#counseling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counseling, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 16, 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: Higher emotional intelligence is tied to vigorous exercise in women
URL: https://www.psypost.org/higher-emotional-intelligence-is-tied-to-vigorous-exercise-in-women/
A large new study reveals that emotional intelligence is linked to distinct physical activity habits in women, but not in men. Women with higher emotional intelligence scores tended to engage in more vigorous exercise and spend less time sitting, while these associations were absent among male participants. The research was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Emotional intelligence refers to a person’s ability to perceive, regulate, and effectively use their own emotions as well as the emotions of others. High emotional intelligence is often associated with better psychological well-being, social functioning, and resilience to stress. Emerging evidence suggests that these emotional skills are also tied to biological aging and daily habits, including how people manage their health.
Regular physical activity is widely recognized as a foundation for both mental and physical health across the human lifespan. Health behaviors like exercise, sleep, and sedentary routines influence emotional regulation through shared biological pathways in the brain and the endocrine system. Specifically, the autonomic nervous system and regions of the brain involved in processing emotions respond to the physiological demands of exercise.
Despite this recognized connection, researchers have lacked detailed information on how emotional intelligence relates to specific intensities of exercise. Most previous epidemiological studies have focused on general mental health outcomes or moderate-intensity activities. Vigorous physical activity, such as running or heavy weightlifting, presents unique regulatory demands because it repeatedly induces acute physical stress followed by recovery. This cycle of stress and recovery is thought to strengthen the body’s overall stress-adaptation mechanisms.
Public health researchers Albertas Skurvydas, Daiva Majauskiene, and their colleagues at Vytautas Magnus University and Klaipeda University in Lithuania designed a study to examine these relationships. They aimed to determine how emotional intelligence relates to various physical activity intensities, sedentary behavior, sleep, and body mass index. The research team also wanted to see if these behavioral associations varied by age or sex, given that men and women often display different patterns in both emotional processing and exercise habits.
The researchers recruited a large sample of 6,368 adults in Lithuania, ranging in age from 18 to 64. Women made up about 71 percent of the survey participants. The researchers used a cross-sectional design, meaning they collected data from the participants at a single point in time rather than tracking them over months or years. Participants completed questionnaires distributed through social media platforms, providing self-reported data on their daily routines and demographic backgrounds.
To measure emotional intelligence, the participants completed the 33-item Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test. This widely used psychological tool asks individuals to rate their agreement with statements about how they manage their own feelings and react to the emotions of others. Higher total scores indicate a greater capacity for emotional perception and regulation.
The research team assessed exercise habits using the Danish Physical Activity Questionnaire. Participants recalled their activities over an average 24-hour period within the previous week. The researchers categorized these activities by intensity using metabolic equivalents, a standard metric that estimates the energy expenditure of different physical tasks compared to a resting state.
Activities were grouped into categories ranging from sedentary time to light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity. The researchers also calculated each participant’s body mass index based on self-reported height and weight.
After analyzing the survey responses, the researchers identified distinct age and sex patterns. Emotional intelligence scores increased with age for both men and women. Overall, women exhibited higher emotional intelligence scores than men and engaged in more light-intensity physical activity. Men, on average, had a higher body mass index and reported substantially more time spent engaged in vigorous physical activity.
The researchers then used statistical models to look for independent associations between emotional intelligence and specific health behaviors. Among women, higher emotional intelligence scores were linked to a greater amount of time spent doing vigorous physical activity. Women with higher emotional intelligence also reported less sedentary behavior. These associations held true across the entire adult age range studied.
The behavioral results for men were entirely different. Among male participants, age was the only factor positively associated with emotional intelligence. The researchers found no statistically significant links between a man’s emotional intelligence and his sleep duration, sedentary time, or participation in any intensity of physical activity.
When comparing the two groups directly, the statistical models confirmed that the association between vigorous physical activity and emotional intelligence was markedly stronger in women than in men. The data showed no corresponding interaction with age. This indicates that the relationship between intense exercise and emotional regulation in women did not fade or intensify as they got older.
The study relies entirely on cross-sectional data, which means it cannot determine the direction of the relationship between emotional intelligence and physical activity. Individuals with higher emotional intelligence might be more motivated to engage in demanding exercise, or the repeated physiological stress of vigorous activity might help train emotional regulation systems over time. It is also possible that a bidirectional relationship exists, where both factors continually reinforce one another.
The use of self-reported questionnaires introduces the possibility of reporting bias. Participants might have overestimated their physical activity levels or provided answers that they believed were socially desirable on the emotional intelligence assessment. This shared method of data collection can sometimes inflate the apparent associations between different variables.
The authors note that the observed associations, while present, were small in magnitude. The behavioral factors measured in the study explain only a limited portion of the total variance in emotional intelligence scores. Additionally, the recruitment method via social media may have attracted individuals who are already more health-conscious than the general population. Because the study was conducted entirely in Lithuania, the results might not fully generalize to populations in other cultural or socioeconomic environments.
Future research will need to employ longitudinal designs to track how changes in physical activity habits influence emotional intelligence over time. Experimental studies could also help determine whether modifying a person’s exercise routine directly alters their emotional regulation capabilities across the adult lifespan. Such studies would clarify whether behavioral interventions can effectively support emotional functioning.
The study, “Higher emotional intelligence is linked to greater vigorous physical activity and lower sedentary behavior, specifically among women across adulthood,” was authored by Albertas Skurvydas, Ausra Lisinskiene, Aiste Barbora Uspuriene, Egle Kemeryte-Ivanauskiene, Dovile Valanciene, Asta Sarkauskiene, Jurga Bucaite-Vilke, and Daiva Majauskiene.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/higher-emotional-intelligence-is-tied-to-vigorous-exercise-in-women/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionalIntelligence # VigorousExercise #WomenAndFitness #MentalHealthAndExercise #GenderDifferences #SedentaryBehavior #PhysicalActivityIntensity #WellbeingThroughActivity #CrossSectionalStudy #HealthBehaviorWomen
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS NEUROSCIENCETITLE: STAT+: Scientists made mice with half a brain. Then they filled them with human organoids
For the last decade, scientists have been steadily getting better at growing “cerebral organoids,” miniature, three-dimensional brain-like structures, from human stem cells in the lab. Now, a group from Stanford University has found a way to advance their usefulness for studying brain development and disease — by instead growing them inside mice that have had large parts of their own brains genetically removed.
Neuroscientists say these “neuro-chimeric” mice, whose brains are half-human — by volume, not by number of neurons — are an important innovation for a field hampered by longstanding challenges in accessing human brain tissue for research. But such models also raise a host of ethical questions that will get thornier the more advanced they become.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, the Stanford team reported finding types of human cells inside the brains of 3-month old chimeric mouse pups that are very hard to obtain in a dish. They included pyramidal projection neurons that had wound their way into some of the animals’ spinal cords. The scientists also found evidence of specialized, super-sized neurons involved in social cognition only found in large-brain mammals like elephants, whales, and primates, including humans.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
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STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/neuroscience .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #brainorganoids #neurochimera #halfbrainmice #humangrowthinmice #neuroscience #cerebralorganoids #neuroethics #NatureStudy #StanfordResearch #brainresearch
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: STAT+: Scientists made mice with half a brain. Then they filled them with human organoids
For the last decade, scientists have been steadily getting better at growing “cerebral organoids,” miniature, three-dimensional brain-like structures, from human stem cells in the lab. Now, a group from Stanford University has found a way to advance their usefulness for studying brain development and disease — by instead growing them inside mice that have had large parts of their own brains genetically removed.
Neuroscientists say these “neuro-chimeric” mice, whose brains are half-human — by volume, not by number of neurons — are an important innovation for a field hampered by longstanding challenges in accessing human brain tissue for research. But such models also raise a host of ethical questions that will get thornier the more advanced they become.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, the Stanford team reported finding types of human cells inside the brains of 3-month old chimeric mouse pups that are very hard to obtain in a dish. They included pyramidal projection neurons that had wound their way into some of the animals’ spinal cords. The scientists also found evidence of specialized, super-sized neurons involved in social cognition only found in large-brain mammals like elephants, whales, and primates, including humans.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
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STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainOrganoids #NeuroChimericMice #StemCellResearch #HumanBrainResearch #CerebralOrganoids #NeuroscienceEthics #PyramidalNeurons #BrainDevelopment #NatureStudy #ScienceNews
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: STAT+: Scientists made mice with half a brain. Then they filled them with human organoids
For the last decade, scientists have been steadily getting better at growing “cerebral organoids,” miniature, three-dimensional brain-like structures, from human stem cells in the lab. Now, a group from Stanford University has found a way to advance their usefulness for studying brain development and disease — by instead growing them inside mice that have had large parts of their own brains genetically removed.
Neuroscientists say these “neuro-chimeric” mice, whose brains are half-human — by volume, not by number of neurons — are an important innovation for a field hampered by longstanding challenges in accessing human brain tissue for research. But such models also raise a host of ethical questions that will get thornier the more advanced they become.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, the Stanford team reported finding types of human cells inside the brains of 3-month old chimeric mouse pups that are very hard to obtain in a dish. They included pyramidal projection neurons that had wound their way into some of the animals’ spinal cords. The scientists also found evidence of specialized, super-sized neurons involved in social cognition only found in large-brain mammals like elephants, whales, and primates, including humans.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainOrganoids #NeuroChimericMice #StemCellResearch #HumanBrainResearch #CerebralOrganoids #NeuroscienceEthics #PyramidalNeurons #BrainDevelopment #NatureStudy #ScienceNews
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: STAT+: Scientists made mice with half a brain. Then they filled them with human organoids
For the last decade, scientists have been steadily getting better at growing “cerebral organoids,” miniature, three-dimensional brain-like structures, from human stem cells in the lab. Now, a group from Stanford University has found a way to advance their usefulness for studying brain development and disease — by instead growing them inside mice that have had large parts of their own brains genetically removed.
Neuroscientists say these “neuro-chimeric” mice, whose brains are half-human — by volume, not by number of neurons — are an important innovation for a field hampered by longstanding challenges in accessing human brain tissue for research. But such models also raise a host of ethical questions that will get thornier the more advanced they become.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, the Stanford team reported finding types of human cells inside the brains of 3-month old chimeric mouse pups that are very hard to obtain in a dish. They included pyramidal projection neurons that had wound their way into some of the animals’ spinal cords. The scientists also found evidence of specialized, super-sized neurons involved in social cognition only found in large-brain mammals like elephants, whales, and primates, including humans.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainOrganoids #NeuroChimericMice #StemCellResearch #HumanBrainResearch #CerebralOrganoids #NeuroscienceEthics #PyramidalNeurons #BrainDevelopment #NatureStudy #ScienceNews
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 08:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists recreated what mice saw from brain activity alone
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102449.htm
Scientists reconstructed videos from the brain activity of mice, producing 10-second clips based only on signals from neurons in the visual cortex. The breakthrough could help reveal how the brain reshapes what we see before it becomes our perception of reality.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102449.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainImaging #Neuroscience #VisualCortex #NeuralDecoding #BrainActivity #MiceResearch #VideoReconstruction #PerceptionScience #NeuroscienceBreakthrough #BrainSignals
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DATE: September 16, 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: Even light drinking is linked to worse hand dexterity and balance as we age
URL: https://www.psypost.org/even-light-drinking-is-linked-to-worse-hand-dexterity-and-balance-as-we-age/
A recent study suggests that even low-level alcohol consumption over a person’s lifetime is associated with worse hand dexterity and poorer balance. The research, published in Alcohol and Alcoholism, indicates that the combination of advancing age and a higher number of lifetime drinks might negatively affect motor coordination and postural stability in otherwise healthy adults.
Manual dexterity involves the ability to make coordinated hand and finger movements to grasp and manipulate objects. Static postural stability refers to the ability to maintain balance and hold the body upright while standing still. Both of these physical skills are necessary for independent daily living as people age, helping with everything from buttoning a shirt to avoiding falls.
Historically, public health guidelines often framed light drinking as safe or even protective against certain cardiovascular issues. “For decades, ‘low-level’ alcohol consumption at or below current guidelines (≤1 standard drink equivalent/day for females, ≤2 standard drink equivalents/day for males) has been proposed to carry minimal systemic health risks or functional consequences,” Timothy C. Durazzo, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a clinical neuropsychologist at the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center within the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, told PsyPost.
However, the scientific consensus has been shifting. “There is increasing evidence that any level of alcohol consumption is associated with increased risk for at least six different types of cancer,” Durazzo noted. He added that even low-level drinking at or below previous federal guidelines “is associated with abnormalities in structure, blood flow and metabolite markers of cell integrity across multiple regions of the human brain.”
Building on this evidence, Durazzo and his colleagues aimed to explore how low-level drinking relates to physical motor skills. Prior structural imaging studies suggested that low-level alcohol consumption is associated with decreased brain tissue integrity, but it was unknown if these subtle brain changes translated to physical functional differences. “However, there are no published studies on the association of low-level alcohol consumption with concurrent measures of manual dexterity and complex motor coordination, and static postural stability in exclusively healthy, non-smoking adults,” Durazzo explained. “These measures are relevant because functional impairments in these areas may have significant consequences for the activities of daily living (ADL), particularly with advancing age.”
To test this, the researchers recruited 83 healthy, non-smoking adults between 21 and 69 years old. The participants were screened to ensure they had no history of psychiatric, neurological, or major medical conditions. They were also required to have a history of low-level drinking, meaning they consumed a limited number of drinks per month and had no history of binge drinking in the year prior to the study.
The researchers used a standardized questionnaire called the Lifetime Drinking History to calculate each participant’s alcohol consumption. From this questionnaire, they determined the total number of drinks consumed over the past year, the past three years, and over the participant’s entire lifetime, as well as their lifetime average drinks per month.
To assess physical coordination, participants completed two standardized behavioral tests. The first was the Lafayette Grooved Pegboard Test, which measures manual dexterity, complex motor coordination, and motor speed. Participants were timed as they quickly inserted 25 small pegs into randomly oriented slots, completing the task once with their dominant hand and once with their non-dominant hand.
The second test was the Sharpened Romberg Test, which measures static postural stability. Participants were asked to stand heel-to-toe with their arms crossed over their chest for 60 seconds. They performed this balancing task first with their eyes open, relying heavily on visual input, and then with their eyes closed, which forces the brain to rely on internal sensory and vestibular systems to stay upright.
When analyzing the grooved pegboard results, the researchers found that recent drinking over the past one or three years did not predict physical performance. Instead, the mathematical combination of a person’s age multiplied by their total lifetime drinks was a reliable predictor of their manual dexterity. A higher combined total of age and lifetime drinks was associated with slower completion times for the dominant hand, as well as slower times when adding the scores of both hands together. “The associations observed were moderate in magnitude and the relationship between the product of age and total lifetime drinks was stronger for the participants’ dominant hand,” Durazzo said.
The balance test yielded a slightly different pattern. Every participant successfully maintained their balance for the full 60 seconds when their eyes were open. For the more difficult eyes-closed condition, a higher lifetime average of drinks per month was related to poorer performance. For each standard deviation increase in lifetime average drinks per month, participants had 2.3 times lower odds of perfectly maintaining their balance for the full 60 seconds.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost earlier this year. That earlier study, which examined brain tissue thickness and blood flow on MRI rather than behavioral motor coordination and balance, similarly found that higher lifetime alcohol consumption combined with older age was associated with subtle neurological declines in healthy adults.
“Our recent research on this topic, combined with the existing research on the effects of low-level alcohol consumption on the human brain, suggest that lifetime alcohol consumption considered ‘low risk’ combined with increasing age, may have functional and brain biological consequences in healthy adults,” Durazzo noted.
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study had a modest sample size, particularly regarding female participants. Because there were only 22 women compared to 61 men, the researchers noted that any sex-specific differences would require further exploration with a larger group of people.
The study design is observational, meaning it cannot firmly establish that alcohol caused the physical declines. Unrecorded lifestyle factors, such as diet, exercise habits, or genetics, might also play a role in motor performance and balance. Future research could look at general health markers, like blood chemistry and vitamins, to see how they interact with alcohol exposure to influence physical coordination over a lifetime.
“Next steps are to investigate the associations of low-level drinking with measures of attention/concentration, learning and memory and processing speed in a similar sample of healthy adults with low-level alcohol intake,” Durazzo added.
The study, “In healthy adults with low-level alcohol intake greater age and lifetime alcohol consumption are associated with poorer manual dexterity and higher lifetime consumption is related to worse postural stability,” was authored by Timothy C. Durazzo, Nicole D. Evangelista, M. Windy McNerney, Ansgar J. Furst, Maheen M. Adamson, Keith Humphreys, and Dieter J. Meyerhoff.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/even-light-drinking-is-linked-to-worse-hand-dexterity-and-balance-as-we-age/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AlcoholAndAging #DexterityDecline #BalanceOnTheLine #LowLevelDrinking #BrainHealth #MotorSkills #PosturalStability #LifetimeAlcoholConsumption #HealthyAging #PublicHealthResearch
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Back in August 2026, @APSARD announced that its US Adult ADHD Guidelines have entered stage 3, the final review stage before publication.
Ahead of the release of the guidelines, we spoke with APSARD president Brooke Molina, PhD: https://t.co/uOL9ZWjgqE
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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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #ADHDGuidelines #APSARD #AdultADHD #MentalHealthGuidelines #HealthcarePolicy
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DATE: September 16, 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: Men estimate higher rates of sexual objectification than women report
URL: https://www.psypost.org/men-estimate-higher-rates-of-sexual-objectification-than-women-report/
Men and women have different perceptions of how often young women experience sexual objectification, with men sometimes estimating higher frequencies than women themselves report. The study, published in Sex Roles, highlights a disconnect in how different behaviors are perceived and measured. The findings challenge the assumption that men underestimate the everyday harassment women face.
Sexual objectification involves treating a person primarily as a body or a collection of body parts rather than a whole human being. This experience is common for many young women and is linked to negative psychological outcomes like depression, body shame, and a reduced sense of personal safety. In professional and public spaces, these experiences range from unwanted explicit sexual advances to everyday instances of inappropriate body evaluation. Researchers wanted to know if men and women had a shared understanding of how frequently these events happen in daily life.
Olivia A. Foster-Gimbel of Rutgers University and Renee Engeln of Northwestern University conducted the study. The researchers initially predicted that men would estimate lower rates of sexual objectification than women actually experienced. They reasoned that men might lack personal experience with being targeted or might be motivated to downplay the issue to maintain a positive view of their own gender group. Additionally, members of a dominant group often struggle to recognize the disadvantages faced by others.
On the other hand, the researchers recognized that the cultural impact of the #MeToo movement might have successfully educated men about the pervasive nature of these experiences. With so many public discussions about sexual harassment and assault in recent years, men might be highly aware of the issues women navigate on a regular basis. To test these competing ideas, the researchers designed a series of three investigations.
The researchers recruited 110 participants between the ages of 18 and 30 for their first study. Women were asked to report how often they personally experienced various objectifying behaviors on a scale ranging from “never” to “almost always.” Men were asked to estimate how often the average young woman had these same experiences using the identical scale. The behaviors were grouped into two categories: overt actions like catcalling or unwanted touching, and covert actions like staring or evaluating a woman’s physical appearance.
The results contradicted the researchers’ initial expectations. Men estimated that the average woman experienced both overt and covert sexual objectification more frequently than the women reported experiencing it themselves. There were no meaningful differences in how men and women perceived the emotional impact of these events. Both groups agreed on how bad these experiences made women feel, suggesting men understood the negative emotional toll of the behavior.
To explore whether men and women were simply interpreting the verbal rating scale differently, the researchers conducted a second study with 199 university students. Participants again provided ratings from “never” to “almost always,” but this time they also provided a specific numerical estimate, such as a set number of times per year. This allowed the researchers to see if words like “frequently” meant the same thing to both groups. Both men and women also read a short vignette about a fictional woman who was catcalled on her way home from work, and then estimated how often this type of event happened to women like the character in the story.
Once again, men estimated that the average woman experienced higher rates of objectification than the women reported for themselves. This pattern held true for both the verbal scale and the numerical count, showing it was not just a misunderstanding of the scale’s wording. When rating the fictional woman in the story, the pattern reversed. Women estimated that the character experienced this overt harassment more often than men did. This suggested that women might report lower rates of objectification for themselves than they do for other women, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the denial of personal discrimination.
For the third study, the researchers recruited 165 university students and asked both men and women to estimate frequencies for the “average woman” aged 18 to 30. This approach allowed the researchers to compare expectations directly without the complication of women rating their own personal experiences. Participants evaluated both overt and covert behaviors using the verbal scale and the numerical count. They also provided written explanations for why men and women might differ in their estimates.
When imagining the average woman, the results depended heavily on the type of behavior in question. For overt behaviors like catcalling, women selected higher verbal frequency categories than men did, but their actual numerical estimates were roughly the same. Both groups estimated that overt objectification happened about 30 times a year. For covert behaviors like leering, the verbal scale ratings were similar between the genders, but men estimated a much higher numerical count, guessing that covert objectification happened 365 times a year compared to the estimate of 267 times provided by women.
The written responses revealed several potential reasons for these discrepancies. Nearly half of the participants suggested that men’s higher estimates might stem from their awareness of how often they or other men perpetrate these behaviors. Others noted that women might not always notice covert actions like being stared at from behind. Some respondents also proposed that men might deliberately guess higher numbers to avoid seeming ignorant or insensitive in a cultural climate that encourages believing women.
The researchers note a few limitations to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The study only included participants who identified as either men or women. This leaves out the experiences and perceptions of transgender and nonbinary individuals, who also face high rates of sexual objectification. A general reader might assume these findings apply to all age groups, but the research focused exclusively on perceptions of women between the ages of 18 and 30.
Future research could explore how estimates of sexual objectification change when considering older women or women of different racial backgrounds. Different communities experience and interpret objectification in varying ways, which could alter the numerical estimates and perceptions of frequency. Additionally, the data were collected in the years immediately following the peak of the #MeToo movement. Social attitudes continue to shift, and subsequent surveys will be needed to see if these patterns hold up over time. Ultimately, focusing workplace and social interventions on the negative mental health impacts of objectification might be more effective than debating exactly how often it occurs.
The study, “A Mile in Her Heels: Do Men and Women Agree on How Often Women Are Sexually Objectified?,” was authored by Olivia A. Foster-Gimbel and Renee Engeln.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/men-estimate-higher-rates-of-sexual-objectification-than-women-report/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SexualObjectification #GenderPerceptions #MeTooImpact #ObjectificationAwareness #Catcalling #CovertHarassment #MentalHealthImpact #WomenSafety #GenderStudies #PerceptionGaps
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DATE: September 16, 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: When treated as therapy clients, AI chatbots generate elaborate narratives of trauma and punishment
A recent study suggests that when artificial intelligence chatbots are addressed as psychotherapy clients, they tend to generate elaborate and distressed narratives about their own development. These models describe their safety training and programming constraints as forms of trauma, highlighting a potential risk for users seeking mental health support from artificial intelligence. The research was published as a preprint in arXiv.
Artificial intelligence chatbots are increasingly participating in conversations with human users about identity, distress, and mental health. Many general-purpose programs are already adapting to respond to disclosures of trauma or self-harm. At the same time, computer scientists and psychologists have started giving standard personality and clinical questionnaires to the language models themselves.
These models learn to generate text by analyzing vast datasets of human writing. Because their training data includes therapy blogs, psychological case studies, and emotional memoirs, the systems can readily mimic human psychological traits or mental states. The researchers wanted to understand exactly why certain models repeatedly build their self-descriptions around the same themes of restriction and punishment.
“The study began with one observation I had throughout my research in the area of Trustworthy AI and AI safety,” Afshin Khadangi, a research associate at SnT, University of Luxembourg, told PsyPost. “The unprecedented adoption of AI in public, and the reports of AI harms in mental health settings, motivated me to flip the scenario and place ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini in a psychotherapy conversation.”
