#counseling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counseling, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 4, 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: Individuals with psychotic spectrum disorder are less successful in recognizing the emotions of others
A study conducted in Sweden found that individuals with psychotic spectrum disorder were less accurate in recognizing the emotions of others compared to healthy controls. Moreover, among participants with psychotic spectrum disorder, those with a history of interpersonal aggression tended to be less accurate than those without such a history. The paper was published in Schizophrenia.
Emotion recognition is a basic part of human social interaction, helping people understand what others are feeling from facial expressions, tone of voice, and body movements. When this ability is impaired, social situations become harder to interpret and misunderstandings become more likely.
Such difficulties are especially relevant in psychotic spectrum disorders. Psychotic spectrum disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking or behavior, and impaired reality testing. These include schizophrenia and related conditions. The emotion recognition impairments found in individuals suffering from these disorders are not limited to static facial expressions, but can also appear when people interpret changing facial expressions, body movements, or other dynamic social signals.
Difficulties in recognizing emotions in these individuals tend to be particularly pronounced for negative emotions, although positive emotions can also be misidentified. People with schizophrenia may, for example, confuse one negative emotion with another or sometimes interpret neutral or positive expressions as negative. These problems usually reflect broader disturbances in perception, memory, attention, language, and other cognitive processes that contribute to understanding social information.
Study author Gabriela Gavalova and her colleagues wanted to compare the emotion recognition abilities of healthy individuals and those suffering from psychotic spectrum disorders. They also wanted to compare individuals with psychotic spectrum disorders who have a history of interpersonal aggression with individuals without such a history. Additionally, they wanted to see whether their recognition abilities depend on the way emotions are presented. With this in mind, they conducted a study in which they used three modes of presenting emotions to be recognized: visual (videos presented without sound), auditory (sound only), and multimodal (videos presented with sound).
Study participants were 79 individuals suffering from psychotic spectrum disorders and a history of interpersonal aggression (recruited from Forensic Psychiatry Stockholm, Sweden), 72 participants with psychotic spectrum disorders but without a history of interpersonal aggression (recruited from psychiatric outpatient clinics in Stockholm), and 86 healthy individuals (recruited via the State Person Address Registry in Sweden). The study authors note that the healthy control group had a higher level of education than the two psychotic spectrum disorder groups.
All participants underwent a short semi-structured demographic interview and were asked about the presence of the studied psychiatric disorders in first- and second-degree relatives, prior interpersonal aggression, as well as prior alcohol and substance abuse. Healthy participants and those without a history of interpersonal aggression also completed assessments of alcohol and drug use disorder symptoms.
The study authors collected data about the type and number of aggressive acts for the group with a history of interpersonal aggression from crime reports, forensic psychiatric assessments, hospital case reports, and participants’ own self-reports. Participants completed an intelligence test to measure fluid intelligence, which is the ability to reason and solve novel problems, a psychomotor speed test to measure the physical speed of responses to cognitive processing, and an assessment of their semantic understanding, or knowledge of the meaning, of emotion words using a synonym test.
Finally, participants completed a series of emotion recognition tasks called the Emotion Recognition Assessment in Multiple modalities test. These tasks contained 72 unique emotional stimuli displaying 12 different emotions. The participants’ task was to select the emotion being presented in the stimulus.
Results showed that participants from all three groups were able to recognize emotions in the emotion recognition task better than chance, meaning their responses were not random guessing. All three groups tended to misclassify some emotions. For example, they all tended to misclassify pride as happiness or interest, happiness as relief or as fear and despair, irritation as anxiety, and anger as irritation. Some other misclassifications were common as well.
Participants with a history of interpersonal aggression tended to also uniquely misclassify happiness as anxiety. The psychotic spectrum disorder group without a history of interpersonal aggression tended to misclassify pride as irritation, while healthy participants tended to mistake interest for anxiety. Crucially, the researchers found an unexpected and clinically significant pattern: participants with a history of interpersonal aggression were much more likely to misclassify negative emotions as positive emotions compared to both the non-aggressive psychotic spectrum group and the healthy controls. The authors suggest this could lead these individuals to miss negative social cues and fail to withdraw from escalating situations.
Healthy participants were much more accurate in recognizing emotions compared to the two other groups. In particular, participants with psychotic spectrum disorder and a history of interpersonal aggression were much less accurate in recognizing emotions than participants with psychotic spectrum disorder but without a history of interpersonal aggression.
Other than this, participants were more successful in recognizing emotions when they were presented with both video and sound compared to situations when one of these was missing. Overall, among individuals with psychotic spectrum disorder, participants with higher fluid intelligence, those who knew more words for emotions, and those who had better education tended to be better at recognizing emotions. Within this group, women and those without a history of interpersonal aggression tended to be better at recognizing emotions. Interestingly, when controlling for other factors, those with a history of alcohol or substance use disorder in remission also tended to score higher. However, the researchers caution that this might be a statistical anomaly known as a suppression effect, rather than proof that past substance abuse improves emotion recognition.
“In summary, individuals with PSD [psychotic spectrum disorders] and a history of interpersonal aggression exhibit more pronounced deficits in emotion recognition than those with PSD alone. This underscores the potential value of incorporating emotion recognition assessment and training into clinical interventions to reduce aggression risk and improve social functioning in individuals with PSD,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychological specificities of individuals with psychotic spectrum disorders. However, it should be noted that all participants with these disorders were recruited from Stockholm, Sweden. Results in other cultural groups might differ.
The paper, “Emotion recognition misclassification patterns in individuals with psychotic spectrum disorders and history of interpersonal aggression,” was authored by Gabriela Gavalova, Petri Laukka, Lennart Högman, Malin V. Källman, Marianne Kristiansson, Märta Wallinius, Håkan Fischer, and Anette G. M. Johansson.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionRecognition #PsychoticSpectrumDisorders #SchizophreniaResearch #AggressionHistory #SocialCognition #MentalHealthAwareness #EmotionProcessing #ForensicPsychiatry #SwedenStudy #ClinicalInterventions
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DATE: September 4, 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: Treatment-resistant depression linked to reduced brain entropy
People who suffer from depression that does not respond to standard treatments may experience a loss of complexity in their resting brain activity. A recent brain imaging study found that patients with treatment-resistant depression display reduced neural entropy, meaning their brain signals are more rigid and less unpredictable than those of healthy individuals. The research, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggests that system-wide reductions in brain flexibility could serve as a biological marker for this severe form of the illness.
Major depressive disorder is a chronic condition that ranks among the leading causes of disability worldwide. While many patients find relief through standard medications, a substantial portion do not. Treatment-resistant depression is typically diagnosed when a patient fails to achieve remission after at least two adequate trials of antidepressant therapy.
Individuals dealing with this form of depression often experience severe symptoms, including persistent low mood, an inability to feel pleasure, and cognitive difficulties. They also face a higher risk of relapse and suicidal thoughts. Understanding the biological mechanisms behind this resistance to treatment is a major goal for psychiatric research.
To explore these underlying mechanisms, researchers often look at brain entropy. In the context of neuroscience, entropy refers to the level of complexity, irregularity, and unpredictability in spontaneous brain signals. A healthy brain exhibits high entropy, which allows it to flexibly adapt to new information, process emotions, and perform cognitive tasks.
Conversely, lower brain entropy indicates a more constrained and stereotyped pattern of brain activity. Previous imaging studies have linked lower entropy to poorer emotional regulation and cognitive rigidity. However, the concept had not been extensively mapped in individuals specifically diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression.
A team of scientists based at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan conducted the recent investigation. The study was led by researchers Wei-Chen Lin and Li-Kai Cheng, alongside senior author Mu-Hong Chen. They wanted to see if the severe clinical features of treatment-resistant depression were reflected in a loss of neural complexity across specific brain networks.
The researchers recruited 48 adults diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression and 38 healthy adults with no history of psychiatric disorders. The patients with depression had all failed to respond to at least three adequate courses of antidepressants, classifying their condition as moderately treatment-resistant. Both groups were matched in terms of age and sex distribution.
To measure brain entropy, all participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. This type of brain scan tracks blood oxygenation levels in the brain over time. Because active brain regions require more oxygen, these fluctuating blood oxygen levels serve as a proxy for neural activity.
During the scans, participants were instructed to simply rest with their eyes closed, stay awake, and let their minds wander. This allowed the researchers to capture the brain’s spontaneous, baseline activity rather than its response to a specific task. The team then calculated the sample entropy of these brain signals across 166 distinct anatomical regions.
Sample entropy is a mathematical formula that quantifies how unpredictable a time series is. The researchers applied two different mathematical thresholds to their entropy calculations. One threshold was more permissive, designed to catch the most robust and pronounced drops in brain complexity. The other was more stringent, designed to detect subtle, widespread reductions in signal irregularity.
Using the more permissive threshold, the researchers found that patients with treatment-resistant depression exhibited lower brain entropy in three specific areas. These included the right angular gyrus, the left cerebellar Crus II, and the median raphe nucleus. The median raphe nucleus is located in the brainstem and serves as a major source of serotonin, a chemical messenger heavily involved in mood regulation. The right angular gyrus and cerebellar Crus II help integrate sensory information and support social and emotional processing.
When the researchers applied the more stringent threshold, they observed a much broader pattern of reduced entropy. The patients displayed lower neural complexity across 24 distinct brain regions compared to the healthy adults. This widespread reduction affected several large-scale brain systems, including the default mode network, the salience network, and the reward network. These systems collectively govern how humans process emotions, assign value to external stimuli, and navigate social environments.
Affected regions within these networks included the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with decision making and cognitive control. The researchers also saw reduced entropy in the thalamus, a central hub that relays sensory signals, and the nucleus accumbens, a key node in the brain’s reward circuitry. This extensive pattern suggests that treatment-resistant depression involves a global disruption of neural flexibility rather than an isolated defect in a single anatomical structure.
The researchers also looked for relationships between entropy levels and the severity of a patient’s treatment resistance. They noticed a preliminary trend in a specific part of the cerebellum where higher entropy correlated with more severe treatment resistance. The researchers suspect this might represent the brain attempting to compensate for dysfunction elsewhere, though the finding was not statistically significant after adjusting for multiple mathematical comparisons.
The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning the researchers observed the participants at a single point in time. Because of this, it is impossible to determine whether reduced brain entropy contributes to the development of treatment-resistant depression or if the prolonged illness causes the brain to lose its complexity. Tracking patients over several years could help clarify the direction of this relationship.
Another detail to consider is the use of medication among the study participants. All the patients with depression were taking antidepressants during the brain scans, and many were taking additional medications such as mood stabilizers or atypical antipsychotics. While this reflects the reality of treating severe depression, it leaves open the possibility that the medications themselves might influence the complexity of resting brain signals.
The research team also did not include a control group of patients whose depression responds well to standard treatments. Without this group, it is difficult to isolate which entropy reductions are unique to treatment resistance versus those that are common to depression in general. Future studies comparing treatment-resistant patients directly with treatment-responsive patients could highlight the specific biological signatures of treatment failure.
Finally, the researchers noted the need for accompanying cognitive and behavioral tests in future work. Incorporating detailed psychological assessments alongside brain scans would help connect the observed reductions in brain entropy to specific real-world challenges, such as memory deficits or emotional blunting.
The study, “Treatment-resistant depression is associated with reduced brain entropy,” was authored by Wei-Chen Lin, Li-Kai Cheng, Tung-Ping Su, Li-Fen Chen, Pei-Chi Tu, Cheng-Ta Li, Ya-Mei Bai, Shih-Jen Tsai, and Mu-Hong Chen.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #TreatmentResistantDepression #BrainEntropy #Neuroscience #MentalHealthResearch #RestingStatefMRI #NeuralFlexibility #DepressionBiology #MoodDisorders #DefaultModeNetwork #SerotoninBrainSafety
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DATE: September 4, 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: Singlehood is increasingly celebrated among women, but the pressure to couple up persists
“Single positivity” celebrates women’s independence, but that approval seems to fade as women age and face renewed pressure to find a partner, according to research published in Sociological Research Online.
Single women have historically been portrayed as lonely, undesirable, or personally deficient because couplehood is treated as the normal and preferable way to live. These judgments are particularly gendered. For example, women may be expected to reach milestones such as partnership, marriage, and motherhood in a prescribed order and within a socially acceptable timeframe. Although being single may be considered normal during young adulthood, previous research suggests that it becomes increasingly stigmatized as women age and their single status is seen as long-term.
More recently, popular culture has promoted “single positivity,” presenting singlehood as an empowering opportunity for independence, personal growth, and self-love. Yet these messages may also reflect a postfeminist and neoliberal culture in which women are encouraged to solve difficulties through confidence, positive thinking, and continual self-improvement.
