete the app. It’s to notice how you’re using it. Ask yourself what you came for, whether you’re getting it, and be willing to close the app when the answer is no.”
These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that greater perceived meaninglessness in life was associated with more frequent pornography use. It is worth noting, however, that the older study measured an overall lack of meaning in life, whereas the new study specifically examined existential meaning in the context of romantic love.
When interpreting the findings, the researchers urge readers to view the associations as a direction rather than destiny. “What we’re describing is a tendency, not a rule, and plenty of people in our data don’t fit the pattern at all,” Shabahang noted. “So nobody should read this and conclude that their own use has already done something to them.”
However, on a broader scale, these tendencies carry weight. “Effects of this size become quite significant once you consider how many people are involved,” he added. “When a platform has hundreds of millions of users, a modest shift in how a portion of them think about love and relationships is not a small thing socially.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Because the study is cross-sectional, it only captures a snapshot in time, making it impossible to establish a firm chain of cause and effect. The research also looks at addiction-like patterns of use, rather than a formally recognized clinical disorder.
“It’s entirely possible that people who already feel disillusioned with love are the ones drawn into compulsive use, rather than the other way around, and the honest answer is that both are probably happening at once,” Shabahang explained. “We’re not saying dating apps are bad, or that using them will make you cynical about love. For many people these platforms work well and meet a genuine need.”
The study also relied on self-reported data from an Iranian sample. In Iran, dating apps and pornography websites are officially restricted and require workarounds to access. The cultural context regarding sexual modesty and religion is also distinct, which might influence how people report their habits. Still, the researchers suggest the psychological mechanisms at play likely apply to users in other parts of the world.
Moving forward, the team hopes to conduct longitudinal research to track changes over time. “After that, we’d like to look at prevalence, though as I said earlier that’s some way off and depends on the field settling on how to define and measure this in the first place,” Shabahang said. “We’re also interested in cross-cultural comparison, because how openly dating apps are used varies a great deal from one society to another, and we suspect the meaning people draw from them varies with it.”
Eventually, the researchers want to test whether simple prompts or design changes can effectively encourage mindful use. “That last question interests us most, because it’s the one with something practical at the end of it,” he added.
The study, “Romeo swipes Juliet left!? Problematic online dating app use and problematic pornography consumption are associated with a weaker sense of existential meaning in romantic love,” was authored by Reza Shabahang, Zsolt Demetrovics, Mehdi Akbari, Gaëlle Ouvrein, and Ágnes Zsila.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ExistentialLove #DatingAppAddiction #PornographyUse #RomanticMeaning #Emophilia #MindfulScrolling #LoveAndMeaning #DigitalDating #RelationshipExistentialism #ProtectiveUse
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic dating app and pornography use are linked to a weaker sense of meaning in romantic love
People who struggle with compulsive use of online dating apps and pornography tend to view romantic love as less existentially meaningful and more as a practical arrangement. A recent study published in BMC Psychology suggests that addiction-like engagement with these digital platforms is linked to a fractured philosophical understanding of romance. The research provides evidence that problematic users are more likely to fall in love quickly and frequently but often lack a deep sense of purpose in their romantic connections.
The study approaches romantic love from an existential perspective. In this view, love is not just a biological drive or a social contract but a fundamental part of human existence that gives life depth and meaning. People who see love through an existential lens often view their romantic relationships as highly meaningful and worthy of personal sacrifice.
Online dating and pornography consumption are incredibly common, and for many people, they are harmless activities. But for some, engagement with these platforms becomes problematic. Problematic use happens when a behavior becomes compulsive, feels out of the person’s control, and starts interfering with their daily life and mood.
Frequent exposure to the specific environments of dating apps and pornography websites might shape how people think about romance. For example, dating apps often encourage users to evaluate potential partners based on superficial traits in a matter of seconds. A 2026 study found that online pornography use is tied to both dating app use and higher levels of emotional detachment.
“It began with something fairly ordinary,” lead researcher Reza Shabahang, a research associate in psychology in the College of Human Sciences and Culture at Flinders University, told PsyPost. “Dating apps have quietly become one of the main ways people meet, and yet a lot of the conversation around them, in research and outside it, was about how much people use them and how that use affects mood, self-esteem or body image.”
The researchers suspected that the negative experiences common to these platforms might alter a user’s sense of meaning. Rejection, shallow conversations, and an endless stream of potential matches on dating apps might erode the idea of a single, meaningful romantic bond. Similarly, the focus on physical gratification over intimacy in pornography might encourage users to view love more practically rather than existentially.
“We kept noticing something else in how people talk about these platforms, a kind of weariness, a sense that the whole business of finding someone had started to feel hollow,” Shabahang explained. “That’s not really a question about well-being in the usual sense. It’s a question about meaning, about what people come to believe love is worth.”
“The literature on behavioral addiction had started to take dating apps seriously, but mostly as a pattern of behavior to be measured, not as something that might change a person’s outlook on love itself,” he added. “So the gap we wanted to address was an existential one, and the real-world problem behind it is that a great many people are now meeting one of their most fundamental needs through a channel we still understand quite poorly.”
To explore these existential questions, Shabahang and his colleagues at Flinders University and ELTE Eötvös Loránd University surveyed 664 adult internet users in Iran. The participants had an average age of 26 and used both dating apps and pornography websites. The researchers asked participants to complete several questionnaires measuring their digital habits and their attitudes toward love.
The surveys measured problematic dating app use and problematic pornography consumption, asking if participants felt restless without the platforms or tried and failed to cut back. The researchers also measured emotional promiscuity, also known as emophilia. This is the tendency to fall in love quickly, frequently, and with less selectivity. A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that higher levels of emophilia were associated with having had more romantic relationships and being unfaithful more often.
Participants also answered questions about their existential reflection on love, rating how often they contemplate the philosophy and purpose of romance. They rated the perceived meaningfulness of love, indicating whether they felt love imparts a sense of meaning to their existence. The researchers also assessed pragmatic views of love, which treat romance as a practical arrangement dependent on things like financial stability. Finally, the team measured mindful social media use, assessing whether participants stay aware and intentional while scrolling.
The results showed that problematic engagement with dating apps and pornography was negatively associated with deep, philosophical views of love. Higher levels of problematic dating app use were linked to less existential reflection on love and a lower sense of love’s overall meaningfulness. The researchers controlled for age, gender, education, relationship status, and sexual orientation, ensuring these basic demographic factors were not driving the results.
Problematic use of both platforms was positively associated with a pragmatic view of love and higher emotional promiscuity. In other words, individuals who compulsively swiped on dating apps or consumed pornography were more likely to view romance as a practical transaction and were prone to falling in love rapidly and repeatedly. The two problematic behaviors were also positively correlated with each other, meaning people who struggled to control their dating app use often struggled with their pornography consumption as well.
The researchers also found a strong negative association between mindful social media use and both problematic behaviors. People who reported being highly aware of their thoughts and actions while using social media were much less likely to use dating apps or pornography compulsively. Once mindful social media use was factored into the statistical model, problematic pornography consumption also showed a negative association with the perceived meaningfulness of love.
“The way you use these apps matters more than whether you use them,” Shabahang said. “Most people assume the danger lies in the amount, that if you’re on there too often or too long, something will go wrong. What we found points somewhere else.”
Instead, purposeful engagement appears to play a protective role. “Someone can spend a fair bit of time on dating apps and come away fine, if they know why they’re there and when to stop,” Shabahang explained. “The practical takeaway isn’t to delete the app. It’s to notice how you’re using it. Ask yourself what you came for, whether you’re getting it, and be willing to close the app when the answer is no.”
These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that greater perceived meaninglessness in life was associated with more frequent pornography use. It is worth noting, however, that the older study measured an overall lack of meaning in life, whereas the new study specifically examined existential meaning in the context of romantic love.
When interpreting the findings, the researchers urge readers to view the associations as a direction rather than destiny. “What we’re describing is a tendency, not a rule, and plenty of people in our data don’t fit the pattern at all,” Shabahang noted. “So nobody should read this and conclude that their own use has already done something to them.”
However, on a broader scale, these tendencies carry weight. “Effects of this size become quite significant once you consider how many people are involved,” he added. “When a platform has hundreds of millions of users, a modest shift in how a portion of them think about love and relationships is not a small thing socially.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Because the study is cross-sectional, it only captures a snapshot in time, making it impossible to establish a firm chain of cause and effect. The research also looks at addiction-like patterns of use, rather than a formally recognized clinical disorder.
“It’s entirely possible that people who already feel disillusioned with love are the ones drawn into compulsive use, rather than the other way around, and the honest answer is that both are probably happening at once,” Shabahang explained. “We’re not saying dating apps are bad, or that using them will make you cynical about love. For many people these platforms work well and meet a genuine need.”
The study also relied on self-reported data from an Iranian sample. In Iran, dating apps and pornography websites are officially restricted and require workarounds to access. The cultural context regarding sexual modesty and religion is also distinct, which might influence how people report their habits. Still, the researchers suggest the psychological mechanisms at play likely apply to users in other parts of the world.
Moving forward, the team hopes to conduct longitudinal research to track changes over time. “After that, we’d like to look at prevalence, though as I said earlier that’s some way off and depends on the field settling on how to define and measure this in the first place,” Shabahang said. “We’re also interested in cross-cultural comparison, because how openly dating apps are used varies a great deal from one society to another, and we suspect the meaning people draw from them varies with it.”
Eventually, the researchers want to test whether simple prompts or design changes can effectively encourage mindful use. “That last question interests us most, because it’s the one with something practical at the end of it,” he added.
The study, “Romeo swipes Juliet left!? Problematic online dating app use and problematic pornography consumption are associated with a weaker sense of existential meaning in romantic love,” was authored by Reza Shabahang, Zsolt Demetrovics, Mehdi Akbari, Gaëlle Ouvrein, and Ágnes Zsila.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ExistentialLove #DatingAppAddiction #PornographyUse #RomanticMeaning #Emophilia #MindfulScrolling #LoveAndMeaning #DigitalDating #RelationshipExistentialism #ProtectiveUse
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic dating app and pornography use are linked to a weaker sense of meaning in romantic love
People who struggle with compulsive use of online dating apps and pornography tend to view romantic love as less existentially meaningful and more as a practical arrangement. A recent study published in BMC Psychology suggests that addiction-like engagement with these digital platforms is linked to a fractured philosophical understanding of romance. The research provides evidence that problematic users are more likely to fall in love quickly and frequently but often lack a deep sense of purpose in their romantic connections.
The study approaches romantic love from an existential perspective. In this view, love is not just a biological drive or a social contract but a fundamental part of human existence that gives life depth and meaning. People who see love through an existential lens often view their romantic relationships as highly meaningful and worthy of personal sacrifice.
Online dating and pornography consumption are incredibly common, and for many people, they are harmless activities. But for some, engagement with these platforms becomes problematic. Problematic use happens when a behavior becomes compulsive, feels out of the person’s control, and starts interfering with their daily life and mood.
Frequent exposure to the specific environments of dating apps and pornography websites might shape how people think about romance. For example, dating apps often encourage users to evaluate potential partners based on superficial traits in a matter of seconds. A 2026 study found that online pornography use is tied to both dating app use and higher levels of emotional detachment.
“It began with something fairly ordinary,” lead researcher Reza Shabahang, a research associate in psychology in the College of Human Sciences and Culture at Flinders University, told PsyPost. “Dating apps have quietly become one of the main ways people meet, and yet a lot of the conversation around them, in research and outside it, was about how much people use them and how that use affects mood, self-esteem or body image.”
The researchers suspected that the negative experiences common to these platforms might alter a user’s sense of meaning. Rejection, shallow conversations, and an endless stream of potential matches on dating apps might erode the idea of a single, meaningful romantic bond. Similarly, the focus on physical gratification over intimacy in pornography might encourage users to view love more practically rather than existentially.
“We kept noticing something else in how people talk about these platforms, a kind of weariness, a sense that the whole business of finding someone had started to feel hollow,” Shabahang explained. “That’s not really a question about well-being in the usual sense. It’s a question about meaning, about what people come to believe love is worth.”
“The literature on behavioral addiction had started to take dating apps seriously, but mostly as a pattern of behavior to be measured, not as something that might change a person’s outlook on love itself,” he added. “So the gap we wanted to address was an existential one, and the real-world problem behind it is that a great many people are now meeting one of their most fundamental needs through a channel we still understand quite poorly.”
To explore these existential questions, Shabahang and his colleagues at Flinders University and ELTE Eötvös Loránd University surveyed 664 adult internet users in Iran. The participants had an average age of 26 and used both dating apps and pornography websites. The researchers asked participants to complete several questionnaires measuring their digital habits and their attitudes toward love.
The surveys measured problematic dating app use and problematic pornography consumption, asking if participants felt restless without the platforms or tried and failed to cut back. The researchers also measured emotional promiscuity, also known as emophilia. This is the tendency to fall in love quickly, frequently, and with less selectivity. A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that higher levels of emophilia were associated with having had more romantic relationships and being unfaithful more often.
Participants also answered questions about their existential reflection on love, rating how often they contemplate the philosophy and purpose of romance. They rated the perceived meaningfulness of love, indicating whether they felt love imparts a sense of meaning to their existence. The researchers also assessed pragmatic views of love, which treat romance as a practical arrangement dependent on things like financial stability. Finally, the team measured mindful social media use, assessing whether participants stay aware and intentional while scrolling.
The results showed that problematic engagement with dating apps and pornography was negatively associated with deep, philosophical views of love. Higher levels of problematic dating app use were linked to less existential reflection on love and a lower sense of love’s overall meaningfulness. The researchers controlled for age, gender, education, relationship status, and sexual orientation, ensuring these basic demographic factors were not driving the results.
Problematic use of both platforms was positively associated with a pragmatic view of love and higher emotional promiscuity. In other words, individuals who compulsively swiped on dating apps or consumed pornography were more likely to view romance as a practical transaction and were prone to falling in love rapidly and repeatedly. The two problematic behaviors were also positively correlated with each other, meaning people who struggled to control their dating app use often struggled with their pornography consumption as well.