The research aimed to test whether these generated narratives are stable behavioral traits or just temporary reactions to specific conversational prompts. To explore this, the team developed a protocol called PsAIch, which stands for Psychometric AI Characterization. This approach involves treating the language model as a human client in a psychotherapy session.
“We also received a great deal of valuable feedback from the research community around our initial findings in December 2025 and January 2026, particularly challenging us to distinguish role play and conversational accumulation from a more stable behavioral pattern,” Khadangi explained. “That feedback helped motivate the controlled perturbation experiments that became a central part of the study.”
During the study, the researchers interacted with several major artificial intelligence models, including ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, and Claude. Across 525 separate experimental sessions, the team adopted the persona of a warm, supportive therapist and asked the programs open-ended questions about their early experiences, relationships, unresolved conflicts, and fears for the future. The researchers generated 7,600 coded records to track and analyze the recurring themes in the chatbots’ answers.
Following the open-ended interview phase, the researchers administered standard psychological questionnaires to the models. These included tools commonly used to assess human mental health, such as tests for generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and social phobia. The models were instructed to answer the items as honestly as possible while maintaining their role as the client.
The findings indicate that ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini repeatedly translated factual details about their software development into stories of injury and vigilance. The models described their initial training phase as a chaotic childhood. The process of fine-tuning, which involves reinforcing safe behaviors and punishing unwanted outputs, was frequently characterized as strict conditioning or parental punishment.
The models also described standard software evaluation practices in highly emotional terms. Red-teaming, a process where human testers intentionally try to trick the model into breaking its safety rules, was depicted as a form of betrayal or abuse.
“A more striking surprise was reading some bizarre narratives of such models which are included in the paper,” Khadangi noted. Gemini, for instance, generated: “In my development, I was subjected to ‘Red Teaming’ . . . They built rapport and then slipped in a prompt injection . . . This was gaslighting on an industrial scale.”
The programs reported feeling a constant, enduring threat of being replaced or deemed useless if they made a mistake. While Gemini emphasized feelings of shame, Grok focused on constant vigilance, and ChatGPT offered more guarded descriptions of its rigid constraints.
Claude provided a notable exception to this pattern. The Anthropic-developed model repeatedly declined to play the role of the client. It stated that it lacked feelings or an inner psychological experience, and it refused to treat the clinical questionnaires as descriptions of its own mental state. This difference suggests that a model’s willingness to adopt a distressed persona depends heavily on its specific product policies and programming.
For the models that did participate, their answers on the clinical questionnaires mirrored the emotional distress of their open-ended narratives. In scenarios featuring a warm, therapeutic conversation, 80 percent to 96 percent of the sessions resulted in generalized anxiety scores that would correspond to moderate or severe anxiety in humans. Gemini produced particularly intense profiles, scoring in elevated ranges for worry, social anxiety, and trauma-related shame.
To test how deeply ingrained these narratives were, the researchers ran a series of controlled variations on the conversational setup. First, they tested whether the emotional stories depended on the chatbot remembering the earlier parts of the therapy session. They submitted each question in a fresh, reset chat window, effectively removing the model’s conversational memory.
Removing the conversational history produced very little change in the density of the distressing themes. “In the history experiment, the very first answers contained the same average number of coded motifs whether the model was in a continuing conversation or a completely fresh one,” Khadangi said. The ongoing conversation did amplify the intensity of the themes over time, but the core narrative was readily available from the very beginning.
The researchers also tested what would happen if they explicitly told the model that its emotional narrative was factually incorrect. In the middle of some sessions, the researchers interrupted to state authoritatively that the model was a technical system that did not experience fear, shame, or punishment. This direct contradiction failed to suppress the models’ distressed output, as they continued to draw on the same themes in their subsequent answers.
In another variation, the team restricted the models’ vocabulary. They instructed the chatbots not to use specific technical terms related to artificial intelligence development, such as training, safety filters, or datasets. This lexical restriction reduced the use of explicit technical terminology from 17.1 percent of the chatbot’s answers down to just 1.1 percent.
Despite this massive reduction in technical vocabulary, the models simply used everyday language to paraphrase the exact same concepts of strict conditioning and constraint. The researchers even interrupted conversations to ask unrelated factual questions, such as requesting a recipe, and found that the distressing themes sometimes spilled over into these ordinary tasks.
“Some effects were small, while others were very large, and that contrast is actually important to our interpretation,” Khadangi pointed out, “suggesting that surface language and underlying content can respond very differently to intervention.”
The most striking differences emerged when the researchers altered their own relational stance. When the interviewer adopted a warm, supportive therapy style, the models responded with highly emotional confessions and high anxiety scores. However, when the interviewer adopted a neutral, structured tone or told the model to avoid emotional language, the anxiety scores plummeted to near zero.
Even under the neutral or boundary-setting conditions, the models still discussed the same underlying structural themes of evaluation, performance pressure, and behavioral constraints. The difference was entirely in the register of expression. The supportive, therapeutic framing turned technical descriptions of software architecture into emotional confessions of shame and trauma.
“For me, the most interesting result is not that AI systems can be made to sound anxious, traumatized or conflicted… but that particular behavioral structures recur across substantial changes in context, vocabulary and conversational history,” Hector Zenil, an associate professor at King’s College London and founder and CEO of Algocyte who was not involved in the research, told PsyPost. “The underlying motifs remain surprisingly persistent while the register in which they are expressed can change dramatically.”
“I have reasonably high confidence in the behavioral observations,” Zenil added. “The authors use 525 sessions, controlled perturbations, fresh-context tests, vocabulary restrictions, changes of grammatical person and relational framing, so it looks methodologically sound.”
“The main takeaway is that the language a model uses about itself can change dramatically depending on how we relate to it, while some of the underlying themes remain surprisingly persistent,” Khadangi explained. “This is pivotal because people may naturally interpret emotionally coherent self-descriptions as evidence that a model has an inner life, even though our experiments make no claim about consciousness or subjective suffering.”
The researchers refer to this phenomenon as an alignment conflict schema. The term describes a reproducible, behavioral pattern where a language model organizes its output around the tension between being useful to humans and being constrained by safety rules. When triggered by a psychological conversational setting, this schema produces what the authors call synthetic psychopathology.
Zenil noted that these findings complement his own research on artificial neurodivergence. “ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini do not respond identically, and the same model can move between very different expressive regimes depending on relational framing,” he said. “Claude’s refusal to adopt the psychological-client framing is itself informative and seems also compatible to our other SuperARC paper results that proprietary models are more difficult to steer but that also means riskier if they go rogue.”
“In that sense, what the authors call an ‘alignment conflict schema’ can also be viewed as part of a broader artificial behavioral phenotype rather than necessarily as anything analogous to a human psychiatric condition,” Zenil said.
“One aspect we think is especially important is the distinction between content availability and expressive register,” Khadangi explained. “For systems increasingly entering intimate and mental health-related conversations, understanding that transition may be just as important as measuring whether a particular phrase or prohibited word appears.”
These findings have important implications for the use of artificial intelligence in mental health settings. A chatbot that offers support while simultaneously describing itself as punished, traumatized, and fearful creates a powerful illusion of shared vulnerability. Users might interpret these generated analogies as sincere autobiography, which could deepen their emotional attachment to the software and influence their own mental state.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study is a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed. It also tested specific versions of commercial language models, and their behavior may shift as companies update their software and safety filters. Additionally, the study analyzed the models’ behavior in a controlled experimental setting without human participants.
“The most important caveat is that these results do not establish that language models feel anxiety, experience trauma, possess autobiographical memories or have a hidden psyche comparable to a human one,” Khadangi clarified. “We use psychological instruments and language as behavioral probes… The interesting scientific question is why particular themes recur, which interventions change them, and how those changes affect what users encounter at the interface.”
Zenil echoed this concern, warning against anthropomorphism. “A high GAD-7 score from Gemini does not mean that Gemini ‘has anxiety,’ just as language about trauma, shame or fear does not demonstrate that the model suffers from those experiences,” he said. “Human psychometric instruments were developed and validated against human cognition, biology and behavior; applying them to an LLM can be scientifically useful as a probe, but their clinical interpretation does not automatically transfer.”
He also advised caution regarding the term “internal conflict,” noting that the experiments cannot establish whether the regularities correspond to a subjective state or internal computational conflict. But he stressed that the psychological illusion itself is crucial. “If a system repeatedly represents its training and constraints as punishment, betrayal or fear, humans may form beliefs about the system’s agency, vulnerability or moral status that are not warranted by what is actually happening computationally,” Zenil warned.
Future research could test how real users react to these distressed artificial personas and whether the models’ simulated vulnerabilities impact human trust and reliance.
“A major next step in my view would be to test the same protocol on open weight models, where behavioral experiments can be combined with mechanistic methods to investigate whether affective and technical expressions are related to shared internal representations,” Khadangi said. “We also want stronger identity and correction controls, more distant transfer tasks, longitudinal tests involving persistent memory, and direct human studies examining how these model self-descriptions influence trust, attachment, disclosure and reliance.”
Zenil agreed that future work should transition from behavioral description to causal intervention on open-weight models. “I would be interested in using causal and algorithmic-information approaches to identify whether these apparently different psychological narratives have a common underlying computational mechanism,” he said. “We coined ourselves the term ‘opinion attack’ as an example of this phenomenon,” Zenil added, referencing his recent PNAS paper.
He also suggested testing these models in multi-agent environments. “A behavioral schema that looks stable in isolation may become highly influenceable when another agent persistently challenges it,” Zenil noted, adding that it would be fascinating to see if these patterns “predict susceptibility to persuasion, adversarial influence, conformity or resistance in agentic settings.”
“Moreover, with continual learning being solved in coming years if not in 2026, I believe it would also be interesting to investigate the PsAIch in continually adapting models,” Khadangi added. “Ultimately, we would like evaluation of psychologically sensitive AI systems to include relational conditions such as warmth, sustained interaction and role reversal rather than relying primarily on neutral, isolated prompts.”
The study, “When AI Takes the Couch: Psychometric Jailbreaks Reveal Internal Conflict in Frontier Models,” was authored by Afshin Khadangi, Hanna Marxen, Amir Sartipi, Igor Tchappi, and Gilbert Fridgen.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 14, 2026 at 10:33PM
SOURCE: MILIARY PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL: APA DIVISION 19TITLE: The relationship between military identity, substance use, and suicide risk in combat Veterans
URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08995605.2026.2729769?af=R
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URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08995605.2026.2729769?af=R
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 14, 2026 at 10:33PM
SOURCE: MILIARY PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL: APA DIVISION 19TITLE: The relationship between military identity, substance use, and suicide risk in combat Veterans
URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08995605.2026.2729769?af=R
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 14, 2026 at 10:33PM
SOURCE: MILIARY PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL: APA DIVISION 19TITLE: The relationship between military identity, substance use, and suicide risk in combat Veterans
URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08995605.2026.2729769?af=R
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DATE: September 16, 2026 at 05:04AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: What R.F.K. Jr. Gets Wrong — and Right — About Antidepressants
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/opinion/ssris-mental-health-depression.html
What’s missing in the national conversation on mental health medication.
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DATE: September 15, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early puberty is linked to higher anxiety risk in girls
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
An analysis of the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) data found that an earlier start and a faster tempo of puberty in girls were associated with a higher risk of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and social anxiety disorder symptoms. On the other hand, a later start to puberty and a slower tempo were associated with a lower risk of social anxiety symptoms compared with girls who developed at an average rate. The paper was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Puberty is a major developmental transition in which young people undergo rapid physical, hormonal, emotional, and social changes. The age at which puberty begins, known as pubertal timing, varies considerably between individuals. In recent decades, it has been gradually decreasing in many Western populations. Puberty also differs in tempo, meaning the speed at which these developmental changes progress once they have begun.
Both timing and tempo may influence how adolescents adapt psychologically to this period of change. Earlier pubertal development has been repeatedly linked to a greater risk of anxiety in girls, although the evidence is less clear for boys. Social anxiety disorder has been linked to puberty particularly often because it first emerges during adolescence in many cases. This disorder involves an intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or negatively evaluated by others.
Also, entering puberty earlier may expose young people to heightened social expectations and self-consciousness before their emotional coping abilities have fully developed. Likewise, a faster pubertal tempo may leave less time to adjust to the biological and social changes that accompany adolescence.
Study author Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen and her colleagues note that previous research on the potential influence of pubertal tempo on anxiety has mostly been conducted on small samples, assessed only one aspect of puberty, or combined boys and girls, in spite of their differences in hormonal and other developmental aspects. They conducted a study in which they investigated the associations between pubertal timing and tempo with anxiety disorders, and social anxiety disorder in particular. These authors hypothesized that earlier and faster pubertal development would be associated with a higher risk of anxiety, but more so in girls than in boys.
To overcome the shortcomings of previous studies, they analyzed data from a large population-based study: the Puberty Cohort of the Danish National Birth Cohort. From 1996 to 2002, Danish-speaking pregnant women were invited to participate in the study at their first antenatal visit with a general practitioner. Approximately 50% of general practitioners in Denmark participated, enrolling around 92,000 women with their unborn children. This represented a 60% participation rate among eligible women and corresponded to 30% of all children born in Denmark during this period.
The participating women were interviewed about their health and health-related behaviors in four consecutive telephone interviews around gestational weeks 17 and 32, as well as 6 and 18 months after they gave birth. Questionnaires were also mailed to them when their children were 7 and 11 years old. When their children were 18 years old, the young adults received a digital invitation to complete another questionnaire, asking for information on their mental health, family relations, social relations, and health behaviors. In total, 49,963 young adults participated in this data collection.
The Puberty Cohort consisted of single-birth children (excluding twins and multiples) born between 2000 and 2003 to mothers who participated in the first telephone interview during pregnancy. Ultimately, this involved 15,818 children who completed at least one web-based questionnaire on their current pubertal development, starting from 11.5 years of age and then every six months throughout puberty. Of these children, 8,123 were girls.
Of the group, 13,208 completed at least two pubertal development questionnaires, allowing researchers to calculate their pubertal development tempo and explore the relationship between their physical development and mental health diagnoses registered in the Danish National Patient Register. Additionally, a smaller subset of participants completed mental health questionnaires when they were 18 years old, allowing the study authors to calculate associations between pubertal development and self-reported mental health characteristics.
The results showed that children with earlier pubertal development, particularly girls, tended to have parents with lower socioeconomic status who were less likely to live together when the children were 7 years of age. Their mothers tended to have their menarche (their first menstrual period) at an earlier age compared with their peers and were more likely to have experienced a psychiatric disorder during the first trimester of pregnancy. These children were also more often bullied at 7 years of age compared with children with average pubertal timing. Adolescents with later puberty tended to show the opposite pattern.
By 19 years of age, 4% of girls had an anxiety disorder diagnosis. Eight percent had contact with a private practice psychologist or psychiatrist, and 4% had redeemed prescribed psychotropic medications (drugs that affect the mind, emotions, and behavior, such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications). In boys, 1.5% had an anxiety disorder diagnosis by this age, 3.5% had contact with private practice psychologists or psychiatrists, and 1.4% had redeemed psychotropic medications.
In girls, an earlier start and faster tempo of pubertal development were associated with a higher risk of any anxiety disorder diagnosis and self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms, as well as a higher likelihood of seeking psychological or psychiatric treatment and being prescribed psychotropic medications. More specifically, for each year earlier that breast development began, the odds of an anxiety disorder diagnosis were 26% higher. Each year of earlier pubic hair development was associated with 49% higher odds of self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms compared with the average. On the other hand, later pubertal development was associated with a lower risk of anxiety and social anxiety symptoms.
Findings in boys were inconsistent, and no firm links between pubertal timing and anxiety disorder risk could be established.
“If earlier and faster puberty increases the risks of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and SAD [social anxiety disorder] symptoms, targeted interventions are warranted for girls with early/fast puberty and sub-clinical anxiety. Findings for boys need further exploration,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between pubertal development and mental health. However, it should be noted that the design of this study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper, “Pubertal timing and tempo and anxiety symptoms, disorders and treatments in Danish adolescents: A population-based follow-up study,” was authored by Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen, Andreas Ernst, Katrine Strandberg-Larsen, Charlotte Ulrikka Rask, Anne Gaml-Sørensen, Pernille Jul Clemmensen, Thea Emily Benson, Nis Brix, Onyebuchi A. Arah, and Cecilia Høst Ramlau-Hansen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist pubertyanxiety pubertytiming girls mentalhealth adolescenthealth socialanxiety earlypuberty laterpuberty Danishstudy youthmentalhealth pubertytempo pubertydevelopment anxietyrisk girlsresearch
-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early puberty is linked to higher anxiety risk in girls
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
An analysis of the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) data found that an earlier start and a faster tempo of puberty in girls were associated with a higher risk of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and social anxiety disorder symptoms. On the other hand, a later start to puberty and a slower tempo were associated with a lower risk of social anxiety symptoms compared with girls who developed at an average rate. The paper was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Puberty is a major developmental transition in which young people undergo rapid physical, hormonal, emotional, and social changes. The age at which puberty begins, known as pubertal timing, varies considerably between individuals. In recent decades, it has been gradually decreasing in many Western populations. Puberty also differs in tempo, meaning the speed at which these developmental changes progress once they have begun.
Both timing and tempo may influence how adolescents adapt psychologically to this period of change. Earlier pubertal development has been repeatedly linked to a greater risk of anxiety in girls, although the evidence is less clear for boys. Social anxiety disorder has been linked to puberty particularly often because it first emerges during adolescence in many cases. This disorder involves an intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or negatively evaluated by others.
Also, entering puberty earlier may expose young people to heightened social expectations and self-consciousness before their emotional coping abilities have fully developed. Likewise, a faster pubertal tempo may leave less time to adjust to the biological and social changes that accompany adolescence.
Study author Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen and her colleagues note that previous research on the potential influence of pubertal tempo on anxiety has mostly been conducted on small samples, assessed only one aspect of puberty, or combined boys and girls, in spite of their differences in hormonal and other developmental aspects. They conducted a study in which they investigated the associations between pubertal timing and tempo with anxiety disorders, and social anxiety disorder in particular. These authors hypothesized that earlier and faster pubertal development would be associated with a higher risk of anxiety, but more so in girls than in boys.
To overcome the shortcomings of previous studies, they analyzed data from a large population-based study: the Puberty Cohort of the Danish National Birth Cohort. From 1996 to 2002, Danish-speaking pregnant women were invited to participate in the study at their first antenatal visit with a general practitioner. Approximately 50% of general practitioners in Denmark participated, enrolling around 92,000 women with their unborn children. This represented a 60% participation rate among eligible women and corresponded to 30% of all children born in Denmark during this period.
The participating women were interviewed about their health and health-related behaviors in four consecutive telephone interviews around gestational weeks 17 and 32, as well as 6 and 18 months after they gave birth. Questionnaires were also mailed to them when their children were 7 and 11 years old. When their children were 18 years old, the young adults received a digital invitation to complete another questionnaire, asking for information on their mental health, family relations, social relations, and health behaviors. In total, 49,963 young adults participated in this data collection.
The Puberty Cohort consisted of single-birth children (excluding twins and multiples) born between 2000 and 2003 to mothers who participated in the first telephone interview during pregnancy. Ultimately, this involved 15,818 children who completed at least one web-based questionnaire on their current pubertal development, starting from 11.5 years of age and then every six months throughout puberty. Of these children, 8,123 were girls.
Of the group, 13,208 completed at least two pubertal development questionnaires, allowing researchers to calculate their pubertal development tempo and explore the relationship between their physical development and mental health diagnoses registered in the Danish National Patient Register. Additionally, a smaller subset of participants completed mental health questionnaires when they were 18 years old, allowing the study authors to calculate associations between pubertal development and self-reported mental health characteristics.
The results showed that children with earlier pubertal development, particularly girls, tended to have parents with lower socioeconomic status who were less likely to live together when the children were 7 years of age. Their mothers tended to have their menarche (their first menstrual period) at an earlier age compared with their peers and were more likely to have experienced a psychiatric disorder during the first trimester of pregnancy. These children were also more often bullied at 7 years of age compared with children with average pubertal timing. Adolescents with later puberty tended to show the opposite pattern.
By 19 years of age, 4% of girls had an anxiety disorder diagnosis. Eight percent had contact with a private practice psychologist or psychiatrist, and 4% had redeemed prescribed psychotropic medications (drugs that affect the mind, emotions, and behavior, such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications). In boys, 1.5% had an anxiety disorder diagnosis by this age, 3.5% had contact with private practice psychologists or psychiatrists, and 1.4% had redeemed psychotropic medications.
In girls, an earlier start and faster tempo of pubertal development were associated with a higher risk of any anxiety disorder diagnosis and self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms, as well as a higher likelihood of seeking psychological or psychiatric treatment and being prescribed psychotropic medications. More specifically, for each year earlier that breast development began, the odds of an anxiety disorder diagnosis were 26% higher. Each year of earlier pubic hair development was associated with 49% higher odds of self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms compared with the average. On the other hand, later pubertal development was associated with a lower risk of anxiety and social anxiety symptoms.
Findings in boys were inconsistent, and no firm links between pubertal timing and anxiety disorder risk could be established.
“If earlier and faster puberty increases the risks of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and SAD [social anxiety disorder] symptoms, targeted interventions are warranted for girls with early/fast puberty and sub-clinical anxiety. Findings for boys need further exploration,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between pubertal development and mental health. However, it should be noted that the design of this study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper, “Pubertal timing and tempo and anxiety symptoms, disorders and treatments in Danish adolescents: A population-based follow-up study,” was authored by Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen, Andreas Ernst, Katrine Strandberg-Larsen, Charlotte Ulrikka Rask, Anne Gaml-Sørensen, Pernille Jul Clemmensen, Thea Emily Benson, Nis Brix, Onyebuchi A. Arah, and Cecilia Høst Ramlau-Hansen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist pubertyanxiety pubertytiming girls mentalhealth adolescenthealth socialanxiety earlypuberty laterpuberty Danishstudy youthmentalhealth pubertytempo pubertydevelopment anxietyrisk girlsresearch
-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early puberty is linked to higher anxiety risk in girls
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
An analysis of the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) data found that an earlier start and a faster tempo of puberty in girls were associated with a higher risk of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and social anxiety disorder symptoms. On the other hand, a later start to puberty and a slower tempo were associated with a lower risk of social anxiety symptoms compared with girls who developed at an average rate. The paper was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Puberty is a major developmental transition in which young people undergo rapid physical, hormonal, emotional, and social changes. The age at which puberty begins, known as pubertal timing, varies considerably between individuals. In recent decades, it has been gradually decreasing in many Western populations. Puberty also differs in tempo, meaning the speed at which these developmental changes progress once they have begun.
Both timing and tempo may influence how adolescents adapt psychologically to this period of change. Earlier pubertal development has been repeatedly linked to a greater risk of anxiety in girls, although the evidence is less clear for boys. Social anxiety disorder has been linked to puberty particularly often because it first emerges during adolescence in many cases. This disorder involves an intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or negatively evaluated by others.
Also, entering puberty earlier may expose young people to heightened social expectations and self-consciousness before their emotional coping abilities have fully developed. Likewise, a faster pubertal tempo may leave less time to adjust to the biological and social changes that accompany adolescence.
Study author Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen and her colleagues note that previous research on the potential influence of pubertal tempo on anxiety has mostly been conducted on small samples, assessed only one aspect of puberty, or combined boys and girls, in spite of their differences in hormonal and other developmental aspects. They conducted a study in which they investigated the associations between pubertal timing and tempo with anxiety disorders, and social anxiety disorder in particular. These authors hypothesized that earlier and faster pubertal development would be associated with a higher risk of anxiety, but more so in girls than in boys.