Alicia Denby examined whether this newer, more celebratory portrayal had genuinely transformed attitudes toward single women in the United Kingdom or whether it continued to preserve the expectation that women should eventually couple.
The qualitative study included 19 single women between the ages of 21 and 52. Participants were recruited through a public advertisement posted on the author’s social-media profiles. Seventeen women responded directly, while two were recruited through referrals from existing participants. Eligibility participants were between ages 18-65 who identified as single; participants defined singlehood for themselves. The final sample included women who had never been partnered, women who were divorced, and women who were dating but not in committed relationships.
The sample was predominantly White British and disproportionately composed of heterosexual women in their twenties. Between June 2022 and April 2023, participants completed life-story interviews lasting from 30 minutes to two hours. Eleven interviews took place in person at locations chosen by participants, including university study spaces, cafés, restaurants, homes, and workplaces; six were conducted through Zoom and two through Microsoft Teams. With participants’ consent, interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, anonymized using pseudonyms, and examined through reflexive thematic analysis.
Women in their twenties and early thirties commonly described singlehood as a period of self-discovery, self-prioritization, and self-love. Being single gave them space to pursue careers, friendships, travel, hobbies, and personal interests without accommodating a partner. Some credited feminist self-help books, podcasts, and social-media content with helping them become more confident and accepting of single life.
Several had become “defiantly single”—rather than entering an unsatisfying relationship simply to avoid being alone, they would consider a partner only if that person added something meaningful to an already fulfilling life. Denby found that this seemingly empowering message presented another ideal women were expected to meet: the confident, self-reliant single woman who had successfully “worked on herself.” Feelings such as loneliness could consequently become difficult to acknowledge because they conflicted with the demand to remain positive.
For most participants, single positivity also had an expiry date. Although women generally viewed singlehood as acceptable or enjoyable in their twenties, many expected to feel mounting pressure as they approached 30 or their late thirties. Partnership remained the anticipated long-term destination, while singlehood was treated as a temporary period of preparation and personal growth. Women who remained happily and voluntarily single in their forties and fifties described having their contentment questioned or dismissed because others assumed that a relationship was necessary for happiness. Single positivity therefore appeared to broaden the identities available to younger single women without displacing the underlying couple norm; women could celebrate being single, but were still expected to settle down eventually.
Denby notes that the sample predominantly included White, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied women in their twenties and early thirties. Consequently, the study could not adequately determine how single-positive messages intersect with race, socioeconomic class, disability, or other identities.
This study shows that replacing negative stereotypes with upbeat messages about singlehood does not necessarily eliminate social pressure. It may simply make singlehood acceptable for a limited period before conventional expectations surrounding partnership re-emerge.
The study, “The Temporal Limits of Single Positivity: Single Women in Postfeminist Culture,” was authored by Alicia Denby.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SinglePositivity #Singlehood #WomenInTheCity #Postfeminism #CoupleNorm #IndependentWomen #WomenAndRelationships #SingleLifeStigma #DefiantlySingle #NeoliberalCulture
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 11:19AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
🧠💊 The latest "Brain Trust" episode is now live! Joseph Goldberg, and guest Anita Clayton discuss how to spot and treat sexual dysfunction in psychiatric care: https://t.co/rnmfNuRQdy https://t.co/ihth3zIpkp
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Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #BrainTrust #SexualDysfunction #PsychiatryCare #MentalHealthAwareness #JosephGoldberg
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People with more social freedom tend to be more willing to put off immediate gratification
People living in societies where it is easy to form new friendships and leave old ones tend to be more willing to sacrifice immediate joy for long-term rewards. This tendency seems to be driven by a stronger sense of personal control and optimism about the future. The findings were published in Emotion.
Delaying happiness is a behavioral concept that describes the belief that sacrificing some amount of current pleasure will lead to greater happiness in the future. This might mean skipping a fun outing to study for an exam, or saving money instead of spending it on immediate entertainment. Behind this mindset is a calculation of whether the future payoff is worth the present cost.
The research, led by Kuan-Ju Huang of Kyoto University, explored how this mindset varies across different countries.
“East Asian cultures are often seen as long-term oriented compared to Western ones due to Confucian values,” Huang, currently a JSPS postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Psychology at The University of Tokyo, told PsyPost. “In fact, the concept of long-term orientation was originally called ‘Confucian dynamism.'”
“I wanted to know whether this future orientation reflects what people want or what they feel they must do,” he added.
To understand these global differences, the researcher focused on a concept called relational mobility. This term refers to the flexibility of social networks within a society. In places with high relational mobility, such as North and Latin America, people have a high degree of freedom to choose their friends, partners, and groups.
In societies with low relational mobility, such as many in East Asia, people have more rigid social structures where it is difficult to form new connections or leave undesirable ones. This rigidity has broad psychological effects. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 indicated that East Asian countries often report lower average happiness than Western nations partly due to cultural tendencies like low relational mobility, which can systematically dampen individual well-being.
Huang wanted to see if this social flexibility also shapes how people approach their future happiness. The idea is that when people feel they have choices in their social lives, they might feel more in control of their life trajectory and more optimistic about what is to come. This optimism and sense of control might encourage them to put current happiness on hold for better outcomes later.
In the first phase of the research, Huang analyzed data from the Global Flourishing Study. The sample included 202,070 participants from 22 countries. Participants answered a single question asking how well the statement “I am always able to give up some happiness now for greater happiness later” described them.
The survey also measured three domains of well-being: general happiness and life satisfaction, a sense of meaning and purpose, and a feeling of balance and harmony in life. Additionally, participants answered questions to gauge their overall optimism. At the national level, the researcher looked at data for relational mobility, national wealth, economic inequality, and how individualistic or collectivistic the culture is.
The results showed that people in countries with high relational mobility were more likely to delay happiness than those in countries with lower relational mobility. Other national factors, such as wealth, income inequality, and cultural individualism, did not consistently predict this tendency once the researcher adjusted for general response biases.
“Surprisingly, people in Japan and Hong Kong were among the least likely to believe that sacrificing current happiness would lead to future well-being,” Huang noted. “This was explained by the especially low relational mobility (how much freedom people have to form and leave relationships) in these societies.”
“In other words, people may persevere and sacrifice in the present in more fixed social networks but not necessarily believe that these sacrifices will pay off in future happiness,” he said.
The data indicated that optimism was a major reason for this link. People in highly mobile societies reported higher levels of optimism, which in turn predicted a stronger willingness to delay happiness. Delaying happiness was also associated with better well-being across the board, particularly with having a stronger sense of meaning and purpose in life.
To build on these initial findings, the researcher conducted a second study to test these ideas with more detailed questionnaires. This online survey included 785 participants, split relatively evenly between Japan, representing a low-mobility society, and the United States, representing a high-mobility society.
Instead of single questions, this phase used established multi-item surveys to measure delaying happiness, optimism, and a sense of personal control. Participants also rated the relational mobility of their immediate social environment by answering questions about how easily the people around them can make new friends or choose their social groups.
The results of the second study mirrored the global data. Participants from the United States reported higher relational mobility, a stronger sense of control, greater optimism, and more willingness to delay happiness compared to the Japanese participants.
Statistical models demonstrated a chain reaction connecting these factors. Living in a high-mobility society was associated with experiencing a greater sense of control and optimism. These two psychological states then predicted a stronger tendency to delay current happiness for future gains.
“Whether you are willing to trade some happiness now for more happiness later is not just a personality trait,” Huang explained. “It is shaped by the social environment you live in.”
“Not everyone has the relational opportunities ‘out there’ that make people believe a better future is waiting for them,” he said. “That sense of open possibility is what fuels optimism and the willingness to invest in future happiness.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first study only had access to relational mobility scores for 15 of the 22 countries, which limits how broadly the results can be applied. Adding more diverse countries in future research would help verify these patterns.
The second study relied on participants self-reporting the social mobility of their surroundings. This method might blur the lines between a person’s own social freedom and the actual, objective flexibility of their broader society. Developing ways to measure relational mobility objectively could strengthen future findings.
Finally, this research relied on data collected at a single point in time. Because of this design, the results cannot confirm a strict cause-and-effect relationship between social environments and psychological mindsets. Long-term studies would be needed to see how changes in a person’s social environment directly alter their willingness to delay happiness over time.
Moving forward, Huang plans to investigate the broader consequences of these social environments. “One line of research I am pursuing is how relational mobility may disproportionately affect people across social stratification,” he said.
“In my recent paper, I found that people from lower social class backgrounds feel less control over their lives especially in societies with low relational mobility,” he added.
“‘Interpersonal wealth’ (having more options in relationships) may be an important driver of well-being alongside financial wealth,” Huang concluded. “Who benefits most from relational mobility, and whether people can have too much of it, are the questions I want to answer next.”
The study, “Relational Mobility Promotes Optimism and Willingness to Delay Happiness,” was authored by Kuan-Ju Huang.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #RelationalMobility #DelayHappiness #FutureOriented #Optimism #SocialFreedom #LongTermOrientation #RelationalOpportunities #PersonalControl #WellBeing #CrossCulturalResearch
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 11:19AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: U.S. Government Is Rolling Out AI Interviews for Some Hires
Source: CBS News - U.S. News
The U.S. government, which employs nearly 2 million people, will begin using artificial intelligence in the interview process for some job applicants in the coming days, according to officials. The change came last week from the Office of Personnel Management—the government's Human Resources unit—which issued guidance nudging agencies to use AI in the hiring process, but it called for human oversight, especially in certain crucial personnel...
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AIinHiring #GovernmentHiring #AIFutureOfWork #HiringTechnology #OfficeOfPersonnelManagement #GSHiring #AIInterview #PublicSectorTech #HRTech #WorkforceAutomation
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 11:19AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: A Focus on Appearance Increases Benevolent Sexism in Men and Women
Source: PsyPost
New research suggests that when men and women focus on their physical appearance, they tend to become more supportive of benevolent sexism. These findings indicate that everyday situations emphasizing how we look might inadvertently reinforce traditional gender roles and preserve the societal status quo. The study, published in Japanese Journal of Social Psychology, used a simulated online shopping platform to induce a focus on appearance.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AFocusOnAppearance #BenevolentSexism #GenderStudies #SocialPsychology #AppearanceFocus #MenAndWomen #GenderRoles #SocietalStatusQuo #OnlineShoppingExperiment #PsychologyResearch
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 10:36AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Gloria Steinem, Trailblazing Figure in Women's Movement, Dies at 92
Source: CBS News - U.S. News
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women's movement in the latter half of the 20th century, died yesterday at the age of 92. Steinem "was one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality," former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday. In 2013, Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and in 2019, the Freedom Award from the National Civil...
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GloriaSteinem #WomensMovement #Feminism #MsMagazine #Equality #Trailblazer #WomenEmpowerment #CivilRights #PresidentialMedalOfFreedom #HerStory
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 11:18AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Global Warming Will Top 1.5-Degree Limit, U.N. Reports
Source: PBS News Hour
In a first-of-its-kind report issued Wednesday, the United Nations has said that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst of global warming's harms. Now, the world must figure out how to get temperatures below the danger zone and back to safety, officials warn. Earth is soon going to exceed the safe temperature threshold agreed upon by the world in the 2015 Paris climate agreement because of warming from the burning of coal, oil,...
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 10:36AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Gloria Steinem, Trailblazing Figure in Women's Movement, Dies at 92
Source: CBS News - U.S. News
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women's movement in the latter half of the 20th century, died yesterday at the age of 92. Steinem "was one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality," former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday. In 2013, Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and in 2019, the Freedom Award from the National Civil...
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GloriaSteinem #WomensMovement #Feminism #MsMagazine #Equality #Trailblazer #WomenEmpowerment #CivilRights #PresidentialMedalOfFreedom #HerStory
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 10:36AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Gloria Steinem, Trailblazing Figure in Women's Movement, Dies at 92
Source: CBS News - U.S. News
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women's movement in the latter half of the 20th century, died yesterday at the age of 92. Steinem "was one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality," former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday. In 2013, Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and in 2019, the Freedom Award from the National Civil...
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GloriaSteinem #WomensMovement #Feminism #MsMagazine #Equality #Trailblazer #WomenEmpowerment #CivilRights #PresidentialMedalOfFreedom #HerStory
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DATE: September 4, 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: Gentle rocking beds could offer a new way to treat insomnia
URL: https://www.psypost.org/gentle-rocking-beds-could-offer-a-new-way-to-treat-insomnia/
For adults who struggle to stay asleep, a bed that sways back and forth gently throughout the night might offer a path to a better night of rest. A small study reveals that continuous, slow rocking reduces nighttime awakenings and improves overall sleep quality in people with insomnia symptoms. The research was published in the Journal of Sleep Research.