The researchers also found a strong negative association between mindful social media use and both problematic behaviors. People who reported being highly aware of their thoughts and actions while using social media were much less likely to use dating apps or pornography compulsively. Once mindful social media use was factored into the statistical model, problematic pornography consumption also showed a negative association with the perceived meaningfulness of love.
“The way you use these apps matters more than whether you use them,” Shabahang said. “Most people assume the danger lies in the amount, that if you’re on there too often or too long, something will go wrong. What we found points somewhere else.”
Instead, purposeful engagement appears to play a protective role. “Someone can spend a fair bit of time on dating apps and come away fine, if they know why they’re there and when to stop,” Shabahang explained. “The practical takeaway isn’t to delete the app. It’s to notice how you’re using it. Ask yourself what you came for, whether you’re getting it, and be willing to close the app when the answer is no.”
These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that greater perceived meaninglessness in life was associated with more frequent pornography use. It is worth noting, however, that the older study measured an overall lack of meaning in life, whereas the new study specifically examined existential meaning in the context of romantic love.
When interpreting the findings, the researchers urge readers to view the associations as a direction rather than destiny. “What we’re describing is a tendency, not a rule, and plenty of people in our data don’t fit the pattern at all,” Shabahang noted. “So nobody should read this and conclude that their own use has already done something to them.”
However, on a broader scale, these tendencies carry weight. “Effects of this size become quite significant once you consider how many people are involved,” he added. “When a platform has hundreds of millions of users, a modest shift in how a portion of them think about love and relationships is not a small thing socially.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Because the study is cross-sectional, it only captures a snapshot in time, making it impossible to establish a firm chain of cause and effect. The research also looks at addiction-like patterns of use, rather than a formally recognized clinical disorder.
“It’s entirely possible that people who already feel disillusioned with love are the ones drawn into compulsive use, rather than the other way around, and the honest answer is that both are probably happening at once,” Shabahang explained. “We’re not saying dating apps are bad, or that using them will make you cynical about love. For many people these platforms work well and meet a genuine need.”
The study also relied on self-reported data from an Iranian sample. In Iran, dating apps and pornography websites are officially restricted and require workarounds to access. The cultural context regarding sexual modesty and religion is also distinct, which might influence how people report their habits. Still, the researchers suggest the psychological mechanisms at play likely apply to users in other parts of the world.
Moving forward, the team hopes to conduct longitudinal research to track changes over time. “After that, we’d like to look at prevalence, though as I said earlier that’s some way off and depends on the field settling on how to define and measure this in the first place,” Shabahang said. “We’re also interested in cross-cultural comparison, because how openly dating apps are used varies a great deal from one society to another, and we suspect the meaning people draw from them varies with it.”
Eventually, the researchers want to test whether simple prompts or design changes can effectively encourage mindful use. “That last question interests us most, because it’s the one with something practical at the end of it,” he added.
The study, “Romeo swipes Juliet left!? Problematic online dating app use and problematic pornography consumption are associated with a weaker sense of existential meaning in romantic love,” was authored by Reza Shabahang, Zsolt Demetrovics, Mehdi Akbari, Gaëlle Ouvrein, and Ágnes Zsila.
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Antidepressants show wide variation in physical side effects
URL: https://www.psypost.org/antidepressants-show-wide-variation-in-physical-side-effects/
Different antidepressants can have drastically different effects on a patient’s physical health, according to a recent review of medical research. Some medications cause substantial weight gain and increased blood pressure, while others lead to weight loss and lowered heart rates. The findings were published in The Lancet.
Millions of people rely on prescription medications to manage mental health conditions. Up to 17 percent of adults in Europe and North America currently take antidepressants. While these drugs are effective at treating mood disorders, they can also cause unintended bodily changes. These physical side effects are a common reason why people stop taking their prescribed treatments.
Medical guidelines recommend that doctors discuss potential physical changes with patients before starting a prescription. However, it can be difficult for physicians to provide precise comparisons between specific drugs.
Toby Pillinger and Atheeshaan Arumuham of King’s College London led the research team to address this knowledge gap. They worked alongside other international experts, including Orestis Efthimiou of the University of Bern, Oliver D. Howes of King’s College London, and Andrea Cipriani of the University of Oxford. The team wanted to determine exactly how different medications compare in terms of physical side effects. They also wanted to see if factors like age or starting weight influenced these bodily reactions.
To answer these questions, the researchers conducted a network meta-analysis. This type of statistical study pools data from multiple independent trials. It allows researchers to compare treatments that might never have been tested directly against each other in the same room. By linking trials through a common comparator, researchers can estimate how two different drugs would perform head-to-head.
The team gathered data from 151 randomized controlled trials and 17 government regulatory reports. The resulting large study included 58,534 participants. The researchers evaluated 30 different antidepressants prescribed for acute psychiatric treatment, which typically lasted about eight weeks.
The analysis revealed major differences in how these drugs affect body weight. People taking agomelatine experienced the most weight loss, losing an average of about 2.4 kilograms compared to those taking a placebo, an inactive control pill. On the other end of the spectrum, maprotiline and amitriptyline caused the most weight gain, adding up to 1.8 kilograms on average. This created a roughly four-kilogram gap between the highest and lowest weight-altering medications.
The researchers estimated that almost half of the people taking maprotiline or amitriptyline would gain a noticeable amount of weight. Medications that caused the most weight gain were generally those known to block specific histamine and serotonin receptors, which act as chemical docking stations in the brain. Over time, extra weight can elevate a person’s risk for metabolic issues and joint stress.
Cardiovascular changes also varied widely depending on the specific medication. Nortriptyline increased patients’ heart rates by an average of nearly 14 beats per minute. By contrast, fluvoxamine lowered heart rates by about eight beats per minute. This difference amounts to a 21-beat-per-minute gap between the two drugs.
Blood pressure effects showed a similar split among the evaluated medications. Amitriptyline raised systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats, by almost five millimeters of mercury. Nortriptyline lowered the same metric by over six millimeters of mercury. The researchers noted that these cardiovascular shifts could influence a patient’s long-term risk for heart disease, especially if the changes persist over several years.
The medications that increased blood pressure were largely serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, or tricyclic antidepressants. These drug classes share a mechanism that affects the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. This chemical messenger plays a well-documented role in blood pressure regulation.
The researchers also tracked metabolic markers like cholesterol and blood sugar. Paroxetine, duloxetine, desvenlafaxine, and venlafaxine were associated with measurable increases in total cholesterol. Duloxetine was also linked to increased blood glucose levels. These metabolic increases occurred even though the medications themselves generally caused patients to lose body weight.
Some medications also affected liver function tests. Duloxetine, desvenlafaxine, and levomilnacipran caused increases in the concentration of certain liver enzymes. These enzymes are proteins that help the organ filter blood and break down medications. While these enzyme elevations were substantial enough to measure, the researchers noted that the amounts were not high enough to pose an immediate medical threat to most patients.
The team did not find that any of the evaluated antidepressants altered heart rhythm intervals to a problematic degree. The medications also did not have a strong effect on sodium levels, potassium levels, or kidney function markers during the trial periods.
In a separate analysis, the researchers examined how patient characteristics influenced these side effects. They used a statistical technique called meta-regression to look for trends across the different study populations. They found that groups of patients with higher starting body weights experienced larger medication-induced increases in blood pressure and liver enzymes. Populations with a higher average age saw larger medication-induced increases in blood sugar.
Finally, the team wanted to know if experiencing physical side effects was linked to mental health improvements. In patients with severe psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, past research has shown a correlation between metabolic disturbances and improved symptoms. To test this concept in depression, the researchers looked specifically at trials involving patients with major depressive disorder.
The researchers compared the change in depressive symptoms against changes in weight, cholesterol, and blood sugar across the studies. They did not find a correlation between improved mental health and metabolic side effects. This suggests that patients do not need to experience physical changes to get the mental health benefits of the medication.
A primary limitation of this research is the short duration of the included trials. Most studies lasted only eight weeks, meaning the long-term physical effects of these medications remain unconfirmed by this specific analysis. Some cardiovascular shifts might fade over time, while other metabolic changes could worsen over a period of years.
The trials also mostly included younger, relatively healthy individuals taking only one medication. This focus might obscure side effects that occur more frequently in older adults or people taking multiple drugs at once. Real-world observational data suggests that certain antidepressants might increase the risk of low sodium or heart rhythm problems in older populations. The researchers suggest that doctors should consider both clinical trial data and real-world observations when prescribing medications to older or medically vulnerable patients.
The study, “The effects of antidepressants on cardiometabolic and other physiological parameters: a systematic review and network meta-analysis,” was authored by Toby Pillinger, Atheeshaan Arumuham, Robert A McCutcheon, Enrico D’Ambrosio, Georgios Basdanis, Marco Branco, Richard Carr, Valeria Finelli, Toshi A Furukawa, Siobhan Gee, Adrian Heald, Sameer Jauhar, Zihan Ma, Valentina Mancini, Calum Moulton, Georgia Salanti, David M Taylor, Anneka Tomlinson, Allan H Young, Orestis Efthimiou, Oliver D Howes, and Andrea Cipriani.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/antidepressants-show-wide-variation-in-physical-side-effects/
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 10:01AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
🚨The FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to Definium Therapeutics for DT120 (lysergide) orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) for the treatment of major depressive disorder. https://t.co/915rDjMOoZ
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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: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People with narcissistic traits generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge, study finds
People who have previously used their imagination to harm others or who possess highly narcissistic traits tend to generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge. These findings indicate that past actions and personality shape how individuals apply their problem-solving skills during interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in The Journal of Intelligence.
Creativity is typically viewed as a positive force in society, driving art, science, and innovation. But creativity also has a dark side, known as malevolent creativity. This involves the application of original ideas to purposely harm, deceive, or manipulate others. It is essentially creative problem-solving with malicious intent, evident in everything from everyday pranks to complex criminal activities.
To understand why some people use their imagination for harm, psychologists often refer to a framework called the AMORAL model. This model suggests that dark creativity results from a combination of personal traits, such as a natural propensity for creativity or certain personality types, and environmental factors, such as a provoking situation.
Among personality types, the dark triad traits are particularly relevant. These include psychopathy (a lack of empathy and high impulsivity), Machiavellianism (a tendency to be strategic and manipulative), and narcissism (a sense of grandiosity, egocentrism, and a strong need for admiration). People high in narcissism tend to be especially reactive to social slights or threats to their ego. A 2021 meta-analysis found that among these dark traits, narcissism has the most consistent relationship with self-reported general creativity.
“Society generally views creativity as a good thing, but some people use their creativity to harm others,” Natalie Ceballos, a professor of psychology at Texas State University, told PsyPost. “I’m interested in the individual and environmental factors that might influence someone to steer their creativity toward antisocial ends.”
The current research, conducted by Ceballos alongside cognitive neuroscientist Carmen E. Westerberg and pre-med student Ruby N. Sweet, aimed to untangle how a person’s history of malicious behavior influences their current ability to devise revenge plots, above and beyond their everyday problem-solving skills and personality.
“We aimed to determine what factors are most relevant for understanding when creative people may use their skills for nefarious purposes,” Ceballos said. “Studies have shown that the dark triad personality traits predict malevolently creative ideology, but how other factors like history of creative malevolence or reaction to acute provocation might interact with dark triad traits is an area that requires further research.”
The research team recruited 248 undergraduate students for an online survey. The participants were predominantly young women, with an average age of 20. First, the students answered questions about their demographics and rated their own potential for everyday creative problem-solving on a simple five-point scale.
Next, participants completed a questionnaire assessing their past malevolent creativity. They rated how often they had engaged in behaviors like fabricating lies to simplify a problem, thinking up ways to take revenge, or playing tricks on others. They also completed a standard personality test to measure their levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
To measure malicious ideation in real time, the researchers used a task built around a hypothetical conflict. Participants read a vignette in which a neighbor asked for help with apartment renovations and promised to pay them. In the scenario, the participant does the work, but the neighbor later denies that any agreement took place and refuses to pay. The participants were instructed to type out as many original ideas as possible to get back at the neighbor.
“Some of the participants’ ideas were malevolent but not very creative, like simply physically assaulting the neighbor,” Ceballos noted. “Other ideas, like seeding the neighbor’s lawn with invasive plants, were more original and showed an appreciation for the long game.”
After generating their ideas, the students rated how provoked they would feel if the situation happened in real life. Two independent raters then evaluated the participants’ responses. They calculated a fluency index, which was the total number of malicious ideas generated. They also calculated a malevolence index, counting ideas that were rated as at least slightly harmful, and a composite score, which only counted ideas that were both harmful and highly original.
The researchers found that different personal factors predicted different types of creative output. A participant’s self-perception of their everyday problem-solving skills predicted their fluency index. People who viewed themselves as good at solving regular problems came up with a larger quantity of revenge ideas, regardless of how original or harmful those ideas actually were.
When it came to the quality of the revenge ideas, personality and past behavior played a larger role. High levels of narcissism and a history of past malevolent behavior predicted both the malevolence index and the overall composite score. This means that individuals who were highly narcissistic or who had a habit of playing tricks and seeking revenge in the past generated ideas that were more harmful and more unique.
Interestingly, past malevolent behavior contributed to the generation of harmful and original ideas independently of everyday problem-solving skills and narcissistic traits. While feeling provoked by the scenario correlated with generating darker ideas, the level of provocation did not uniquely predict the task outcomes once past behavior and personality were factored into the statistical models. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism also did not emerge as unique predictors in the final analyses.
“We were a bit surprised that provocation level didn’t have a larger effect on malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “In our study, it appears that past behaviors and personality traits were more closely tied to malevolently creative ideation.”
The findings align with research covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that dark personality traits and a history of malicious actions relate to generating novel ways to harm others. They also fit with a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicating that narcissism helps explain variations in malevolent creativity, though the new study specifically measured idea generation in real time rather than just relying on general behavioral tendencies.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning the data was collected at a single point in time. Because of this, the researchers cannot determine cause and effect. It is not possible to say that past malicious behavior directly causes a person to generate better revenge ideas today, only that the two are associated.