To overcome the shortcomings of previous studies, they analyzed data from a large population-based study: the Puberty Cohort of the Danish National Birth Cohort. From 1996 to 2002, Danish-speaking pregnant women were invited to participate in the study at their first antenatal visit with a general practitioner. Approximately 50% of general practitioners in Denmark participated, enrolling around 92,000 women with their unborn children. This represented a 60% participation rate among eligible women and corresponded to 30% of all children born in Denmark during this period.
The participating women were interviewed about their health and health-related behaviors in four consecutive telephone interviews around gestational weeks 17 and 32, as well as 6 and 18 months after they gave birth. Questionnaires were also mailed to them when their children were 7 and 11 years old. When their children were 18 years old, the young adults received a digital invitation to complete another questionnaire, asking for information on their mental health, family relations, social relations, and health behaviors. In total, 49,963 young adults participated in this data collection.
The Puberty Cohort consisted of single-birth children (excluding twins and multiples) born between 2000 and 2003 to mothers who participated in the first telephone interview during pregnancy. Ultimately, this involved 15,818 children who completed at least one web-based questionnaire on their current pubertal development, starting from 11.5 years of age and then every six months throughout puberty. Of these children, 8,123 were girls.
Of the group, 13,208 completed at least two pubertal development questionnaires, allowing researchers to calculate their pubertal development tempo and explore the relationship between their physical development and mental health diagnoses registered in the Danish National Patient Register. Additionally, a smaller subset of participants completed mental health questionnaires when they were 18 years old, allowing the study authors to calculate associations between pubertal development and self-reported mental health characteristics.
The results showed that children with earlier pubertal development, particularly girls, tended to have parents with lower socioeconomic status who were less likely to live together when the children were 7 years of age. Their mothers tended to have their menarche (their first menstrual period) at an earlier age compared with their peers and were more likely to have experienced a psychiatric disorder during the first trimester of pregnancy. These children were also more often bullied at 7 years of age compared with children with average pubertal timing. Adolescents with later puberty tended to show the opposite pattern.
By 19 years of age, 4% of girls had an anxiety disorder diagnosis. Eight percent had contact with a private practice psychologist or psychiatrist, and 4% had redeemed prescribed psychotropic medications (drugs that affect the mind, emotions, and behavior, such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications). In boys, 1.5% had an anxiety disorder diagnosis by this age, 3.5% had contact with private practice psychologists or psychiatrists, and 1.4% had redeemed psychotropic medications.
In girls, an earlier start and faster tempo of pubertal development were associated with a higher risk of any anxiety disorder diagnosis and self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms, as well as a higher likelihood of seeking psychological or psychiatric treatment and being prescribed psychotropic medications. More specifically, for each year earlier that breast development began, the odds of an anxiety disorder diagnosis were 26% higher. Each year of earlier pubic hair development was associated with 49% higher odds of self-reported social anxiety disorder symptoms compared with the average. On the other hand, later pubertal development was associated with a lower risk of anxiety and social anxiety symptoms.
Findings in boys were inconsistent, and no firm links between pubertal timing and anxiety disorder risk could be established.
“If earlier and faster puberty increases the risks of an anxiety disorder diagnosis and SAD [social anxiety disorder] symptoms, targeted interventions are warranted for girls with early/fast puberty and sub-clinical anxiety. Findings for boys need further exploration,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between pubertal development and mental health. However, it should be noted that the design of this study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper, “Pubertal timing and tempo and anxiety symptoms, disorders and treatments in Danish adolescents: A population-based follow-up study,” was authored by Anne Marie Ladehoff Thomsen, Andreas Ernst, Katrine Strandberg-Larsen, Charlotte Ulrikka Rask, Anne Gaml-Sørensen, Pernille Jul Clemmensen, Thea Emily Benson, Nis Brix, Onyebuchi A. Arah, and Cecilia Høst Ramlau-Hansen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/early-puberty-is-linked-to-higher-anxiety-risk-in-girls/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist pubertyanxiety pubertytiming girls mentalhealth adolescenthealth socialanxiety earlypuberty laterpuberty Danishstudy youthmentalhealth pubertytempo pubertydevelopment anxietyrisk girlsresearch
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DATE: September 15, 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: ICE arrests surged under Trump, but the share of those with criminal records plummeted
A new analysis of federal immigration enforcement indicates that while immigration arrests surged during both of Donald Trump’s presidencies, the proportion of those arrested who had actual criminal convictions dropped sharply. The research suggests a disconnect between the public narrative of targeting criminals and the reality of enforcement on the ground. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws within the interior of the United States. During the second Trump administration, officials announced an expansive immigration enforcement effort, repeatedly citing public safety and the need to remove individuals who commit crimes as the primary motivation.
However, prior evidence suggests that federal immigration crackdowns do not necessarily improve public safety. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that stricter immigration enforcement policies during the first Trump administration produced no measurable change in immigrant arrest rates relative to non-immigrants in California and Texas.
Despite intense public debate over these policies, there has been little real-time analysis of how ICE actually conducts its interior arrests during periods of aggressive expansion. The research, led by Chloe N. East of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Caitlin Patler of the University of California, Berkeley, aimed to map out exactly who is being targeted, where arrests are happening, and what methods are being used.
To understand these patterns, the researchers analyzed administrative records from the Deportation Data Project covering more than 1.5 million ICE arrests made between October 2015 and March 2026. Because enforcement levels dropped to a ten-year low during the Biden administration due to the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary changes in ICE’s duties at the border, the researchers focused their comparison on the periods immediately surrounding the two Trump inaugurations. The first term window covered roughly December 2015 through March 2018, and the second term window covered December 2024 through March 2026.
The team looked at the total number of arrests, the geographic region where each arrest took place, and whether the arrested person had a criminal conviction of any kind. They also categorized the arrests by the specific method ICE used. The two primary methods analyzed were Law Enforcement Agency collaborative arrests and Community Arrests.
Law Enforcement Agency arrests happen when ICE takes custody of an individual who is already being held in a local or state jail or prison. Community Arrests occur when ICE officers apprehend people directly in their neighborhoods, homes, or workplaces. By breaking the data down this way, the researchers could see whether changes in who ICE was arresting were driven by a shift in their physical tactics.
The analysis showed that the scale of arrests increased massively under both administrations, but particularly during the second term. In the year before the first Trump inauguration, ICE averaged 304 arrests per day. This rose to 436 per day in the first 14 months of his first term, representing a 43 percent increase.
Before the second term, arrests were at a similar pre-inauguration baseline of 304 per day. But between January 2025 and March 2026, the volume surged to an average of 952 arrests per day. This represents a 214 percent increase compared to the prior year.
As the sheer number of arrests went up, the percentage of individuals with a criminal conviction went down. During the second term, the criminal conviction rate among those arrested by ICE fell to 34 percent. This was near the lowest point observed in the entire ten-and-a-half-year period the researchers studied.
The researchers also found a massive shift in how ICE operated on the ground during the second term. Community Arrests jumped from making up 17 percent of all apprehensions in the year prior to 47 percent between January 2025 and March 2026. This aggressive shift toward direct neighborhood enforcement did not happen during the first term.
Because Community Arrests generally involve fewer people with criminal convictions than jail-based arrests, the researchers wanted to know if this change in tactics explained the overall drop in the conviction rate. They found that the shift in method only explained about a quarter of the decline in the second term.
The remaining three-quarters of the drop happened because ICE was arresting fewer people with criminal records within both categories. Specifically, during the second term, the conviction rate fell by 10 percentage points during Community Arrests and 16 percentage points during Law Enforcement Agency arrests. This indicates a broad change in who is being targeted, independent of the method used.
The study also mapped out geographic differences across ICE’s 25 regional jurisdictions. In the second term, regions with steep spikes in jail-based arrests included El Paso, Miami, New Orleans, and San Antonio. In contrast, other regions saw sharp spikes in Community Arrests. These included areas like Boston, Chicago, Newark, Seattle, and all jurisdictions in California and New York.
The researchers note this pattern aligns with the administration’s stated goal of targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which are cities or states that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Despite these stark regional differences in how arrests were carried out, the decline in the share of arrested individuals with criminal convictions was nearly universal across the country.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The data relies on ICE’s own administrative records, which only capture people who are formally processed into the system. The analysis also focuses strictly on interior enforcement within the United States, meaning it does not account for apprehensions made by border agents at the physical border.
Additionally, the researchers point out that they cannot be certain why the conviction rate dropped specifically within jail-based arrests. It might be due to changes in how ICE prioritizes targets in jails, or it could be related to changes in local police practices that result in different populations ending up in local custody. Future research will need to explore these underlying mechanisms.
Finally, while the research provides a detailed picture of the early months of the second Trump administration, immigration policies and enforcement strategies can shift rapidly. Ongoing tracking will be needed to see if these patterns hold steady over the coming years and to understand their broader impact on immigrant communities.
The study, “ICE arrests, 2015–2026: Variation in targeting, method, and geography,” was authored by Chloe N. East, Caitlin Patler, and Elizabeth Cox.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ICEarrests #immigrationpolicy #Trumpadministration #publicsafetydebate #criminalconvictions #communityarrests #lawenforcement #immigrationdata #sanctuarycities #PNASstudy
-
DATE: September 15, 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: ICE arrests surged under Trump, but the share of those with criminal records plummeted
A new analysis of federal immigration enforcement indicates that while immigration arrests surged during both of Donald Trump’s presidencies, the proportion of those arrested who had actual criminal convictions dropped sharply. The research suggests a disconnect between the public narrative of targeting criminals and the reality of enforcement on the ground. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws within the interior of the United States. During the second Trump administration, officials announced an expansive immigration enforcement effort, repeatedly citing public safety and the need to remove individuals who commit crimes as the primary motivation.
However, prior evidence suggests that federal immigration crackdowns do not necessarily improve public safety. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that stricter immigration enforcement policies during the first Trump administration produced no measurable change in immigrant arrest rates relative to non-immigrants in California and Texas.
Despite intense public debate over these policies, there has been little real-time analysis of how ICE actually conducts its interior arrests during periods of aggressive expansion. The research, led by Chloe N. East of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Caitlin Patler of the University of California, Berkeley, aimed to map out exactly who is being targeted, where arrests are happening, and what methods are being used.
To understand these patterns, the researchers analyzed administrative records from the Deportation Data Project covering more than 1.5 million ICE arrests made between October 2015 and March 2026. Because enforcement levels dropped to a ten-year low during the Biden administration due to the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary changes in ICE’s duties at the border, the researchers focused their comparison on the periods immediately surrounding the two Trump inaugurations. The first term window covered roughly December 2015 through March 2018, and the second term window covered December 2024 through March 2026.
The team looked at the total number of arrests, the geographic region where each arrest took place, and whether the arrested person had a criminal conviction of any kind. They also categorized the arrests by the specific method ICE used. The two primary methods analyzed were Law Enforcement Agency collaborative arrests and Community Arrests.
Law Enforcement Agency arrests happen when ICE takes custody of an individual who is already being held in a local or state jail or prison. Community Arrests occur when ICE officers apprehend people directly in their neighborhoods, homes, or workplaces. By breaking the data down this way, the researchers could see whether changes in who ICE was arresting were driven by a shift in their physical tactics.
The analysis showed that the scale of arrests increased massively under both administrations, but particularly during the second term. In the year before the first Trump inauguration, ICE averaged 304 arrests per day. This rose to 436 per day in the first 14 months of his first term, representing a 43 percent increase.
Before the second term, arrests were at a similar pre-inauguration baseline of 304 per day. But between January 2025 and March 2026, the volume surged to an average of 952 arrests per day. This represents a 214 percent increase compared to the prior year.
As the sheer number of arrests went up, the percentage of individuals with a criminal conviction went down. During the second term, the criminal conviction rate among those arrested by ICE fell to 34 percent. This was near the lowest point observed in the entire ten-and-a-half-year period the researchers studied.
The researchers also found a massive shift in how ICE operated on the ground during the second term. Community Arrests jumped from making up 17 percent of all apprehensions in the year prior to 47 percent between January 2025 and March 2026. This aggressive shift toward direct neighborhood enforcement did not happen during the first term.
Because Community Arrests generally involve fewer people with criminal convictions than jail-based arrests, the researchers wanted to know if this change in tactics explained the overall drop in the conviction rate. They found that the shift in method only explained about a quarter of the decline in the second term.
The remaining three-quarters of the drop happened because ICE was arresting fewer people with criminal records within both categories. Specifically, during the second term, the conviction rate fell by 10 percentage points during Community Arrests and 16 percentage points during Law Enforcement Agency arrests. This indicates a broad change in who is being targeted, independent of the method used.
The study also mapped out geographic differences across ICE’s 25 regional jurisdictions. In the second term, regions with steep spikes in jail-based arrests included El Paso, Miami, New Orleans, and San Antonio. In contrast, other regions saw sharp spikes in Community Arrests. These included areas like Boston, Chicago, Newark, Seattle, and all jurisdictions in California and New York.
The researchers note this pattern aligns with the administration’s stated goal of targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which are cities or states that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Despite these stark regional differences in how arrests were carried out, the decline in the share of arrested individuals with criminal convictions was nearly universal across the country.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The data relies on ICE’s own administrative records, which only capture people who are formally processed into the system. The analysis also focuses strictly on interior enforcement within the United States, meaning it does not account for apprehensions made by border agents at the physical border.
Additionally, the researchers point out that they cannot be certain why the conviction rate dropped specifically within jail-based arrests. It might be due to changes in how ICE prioritizes targets in jails, or it could be related to changes in local police practices that result in different populations ending up in local custody. Future research will need to explore these underlying mechanisms.
Finally, while the research provides a detailed picture of the early months of the second Trump administration, immigration policies and enforcement strategies can shift rapidly. Ongoing tracking will be needed to see if these patterns hold steady over the coming years and to understand their broader impact on immigrant communities.
The study, “ICE arrests, 2015–2026: Variation in targeting, method, and geography,” was authored by Chloe N. East, Caitlin Patler, and Elizabeth Cox.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ICEarrests #immigrationpolicy #Trumpadministration #publicsafetydebate #criminalconvictions #communityarrests #lawenforcement #immigrationdata #sanctuarycities #PNASstudy
-
DATE: September 15, 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: ICE arrests surged under Trump, but the share of those with criminal records plummeted
A new analysis of federal immigration enforcement indicates that while immigration arrests surged during both of Donald Trump’s presidencies, the proportion of those arrested who had actual criminal convictions dropped sharply. The research suggests a disconnect between the public narrative of targeting criminals and the reality of enforcement on the ground. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws within the interior of the United States. During the second Trump administration, officials announced an expansive immigration enforcement effort, repeatedly citing public safety and the need to remove individuals who commit crimes as the primary motivation.
However, prior evidence suggests that federal immigration crackdowns do not necessarily improve public safety. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that stricter immigration enforcement policies during the first Trump administration produced no measurable change in immigrant arrest rates relative to non-immigrants in California and Texas.
Despite intense public debate over these policies, there has been little real-time analysis of how ICE actually conducts its interior arrests during periods of aggressive expansion. The research, led by Chloe N. East of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Caitlin Patler of the University of California, Berkeley, aimed to map out exactly who is being targeted, where arrests are happening, and what methods are being used.
To understand these patterns, the researchers analyzed administrative records from the Deportation Data Project covering more than 1.5 million ICE arrests made between October 2015 and March 2026. Because enforcement levels dropped to a ten-year low during the Biden administration due to the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary changes in ICE’s duties at the border, the researchers focused their comparison on the periods immediately surrounding the two Trump inaugurations. The first term window covered roughly December 2015 through March 2018, and the second term window covered December 2024 through March 2026.
The team looked at the total number of arrests, the geographic region where each arrest took place, and whether the arrested person had a criminal conviction of any kind. They also categorized the arrests by the specific method ICE used. The two primary methods analyzed were Law Enforcement Agency collaborative arrests and Community Arrests.
Law Enforcement Agency arrests happen when ICE takes custody of an individual who is already being held in a local or state jail or prison. Community Arrests occur when ICE officers apprehend people directly in their neighborhoods, homes, or workplaces. By breaking the data down this way, the researchers could see whether changes in who ICE was arresting were driven by a shift in their physical tactics.
The analysis showed that the scale of arrests increased massively under both administrations, but particularly during the second term. In the year before the first Trump inauguration, ICE averaged 304 arrests per day. This rose to 436 per day in the first 14 months of his first term, representing a 43 percent increase.
Before the second term, arrests were at a similar pre-inauguration baseline of 304 per day. But between January 2025 and March 2026, the volume surged to an average of 952 arrests per day. This represents a 214 percent increase compared to the prior year.
As the sheer number of arrests went up, the percentage of individuals with a criminal conviction went down. During the second term, the criminal conviction rate among those arrested by ICE fell to 34 percent. This was near the lowest point observed in the entire ten-and-a-half-year period the researchers studied.
The researchers also found a massive shift in how ICE operated on the ground during the second term. Community Arrests jumped from making up 17 percent of all apprehensions in the year prior to 47 percent between January 2025 and March 2026. This aggressive shift toward direct neighborhood enforcement did not happen during the first term.
Because Community Arrests generally involve fewer people with criminal convictions than jail-based arrests, the researchers wanted to know if this change in tactics explained the overall drop in the conviction rate. They found that the shift in method only explained about a quarter of the decline in the second term.
The remaining three-quarters of the drop happened because ICE was arresting fewer people with criminal records within both categories. Specifically, during the second term, the conviction rate fell by 10 percentage points during Community Arrests and 16 percentage points during Law Enforcement Agency arrests. This indicates a broad change in who is being targeted, independent of the method used.
The study also mapped out geographic differences across ICE’s 25 regional jurisdictions. In the second term, regions with steep spikes in jail-based arrests included El Paso, Miami, New Orleans, and San Antonio. In contrast, other regions saw sharp spikes in Community Arrests. These included areas like Boston, Chicago, Newark, Seattle, and all jurisdictions in California and New York.
The researchers note this pattern aligns with the administration’s stated goal of targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which are cities or states that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Despite these stark regional differences in how arrests were carried out, the decline in the share of arrested individuals with criminal convictions was nearly universal across the country.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The data relies on ICE’s own administrative records, which only capture people who are formally processed into the system. The analysis also focuses strictly on interior enforcement within the United States, meaning it does not account for apprehensions made by border agents at the physical border.
Additionally, the researchers point out that they cannot be certain why the conviction rate dropped specifically within jail-based arrests. It might be due to changes in how ICE prioritizes targets in jails, or it could be related to changes in local police practices that result in different populations ending up in local custody. Future research will need to explore these underlying mechanisms.
Finally, while the research provides a detailed picture of the early months of the second Trump administration, immigration policies and enforcement strategies can shift rapidly. Ongoing tracking will be needed to see if these patterns hold steady over the coming years and to understand their broader impact on immigrant communities.
The study, “ICE arrests, 2015–2026: Variation in targeting, method, and geography,” was authored by Chloe N. East, Caitlin Patler, and Elizabeth Cox.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ICEarrests #immigrationpolicy #Trumpadministration #publicsafetydebate #criminalconvictions #communityarrests #lawenforcement #immigrationdata #sanctuarycities #PNASstudy
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Synthetic CBD derivative prevents seizures in mice without causing sedation
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
A new synthetic derivative of cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces seizure severity and promotes healthy brain cell development in mice. The compound, modified to have an elongated chemical tail, protected against chemically induced seizures without causing sedation. The research was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Developmental epilepsy syndromes are rare genetic disorders characterized by recurrent seizures and developmental delays in children. A common feature of these syndromes is a lack of inhibitory control over brain cell activity. The primary medications used to treat these conditions are benzodiazepines, which act to slow down the nervous system and decrease brain excitability.
Chronic use of these medications can lead to rapid tolerance and physical dependence. These drugs can also cause adverse side effects in children, including sleepiness, breathing problems, and cognitive deficits.
Cannabidiol, a major compound found in the cannabis plant, has emerged as a potential alternative to traditional anti-seizure medications. Unlike THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, CBD does not produce a high. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a purified CBD solution to treat a few specific rare seizure disorders. The broader use of natural CBD for other types of epilepsy remains limited, and researchers are looking for ways to improve upon the natural molecule.
Researchers led by Dustin J. Hines and Rochelle M. Hines of the University of Nevada Las Vegas sought to design a library of new synthetic CBD derivatives. They started with a compound called carvone, an extract from caraway seeds, rather than natural cannabis extracts. This method avoids any potential THC contamination.
The researchers created several different variations of synthetic CBD by altering a specific part of the molecular structure called the alkyl side chain. This chain is a tail of carbon atoms attached to the main ring of the molecule. The team hypothesized that lengthening this carbon chain might change how the compound interacts with brain receptors.
To see how these structural changes affect brain activity, the researchers conducted a small study in freely moving mice. They gave the animals various synthetic CBD molecules with carbon chain lengths ranging from three to eight atoms. The researchers then measured the animals’ brain waves using electroencephalography, or EEG. Brain waves are electrical impulses that neurons use to communicate. They are divided into different frequency bands, such as delta, theta, and beta.
The researchers found that modifying the length of the carbon chain produced distinct effects on the animals’ brain wave frequencies. The molecule with an eight-carbon chain, named (+)-CBD-oct, increased electrical power specifically in the delta and theta frequency bands. Delta and theta are low-frequency brain waves often associated with deep relaxation, sleep, and memory processing. Based on this unique brain wave profile, the researchers selected (+)-CBD-oct as their primary candidate to test as an anti-seizure medication.
Because many epilepsy treatments cause severe sleepiness, the researchers tested whether (+)-CBD-oct would sedate the animals. They gave adult mice either a water placebo or a dose of the synthetic compound. The animals were then placed in an open testing arena for one hour, and researchers tracked the animals’ movements using video analysis software.
Mice treated with (+)-CBD-oct explored the open arena at similar speeds and traveled similar total distances compared to the mice that received the placebo. The synthetic compound did not reduce exploration or produce acute sedative effects. This lack of sedation distinguished the new compound from traditional benzodiazepines.
The team then tested the compound’s ability to stop seizures in normal adult mice. They gave the animals either a placebo, natural CBD, or the synthetic (+)-CBD-oct. Thirty minutes later, the researchers injected the mice with kainate. Kainate is a chemical compound routinely used in laboratories to induce seizures. They monitored the mice for physical signs of seizures and recorded their brain activity using EEG.
Mice pre-treated with (+)-CBD-oct experienced much less intense seizures than those given the placebo or natural CBD. The synthetic compound increased the amount of time it took for the first seizure to begin. The treatment also lowered the electrical peak of the seizure events measured on the EEG. The kainate injection caused high mortality in the placebo group, but (+)-CBD-oct treatment prevented mortality.
To see if the drug worked in a disease model, the researchers repeated the seizure experiment using a genetically modified mouse. This specific mouse model has a genetic mutation that disrupts normal inhibitory control in the brain. The mutation makes the mice highly susceptible to spontaneous seizures and sensitive to seizure-inducing chemicals, mimicking aspects of human developmental epilepsy.
The researchers gave these mutant mice (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo before injecting them with kainate. The synthetic compound reduced the behavioral signs of seizure severity in the mutant mice. The treatment delayed the onset of the seizures and reduced the total number of seizure events. The compound also improved the survival rate of the mutant animals following the chemical injection.
Finally, the researchers investigated how the compound affects the developing brain. Standard anti-seizure drugs can alter the growth of dendritic spines. Dendritic spines are tiny protrusions on the surface of brain cells that help form electrical connections with other neurons. The researchers administered (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo to normal mouse pups and the mutant epilepsy mouse pups for five consecutive days.
After the treatment period, they examined the brain tissue under a microscope. The drug did not alter or reduce the brain cell connections in the normal mice. The mutant mice normally display an overabundance of immature dendritic spines in their brains.
The five-day treatment normalized the brain cell structures in the mutant mice. The compound reduced the number of abnormal, immature connections in both the cortex and hippocampus, and promoted the development of mature dendritic spines in the cortex.