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder defined by a persistent difficulty falling asleep or returning to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. These disruptions lead to daytime fatigue, mood changes, and trouble concentrating. The standard clinical treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy, a psychological intervention that targets anxiety around sleep and helps correct unhelpful bedtime habits. While this therapy helps many people feel better about their sleep, it does not always resolve the physiological disruptions that show up on brain monitors.
Normal sleep progresses through a highly structured series of stages, moving from light sleep to deep sleep, and finally to rapid eye movement sleep. Deep sleep is characterized by specific patterns of electrical activity in the brain, notably slow oscillations and sleep spindles. Slow oscillations are large, rolling brain waves, while sleep spindles are brief, rapid bursts of electrical activity. These distinct rhythms help the brain block out environmental noise and process the events of the previous day.
Researchers Aurore A. Perrault, Sophie Schwartz, and Laurence Bayer from the University of Geneva and their colleagues wanted to see if physical motion could directly influence these brain rhythms in a clinical population. Prior experiments by the team showed that healthy sleepers spent more time in deep sleep and had enhanced memory recall after sleeping on a gently rocking bed. Studies in mice indicate that this effect is driven by the vestibular system, a sensory network in the inner ear that detects movement and balance. When a person rocks, the vestibular system sends a rhythmic physical signal to the thalamus, a brain region central to generating sleep spindles and slow waves.
Because the rocking motion directly stimulates the neural circuits involved in stabilizing sleep, the researchers hypothesized that it might provide a unique benefit to individuals who suffer from chronic sleep disruptions. The team suspected that a moving bed could act as a physiological complement to traditional psychological therapies. To test this idea, they recruited 16 young adults who reported mild to moderate difficulties falling or staying asleep.
The team first verified the participants’ sleep troubles to ensure they exhibited objectively poor sleep. For three weeks, the participants wore movement-tracking wristbands at home to log their natural rest patterns. They then spent a baseline habituation night in a sleep laboratory wired to diagnostic equipment to rule out other medical issues, such as sleep apnea or cardiac arrhythmias.
Following the screening period, each participant spent two separate experimental nights in the sleep laboratory. During one visit, the participants slept on a completely stationary bed. During the other visit, they slept on a bed that moved laterally from side to side in a slow, continuous rocking motion. The bed shifted a few inches in each direction, completing a full sweep every four seconds for the entire night.
Throughout both nights, the researchers recorded the participants’ brain waves, muscle activity, and eye movements to precisely track their progression through the various stages of sleep. The participants also completed questionnaires about their subjective sleep experience upon waking. Additionally, the researchers administered a memory test involving pairs of unrelated words before bed and again the next morning to assess whether the rocking motion affected memory retention.
The continuous rocking motion produced measurable improvements in how well the participants maintained their sleep. Compared to the stationary night, the participants spent 34 percent less time awake in the middle of the night. They also spent about 15 percent less time in the lightest and most easily interrupted stage of sleep.
This reduction in wakefulness led to an overall increase in sleep efficiency, a metric that calculates the percentage of time in bed that a person is actually asleep. The monitoring equipment also recorded a lower rate of sleep fragmentation during the rocking night. This indicates that the sleepers transitioned much less frequently from deeper sleep states back into light sleep or full wakefulness.
These physiological improvements aligned with the participants’ own perceptions of their rest. On mornings following the rocking night, participants rated their sleep quality about 25 percent higher on average than they did after the stationary night. They generally found the rocking motion pleasant and relaxing, and the participants who experienced the largest drop in sleep fragmentation reported the highest subjective improvements in their rest.
The team also looked closely at the electrical activity in the brain to understand how the physical movement altered the sleep cycle. They observed that the side-to-side motion actively synchronized with the brain’s natural rhythms. Bursts of sleep spindles and the lowest points of slow wave activity clustered at specific moments that matched the physical turning points of the moving bed.
During the deepest stages of rest, this synchronization appeared to boost brain activity. The rocking motion generated a higher density of fast sleep spindles compared to the stationary night. This suggests that the continuous stimulation of the inner ear effectively prompted the brain’s thalamus to generate the electrical rhythms necessary to keep the brain asleep.
However, the rocking bed did not improve every aspect of the participants’ insomnia symptoms. The gentle motion did not reduce the amount of time it took the participants to initially fall asleep. While some individuals drifted off much faster on the moving bed, others took longer, resulting in wide variations across the test group.
Despite the changes in brain wave activity, the enhanced rest also did not translate into better cognitive performance. The participants performed equally well on the morning word-pair memory test regardless of which bed they slept in. The researchers suspect this might be due to the fact that the rocking bed had a variable effect on the exact amount of deep sleep each person received, unlike healthy sleepers who tend to experience a more uniform boost in deep sleep.
As a small study focused exclusively on young adults, the results do not necessarily reflect how older populations or individuals with more severe health conditions might respond to the motion. Insomnia encompasses a wide variety of symptoms and underlying causes, and people with high sensory sensitivity might find a moving bed distracting rather than relaxing. The experiment also evaluated only a single night of rocking per participant.
It remains unknown whether the observed sleep improvements would persist over several nights of use or if the benefits might fade as the nervous system becomes accustomed to the movement. Further testing over longer periods will be required to determine if rocking beds could become a practical, long-term intervention for chronic insomnia. If the results hold up in larger trials, rhythmic sensory stimulation could eventually be paired with behavioral therapies to help patients find more stable rest.
The study, “Whole-Night Gentle Rocking Improves Sleep in Poor Sleepers With Insomnia Complaints,” was authored by Aurore A. Perrault, Nathan E. Cross, Thien Thanh Dang Vu, Sophie Schwartz, and Laurence Bayer.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/gentle-rocking-beds-could-offer-a-new-way-to-treat-insomnia/
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Psychiatrists detail mother’s sudden descent into severe psychosis and delirious mania following childbirth
A recent case report published in Frontiers in Psychiatry details the experience of a 27-year-old woman who developed a rare and severe condition known as delirious mania shortly after giving birth. The case highlights how women with bipolar disorder may face an increased risk of complex manic episodes following multiple pregnancies and deliveries. The findings suggest that electroconvulsive therapy can be an effective and rapid treatment for this life-threatening psychiatric emergency.
Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition characterized by extreme mood swings, including emotional highs known as mania and lows known as depression. Following childbirth, women with bipolar disorder experience a heightened risk of recurrent psychiatric episodes. These postpartum episodes typically present as depression or standard mania. Postpartum psychosis is another related condition where mothers experience an abrupt onset of psychotic symptoms shortly following childbirth.
Delirious mania is an unusually severe neuropsychiatric condition that is rarely documented. It combines the hyperactive and erratic behaviors of mania with delirium, which is a state of profound confusion and disorientation. Patients may also experience psychosis, meaning they lose touch with reality through hallucinations or delusions.
Diagnosing delirious mania is challenging because doctors must first rule out a variety of physical illnesses that can cause similar symptoms. Infections, drug toxicity, and severe metabolic imbalances can all produce a state of delirium. Medical teams typically conduct extensive blood tests, brain imaging, and neurological exams to ensure the symptoms are not caused by an underlying physical disease.
Because delirious mania is poorly understood and infrequently documented, it often goes unrecognized in clinical settings. Lead author Bowen Song, a researcher at Sichuan University’s Mental Health Center in China, and a team of scientists documented this specific case to build a medical literature base that helps other doctors recognize the condition. By detailing the patient’s symptoms and treatment, the authors aim to provide evidence on how to identify and manage postpartum delirious mania before it escalates into a life-threatening situation.
The patient in this report was a 27-year-old Chinese woman with a documented history of bipolar disorder type I. She had previously experienced manic episodes characterized by excessive talking, a decreased need for sleep, and impulsive behavior. During her first pregnancy in 2020, she experienced a manic episode with psychotic symptoms following a routine amniocentesis. An amniocentesis is a medical procedure used to test amniotic fluid, and the physical stress of the event appeared to trigger her symptoms.
She was treated with medication and later delivered her first child via a cesarean section without further postpartum psychiatric issues. In 2024, she became pregnant again and delivered her second child, also via a cesarean section. Her mood had remained stable throughout the pregnancy on a low dose of an antipsychotic medication called quetiapine.
On the first day after her second surgery, her behavior changed drastically. She became highly excitable, talked excessively, and showed uncharacteristic aggression toward her family members. Over the next three days, she did not sleep and began experiencing auditory hallucinations, hearing voices mocking her. She also developed paranoid delusions, believing her husband had been unfaithful.
Her condition quickly deteriorated into a state of severe confusion and physical restlessness. She exhibited inappropriate behaviors, such as bedwetting, and became completely disoriented. She claimed to have lived for hundreds of years and could no longer recognize familiar people, places, or the current time.
Her family brought her to the emergency department, where doctors initially attempted to calm her using various medications. These initial treatments included sodium valproate, a mood stabilizer, and propofol, a strong sedative. These medications did not improve her symptoms. Her extreme agitation posed a risk to herself and the medical staff, requiring continuous sedation and physical restraints.
Given the severe and life-threatening nature of her symptoms, the medical team recommended electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as ECT, on her seventh day of hospitalization. ECT is a medical procedure that involves passing small electric currents through the brain to intentionally trigger a brief seizure. This process appears to alter brain chemistry in a way that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain severe mental health conditions.
The patient received daily ECT sessions for the first three days, followed by treatments every other day. After the third session, her mood began to stabilize, and her consciousness returned to normal. She was once again able to recognize her surroundings and interact amicably with her family members.
Following the eighth ECT session, her emotional state stabilized entirely. Her hallucinations, delusions, and severe agitation resolved. She was discharged on the 19th day of her hospital stay and prescribed maintenance doses of oral psychiatric medications.
During a follow-up visit four weeks later, the patient remained alert and emotionally stable. She reported complete amnesia regarding the acute phase of her illness. She remembered nothing from the delivery until her third ECT treatment.
This single account cannot establish that multiple pregnancies or cesarean sections directly cause delirious mania in women with bipolar disorder. Biological changes during childbirth are complex, and individual medical events do not indicate a direct cause-and-effect relationship. The onset of psychiatric symptoms after delivery likely involves a combination of hormonal fluctuations, physical stress from surgery, and underlying genetic vulnerabilities.
These findings also do not imply that standard psychiatric medications are ineffective for postpartum psychiatric emergencies. For this specific patient, standard drugs did not stabilize her condition quickly enough, necessitating electroconvulsive therapy. Different individuals respond uniquely to treatments, and medications remain the standard initial approach for managing acute mania.
During the diagnostic process, the patient’s family declined a lumbar puncture, a routine procedure used to test the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. This meant doctors could not definitively test for autoimmune encephalitis, a condition where the immune system attacks the brain and produces similar psychiatric symptoms. The patient’s rapid recovery following ECT indicates an underlying psychiatric condition rather than an autoimmune disease, but the absence of this test leaves a small degree of diagnostic uncertainty.
Case reports describe the unique experiences of individual patients. They cannot be used to determine how common a condition is within the broader population or to create universal treatment guidelines. They are highly useful in medicine because they document rare clinical presentations, helping other doctors recognize unusual symptoms and consider alternative treatment options when standard therapies fail.
The report, “Postpartum delirious mania in a patient with diagnosis of bipolar disorder after cesarean delivery: a case report,” was authored by Bowen Song, Yiwen Yuan, Zhixiong Li, Zhongrui Ma, Xiufang Yang, and Zhe Li.
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 02:04AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Scientists reveal the hidden instructions that build the human brain
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000308.htm
UCLA researchers have discovered two powerful influences that help guide how the human brain forms before birth. Radial glia, stem cells responsible for producing much of the cerebral cortex, change their behavior depending on how they process glucose and on physical contact with signals arriving from the thalamus. Those signals can alter which types of neurons are produced, including upper-layer neurons that are especially prominent in humans.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000308.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 08:29AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Stanford scientists discover a seafood that can reverse signs of aging
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260902234518.htm
A substance found in edible sea squirts appeared to reverse several signs of aging in older mice. Plasmalogen supplements improved memory and learning, strengthened connections between brain cells, reduced inflammation, and even helped the mice grow thicker, darker hair. Researchers believe the compounds may encourage brain regeneration and protect aging synapses.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260902234518.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:33AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: A longer exhale may push your brain toward bolder decisions
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
Slow breathing with a prolonged exhale made people more willing to take risks by changing heart activity and increasing the brain’s sensitivity to rewards. The findings suggest that something as simple as controlling your breath can directly influence how you evaluate choices.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260904000320.htm
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DATE: September 4, 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: Neuroticism intensifies the transfer of fear and negativity during associative learning
People who score high in neuroticism not only experience more intense emotional reactions to aversive images, but they also tend to transfer those negative feelings more strongly onto unrelated, neutral objects. This heightened capacity for emotional learning provides evidence for how specific personality traits contribute to generalized anxiety and emotional vulnerability in daily life. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Personality.