The participant pool also consisted mostly of female college students in the United States. The results might not generalize to older adults, men, or people from different cultural backgrounds, especially since dark personality traits often vary across age and gender. Additionally, the study relied on self-reports for past bad behavior, which can be skewed if participants want to present themselves in a positive light.
The measure for everyday creativity was also based on a single question, which might not capture the full scope of a person’s creative abilities.
“What leads a person to use their creative abilities to harm others? I think the take-home message is that a complex mixture of personality, lived experiences, and current circumstances all come together to create a perfect storm of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos explained. “Our study included only a small subset of the factors that might contribute to malevolent creativity. A lot of open questions remain for future work, but our results suggest that it’s not a simple explanation.”
For instance, future studies could track people over time to see if a habit of malicious creativity builds on itself through positive reinforcement, eventually creating an automatic cognitive strategy for dealing with conflict.
“My collaborators and I have backgrounds in neuroscience, so our natural next step involves the exploration of potential neurophysiological correlates of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “We’re particularly interested in how different kinds of acute and chronic stress, and even factors like sleep quality, might influence malevolent creativity and which therapeutic strategies might help to reduce negative outcomes.”
The study, “Self-Reports of Past Malevolent Behavior and Narcissism as Predictors of Malevolent Creativity on a Real-World Ideation Task,” was authored by Natalie A. Ceballos, Ruby N. Sweet, and Carmen E. Westerberg.
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-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People with narcissistic traits generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge, study finds
People who have previously used their imagination to harm others or who possess highly narcissistic traits tend to generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge. These findings indicate that past actions and personality shape how individuals apply their problem-solving skills during interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in The Journal of Intelligence.
Creativity is typically viewed as a positive force in society, driving art, science, and innovation. But creativity also has a dark side, known as malevolent creativity. This involves the application of original ideas to purposely harm, deceive, or manipulate others. It is essentially creative problem-solving with malicious intent, evident in everything from everyday pranks to complex criminal activities.
To understand why some people use their imagination for harm, psychologists often refer to a framework called the AMORAL model. This model suggests that dark creativity results from a combination of personal traits, such as a natural propensity for creativity or certain personality types, and environmental factors, such as a provoking situation.
Among personality types, the dark triad traits are particularly relevant. These include psychopathy (a lack of empathy and high impulsivity), Machiavellianism (a tendency to be strategic and manipulative), and narcissism (a sense of grandiosity, egocentrism, and a strong need for admiration). People high in narcissism tend to be especially reactive to social slights or threats to their ego. A 2021 meta-analysis found that among these dark traits, narcissism has the most consistent relationship with self-reported general creativity.
“Society generally views creativity as a good thing, but some people use their creativity to harm others,” Natalie Ceballos, a professor of psychology at Texas State University, told PsyPost. “I’m interested in the individual and environmental factors that might influence someone to steer their creativity toward antisocial ends.”
The current research, conducted by Ceballos alongside cognitive neuroscientist Carmen E. Westerberg and pre-med student Ruby N. Sweet, aimed to untangle how a person’s history of malicious behavior influences their current ability to devise revenge plots, above and beyond their everyday problem-solving skills and personality.
“We aimed to determine what factors are most relevant for understanding when creative people may use their skills for nefarious purposes,” Ceballos said. “Studies have shown that the dark triad personality traits predict malevolently creative ideology, but how other factors like history of creative malevolence or reaction to acute provocation might interact with dark triad traits is an area that requires further research.”
The research team recruited 248 undergraduate students for an online survey. The participants were predominantly young women, with an average age of 20. First, the students answered questions about their demographics and rated their own potential for everyday creative problem-solving on a simple five-point scale.
Next, participants completed a questionnaire assessing their past malevolent creativity. They rated how often they had engaged in behaviors like fabricating lies to simplify a problem, thinking up ways to take revenge, or playing tricks on others. They also completed a standard personality test to measure their levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
To measure malicious ideation in real time, the researchers used a task built around a hypothetical conflict. Participants read a vignette in which a neighbor asked for help with apartment renovations and promised to pay them. In the scenario, the participant does the work, but the neighbor later denies that any agreement took place and refuses to pay. The participants were instructed to type out as many original ideas as possible to get back at the neighbor.
“Some of the participants’ ideas were malevolent but not very creative, like simply physically assaulting the neighbor,” Ceballos noted. “Other ideas, like seeding the neighbor’s lawn with invasive plants, were more original and showed an appreciation for the long game.”
After generating their ideas, the students rated how provoked they would feel if the situation happened in real life. Two independent raters then evaluated the participants’ responses. They calculated a fluency index, which was the total number of malicious ideas generated. They also calculated a malevolence index, counting ideas that were rated as at least slightly harmful, and a composite score, which only counted ideas that were both harmful and highly original.
The researchers found that different personal factors predicted different types of creative output. A participant’s self-perception of their everyday problem-solving skills predicted their fluency index. People who viewed themselves as good at solving regular problems came up with a larger quantity of revenge ideas, regardless of how original or harmful those ideas actually were.
When it came to the quality of the revenge ideas, personality and past behavior played a larger role. High levels of narcissism and a history of past malevolent behavior predicted both the malevolence index and the overall composite score. This means that individuals who were highly narcissistic or who had a habit of playing tricks and seeking revenge in the past generated ideas that were more harmful and more unique.
Interestingly, past malevolent behavior contributed to the generation of harmful and original ideas independently of everyday problem-solving skills and narcissistic traits. While feeling provoked by the scenario correlated with generating darker ideas, the level of provocation did not uniquely predict the task outcomes once past behavior and personality were factored into the statistical models. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism also did not emerge as unique predictors in the final analyses.
“We were a bit surprised that provocation level didn’t have a larger effect on malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “In our study, it appears that past behaviors and personality traits were more closely tied to malevolently creative ideation.”
The findings align with research covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that dark personality traits and a history of malicious actions relate to generating novel ways to harm others. They also fit with a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicating that narcissism helps explain variations in malevolent creativity, though the new study specifically measured idea generation in real time rather than just relying on general behavioral tendencies.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning the data was collected at a single point in time. Because of this, the researchers cannot determine cause and effect. It is not possible to say that past malicious behavior directly causes a person to generate better revenge ideas today, only that the two are associated.
The participant pool also consisted mostly of female college students in the United States. The results might not generalize to older adults, men, or people from different cultural backgrounds, especially since dark personality traits often vary across age and gender. Additionally, the study relied on self-reports for past bad behavior, which can be skewed if participants want to present themselves in a positive light.
The measure for everyday creativity was also based on a single question, which might not capture the full scope of a person’s creative abilities.
“What leads a person to use their creative abilities to harm others? I think the take-home message is that a complex mixture of personality, lived experiences, and current circumstances all come together to create a perfect storm of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos explained. “Our study included only a small subset of the factors that might contribute to malevolent creativity. A lot of open questions remain for future work, but our results suggest that it’s not a simple explanation.”
For instance, future studies could track people over time to see if a habit of malicious creativity builds on itself through positive reinforcement, eventually creating an automatic cognitive strategy for dealing with conflict.
“My collaborators and I have backgrounds in neuroscience, so our natural next step involves the exploration of potential neurophysiological correlates of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “We’re particularly interested in how different kinds of acute and chronic stress, and even factors like sleep quality, might influence malevolent creativity and which therapeutic strategies might help to reduce negative outcomes.”
The study, “Self-Reports of Past Malevolent Behavior and Narcissism as Predictors of Malevolent Creativity on a Real-World Ideation Task,” was authored by Natalie A. Ceballos, Ruby N. Sweet, and Carmen E. Westerberg.
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People with narcissistic traits generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge, study finds
People who have previously used their imagination to harm others or who possess highly narcissistic traits tend to generate more original and malicious ideas for revenge. These findings indicate that past actions and personality shape how individuals apply their problem-solving skills during interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in The Journal of Intelligence.
Creativity is typically viewed as a positive force in society, driving art, science, and innovation. But creativity also has a dark side, known as malevolent creativity. This involves the application of original ideas to purposely harm, deceive, or manipulate others. It is essentially creative problem-solving with malicious intent, evident in everything from everyday pranks to complex criminal activities.
To understand why some people use their imagination for harm, psychologists often refer to a framework called the AMORAL model. This model suggests that dark creativity results from a combination of personal traits, such as a natural propensity for creativity or certain personality types, and environmental factors, such as a provoking situation.
Among personality types, the dark triad traits are particularly relevant. These include psychopathy (a lack of empathy and high impulsivity), Machiavellianism (a tendency to be strategic and manipulative), and narcissism (a sense of grandiosity, egocentrism, and a strong need for admiration). People high in narcissism tend to be especially reactive to social slights or threats to their ego. A 2021 meta-analysis found that among these dark traits, narcissism has the most consistent relationship with self-reported general creativity.
“Society generally views creativity as a good thing, but some people use their creativity to harm others,” Natalie Ceballos, a professor of psychology at Texas State University, told PsyPost. “I’m interested in the individual and environmental factors that might influence someone to steer their creativity toward antisocial ends.”
The current research, conducted by Ceballos alongside cognitive neuroscientist Carmen E. Westerberg and pre-med student Ruby N. Sweet, aimed to untangle how a person’s history of malicious behavior influences their current ability to devise revenge plots, above and beyond their everyday problem-solving skills and personality.
“We aimed to determine what factors are most relevant for understanding when creative people may use their skills for nefarious purposes,” Ceballos said. “Studies have shown that the dark triad personality traits predict malevolently creative ideology, but how other factors like history of creative malevolence or reaction to acute provocation might interact with dark triad traits is an area that requires further research.”
The research team recruited 248 undergraduate students for an online survey. The participants were predominantly young women, with an average age of 20. First, the students answered questions about their demographics and rated their own potential for everyday creative problem-solving on a simple five-point scale.
Next, participants completed a questionnaire assessing their past malevolent creativity. They rated how often they had engaged in behaviors like fabricating lies to simplify a problem, thinking up ways to take revenge, or playing tricks on others. They also completed a standard personality test to measure their levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
To measure malicious ideation in real time, the researchers used a task built around a hypothetical conflict. Participants read a vignette in which a neighbor asked for help with apartment renovations and promised to pay them. In the scenario, the participant does the work, but the neighbor later denies that any agreement took place and refuses to pay. The participants were instructed to type out as many original ideas as possible to get back at the neighbor.
“Some of the participants’ ideas were malevolent but not very creative, like simply physically assaulting the neighbor,” Ceballos noted. “Other ideas, like seeding the neighbor’s lawn with invasive plants, were more original and showed an appreciation for the long game.”
After generating their ideas, the students rated how provoked they would feel if the situation happened in real life. Two independent raters then evaluated the participants’ responses. They calculated a fluency index, which was the total number of malicious ideas generated. They also calculated a malevolence index, counting ideas that were rated as at least slightly harmful, and a composite score, which only counted ideas that were both harmful and highly original.
The researchers found that different personal factors predicted different types of creative output. A participant’s self-perception of their everyday problem-solving skills predicted their fluency index. People who viewed themselves as good at solving regular problems came up with a larger quantity of revenge ideas, regardless of how original or harmful those ideas actually were.
When it came to the quality of the revenge ideas, personality and past behavior played a larger role. High levels of narcissism and a history of past malevolent behavior predicted both the malevolence index and the overall composite score. This means that individuals who were highly narcissistic or who had a habit of playing tricks and seeking revenge in the past generated ideas that were more harmful and more unique.
Interestingly, past malevolent behavior contributed to the generation of harmful and original ideas independently of everyday problem-solving skills and narcissistic traits. While feeling provoked by the scenario correlated with generating darker ideas, the level of provocation did not uniquely predict the task outcomes once past behavior and personality were factored into the statistical models. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism also did not emerge as unique predictors in the final analyses.
“We were a bit surprised that provocation level didn’t have a larger effect on malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “In our study, it appears that past behaviors and personality traits were more closely tied to malevolently creative ideation.”
The findings align with research covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that dark personality traits and a history of malicious actions relate to generating novel ways to harm others. They also fit with a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicating that narcissism helps explain variations in malevolent creativity, though the new study specifically measured idea generation in real time rather than just relying on general behavioral tendencies.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning the data was collected at a single point in time. Because of this, the researchers cannot determine cause and effect. It is not possible to say that past malicious behavior directly causes a person to generate better revenge ideas today, only that the two are associated.
The participant pool also consisted mostly of female college students in the United States. The results might not generalize to older adults, men, or people from different cultural backgrounds, especially since dark personality traits often vary across age and gender. Additionally, the study relied on self-reports for past bad behavior, which can be skewed if participants want to present themselves in a positive light.
The measure for everyday creativity was also based on a single question, which might not capture the full scope of a person’s creative abilities.
“What leads a person to use their creative abilities to harm others? I think the take-home message is that a complex mixture of personality, lived experiences, and current circumstances all come together to create a perfect storm of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos explained. “Our study included only a small subset of the factors that might contribute to malevolent creativity. A lot of open questions remain for future work, but our results suggest that it’s not a simple explanation.”
For instance, future studies could track people over time to see if a habit of malicious creativity builds on itself through positive reinforcement, eventually creating an automatic cognitive strategy for dealing with conflict.
“My collaborators and I have backgrounds in neuroscience, so our natural next step involves the exploration of potential neurophysiological correlates of malevolent creativity,” Ceballos said. “We’re particularly interested in how different kinds of acute and chronic stress, and even factors like sleep quality, might influence malevolent creativity and which therapeutic strategies might help to reduce negative outcomes.”
The study, “Self-Reports of Past Malevolent Behavior and Narcissism as Predictors of Malevolent Creativity on a Real-World Ideation Task,” was authored by Natalie A. Ceballos, Ruby N. Sweet, and Carmen E. Westerberg.