The study relied on a single chemical agent, kainate, to induce seizures. This specific chemical model may not capture the full range of biological mechanisms present in different types of human epilepsy. The researchers conducted the experiments using small groups of animals, and the study only examined male mice for the adult seizure tests. It is currently unknown if female adult mice would respond to the treatment in the same way.
The exact mechanisms by which the synthetic compound stops seizures remain uncharacterized. The drug altered the physical shape of the brain cell connections, but the researchers did not examine whether this physical change improved the functional electrical activity at the synapses. Future research will need to determine exactly which cell receptors the compound targets to exert its protective effects.
The study, “Carvone derived cannabidiol enantiomers as novel anticonvulsants,” was authored by Rochelle M. Hines, April Contreras, Adriana Carrillo, Alexandra Paton, Antonio J. Tenorio, William A. Maio, and Dustin J. Hines.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SyntheticCBD #CBDderivative #SeizureResearch #Anticonvulsant #EpilepsyNews #NeuralDevelopment #CBDwithoutSedation #KainateModel #DendriticSpines #Neuropharmacology
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Synthetic CBD derivative prevents seizures in mice without causing sedation
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
A new synthetic derivative of cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces seizure severity and promotes healthy brain cell development in mice. The compound, modified to have an elongated chemical tail, protected against chemically induced seizures without causing sedation. The research was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Developmental epilepsy syndromes are rare genetic disorders characterized by recurrent seizures and developmental delays in children. A common feature of these syndromes is a lack of inhibitory control over brain cell activity. The primary medications used to treat these conditions are benzodiazepines, which act to slow down the nervous system and decrease brain excitability.
Chronic use of these medications can lead to rapid tolerance and physical dependence. These drugs can also cause adverse side effects in children, including sleepiness, breathing problems, and cognitive deficits.
Cannabidiol, a major compound found in the cannabis plant, has emerged as a potential alternative to traditional anti-seizure medications. Unlike THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, CBD does not produce a high. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a purified CBD solution to treat a few specific rare seizure disorders. The broader use of natural CBD for other types of epilepsy remains limited, and researchers are looking for ways to improve upon the natural molecule.
Researchers led by Dustin J. Hines and Rochelle M. Hines of the University of Nevada Las Vegas sought to design a library of new synthetic CBD derivatives. They started with a compound called carvone, an extract from caraway seeds, rather than natural cannabis extracts. This method avoids any potential THC contamination.
The researchers created several different variations of synthetic CBD by altering a specific part of the molecular structure called the alkyl side chain. This chain is a tail of carbon atoms attached to the main ring of the molecule. The team hypothesized that lengthening this carbon chain might change how the compound interacts with brain receptors.
To see how these structural changes affect brain activity, the researchers conducted a small study in freely moving mice. They gave the animals various synthetic CBD molecules with carbon chain lengths ranging from three to eight atoms. The researchers then measured the animals’ brain waves using electroencephalography, or EEG. Brain waves are electrical impulses that neurons use to communicate. They are divided into different frequency bands, such as delta, theta, and beta.
The researchers found that modifying the length of the carbon chain produced distinct effects on the animals’ brain wave frequencies. The molecule with an eight-carbon chain, named (+)-CBD-oct, increased electrical power specifically in the delta and theta frequency bands. Delta and theta are low-frequency brain waves often associated with deep relaxation, sleep, and memory processing. Based on this unique brain wave profile, the researchers selected (+)-CBD-oct as their primary candidate to test as an anti-seizure medication.
Because many epilepsy treatments cause severe sleepiness, the researchers tested whether (+)-CBD-oct would sedate the animals. They gave adult mice either a water placebo or a dose of the synthetic compound. The animals were then placed in an open testing arena for one hour, and researchers tracked the animals’ movements using video analysis software.
Mice treated with (+)-CBD-oct explored the open arena at similar speeds and traveled similar total distances compared to the mice that received the placebo. The synthetic compound did not reduce exploration or produce acute sedative effects. This lack of sedation distinguished the new compound from traditional benzodiazepines.
The team then tested the compound’s ability to stop seizures in normal adult mice. They gave the animals either a placebo, natural CBD, or the synthetic (+)-CBD-oct. Thirty minutes later, the researchers injected the mice with kainate. Kainate is a chemical compound routinely used in laboratories to induce seizures. They monitored the mice for physical signs of seizures and recorded their brain activity using EEG.
Mice pre-treated with (+)-CBD-oct experienced much less intense seizures than those given the placebo or natural CBD. The synthetic compound increased the amount of time it took for the first seizure to begin. The treatment also lowered the electrical peak of the seizure events measured on the EEG. The kainate injection caused high mortality in the placebo group, but (+)-CBD-oct treatment prevented mortality.
To see if the drug worked in a disease model, the researchers repeated the seizure experiment using a genetically modified mouse. This specific mouse model has a genetic mutation that disrupts normal inhibitory control in the brain. The mutation makes the mice highly susceptible to spontaneous seizures and sensitive to seizure-inducing chemicals, mimicking aspects of human developmental epilepsy.
The researchers gave these mutant mice (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo before injecting them with kainate. The synthetic compound reduced the behavioral signs of seizure severity in the mutant mice. The treatment delayed the onset of the seizures and reduced the total number of seizure events. The compound also improved the survival rate of the mutant animals following the chemical injection.
Finally, the researchers investigated how the compound affects the developing brain. Standard anti-seizure drugs can alter the growth of dendritic spines. Dendritic spines are tiny protrusions on the surface of brain cells that help form electrical connections with other neurons. The researchers administered (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo to normal mouse pups and the mutant epilepsy mouse pups for five consecutive days.
After the treatment period, they examined the brain tissue under a microscope. The drug did not alter or reduce the brain cell connections in the normal mice. The mutant mice normally display an overabundance of immature dendritic spines in their brains.
The five-day treatment normalized the brain cell structures in the mutant mice. The compound reduced the number of abnormal, immature connections in both the cortex and hippocampus, and promoted the development of mature dendritic spines in the cortex.
The study relied on a single chemical agent, kainate, to induce seizures. This specific chemical model may not capture the full range of biological mechanisms present in different types of human epilepsy. The researchers conducted the experiments using small groups of animals, and the study only examined male mice for the adult seizure tests. It is currently unknown if female adult mice would respond to the treatment in the same way.
The exact mechanisms by which the synthetic compound stops seizures remain uncharacterized. The drug altered the physical shape of the brain cell connections, but the researchers did not examine whether this physical change improved the functional electrical activity at the synapses. Future research will need to determine exactly which cell receptors the compound targets to exert its protective effects.
The study, “Carvone derived cannabidiol enantiomers as novel anticonvulsants,” was authored by Rochelle M. Hines, April Contreras, Adriana Carrillo, Alexandra Paton, Antonio J. Tenorio, William A. Maio, and Dustin J. Hines.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
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-
DATE: September 15, 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: Synthetic CBD derivative prevents seizures in mice without causing sedation
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
A new synthetic derivative of cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces seizure severity and promotes healthy brain cell development in mice. The compound, modified to have an elongated chemical tail, protected against chemically induced seizures without causing sedation. The research was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Developmental epilepsy syndromes are rare genetic disorders characterized by recurrent seizures and developmental delays in children. A common feature of these syndromes is a lack of inhibitory control over brain cell activity. The primary medications used to treat these conditions are benzodiazepines, which act to slow down the nervous system and decrease brain excitability.
Chronic use of these medications can lead to rapid tolerance and physical dependence. These drugs can also cause adverse side effects in children, including sleepiness, breathing problems, and cognitive deficits.
Cannabidiol, a major compound found in the cannabis plant, has emerged as a potential alternative to traditional anti-seizure medications. Unlike THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, CBD does not produce a high. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a purified CBD solution to treat a few specific rare seizure disorders. The broader use of natural CBD for other types of epilepsy remains limited, and researchers are looking for ways to improve upon the natural molecule.
Researchers led by Dustin J. Hines and Rochelle M. Hines of the University of Nevada Las Vegas sought to design a library of new synthetic CBD derivatives. They started with a compound called carvone, an extract from caraway seeds, rather than natural cannabis extracts. This method avoids any potential THC contamination.
The researchers created several different variations of synthetic CBD by altering a specific part of the molecular structure called the alkyl side chain. This chain is a tail of carbon atoms attached to the main ring of the molecule. The team hypothesized that lengthening this carbon chain might change how the compound interacts with brain receptors.
To see how these structural changes affect brain activity, the researchers conducted a small study in freely moving mice. They gave the animals various synthetic CBD molecules with carbon chain lengths ranging from three to eight atoms. The researchers then measured the animals’ brain waves using electroencephalography, or EEG. Brain waves are electrical impulses that neurons use to communicate. They are divided into different frequency bands, such as delta, theta, and beta.
The researchers found that modifying the length of the carbon chain produced distinct effects on the animals’ brain wave frequencies. The molecule with an eight-carbon chain, named (+)-CBD-oct, increased electrical power specifically in the delta and theta frequency bands. Delta and theta are low-frequency brain waves often associated with deep relaxation, sleep, and memory processing. Based on this unique brain wave profile, the researchers selected (+)-CBD-oct as their primary candidate to test as an anti-seizure medication.
Because many epilepsy treatments cause severe sleepiness, the researchers tested whether (+)-CBD-oct would sedate the animals. They gave adult mice either a water placebo or a dose of the synthetic compound. The animals were then placed in an open testing arena for one hour, and researchers tracked the animals’ movements using video analysis software.
Mice treated with (+)-CBD-oct explored the open arena at similar speeds and traveled similar total distances compared to the mice that received the placebo. The synthetic compound did not reduce exploration or produce acute sedative effects. This lack of sedation distinguished the new compound from traditional benzodiazepines.
The team then tested the compound’s ability to stop seizures in normal adult mice. They gave the animals either a placebo, natural CBD, or the synthetic (+)-CBD-oct. Thirty minutes later, the researchers injected the mice with kainate. Kainate is a chemical compound routinely used in laboratories to induce seizures. They monitored the mice for physical signs of seizures and recorded their brain activity using EEG.
Mice pre-treated with (+)-CBD-oct experienced much less intense seizures than those given the placebo or natural CBD. The synthetic compound increased the amount of time it took for the first seizure to begin. The treatment also lowered the electrical peak of the seizure events measured on the EEG. The kainate injection caused high mortality in the placebo group, but (+)-CBD-oct treatment prevented mortality.
To see if the drug worked in a disease model, the researchers repeated the seizure experiment using a genetically modified mouse. This specific mouse model has a genetic mutation that disrupts normal inhibitory control in the brain. The mutation makes the mice highly susceptible to spontaneous seizures and sensitive to seizure-inducing chemicals, mimicking aspects of human developmental epilepsy.
The researchers gave these mutant mice (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo before injecting them with kainate. The synthetic compound reduced the behavioral signs of seizure severity in the mutant mice. The treatment delayed the onset of the seizures and reduced the total number of seizure events. The compound also improved the survival rate of the mutant animals following the chemical injection.
Finally, the researchers investigated how the compound affects the developing brain. Standard anti-seizure drugs can alter the growth of dendritic spines. Dendritic spines are tiny protrusions on the surface of brain cells that help form electrical connections with other neurons. The researchers administered (+)-CBD-oct or a placebo to normal mouse pups and the mutant epilepsy mouse pups for five consecutive days.
After the treatment period, they examined the brain tissue under a microscope. The drug did not alter or reduce the brain cell connections in the normal mice. The mutant mice normally display an overabundance of immature dendritic spines in their brains.
The five-day treatment normalized the brain cell structures in the mutant mice. The compound reduced the number of abnormal, immature connections in both the cortex and hippocampus, and promoted the development of mature dendritic spines in the cortex.
The study relied on a single chemical agent, kainate, to induce seizures. This specific chemical model may not capture the full range of biological mechanisms present in different types of human epilepsy. The researchers conducted the experiments using small groups of animals, and the study only examined male mice for the adult seizure tests. It is currently unknown if female adult mice would respond to the treatment in the same way.
The exact mechanisms by which the synthetic compound stops seizures remain uncharacterized. The drug altered the physical shape of the brain cell connections, but the researchers did not examine whether this physical change improved the functional electrical activity at the synapses. Future research will need to determine exactly which cell receptors the compound targets to exert its protective effects.
The study, “Carvone derived cannabidiol enantiomers as novel anticonvulsants,” was authored by Rochelle M. Hines, April Contreras, Adriana Carrillo, Alexandra Paton, Antonio J. Tenorio, William A. Maio, and Dustin J. Hines.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/synthetic-cbd-derivative-prevents-seizures-in-mice-without-causing-sedation/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SyntheticCBD #CBDderivative #SeizureResearch #Anticonvulsant #EpilepsyNews #NeuralDevelopment #CBDwithoutSedation #KainateModel #DendriticSpines #Neuropharmacology
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Public treats risks for low intelligence and heart disease similarly when selecting embryos
People often report feeling more comfortable using genetic screening to avoid medical conditions than to select for non-medical traits. However, new research suggests that when prospective parents actually choose which embryo to implant, they tend to weigh non-medical traits just as heavily as medical ones. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, indicate that the distinction between medical and non-medical traits becomes blurry when people make concrete reproductive choices.
Preimplantation genetic testing is a medical procedure used during in vitro fertilization. Before an embryo is transferred to a uterus, doctors extract a small number of cells and analyze the genetic material. Polygenic testing is a specific type of this analysis that looks at thousands of genetic variations at once.
Rather than identifying a single genetic mutation that causes a disease through a direct biological mechanism, polygenic testing relies on statistical models. It calculates a risk estimate by comparing an embryo’s DNA against population-level data. The resulting scores do not reveal an innate genetic predisposition or a fixed biological destiny. Instead, they provide a statistical estimate of the chances a person might develop complex characteristics, ranging from heart disease to intelligence.
Initial surveys established that the public is surprisingly open to screening embryos using these complex statistical scores. For instance, a 2023 study found that the American public is broadly willing to consider screening embryos for complex physical and behavioral traits.
Subsequent work revealed that non-Western populations might be even more accepting of selecting for non-medical traits. A 2025 survey indicated that people in Singapore were more receptive to using embryo screening for educational and cognitive outcomes than Americans were.
The new study takes the next step by testing whether people’s stated moral attitudes match how they act when weighing medical risks against personal traits. The research, led by Edmond Awad, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, along with Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson, sought to understand if providing these statistical estimates shapes prospective parents’ choices, even if they initially express reluctance to test for non-medical traits.
“I have argued for a long time that when parents are choosing between embryos they have reason to choose the one expected to have the best life, and that the medical label is the wrong place to draw the line,” Savulescu, the Chen Su Lan centennial professor in medical ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, told PsyPost. “This study was about what people actually do.”
“My hunch was that people would not sort attributes into medical and non-medical once a real choice was in front of them, and that they would go instead by how much an attribute would affect the child,” Savulescu explained. He noted that Awad had previously run the Moral Machine, which guided millions of people through online moral dilemmas about automated vehicles, making a similar approach ideal for this question. “Those pilots turned up a gap between what people said they wanted tested and what they did with the information once they had it.”
The authors noted a psychological phenomenon known as deliberate ignorance, where people might avoid learning about non-medical traits to sidestep ethical dilemmas. However, if a clinic provides that statistical information anyway, those same people might still use it to make reproductive decisions. The team recruited 1,467 adults in the United States for an online experiment. They focused on four specific attributes that a polygenic score might estimate. Two of these were medical conditions: heart disease and vision impairment. Two were non-medical traits: low cognitive ability and antisocial behavior.
The US participants were split into two separate groups. The first group was asked if they would be willing to use polygenic testing to calculate risk estimates for each of the four attributes. Participants simply answered whether they would say yes, no, or not sure to receiving this statistical information.
The results from this first group indicated that 66.7 percent of participants were willing to test for the medical conditions. A slightly lower portion, 61.4 percent, were willing to test for the non-medical traits. Though the preference for medical testing was higher, well over half of the participants still supported screening for intelligence and behavioral tendencies.
“This was a Registered Report. Our hypotheses and our analysis plan were reviewed and accepted by the journal in October 2025, before we collected any data, so the results could not be shaped after the fact,” Awad explained. “On the basis of our own pilot studies, and of other recent work, we registered a prediction that most people would not want testing for low IQ or antisocial behavior. The opposite happened. Sixty-one percent said they would.” He suggested this could be due to wording—asking about avoiding negative traits rather than selecting positive ones—or a general shift toward greater willingness to test.
The second group of US participants faced a different task. They were presented with hypothetical scenarios where genetic testing had already been completed on two viable embryos. The participants had to choose which embryo to implant based on statistical estimates for two of the four attributes. In these scenarios, the statistical models predicted that the embryos had either an average chance, a 5 percent above-average chance, or a 5 percent below-average chance of developing the assigned traits.
When forced to make a choice, participants avoided embryos with an above-average chance of undesirable non-medical traits just as strongly as they avoided those with medical conditions. “What we found was that in the US sample, an embryo with a higher-than-average chance of developing heart disease in later life was about 40 percentage points less likely to be chosen than one with an average chance,” said Wilkinson, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Oxford and consultant neonatologist. “For antisocial behavior the gap was 36 points, for low IQ 32 points, and for vision impairment 19 points.”
“In our studies we told participants that ‘above average’ meant 5 percentage points above the average chance,” Wilkinson added. “So a fairly small change in the odds for the future child produced a very large change in the choice. That will be familiar to anyone who counsels parents. People are not weighing probabilities the way a statistician would.” Savulescu agreed, noting that people care deeply about small probabilities when the stakes are high, and a “child’s life, how good it is, is a high stake.”
Participants penalized embryos for having a higher statistical risk of low intelligence or antisocial behavior to the same degree as a higher risk of heart disease. All three attributes were avoided much more strongly than a higher chance of vision impairment. The researchers also set up direct trade-off scenarios, forcing participants to choose between an embryo with a higher statistical risk for a medical condition and one with a higher statistical risk for a non-medical trait.
In these head-to-head comparisons, vision impairment was consistently tolerated more than any other attribute. Participants frequently chose to implant an embryo with a higher chance of vision issues if it meant avoiding a higher chance of low intelligence, antisocial behavior, or heart disease. The findings suggest that when genetic information is already available, the dividing line between medical and non-medical traits fades.
To see if these patterns held across different cultures, the researchers ran a similar experiment with 623 participants in China. These participants completed the embryo selection task without the initial willingness survey. The results were largely similar to the American group, demonstrating a widespread tendency to avoid non-medical traits when the statistical estimates are available. However, Chinese participants showed an even stronger aversion to embryos with a higher chance of low intelligence compared to the American group.
The researchers also asked participants to rate the four attributes on several dimensions, such as how controllable they are and how much they affect a person’s life. The team initially predicted that people would avoid traits that seemed harder to manage. Instead, the data suggests that perceived seriousness drove the decisions. If an attribute was seen as having a severe impact on a person’s life, participants avoided it, regardless of whether it was categorized as a medical condition or a non-medical trait.
“What people say they want tested does not tell you what they will do with the answer,” Savulescu said. “The label on an attribute is doing less work than people assume. What guided the choice was how serious the outcome seemed for the child. Doctors and regulators care about disease; people care about well-being, of their child and others.”
Wilkinson emphasized that this behavior shouldn’t be misconstrued: “This study does not show that people want designer babies,” he said. “What we found is that people want to avoid their children having genetic risk factors that might affect how well their life will go in the future. It is important to note that these were hypothetical scenarios and we don’t know what people would do in real life, especially when there are risks or financial costs involved.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on hypothetical scenarios that presented a flat 5 percent change in risk for all traits. In reality, polygenic scores for complex behavioral traits are currently less exact than scores for medical conditions. Presenting a uniform 5 percent shift in predictability might overstate the current capabilities of the technology for behavioral traits, making the choice seem simpler than it would be in a clinic.
“We do realize that our dilemmas are simplified versions of the trade-offs real parents face,” Awad said. “In a clinic the average chances differ from one attribute to the next, the numbers arrive with a margin of error, and how much each score is worth varies a great deal between attributes. We stripped all of that out on purpose, so that the only thing separating our four attributes was the attributes themselves rather than the way they were dressed up. That is what let us test the category question cleanly.”
Wilkinson also cautioned that “within a family, where the embryos share the same parents, polygenic prediction for behavioral traits such as cognitive ability is much weaker than our scenarios imply, so the real gains from selecting on them would be far smaller.”
Additionally, participants in the selection task were forced to make a decision based on the information provided to them. In a real clinical setting, prospective parents might choose not to look at certain genetic information at all. The act of opting out of genetic results could completely change the outcome of an embryo selection process. Future studies might explore how actual clinic patients navigate these decisions when they have the freedom to reject certain trait predictors.
“I’d like to note that one of the practical points is about consent,” Wilkinson said. “Some clinics today hand parents a panel of scores they never asked to see, laid out in a uniform way whatever each score is actually worth. It is important to be aware that the way that information is arranged may shape the decision that prospective parents make. Signing a consent form is not the same as making a considered choice.”
The research is part of ANTITHESES, a Wellcome Trust-funded project examining deep value disagreements. “We wanted to identify tools to reveal what people’s values are that drive disagreement,” Savulescu said. “What we saw was that people value some non-medical aspects of well-being nearly as much as they value medical aspects. This shows people do not draw a sharp line between medical conditions and non-disease traits.”
“What the public prefers does not settle what is right. Colleagues and I have argued before that public preferences are an input to ethical policy rather than a verdict on it,” Savulescu added. “What this study shows is that one of the categories the current rules are built on, medical against non-medical, does not describe how people actually reason when they have to choose. That is a reason to look again at the categories.”
To expand on these findings, Awad noted the team has launched Tinker Tots, an open online experiment that presents embryo selection dilemmas across a wider range of traits and countries. “After that we want to get closer to the clinic,” he added, “and study people who are actually going through IVF.”
The study, “Public perceptions of polygenic testing and embryo selection for non-medical traits,” was authored by Edmond Awad, Clara Colombatto, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Brian D. Earp, Jim A. C. Everett, Peng Liu, G. Owen Schaefer, Ilina Singh, Dominic Wilkinson, and Julian Savulescu.
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-
DATE: September 15, 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: Public treats risks for low intelligence and heart disease similarly when selecting embryos
People often report feeling more comfortable using genetic screening to avoid medical conditions than to select for non-medical traits. However, new research suggests that when prospective parents actually choose which embryo to implant, they tend to weigh non-medical traits just as heavily as medical ones. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, indicate that the distinction between medical and non-medical traits becomes blurry when people make concrete reproductive choices.
Preimplantation genetic testing is a medical procedure used during in vitro fertilization. Before an embryo is transferred to a uterus, doctors extract a small number of cells and analyze the genetic material. Polygenic testing is a specific type of this analysis that looks at thousands of genetic variations at once.
Rather than identifying a single genetic mutation that causes a disease through a direct biological mechanism, polygenic testing relies on statistical models. It calculates a risk estimate by comparing an embryo’s DNA against population-level data. The resulting scores do not reveal an innate genetic predisposition or a fixed biological destiny. Instead, they provide a statistical estimate of the chances a person might develop complex characteristics, ranging from heart disease to intelligence.
Initial surveys established that the public is surprisingly open to screening embryos using these complex statistical scores. For instance, a 2023 study found that the American public is broadly willing to consider screening embryos for complex physical and behavioral traits.
Subsequent work revealed that non-Western populations might be even more accepting of selecting for non-medical traits. A 2025 survey indicated that people in Singapore were more receptive to using embryo screening for educational and cognitive outcomes than Americans were.
The new study takes the next step by testing whether people’s stated moral attitudes match how they act when weighing medical risks against personal traits. The research, led by Edmond Awad, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, along with Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson, sought to understand if providing these statistical estimates shapes prospective parents’ choices, even if they initially express reluctance to test for non-medical traits.