Our brains constantly scan the environment, learning which objects or situations are safe and which are dangerous. One of the primary ways we learn these associations is through a process called evaluative conditioning. This occurs when a completely neutral item, such as a random geometric shape, is repeatedly presented alongside an emotionally charged item, such as a disturbing photograph.
Over time, the neutral shape takes on the emotional flavor of the photograph. Associative learning of this kind is a fundamental building block of human emotion, as a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicates that repeatedly pairing specific personal attributes with negative social feedback leads individuals to develop heightened anxiety toward those attributes.
While the basic mechanism of evaluative conditioning is universal, individuals do not all experience it with the same intensity. A 2026 study suggests that personal psychological dispositions influence how strongly we form positive or negative feelings toward neutral objects through associative conditioning. One of the most prominent traits related to emotional reactivity is neuroticism.
People with high levels of neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more frequently and intensely. A study covered by PsyPost in 2026 provides evidence that this trait is tied to heightened connectivity between the brain regions responsible for emotional processing during affective tasks.
Another psychological factor related to emotional vulnerability is the looming cognitive style. This refers to a mental bias where an individual perceives potential threats not as static, but as rapidly approaching or escalating in space and time. A person with a high looming cognitive style might view a minor, distant problem as an incoming disaster that is quickly gaining momentum, which frequently leads to heightened anxiety.
The research was led by Darian Faur, an assistant professor at the West University of Timisoara in Romania. His team aimed to understand how neuroticism and the looming cognitive style interact to shape emotional learning.
“Tracking individual differences in conditioning was a preoccupation for behavioral scientists in the ’80s (see Levey & Martin, 1981), but slowly faded away due to developments in both fields that eventually established them as separate research traditions,” Faur told PsyPost. “The lab I am currently involved in (Social Cognition and Personality Assessment from the West University of Timisoara) revived this interest.”
“I was coming from a clinical background with a desire to study transdiagnostic models, and I found in this interdisciplinary approach an excellent experimental gateway to match my own research interests,” he explained.
Traditionally, studies on evaluative conditioning only measure whether a stimulus is perceived as generally positive or negative. The authors wanted to introduce a more specific measurement by asking participants to evaluate exactly how threatening an image felt, and then testing how that specific sense of threat transferred to a neutral object.
To investigate this, the researchers conducted an online experiment with 806 adult participants, primarily from the United Kingdom. The participants first completed standardized questionnaires to measure their levels of neuroticism and their looming cognitive style. The participants then viewed a series of twenty computer-generated grayscale fractals, which are complex, abstract geometric patterns. They rated how pleasant or unpleasant they found each fractal. The computer system then selected the six fractals that each participant rated as the most perfectly neutral, ensuring the conditioning process started from a blank slate.
During the conditioning phase, the participants viewed these neutral fractals paired with different photographs. The photographs had been pre-tested in a pilot study to fall into three distinct categories: positive images, negative but non-threatening images, and negative images that were highly threatening. Each neutral fractal was presented on the screen alongside one of the photographs. To mimic the psychological experience of a looming threat, the photographs were not static. Instead, they slowly expanded on the screen over a period of four seconds, growing by at least half their original size to simulate the feeling that the image was approaching the viewer.
After viewing all the pairings multiple times, the participants were asked to rate the original photographs based on how positive, negative, and threatening they were. Finally, they were asked to rate the initially neutral fractals again to see if their feelings toward the shapes had changed.
The scientists found that the evaluative conditioning procedure worked as expected. Fractals that had been paired with negative or threatening photographs were rated much more negatively than fractals paired with positive photographs. This shift in attitude was driven by how the participants individually appraised the original photographs. When a participant rated a photograph as highly negative or highly threatening, that intense rating directly predicted how negatively they would evaluate the paired fractal.
Personality traits played a major role in shaping these reactions. Participants with high levels of neuroticism evaluated the negative and threatening photographs much more harshly than participants with low neuroticism. Beyond just seeing the original images as worse, highly neurotic individuals also demonstrated a stronger learning effect. They transferred more of that negative emotion onto the neutral fractals.
“The findings from this study suggest that general emotional vulnerability (the trait everyone shares to a certain extent in the general population that makes us respond with anxiety or depression to certain life events) impacts not only how we perceive stimuli with a valence of their own, but also how that valence is further transferred to a neutral stimulus that happens to be in the same environment as the pleasant/unpleasant stimulus,” Faur said.
“In other words, if you are a highly emotionally-reactive person, you will most likely learn to dislike neutral stimuli that were associated with negative stimuli more than a person with lower reactivity,” he noted.
The researchers observed that this effect seemed to be driven mostly by the self-consciousness and vulnerability components of neuroticism, suggesting that an inward-focused cognitive awareness might heighten the associative learning process. “Moreover, for highly neurotic individuals, the study indicates that learning might not only be explained by the conscious evaluation of the valenced stimuli (i.e., I dislike this gray box because it was paired with a bunch of insects that I found unpleasant), but also by the general exposure to negative stimuli,” Faur added.
The results regarding the looming cognitive style were more complex. Generally, participants with a higher looming cognitive style tended to rate all the fractals more negatively overall. However, when the researchers isolated the specific transfer of threat from the photograph to the fractal, the looming cognitive style appeared to have a mild buffering effect. People with this trait transferred slightly less of the threat to the neutral object than expected.
“I did not anticipate the interesting interaction between the looming cognitive style and the evaluative conditioning process,” Faur said. “While this cognitive vulnerability was associated with contingency awareness (and contingency awareness was further associated with larger evaluative conditioning effects), it buffered the valence transfer from unconditioned stimuli to neutral stimuli instead of amplifying it.”
The researchers speculate that because the looming cognitive style causes people to focus so intensely on an approaching threat, they might fixate entirely on the threatening photograph and pay less attention to the neutral fractal beside it, weakening the associative link. But Faur added a note of caution regarding this finding: “It is important to note, however, that these results were uncertain and should be interpreted cautiously, as they require replication.”
Interestingly, this buffering effect disappeared when a person possessed both high neuroticism and a high looming cognitive style. When these two traits were elevated together, the individual’s heightened emotional reactivity overrode any attentional buffering, resulting in a massively amplified transfer of negative emotion to the neutral object.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study utilized a highly controlled digital environment with an artificial zooming effect to simulate looming threats. While this allowed for precise measurements, human emotional learning in real-world scenarios is often messier and more complex.
Another important consideration is the magnitude of these influences. “As per our experience with personality and conditioning models, the moderation effects, although replicable, are very small,” Faur pointed out. “Therefore, personality can be seen as impacting distally and broadly the learning process.”
However, the context of the sample matters. “Another study of ours (which is currently under review) returns much larger effects of the association between neuroticism and evaluative conditioning in the clinical population (anxiety disorders or related), so we further need to identify which mechanisms drive or which conditions amplify the effects of personality on learning,” Faur said.
Additionally, the researchers only measured how threatening the participants found the original photographs, not how threatening they found the neutral fractals after the conditioning was complete. Because of this, the study can only confirm that general negative feelings were transferred to the fractals, rather than a specific sense of physical threat.
Future studies could build on this work by testing these personality interactions in more ecological settings or by asking participants to rate the threat level of the conditioned objects. Exploring how different relational cues alter the way threats are learned could offer deeper insights into how anxiety disorders develop and how they might be treated.
“My intention is to use conditioning paradigms (and other learning frameworks) as experimental proxies for studying how personality and cognition interact to produce psychopathology,” Faur concluded.
The study, “Beyond the Moderating Role of Neuroticism on Evaluative Conditioning: Threat Appraisal,” was authored by Darian Faur and Florin Alin Sava.
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DATE: September 4, 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: Neuroticism intensifies the transfer of fear and negativity during associative learning
People who score high in neuroticism not only experience more intense emotional reactions to aversive images, but they also tend to transfer those negative feelings more strongly onto unrelated, neutral objects. This heightened capacity for emotional learning provides evidence for how specific personality traits contribute to generalized anxiety and emotional vulnerability in daily life. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Personality.
Our brains constantly scan the environment, learning which objects or situations are safe and which are dangerous. One of the primary ways we learn these associations is through a process called evaluative conditioning. This occurs when a completely neutral item, such as a random geometric shape, is repeatedly presented alongside an emotionally charged item, such as a disturbing photograph.
Over time, the neutral shape takes on the emotional flavor of the photograph. Associative learning of this kind is a fundamental building block of human emotion, as a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicates that repeatedly pairing specific personal attributes with negative social feedback leads individuals to develop heightened anxiety toward those attributes.
While the basic mechanism of evaluative conditioning is universal, individuals do not all experience it with the same intensity. A 2026 study suggests that personal psychological dispositions influence how strongly we form positive or negative feelings toward neutral objects through associative conditioning. One of the most prominent traits related to emotional reactivity is neuroticism.
People with high levels of neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more frequently and intensely. A study covered by PsyPost in 2026 provides evidence that this trait is tied to heightened connectivity between the brain regions responsible for emotional processing during affective tasks.
Another psychological factor related to emotional vulnerability is the looming cognitive style. This refers to a mental bias where an individual perceives potential threats not as static, but as rapidly approaching or escalating in space and time. A person with a high looming cognitive style might view a minor, distant problem as an incoming disaster that is quickly gaining momentum, which frequently leads to heightened anxiety.
The research was led by Darian Faur, an assistant professor at the West University of Timisoara in Romania. His team aimed to understand how neuroticism and the looming cognitive style interact to shape emotional learning.
“Tracking individual differences in conditioning was a preoccupation for behavioral scientists in the ’80s (see Levey & Martin, 1981), but slowly faded away due to developments in both fields that eventually established them as separate research traditions,” Faur told PsyPost. “The lab I am currently involved in (Social Cognition and Personality Assessment from the West University of Timisoara) revived this interest.”
“I was coming from a clinical background with a desire to study transdiagnostic models, and I found in this interdisciplinary approach an excellent experimental gateway to match my own research interests,” he explained.
Traditionally, studies on evaluative conditioning only measure whether a stimulus is perceived as generally positive or negative. The authors wanted to introduce a more specific measurement by asking participants to evaluate exactly how threatening an image felt, and then testing how that specific sense of threat transferred to a neutral object.
To investigate this, the researchers conducted an online experiment with 806 adult participants, primarily from the United Kingdom. The participants first completed standardized questionnaires to measure their levels of neuroticism and their looming cognitive style. The participants then viewed a series of twenty computer-generated grayscale fractals, which are complex, abstract geometric patterns. They rated how pleasant or unpleasant they found each fractal. The computer system then selected the six fractals that each participant rated as the most perfectly neutral, ensuring the conditioning process started from a blank slate.
During the conditioning phase, the participants viewed these neutral fractals paired with different photographs. The photographs had been pre-tested in a pilot study to fall into three distinct categories: positive images, negative but non-threatening images, and negative images that were highly threatening. Each neutral fractal was presented on the screen alongside one of the photographs. To mimic the psychological experience of a looming threat, the photographs were not static. Instead, they slowly expanded on the screen over a period of four seconds, growing by at least half their original size to simulate the feeling that the image was approaching the viewer.
After viewing all the pairings multiple times, the participants were asked to rate the original photographs based on how positive, negative, and threatening they were. Finally, they were asked to rate the initially neutral fractals again to see if their feelings toward the shapes had changed.
The scientists found that the evaluative conditioning procedure worked as expected. Fractals that had been paired with negative or threatening photographs were rated much more negatively than fractals paired with positive photographs. This shift in attitude was driven by how the participants individually appraised the original photographs. When a participant rated a photograph as highly negative or highly threatening, that intense rating directly predicted how negatively they would evaluate the paired fractal.
Personality traits played a major role in shaping these reactions. Participants with high levels of neuroticism evaluated the negative and threatening photographs much more harshly than participants with low neuroticism. Beyond just seeing the original images as worse, highly neurotic individuals also demonstrated a stronger learning effect. They transferred more of that negative emotion onto the neutral fractals.
“The findings from this study suggest that general emotional vulnerability (the trait everyone shares to a certain extent in the general population that makes us respond with anxiety or depression to certain life events) impacts not only how we perceive stimuli with a valence of their own, but also how that valence is further transferred to a neutral stimulus that happens to be in the same environment as the pleasant/unpleasant stimulus,” Faur said.
“In other words, if you are a highly emotionally-reactive person, you will most likely learn to dislike neutral stimuli that were associated with negative stimuli more than a person with lower reactivity,” he noted.