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:40AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Your personality may be more genetic than scientists realized
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201554.htm
More than 1,200 genetic variants have been linked to the Big Five personality traits, and many of the same variants are also associated with health, longevity, careers, income, and everyday habits. The findings reveal a surprisingly wide genetic connection between personality and life outcomes while showing that environment still plays a powerful role.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201554.htm
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Ozempic and Wegovy may have an unexpected mental health benefit
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
Semaglutide, the drug behind Ozempic and Wegovy, may have benefits that extend well beyond weight loss and diabetes. In a large Swedish study of nearly 15,000 people with bipolar disorder, its use was linked to a 21% lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization. Researchers think effects on inflammation and brain-related biological pathways could help stabilize mood, though other GLP-1 drugs did not show the same association.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260907201601.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Ozempic #Wegovy #Semaglutide #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealthBenefits #Glp1 #MoodStabilization #Inflammation #PsychiatricHospitalization #DiabetesAndWeightLoss
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DATE: September 7, 2026 at 04:58AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists say love follows hidden mathematical rules
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
Could math help explain why some relationships survive life’s inevitable stresses while others slowly fall apart? Researchers have spent decades developing mathematical models that treat romantic feelings as changing systems, revealing patterns in attraction, emotional reactions, conflict, and recovery.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
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-
DATE: September 7, 2026 at 04:58AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists say love follows hidden mathematical rules
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
Could math help explain why some relationships survive life’s inevitable stresses while others slowly fall apart? Researchers have spent decades developing mathematical models that treat romantic feelings as changing systems, revealing patterns in attraction, emotional reactions, conflict, and recovery.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
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-
DATE: September 7, 2026 at 04:58AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists say love follows hidden mathematical rules
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
Could math help explain why some relationships survive life’s inevitable stresses while others slowly fall apart? Researchers have spent decades developing mathematical models that treat romantic feelings as changing systems, revealing patterns in attraction, emotional reactions, conflict, and recovery.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260906170140.htm
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Early statin use linked to 15% lower dementia risk
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
Starting statins soon after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis may do more than protect the heart. In a nationwide Danish study of more than 132,000 people, those who began statin treatment within a year of diagnosis had a 15% lower relative risk of developing dementia over 10 years compared with those who did not start statins.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Early statin use linked to 15% lower dementia risk
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
Starting statins soon after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis may do more than protect the heart. In a nationwide Danish study of more than 132,000 people, those who began statin treatment within a year of diagnosis had a 15% lower relative risk of developing dementia over 10 years compared with those who did not start statins.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Early statin use linked to 15% lower dementia risk
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
Starting statins soon after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis may do more than protect the heart. In a nationwide Danish study of more than 132,000 people, those who began statin treatment within a year of diagnosis had a 15% lower relative risk of developing dementia over 10 years compared with those who did not start statins.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901070520.htm
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-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:45AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! https://t.co/cGIhq70sPj https://t.co/UZpa4BSYiT
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:45AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! https://t.co/cGIhq70sPj https://t.co/UZpa4BSYiT
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:45AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! https://t.co/cGIhq70sPj https://t.co/UZpa4BSYiT
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study maps the strategies women use to defend against sexual violence
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
Women identified more than 9,000 possible ways of preventing or responding to sexual violence, with the strategies they suggested varying according to who posed the threat and whether an assault had already occurred. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Sexual violence can produce serious physical, psychological, reproductive, and social consequences. Although considerable research has examined why sexual violence occurs, substantially less has investigated the full range of actions women may use to prevent an assault, resist one in progress, or reduce its consequences afterward. Previous studies have also tended to examine a predetermined set of behaviours, such as avoiding isolated places, travelling with others, or carrying a weapon, rather than allowing women to generate strategies themselves.
This earlier research has often focused on assaults by strangers, even though sexual violence is frequently perpetrated by acquaintances, dates, and romantic partners. Strategies that might be useful against a stranger could carry different practical or social consequences when the potential perpetrator is someone the woman knows.
Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss sought to develop a broader, context-sensitive taxonomy of women’s potential defenses. Drawing on sexual conflict theory, they proposed that women may have learned, developed, or evolved a varied set of responses that are sensitive both to their relationship with a potential perpetrator and to whether they are trying to prevent an assault or manage its aftermath.
Study 1 included 262 women between the ages of 18 and 75, with an average age of 22. Participants were recruited between August 2021 and May 2022 through the University of Texas at Austin psychology participant pool, social media posts, and snowball sampling. They considered five scenarios presented in random order: travelling through a dangerous area, attending a party where an acquaintance accused of sexual assault might be present, meeting a man from a dating app, dealing with a sexually aggressive romantic partner, and a general opportunity to suggest additional protective behaviours.
For each scenario, participants listed three to six things they might do, producing 4,467 nominations. They subsequently provided demographic information and completed measures of sociosexual orientation, perceived mate value, fear of crime, and perceived physical formidability. Responses were organized into an initial coding scheme using both categories suggested by previous theory and categories that emerged from the participants’ answers, after which research assistants who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses independently coded the nominations.
Study 2 included 301 women recruited through the University of Texas at Austin participant pool between August 2023 and May 2024. They were between 18 and 26 years old and were randomly assigned either to suggest ways of preventing an impending sexual assault or to suggest ways of protecting oneself from the consequences of a completed assault. The prevention condition included 148 participants and the aftermath condition included 153.
After reading an explicit definition of sexual assault, participants responded to four randomly ordered prompts involving a stranger, acquaintance, date, or current romantic partner, listing three to six strategies for each. They also reported their biological sex, gender, ethnicity, age, and history of sexual violence. Participants generated 2,268 prevention strategies and 2,350 aftermath strategies, which were independently coded by pairs of research assistants.
In Study 1, the most frequently suggested strategies involved using social allies as “bodyguards.” Women described telling trusted people where they were going, arranging check-ins, bringing someone with them, or pretending that someone else knew their whereabouts. These strategies accounted for nearly 29% of all responses. Preparing to use a weapon or pepper spray accounted for approximately 14%, while other common responses included avoiding isolated places, unwanted attention, nighttime travel, or the situation altogether.
Participants also generated strategies that had received comparatively little attention in previous research, including remaining sober, ending a relationship, researching a potential date, changing clothing or body language, wearing shoes suitable for running, and warning other women through informal “whisper networks.” The strategies varied substantially across scenarios. Remaining sober was overwhelmingly associated with the acquaintance-party scenario, gathering information was especially common before an online date, and ending the relationship or verbally asserting refusal was concentrated in the romantic-partner scenario.
Study 2 showed that women generated similar overall numbers of strategies for prevention and aftermath, but the kinds of strategies differed. For preventing an assault, aggressive defenses, such as carrying a weapon, learning self-defense, or fighting back, were most common, accounting for 33.2% of nominations.
Verbal defenses accounted for 19.0%, using social allies for 16.6%, vigilance for 9.8%, and avoidance for 8.5%. Aggressive defenses were suggested more often against strangers, while avoidance was suggested far less often against romantic partners than against other potential perpetrators. In the aftermath condition, seeking medical or psychological support was the most common response, accounting for 29.4% of nominations.
Participants also suggested turning to social allies, preparing to defend themselves against future assaults, withdrawing socially, engaging in activism or expression, controlling who learned about the assault, pursuing legal action, practising self-care, and warning others. Aftermath strategies were generally less dependent on the perpetrator’s identity, although women were more likely to suggest managing information following an assault by an acquaintance, verbally asserting boundaries with romantic partners, and withdrawing socially following assaults by partners rather than strangers.
Combining both studies produced a preliminary taxonomy of more than 19 broad categories and 48 specific tactics.
The authors emphasize that the taxonomy documents strategies women could imagine using; it does not establish whether participants would use them in real situations or which strategies are most effective.
The research, “Women’s Defenses Against Sexual Violence,” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study maps the strategies women use to defend against sexual violence
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
Women identified more than 9,000 possible ways of preventing or responding to sexual violence, with the strategies they suggested varying according to who posed the threat and whether an assault had already occurred. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Sexual violence can produce serious physical, psychological, reproductive, and social consequences. Although considerable research has examined why sexual violence occurs, substantially less has investigated the full range of actions women may use to prevent an assault, resist one in progress, or reduce its consequences afterward. Previous studies have also tended to examine a predetermined set of behaviours, such as avoiding isolated places, travelling with others, or carrying a weapon, rather than allowing women to generate strategies themselves.
This earlier research has often focused on assaults by strangers, even though sexual violence is frequently perpetrated by acquaintances, dates, and romantic partners. Strategies that might be useful against a stranger could carry different practical or social consequences when the potential perpetrator is someone the woman knows.
Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss sought to develop a broader, context-sensitive taxonomy of women’s potential defenses. Drawing on sexual conflict theory, they proposed that women may have learned, developed, or evolved a varied set of responses that are sensitive both to their relationship with a potential perpetrator and to whether they are trying to prevent an assault or manage its aftermath.
Study 1 included 262 women between the ages of 18 and 75, with an average age of 22. Participants were recruited between August 2021 and May 2022 through the University of Texas at Austin psychology participant pool, social media posts, and snowball sampling. They considered five scenarios presented in random order: travelling through a dangerous area, attending a party where an acquaintance accused of sexual assault might be present, meeting a man from a dating app, dealing with a sexually aggressive romantic partner, and a general opportunity to suggest additional protective behaviours.
For each scenario, participants listed three to six things they might do, producing 4,467 nominations. They subsequently provided demographic information and completed measures of sociosexual orientation, perceived mate value, fear of crime, and perceived physical formidability. Responses were organized into an initial coding scheme using both categories suggested by previous theory and categories that emerged from the participants’ answers, after which research assistants who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses independently coded the nominations.
Study 2 included 301 women recruited through the University of Texas at Austin participant pool between August 2023 and May 2024. They were between 18 and 26 years old and were randomly assigned either to suggest ways of preventing an impending sexual assault or to suggest ways of protecting oneself from the consequences of a completed assault. The prevention condition included 148 participants and the aftermath condition included 153.
After reading an explicit definition of sexual assault, participants responded to four randomly ordered prompts involving a stranger, acquaintance, date, or current romantic partner, listing three to six strategies for each. They also reported their biological sex, gender, ethnicity, age, and history of sexual violence. Participants generated 2,268 prevention strategies and 2,350 aftermath strategies, which were independently coded by pairs of research assistants.
In Study 1, the most frequently suggested strategies involved using social allies as “bodyguards.” Women described telling trusted people where they were going, arranging check-ins, bringing someone with them, or pretending that someone else knew their whereabouts. These strategies accounted for nearly 29% of all responses. Preparing to use a weapon or pepper spray accounted for approximately 14%, while other common responses included avoiding isolated places, unwanted attention, nighttime travel, or the situation altogether.
Participants also generated strategies that had received comparatively little attention in previous research, including remaining sober, ending a relationship, researching a potential date, changing clothing or body language, wearing shoes suitable for running, and warning other women through informal “whisper networks.” The strategies varied substantially across scenarios. Remaining sober was overwhelmingly associated with the acquaintance-party scenario, gathering information was especially common before an online date, and ending the relationship or verbally asserting refusal was concentrated in the romantic-partner scenario.
Study 2 showed that women generated similar overall numbers of strategies for prevention and aftermath, but the kinds of strategies differed. For preventing an assault, aggressive defenses, such as carrying a weapon, learning self-defense, or fighting back, were most common, accounting for 33.2% of nominations.
Verbal defenses accounted for 19.0%, using social allies for 16.6%, vigilance for 9.8%, and avoidance for 8.5%. Aggressive defenses were suggested more often against strangers, while avoidance was suggested far less often against romantic partners than against other potential perpetrators. In the aftermath condition, seeking medical or psychological support was the most common response, accounting for 29.4% of nominations.
Participants also suggested turning to social allies, preparing to defend themselves against future assaults, withdrawing socially, engaging in activism or expression, controlling who learned about the assault, pursuing legal action, practising self-care, and warning others. Aftermath strategies were generally less dependent on the perpetrator’s identity, although women were more likely to suggest managing information following an assault by an acquaintance, verbally asserting boundaries with romantic partners, and withdrawing socially following assaults by partners rather than strangers.
Combining both studies produced a preliminary taxonomy of more than 19 broad categories and 48 specific tactics.
The authors emphasize that the taxonomy documents strategies women could imagine using; it does not establish whether participants would use them in real situations or which strategies are most effective.
The research, “Women’s Defenses Against Sexual Violence,” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
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-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study maps the strategies women use to defend against sexual violence
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
Women identified more than 9,000 possible ways of preventing or responding to sexual violence, with the strategies they suggested varying according to who posed the threat and whether an assault had already occurred. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Sexual violence can produce serious physical, psychological, reproductive, and social consequences. Although considerable research has examined why sexual violence occurs, substantially less has investigated the full range of actions women may use to prevent an assault, resist one in progress, or reduce its consequences afterward. Previous studies have also tended to examine a predetermined set of behaviours, such as avoiding isolated places, travelling with others, or carrying a weapon, rather than allowing women to generate strategies themselves.
This earlier research has often focused on assaults by strangers, even though sexual violence is frequently perpetrated by acquaintances, dates, and romantic partners. Strategies that might be useful against a stranger could carry different practical or social consequences when the potential perpetrator is someone the woman knows.
Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss sought to develop a broader, context-sensitive taxonomy of women’s potential defenses. Drawing on sexual conflict theory, they proposed that women may have learned, developed, or evolved a varied set of responses that are sensitive both to their relationship with a potential perpetrator and to whether they are trying to prevent an assault or manage its aftermath.
Study 1 included 262 women between the ages of 18 and 75, with an average age of 22. Participants were recruited between August 2021 and May 2022 through the University of Texas at Austin psychology participant pool, social media posts, and snowball sampling. They considered five scenarios presented in random order: travelling through a dangerous area, attending a party where an acquaintance accused of sexual assault might be present, meeting a man from a dating app, dealing with a sexually aggressive romantic partner, and a general opportunity to suggest additional protective behaviours.