“I have argued for a long time that when parents are choosing between embryos they have reason to choose the one expected to have the best life, and that the medical label is the wrong place to draw the line,” Savulescu, the Chen Su Lan centennial professor in medical ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, told PsyPost. “This study was about what people actually do.”
“My hunch was that people would not sort attributes into medical and non-medical once a real choice was in front of them, and that they would go instead by how much an attribute would affect the child,” Savulescu explained. He noted that Awad had previously run the Moral Machine, which guided millions of people through online moral dilemmas about automated vehicles, making a similar approach ideal for this question. “Those pilots turned up a gap between what people said they wanted tested and what they did with the information once they had it.”
The authors noted a psychological phenomenon known as deliberate ignorance, where people might avoid learning about non-medical traits to sidestep ethical dilemmas. However, if a clinic provides that statistical information anyway, those same people might still use it to make reproductive decisions. The team recruited 1,467 adults in the United States for an online experiment. They focused on four specific attributes that a polygenic score might estimate. Two of these were medical conditions: heart disease and vision impairment. Two were non-medical traits: low cognitive ability and antisocial behavior.
The US participants were split into two separate groups. The first group was asked if they would be willing to use polygenic testing to calculate risk estimates for each of the four attributes. Participants simply answered whether they would say yes, no, or not sure to receiving this statistical information.
The results from this first group indicated that 66.7 percent of participants were willing to test for the medical conditions. A slightly lower portion, 61.4 percent, were willing to test for the non-medical traits. Though the preference for medical testing was higher, well over half of the participants still supported screening for intelligence and behavioral tendencies.
“This was a Registered Report. Our hypotheses and our analysis plan were reviewed and accepted by the journal in October 2025, before we collected any data, so the results could not be shaped after the fact,” Awad explained. “On the basis of our own pilot studies, and of other recent work, we registered a prediction that most people would not want testing for low IQ or antisocial behavior. The opposite happened. Sixty-one percent said they would.” He suggested this could be due to wording—asking about avoiding negative traits rather than selecting positive ones—or a general shift toward greater willingness to test.
The second group of US participants faced a different task. They were presented with hypothetical scenarios where genetic testing had already been completed on two viable embryos. The participants had to choose which embryo to implant based on statistical estimates for two of the four attributes. In these scenarios, the statistical models predicted that the embryos had either an average chance, a 5 percent above-average chance, or a 5 percent below-average chance of developing the assigned traits.
When forced to make a choice, participants avoided embryos with an above-average chance of undesirable non-medical traits just as strongly as they avoided those with medical conditions. “What we found was that in the US sample, an embryo with a higher-than-average chance of developing heart disease in later life was about 40 percentage points less likely to be chosen than one with an average chance,” said Wilkinson, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Oxford and consultant neonatologist. “For antisocial behavior the gap was 36 points, for low IQ 32 points, and for vision impairment 19 points.”
“In our studies we told participants that ‘above average’ meant 5 percentage points above the average chance,” Wilkinson added. “So a fairly small change in the odds for the future child produced a very large change in the choice. That will be familiar to anyone who counsels parents. People are not weighing probabilities the way a statistician would.” Savulescu agreed, noting that people care deeply about small probabilities when the stakes are high, and a “child’s life, how good it is, is a high stake.”
Participants penalized embryos for having a higher statistical risk of low intelligence or antisocial behavior to the same degree as a higher risk of heart disease. All three attributes were avoided much more strongly than a higher chance of vision impairment. The researchers also set up direct trade-off scenarios, forcing participants to choose between an embryo with a higher statistical risk for a medical condition and one with a higher statistical risk for a non-medical trait.
In these head-to-head comparisons, vision impairment was consistently tolerated more than any other attribute. Participants frequently chose to implant an embryo with a higher chance of vision issues if it meant avoiding a higher chance of low intelligence, antisocial behavior, or heart disease. The findings suggest that when genetic information is already available, the dividing line between medical and non-medical traits fades.
To see if these patterns held across different cultures, the researchers ran a similar experiment with 623 participants in China. These participants completed the embryo selection task without the initial willingness survey. The results were largely similar to the American group, demonstrating a widespread tendency to avoid non-medical traits when the statistical estimates are available. However, Chinese participants showed an even stronger aversion to embryos with a higher chance of low intelligence compared to the American group.
The researchers also asked participants to rate the four attributes on several dimensions, such as how controllable they are and how much they affect a person’s life. The team initially predicted that people would avoid traits that seemed harder to manage. Instead, the data suggests that perceived seriousness drove the decisions. If an attribute was seen as having a severe impact on a person’s life, participants avoided it, regardless of whether it was categorized as a medical condition or a non-medical trait.
“What people say they want tested does not tell you what they will do with the answer,” Savulescu said. “The label on an attribute is doing less work than people assume. What guided the choice was how serious the outcome seemed for the child. Doctors and regulators care about disease; people care about well-being, of their child and others.”
Wilkinson emphasized that this behavior shouldn’t be misconstrued: “This study does not show that people want designer babies,” he said. “What we found is that people want to avoid their children having genetic risk factors that might affect how well their life will go in the future. It is important to note that these were hypothetical scenarios and we don’t know what people would do in real life, especially when there are risks or financial costs involved.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on hypothetical scenarios that presented a flat 5 percent change in risk for all traits. In reality, polygenic scores for complex behavioral traits are currently less exact than scores for medical conditions. Presenting a uniform 5 percent shift in predictability might overstate the current capabilities of the technology for behavioral traits, making the choice seem simpler than it would be in a clinic.
“We do realize that our dilemmas are simplified versions of the trade-offs real parents face,” Awad said. “In a clinic the average chances differ from one attribute to the next, the numbers arrive with a margin of error, and how much each score is worth varies a great deal between attributes. We stripped all of that out on purpose, so that the only thing separating our four attributes was the attributes themselves rather than the way they were dressed up. That is what let us test the category question cleanly.”
Wilkinson also cautioned that “within a family, where the embryos share the same parents, polygenic prediction for behavioral traits such as cognitive ability is much weaker than our scenarios imply, so the real gains from selecting on them would be far smaller.”
Additionally, participants in the selection task were forced to make a decision based on the information provided to them. In a real clinical setting, prospective parents might choose not to look at certain genetic information at all. The act of opting out of genetic results could completely change the outcome of an embryo selection process. Future studies might explore how actual clinic patients navigate these decisions when they have the freedom to reject certain trait predictors.
“I’d like to note that one of the practical points is about consent,” Wilkinson said. “Some clinics today hand parents a panel of scores they never asked to see, laid out in a uniform way whatever each score is actually worth. It is important to be aware that the way that information is arranged may shape the decision that prospective parents make. Signing a consent form is not the same as making a considered choice.”
The research is part of ANTITHESES, a Wellcome Trust-funded project examining deep value disagreements. “We wanted to identify tools to reveal what people’s values are that drive disagreement,” Savulescu said. “What we saw was that people value some non-medical aspects of well-being nearly as much as they value medical aspects. This shows people do not draw a sharp line between medical conditions and non-disease traits.”
“What the public prefers does not settle what is right. Colleagues and I have argued before that public preferences are an input to ethical policy rather than a verdict on it,” Savulescu added. “What this study shows is that one of the categories the current rules are built on, medical against non-medical, does not describe how people actually reason when they have to choose. That is a reason to look again at the categories.”
To expand on these findings, Awad noted the team has launched Tinker Tots, an open online experiment that presents embryo selection dilemmas across a wider range of traits and countries. “After that we want to get closer to the clinic,” he added, “and study people who are actually going through IVF.”
The study, “Public perceptions of polygenic testing and embryo selection for non-medical traits,” was authored by Edmond Awad, Clara Colombatto, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Brian D. Earp, Jim A. C. Everett, Peng Liu, G. Owen Schaefer, Ilina Singh, Dominic Wilkinson, and Julian Savulescu.
-------------------------------------------------
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DATE: September 15, 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: Public treats risks for low intelligence and heart disease similarly when selecting embryos
People often report feeling more comfortable using genetic screening to avoid medical conditions than to select for non-medical traits. However, new research suggests that when prospective parents actually choose which embryo to implant, they tend to weigh non-medical traits just as heavily as medical ones. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, indicate that the distinction between medical and non-medical traits becomes blurry when people make concrete reproductive choices.
Preimplantation genetic testing is a medical procedure used during in vitro fertilization. Before an embryo is transferred to a uterus, doctors extract a small number of cells and analyze the genetic material. Polygenic testing is a specific type of this analysis that looks at thousands of genetic variations at once.
Rather than identifying a single genetic mutation that causes a disease through a direct biological mechanism, polygenic testing relies on statistical models. It calculates a risk estimate by comparing an embryo’s DNA against population-level data. The resulting scores do not reveal an innate genetic predisposition or a fixed biological destiny. Instead, they provide a statistical estimate of the chances a person might develop complex characteristics, ranging from heart disease to intelligence.
Initial surveys established that the public is surprisingly open to screening embryos using these complex statistical scores. For instance, a 2023 study found that the American public is broadly willing to consider screening embryos for complex physical and behavioral traits.
Subsequent work revealed that non-Western populations might be even more accepting of selecting for non-medical traits. A 2025 survey indicated that people in Singapore were more receptive to using embryo screening for educational and cognitive outcomes than Americans were.
The new study takes the next step by testing whether people’s stated moral attitudes match how they act when weighing medical risks against personal traits. The research, led by Edmond Awad, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, along with Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson, sought to understand if providing these statistical estimates shapes prospective parents’ choices, even if they initially express reluctance to test for non-medical traits.
“I have argued for a long time that when parents are choosing between embryos they have reason to choose the one expected to have the best life, and that the medical label is the wrong place to draw the line,” Savulescu, the Chen Su Lan centennial professor in medical ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, told PsyPost. “This study was about what people actually do.”
“My hunch was that people would not sort attributes into medical and non-medical once a real choice was in front of them, and that they would go instead by how much an attribute would affect the child,” Savulescu explained. He noted that Awad had previously run the Moral Machine, which guided millions of people through online moral dilemmas about automated vehicles, making a similar approach ideal for this question. “Those pilots turned up a gap between what people said they wanted tested and what they did with the information once they had it.”
The authors noted a psychological phenomenon known as deliberate ignorance, where people might avoid learning about non-medical traits to sidestep ethical dilemmas. However, if a clinic provides that statistical information anyway, those same people might still use it to make reproductive decisions. The team recruited 1,467 adults in the United States for an online experiment. They focused on four specific attributes that a polygenic score might estimate. Two of these were medical conditions: heart disease and vision impairment. Two were non-medical traits: low cognitive ability and antisocial behavior.
The US participants were split into two separate groups. The first group was asked if they would be willing to use polygenic testing to calculate risk estimates for each of the four attributes. Participants simply answered whether they would say yes, no, or not sure to receiving this statistical information.
The results from this first group indicated that 66.7 percent of participants were willing to test for the medical conditions. A slightly lower portion, 61.4 percent, were willing to test for the non-medical traits. Though the preference for medical testing was higher, well over half of the participants still supported screening for intelligence and behavioral tendencies.
“This was a Registered Report. Our hypotheses and our analysis plan were reviewed and accepted by the journal in October 2025, before we collected any data, so the results could not be shaped after the fact,” Awad explained. “On the basis of our own pilot studies, and of other recent work, we registered a prediction that most people would not want testing for low IQ or antisocial behavior. The opposite happened. Sixty-one percent said they would.” He suggested this could be due to wording—asking about avoiding negative traits rather than selecting positive ones—or a general shift toward greater willingness to test.
The second group of US participants faced a different task. They were presented with hypothetical scenarios where genetic testing had already been completed on two viable embryos. The participants had to choose which embryo to implant based on statistical estimates for two of the four attributes. In these scenarios, the statistical models predicted that the embryos had either an average chance, a 5 percent above-average chance, or a 5 percent below-average chance of developing the assigned traits.
When forced to make a choice, participants avoided embryos with an above-average chance of undesirable non-medical traits just as strongly as they avoided those with medical conditions. “What we found was that in the US sample, an embryo with a higher-than-average chance of developing heart disease in later life was about 40 percentage points less likely to be chosen than one with an average chance,” said Wilkinson, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Oxford and consultant neonatologist. “For antisocial behavior the gap was 36 points, for low IQ 32 points, and for vision impairment 19 points.”
“In our studies we told participants that ‘above average’ meant 5 percentage points above the average chance,” Wilkinson added. “So a fairly small change in the odds for the future child produced a very large change in the choice. That will be familiar to anyone who counsels parents. People are not weighing probabilities the way a statistician would.” Savulescu agreed, noting that people care deeply about small probabilities when the stakes are high, and a “child’s life, how good it is, is a high stake.”
Participants penalized embryos for having a higher statistical risk of low intelligence or antisocial behavior to the same degree as a higher risk of heart disease. All three attributes were avoided much more strongly than a higher chance of vision impairment. The researchers also set up direct trade-off scenarios, forcing participants to choose between an embryo with a higher statistical risk for a medical condition and one with a higher statistical risk for a non-medical trait.
In these head-to-head comparisons, vision impairment was consistently tolerated more than any other attribute. Participants frequently chose to implant an embryo with a higher chance of vision issues if it meant avoiding a higher chance of low intelligence, antisocial behavior, or heart disease. The findings suggest that when genetic information is already available, the dividing line between medical and non-medical traits fades.
To see if these patterns held across different cultures, the researchers ran a similar experiment with 623 participants in China. These participants completed the embryo selection task without the initial willingness survey. The results were largely similar to the American group, demonstrating a widespread tendency to avoid non-medical traits when the statistical estimates are available. However, Chinese participants showed an even stronger aversion to embryos with a higher chance of low intelligence compared to the American group.
The researchers also asked participants to rate the four attributes on several dimensions, such as how controllable they are and how much they affect a person’s life. The team initially predicted that people would avoid traits that seemed harder to manage. Instead, the data suggests that perceived seriousness drove the decisions. If an attribute was seen as having a severe impact on a person’s life, participants avoided it, regardless of whether it was categorized as a medical condition or a non-medical trait.
“What people say they want tested does not tell you what they will do with the answer,” Savulescu said. “The label on an attribute is doing less work than people assume. What guided the choice was how serious the outcome seemed for the child. Doctors and regulators care about disease; people care about well-being, of their child and others.”
Wilkinson emphasized that this behavior shouldn’t be misconstrued: “This study does not show that people want designer babies,” he said. “What we found is that people want to avoid their children having genetic risk factors that might affect how well their life will go in the future. It is important to note that these were hypothetical scenarios and we don’t know what people would do in real life, especially when there are risks or financial costs involved.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on hypothetical scenarios that presented a flat 5 percent change in risk for all traits. In reality, polygenic scores for complex behavioral traits are currently less exact than scores for medical conditions. Presenting a uniform 5 percent shift in predictability might overstate the current capabilities of the technology for behavioral traits, making the choice seem simpler than it would be in a clinic.
“We do realize that our dilemmas are simplified versions of the trade-offs real parents face,” Awad said. “In a clinic the average chances differ from one attribute to the next, the numbers arrive with a margin of error, and how much each score is worth varies a great deal between attributes. We stripped all of that out on purpose, so that the only thing separating our four attributes was the attributes themselves rather than the way they were dressed up. That is what let us test the category question cleanly.”
Wilkinson also cautioned that “within a family, where the embryos share the same parents, polygenic prediction for behavioral traits such as cognitive ability is much weaker than our scenarios imply, so the real gains from selecting on them would be far smaller.”
Additionally, participants in the selection task were forced to make a decision based on the information provided to them. In a real clinical setting, prospective parents might choose not to look at certain genetic information at all. The act of opting out of genetic results could completely change the outcome of an embryo selection process. Future studies might explore how actual clinic patients navigate these decisions when they have the freedom to reject certain trait predictors.
“I’d like to note that one of the practical points is about consent,” Wilkinson said. “Some clinics today hand parents a panel of scores they never asked to see, laid out in a uniform way whatever each score is actually worth. It is important to be aware that the way that information is arranged may shape the decision that prospective parents make. Signing a consent form is not the same as making a considered choice.”
The research is part of ANTITHESES, a Wellcome Trust-funded project examining deep value disagreements. “We wanted to identify tools to reveal what people’s values are that drive disagreement,” Savulescu said. “What we saw was that people value some non-medical aspects of well-being nearly as much as they value medical aspects. This shows people do not draw a sharp line between medical conditions and non-disease traits.”
“What the public prefers does not settle what is right. Colleagues and I have argued before that public preferences are an input to ethical policy rather than a verdict on it,” Savulescu added. “What this study shows is that one of the categories the current rules are built on, medical against non-medical, does not describe how people actually reason when they have to choose. That is a reason to look again at the categories.”
To expand on these findings, Awad noted the team has launched Tinker Tots, an open online experiment that presents embryo selection dilemmas across a wider range of traits and countries. “After that we want to get closer to the clinic,” he added, “and study people who are actually going through IVF.”
The study, “Public perceptions of polygenic testing and embryo selection for non-medical traits,” was authored by Edmond Awad, Clara Colombatto, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Brian D. Earp, Jim A. C. Everett, Peng Liu, G. Owen Schaefer, Ilina Singh, Dominic Wilkinson, and Julian Savulescu.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #polygenictesting #embryoselection #IVFethics #medicalvsnonmedicaltraits #geneticrisk #wellbeingoverlabels #ethicsinreproduction #intelligenceandhealth #deliberateignorance #polygenicscores
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Researchers launch global tracking project to measure the daily mental health impacts of cannabis
A new global research initiative aims to track the real-time habits and health outcomes of both recreational and medicinal cannabis users over a two-year period. The project will map how local laws, individual mindsets, and daily routines shape the positive and negative effects of cannabis on the brain. The study protocol was recently published in Comprehensive Psychiatry.
As cannabis laws relax around the world, usage is rising. Many people consume the plant recreationally, but a growing number of individuals use it for medical reasons. Pain management and mental health symptom relief are common motivations for medicinal use. The actual effectiveness of cannabis for mental health remains a subject of intense debate among researchers. Some individuals report substantial benefits, noting that the drug eases their anxiety and stabilizes their mood. Others experience adverse reactions, including worsened depression, heightened paranoia, and the onset of cannabis use disorder.
Researchers want to understand why these outcomes vary so wildly from person to person. Part of the explanation likely involves the specific chemical makeup of the products being consumed. Cannabis contains different compounds, most notably tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which produces the psychoactive high, and cannabidiol, or CBD, which does not. High doses of THC are generally linked to a greater risk of adverse mental health effects. At the same time, preexisting psychiatric conditions and biological vulnerabilities play a role in how a person reacts to the drug.
Past research on cannabis often viewed the drug through a narrow lens, focusing heavily on either its potential harms or its supposed benefits. Funding sources and disciplinary boundaries frequently restricted the scope of these investigations. The existing literature also tends to overlook the environmental and cultural contexts in which people consume the drug. The social stigma attached to cannabis, local law enforcement practices, and community norms can all influence an individual’s psychological relationship with the substance. Additionally, most medicinal users purchase and consume cannabis without any formal medical supervision, making their habits difficult to track in clinical settings.
To build a more complete picture of modern cannabis consumption, a team of scientists launched the “Blowing Minds” project. Nora de Bode, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is the lead author of the study protocol. She collaborated with Erasmus University colleagues Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
The research team plans to recruit 1,800 participants between the ages of 18 and 65. To qualify, individuals must consume cannabis at least four times a week. The study compares people who use the drug recreationally with those who use it medicinally. Because the researchers want to measure the impact of different legal environments, they are recruiting subjects from a variety of regions. The initial rollout includes participants from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and Brazil, with plans to expand into parts of Asia and Africa.
The study takes place entirely online. Participants begin by completing an extensive series of baseline questionnaires. They report their preferred methods of consumption, such as smoking or vaping, and estimate the potency of the products they buy. They also answer questions about their physical health, sleep quality, and history of psychological trauma or mental illness. The surveys ask participants to reflect on how their friends, family, and local government view cannabis, which helps the researchers quantify the social pressure surrounding each user.
After finishing the surveys, the participants complete a battery of digital cognitive tests. These assessments measure memory, processing speed, general intelligence, and emotional perception. One specific test tracks how easily a participant’s attention is captured by images related to cannabis, which can serve as an indicator of addictive behavior.
Once the baseline measurements are established, the subjects begin a 14-day intensive tracking period using a mobile application. This technique, known as the experience sampling method, allows researchers to observe behavior in a natural setting rather than a laboratory. Every morning, the app asks the participants how well they slept and whether they used any substances the day before. Throughout the day, the app sends five random notifications. When prompted, the participants have one hour to log their current mood, stress levels, and cannabis cravings. They rate their feelings of happiness, anxiety, loneliness, and physical pain on a sliding scale.
In addition to the random prompts, the participants are instructed to open the app right before they consume cannabis. They log their intention to use the drug and record their immediate emotional state. By capturing mood and craving data right before consumption and comparing it to the random check-ins throughout the day, the researchers can see what emotional triggers prompt a person to use. They can also track how the drug alters the user’s mood in the hours that follow.
The project extends far beyond the initial two-week tracking period. The researchers will contact the participants again one and two years after their baseline assessments. The subjects will retake the digital cognitive tests and fill out the mental health questionnaires a second and third time. This longitudinal approach allows the team to map out long-term trajectories. They hope to identify whether certain habits, such as relying on highly potent products to cope with negative emotions, consistently lead to cognitive decline or worsening mental health over a multi-year period.
Running a remote, multi-year study presents distinct logistical challenges. Because the participants are paid for their time, the online format is vulnerable to fraudulent responses. People might try to enter the study multiple times or use automated software to complete the surveys. The researchers employ digital security measures to flag suspicious activity, manually check for contradictory demographic answers, and verify regional locations using internet routing data.
The daily tracking period also requires a high level of commitment from the participants. Being interrupted by phone notifications five times a day for two weeks can cause fatigue, leading some individuals to skip questions or provide rushed answers. In any multi-year study, a portion of the participants will inevitably drop out before the final follow-up. The research team uses statistical models designed to handle missing data to account for these dropouts.
By making their digital materials and anonymized data available to other scientists, the research team hopes to standardize how cannabis habits are measured globally. Sharing this framework will allow other laboratories to replicate the study in different countries or among specific age groups.
The study, “Blowing minds: A cross-cultural, longitudinal investigation to unravel the highs and lows of recreational and medicinal cannabis users,” was authored by Nora de Bode, Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CannabisResearch #BlowingMindsStudy #MentalHealth cannabis? should be without space; hashtags: #CannabisResearch #MentalHealth #CannabisUse #THC #CBD #ExperienceSampling #LongitudinalStudy #GlobalStudy #DigitalHealthResearch
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Researchers launch global tracking project to measure the daily mental health impacts of cannabis
A new global research initiative aims to track the real-time habits and health outcomes of both recreational and medicinal cannabis users over a two-year period. The project will map how local laws, individual mindsets, and daily routines shape the positive and negative effects of cannabis on the brain. The study protocol was recently published in Comprehensive Psychiatry.
As cannabis laws relax around the world, usage is rising. Many people consume the plant recreationally, but a growing number of individuals use it for medical reasons. Pain management and mental health symptom relief are common motivations for medicinal use. The actual effectiveness of cannabis for mental health remains a subject of intense debate among researchers. Some individuals report substantial benefits, noting that the drug eases their anxiety and stabilizes their mood. Others experience adverse reactions, including worsened depression, heightened paranoia, and the onset of cannabis use disorder.
Researchers want to understand why these outcomes vary so wildly from person to person. Part of the explanation likely involves the specific chemical makeup of the products being consumed. Cannabis contains different compounds, most notably tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which produces the psychoactive high, and cannabidiol, or CBD, which does not. High doses of THC are generally linked to a greater risk of adverse mental health effects. At the same time, preexisting psychiatric conditions and biological vulnerabilities play a role in how a person reacts to the drug.