The researchers observed that this effect seemed to be driven mostly by the self-consciousness and vulnerability components of neuroticism, suggesting that an inward-focused cognitive awareness might heighten the associative learning process. “Moreover, for highly neurotic individuals, the study indicates that learning might not only be explained by the conscious evaluation of the valenced stimuli (i.e., I dislike this gray box because it was paired with a bunch of insects that I found unpleasant), but also by the general exposure to negative stimuli,” Faur added.
The results regarding the looming cognitive style were more complex. Generally, participants with a higher looming cognitive style tended to rate all the fractals more negatively overall. However, when the researchers isolated the specific transfer of threat from the photograph to the fractal, the looming cognitive style appeared to have a mild buffering effect. People with this trait transferred slightly less of the threat to the neutral object than expected.
“I did not anticipate the interesting interaction between the looming cognitive style and the evaluative conditioning process,” Faur said. “While this cognitive vulnerability was associated with contingency awareness (and contingency awareness was further associated with larger evaluative conditioning effects), it buffered the valence transfer from unconditioned stimuli to neutral stimuli instead of amplifying it.”
The researchers speculate that because the looming cognitive style causes people to focus so intensely on an approaching threat, they might fixate entirely on the threatening photograph and pay less attention to the neutral fractal beside it, weakening the associative link. But Faur added a note of caution regarding this finding: “It is important to note, however, that these results were uncertain and should be interpreted cautiously, as they require replication.”
Interestingly, this buffering effect disappeared when a person possessed both high neuroticism and a high looming cognitive style. When these two traits were elevated together, the individual’s heightened emotional reactivity overrode any attentional buffering, resulting in a massively amplified transfer of negative emotion to the neutral object.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study utilized a highly controlled digital environment with an artificial zooming effect to simulate looming threats. While this allowed for precise measurements, human emotional learning in real-world scenarios is often messier and more complex.
Another important consideration is the magnitude of these influences. “As per our experience with personality and conditioning models, the moderation effects, although replicable, are very small,” Faur pointed out. “Therefore, personality can be seen as impacting distally and broadly the learning process.”
However, the context of the sample matters. “Another study of ours (which is currently under review) returns much larger effects of the association between neuroticism and evaluative conditioning in the clinical population (anxiety disorders or related), so we further need to identify which mechanisms drive or which conditions amplify the effects of personality on learning,” Faur said.
Additionally, the researchers only measured how threatening the participants found the original photographs, not how threatening they found the neutral fractals after the conditioning was complete. Because of this, the study can only confirm that general negative feelings were transferred to the fractals, rather than a specific sense of physical threat.
Future studies could build on this work by testing these personality interactions in more ecological settings or by asking participants to rate the threat level of the conditioned objects. Exploring how different relational cues alter the way threats are learned could offer deeper insights into how anxiety disorders develop and how they might be treated.
“My intention is to use conditioning paradigms (and other learning frameworks) as experimental proxies for studying how personality and cognition interact to produce psychopathology,” Faur concluded.
The study, “Beyond the Moderating Role of Neuroticism on Evaluative Conditioning: Threat Appraisal,” was authored by Darian Faur and Florin Alin Sava.
-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: September 4, 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: Neuroticism intensifies the transfer of fear and negativity during associative learning
People who score high in neuroticism not only experience more intense emotional reactions to aversive images, but they also tend to transfer those negative feelings more strongly onto unrelated, neutral objects. This heightened capacity for emotional learning provides evidence for how specific personality traits contribute to generalized anxiety and emotional vulnerability in daily life. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Personality.
Our brains constantly scan the environment, learning which objects or situations are safe and which are dangerous. One of the primary ways we learn these associations is through a process called evaluative conditioning. This occurs when a completely neutral item, such as a random geometric shape, is repeatedly presented alongside an emotionally charged item, such as a disturbing photograph.
Over time, the neutral shape takes on the emotional flavor of the photograph. Associative learning of this kind is a fundamental building block of human emotion, as a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicates that repeatedly pairing specific personal attributes with negative social feedback leads individuals to develop heightened anxiety toward those attributes.
While the basic mechanism of evaluative conditioning is universal, individuals do not all experience it with the same intensity. A 2026 study suggests that personal psychological dispositions influence how strongly we form positive or negative feelings toward neutral objects through associative conditioning. One of the most prominent traits related to emotional reactivity is neuroticism.
People with high levels of neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more frequently and intensely. A study covered by PsyPost in 2026 provides evidence that this trait is tied to heightened connectivity between the brain regions responsible for emotional processing during affective tasks.
Another psychological factor related to emotional vulnerability is the looming cognitive style. This refers to a mental bias where an individual perceives potential threats not as static, but as rapidly approaching or escalating in space and time. A person with a high looming cognitive style might view a minor, distant problem as an incoming disaster that is quickly gaining momentum, which frequently leads to heightened anxiety.
The research was led by Darian Faur, an assistant professor at the West University of Timisoara in Romania. His team aimed to understand how neuroticism and the looming cognitive style interact to shape emotional learning.
“Tracking individual differences in conditioning was a preoccupation for behavioral scientists in the ’80s (see Levey & Martin, 1981), but slowly faded away due to developments in both fields that eventually established them as separate research traditions,” Faur told PsyPost. “The lab I am currently involved in (Social Cognition and Personality Assessment from the West University of Timisoara) revived this interest.”
“I was coming from a clinical background with a desire to study transdiagnostic models, and I found in this interdisciplinary approach an excellent experimental gateway to match my own research interests,” he explained.
Traditionally, studies on evaluative conditioning only measure whether a stimulus is perceived as generally positive or negative. The authors wanted to introduce a more specific measurement by asking participants to evaluate exactly how threatening an image felt, and then testing how that specific sense of threat transferred to a neutral object.
To investigate this, the researchers conducted an online experiment with 806 adult participants, primarily from the United Kingdom. The participants first completed standardized questionnaires to measure their levels of neuroticism and their looming cognitive style. The participants then viewed a series of twenty computer-generated grayscale fractals, which are complex, abstract geometric patterns. They rated how pleasant or unpleasant they found each fractal. The computer system then selected the six fractals that each participant rated as the most perfectly neutral, ensuring the conditioning process started from a blank slate.
During the conditioning phase, the participants viewed these neutral fractals paired with different photographs. The photographs had been pre-tested in a pilot study to fall into three distinct categories: positive images, negative but non-threatening images, and negative images that were highly threatening. Each neutral fractal was presented on the screen alongside one of the photographs. To mimic the psychological experience of a looming threat, the photographs were not static. Instead, they slowly expanded on the screen over a period of four seconds, growing by at least half their original size to simulate the feeling that the image was approaching the viewer.
After viewing all the pairings multiple times, the participants were asked to rate the original photographs based on how positive, negative, and threatening they were. Finally, they were asked to rate the initially neutral fractals again to see if their feelings toward the shapes had changed.
The scientists found that the evaluative conditioning procedure worked as expected. Fractals that had been paired with negative or threatening photographs were rated much more negatively than fractals paired with positive photographs. This shift in attitude was driven by how the participants individually appraised the original photographs. When a participant rated a photograph as highly negative or highly threatening, that intense rating directly predicted how negatively they would evaluate the paired fractal.
Personality traits played a major role in shaping these reactions. Participants with high levels of neuroticism evaluated the negative and threatening photographs much more harshly than participants with low neuroticism. Beyond just seeing the original images as worse, highly neurotic individuals also demonstrated a stronger learning effect. They transferred more of that negative emotion onto the neutral fractals.
“The findings from this study suggest that general emotional vulnerability (the trait everyone shares to a certain extent in the general population that makes us respond with anxiety or depression to certain life events) impacts not only how we perceive stimuli with a valence of their own, but also how that valence is further transferred to a neutral stimulus that happens to be in the same environment as the pleasant/unpleasant stimulus,” Faur said.
“In other words, if you are a highly emotionally-reactive person, you will most likely learn to dislike neutral stimuli that were associated with negative stimuli more than a person with lower reactivity,” he noted.
The researchers observed that this effect seemed to be driven mostly by the self-consciousness and vulnerability components of neuroticism, suggesting that an inward-focused cognitive awareness might heighten the associative learning process. “Moreover, for highly neurotic individuals, the study indicates that learning might not only be explained by the conscious evaluation of the valenced stimuli (i.e., I dislike this gray box because it was paired with a bunch of insects that I found unpleasant), but also by the general exposure to negative stimuli,” Faur added.
The results regarding the looming cognitive style were more complex. Generally, participants with a higher looming cognitive style tended to rate all the fractals more negatively overall. However, when the researchers isolated the specific transfer of threat from the photograph to the fractal, the looming cognitive style appeared to have a mild buffering effect. People with this trait transferred slightly less of the threat to the neutral object than expected.
“I did not anticipate the interesting interaction between the looming cognitive style and the evaluative conditioning process,” Faur said. “While this cognitive vulnerability was associated with contingency awareness (and contingency awareness was further associated with larger evaluative conditioning effects), it buffered the valence transfer from unconditioned stimuli to neutral stimuli instead of amplifying it.”
The researchers speculate that because the looming cognitive style causes people to focus so intensely on an approaching threat, they might fixate entirely on the threatening photograph and pay less attention to the neutral fractal beside it, weakening the associative link. But Faur added a note of caution regarding this finding: “It is important to note, however, that these results were uncertain and should be interpreted cautiously, as they require replication.”
Interestingly, this buffering effect disappeared when a person possessed both high neuroticism and a high looming cognitive style. When these two traits were elevated together, the individual’s heightened emotional reactivity overrode any attentional buffering, resulting in a massively amplified transfer of negative emotion to the neutral object.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study utilized a highly controlled digital environment with an artificial zooming effect to simulate looming threats. While this allowed for precise measurements, human emotional learning in real-world scenarios is often messier and more complex.
Another important consideration is the magnitude of these influences. “As per our experience with personality and conditioning models, the moderation effects, although replicable, are very small,” Faur pointed out. “Therefore, personality can be seen as impacting distally and broadly the learning process.”
However, the context of the sample matters. “Another study of ours (which is currently under review) returns much larger effects of the association between neuroticism and evaluative conditioning in the clinical population (anxiety disorders or related), so we further need to identify which mechanisms drive or which conditions amplify the effects of personality on learning,” Faur said.
Additionally, the researchers only measured how threatening the participants found the original photographs, not how threatening they found the neutral fractals after the conditioning was complete. Because of this, the study can only confirm that general negative feelings were transferred to the fractals, rather than a specific sense of physical threat.
Future studies could build on this work by testing these personality interactions in more ecological settings or by asking participants to rate the threat level of the conditioned objects. Exploring how different relational cues alter the way threats are learned could offer deeper insights into how anxiety disorders develop and how they might be treated.
“My intention is to use conditioning paradigms (and other learning frameworks) as experimental proxies for studying how personality and cognition interact to produce psychopathology,” Faur concluded.
The study, “Beyond the Moderating Role of Neuroticism on Evaluative Conditioning: Threat Appraisal,” was authored by Darian Faur and Florin Alin Sava.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #Neuroticism #EvaluativeConditioning #EmotionalLearning #Affective Neuroscience #AnxietyResearch #EmotionTransfer #LoomingCognitiveStyle #NeuroticismAndAnxiety #FractalConditioning #PsychologyResearch
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: A computational model explains the sudden rise in societal division
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-hidden-cost-of-increased-social-connectivity/
As modern communication technology has doubled the number of close social ties people maintain, societies have fractured into deeply divided political camps. A computational model simulating human social behavior shows that simply having more connections past a certain threshold forces communities to splinter into polarized echo chambers. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Political polarization has risen sharply in the United States and other Western nations over the past two decades. During this same period, the average number of close friendships reported by individuals has nearly doubled, a trend coinciding with the public debut of smartphones and mass social media networks around 2008.
Stefan Thurner, Markus Hofer, and Jan Korbel, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, noticed the parallel timing of these two trends. They wanted to test whether the sheer volume of social connections might be driving the ideological divide.
To investigate this, the researchers focused on two well-documented features of human behavior: homophily and social balance. Homophily is the human tendency to seek out and befriend like-minded individuals. When people interact with those who share their views, they often reinforce each other’s beliefs, causing their opinions to align even more closely.
Social balance describes how groups of three people naturally seek comfortable, stable relationship dynamics. A balanced triad occurs when all three people are friends, or when two friends mutually dislike a third person.
Unbalanced triads cause psychological tension or social stress. This happens if one person tries to remain friends with two people who despise each other, or if three people all dislike one another. People naturally try to resolve this tension by either changing their opinions to match their friends or by distancing themselves from people who disagree with them.
To see how these basic social rules play out on a large scale, the research team built an agent-based computational model. In this virtual society, each simulated individual was assigned a mathematical profile representing a set of binary political stances on different topics.