For each scenario, participants listed three to six things they might do, producing 4,467 nominations. They subsequently provided demographic information and completed measures of sociosexual orientation, perceived mate value, fear of crime, and perceived physical formidability. Responses were organized into an initial coding scheme using both categories suggested by previous theory and categories that emerged from the participants’ answers, after which research assistants who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses independently coded the nominations.
Study 2 included 301 women recruited through the University of Texas at Austin participant pool between August 2023 and May 2024. They were between 18 and 26 years old and were randomly assigned either to suggest ways of preventing an impending sexual assault or to suggest ways of protecting oneself from the consequences of a completed assault. The prevention condition included 148 participants and the aftermath condition included 153.
After reading an explicit definition of sexual assault, participants responded to four randomly ordered prompts involving a stranger, acquaintance, date, or current romantic partner, listing three to six strategies for each. They also reported their biological sex, gender, ethnicity, age, and history of sexual violence. Participants generated 2,268 prevention strategies and 2,350 aftermath strategies, which were independently coded by pairs of research assistants.
In Study 1, the most frequently suggested strategies involved using social allies as “bodyguards.” Women described telling trusted people where they were going, arranging check-ins, bringing someone with them, or pretending that someone else knew their whereabouts. These strategies accounted for nearly 29% of all responses. Preparing to use a weapon or pepper spray accounted for approximately 14%, while other common responses included avoiding isolated places, unwanted attention, nighttime travel, or the situation altogether.
Participants also generated strategies that had received comparatively little attention in previous research, including remaining sober, ending a relationship, researching a potential date, changing clothing or body language, wearing shoes suitable for running, and warning other women through informal “whisper networks.” The strategies varied substantially across scenarios. Remaining sober was overwhelmingly associated with the acquaintance-party scenario, gathering information was especially common before an online date, and ending the relationship or verbally asserting refusal was concentrated in the romantic-partner scenario.
Study 2 showed that women generated similar overall numbers of strategies for prevention and aftermath, but the kinds of strategies differed. For preventing an assault, aggressive defenses, such as carrying a weapon, learning self-defense, or fighting back, were most common, accounting for 33.2% of nominations.
Verbal defenses accounted for 19.0%, using social allies for 16.6%, vigilance for 9.8%, and avoidance for 8.5%. Aggressive defenses were suggested more often against strangers, while avoidance was suggested far less often against romantic partners than against other potential perpetrators. In the aftermath condition, seeking medical or psychological support was the most common response, accounting for 29.4% of nominations.
Participants also suggested turning to social allies, preparing to defend themselves against future assaults, withdrawing socially, engaging in activism or expression, controlling who learned about the assault, pursuing legal action, practising self-care, and warning others. Aftermath strategies were generally less dependent on the perpetrator’s identity, although women were more likely to suggest managing information following an assault by an acquaintance, verbally asserting boundaries with romantic partners, and withdrawing socially following assaults by partners rather than strangers.
Combining both studies produced a preliminary taxonomy of more than 19 broad categories and 48 specific tactics.
The authors emphasize that the taxonomy documents strategies women could imagine using; it does not establish whether participants would use them in real situations or which strategies are most effective.
The research, “Women’s Defenses Against Sexual Violence,” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #WomensDefensesAgainstSexualViolence #SexualViolencePrevention #SafetyStrategies #SocialAlliesProtections #WhisperNetworks #SelfDefenseEducation #AcquaintanceRisk #PreventiveStrategies #AftermathSupport #EmpowermentResearch
-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study maps the strategies women use to defend against sexual violence
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
Women identified more than 9,000 possible ways of preventing or responding to sexual violence, with the strategies they suggested varying according to who posed the threat and whether an assault had already occurred. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Sexual violence can produce serious physical, psychological, reproductive, and social consequences. Although considerable research has examined why sexual violence occurs, substantially less has investigated the full range of actions women may use to prevent an assault, resist one in progress, or reduce its consequences afterward. Previous studies have also tended to examine a predetermined set of behaviours, such as avoiding isolated places, travelling with others, or carrying a weapon, rather than allowing women to generate strategies themselves.
This earlier research has often focused on assaults by strangers, even though sexual violence is frequently perpetrated by acquaintances, dates, and romantic partners. Strategies that might be useful against a stranger could carry different practical or social consequences when the potential perpetrator is someone the woman knows.
Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss sought to develop a broader, context-sensitive taxonomy of women’s potential defenses. Drawing on sexual conflict theory, they proposed that women may have learned, developed, or evolved a varied set of responses that are sensitive both to their relationship with a potential perpetrator and to whether they are trying to prevent an assault or manage its aftermath.
Study 1 included 262 women between the ages of 18 and 75, with an average age of 22. Participants were recruited between August 2021 and May 2022 through the University of Texas at Austin psychology participant pool, social media posts, and snowball sampling. They considered five scenarios presented in random order: travelling through a dangerous area, attending a party where an acquaintance accused of sexual assault might be present, meeting a man from a dating app, dealing with a sexually aggressive romantic partner, and a general opportunity to suggest additional protective behaviours.
For each scenario, participants listed three to six things they might do, producing 4,467 nominations. They subsequently provided demographic information and completed measures of sociosexual orientation, perceived mate value, fear of crime, and perceived physical formidability. Responses were organized into an initial coding scheme using both categories suggested by previous theory and categories that emerged from the participants’ answers, after which research assistants who were unaware of the study’s hypotheses independently coded the nominations.
Study 2 included 301 women recruited through the University of Texas at Austin participant pool between August 2023 and May 2024. They were between 18 and 26 years old and were randomly assigned either to suggest ways of preventing an impending sexual assault or to suggest ways of protecting oneself from the consequences of a completed assault. The prevention condition included 148 participants and the aftermath condition included 153.
After reading an explicit definition of sexual assault, participants responded to four randomly ordered prompts involving a stranger, acquaintance, date, or current romantic partner, listing three to six strategies for each. They also reported their biological sex, gender, ethnicity, age, and history of sexual violence. Participants generated 2,268 prevention strategies and 2,350 aftermath strategies, which were independently coded by pairs of research assistants.
In Study 1, the most frequently suggested strategies involved using social allies as “bodyguards.” Women described telling trusted people where they were going, arranging check-ins, bringing someone with them, or pretending that someone else knew their whereabouts. These strategies accounted for nearly 29% of all responses. Preparing to use a weapon or pepper spray accounted for approximately 14%, while other common responses included avoiding isolated places, unwanted attention, nighttime travel, or the situation altogether.
Participants also generated strategies that had received comparatively little attention in previous research, including remaining sober, ending a relationship, researching a potential date, changing clothing or body language, wearing shoes suitable for running, and warning other women through informal “whisper networks.” The strategies varied substantially across scenarios. Remaining sober was overwhelmingly associated with the acquaintance-party scenario, gathering information was especially common before an online date, and ending the relationship or verbally asserting refusal was concentrated in the romantic-partner scenario.
Study 2 showed that women generated similar overall numbers of strategies for prevention and aftermath, but the kinds of strategies differed. For preventing an assault, aggressive defenses, such as carrying a weapon, learning self-defense, or fighting back, were most common, accounting for 33.2% of nominations.
Verbal defenses accounted for 19.0%, using social allies for 16.6%, vigilance for 9.8%, and avoidance for 8.5%. Aggressive defenses were suggested more often against strangers, while avoidance was suggested far less often against romantic partners than against other potential perpetrators. In the aftermath condition, seeking medical or psychological support was the most common response, accounting for 29.4% of nominations.
Participants also suggested turning to social allies, preparing to defend themselves against future assaults, withdrawing socially, engaging in activism or expression, controlling who learned about the assault, pursuing legal action, practising self-care, and warning others. Aftermath strategies were generally less dependent on the perpetrator’s identity, although women were more likely to suggest managing information following an assault by an acquaintance, verbally asserting boundaries with romantic partners, and withdrawing socially following assaults by partners rather than strangers.
Combining both studies produced a preliminary taxonomy of more than 19 broad categories and 48 specific tactics.
The authors emphasize that the taxonomy documents strategies women could imagine using; it does not establish whether participants would use them in real situations or which strategies are most effective.
The research, “Women’s Defenses Against Sexual Violence,” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters and David M. Buss.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-maps-the-strategies-women-use-to-defend-against-sexual-violence/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #WomensDefensesAgainstSexualViolence #SexualViolencePrevention #SafetyStrategies #SocialAlliesProtections #WhisperNetworks #SelfDefenseEducation #AcquaintanceRisk #PreventiveStrategies #AftermathSupport #EmpowermentResearch
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:22AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! #PracticalForYourPractice https://t.co/H9nTs19w7g
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:22AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! #PracticalForYourPractice https://t.co/H9nTs19w7g
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 08:22AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Think OT is just physical rehab? Think again! OTs Staci Molinar and Michelle Luken share how occupational therapy helps service members translate psychological skills into daily habits and meaningful roles. Learn more about how to stoke your flame! #PracticalForYourPractice https://t.co/H9nTs19w7g
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Massive study reveals a “physical activity paradox” in dementia risk
URL: https://www.psypost.org/massive-study-reveals-a-physical-activity-paradox-in-dementia-risk/
Staying active is widely recommended to protect the brain from decline as people age, but the context in which that movement happens seems to matter. A large new data analysis indicates that while recreational exercise and household chores are linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, physically demanding jobs and active commuting might actually increase that risk. The findings were published in The Lancet Public Health.
Dementia is a broad category of conditions characterized by a gradual loss of memory, thinking skills, and the ability to perform daily tasks. Because there are limited medical treatments for the condition, public health professionals focus heavily on prevention through lifestyle habits. Physical activity is one of the primary habits recommended to keep the brain healthy. However, human movement is divided into distinct categories depending on the context. These categories include recreational time, work duties, household chores, and transportation.
The research was motivated by a gap in how scientists understand movement and brain health. Most public health guidelines are based on studies of recreational exercise. Moving the body outside of work definitely has brain benefits. For instance, a 2025 study of older adults in China found that people who regularly spent time outdoors experienced a lower likelihood of developing dementia. But recreational exercise only accounts for a tiny fraction of total global physical activity.
“We have known for years that physical activity is generally associated with a lower risk of dementia, but most studies treat all movement as though it were the same,” Natan Feter, a postdoctoral research associate in the Human and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Southern California and a researcher in the Graduate Program in Epidemiology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, told PsyPost. “Evidence from cardiovascular research suggests a ‘physical activity paradox,’ in which leisure-time exercise provides health benefits while physically demanding work may not. We wanted to determine whether this paradox also applies to dementia risk.”
In reality, the vast majority of human energy expenditure happens during work, commuting, and home maintenance. This is especially true in lower-income countries, where recreational exercise is far less common. Because dementia rates are expected to climb drastically in these regions over the next few decades, the authors wanted to synthesize existing research to see if the protective benefits of physical activity apply across all areas of daily life.
To answer this question, the researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. This process involves gathering all the available scientific literature on a topic, filtering out studies that do not meet strict quality standards, and statistically combining the data from the remaining studies. They searched multiple scientific databases for studies published up to May 2026. They specifically looked for studies that measured physical activity in adults who did not have cognitive issues at the start, and then tracked those individuals for at least one year to see who developed dementia.
The final analysis included 74 observational studies. The combined sample size was enormous, encompassing over 4.2 million participants across 30 different countries. The participants had a median age of 67 at the start of their respective studies, and there was a relatively even split between men and women. The researchers followed these participants for a median duration of 10 years. During that time, over 64,000 cases of all-cause dementia were diagnosed.
Overall, high levels of physical activity were associated with a lower chance of cognitive decline. Compared to the least active individuals, those with high overall physical activity had a 20 percent lower risk of developing all-cause dementia. The risk dropped by 21 percent for Alzheimer’s disease and 29 percent for vascular dementia, a type of cognitive decline caused by reduced blood flow to the brain.
However, breaking the numbers down by the context of the activity painted a much more complex picture. High levels of recreational physical activity were linked to a 24 percent lower risk of all-cause dementia. Household chores also showed a protective trend, linked to a 15 percent drop in risk.
On the other hand, occupational physical activity was associated with a 20 percent higher risk of developing dementia. Active commuting, such as walking or cycling to work, also correlated with a 10 percent increase in risk. When the researchers looked at how the amount of activity influenced these outcomes, they found that the protective benefits of recreational exercise leveled off after a certain point. For occupational activity, the risk of dementia increased alongside the amount of physical labor required by the job.
“The contrasting patterns were particularly striking,” Feter noted. “As leisure-time physical activity increased, dementia risk progressively declined before plateauing, while occupational physical activity showed the opposite pattern.” Ultimately, he added, “These findings support making time for enjoyable, voluntary physical activity, even for people whose jobs are already physically demanding.”
“The main message is clear: as physical activity and especially leisure-time physical activity was related to lower risk of dementia, one of the easiest ways to maintain and improve brain health across the lifespan is to be active during leisure time,” Eero Haapala, a senior researcher at the Preventive Health Unit at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences and a research director at the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Eastern Finland who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost.
“This review is also among the first to look at the domain-specific associations providing more nuanced information whether the context or place where physical [activity] takes place is an important consideration in the associations between physical activity and dementia risk,” Haapala added. “Compared to previous reviews, this study includes substantially higher sample size.”
While the findings offer a promising strategy for maintaining brain health, the researchers stressed that lifestyle habits are only part of the equation. “A 24% lower relative risk associated with leisure-time physical activity is meaningful at the population level, particularly because dementia is common and currently has limited treatment options,” Feter explained. “However, this represents a relative difference between groups, not a guarantee that an active individual will not develop dementia. A person’s absolute risk also depends on age, genetics, cardiovascular health, education, and several other factors.”
The findings regarding recreational exercise are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2016, which found that leisure-time physical activities were associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Other recent work also points in the same direction. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 found that higher activity levels lowered dementia risk, though that study measured overall device-tracked movement rather than separating the data into specific domains like work or leisure.
Similarly, a 2026 study covered by PsyPost indicated that objectively measured cardiovascular health is tied to a reduced risk of cognitive decline, which complements the idea that beneficial forms of movement protect the brain.