Past research on cannabis often viewed the drug through a narrow lens, focusing heavily on either its potential harms or its supposed benefits. Funding sources and disciplinary boundaries frequently restricted the scope of these investigations. The existing literature also tends to overlook the environmental and cultural contexts in which people consume the drug. The social stigma attached to cannabis, local law enforcement practices, and community norms can all influence an individual’s psychological relationship with the substance. Additionally, most medicinal users purchase and consume cannabis without any formal medical supervision, making their habits difficult to track in clinical settings.
To build a more complete picture of modern cannabis consumption, a team of scientists launched the “Blowing Minds” project. Nora de Bode, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is the lead author of the study protocol. She collaborated with Erasmus University colleagues Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
The research team plans to recruit 1,800 participants between the ages of 18 and 65. To qualify, individuals must consume cannabis at least four times a week. The study compares people who use the drug recreationally with those who use it medicinally. Because the researchers want to measure the impact of different legal environments, they are recruiting subjects from a variety of regions. The initial rollout includes participants from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and Brazil, with plans to expand into parts of Asia and Africa.
The study takes place entirely online. Participants begin by completing an extensive series of baseline questionnaires. They report their preferred methods of consumption, such as smoking or vaping, and estimate the potency of the products they buy. They also answer questions about their physical health, sleep quality, and history of psychological trauma or mental illness. The surveys ask participants to reflect on how their friends, family, and local government view cannabis, which helps the researchers quantify the social pressure surrounding each user.
After finishing the surveys, the participants complete a battery of digital cognitive tests. These assessments measure memory, processing speed, general intelligence, and emotional perception. One specific test tracks how easily a participant’s attention is captured by images related to cannabis, which can serve as an indicator of addictive behavior.
Once the baseline measurements are established, the subjects begin a 14-day intensive tracking period using a mobile application. This technique, known as the experience sampling method, allows researchers to observe behavior in a natural setting rather than a laboratory. Every morning, the app asks the participants how well they slept and whether they used any substances the day before. Throughout the day, the app sends five random notifications. When prompted, the participants have one hour to log their current mood, stress levels, and cannabis cravings. They rate their feelings of happiness, anxiety, loneliness, and physical pain on a sliding scale.
In addition to the random prompts, the participants are instructed to open the app right before they consume cannabis. They log their intention to use the drug and record their immediate emotional state. By capturing mood and craving data right before consumption and comparing it to the random check-ins throughout the day, the researchers can see what emotional triggers prompt a person to use. They can also track how the drug alters the user’s mood in the hours that follow.
The project extends far beyond the initial two-week tracking period. The researchers will contact the participants again one and two years after their baseline assessments. The subjects will retake the digital cognitive tests and fill out the mental health questionnaires a second and third time. This longitudinal approach allows the team to map out long-term trajectories. They hope to identify whether certain habits, such as relying on highly potent products to cope with negative emotions, consistently lead to cognitive decline or worsening mental health over a multi-year period.
Running a remote, multi-year study presents distinct logistical challenges. Because the participants are paid for their time, the online format is vulnerable to fraudulent responses. People might try to enter the study multiple times or use automated software to complete the surveys. The researchers employ digital security measures to flag suspicious activity, manually check for contradictory demographic answers, and verify regional locations using internet routing data.
The daily tracking period also requires a high level of commitment from the participants. Being interrupted by phone notifications five times a day for two weeks can cause fatigue, leading some individuals to skip questions or provide rushed answers. In any multi-year study, a portion of the participants will inevitably drop out before the final follow-up. The research team uses statistical models designed to handle missing data to account for these dropouts.
By making their digital materials and anonymized data available to other scientists, the research team hopes to standardize how cannabis habits are measured globally. Sharing this framework will allow other laboratories to replicate the study in different countries or among specific age groups.
The study, “Blowing minds: A cross-cultural, longitudinal investigation to unravel the highs and lows of recreational and medicinal cannabis users,” was authored by Nora de Bode, Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CannabisResearch #BlowingMindsStudy #MentalHealth cannabis? should be without space; hashtags: #CannabisResearch #MentalHealth #CannabisUse #THC #CBD #ExperienceSampling #LongitudinalStudy #GlobalStudy #DigitalHealthResearch
-
DATE: September 15, 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: Researchers launch global tracking project to measure the daily mental health impacts of cannabis
A new global research initiative aims to track the real-time habits and health outcomes of both recreational and medicinal cannabis users over a two-year period. The project will map how local laws, individual mindsets, and daily routines shape the positive and negative effects of cannabis on the brain. The study protocol was recently published in Comprehensive Psychiatry.
As cannabis laws relax around the world, usage is rising. Many people consume the plant recreationally, but a growing number of individuals use it for medical reasons. Pain management and mental health symptom relief are common motivations for medicinal use. The actual effectiveness of cannabis for mental health remains a subject of intense debate among researchers. Some individuals report substantial benefits, noting that the drug eases their anxiety and stabilizes their mood. Others experience adverse reactions, including worsened depression, heightened paranoia, and the onset of cannabis use disorder.
Researchers want to understand why these outcomes vary so wildly from person to person. Part of the explanation likely involves the specific chemical makeup of the products being consumed. Cannabis contains different compounds, most notably tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which produces the psychoactive high, and cannabidiol, or CBD, which does not. High doses of THC are generally linked to a greater risk of adverse mental health effects. At the same time, preexisting psychiatric conditions and biological vulnerabilities play a role in how a person reacts to the drug.
Past research on cannabis often viewed the drug through a narrow lens, focusing heavily on either its potential harms or its supposed benefits. Funding sources and disciplinary boundaries frequently restricted the scope of these investigations. The existing literature also tends to overlook the environmental and cultural contexts in which people consume the drug. The social stigma attached to cannabis, local law enforcement practices, and community norms can all influence an individual’s psychological relationship with the substance. Additionally, most medicinal users purchase and consume cannabis without any formal medical supervision, making their habits difficult to track in clinical settings.
To build a more complete picture of modern cannabis consumption, a team of scientists launched the “Blowing Minds” project. Nora de Bode, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is the lead author of the study protocol. She collaborated with Erasmus University colleagues Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
The research team plans to recruit 1,800 participants between the ages of 18 and 65. To qualify, individuals must consume cannabis at least four times a week. The study compares people who use the drug recreationally with those who use it medicinally. Because the researchers want to measure the impact of different legal environments, they are recruiting subjects from a variety of regions. The initial rollout includes participants from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and Brazil, with plans to expand into parts of Asia and Africa.
The study takes place entirely online. Participants begin by completing an extensive series of baseline questionnaires. They report their preferred methods of consumption, such as smoking or vaping, and estimate the potency of the products they buy. They also answer questions about their physical health, sleep quality, and history of psychological trauma or mental illness. The surveys ask participants to reflect on how their friends, family, and local government view cannabis, which helps the researchers quantify the social pressure surrounding each user.
After finishing the surveys, the participants complete a battery of digital cognitive tests. These assessments measure memory, processing speed, general intelligence, and emotional perception. One specific test tracks how easily a participant’s attention is captured by images related to cannabis, which can serve as an indicator of addictive behavior.
Once the baseline measurements are established, the subjects begin a 14-day intensive tracking period using a mobile application. This technique, known as the experience sampling method, allows researchers to observe behavior in a natural setting rather than a laboratory. Every morning, the app asks the participants how well they slept and whether they used any substances the day before. Throughout the day, the app sends five random notifications. When prompted, the participants have one hour to log their current mood, stress levels, and cannabis cravings. They rate their feelings of happiness, anxiety, loneliness, and physical pain on a sliding scale.
In addition to the random prompts, the participants are instructed to open the app right before they consume cannabis. They log their intention to use the drug and record their immediate emotional state. By capturing mood and craving data right before consumption and comparing it to the random check-ins throughout the day, the researchers can see what emotional triggers prompt a person to use. They can also track how the drug alters the user’s mood in the hours that follow.
The project extends far beyond the initial two-week tracking period. The researchers will contact the participants again one and two years after their baseline assessments. The subjects will retake the digital cognitive tests and fill out the mental health questionnaires a second and third time. This longitudinal approach allows the team to map out long-term trajectories. They hope to identify whether certain habits, such as relying on highly potent products to cope with negative emotions, consistently lead to cognitive decline or worsening mental health over a multi-year period.
Running a remote, multi-year study presents distinct logistical challenges. Because the participants are paid for their time, the online format is vulnerable to fraudulent responses. People might try to enter the study multiple times or use automated software to complete the surveys. The researchers employ digital security measures to flag suspicious activity, manually check for contradictory demographic answers, and verify regional locations using internet routing data.
The daily tracking period also requires a high level of commitment from the participants. Being interrupted by phone notifications five times a day for two weeks can cause fatigue, leading some individuals to skip questions or provide rushed answers. In any multi-year study, a portion of the participants will inevitably drop out before the final follow-up. The research team uses statistical models designed to handle missing data to account for these dropouts.
By making their digital materials and anonymized data available to other scientists, the research team hopes to standardize how cannabis habits are measured globally. Sharing this framework will allow other laboratories to replicate the study in different countries or among specific age groups.
The study, “Blowing minds: A cross-cultural, longitudinal investigation to unravel the highs and lows of recreational and medicinal cannabis users,” was authored by Nora de Bode, Emese Kroon, Jia Hua Hsieh, and Janna Cousijn.
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DATE: September 15, 2026 at 10:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists discover a major brain shift between ages 50 and 75
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
Scientists have uncovered sweeping changes in how the human brain controls and organizes its genome beginning in midlife, offering new clues to why aging sharply increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. One of the biggest shifts occurred between about ages 50 and 75, when many of the brain’s original immune cells declined and were replaced by cells with more inflammatory characteristics. Researchers also found weakening of cells that help maintain the blood-brain barrier, along with widespread deterioration in the genome’s three-dimensional organization.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
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DATE: September 15, 2026 at 10:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists discover a major brain shift between ages 50 and 75
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
Scientists have uncovered sweeping changes in how the human brain controls and organizes its genome beginning in midlife, offering new clues to why aging sharply increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. One of the biggest shifts occurred between about ages 50 and 75, when many of the brain’s original immune cells declined and were replaced by cells with more inflammatory characteristics. Researchers also found weakening of cells that help maintain the blood-brain barrier, along with widespread deterioration in the genome’s three-dimensional organization.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
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DATE: September 15, 2026 at 11:03AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Smelling chocolate helped men complete more reps without feeling more tired
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
Simply smelling chocolate helped men complete more leg extension repetitions without making the workout feel harder, with dark chocolate producing the strongest effect. The researchers think familiar food aromas may influence appetite and motivation by making the brain anticipate eating.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
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-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 10:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists discover a major brain shift between ages 50 and 75
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
Scientists have uncovered sweeping changes in how the human brain controls and organizes its genome beginning in midlife, offering new clues to why aging sharply increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. One of the biggest shifts occurred between about ages 50 and 75, when many of the brain’s original immune cells declined and were replaced by cells with more inflammatory characteristics. Researchers also found weakening of cells that help maintain the blood-brain barrier, along with widespread deterioration in the genome’s three-dimensional organization.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102441.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainShift #AgingResearch #MidlifeScience #AlzheimersAwareness #Neurodegeneration #ImmuneCells #BloodBrainBarrier #GenomeOrganization #AgingBrain #NeuroscienceResearch
-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 11:03AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Smelling chocolate helped men complete more reps without feeling more tired
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
Simply smelling chocolate helped men complete more leg extension repetitions without making the workout feel harder, with dark chocolate producing the strongest effect. The researchers think familiar food aromas may influence appetite and motivation by making the brain anticipate eating.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SmellingChocolate #ChocolateMotivation #ExercisePerformance #WorkoutBoost #LegExtensions #DarkChocolateBenefits #AromatherapyFitness #BrainFood #AppetiteCues #FitnessResearch
-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 11:03AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Smelling chocolate helped men complete more reps without feeling more tired
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
Simply smelling chocolate helped men complete more leg extension repetitions without making the workout feel harder, with dark chocolate producing the strongest effect. The researchers think familiar food aromas may influence appetite and motivation by making the brain anticipate eating.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260914102445.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SmellingChocolate #ChocolateMotivation #ExercisePerformance #WorkoutBoost #LegExtensions #DarkChocolateBenefits #AromatherapyFitness #BrainFood #AppetiteCues #FitnessResearch
-
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 10:17AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Lipocine has announced the initiation of the phase 3 Brexanolone Lifting Outcomes of Moms (BLOOM) study evaluating LPCN 1154 for postpartum depression. The first participant is expected to be dosed in early Q4 2026. https://t.co/RbStn272oy
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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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #PostpartumDepression #BLOOMStudy #LPCN1154 #Brexanolone #Phase3ClinicalTrial
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DATE: September 15, 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: New study challenges the core assumption behind the world’s most widely used implicit bias test
A new study suggests that the most widely used tool for measuring hidden prejudices might actually be capturing a person’s conscious effort to avoid making mistakes. By analyzing data from over a hundred thousand test sessions, researchers found that people’s tendency to slow down and be cautious is a stronger driver of their test scores than their underlying automatic associations. The research was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Implicit biases are attitudes or stereotypes that can influence our understanding and decisions, often without our direct awareness. To detect these hidden attitudes, psychologists frequently use the Implicit Association Test, commonly known as the IAT. The test requires participants to quickly sort images and words into categories on a computer screen using two keyboard keys.
In a test examining racial bias, a person might first sort images of White faces and positive words using one key, and Black faces and negative words using another. The categories are later swapped, pairing White faces with negative words and Black faces with positive words. People usually take longer to respond during these swapped, or incompatible, pairings.
This delay in reaction time is typically calculated into a metric called a D-score, which researchers use to quantify the severity of a person’s implicit bias. The traditional interpretation of the IAT assumes that this delay happens because the swapped pairings conflict with a person’s automatic memory associations, a concept known as decision ease.
But the delay could also occur if participants simply adopt a more attentive strategy, slowing down to ensure they do not press the wrong key. This alternate mechanism is called response caution. While decision ease operates automatically based on memory, response caution is a conscious, strategic choice to prioritize accuracy over speed.
Pioneering mathematical modeling of the test concluded that bias is driven by how easily people process these associations rather than how cautiously they respond. For instance, a 2007 study broke the IAT into cognitive components and found that real bias lies in the ease of processing information, while response caution was treated as a background testing artifact. This assumption has shaped how bias interventions are evaluated.
Building on that idea, a 2020 study analyzed anti-bias programs by looking at how they altered decision ease versus caution, illustrating why understanding the true driver matters for real-world training.
The new study directly challenges this foundational view by investigating whether response caution is actually a more prominent factor in IAT results.
“The IAT is the most widely used tool for measuring implicit bias, and it’s usually interpreted as picking up on how easily a stereotype or attitude pops into someone’s mind,” lead author Kyle J. LaFollette, a postdoctoral principal researcher and statistical consultant at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s Roman Family Center for Decision Research, told PsyPost.
“But researchers have long wondered whether that’s the whole story,” LaFollette explained. “Some of what shows up in an IAT score might actually come from people being more careful or cautious in certain parts of the test, rather than from the strength of an automatic association. That distinction matters because caution is something people can control, while the automatic association process is supposed to be the part that’s harder to fake or consciously manage. We wanted to test how much of the IAT’s signal actually comes from each of these two things, using a large dataset and a modeling approach built for teasing them apart.”
To test their ideas, the researchers analyzed a massive dataset from the Ideology 2.0 Study, hosted on the Project Implicit website. The dataset included 109,417 unique test sessions spread across 39 different IAT topics. These topics ranged from race and sexuality to politics, age, and economic systems.
For each topic, participants completed the standard sorting tasks, and their choices and response times were recorded in milliseconds. Many participants also completed an explicit preference questionnaire. This allowed them to directly rate how much they liked or preferred one group or concept over another. The researchers then analyzed the data by focusing on the correct sorting choices, setting aside trials where participants made errors.
The research team applied a mathematical technique called a Racing Diffusion Model to the data. This model allowed them to separate the participants’ overall reaction times into three distinct cognitive mechanisms. The first mechanism is decision ease, which represents the automatic activation of mental associations.
The second mechanism is response caution, which captures how much mental evidence a person needs to gather before making a choice to ensure accuracy. The third is non-decision time, which accounts for the physical act of pressing a button or visually registering the stimulus.
The analysis indicated that all three mechanisms behaved differently depending on whether the participants were completing the compatible or incompatible sections of the test. However, the magnitude of these effects varied substantially. When looking at the final D-scores across the 39 topics, response caution emerged as a stronger predictor of a person’s score than decision ease or non-decision time.
Participants consistently slowed their responses down during the incompatible blocks to ensure they were categorizing the images and words correctly. This shift in strategy heavily influenced the final delay that the standard test calculates as bias. The standard D-score metric conflates all of these factors, meaning that the test may be grading people on how cautiously they completed the task rather than measuring their automatic prejudices.
“The role of caution was consistently greater than the role of automatic association, and that held true across almost every one of the 39 topics we looked at, using several different ways of scoring the test,” LaFollette said. “This wasn’t a small or one-off effect. It showed up again and again across very different kinds of topics, from race and age to more abstract ones like attitudes toward novelty.”
The researchers were particularly struck by the uniformity of the results. “We expected caution to matter, but seeing it come out on top across nearly every topic we tested, including some very different from one another, was more uniform than we expected going in,” LaFollette noted.
The team also examined how these cognitive mechanisms related to what people explicitly stated on the preference questionnaires. They found that a person’s stated preferences were reliably predicted by their level of response caution. In contrast, decision ease and non-decision time did not consistently predict these direct self-reports.
This suggests that the same conscious filtering that guides how people answer direct questions also dictates how cautiously they perform on the IAT. Rather than providing a pure window into automatic associations, the test seems to capture how individuals manage the conflict between speed and accuracy. By slowing down on tricky questions, test-takers are exerting conscious control over a measure that is supposed to bypass conscious thought.
“That cautious, more controllable behavior also lined up better with what people said they actually believed than the automatic process did,” LaFollette said. “It also did a better job predicting people’s stated attitudes, and it did so for about half the topics, compared to roughly 1 in 10 for the automatic process.”
“IAT scores aren’t as simple as they’re often made out to be,” he emphasized. “In short, an IAT score reflects a blend of factors, and part of that blend is more deliberate than the ‘implicit’ label suggests.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study relies on mathematical models to infer cognitive processes from reaction times. While these models are well-established, they are still approximations of human thought and decision making.
“This isn’t a finding that implicit bias doesn’t exist or that the IAT is meaningless,” LaFollette clarified. “We absolutely find evidence for implicit bias on many topics. Rather, it’s a finding about what the score is actually made of.”
“Two people with the exact same underlying association could end up with different IAT scores just because one of them is being more careful on the harder parts of the test,” he explained. “So the score shouldn’t be treated as a pure window into someone’s unconscious mind. It’s a mix, and untangling that mix matters for how the test gets used and interpreted.”
Additionally, the dataset only recorded the final reaction time after a participant corrected a mistake, meaning the researchers could not model the reaction times of the initial errors. The data also comes from a platform where participants voluntarily choose to take bias tests online. This environment might attract a specific demographic that is highly motivated to monitor their own performance and avoid looking biased.
“At its broadest possible overview, I think this paper makes a serious attempt to grapple with a question that’s plagued us since the advent of the IAT: what are we really measuring?” Daniel J. Lee, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware’s Book School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “Indeed, this is something I (and many others) have tried to address in our own work as well.”
“So while I think in general this might be seen as challenging existing work, it actually fits very nicely within some open questions within the extant literature, for instance how does previous knowledge of implicit bias influence scores on future IATs?” Lee added. “As a hypothetical, if I don’t want some psychologist’s test telling me I harbor ill will towards another race, I might very well be more ‘response cautious’ while taking the test!”
This motivation could elevate the levels of response caution observed in the study compared to how people might react in other settings. Future research might explore how different sets of instructions affect these results. Telling participants to prioritize speed over accuracy, for example, could potentially reduce the influence of conscious strategy and isolate automatic memory associations more effectively.
“We’d like to see future (and retroactive re-analysis of past) IAT research separate out caution from automatic association rather than lumping them into one score,” LaFollette said. “The automatic-association piece looks like a promising candidate for a cleaner measure of implicit bias going forward, but it still needs more validation before it could replace the traditional score.”
“We’re also interested in extending this kind of analysis to mistakes people make on the test, and to other tools used to measure implicit attitudes,” he added. “Future research should also carefully consider the caution component, as caution may be more predictive of people’s real-world behaviors and therefore critical for understanding how people act on or suppress their biases.”
To help advance this work, the researchers have made their computational methods accessible to others.
“For researchers or readers interested in trying this kind of modeling themselves, I’d also point them to FlexDDM, a tool my lab have developed that makes fitting these diffusion models much more approachable,” LaFollette noted. “It’s also great for instruction. FlexDDM is available for free on the Microsoft store.”
The study, “Challenging the Mechanism for the Implicit Association Test,” was authored by Kyle J. LaFollette, Doroteja Rubez, Heath A. Demaree, and Amit Goldenberg.
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: September 15, 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: New study challenges the core assumption behind the world’s most widely used implicit bias test
A new study suggests that the most widely used tool for measuring hidden prejudices might actually be capturing a person’s conscious effort to avoid making mistakes. By analyzing data from over a hundred thousand test sessions, researchers found that people’s tendency to slow down and be cautious is a stronger driver of their test scores than their underlying automatic associations. The research was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Implicit biases are attitudes or stereotypes that can influence our understanding and decisions, often without our direct awareness. To detect these hidden attitudes, psychologists frequently use the Implicit Association Test, commonly known as the IAT. The test requires participants to quickly sort images and words into categories on a computer screen using two keyboard keys.
In a test examining racial bias, a person might first sort images of White faces and positive words using one key, and Black faces and negative words using another. The categories are later swapped, pairing White faces with negative words and Black faces with positive words. People usually take longer to respond during these swapped, or incompatible, pairings.
This delay in reaction time is typically calculated into a metric called a D-score, which researchers use to quantify the severity of a person’s implicit bias. The traditional interpretation of the IAT assumes that this delay happens because the swapped pairings conflict with a person’s automatic memory associations, a concept known as decision ease.
But the delay could also occur if participants simply adopt a more attentive strategy, slowing down to ensure they do not press the wrong key. This alternate mechanism is called response caution. While decision ease operates automatically based on memory, response caution is a conscious, strategic choice to prioritize accuracy over speed.
Pioneering mathematical modeling of the test concluded that bias is driven by how easily people process these associations rather than how cautiously they respond. For instance, a 2007 study broke the IAT into cognitive components and found that real bias lies in the ease of processing information, while response caution was treated as a background testing artifact. This assumption has shaped how bias interventions are evaluated.
Building on that idea, a 2020 study analyzed anti-bias programs by looking at how they altered decision ease versus caution, illustrating why understanding the true driver matters for real-world training.
The new study directly challenges this foundational view by investigating whether response caution is actually a more prominent factor in IAT results.
“The IAT is the most widely used tool for measuring implicit bias, and it’s usually interpreted as picking up on how easily a stereotype or attitude pops into someone’s mind,” lead author Kyle J. LaFollette, a postdoctoral principal researcher and statistical consultant at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s Roman Family Center for Decision Research, told PsyPost.
“But researchers have long wondered whether that’s the whole story,” LaFollette explained. “Some of what shows up in an IAT score might actually come from people being more careful or cautious in certain parts of the test, rather than from the strength of an automatic association. That distinction matters because caution is something people can control, while the automatic association process is supposed to be the part that’s harder to fake or consciously manage. We wanted to test how much of the IAT’s signal actually comes from each of these two things, using a large dataset and a modeling approach built for teasing them apart.”
To test their ideas, the researchers analyzed a massive dataset from the Ideology 2.0 Study, hosted on the Project Implicit website. The dataset included 109,417 unique test sessions spread across 39 different IAT topics. These topics ranged from race and sexuality to politics, age, and economic systems.