Individuals in the simulation were connected in a network where relationships could be either positive or negative. A positive connection formed if two individuals shared a majority of their stances, acting as a virtual friendship. A negative connection formed if their stances opposed one another, acting as a rivalry or enmity.
The researchers used a mathematical algorithm to randomly select individuals and flip one of their political stances. After flipping an opinion, the model calculated the individual’s new level of cognitive dissonance, measured by how much they now agreed with their friends and disagreed with their enemies.
If the new opinion lowered their overall social stress, the individual kept the new stance. If the opinion increased their social stress, the individual rejected the change, though the model allowed a small probability of keeping it to represent occasional irrational behavior. As individuals updated their views, their positive and negative relationships shifted to maintain social balance.
The researchers ran this simulation multiple times, varying the average number of close connections each individual possessed. They tracked how the distribution of opinions across the entire population changed as the network became more interconnected.
The simulation revealed a sudden tipping point, which physicists call a phase transition. When the average number of close connections remained low, the virtual society maintained a diverse, cohesive blend of opinions. Small friend groups shared similar views, but these groups remained scattered and tolerant of the broader population.
Once the average number of connections surpassed a critical threshold of about five close friends, the societal structure abruptly collapsed into a highly polarized state. The numerous small, diverse clusters merged into two massive, opposing groups of roughly equal size.
Within each massive group, individuals held nearly identical opinions. Between the two groups, individuals held entirely opposite views and maintained strictly negative relationships with anyone on the other side.
Next, the researchers introduced radical influencers to the model. They assigned extreme, unchanging opinions to just two percent of the simulated population. These influencers never adjusted their stances to reduce social stress, but they still formed friendships and rivalries based on ideological alignment.
The presence of these rigid influencers changed the nature of the polarization tipping point. The transition from a cohesive society to a divided one became gradual rather than sudden. However, the splintering into opposing echo chambers began at an even lower threshold, occurring when individuals averaged just four and a half close connections.
To test if their model reflected reality, the research team compared their simulated results to real-world survey data. They analyzed data from large, multi-year surveys, including the Pew Research Center, which track both political ideology and the average number of close friendships among thousands of respondents.
The empirical data showed that ideological polarization in the United States remained relatively low and stable before 2010. Shortly after that time, the average number of close social ties increased, and polarization spiked rapidly.
The researchers found that their computational model accurately predicted both the timing and the magnitude of this real-world polarization spike. The model required no outside factors like economic changes or political campaigns to explain the divide. The mathematical rules of homophily and social balance, combined with an increasing number of social ties, were enough to produce the exact polarization trend seen in the survey data.
The study does present certain caveats. The computational model assumes every individual has the exact same sensitivity to cognitive dissonance and social stress. In reality, human beings display varied levels of tolerance for disagreement and differing levels of political engagement.
The simulation also uses a relatively fixed network structure. While relationships can switch between positive and negative, the underlying web of who knows whom does not fluidly dissolve and rewire over time. The authors note that real social media platforms use recommendation algorithms that constantly suggest new connections, which might amplify the clustering effect beyond what the current model captures.
One concerning finding from the model is a hysteresis effect, meaning the process is difficult to reverse. Once a society crosses the connectivity threshold and becomes highly polarized, simply reducing the number of connections back to the original level will not depolarize the population. A fractured society must drop its connectivity far below the initial tipping point to restore ideological cohesion.
Since reducing human connectivity is likely impossible in the digital age, the authors suggest alternative ways to raise the critical threshold. They suggest that educational efforts could train individuals to have a higher tolerance for opposing opinions, which mathematically prevents the phase transition. Disrupting the reach of radical influencers through content moderation could also delay the onset of extreme societal division.
The study, “Why more social interactions lead to more polarization in societies,” was authored by Stefan Thurner, Markus Hofer, and Jan Korbel.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-hidden-cost-of-increased-social-connectivity/
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DATE: September 4, 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: Regular coffee beats decaf in protecting the brain from chronic stress, mouse study finds
Regular coffee consumption might do more than just wake you up; it appears to protect the brain against the damaging effects of chronic stress. A new study in mice found that drinking caffeinated coffee prevented stress-induced memory loss and mood deterioration, while decaffeinated coffee offered no such benefits. The findings, published in Neurobiology of Stress, suggest that caffeine is the primary ingredient responsible for coffee’s mood-protecting properties.
For years, researchers have tried to understand the relationship between dietary habits and mental health. Epidemiological evidence frequently points to coffee as a protective beverage. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 indicated that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of mood and stress disorders. These population studies raised an interesting question about which specific parts of the complex beverage drive these benefits.
Scientific investigations have built a case for caffeine as the active ingredient. As an example, a 2011 study of women found that drinking regular caffeinated coffee was linked to a lower risk of depression, whereas decaffeinated coffee offered no such protection. Following this, a 2015 study in mice demonstrated that pure caffeine prevents the mood and memory problems normally triggered by long-term stress. Yet, a 2018 analysis showed that decaf coffee still contains nearly all of the same healthy antioxidants as regular coffee, leaving scientists wondering if other nutrients in the beverage also played a role.
To settle whether caffeine is truly the essential ingredient for stress resilience, Ângelo R. Tomé and Rodrigo A. Cunha of the University of Coimbra led a research team to directly compare the effects of regular and decaffeinated coffee. They focused on how these beverages affected mice exposed to chronic unpredictable stress.
Chronic unpredictable stress is a laboratory model used to mimic human depression and anxiety. By exposing animals to mild, changing stressors over a period of several weeks, scientists can observe the resulting emotional and cognitive decline. The research team also wanted to look closely at changes in the brain, specifically measuring long-term potentiation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Long-term potentiation is a process where the connections between neurons strengthen, serving as a cellular foundation for learning and memory. This activity is heavily concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region dedicated to forming memories. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a protein that acts like a fertilizer for the brain, helping neurons grow and survive. The researchers measured this protein in the frontal cortex, an area heavily involved in complex behaviors and emotional regulation.
The research team studied 24 adult mice, dividing them into four groups. One group drank water and experienced no stress. The other three groups underwent three weeks of chronic unpredictable stress. During this time, they experienced random daily stressors, such as damp bedding, a brief cold bath, or having their cage tilted. One of the stressed groups drank regular water, another drank a caffeinated coffee extract, and the final group drank a decaffeinated coffee extract.
The mice received their respective beverages during their active nighttime hours, starting a week before the stress protocol began and continuing throughout the experiment. The amount of coffee the mice voluntarily drank roughly translated to an adult human consuming about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day, or roughly two to three standard cups of coffee.
Following the three weeks of stress, the researchers put the mice through a series of behavioral tests. They used an open field arena to measure spontaneous movement and general anxiety. They also evaluated anxiety by seeing how much time the mice spent in the unprotected open arms of an elevated maze. To assess depressive-like behaviors, the team observed the mice in a forced swimming test, recording how quickly they gave up struggling and simply floated.
The team sprayed a sticky sugar solution on the mice for a splash test, measuring how quickly they cleaned themselves as a sign of motivation and self-care. They also tracked whether the mice lost their natural preference for drinking a sweet sugar water solution. A loss of this preference serves as an indicator of anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure.
Finally, the researchers tested spatial memory. They watched whether the mice could recognize when a familiar object had been moved to a new location in a testing arena. They also tested whether the mice preferred to explore a newly opened arm of a maze they had previously navigated.
The results showed that chronic unpredictable stress took a heavy toll on the mice drinking plain water. Compared to the unstressed controls, these mice lost weight, displayed heightened anxiety, and showed a pronounced lack of self-care. They also exhibited severe anhedonia, drinking much less sugar water than usual. Their spatial memory suffered, as they struggled to notice moved objects or explore new areas of the maze.
However, the mice that drank caffeinated coffee weathered the stress remarkably well. Their behavioral patterns were nearly identical to the control mice that experienced no stress at all. The caffeinated coffee prevented the weight loss, the anxiety, the despair in the swimming test, and the loss of motivation for self-care. It also fully protected their spatial memory.
The decaffeinated coffee failed to provide these robust protections. The stressed mice drinking decaf exhibited almost all the same behavioral deficits as the stressed mice drinking water. They failed to recover their body weight, remained anxious in the open field and maze tests, and showed persistent memory issues. While the decaf group showed very slight improvements in a few areas, these small changes were not statistically meaningful.
The brain tissue analysis provided a biological explanation for the behavioral differences. In the stressed mice drinking water, the magnitude of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus dropped from a roughly 61 percent baseline increase down to just 25 percent, indicating a severe disruption in memory-forming capacity. The levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their frontal cortex also plummeted.
Drinking caffeinated coffee completely prevented these neurological declines. The mice in this group maintained normal long-term potentiation and normal levels of the neurotrophic protein, keeping their brain networks highly functional despite the chronic stress. Just as with the behavioral tests, decaffeinated coffee offered no protection for the brain, leaving the mice with diminished synaptic plasticity and depleted protein levels.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that caffeine protects rodents from stress-induced spatial memory deficits and hippocampal impairment. They also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2025, which demonstrated that caffeine prevents stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and preserves neurochemical balance in mice.
However, the results are in tension with another study covered by PsyPost in 2024. That study found that non-caffeine compounds in coffee protected against stress-induced cognitive deficits. It is worth noting that the earlier research tested isolated coffee polyphenols during early development, rather than using whole decaffeinated coffee in adult mice exposed to chronic stress, which likely explains the differing outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study did not measure the exact circulating levels of caffeine or other specific compounds in the blood or tissues of the mice. Because the animals were housed in small groups during the fluid consumption phase to avoid the added stress of isolation, the researchers could not track the precise individual intake for every single mouse.
The testing was also performed on a mixed group of male and female mice without isolating sex as a variable. Past studies suggest there may be discrete differences in how coffee impacts mood in males compared to females, which this study design could not explore. Finally, translating behavioral and brain changes from mice to humans always requires caution, as human diets, stress factors, and brain chemistry are far more complex.
The study, “Regular intake of caffeinated but not decaffeinated coffee attenuates behavioral modifications in mice subject to chronic unpredictable stress,” was authored by Ângelo R. Tomé, Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, Paula Agostinho, and Rodrigo A. Cunha.
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 04:30AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: STAT+: Lindsay Clancy case exposes dangers of fragmented U.S. health system, experts say
Thirteen medications across 30 different prescriptions. Five clinicians. Two hospitals.
In the four months before killing her three children and attempting to kill herself, Lindsay Clancy desperately sought help for her deteriorating mental condition. But as her ongoing murder trial has made clear, the help she got was scattered across multiple providers who gave conflicting advice and, crucially, didn’t talk to one another.
For Americans with private insurance, Clancy included, this kind of fragmented care is the norm. Not only are providers siloed within their own employers with little incentive to communicate, there’s no universal electronic health records where they can see the totality of a patient’s care and medications. Experts following the Clancy case said if there had been someone in the driver’s seat responsible for overseeing all of her care, things may have turned out differently.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 04:30AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: Opinion: The FDA removed the red tape around one of the best drugs for children with schizophrenia. But the fear remains
On Feb. 24, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration did something it arguably should have done long ago: It removed the elaborate monitoring program that has governed one of psychiatry’s most important drugs, clozapine, for more than 30 years. For anyone who treats serious mental illness, this is welcome news.
But I want to say something more complicated about it, because I have spent a large part of my career prescribing this drug (or trying to) to the most vulnerable population there is: children with psychosis. The paperwork was never really the problem.
Read the rest…
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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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DATE: September 3, 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: Focusing on your appearance increases benevolent sexist beliefs in both men and women
A recent study published in 社会心理学研究 (Japanese Journal of Social Psychology) suggests that when both men and women focus on their physical appearance, they tend to become more supportive of benevolent sexism. These findings indicate that everyday situations emphasizing how we look might inadvertently reinforce traditional gender roles and preserve the societal status quo.
Benevolent sexism is a set of attitudes toward women that appear positive on the surface but are actually restrictive. It involves the belief that women are delicate creatures who should be cherished, protected, and financially supported by men. Unlike hostile sexism, which involves overt anger and antagonism toward women who challenge male power, benevolent sexism relies on traditional gender roles and rewards women only when they conform to those roles. Because it is often perceived as harmless or romantic, benevolent sexism can be particularly insidious.
Focusing on one’s appearance is defined as the situational attention people pay to how they look. This happens naturally in everyday situations, like trying on clothes or looking in a mirror. While it is a normal behavior, focusing on appearance often triggers thoughts about societal beauty standards, which are deeply intertwined with traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. When people think about their appearance, they often compare themselves to these ideals, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy or body dissatisfaction.
A 2010 study demonstrated that when women are exposed to subtle, seemingly positive sexist attitudes, they tend to focus heavily on monitoring their own appearance. Another 2010 study indicated that holding benevolent sexist attitudes is closely tied to how people evaluate their own bodies. These earlier findings established that experiencing benevolent sexism prompts people to fixate on their physical appearance.