The authors propose several reasons why physical labor at work might be linked to worse brain health. First, physically demanding jobs often come with high psychological stress, lower wages, and reduced autonomy. Workers in these roles might also face elevated exposure to environmental hazards like noise and air pollution, which are known threats to brain health. Finally, many manual labor jobs involve highly repetitive tasks that do not stimulate the brain in ways that build cognitive resilience.
Feter elaborated on this point, noting that the higher risk could also stem from “insufficient recovery” and “limited control over one’s work.” But he emphasized that “the findings should not be interpreted as advice for people to avoid movement at work.” “Rather, they suggest that occupational activity may not offer the same benefits as voluntary exercise and should not necessarily be considered a substitute for leisure-time activity,” he added.
“While the study found that occupational physical activity was related to higher dementia risk, this does not mean that all occupations with some physical demands are automatically bad for the brain health,” Haapala pointed out. “This finding calls for the employers to examine whether physically demanding jobs also include other stressors that could negatively affect brain health.”
Active commuting might carry similar risks, as walking or cycling to work is sometimes an economic necessity rather than a recreational choice, and it frequently exposes commuters to heavy traffic exhaust.
“What is interesting and against, for example WHO’s policy brief concluding that active mobility, i.e., commuting physical activity, may prevent cognitive decline, is that the evidence from the current review suggested that higher levels of commuting physical activity are related to higher risk of all-cause dementia,” Haapala explained. “While this negative influence of commuting physical activity may not be due to physical activity itself but influenced by air pollution or some other unmeasured factors, these findings suggest that promoting active commuting may not be the most effective way to improve brain health and prevent dementia.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The most glaring issue is a massive geographical mismatch in the data. Over 90 percent of the studies included in this analysis were conducted in high-income countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland. Very little data came from lower-income and middle-income regions. This is a problem because dementia rates are expected to grow fastest in the developing world, where manual labor and active commuting make up a much larger portion of daily life.
Additionally, the data on household and commuting activity came from a very small number of studies. This means the statistical estimates for these two categories are less certain than the estimates for recreational and occupational movement. The researchers also noted high statistical variation among the studies, meaning that not all jobs or recreational activities are equal in intensity or impact.
Another thing to consider is how the data was collected. The vast majority of the studies relied on participants remembering and self-reporting their own activity levels via questionnaires. People are not always accurate when estimating how much they move, which can introduce errors into the data. Wearable fitness trackers might provide better data in the future, though current devices struggle to distinguish between a recreational jog and a physically demanding shift at work.
Finally, the observational nature of the included studies means scientists cannot completely rule out reverse causation. People might naturally slow down and move less as the early, undetected stages of dementia begin to affect their bodies. While some of the studies attempted to account for this by excluding people who developed dementia shortly after the research began, more long-term tracking is required to fully untangle the timeline of cause and effect.
“The most important caveat is that the included studies were observational,” Feter cautioned. “Therefore, our findings show associations but cannot establish that occupational physical activity directly causes dementia.”
“This review included only observational studies with physical activity assessed at the study baseline,” Haapala agreed. “Therefore, this research does not provide information whether increases or decreases in physical activity during the follow-up contributed to the results.”
“Although the review showed associations between physical activity and dementia risk, the authors graded the level of evidence as very low to low, meaning that the authors think that the true values may deviate from the reported range,” Haapala added. “Therefore, it is possible that new research can change the conclusions of this research. Nevertheless, the evidence is based on a large sample of over four million participants, and the results and direction of the associations remained consistent also in the sensitivity analyses.”
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to investigate the specific workplace factors driving these patterns. “We want to better understand which characteristics of occupational activity and working conditions may explain the observed association,” Feter said. “Studies using objective measures of activity and more detailed information about workplace exposures will be especially important.”
Haapala highlighted another area for future research. “Most previous studies, including the review, have focused on aerobic physical activity,” he said. “There is limited evidence how muscle strengthening physical activity or resistance training have similar beneficial associations.”
“The broader lesson is that public-health messages may need to move beyond simply telling people to ‘move more,'” Feter concluded. “Promoting access to safe and enjoyable opportunities for leisure-time activity, while also improving working conditions and ensuring sufficient recovery for people in physically demanding occupations, may be important components of dementia prevention.”
The study, “Domain-specific physical activity levels and risk of dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” was authored by Natan Feter, Paula Iso-Markku, Tiladia Markarian, Dylan M Luong, Jack Gunnink, Natália Schröder, Eduardo Lucia Caputo, Jayne Feter, Anamika Nanda, Sarah Hourihan, Gustavo S da Silva, Ashley Ventura, Daniela Benzano Bumaguin, Yann C Klimentidis, Gene E Alexander, Daniel Umpierre, Pedro C Hallal, Airton José Rombaldi, and David A Raichlen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/massive-study-reveals-a-physical-activity-paradox-in-dementia-risk/
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DATE: September 8, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The psychological link between making sense of life and avoiding depression
A massive new review of psychological research shows that people who feel their lives have meaning tend to experience lower levels of depression. The findings, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggest that having a sense of purpose acts as a psychological buffer against negative emotions. This association changes depending on a person’s cultural background, age, and physical health, revealing a nuanced connection between personal philosophy and mental well-being.
Psychologists define meaning in life as a person’s ability to understand their experiences and recognize their own existence as having worth. Existential theorists propose that a lack of meaning is a root cause of depressive symptoms, suggesting that humans need a guiding philosophy to navigate adversity. Conversely, biomedical models argue that depression is primarily a physiological issue driven by genetics, brain chemistry, or neurodegenerative diseases. From a purely medical perspective, abstract psychological concepts like life purpose are secondary to biological treatments.
To resolve conflicting results in past literature, psychologists Wu-han Ouyang and Xin-qiang Wang at Jiangxi Normal University led a team to investigate exactly how a sense of meaning correlates with depression. They wanted to see if the connection was universal or if external factors altered the strength of the relationship. The researchers gathered data from 278 previously published studies to conduct a meta-analysis. This statistical technique pools results from multiple independent projects to identify broader trends that a single study might miss.
The approach allowed the team to analyze information from more than 250,000 participants worldwide. By using a specialized three-level statistical model, the researchers accounted for sampling variations within individual studies as well as broader differences across the entire body of literature. When looking at the combined data, Ouyang and Wang found a moderate negative correlation between overall meaning in life and depression. As a person’s sense of meaning increased, their reported levels of depression tended to decrease.
To understand this dynamic better, the researchers broke the broad concept of meaning down into several distinct components. They looked at coherence, purpose, and a person’s belief that their existence matters. Coherence, which is the ability to make sense of one’s life and environment, had the strongest negative association with depression. People who felt their lives made logical sense were the least likely to report depressive symptoms.
Believing that one’s life has inherent worth also strongly correlated with lower depression. A sense of purpose, defined as having distinct life goals, showed a similar protective association. The relationship shifted dramatically when the researchers looked at the search for meaning. This concept refers to a person’s active motivation to find purpose, rather than their current possession of it.
Overall, simply searching for meaning did not yield a statistically significant association with depression. However, the researchers discovered that this seemingly flat result actually masked a major cultural divide. In individualistic cultures, such as those in the United States or the United Kingdom, actively searching for meaning was linked to higher levels of depression. In collectivistic cultures, such as those in China or South Korea, searching for meaning was associated with lower levels of depression.
The researchers suspect this divergence happens because individualistic societies expect people to independently construct their own life goals. This solitary pressure can lead to severe frustration and isolation if a person struggles to find answers. Collectivistic societies tend to frame the search for meaning as a shared social endeavor. These cultures often embed personal purpose within family networks and community responsibilities.
This collectivistic framework provides social support that might protect against negative emotions during periods of uncertainty. Sharing the psychological burden of finding purpose appears to keep depression at bay. Physical health also played a major role in how meaning and depression interacted. For individuals diagnosed with medical illnesses, the association between having a purpose in life and experiencing lower depression was much stronger than it was for healthy individuals.
Chronic or severe illness can strip away a person’s daily routines and long-term goals, removing usual sources of happiness. In these high-stress situations, maintaining a core sense of purpose provides a psychological anchor. A strong sense of direction helps patients reframe their adversity and manage emotional distress. The tools used to measure depression also influenced the reported results across the studies.
The researchers found the strongest negative correlation between meaning in life and depression when studies used the Beck Depression Inventory. This specific questionnaire evaluates emotional distress along with physical symptoms of depression, such as fatigue or changes in appetite. Because a lack of meaning often translates into physical lethargy, this tool captured the mind-body connection more effectively than general mental health surveys. Age influenced the results as well, specifically regarding how strongly the presence of meaning linked to lower depression.
This protective association peaked in middle-aged adults and was weakest among adolescents. Middle adulthood often brings long-term stressors related to career and family responsibilities. A stable sense of purpose is highly beneficial for processing these heavy adult burdens. Adolescents, meanwhile, are still developing their emotional regulation skills and core identities.
Because a teenager’s worldview is still forming, their depressive symptoms are often tied more closely to immediate environmental factors like school pressure or peer relationships. Teenagers lack the mature psychological mechanisms needed to buffer negative emotions through a stable philosophy of life. Because the vast majority of the analyzed studies relied on observational data taken at a single point in time, the results cannot prove that a lack of meaning directly causes depression. It is entirely possible that experiencing depression makes it harder for a person to find meaning in their life, creating a feedback loop that is difficult to untangle.
Most of the data also came from self-reported questionnaires. This data collection method can introduce bias if participants answer in ways they perceive as socially desirable. Future research will need to track individuals over long periods to see whether changes in a person’s sense of purpose precede changes in their depressive symptoms. The researchers also noted a lack of data regarding people who have received formal clinical diagnoses of depression.
The current literature also lacks information on participants who take antidepressant medications. Expanding research into these clinical populations could help psychologists design better therapies. These future treatments might incorporate meaning-building exercises alongside traditional medical interventions. Recognizing how factors like age, illness, and culture shape the human experience could ultimately lead to more personalized mental health care.
The study, “A three-level meta-analysis of the relationship between meaning in life and depression,” was authored by Wu-han Ouyang, Xin-qiang Wang, Jia-yi Cai, Shu-ya Pan, and Jing-yi Li.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #meaninginlife #depression研究 #mentalhealth #senseofpurpose #coherence #lifeexistence #collectivisticvsindividualistic #beckdepressioninventory #psychologicalwellbeing #lifepurpose
-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The psychological link between making sense of life and avoiding depression
A massive new review of psychological research shows that people who feel their lives have meaning tend to experience lower levels of depression. The findings, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggest that having a sense of purpose acts as a psychological buffer against negative emotions. This association changes depending on a person’s cultural background, age, and physical health, revealing a nuanced connection between personal philosophy and mental well-being.
Psychologists define meaning in life as a person’s ability to understand their experiences and recognize their own existence as having worth. Existential theorists propose that a lack of meaning is a root cause of depressive symptoms, suggesting that humans need a guiding philosophy to navigate adversity. Conversely, biomedical models argue that depression is primarily a physiological issue driven by genetics, brain chemistry, or neurodegenerative diseases. From a purely medical perspective, abstract psychological concepts like life purpose are secondary to biological treatments.
To resolve conflicting results in past literature, psychologists Wu-han Ouyang and Xin-qiang Wang at Jiangxi Normal University led a team to investigate exactly how a sense of meaning correlates with depression. They wanted to see if the connection was universal or if external factors altered the strength of the relationship. The researchers gathered data from 278 previously published studies to conduct a meta-analysis. This statistical technique pools results from multiple independent projects to identify broader trends that a single study might miss.
The approach allowed the team to analyze information from more than 250,000 participants worldwide. By using a specialized three-level statistical model, the researchers accounted for sampling variations within individual studies as well as broader differences across the entire body of literature. When looking at the combined data, Ouyang and Wang found a moderate negative correlation between overall meaning in life and depression. As a person’s sense of meaning increased, their reported levels of depression tended to decrease.
To understand this dynamic better, the researchers broke the broad concept of meaning down into several distinct components. They looked at coherence, purpose, and a person’s belief that their existence matters. Coherence, which is the ability to make sense of one’s life and environment, had the strongest negative association with depression. People who felt their lives made logical sense were the least likely to report depressive symptoms.
Believing that one’s life has inherent worth also strongly correlated with lower depression. A sense of purpose, defined as having distinct life goals, showed a similar protective association. The relationship shifted dramatically when the researchers looked at the search for meaning. This concept refers to a person’s active motivation to find purpose, rather than their current possession of it.
Overall, simply searching for meaning did not yield a statistically significant association with depression. However, the researchers discovered that this seemingly flat result actually masked a major cultural divide. In individualistic cultures, such as those in the United States or the United Kingdom, actively searching for meaning was linked to higher levels of depression. In collectivistic cultures, such as those in China or South Korea, searching for meaning was associated with lower levels of depression.
The researchers suspect this divergence happens because individualistic societies expect people to independently construct their own life goals. This solitary pressure can lead to severe frustration and isolation if a person struggles to find answers. Collectivistic societies tend to frame the search for meaning as a shared social endeavor. These cultures often embed personal purpose within family networks and community responsibilities.
This collectivistic framework provides social support that might protect against negative emotions during periods of uncertainty. Sharing the psychological burden of finding purpose appears to keep depression at bay. Physical health also played a major role in how meaning and depression interacted. For individuals diagnosed with medical illnesses, the association between having a purpose in life and experiencing lower depression was much stronger than it was for healthy individuals.
Chronic or severe illness can strip away a person’s daily routines and long-term goals, removing usual sources of happiness. In these high-stress situations, maintaining a core sense of purpose provides a psychological anchor. A strong sense of direction helps patients reframe their adversity and manage emotional distress. The tools used to measure depression also influenced the reported results across the studies.
The researchers found the strongest negative correlation between meaning in life and depression when studies used the Beck Depression Inventory. This specific questionnaire evaluates emotional distress along with physical symptoms of depression, such as fatigue or changes in appetite. Because a lack of meaning often translates into physical lethargy, this tool captured the mind-body connection more effectively than general mental health surveys. Age influenced the results as well, specifically regarding how strongly the presence of meaning linked to lower depression.