For each topic, participants completed the standard sorting tasks, and their choices and response times were recorded in milliseconds. Many participants also completed an explicit preference questionnaire. This allowed them to directly rate how much they liked or preferred one group or concept over another. The researchers then analyzed the data by focusing on the correct sorting choices, setting aside trials where participants made errors.
The research team applied a mathematical technique called a Racing Diffusion Model to the data. This model allowed them to separate the participants’ overall reaction times into three distinct cognitive mechanisms. The first mechanism is decision ease, which represents the automatic activation of mental associations.
The second mechanism is response caution, which captures how much mental evidence a person needs to gather before making a choice to ensure accuracy. The third is non-decision time, which accounts for the physical act of pressing a button or visually registering the stimulus.
The analysis indicated that all three mechanisms behaved differently depending on whether the participants were completing the compatible or incompatible sections of the test. However, the magnitude of these effects varied substantially. When looking at the final D-scores across the 39 topics, response caution emerged as a stronger predictor of a person’s score than decision ease or non-decision time.
Participants consistently slowed their responses down during the incompatible blocks to ensure they were categorizing the images and words correctly. This shift in strategy heavily influenced the final delay that the standard test calculates as bias. The standard D-score metric conflates all of these factors, meaning that the test may be grading people on how cautiously they completed the task rather than measuring their automatic prejudices.
“The role of caution was consistently greater than the role of automatic association, and that held true across almost every one of the 39 topics we looked at, using several different ways of scoring the test,” LaFollette said. “This wasn’t a small or one-off effect. It showed up again and again across very different kinds of topics, from race and age to more abstract ones like attitudes toward novelty.”
The researchers were particularly struck by the uniformity of the results. “We expected caution to matter, but seeing it come out on top across nearly every topic we tested, including some very different from one another, was more uniform than we expected going in,” LaFollette noted.
The team also examined how these cognitive mechanisms related to what people explicitly stated on the preference questionnaires. They found that a person’s stated preferences were reliably predicted by their level of response caution. In contrast, decision ease and non-decision time did not consistently predict these direct self-reports.
This suggests that the same conscious filtering that guides how people answer direct questions also dictates how cautiously they perform on the IAT. Rather than providing a pure window into automatic associations, the test seems to capture how individuals manage the conflict between speed and accuracy. By slowing down on tricky questions, test-takers are exerting conscious control over a measure that is supposed to bypass conscious thought.
“That cautious, more controllable behavior also lined up better with what people said they actually believed than the automatic process did,” LaFollette said. “It also did a better job predicting people’s stated attitudes, and it did so for about half the topics, compared to roughly 1 in 10 for the automatic process.”
“IAT scores aren’t as simple as they’re often made out to be,” he emphasized. “In short, an IAT score reflects a blend of factors, and part of that blend is more deliberate than the ‘implicit’ label suggests.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study relies on mathematical models to infer cognitive processes from reaction times. While these models are well-established, they are still approximations of human thought and decision making.
“This isn’t a finding that implicit bias doesn’t exist or that the IAT is meaningless,” LaFollette clarified. “We absolutely find evidence for implicit bias on many topics. Rather, it’s a finding about what the score is actually made of.”
“Two people with the exact same underlying association could end up with different IAT scores just because one of them is being more careful on the harder parts of the test,” he explained. “So the score shouldn’t be treated as a pure window into someone’s unconscious mind. It’s a mix, and untangling that mix matters for how the test gets used and interpreted.”
Additionally, the dataset only recorded the final reaction time after a participant corrected a mistake, meaning the researchers could not model the reaction times of the initial errors. The data also comes from a platform where participants voluntarily choose to take bias tests online. This environment might attract a specific demographic that is highly motivated to monitor their own performance and avoid looking biased.
“At its broadest possible overview, I think this paper makes a serious attempt to grapple with a question that’s plagued us since the advent of the IAT: what are we really measuring?” Daniel J. Lee, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware’s Book School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “Indeed, this is something I (and many others) have tried to address in our own work as well.”
“So while I think in general this might be seen as challenging existing work, it actually fits very nicely within some open questions within the extant literature, for instance how does previous knowledge of implicit bias influence scores on future IATs?” Lee added. “As a hypothetical, if I don’t want some psychologist’s test telling me I harbor ill will towards another race, I might very well be more ‘response cautious’ while taking the test!”
This motivation could elevate the levels of response caution observed in the study compared to how people might react in other settings. Future research might explore how different sets of instructions affect these results. Telling participants to prioritize speed over accuracy, for example, could potentially reduce the influence of conscious strategy and isolate automatic memory associations more effectively.
“We’d like to see future (and retroactive re-analysis of past) IAT research separate out caution from automatic association rather than lumping them into one score,” LaFollette said. “The automatic-association piece looks like a promising candidate for a cleaner measure of implicit bias going forward, but it still needs more validation before it could replace the traditional score.”
“We’re also interested in extending this kind of analysis to mistakes people make on the test, and to other tools used to measure implicit attitudes,” he added. “Future research should also carefully consider the caution component, as caution may be more predictive of people’s real-world behaviors and therefore critical for understanding how people act on or suppress their biases.”
To help advance this work, the researchers have made their computational methods accessible to others.
“For researchers or readers interested in trying this kind of modeling themselves, I’d also point them to FlexDDM, a tool my lab have developed that makes fitting these diffusion models much more approachable,” LaFollette noted. “It’s also great for instruction. FlexDDM is available for free on the Microsoft store.”
The study, “Challenging the Mechanism for the Implicit Association Test,” was authored by Kyle J. LaFollette, Doroteja Rubez, Heath A. Demaree, and Amit Goldenberg.
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ImplicitBias #IAT #ReactionTime #CognitivePsychology #ResponseCaution #DecisionEase #ImplicitAttitudes #MindfulTesting #NatureHumanBehaviour #BiasMeasurement
-
DATE: September 15, 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: New study challenges the core assumption behind the world’s most widely used implicit bias test
A new study suggests that the most widely used tool for measuring hidden prejudices might actually be capturing a person’s conscious effort to avoid making mistakes. By analyzing data from over a hundred thousand test sessions, researchers found that people’s tendency to slow down and be cautious is a stronger driver of their test scores than their underlying automatic associations. The research was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Implicit biases are attitudes or stereotypes that can influence our understanding and decisions, often without our direct awareness. To detect these hidden attitudes, psychologists frequently use the Implicit Association Test, commonly known as the IAT. The test requires participants to quickly sort images and words into categories on a computer screen using two keyboard keys.
In a test examining racial bias, a person might first sort images of White faces and positive words using one key, and Black faces and negative words using another. The categories are later swapped, pairing White faces with negative words and Black faces with positive words. People usually take longer to respond during these swapped, or incompatible, pairings.
This delay in reaction time is typically calculated into a metric called a D-score, which researchers use to quantify the severity of a person’s implicit bias. The traditional interpretation of the IAT assumes that this delay happens because the swapped pairings conflict with a person’s automatic memory associations, a concept known as decision ease.
But the delay could also occur if participants simply adopt a more attentive strategy, slowing down to ensure they do not press the wrong key. This alternate mechanism is called response caution. While decision ease operates automatically based on memory, response caution is a conscious, strategic choice to prioritize accuracy over speed.
Pioneering mathematical modeling of the test concluded that bias is driven by how easily people process these associations rather than how cautiously they respond. For instance, a 2007 study broke the IAT into cognitive components and found that real bias lies in the ease of processing information, while response caution was treated as a background testing artifact. This assumption has shaped how bias interventions are evaluated.
Building on that idea, a 2020 study analyzed anti-bias programs by looking at how they altered decision ease versus caution, illustrating why understanding the true driver matters for real-world training.
The new study directly challenges this foundational view by investigating whether response caution is actually a more prominent factor in IAT results.
“The IAT is the most widely used tool for measuring implicit bias, and it’s usually interpreted as picking up on how easily a stereotype or attitude pops into someone’s mind,” lead author Kyle J. LaFollette, a postdoctoral principal researcher and statistical consultant at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s Roman Family Center for Decision Research, told PsyPost.
“But researchers have long wondered whether that’s the whole story,” LaFollette explained. “Some of what shows up in an IAT score might actually come from people being more careful or cautious in certain parts of the test, rather than from the strength of an automatic association. That distinction matters because caution is something people can control, while the automatic association process is supposed to be the part that’s harder to fake or consciously manage. We wanted to test how much of the IAT’s signal actually comes from each of these two things, using a large dataset and a modeling approach built for teasing them apart.”
To test their ideas, the researchers analyzed a massive dataset from the Ideology 2.0 Study, hosted on the Project Implicit website. The dataset included 109,417 unique test sessions spread across 39 different IAT topics. These topics ranged from race and sexuality to politics, age, and economic systems.
For each topic, participants completed the standard sorting tasks, and their choices and response times were recorded in milliseconds. Many participants also completed an explicit preference questionnaire. This allowed them to directly rate how much they liked or preferred one group or concept over another. The researchers then analyzed the data by focusing on the correct sorting choices, setting aside trials where participants made errors.
The research team applied a mathematical technique called a Racing Diffusion Model to the data. This model allowed them to separate the participants’ overall reaction times into three distinct cognitive mechanisms. The first mechanism is decision ease, which represents the automatic activation of mental associations.
The second mechanism is response caution, which captures how much mental evidence a person needs to gather before making a choice to ensure accuracy. The third is non-decision time, which accounts for the physical act of pressing a button or visually registering the stimulus.
The analysis indicated that all three mechanisms behaved differently depending on whether the participants were completing the compatible or incompatible sections of the test. However, the magnitude of these effects varied substantially. When looking at the final D-scores across the 39 topics, response caution emerged as a stronger predictor of a person’s score than decision ease or non-decision time.
Participants consistently slowed their responses down during the incompatible blocks to ensure they were categorizing the images and words correctly. This shift in strategy heavily influenced the final delay that the standard test calculates as bias. The standard D-score metric conflates all of these factors, meaning that the test may be grading people on how cautiously they completed the task rather than measuring their automatic prejudices.
“The role of caution was consistently greater than the role of automatic association, and that held true across almost every one of the 39 topics we looked at, using several different ways of scoring the test,” LaFollette said. “This wasn’t a small or one-off effect. It showed up again and again across very different kinds of topics, from race and age to more abstract ones like attitudes toward novelty.”
The researchers were particularly struck by the uniformity of the results. “We expected caution to matter, but seeing it come out on top across nearly every topic we tested, including some very different from one another, was more uniform than we expected going in,” LaFollette noted.
The team also examined how these cognitive mechanisms related to what people explicitly stated on the preference questionnaires. They found that a person’s stated preferences were reliably predicted by their level of response caution. In contrast, decision ease and non-decision time did not consistently predict these direct self-reports.
This suggests that the same conscious filtering that guides how people answer direct questions also dictates how cautiously they perform on the IAT. Rather than providing a pure window into automatic associations, the test seems to capture how individuals manage the conflict between speed and accuracy. By slowing down on tricky questions, test-takers are exerting conscious control over a measure that is supposed to bypass conscious thought.
“That cautious, more controllable behavior also lined up better with what people said they actually believed than the automatic process did,” LaFollette said. “It also did a better job predicting people’s stated attitudes, and it did so for about half the topics, compared to roughly 1 in 10 for the automatic process.”
“IAT scores aren’t as simple as they’re often made out to be,” he emphasized. “In short, an IAT score reflects a blend of factors, and part of that blend is more deliberate than the ‘implicit’ label suggests.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study relies on mathematical models to infer cognitive processes from reaction times. While these models are well-established, they are still approximations of human thought and decision making.
“This isn’t a finding that implicit bias doesn’t exist or that the IAT is meaningless,” LaFollette clarified. “We absolutely find evidence for implicit bias on many topics. Rather, it’s a finding about what the score is actually made of.”
“Two people with the exact same underlying association could end up with different IAT scores just because one of them is being more careful on the harder parts of the test,” he explained. “So the score shouldn’t be treated as a pure window into someone’s unconscious mind. It’s a mix, and untangling that mix matters for how the test gets used and interpreted.”
Additionally, the dataset only recorded the final reaction time after a participant corrected a mistake, meaning the researchers could not model the reaction times of the initial errors. The data also comes from a platform where participants voluntarily choose to take bias tests online. This environment might attract a specific demographic that is highly motivated to monitor their own performance and avoid looking biased.
“At its broadest possible overview, I think this paper makes a serious attempt to grapple with a question that’s plagued us since the advent of the IAT: what are we really measuring?” Daniel J. Lee, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware’s Book School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “Indeed, this is something I (and many others) have tried to address in our own work as well.”
“So while I think in general this might be seen as challenging existing work, it actually fits very nicely within some open questions within the extant literature, for instance how does previous knowledge of implicit bias influence scores on future IATs?” Lee added. “As a hypothetical, if I don’t want some psychologist’s test telling me I harbor ill will towards another race, I might very well be more ‘response cautious’ while taking the test!”
This motivation could elevate the levels of response caution observed in the study compared to how people might react in other settings. Future research might explore how different sets of instructions affect these results. Telling participants to prioritize speed over accuracy, for example, could potentially reduce the influence of conscious strategy and isolate automatic memory associations more effectively.
“We’d like to see future (and retroactive re-analysis of past) IAT research separate out caution from automatic association rather than lumping them into one score,” LaFollette said. “The automatic-association piece looks like a promising candidate for a cleaner measure of implicit bias going forward, but it still needs more validation before it could replace the traditional score.”
“We’re also interested in extending this kind of analysis to mistakes people make on the test, and to other tools used to measure implicit attitudes,” he added. “Future research should also carefully consider the caution component, as caution may be more predictive of people’s real-world behaviors and therefore critical for understanding how people act on or suppress their biases.”
To help advance this work, the researchers have made their computational methods accessible to others.
“For researchers or readers interested in trying this kind of modeling themselves, I’d also point them to FlexDDM, a tool my lab have developed that makes fitting these diffusion models much more approachable,” LaFollette noted. “It’s also great for instruction. FlexDDM is available for free on the Microsoft store.”
The study, “Challenging the Mechanism for the Implicit Association Test,” was authored by Kyle J. LaFollette, Doroteja Rubez, Heath A. Demaree, and Amit Goldenberg.
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DATE: September 15, 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: Common antidepressants might help liver cells clear a dangerous type of cholesterol
Common antidepressants might help lower a stubborn, disease-causing type of cholesterol by helping liver cells absorb it from the bloodstream. This unintended side effect could eventually provide a dual-purpose treatment for patients facing both depression and an elevated risk of heart disease. The findings were published in the Journal of Lipid Research.
Lipoprotein(a) is a complex particle in the blood that carries fats and cholesterol throughout the body. It is structurally similar to low-density lipoprotein, commonly known as bad cholesterol. However, it contains an extra protein called apolipoprotein(a) that makes it particularly prone to causing blockages in arteries. High levels of this molecule are genetic and affect at least a fifth of the population of European descent.
Traditional cholesterol-lowering medications, such as statins, fail to reduce these specific particles in the blood. The lack of targeted clinical treatments leaves a major gap in preventing cardiovascular disease for many patients. Researchers are actively trying to understand exactly how the human body clears this molecule from circulation.
Cells absorb molecules from their environment through a process called endocytosis, which involves the cell membrane folding inward to swallow outside material. A specific type of endocytosis called macropinocytosis, or cellular drinking, handles the uptake of this particular cholesterol particle. During cellular drinking, the cell membrane extends outward to gulp large amounts of surrounding fluid and particles.
Researchers from the University of Otago and the University of New South Wales, led by Nikita Deo, Sally P. A. McCormick, and Gregory M. I. Redpath, wanted to map the mechanics of this cellular drinking. They sought to identify exactly what stimulates liver cells to absorb the particles.
The research team initially tested a drug called imipramine on human liver cells grown in a laboratory. Imipramine is an older tricyclic antidepressant that previous laboratory studies identified as a blocker of cellular drinking. The researchers treated the liver cells with the drug overnight and then introduced the cholesterol particles into the fluid bathing the cells.
After a short incubation period, the team measured how much of the substance the cells had absorbed. Instead of blocking the process, the drug caused the cells to absorb nearly three times as much of the cholesterol. The researchers confirmed this was an isolated effect by testing regular bad cholesterol, which the drug did not affect.
This unexpected outcome prompted the team to test newer, more frequently prescribed antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These drugs treat depression by blocking a specific transport protein from pulling serotonin back into cells. This mechanism leaves more of the mood-regulating chemical active in the space outside the cells.
The researchers repeated the cell culture experiment using the common drugs citalopram, sertraline, and fluoxetine. Citalopram increased the cholesterol uptake in the liver cells to a degree similar to imipramine. Sertraline and fluoxetine did not alter the uptake levels. A later test with paroxetine showed it also boosted cellular absorption of the particles.
To figure out how imipramine and citalopram caused this effect, the researchers looked at the outer boundary of the liver cells. The cholesterol molecules must anchor to the cell surface before the cell can swallow them. The team cooled the cells to temporarily halt the swallowing process, added the cholesterol, and used fluorescent tags to measure how much stuck to the outside of the cells.
Both imipramine and citalopram roughly doubled the amount of cholesterol anchored to the cell surface. The drugs did not change the cells’ ability to bind to standard sugar molecules used as a control. This confirmed that the medications specifically enhanced the cell’s grip on this exact type of cholesterol.
Because these drugs increase the availability of serotonin outside the cells, the researchers hypothesized that serotonin itself might be driving the surface binding. They added pure serotonin to the liver cell cultures overnight and tracked the cholesterol particles. The serotonin treatment produced the same outcome as the medications.
The serotonin drastically increased both the amount of cholesterol sticking to the cell surface and the amount the cells eventually absorbed. This suggests the antidepressants enhance cholesterol absorption by increasing local serotonin levels. The serotonin then somehow alters the cell surface to make it more receptive to the passing cholesterol particles.
The team also explored why sertraline failed to enhance the absorption process despite being in the same class of drugs. Some forms of cellular drinking rely on a specific structural protein called dynamin. Dynamin acts like a lasso, pinching off the newly formed internal pouches so they can detach and drop into the cell interior.
Previous research shows sertraline can interfere with dynamin, preventing it from pinching off the pouches. The researchers tested this by tracking a different molecule known to require dynamin for absorption. Sertraline blocked this control molecule from entering the cells. Its interference with dynamin likely prevents it from enhancing cholesterol uptake.
To understand the mechanics of the surface binding, the researchers examined specific anchor proteins on the liver cells. They used fluorescent tags to measure the presence of a receptor known to grab the cholesterol particles. Treating the cells with imipramine or serotonin increased the amount of this receptor on the cell surface.
Citalopram did not increase this specific receptor. However, it did boost the presence of an accessory protein that helps orchestrate the swallowing process. The precise mechanism linking citalopram, serotonin, and this accessory protein requires further mapping.
Finally, the team tracked where the cholesterol went after the cells swallowed it. They used chemical markers to see if the cells sent the particles to internal compartments meant for degradation or compartments meant for recycling material back outside the cell. The cells treated with imipramine and citalopram routed the extra cholesterol into the recycling compartments.
The researchers suspect this recycling process strips the harmful lipid component from the particle before sending the harmless protein portion back into the bloodstream. If true, the overall impact would still be a reduction in cardiovascular risk.
This study relied exclusively on isolated cells in a laboratory. The behavior of these drugs and the cholesterol particles might differ inside a living human body. The liver interacts with many different tissues and chemical signals that a petri dish cannot replicate.
Additionally, the concentration of citalopram used in the main experiments was roughly twice the maximum dose prescribed to human patients. The serotonin levels tested were also much higher than typical biological conditions. While the paroxetine tests matched clinical doses, animal studies or human trials are needed to verify if these medications can safely lower this dangerous cholesterol in patients.
People suffering from depression often exhibit higher levels of this specific cholesterol, elevating their risk of heart attacks and strokes. Identifying an existing, affordable medication that manages both mood and cardiovascular risk could simplify treatment regimens for vulnerable patients.
The study, “Antidepressants stimulate lipoprotein(a) macropinocytosis via serotonin-enhanced cell surface binding,” was authored by Nikita Deo, Halima Siddiqui, Katie Peppercorn, Golnoush Madani, Alexandria Rutherford-Blyth, Malcolm Rutledge, Michael J. A. Williams, Sally P. A. McCormick, and Gregory M. I. Redpath.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 07:58AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 07:58AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Join our 90-minute webinar on Therapeutic Relationship-Focused CBT in recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and learn how to use the therapist–client dynamic as your primary engine for clinical change.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 15, 2026 at 07:58AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
Join our 90-minute webinar on Therapeutic Relationship-Focused CBT in recognition of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and learn how to use the therapist–client dynamic as your primary engine for clinical change.
🗓 Sept 23rd, 12:00 - 1:30 ET
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DATE: September 15, 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: Massive study of over a million people identifies hundreds of genetic variants linked to personality
A massive genetic analysis has identified hundreds of specific DNA variations tied to human personality. The findings suggest that the genetic basis of personality is highly consistent across different populations and is not heavily skewed by a person’s family environment. The research was published in Nature.
Personality is typically understood through the framework of the “Big Five” traits. These include extraversion (sociability and energy), agreeableness (compassion and trust), conscientiousness (organization and responsibility), neuroticism (anxiety and volatility), and openness to experience (curiosity and imagination). Decades of research show that these traits are relatively stable over a person’s life and influence major outcomes like physical health, career success, and mental well-being.
Scientists know that genetics play a role in shaping personality. However, the exact genetic mechanisms remain complex, and many previous studies have struggled to pin down how individual variations in our DNA correspond to specific traits. To find these links, researchers use a technique called a genome-wide association study, which scans the entire genetic code of many people to find common single-letter changes in DNA that appear more frequently in individuals with certain traits.
The research team, led by Ted Schwaba of Michigan State University alongside Michel G. Nivard and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob, wanted to test the robustness of these genetic associations. They specifically aimed to determine if the genetic markers linked to personality actually reflect direct biological inheritance. For example, a 2022 study indicated that genetic links for some social behaviors, such as educational achievement, tend to be inflated by the shared environment that parents create for their children. The authors sought to see if personality genetics suffer from this same type of environmental confounding.
The researchers gathered data from 46 different study cohorts spanning multiple countries. The total sample size ranged from roughly 611,000 to over 1.14 million participants for each of the Big Five traits. Participants provided DNA samples and completed validated surveys to assess their personalities.
By pooling this massive amount of data, the researchers identified 1,260 specific locations in the human genome that are associated with the Big Five traits. Of these locations, 824 had never been linked to personality variation before. Individually, each genetic variant has a tiny effect on a person’s character. Altogether, these common variants explain between 4.8 percent and 9.3 percent of the variance in personality across the population.
The genetic signals were highly consistent across different groups. The researchers found similar genetic patterns across populations in the United States, Europe, and Australia, as well as across different age groups. The genetic links also remained stable regardless of the specific survey used to measure personality, and even when a person’s traits were rated by a close friend instead of through self-report.
To test whether family environments were skewing the results, the scientists looked at genetic data from thousands of siblings. Because siblings share the same parents and similar upbringings, comparing siblings isolates the direct effect of their differing genes. The researchers found that the genetic associations for personality barely changed when looking within families. This provides evidence that the genetic architecture of personality is driven mostly by direct biological inheritance rather than the social environments parents create for their children.
The team also looked at whether people choose partners with similar genetics for personality. While a 2023 meta-analysis, a research method that combines data from many different studies to find common results, found that partners often share similar behavioral traits, this new study found only minimal genetic similarity for personality between spouses. This indicates that people do not typically sort themselves into relationships based on genetic profiles associated with the Big Five traits in any major way.
To understand how personality shapes the human experience, the researchers used a statistical technique that relies on genetic data to test for cause-and-effect relationships. They found evidence that personality traits have widespread effects on behaviors and physical health. For example, having genetic variants linked to higher conscientiousness was also associated with a lower body mass index and a reduced likelihood of starting smoking. Similarly, a genetic profile associated with higher neuroticism was linked to a lower chance of healthy aging.