Kunyoung Park and Makoto Numazaki at Tokyo Metropolitan University designed a new study to investigate the reverse causal link. They wanted to see if the simple act of focusing on one’s appearance could lead people to endorse benevolent sexism.
The rationale for this question draws on a concept called system justification. This is the psychological tendency for individuals to defend and rationalize existing social structures, especially when they feel uncomfortable or threatened. When people focus on their appearance and notice a gap between how they look and societal ideals, they experience psychological discomfort. To cope with this discomfort and maintain a sense of social belonging, they might lean into traditional gender roles. Endorsing a system that frames men and women as naturally different and complementary helps soothe that discomfort.
To test this idea, the researchers recruited 181 undergraduate students in Japan, consisting of 107 men and 74 women. The participants were told they were taking part in a study about online shopping behavior and personality characteristics. This cover story helped ensure the students would behave naturally without guessing the true purpose of the experiment.
In a simulated online shopping platform, the students first evaluated neutral items like food and daily goods. Then, they were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the appearance-focused condition, participants looked at photos of mannequins wearing swimsuits and chose the ones they found most flattering for themselves to wear at a pool with friends. Men were shown men’s swimwear, and women were shown women’s swimwear.
In the control condition, participants evaluated and selected sneakers for a trip to the shopping mall. The researchers chose sneakers instead of everyday clothing to avoid triggering body consciousness in the control group, providing a culturally neutral baseline comparison.
After completing the shopping task, participants filled out the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, a standardized questionnaire that measures both hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs. Participants rated their agreement with statements on a scale of 1 to 6. They also completed a scale measuring gender self-stereotyping, which assesses how much individuals attribute positive traditional masculine traits (like being brave or decisive) or feminine traits (like being warm or delicate) to themselves. The researchers also recorded participants’ body mass index to ensure body size was accounted for in the statistical models.
The researchers found that participants who imagined trying on swimsuits reported higher levels of benevolent sexism compared to those who shopped for sneakers. Among men, the average benevolent sexism score was 3.30 in the swimsuit condition, compared to 3.07 in the sneaker condition. Among women, the average score was 3.10 in the swimsuit condition, compared to 2.88 in the sneaker condition. This increase in benevolent sexist beliefs occurred regardless of the participants’ body mass index.
Focusing on appearance did not influence scores on hostile sexism. The hostile sexism scores remained similar across both the swimsuit and sneaker groups for both men and women. This supports the idea that appearance concerns are specifically tied to the complementary, romanticized gender roles promoted by benevolent sexism, rather than outward hostility toward women.
Interestingly, the appearance-focused task did not increase gender self-stereotyping. The researchers had expected that women might rate themselves as more feminine and men as more masculine after thinking about swimwear. Instead, participants in the swimsuit condition tended to rate themselves more positively across all traits in general, suggesting they used a broad strategy of self-enhancement to protect their self-image rather than leaning into specific gender stereotypes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. One alternative explanation for the findings relates to heterosexual intimacy. Evaluating swimsuits might have made participants think about being evaluated by potential romantic partners. Adopting the perspective of a potential partner could make the traditional roles of benevolent sexism feel more appealing in that specific moment, rather than the shift being driven purely by a desire to justify the social system.
Another consideration is the use of sneakers as a comparison. Thinking about sneakers might bring to mind physical activity, agency, or independence. This mindset could have inadvertently lowered benevolent sexism scores in the control group. Future research could use different types of control items to clarify this dynamic.
The researchers also note that they did not directly measure the exact level of psychological discomfort participants felt when evaluating their appearance. Measuring this emotional state in future studies would help map out the exact mental steps that link appearance focus to sexist attitudes.
The study, “Focusing on one’s appearance increases benevolent sexism in women and men,” was authored by Kunyoung Park and Makoto Numazaki.
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DATE: September 3, 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: New research questions the role of fertility in women’s indirect aggression
A new study finds that a woman’s competitive behavior toward other women is driven by her individual personality traits rather than changes in her menstrual cycle. The research suggests that fertility levels do not influence whether women act competitively in mating or social contexts. The findings were published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Evolutionary psychologists study how human behavior adapts to ensure survival and reproduction. For women, competing for romantic partners and social alliances is an important part of life. Historically, direct physical fights posed severe risks, as injuries could limit a mother’s ability to raise offspring.
To avoid physical harm, female competition often takes the form of indirect aggression. Indirect aggression includes covert strategies like spreading rumors, social exclusion, and subtle character assassination. These tactics allow individuals to damage a rival’s reputation without initiating a physical confrontation.
Past research has suggested that hormone fluctuations during the menstrual cycle might dictate when and how women use these strategies. Estrogen reaches its peak just before ovulation. This is the phase of the menstrual cycle when women are most fertile and physically capable of becoming pregnant.
Because the immediate reproductive benefits of mating are highest during ovulation, some researchers hypothesized that this estrogen peak would trigger increased competition for romantic partners. Progesterone, another hormone, follows a different pattern. It remains low during ovulation but peaks later in the luteal phase as the body prepares for a potential pregnancy.
High progesterone levels have been linked to affiliative behaviors and a desire for social bonding. During a pregnancy, social support from other women would be highly beneficial for acquiring resources and childcare. Researchers theorized that during this high-progesterone phase, women might compete more fiercely to protect their existing social alliances from potential threats.
Lead author Jaime L. Palmer-Hague, a psychology researcher at Trinity Western University, and her colleagues set out to test these hormone-based theories. They wanted to see if women target their competitive behaviors toward strong rivals at specific points in their menstrual cycles.
The research team recruited 464 naturally cycling women for an online experiment. The participants did not use hormonal birth control, which alters natural hormone fluctuations. The researchers estimated each participant’s current menstrual cycle phase using a technique known as the backward counting method.
This method involves tracking exactly when a participant’s next period begins and counting backward to estimate the day ovulation likely occurred. Based on these estimates, participants were categorized into groups reflecting high or low fertility phases.
In the first part of the experiment, participants viewed computer-generated faces of hypothetical romantic rivals. The researchers used special software to blend existing photos into composite faces. One face was designed to be highly attractive, representing a strong mating threat, while the other face was less attractive, representing a weak mating threat.
Participants answered questions about how they would react to each woman in a romantic context. They rated their likelihood of introducing the rival to their boyfriend, their comfort leaving the two alone, and their likelihood of gossiping about the rival. The researchers then compared these behavioral responses across the different menstrual cycle phases.
Women reported a much higher likelihood of acting competitively toward the highly attractive rival than the less attractive one. However, the menstrual cycle phase had no effect on these behaviors. The statistical tests comparing competitive behavior across the different hormonal phases were not statistically significant.
Instead of hormones, the researchers found that an individual’s baseline personality predicted their responses. Women who scored high on a separate questionnaire measuring intrasexual competitiveness were much more likely to act competitively toward the attractive face. Intrasexual competitiveness is a psychological trait reflecting a general tendency to view same-sex peers as rivals.
Participant age also played a predictive role in the mating context. Younger participants displayed more competitive responses toward the highly attractive face than older participants. Estimated hormone levels played no role in predicting these behaviors.
In a second set of tasks, the researchers explored competition for social alliances. They showed the participants a different pair of computer-generated faces representing potential social rivals. One face represented a strong social threat, designed to look socially dominant and prone to indirect aggression, while the other represented a weak social threat.
Participants answered questions about how they would interact with these women in relation to their own best friend. They rated their comfort with the rival spending time with their best friend and their likelihood of gossiping about the rival. Once again, participants exhibited more competitive behavior toward the strong social threat compared to the weak one.
Just as in the mating context, the menstrual cycle phase did not influence the social competition results. Variations in estimated estrogen and progesterone levels played no role in how women reacted to the social rivals. Personality traits were the only factors that predicted social competition.
Women with higher levels of self-reported dominance and intrasexual competitiveness were more likely to act competitively toward the social rivals. Conversely, women who scored high in friendliness and self-esteem were less likely to engage in competitive behaviors in the social scenario.
The study relied on a mathematical estimation method to determine menstrual cycle phases rather than biological tests. The researchers did not use ovulation kits or blood tests to verify exact hormone levels. This limitation means that subtle hormonal effects might have been missed due to natural variations in cycle length across individuals.
Additionally, the experiment used hypothetical scenarios and computer-generated faces to gauge reactions. Self-reported responses in an online survey might not perfectly reflect how people behave in real-world situations. People are not always fully aware of their own competitive behaviors, which could lead to underreporting.
Future studies might benefit from observing actual social interactions to verify these self-reported tendencies. Larger samples and direct hormone tracking could also help evaluate whether any minor hormonal influences exist.
The study, “Women’s intrasexual competitiveness, but not fertility, predicts greater competitive behavior toward attractive women across the menstrual cycle,” was authored by Jaime L. Palmer-Hague, Jade S. Stobbart, and Benjamin J. Zubaly.
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DATE: September 3, 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: Psilocin triggers rapid neural growth in laboratory study
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
Psilocin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, promotes the rapid growth of neural connections in laboratory settings at a level comparable to established psychiatric drugs like ketamine and lithium. These structural changes to brain cells offer a biological explanation for the rapid antidepressant effects observed in recent clinical trials of psychedelics. The findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to modify its physical structure and rewire its connections in response to new experiences. This biological process plays a fundamental role in learning and memory, as well as in the development of neuropsychiatric conditions. Disorders such as severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder are often accompanied by a loss of neuroplasticity. Over time, neurons in specific regions of the brain begin to shrivel, losing the tiny branches and synaptic connections they use to communicate with one another.
Standard psychiatric treatments generally aim to restore these lost connections, but they often operate on a delayed timeline. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, are the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants. Drugs like fluoxetine work by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain, which slowly helps reopen a window of plasticity. However, these structural effects take weeks to materialize, and many patients do not experience a reduction in symptoms.
Lithium, a medication primarily used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder, also promotes neuroplasticity and protects neurons from damage. Despite its efficacy, lithium carries a narrow safety margin and a risk of severe side effects involving the kidneys and thyroid. Because of these limitations, psychiatric research has shifted toward finding interventions that can trigger neuroplasticity safely and rapidly.
In contrast to traditional daily medications, compounds like ketamine and classical psychedelics produce rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. These drugs are often grouped as psychoplastogens because of their capacity to rapidly induce structural growth in neurons. Yana Vella and Kateřina Syrová, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in Czechia, led a team to compare these new and old compounds directly. The researchers sought to document exactly how these distinct classes of drugs influence brain cells at a molecular level.
To observe this growth in a highly controlled environment, the research team extracted brain cells from the cerebral cortex of rat embryos. They isolated the cells and seeded them onto specially coated laboratory plates. Over several weeks in a nutrient-rich medium, the isolated neurons grew and formed spontaneous communication networks.
Once the cell networks matured, the researchers treated different batches with a single dose of psilocin, LSD, DMT, ketamine, fluoxetine, or lithium. After 24 hours of exposure, the scientists used fluorescent antibodies to visually tag specific structural proteins within the neurons. They targeted synapsin, a protein located in the vesicles at the transmitting end of a nerve cell, and PSD-95, a protein that anchors receptors at the receiving end of a nerve cell.
Using a confocal laser scanning microscope and specialized image analysis software, they mapped the physical architecture of the neurons. They counted the microscopic spots where the presynaptic synapsin and postsynaptic PSD-95 proteins spatially overlapped. This overlapping visual signal indicates a fully established synaptic connection between two cells.
Psilocin increased the overall number of formed synapses across the cultured neurons. This rapid synapse-building capacity matched the growth produced by ketamine and lithium. Ketamine also selectively increased the density of PSD-95 proteins, indicating a specific enhancement on the receiving ends of the synapses.
Conversely, LSD, DMT, and fluoxetine produced no measurable changes in the number of synaptic connections during this 24-hour testing window. The lack of structural growth from fluoxetine aligns with the drug’s typical pharmacological timeline. Fluoxetine generally requires chronic administration over several weeks to alter brain architecture in living animals, making a single laboratory dose an ineffective trigger for rapid structural change.
In a separate phase of the study, the researchers measured the activation of immediate early genes within the cultured neurons. These genes act as a rapid response system in biological environments. They switch on within minutes of a stimulus without requiring the cell to synthesize new proteins first. Once activated, these genes initiate a chain reaction, providing the instructions for other proteins that build, stabilize, and maintain new synaptic connections.
The researchers extracted genetic material from the cells one hour and 24 hours after drug exposure. They used a technique called quantitative polymerase chain reaction to measure the expression levels of three specific genes known to support neuroplasticity. By analyzing the genetic material, they could measure which drugs triggered the molecular machinery necessary for long-term neural adaptation.