This protective association peaked in middle-aged adults and was weakest among adolescents. Middle adulthood often brings long-term stressors related to career and family responsibilities. A stable sense of purpose is highly beneficial for processing these heavy adult burdens. Adolescents, meanwhile, are still developing their emotional regulation skills and core identities.
Because a teenager’s worldview is still forming, their depressive symptoms are often tied more closely to immediate environmental factors like school pressure or peer relationships. Teenagers lack the mature psychological mechanisms needed to buffer negative emotions through a stable philosophy of life. Because the vast majority of the analyzed studies relied on observational data taken at a single point in time, the results cannot prove that a lack of meaning directly causes depression. It is entirely possible that experiencing depression makes it harder for a person to find meaning in their life, creating a feedback loop that is difficult to untangle.
Most of the data also came from self-reported questionnaires. This data collection method can introduce bias if participants answer in ways they perceive as socially desirable. Future research will need to track individuals over long periods to see whether changes in a person’s sense of purpose precede changes in their depressive symptoms. The researchers also noted a lack of data regarding people who have received formal clinical diagnoses of depression.
The current literature also lacks information on participants who take antidepressant medications. Expanding research into these clinical populations could help psychologists design better therapies. These future treatments might incorporate meaning-building exercises alongside traditional medical interventions. Recognizing how factors like age, illness, and culture shape the human experience could ultimately lead to more personalized mental health care.
The study, “A three-level meta-analysis of the relationship between meaning in life and depression,” was authored by Wu-han Ouyang, Xin-qiang Wang, Jia-yi Cai, Shu-ya Pan, and Jing-yi Li.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #meaninginlife #depression研究 #mentalhealth #senseofpurpose #coherence #lifeexistence #collectivisticvsindividualistic #beckdepressioninventory #psychologicalwellbeing #lifepurpose
-
DATE: September 8, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The psychological link between making sense of life and avoiding depression
A massive new review of psychological research shows that people who feel their lives have meaning tend to experience lower levels of depression. The findings, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggest that having a sense of purpose acts as a psychological buffer against negative emotions. This association changes depending on a person’s cultural background, age, and physical health, revealing a nuanced connection between personal philosophy and mental well-being.
Psychologists define meaning in life as a person’s ability to understand their experiences and recognize their own existence as having worth. Existential theorists propose that a lack of meaning is a root cause of depressive symptoms, suggesting that humans need a guiding philosophy to navigate adversity. Conversely, biomedical models argue that depression is primarily a physiological issue driven by genetics, brain chemistry, or neurodegenerative diseases. From a purely medical perspective, abstract psychological concepts like life purpose are secondary to biological treatments.
To resolve conflicting results in past literature, psychologists Wu-han Ouyang and Xin-qiang Wang at Jiangxi Normal University led a team to investigate exactly how a sense of meaning correlates with depression. They wanted to see if the connection was universal or if external factors altered the strength of the relationship. The researchers gathered data from 278 previously published studies to conduct a meta-analysis. This statistical technique pools results from multiple independent projects to identify broader trends that a single study might miss.
The approach allowed the team to analyze information from more than 250,000 participants worldwide. By using a specialized three-level statistical model, the researchers accounted for sampling variations within individual studies as well as broader differences across the entire body of literature. When looking at the combined data, Ouyang and Wang found a moderate negative correlation between overall meaning in life and depression. As a person’s sense of meaning increased, their reported levels of depression tended to decrease.
To understand this dynamic better, the researchers broke the broad concept of meaning down into several distinct components. They looked at coherence, purpose, and a person’s belief that their existence matters. Coherence, which is the ability to make sense of one’s life and environment, had the strongest negative association with depression. People who felt their lives made logical sense were the least likely to report depressive symptoms.
Believing that one’s life has inherent worth also strongly correlated with lower depression. A sense of purpose, defined as having distinct life goals, showed a similar protective association. The relationship shifted dramatically when the researchers looked at the search for meaning. This concept refers to a person’s active motivation to find purpose, rather than their current possession of it.
Overall, simply searching for meaning did not yield a statistically significant association with depression. However, the researchers discovered that this seemingly flat result actually masked a major cultural divide. In individualistic cultures, such as those in the United States or the United Kingdom, actively searching for meaning was linked to higher levels of depression. In collectivistic cultures, such as those in China or South Korea, searching for meaning was associated with lower levels of depression.
The researchers suspect this divergence happens because individualistic societies expect people to independently construct their own life goals. This solitary pressure can lead to severe frustration and isolation if a person struggles to find answers. Collectivistic societies tend to frame the search for meaning as a shared social endeavor. These cultures often embed personal purpose within family networks and community responsibilities.
This collectivistic framework provides social support that might protect against negative emotions during periods of uncertainty. Sharing the psychological burden of finding purpose appears to keep depression at bay. Physical health also played a major role in how meaning and depression interacted. For individuals diagnosed with medical illnesses, the association between having a purpose in life and experiencing lower depression was much stronger than it was for healthy individuals.
Chronic or severe illness can strip away a person’s daily routines and long-term goals, removing usual sources of happiness. In these high-stress situations, maintaining a core sense of purpose provides a psychological anchor. A strong sense of direction helps patients reframe their adversity and manage emotional distress. The tools used to measure depression also influenced the reported results across the studies.
The researchers found the strongest negative correlation between meaning in life and depression when studies used the Beck Depression Inventory. This specific questionnaire evaluates emotional distress along with physical symptoms of depression, such as fatigue or changes in appetite. Because a lack of meaning often translates into physical lethargy, this tool captured the mind-body connection more effectively than general mental health surveys. Age influenced the results as well, specifically regarding how strongly the presence of meaning linked to lower depression.
This protective association peaked in middle-aged adults and was weakest among adolescents. Middle adulthood often brings long-term stressors related to career and family responsibilities. A stable sense of purpose is highly beneficial for processing these heavy adult burdens. Adolescents, meanwhile, are still developing their emotional regulation skills and core identities.
Because a teenager’s worldview is still forming, their depressive symptoms are often tied more closely to immediate environmental factors like school pressure or peer relationships. Teenagers lack the mature psychological mechanisms needed to buffer negative emotions through a stable philosophy of life. Because the vast majority of the analyzed studies relied on observational data taken at a single point in time, the results cannot prove that a lack of meaning directly causes depression. It is entirely possible that experiencing depression makes it harder for a person to find meaning in their life, creating a feedback loop that is difficult to untangle.
Most of the data also came from self-reported questionnaires. This data collection method can introduce bias if participants answer in ways they perceive as socially desirable. Future research will need to track individuals over long periods to see whether changes in a person’s sense of purpose precede changes in their depressive symptoms. The researchers also noted a lack of data regarding people who have received formal clinical diagnoses of depression.
The current literature also lacks information on participants who take antidepressant medications. Expanding research into these clinical populations could help psychologists design better therapies. These future treatments might incorporate meaning-building exercises alongside traditional medical interventions. Recognizing how factors like age, illness, and culture shape the human experience could ultimately lead to more personalized mental health care.
The study, “A three-level meta-analysis of the relationship between meaning in life and depression,” was authored by Wu-han Ouyang, Xin-qiang Wang, Jia-yi Cai, Shu-ya Pan, and Jing-yi Li.
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #meaninginlife #depression研究 #mentalhealth #senseofpurpose #coherence #lifeexistence #collectivisticvsindividualistic #beckdepressioninventory #psychologicalwellbeing #lifepurpose
-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: A moderate dose of beer reduces your willingness to help others in pain
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
A moderate dose of beer might not impair your ability to read someone’s emotions, but it could make you less willing to help them if they are in pain, a new study suggests. Research published in Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental indicates that social drinkers who consume a moderate amount of alcoholic beer show a reduced willingness to assist people in distressing situations. However, the study did not find evidence that drinking beer altered people’s ability to accurately perceive the feelings of others.
Empathy is a complex social skill that involves both recognizing how someone else feels and responding to that feeling. Scientists often divide this into different components, such as empathic accuracy and behavioral empathy. Empathic accuracy refers to the ability to correctly interpret another person’s emotional state, like realizing a friend is secretly sad even when they are smiling. Behavioral empathy describes the willingness to take action to help someone experiencing physical or emotional pain.
Alcohol is frequently consumed in social settings, prompting scientists to explore how it might alter these empathic abilities. Prior research has yielded mixed results, leading researchers to wonder if the type of beverage matters. For example, a 2018 study found that a moderate dose of vodka impaired the ability of men to accurately read positive emotions in others.
Lead author Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist based in Romania, designed the new study with colleagues at the University of Groningen to build on this research progression. They wanted to test whether the same impairment holds true when people drink beer, which is widely consumed in everyday social situations, and whether alcohol dampens the actual willingness to help people in pain.
“This study was part of my doctoral research investigating the link between alcohol dependence, aggression, and empathy,” Baltariu told PsyPost. “Beyond the clinical curiosity shared with my advisors, this research addresses a critical societal issue in Romania, where alcohol-related violence and femicide remain widespread.”
“I wanted to look deeper into human psychological traits—specifically empathy—to help explain the mechanisms behind this aggression and find potential avenues for clinical intervention,” she said.
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 66 individuals, 62% of whom were men, with an average age of 25. Participants first completed baseline questionnaires, including a measure of their typical drinking habits to identify any hazardous patterns. The researchers then randomly assigned participants to drink either a moderate dose of alcoholic beer or an equivalent amount of non-alcoholic placebo beer.
The alcoholic beverage contained 6.6% alcohol, and each participant received a dose scaled to their body weight. On average, the blood alcohol concentration in the alcohol group peaked at 0.56 milligrams per liter about ten minutes after finishing the drink. Participants completed two tasks measuring empathy both before and after drinking.
Empathic accuracy was measured by having participants watch short video clips of people recounting positive or negative autobiographical events. Participants continuously rated how the person in the video was feeling, and these ratings were compared to how the individuals in the videos had actually rated their own feelings. To measure behavioral empathy, participants read hypothetical scenarios involving people in high levels of physical or emotional pain, or low-pain situations.
After reading the scenarios, participants used a slider scale from 0 to 100 to indicate how willing they would be to help the person in distress. When analyzing the results, the researchers did not replicate the findings of the 2018 study. They found no reliable evidence that drinking beer worsened participants’ ability to accurately read either positive or negative emotions in the video clips.
The ability to recognize emotions remained largely intact regardless of whether participants drank alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer. “The most remarkable aspect was observing the sheer degree of variability in how alcohol influences empathy across different measures—both within our study and across past literature,” Baltariu noted.
“Running a precise pharmacological experiment like this is a rare opportunity, and actually capturing these controlled behavioral and emotional shifts in real time reinforced just how complex human social cognition really is,” she added.
However, the alcoholic beer did alter participants’ willingness to help others, and this effect depended on their typical drinking habits. Among individuals who reported low, non-hazardous drinking habits on the initial questionnaire, behavioral empathy scores decreased after consuming alcohol.
This means they became less willing to help people in painful scenarios after a few drinks. Interestingly, this reduction in helpfulness did not appear among participants who regularly engaged in heavier, more hazardous drinking. The alcohol also did not reliably affect general helping behavior in low-pain scenarios for any group.
“I want to be careful to avoid oversimplification: alcohol does not instantly erase empathy,” Baltariu explained. “How significant that impairment is depends on the individual, their drinking habits, and the social context. It is about a loss of accuracy and sensitivity, not a total shutdown of human caring.”
The finding that alcohol reduces the willingness to help people in distress is generally consistent with research covered by PsyPost in 2020. That earlier study indicated that sober young binge drinkers show impaired neural processing when viewing others in pain, requiring compensatory brain effort. The new study adds to this by showing an immediate drop in behavioral willingness to help after acute alcohol consumption.
On the other hand, the lack of an effect on emotion recognition stands in tension with a 2025 study covered by PsyPost. That research found that an intoxicating dose of alcohol impaired people’s ability to recognize angry expressions while increasing self-reported emotional connection with peers. It is worth noting that these studies measured distinct facets of empathy across different alcohol types and drinking populations, which might explain the differing results.
The 2025 study used live group interactions and measured anger recognition, while the new study used video-based empathic accuracy and hypothetical willingness to help.
“The main message is that alcohol can create a deceptive gap between how connected we feel and how accurately we actually read others,” Baltariu said. “In everyday life, knowing that alcohol quietly degrades our emotional radar helps explain why mild misunderstandings can easily turn into real friction over a couple of drinks.”
“It is important to view these findings as a foundational baseline,” she continued. “A moderate dose shows us that alcohol can measurably alter our capacity to empathize with others, even if the effect size appears modest under controlled laboratory conditions.”
“In real-life scenarios—or with higher alcohol intake—those subtle shifts in emotional accuracy can be the difference between de-escalating a disagreement and escalating it,” Baltariu pointed out.
There are a few other things to keep in mind when interpreting these new results. First, the researchers had a smaller number of female participants than they originally planned.
This was partly because they excluded women using hormonal contraceptives, as previous research suggests these medications can independently alter emotion recognition. Because of this smaller sample, it is difficult to say for sure whether men and women experience these alcohol-induced changes in empathy differently. Additionally, the study used a moderate dose of beer, which might act differently on the body and brain than a moderate dose of hard liquor.
Beer is carbonated, which can change how quickly alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. The researchers noted that different types of alcohol, consumed at varying doses, might produce different effects on social skills.
Future research could explore how alcohol alters empathy during live, unstructured social interactions rather than relying on computer-based video tasks and written scenarios.
“My immediate next step is concluding a clinical study that explores the alcohol-aggression link in individuals diagnosed with Alcohol Use Disorder,” Baltariu said. “Using a case-control design, we assessed both cognitive and affective empathy alongside proactive and reactive aggression.”
“Long-term, my goal is to pinpoint how specific empathy impairments drive different types of aggression, providing the necessary insights for clinical practice to develop targeted psychological interventions and treatments for alcohol-related violence,” she concluded.