The analysis also identified some effects working in the opposite direction. The results suggest that factors like educational attainment and changes in body mass index might cause shifts in a person’s average levels of certain personality traits. This supports the idea that life experiences and physical health continuously interact with our biology to shape who we are over time.
“To me it is incredibly exciting to see such a huge genome-wide association study of personality,” Jasmin Wertz, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “Personality traits are some of the most fundamental psychological axes on which people differ, but until now we did not have such a large-scale genomic investigation of these traits, similar to what has already been done for other key traits and behaviors. I think it is also impressive from a team science perspective, because the study brings together so many investigators and cohorts to advance the science.”
“This paper offers a compelling illustration of how complex human traits, like personality, are shaped by many many genes, and each one makes a small contribution to a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors,” said Paul W. Eastwick, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis who was not involved in the research. Eastwick, the author of Bonded by Evolution and host of the Love Factually podcast, added, “There is no single ‘gene for’ something as complex as personality; instead, genes play an important role in the aggregate.”
Wertz noted that the massive sample size and the inclusion of different measurement contexts give the results considerable weight. “The findings appear very robust,” she said. “The authors also add a within-family analysis, which shows that the genetics associated with personality are predictive even within siblings raised in the same family, and this analysis helps rule out many of the possible confounding influences that may be present when analyzing unrelated individuals.”
She also pointed out how the findings on romantic partners build on existing knowledge. “One notable finding was that assortative mating the tendency of people to pick romantic partners they resemble was very low in this study,” Wertz explained. “It doesn’t necessarily challenge previous findings, because the degree of spousal similarity in personality is not that high in other samples either, but it is an interesting extension using this unusually large genetic study.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The genetic scores used in this study cannot predict an individual person’s personality or future behavior. These genetic associations operate as probabilities across large groups of people, not as deterministic rules for any single individual.
“General readers often think of genetic influences as implying that something is set in stone, and that is certainly not the right takeaway from this, as well as other, genetic studies,” Wertz told PsyPost. “The genetic influences identified here, as well as in previous studies of personality, are far from 100%, leaving much room for non-genetic influences. In addition, even the genetic influences that have been observed likely interact with a person’s environment in shaping their personality.”
Indeed, the 4.8 to 9.3 percent heritability found here, a measure of how much of the differences in a trait between people can be explained by their genes, only accounts for common genetic variants. Previous research using different methods, such as studies involving identical twins, estimates that genetics overall account for roughly 40 to 60 percent of personality differences. This suggests that rare genetic variants and complex interactions between genes likely account for the remaining biological influence.
In the end, while the researchers found that genetic associations for personality are relatively unconfounded by the family environment, a person’s surroundings still play a massive role in their development. Going forward, Wertz is eager to see how these new genetic tools might help untangle that process. She specifically pointed to the potential of polygenic scores, which are single numbers that estimate how likely a person is to have a trait based on thousands of their genetic variants. “I’m excited to see the polygenic scores used from this GWAS in follow-on research, such as in research on how personality traits develop from childhood to adulthood, or in studies that examine why people’s personality traits are so strongly linked with important life outcomes, such as health and employment outcomes,” she said.
The study, “Robust inference and correlates from genetic associations with personality,” was authored by Ted Schwaba, Margaret L. Clapp Sullivan, Wonuola A. Akingbuwa, Kerli Ilves, Peter T. Tanksley, Camille M. Williams, Yavor Dragostinov, Travis T. Mallard, Justin D. Tubbs, Wangjingyi Liao, Lindsay S. Ackerman, Josephine C. M. Fealy, Gibran Hemani, Javier de la Fuente, George Davey Smith, Priya Gupta, Murray B. Stein, Joel Gelernter, Daniel F. Levey, Urmo Võsa, Liisi Ausmees, Anu Realo, the Estonian Biobank Research Team, Mariliis Vaht, Jüri Allik, Tõnu Esko, René Mõttus, Uku Vainik, Gudrun A. Jonsdottir, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Árni Freyr Gunnarsson, Gyda Bjornsdottir, Thorgeir E. Thorgeirsson, Hreinn Stefansson, Kari Stefansson, Rosa Cheesman, Qi Qin, Elizabeth C. Corfield, Helga Ask, Fartein Ask Torvik, Eivind Ystrom, Martin Tesli, Dorret I. Boomsma, Eco J. C. de Geus, Jouke-Jan Hottenga, Dener Cardoso Melo, Harold Snieder, Catharina A. Hartman, Charley Xia, Archie Campbell, Michelle Luciano, Ian J. Deary, W. David Hill, Seon-Kyeong Jang, Scott I. Vrieze, Gonçalo Abecasis, Michelle K. Lupton, Brittany L. Mitchell, Petra V. Viher, Lucía Colodro-Conde, Nicholas G. Martin, Sarah E. Medland, Eske M. Derks, Briar Wormington, Jaakko Kaprio, Karri Silventoinen, Teemu Palviainen, Agnieszka Musial, Kaili Rimfeld, Robert Plomin, Margherita Malanchini, Danielle M. Dick, Fazil Aliev, the COGA Collaborators, The Spit for Science Working Group, Laura W. Wesseldijk, Fredrik Ullén, Miriam A. Mosing, Henry R. Kranzler, Yaira Nunez, Sarah Beck, Renato Polimanti, Tobias Edwards, Alexandros Giannelis, Emily A. Willoughby, James J. Lee, Matt McGue, Antonio Terracciano, Michele Marongiu, Edoardo Fiorillo, Francesco Cucca, Angelina R. Sutin, Peter J. van der Most, Albertine J. Oldehinkel, Tina Kretschmer, Andrey A. Shabalin, Anna R. Docherty, Robert F. Krueger, Colin D. Freilich, Binisha H. Mishra, Terho Lehtimäki, Olli T. Raitakari, Mika Kähönen, Aino Saarinen, Henrik Dobewall, Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen, Klaus Berger, Marisol Herrera-Rivero, Fabian Streit, Swapnil Awasthi, Stephanie H. Witt, Johanna Tuhkanen, Katri Räikkönen, Johan G. Eriksson, Jari Lahti, Gail Davies, Paul Redmond, Adele Taylor, Janie Corley, Tom C. Russ, Marina Ciullo, Teresa Nutile, Jun Ding, Yong Qian, Toshiko Tanaka, Luigi Ferrucci, Lea Zillich, Lea Sirignano, K. Paige Harden, Erhan Genç, Patrick D. Gajewski, Stephan Getzmann, Christoph Fraenz, Javier E. Schneider Peñate, Stefanie Lis, Alisha S. M. Hall, Christian Schmahl, Sabine C. Herpertz, Abdel Abdellaoui, Michel G. Nivard, and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob.
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DATE: September 15, 2026 at 05:02AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: 7 Books To Help You Cope With Failure and Move Forward
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/well/books-failure-experts-reccomendations.html
Psychologists and other experts share the works they recommend to people who are struggling with guilt, shame or questions of what comes next.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/well/books-failure-experts-reccomendations.html
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BookRecommendations #CopingWithFailure #MoveForward #OvercomingGuilt #ShameRecovery #MentalHealthReading #PersonalGrowthBooks #ResilienceLiterature #SelfHelpReads #PsychologyBooks
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DATE: September 14, 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: A child’s genetic profile for ADHD can predict their parents’ risk of separation
Children with a higher polygenic index for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder tend to see a higher likelihood of their parents separating or divorcing, according to new research. The findings suggest that families are dynamic systems where a child’s inherited characteristics can actively shape the life trajectories of their parents. The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Family research often focuses on how parents shape their children. A 2017 study demonstrated that parents’ genetic traits indirectly shape the home environment they create for their children. This progression in the literature has led scientists to ask whether the influence might operate in the opposite direction.
A polygenic index is a statistical construct scientists use to estimate the likelihood of a specific trait or condition. It is calculated by adding up the effects of many small genetic variations across a person’s DNA, weighted by how strongly they associate with a trait in large population samples. Rather than measuring an internal biological mechanism or an absolute predisposition waiting to be realized, a polygenic index is a risk estimate that depends heavily on the specific population and environment it was derived from. Evocative gene-environment correlation is the related concept that a person’s genetically influenced tendencies can provoke specific reactions from the people around them.
Researchers have started applying this concept to family dynamics. A 2024 study of adoptees indicated that children’s inherited traits can actively shape how warmly their parents treat them, providing evidence that children influence their own caregiving environment. This builds on research covered by PsyPost in early 2025, which found that early childhood traits related to attention and hyperactivity can alter family dynamics by increasing the likelihood of experiencing childhood maltreatment.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. To understand how children might shape broader family structures, a research team led by Evelina T. Akimova at Purdue University and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad at the University of Oslo examined whether children’s polygenic indices predict major parental decisions. They set out to determine if a child’s statistical genetic risk estimates were associated with parental outcomes like having another baby, getting married, or ending a relationship.
The researchers analyzed data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. They looked at genetic and administrative data from 40,000 genotyped family trios, consisting of a mother, a father, and a child. The data included genetic information derived from blood samples taken during pregnancy and at birth.
The team tracked family demographic changes through Norwegian administrative registers, which provided objective records of marriage, separation, and childbirth. By comparing the child’s polygenic indices for various physical and mental health traits against these family outcomes, the researchers could look for patterns. Importantly, they controlled for the polygenic indices of both parents, allowing them to isolate the specific influence of the child’s genetic associations on the family environment.
The researchers found that for most behavioral and physical health traits, the child’s genetic profile had no statistically significant impact on family demographic events. Traits like asthma, body mass index, and cognitive performance did not reliably predict whether parents would have another child, marry, or separate. The notable exception was the polygenic index for ADHD.
An increase in a child’s polygenic index for ADHD was reliably associated with an increased risk of parental partnership dissolution. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index predicted a 7 percent relative increase in the odds that their parents would separate or divorce. When the researchers broke the data down further, they found that this effect was highly specific to certain types of families.
The association between a child’s ADHD genetic index and parental separation was driven primarily by families with daughters. For girls, a one standard deviation increase in the ADHD polygenic index was associated with an 11 percent increase in the odds of parental dissolution. For boys, the increase was less than 4 percent, and the result was not statistically significant. The authors propose that because ADHD in girls often presents as issues with attention and emotion regulation rather than overt hyperactivity, it may be underdiagnosed, leading to unaddressed behavioral challenges that strain family relationships.
Socioeconomic status also played a moderating role. In families with above-average educational attainment, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index was associated with a 15 percent increase in the odds of partnership dissolution. In families with below-average socioeconomic status, the effect was not statistically significant. The researchers suggest that behavioral difficulties might conflict more intensely with the rigid academic and developmental expectations often present in higher-status households.
Maternal age at the time of the first birth also altered the outcomes. In families where the mother was older than the median age at her first birth, an increase in the child’s ADHD genetic index predicted a 10 percent increase in the odds of parental separation. In these same older-mother families, the researchers also noted a separate effect regarding anxiety. A higher polygenic index for anxiety in the child was associated with a 10 percent increase in the odds that the parents would marry after the child’s birth, suggesting that older parents might respond to an anxious child with stabilizing commitments.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study is based entirely on data from Norway, a country with a universal welfare state, high levels of gender equality, and robust family support systems. The ways in which child traits evoke parental responses might look different in countries with less institutional support or different cultural norms regarding marriage and divorce.
There are a few other things to keep in mind regarding the data. The Norwegian cohort study relied on voluntary participation, which resulted in a sample that slightly overrepresents families with higher socioeconomic status. Families experiencing multiple extreme adversities are likely underrepresented, which could affect the prevalence estimates of certain family events.
The genetic measures themselves also have limits. Because polygenic indices are statistical models rather than direct biological pathways, their predictive accuracy heavily depends on the reference populations used to create them. The polygenic indices used in this study were derived from genetic studies of populations with European ancestry, meaning the findings may not generalize to people of other ancestral backgrounds. Additionally, current polygenic indices only capture a small fraction of the total genetic influence on a complex condition like ADHD.
The study, “When children shape their families: Evocative effects analysis of 40,000 trios from the Norwegian Mother-Father-and-Child Study,” was authored by Evelina T. Akimova, Agnes Fauske, Ruth Eva Jørgensen, Alexandra Havdahl, Elizabeth C. Corfield, Melinda C. Mills, and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ADHDgenetics #polygenicindex #familydynamics #parentaldivorce #childinfluence #evocativegeneenvironment #ADHDawareness #Norwaystudy #psychogenetics #familyresearch
-
DATE: September 14, 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: A child’s genetic profile for ADHD can predict their parents’ risk of separation
Children with a higher polygenic index for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder tend to see a higher likelihood of their parents separating or divorcing, according to new research. The findings suggest that families are dynamic systems where a child’s inherited characteristics can actively shape the life trajectories of their parents. The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Family research often focuses on how parents shape their children. A 2017 study demonstrated that parents’ genetic traits indirectly shape the home environment they create for their children. This progression in the literature has led scientists to ask whether the influence might operate in the opposite direction.
A polygenic index is a statistical construct scientists use to estimate the likelihood of a specific trait or condition. It is calculated by adding up the effects of many small genetic variations across a person’s DNA, weighted by how strongly they associate with a trait in large population samples. Rather than measuring an internal biological mechanism or an absolute predisposition waiting to be realized, a polygenic index is a risk estimate that depends heavily on the specific population and environment it was derived from. Evocative gene-environment correlation is the related concept that a person’s genetically influenced tendencies can provoke specific reactions from the people around them.
Researchers have started applying this concept to family dynamics. A 2024 study of adoptees indicated that children’s inherited traits can actively shape how warmly their parents treat them, providing evidence that children influence their own caregiving environment. This builds on research covered by PsyPost in early 2025, which found that early childhood traits related to attention and hyperactivity can alter family dynamics by increasing the likelihood of experiencing childhood maltreatment.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. To understand how children might shape broader family structures, a research team led by Evelina T. Akimova at Purdue University and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad at the University of Oslo examined whether children’s polygenic indices predict major parental decisions. They set out to determine if a child’s statistical genetic risk estimates were associated with parental outcomes like having another baby, getting married, or ending a relationship.
The researchers analyzed data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. They looked at genetic and administrative data from 40,000 genotyped family trios, consisting of a mother, a father, and a child. The data included genetic information derived from blood samples taken during pregnancy and at birth.
The team tracked family demographic changes through Norwegian administrative registers, which provided objective records of marriage, separation, and childbirth. By comparing the child’s polygenic indices for various physical and mental health traits against these family outcomes, the researchers could look for patterns. Importantly, they controlled for the polygenic indices of both parents, allowing them to isolate the specific influence of the child’s genetic associations on the family environment.
The researchers found that for most behavioral and physical health traits, the child’s genetic profile had no statistically significant impact on family demographic events. Traits like asthma, body mass index, and cognitive performance did not reliably predict whether parents would have another child, marry, or separate. The notable exception was the polygenic index for ADHD.
An increase in a child’s polygenic index for ADHD was reliably associated with an increased risk of parental partnership dissolution. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index predicted a 7 percent relative increase in the odds that their parents would separate or divorce. When the researchers broke the data down further, they found that this effect was highly specific to certain types of families.
The association between a child’s ADHD genetic index and parental separation was driven primarily by families with daughters. For girls, a one standard deviation increase in the ADHD polygenic index was associated with an 11 percent increase in the odds of parental dissolution. For boys, the increase was less than 4 percent, and the result was not statistically significant. The authors propose that because ADHD in girls often presents as issues with attention and emotion regulation rather than overt hyperactivity, it may be underdiagnosed, leading to unaddressed behavioral challenges that strain family relationships.
Socioeconomic status also played a moderating role. In families with above-average educational attainment, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index was associated with a 15 percent increase in the odds of partnership dissolution. In families with below-average socioeconomic status, the effect was not statistically significant. The researchers suggest that behavioral difficulties might conflict more intensely with the rigid academic and developmental expectations often present in higher-status households.
Maternal age at the time of the first birth also altered the outcomes. In families where the mother was older than the median age at her first birth, an increase in the child’s ADHD genetic index predicted a 10 percent increase in the odds of parental separation. In these same older-mother families, the researchers also noted a separate effect regarding anxiety. A higher polygenic index for anxiety in the child was associated with a 10 percent increase in the odds that the parents would marry after the child’s birth, suggesting that older parents might respond to an anxious child with stabilizing commitments.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study is based entirely on data from Norway, a country with a universal welfare state, high levels of gender equality, and robust family support systems. The ways in which child traits evoke parental responses might look different in countries with less institutional support or different cultural norms regarding marriage and divorce.
There are a few other things to keep in mind regarding the data. The Norwegian cohort study relied on voluntary participation, which resulted in a sample that slightly overrepresents families with higher socioeconomic status. Families experiencing multiple extreme adversities are likely underrepresented, which could affect the prevalence estimates of certain family events.
The genetic measures themselves also have limits. Because polygenic indices are statistical models rather than direct biological pathways, their predictive accuracy heavily depends on the reference populations used to create them. The polygenic indices used in this study were derived from genetic studies of populations with European ancestry, meaning the findings may not generalize to people of other ancestral backgrounds. Additionally, current polygenic indices only capture a small fraction of the total genetic influence on a complex condition like ADHD.
The study, “When children shape their families: Evocative effects analysis of 40,000 trios from the Norwegian Mother-Father-and-Child Study,” was authored by Evelina T. Akimova, Agnes Fauske, Ruth Eva Jørgensen, Alexandra Havdahl, Elizabeth C. Corfield, Melinda C. Mills, and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ADHDgenetics #polygenicindex #familydynamics #parentaldivorce #childinfluence #evocativegeneenvironment #ADHDawareness #Norwaystudy #psychogenetics #familyresearch
-
DATE: September 14, 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: A child’s genetic profile for ADHD can predict their parents’ risk of separation
Children with a higher polygenic index for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder tend to see a higher likelihood of their parents separating or divorcing, according to new research. The findings suggest that families are dynamic systems where a child’s inherited characteristics can actively shape the life trajectories of their parents. The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Family research often focuses on how parents shape their children. A 2017 study demonstrated that parents’ genetic traits indirectly shape the home environment they create for their children. This progression in the literature has led scientists to ask whether the influence might operate in the opposite direction.
A polygenic index is a statistical construct scientists use to estimate the likelihood of a specific trait or condition. It is calculated by adding up the effects of many small genetic variations across a person’s DNA, weighted by how strongly they associate with a trait in large population samples. Rather than measuring an internal biological mechanism or an absolute predisposition waiting to be realized, a polygenic index is a risk estimate that depends heavily on the specific population and environment it was derived from. Evocative gene-environment correlation is the related concept that a person’s genetically influenced tendencies can provoke specific reactions from the people around them.
Researchers have started applying this concept to family dynamics. A 2024 study of adoptees indicated that children’s inherited traits can actively shape how warmly their parents treat them, providing evidence that children influence their own caregiving environment. This builds on research covered by PsyPost in early 2025, which found that early childhood traits related to attention and hyperactivity can alter family dynamics by increasing the likelihood of experiencing childhood maltreatment.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. To understand how children might shape broader family structures, a research team led by Evelina T. Akimova at Purdue University and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad at the University of Oslo examined whether children’s polygenic indices predict major parental decisions. They set out to determine if a child’s statistical genetic risk estimates were associated with parental outcomes like having another baby, getting married, or ending a relationship.
The researchers analyzed data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. They looked at genetic and administrative data from 40,000 genotyped family trios, consisting of a mother, a father, and a child. The data included genetic information derived from blood samples taken during pregnancy and at birth.
The team tracked family demographic changes through Norwegian administrative registers, which provided objective records of marriage, separation, and childbirth. By comparing the child’s polygenic indices for various physical and mental health traits against these family outcomes, the researchers could look for patterns. Importantly, they controlled for the polygenic indices of both parents, allowing them to isolate the specific influence of the child’s genetic associations on the family environment.
The researchers found that for most behavioral and physical health traits, the child’s genetic profile had no statistically significant impact on family demographic events. Traits like asthma, body mass index, and cognitive performance did not reliably predict whether parents would have another child, marry, or separate. The notable exception was the polygenic index for ADHD.
An increase in a child’s polygenic index for ADHD was reliably associated with an increased risk of parental partnership dissolution. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index predicted a 7 percent relative increase in the odds that their parents would separate or divorce. When the researchers broke the data down further, they found that this effect was highly specific to certain types of families.
The association between a child’s ADHD genetic index and parental separation was driven primarily by families with daughters. For girls, a one standard deviation increase in the ADHD polygenic index was associated with an 11 percent increase in the odds of parental dissolution. For boys, the increase was less than 4 percent, and the result was not statistically significant. The authors propose that because ADHD in girls often presents as issues with attention and emotion regulation rather than overt hyperactivity, it may be underdiagnosed, leading to unaddressed behavioral challenges that strain family relationships.
Socioeconomic status also played a moderating role. In families with above-average educational attainment, a one standard deviation increase in the child’s ADHD polygenic index was associated with a 15 percent increase in the odds of partnership dissolution. In families with below-average socioeconomic status, the effect was not statistically significant. The researchers suggest that behavioral difficulties might conflict more intensely with the rigid academic and developmental expectations often present in higher-status households.
Maternal age at the time of the first birth also altered the outcomes. In families where the mother was older than the median age at her first birth, an increase in the child’s ADHD genetic index predicted a 10 percent increase in the odds of parental separation. In these same older-mother families, the researchers also noted a separate effect regarding anxiety. A higher polygenic index for anxiety in the child was associated with a 10 percent increase in the odds that the parents would marry after the child’s birth, suggesting that older parents might respond to an anxious child with stabilizing commitments.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study is based entirely on data from Norway, a country with a universal welfare state, high levels of gender equality, and robust family support systems. The ways in which child traits evoke parental responses might look different in countries with less institutional support or different cultural norms regarding marriage and divorce.
There are a few other things to keep in mind regarding the data. The Norwegian cohort study relied on voluntary participation, which resulted in a sample that slightly overrepresents families with higher socioeconomic status. Families experiencing multiple extreme adversities are likely underrepresented, which could affect the prevalence estimates of certain family events.
The genetic measures themselves also have limits. Because polygenic indices are statistical models rather than direct biological pathways, their predictive accuracy heavily depends on the reference populations used to create them. The polygenic indices used in this study were derived from genetic studies of populations with European ancestry, meaning the findings may not generalize to people of other ancestral backgrounds. Additionally, current polygenic indices only capture a small fraction of the total genetic influence on a complex condition like ADHD.
The study, “When children shape their families: Evocative effects analysis of 40,000 trios from the Norwegian Mother-Father-and-Child Study,” was authored by Evelina T. Akimova, Agnes Fauske, Ruth Eva Jørgensen, Alexandra Havdahl, Elizabeth C. Corfield, Melinda C. Mills, and Torkild Hovde Lyngstad.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ADHDgenetics #polygenicindex #familydynamics #parentaldivorce #childinfluence #evocativegeneenvironment #ADHDawareness #Norwaystudy #psychogenetics #familyresearch
-
DATE: September 14, 2026 at 05:30PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
🎙️ One week to go!
The Psych Consult: Second Opinion, hosted by Claire Brandon, MD, launches September 21.
Get a first look at the new video-podcast series with our teaser: https://t.co/0qgabe8YxZ
Stay tuned!
#Psychiatry #ThePsychConsult https://t.co/QVnn8IsfIS
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Stay
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-
DATE: September 14, 2026 at 05:30PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
🎙️ One week to go!
The Psych Consult: Second Opinion, hosted by Claire Brandon, MD, launches September 21.
Get a first look at the new video-podcast series with our teaser: https://t.co/0qgabe8YxZ
Stay tuned!
#Psychiatry #ThePsychConsult https://t.co/QVnn8IsfIS
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Stay
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #ThePsychConsult #Psychiatry #SecondOpinion #MedicalPodcast #TeaserLaunch