The study, “Empathic Accuracy and Behavioral Empathy After a Moderate Dose of Beer,” was authored by Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, Violeta Enea, Teresa B. Prucker, and Marije aan het Rot.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
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-
DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: A moderate dose of beer reduces your willingness to help others in pain
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
A moderate dose of beer might not impair your ability to read someone’s emotions, but it could make you less willing to help them if they are in pain, a new study suggests. Research published in Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental indicates that social drinkers who consume a moderate amount of alcoholic beer show a reduced willingness to assist people in distressing situations. However, the study did not find evidence that drinking beer altered people’s ability to accurately perceive the feelings of others.
Empathy is a complex social skill that involves both recognizing how someone else feels and responding to that feeling. Scientists often divide this into different components, such as empathic accuracy and behavioral empathy. Empathic accuracy refers to the ability to correctly interpret another person’s emotional state, like realizing a friend is secretly sad even when they are smiling. Behavioral empathy describes the willingness to take action to help someone experiencing physical or emotional pain.
Alcohol is frequently consumed in social settings, prompting scientists to explore how it might alter these empathic abilities. Prior research has yielded mixed results, leading researchers to wonder if the type of beverage matters. For example, a 2018 study found that a moderate dose of vodka impaired the ability of men to accurately read positive emotions in others.
Lead author Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist based in Romania, designed the new study with colleagues at the University of Groningen to build on this research progression. They wanted to test whether the same impairment holds true when people drink beer, which is widely consumed in everyday social situations, and whether alcohol dampens the actual willingness to help people in pain.
“This study was part of my doctoral research investigating the link between alcohol dependence, aggression, and empathy,” Baltariu told PsyPost. “Beyond the clinical curiosity shared with my advisors, this research addresses a critical societal issue in Romania, where alcohol-related violence and femicide remain widespread.”
“I wanted to look deeper into human psychological traits—specifically empathy—to help explain the mechanisms behind this aggression and find potential avenues for clinical intervention,” she said.
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 66 individuals, 62% of whom were men, with an average age of 25. Participants first completed baseline questionnaires, including a measure of their typical drinking habits to identify any hazardous patterns. The researchers then randomly assigned participants to drink either a moderate dose of alcoholic beer or an equivalent amount of non-alcoholic placebo beer.
The alcoholic beverage contained 6.6% alcohol, and each participant received a dose scaled to their body weight. On average, the blood alcohol concentration in the alcohol group peaked at 0.56 milligrams per liter about ten minutes after finishing the drink. Participants completed two tasks measuring empathy both before and after drinking.
Empathic accuracy was measured by having participants watch short video clips of people recounting positive or negative autobiographical events. Participants continuously rated how the person in the video was feeling, and these ratings were compared to how the individuals in the videos had actually rated their own feelings. To measure behavioral empathy, participants read hypothetical scenarios involving people in high levels of physical or emotional pain, or low-pain situations.
After reading the scenarios, participants used a slider scale from 0 to 100 to indicate how willing they would be to help the person in distress. When analyzing the results, the researchers did not replicate the findings of the 2018 study. They found no reliable evidence that drinking beer worsened participants’ ability to accurately read either positive or negative emotions in the video clips.
The ability to recognize emotions remained largely intact regardless of whether participants drank alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer. “The most remarkable aspect was observing the sheer degree of variability in how alcohol influences empathy across different measures—both within our study and across past literature,” Baltariu noted.
“Running a precise pharmacological experiment like this is a rare opportunity, and actually capturing these controlled behavioral and emotional shifts in real time reinforced just how complex human social cognition really is,” she added.
However, the alcoholic beer did alter participants’ willingness to help others, and this effect depended on their typical drinking habits. Among individuals who reported low, non-hazardous drinking habits on the initial questionnaire, behavioral empathy scores decreased after consuming alcohol.
This means they became less willing to help people in painful scenarios after a few drinks. Interestingly, this reduction in helpfulness did not appear among participants who regularly engaged in heavier, more hazardous drinking. The alcohol also did not reliably affect general helping behavior in low-pain scenarios for any group.
“I want to be careful to avoid oversimplification: alcohol does not instantly erase empathy,” Baltariu explained. “How significant that impairment is depends on the individual, their drinking habits, and the social context. It is about a loss of accuracy and sensitivity, not a total shutdown of human caring.”
The finding that alcohol reduces the willingness to help people in distress is generally consistent with research covered by PsyPost in 2020. That earlier study indicated that sober young binge drinkers show impaired neural processing when viewing others in pain, requiring compensatory brain effort. The new study adds to this by showing an immediate drop in behavioral willingness to help after acute alcohol consumption.
On the other hand, the lack of an effect on emotion recognition stands in tension with a 2025 study covered by PsyPost. That research found that an intoxicating dose of alcohol impaired people’s ability to recognize angry expressions while increasing self-reported emotional connection with peers. It is worth noting that these studies measured distinct facets of empathy across different alcohol types and drinking populations, which might explain the differing results.
The 2025 study used live group interactions and measured anger recognition, while the new study used video-based empathic accuracy and hypothetical willingness to help.
“The main message is that alcohol can create a deceptive gap between how connected we feel and how accurately we actually read others,” Baltariu said. “In everyday life, knowing that alcohol quietly degrades our emotional radar helps explain why mild misunderstandings can easily turn into real friction over a couple of drinks.”
“It is important to view these findings as a foundational baseline,” she continued. “A moderate dose shows us that alcohol can measurably alter our capacity to empathize with others, even if the effect size appears modest under controlled laboratory conditions.”
“In real-life scenarios—or with higher alcohol intake—those subtle shifts in emotional accuracy can be the difference between de-escalating a disagreement and escalating it,” Baltariu pointed out.
There are a few other things to keep in mind when interpreting these new results. First, the researchers had a smaller number of female participants than they originally planned.
This was partly because they excluded women using hormonal contraceptives, as previous research suggests these medications can independently alter emotion recognition. Because of this smaller sample, it is difficult to say for sure whether men and women experience these alcohol-induced changes in empathy differently. Additionally, the study used a moderate dose of beer, which might act differently on the body and brain than a moderate dose of hard liquor.
Beer is carbonated, which can change how quickly alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. The researchers noted that different types of alcohol, consumed at varying doses, might produce different effects on social skills.
Future research could explore how alcohol alters empathy during live, unstructured social interactions rather than relying on computer-based video tasks and written scenarios.
“My immediate next step is concluding a clinical study that explores the alcohol-aggression link in individuals diagnosed with Alcohol Use Disorder,” Baltariu said. “Using a case-control design, we assessed both cognitive and affective empathy alongside proactive and reactive aggression.”
“Long-term, my goal is to pinpoint how specific empathy impairments drive different types of aggression, providing the necessary insights for clinical practice to develop targeted psychological interventions and treatments for alcohol-related violence,” she concluded.
The study, “Empathic Accuracy and Behavioral Empathy After a Moderate Dose of Beer,” was authored by Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, Violeta Enea, Teresa B. Prucker, and Marije aan het Rot.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
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DATE: September 8, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: A moderate dose of beer reduces your willingness to help others in pain
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
A moderate dose of beer might not impair your ability to read someone’s emotions, but it could make you less willing to help them if they are in pain, a new study suggests. Research published in Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental indicates that social drinkers who consume a moderate amount of alcoholic beer show a reduced willingness to assist people in distressing situations. However, the study did not find evidence that drinking beer altered people’s ability to accurately perceive the feelings of others.
Empathy is a complex social skill that involves both recognizing how someone else feels and responding to that feeling. Scientists often divide this into different components, such as empathic accuracy and behavioral empathy. Empathic accuracy refers to the ability to correctly interpret another person’s emotional state, like realizing a friend is secretly sad even when they are smiling. Behavioral empathy describes the willingness to take action to help someone experiencing physical or emotional pain.
Alcohol is frequently consumed in social settings, prompting scientists to explore how it might alter these empathic abilities. Prior research has yielded mixed results, leading researchers to wonder if the type of beverage matters. For example, a 2018 study found that a moderate dose of vodka impaired the ability of men to accurately read positive emotions in others.
Lead author Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist based in Romania, designed the new study with colleagues at the University of Groningen to build on this research progression. They wanted to test whether the same impairment holds true when people drink beer, which is widely consumed in everyday social situations, and whether alcohol dampens the actual willingness to help people in pain.
“This study was part of my doctoral research investigating the link between alcohol dependence, aggression, and empathy,” Baltariu told PsyPost. “Beyond the clinical curiosity shared with my advisors, this research addresses a critical societal issue in Romania, where alcohol-related violence and femicide remain widespread.”
“I wanted to look deeper into human psychological traits—specifically empathy—to help explain the mechanisms behind this aggression and find potential avenues for clinical intervention,” she said.
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 66 individuals, 62% of whom were men, with an average age of 25. Participants first completed baseline questionnaires, including a measure of their typical drinking habits to identify any hazardous patterns. The researchers then randomly assigned participants to drink either a moderate dose of alcoholic beer or an equivalent amount of non-alcoholic placebo beer.
The alcoholic beverage contained 6.6% alcohol, and each participant received a dose scaled to their body weight. On average, the blood alcohol concentration in the alcohol group peaked at 0.56 milligrams per liter about ten minutes after finishing the drink. Participants completed two tasks measuring empathy both before and after drinking.
Empathic accuracy was measured by having participants watch short video clips of people recounting positive or negative autobiographical events. Participants continuously rated how the person in the video was feeling, and these ratings were compared to how the individuals in the videos had actually rated their own feelings. To measure behavioral empathy, participants read hypothetical scenarios involving people in high levels of physical or emotional pain, or low-pain situations.
After reading the scenarios, participants used a slider scale from 0 to 100 to indicate how willing they would be to help the person in distress. When analyzing the results, the researchers did not replicate the findings of the 2018 study. They found no reliable evidence that drinking beer worsened participants’ ability to accurately read either positive or negative emotions in the video clips.
The ability to recognize emotions remained largely intact regardless of whether participants drank alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer. “The most remarkable aspect was observing the sheer degree of variability in how alcohol influences empathy across different measures—both within our study and across past literature,” Baltariu noted.
“Running a precise pharmacological experiment like this is a rare opportunity, and actually capturing these controlled behavioral and emotional shifts in real time reinforced just how complex human social cognition really is,” she added.
However, the alcoholic beer did alter participants’ willingness to help others, and this effect depended on their typical drinking habits. Among individuals who reported low, non-hazardous drinking habits on the initial questionnaire, behavioral empathy scores decreased after consuming alcohol.
This means they became less willing to help people in painful scenarios after a few drinks. Interestingly, this reduction in helpfulness did not appear among participants who regularly engaged in heavier, more hazardous drinking. The alcohol also did not reliably affect general helping behavior in low-pain scenarios for any group.
“I want to be careful to avoid oversimplification: alcohol does not instantly erase empathy,” Baltariu explained. “How significant that impairment is depends on the individual, their drinking habits, and the social context. It is about a loss of accuracy and sensitivity, not a total shutdown of human caring.”
The finding that alcohol reduces the willingness to help people in distress is generally consistent with research covered by PsyPost in 2020. That earlier study indicated that sober young binge drinkers show impaired neural processing when viewing others in pain, requiring compensatory brain effort. The new study adds to this by showing an immediate drop in behavioral willingness to help after acute alcohol consumption.
On the other hand, the lack of an effect on emotion recognition stands in tension with a 2025 study covered by PsyPost. That research found that an intoxicating dose of alcohol impaired people’s ability to recognize angry expressions while increasing self-reported emotional connection with peers. It is worth noting that these studies measured distinct facets of empathy across different alcohol types and drinking populations, which might explain the differing results.
The 2025 study used live group interactions and measured anger recognition, while the new study used video-based empathic accuracy and hypothetical willingness to help.
“The main message is that alcohol can create a deceptive gap between how connected we feel and how accurately we actually read others,” Baltariu said. “In everyday life, knowing that alcohol quietly degrades our emotional radar helps explain why mild misunderstandings can easily turn into real friction over a couple of drinks.”
“It is important to view these findings as a foundational baseline,” she continued. “A moderate dose shows us that alcohol can measurably alter our capacity to empathize with others, even if the effect size appears modest under controlled laboratory conditions.”
“In real-life scenarios—or with higher alcohol intake—those subtle shifts in emotional accuracy can be the difference between de-escalating a disagreement and escalating it,” Baltariu pointed out.
There are a few other things to keep in mind when interpreting these new results. First, the researchers had a smaller number of female participants than they originally planned.
This was partly because they excluded women using hormonal contraceptives, as previous research suggests these medications can independently alter emotion recognition. Because of this smaller sample, it is difficult to say for sure whether men and women experience these alcohol-induced changes in empathy differently. Additionally, the study used a moderate dose of beer, which might act differently on the body and brain than a moderate dose of hard liquor.
Beer is carbonated, which can change how quickly alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. The researchers noted that different types of alcohol, consumed at varying doses, might produce different effects on social skills.
Future research could explore how alcohol alters empathy during live, unstructured social interactions rather than relying on computer-based video tasks and written scenarios.
“My immediate next step is concluding a clinical study that explores the alcohol-aggression link in individuals diagnosed with Alcohol Use Disorder,” Baltariu said. “Using a case-control design, we assessed both cognitive and affective empathy alongside proactive and reactive aggression.”
“Long-term, my goal is to pinpoint how specific empathy impairments drive different types of aggression, providing the necessary insights for clinical practice to develop targeted psychological interventions and treatments for alcohol-related violence,” she concluded.
The study, “Empathic Accuracy and Behavioral Empathy After a Moderate Dose of Beer,” was authored by Isabelle Cristina Baltariu, Violeta Enea, Teresa B. Prucker, and Marije aan het Rot.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-moderate-dose-of-beer-reduces-your-willingness-to-help-others-in-pain/
-------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Empathy #AlcoholAndEmpathy #BeerStudy #BehavioralEmpathy #EmpathicAccuracy #SocialBehavior #ModerateAlcohol #EmpathyResearch #AlcoholUseAndAggression #PsyPostResearch