One hour after treatment, psilocin caused a rapid spike in the expression of the Arc gene. The Arc gene produces a protein that helps shape the physical structure of the synapse and manages the flow of chemical signals across the cell membrane. The rapid activation of Arc provides a potential molecular mechanism for how psilocin initiates neural growth so quickly.
At the 24-hour mark, fluoxetine increased the activity of the Egr1 and Npas4 genes. Egr1 acts as a transcription factor that binds to DNA and regulates the overall organization of synapses. Npas4 operates as a homeostatic regulator, helping to maintain a healthy balance between excitatory and inhibitory electrical signals in the brain. The other tested drugs did not reliably activate these specific genes at the tested time points, suggesting different compounds might rely on distinct molecular pathways to produce their effects.
The study took place in isolated cells in a laboratory rather than in a living animal or human. Living brains contain diverse networks of interacting cell types, including specialized support cells, that a simple laboratory culture cannot fully replicate. The researchers also used a mixture of cells from both male and female rat embryos, which might mask sex-specific differences in how neurons respond to psychedelics or antidepressants.
The lack of structural effects from LSD and DMT might stem from how the specific chemical preparations interacted with the cells. The researchers used a fumarate salt form of these compounds to ensure stability in the growth medium. However, they did not add a chemical solvent, such as dimethyl sulfoxide, to help the drugs cross the cell membrane.
Recent biological research suggests that serotonergic psychedelics must enter the interior of the neuron to activate intracellular receptors and trigger growth. Without a permeation enhancer, the salt forms of LSD and DMT may simply have been unable to penetrate the lipid barrier of the cells in this specific experimental setup. Future studies using different drug formulations will be necessary to determine if LSD and DMT possess the same rapid synapse-building properties as psilocin.
The study, “Effects of serotonergic psychedelics on synaptogenesis and immediate early genes expression – comparison with ketamine, fluoxetine and lithium,” was authored by Yana Vella, Kateřina Syrová, Aneta Petrušková, Isis Koutrouli, Viera Kútna, Jan Pala, Klára Šíchová, Marek Nikolič, Vladimír Mazoch, Radek Jurok, Martin Kuchař, Zdeňka Bendová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
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-
DATE: September 3, 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: Psilocin triggers rapid neural growth in laboratory study
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
Psilocin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, promotes the rapid growth of neural connections in laboratory settings at a level comparable to established psychiatric drugs like ketamine and lithium. These structural changes to brain cells offer a biological explanation for the rapid antidepressant effects observed in recent clinical trials of psychedelics. The findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to modify its physical structure and rewire its connections in response to new experiences. This biological process plays a fundamental role in learning and memory, as well as in the development of neuropsychiatric conditions. Disorders such as severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder are often accompanied by a loss of neuroplasticity. Over time, neurons in specific regions of the brain begin to shrivel, losing the tiny branches and synaptic connections they use to communicate with one another.
Standard psychiatric treatments generally aim to restore these lost connections, but they often operate on a delayed timeline. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, are the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants. Drugs like fluoxetine work by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain, which slowly helps reopen a window of plasticity. However, these structural effects take weeks to materialize, and many patients do not experience a reduction in symptoms.
Lithium, a medication primarily used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder, also promotes neuroplasticity and protects neurons from damage. Despite its efficacy, lithium carries a narrow safety margin and a risk of severe side effects involving the kidneys and thyroid. Because of these limitations, psychiatric research has shifted toward finding interventions that can trigger neuroplasticity safely and rapidly.
In contrast to traditional daily medications, compounds like ketamine and classical psychedelics produce rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. These drugs are often grouped as psychoplastogens because of their capacity to rapidly induce structural growth in neurons. Yana Vella and Kateřina Syrová, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in Czechia, led a team to compare these new and old compounds directly. The researchers sought to document exactly how these distinct classes of drugs influence brain cells at a molecular level.
To observe this growth in a highly controlled environment, the research team extracted brain cells from the cerebral cortex of rat embryos. They isolated the cells and seeded them onto specially coated laboratory plates. Over several weeks in a nutrient-rich medium, the isolated neurons grew and formed spontaneous communication networks.
Once the cell networks matured, the researchers treated different batches with a single dose of psilocin, LSD, DMT, ketamine, fluoxetine, or lithium. After 24 hours of exposure, the scientists used fluorescent antibodies to visually tag specific structural proteins within the neurons. They targeted synapsin, a protein located in the vesicles at the transmitting end of a nerve cell, and PSD-95, a protein that anchors receptors at the receiving end of a nerve cell.
Using a confocal laser scanning microscope and specialized image analysis software, they mapped the physical architecture of the neurons. They counted the microscopic spots where the presynaptic synapsin and postsynaptic PSD-95 proteins spatially overlapped. This overlapping visual signal indicates a fully established synaptic connection between two cells.
Psilocin increased the overall number of formed synapses across the cultured neurons. This rapid synapse-building capacity matched the growth produced by ketamine and lithium. Ketamine also selectively increased the density of PSD-95 proteins, indicating a specific enhancement on the receiving ends of the synapses.
Conversely, LSD, DMT, and fluoxetine produced no measurable changes in the number of synaptic connections during this 24-hour testing window. The lack of structural growth from fluoxetine aligns with the drug’s typical pharmacological timeline. Fluoxetine generally requires chronic administration over several weeks to alter brain architecture in living animals, making a single laboratory dose an ineffective trigger for rapid structural change.
In a separate phase of the study, the researchers measured the activation of immediate early genes within the cultured neurons. These genes act as a rapid response system in biological environments. They switch on within minutes of a stimulus without requiring the cell to synthesize new proteins first. Once activated, these genes initiate a chain reaction, providing the instructions for other proteins that build, stabilize, and maintain new synaptic connections.
The researchers extracted genetic material from the cells one hour and 24 hours after drug exposure. They used a technique called quantitative polymerase chain reaction to measure the expression levels of three specific genes known to support neuroplasticity. By analyzing the genetic material, they could measure which drugs triggered the molecular machinery necessary for long-term neural adaptation.
One hour after treatment, psilocin caused a rapid spike in the expression of the Arc gene. The Arc gene produces a protein that helps shape the physical structure of the synapse and manages the flow of chemical signals across the cell membrane. The rapid activation of Arc provides a potential molecular mechanism for how psilocin initiates neural growth so quickly.
At the 24-hour mark, fluoxetine increased the activity of the Egr1 and Npas4 genes. Egr1 acts as a transcription factor that binds to DNA and regulates the overall organization of synapses. Npas4 operates as a homeostatic regulator, helping to maintain a healthy balance between excitatory and inhibitory electrical signals in the brain. The other tested drugs did not reliably activate these specific genes at the tested time points, suggesting different compounds might rely on distinct molecular pathways to produce their effects.
The study took place in isolated cells in a laboratory rather than in a living animal or human. Living brains contain diverse networks of interacting cell types, including specialized support cells, that a simple laboratory culture cannot fully replicate. The researchers also used a mixture of cells from both male and female rat embryos, which might mask sex-specific differences in how neurons respond to psychedelics or antidepressants.
The lack of structural effects from LSD and DMT might stem from how the specific chemical preparations interacted with the cells. The researchers used a fumarate salt form of these compounds to ensure stability in the growth medium. However, they did not add a chemical solvent, such as dimethyl sulfoxide, to help the drugs cross the cell membrane.
Recent biological research suggests that serotonergic psychedelics must enter the interior of the neuron to activate intracellular receptors and trigger growth. Without a permeation enhancer, the salt forms of LSD and DMT may simply have been unable to penetrate the lipid barrier of the cells in this specific experimental setup. Future studies using different drug formulations will be necessary to determine if LSD and DMT possess the same rapid synapse-building properties as psilocin.
The study, “Effects of serotonergic psychedelics on synaptogenesis and immediate early genes expression – comparison with ketamine, fluoxetine and lithium,” was authored by Yana Vella, Kateřina Syrová, Aneta Petrušková, Isis Koutrouli, Viera Kútna, Jan Pala, Klára Šíchová, Marek Nikolič, Vladimír Mazoch, Radek Jurok, Martin Kuchař, Zdeňka Bendová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PsilocinNeuroplasticity #Synaptogenesis #PsychedelicsResearch #NeuronsGrowth #RapidAntidepressant #Neurobiology #KetamineComparison # PsychedelicsSafety #BrainPlasticity #SciComm
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Psilocin triggers rapid neural growth in laboratory study
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
Psilocin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, promotes the rapid growth of neural connections in laboratory settings at a level comparable to established psychiatric drugs like ketamine and lithium. These structural changes to brain cells offer a biological explanation for the rapid antidepressant effects observed in recent clinical trials of psychedelics. The findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to modify its physical structure and rewire its connections in response to new experiences. This biological process plays a fundamental role in learning and memory, as well as in the development of neuropsychiatric conditions. Disorders such as severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder are often accompanied by a loss of neuroplasticity. Over time, neurons in specific regions of the brain begin to shrivel, losing the tiny branches and synaptic connections they use to communicate with one another.
Standard psychiatric treatments generally aim to restore these lost connections, but they often operate on a delayed timeline. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, are the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants. Drugs like fluoxetine work by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain, which slowly helps reopen a window of plasticity. However, these structural effects take weeks to materialize, and many patients do not experience a reduction in symptoms.
Lithium, a medication primarily used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder, also promotes neuroplasticity and protects neurons from damage. Despite its efficacy, lithium carries a narrow safety margin and a risk of severe side effects involving the kidneys and thyroid. Because of these limitations, psychiatric research has shifted toward finding interventions that can trigger neuroplasticity safely and rapidly.
In contrast to traditional daily medications, compounds like ketamine and classical psychedelics produce rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. These drugs are often grouped as psychoplastogens because of their capacity to rapidly induce structural growth in neurons. Yana Vella and Kateřina Syrová, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in Czechia, led a team to compare these new and old compounds directly. The researchers sought to document exactly how these distinct classes of drugs influence brain cells at a molecular level.
To observe this growth in a highly controlled environment, the research team extracted brain cells from the cerebral cortex of rat embryos. They isolated the cells and seeded them onto specially coated laboratory plates. Over several weeks in a nutrient-rich medium, the isolated neurons grew and formed spontaneous communication networks.
Once the cell networks matured, the researchers treated different batches with a single dose of psilocin, LSD, DMT, ketamine, fluoxetine, or lithium. After 24 hours of exposure, the scientists used fluorescent antibodies to visually tag specific structural proteins within the neurons. They targeted synapsin, a protein located in the vesicles at the transmitting end of a nerve cell, and PSD-95, a protein that anchors receptors at the receiving end of a nerve cell.
Using a confocal laser scanning microscope and specialized image analysis software, they mapped the physical architecture of the neurons. They counted the microscopic spots where the presynaptic synapsin and postsynaptic PSD-95 proteins spatially overlapped. This overlapping visual signal indicates a fully established synaptic connection between two cells.
Psilocin increased the overall number of formed synapses across the cultured neurons. This rapid synapse-building capacity matched the growth produced by ketamine and lithium. Ketamine also selectively increased the density of PSD-95 proteins, indicating a specific enhancement on the receiving ends of the synapses.
Conversely, LSD, DMT, and fluoxetine produced no measurable changes in the number of synaptic connections during this 24-hour testing window. The lack of structural growth from fluoxetine aligns with the drug’s typical pharmacological timeline. Fluoxetine generally requires chronic administration over several weeks to alter brain architecture in living animals, making a single laboratory dose an ineffective trigger for rapid structural change.
In a separate phase of the study, the researchers measured the activation of immediate early genes within the cultured neurons. These genes act as a rapid response system in biological environments. They switch on within minutes of a stimulus without requiring the cell to synthesize new proteins first. Once activated, these genes initiate a chain reaction, providing the instructions for other proteins that build, stabilize, and maintain new synaptic connections.
The researchers extracted genetic material from the cells one hour and 24 hours after drug exposure. They used a technique called quantitative polymerase chain reaction to measure the expression levels of three specific genes known to support neuroplasticity. By analyzing the genetic material, they could measure which drugs triggered the molecular machinery necessary for long-term neural adaptation.
One hour after treatment, psilocin caused a rapid spike in the expression of the Arc gene. The Arc gene produces a protein that helps shape the physical structure of the synapse and manages the flow of chemical signals across the cell membrane. The rapid activation of Arc provides a potential molecular mechanism for how psilocin initiates neural growth so quickly.
At the 24-hour mark, fluoxetine increased the activity of the Egr1 and Npas4 genes. Egr1 acts as a transcription factor that binds to DNA and regulates the overall organization of synapses. Npas4 operates as a homeostatic regulator, helping to maintain a healthy balance between excitatory and inhibitory electrical signals in the brain. The other tested drugs did not reliably activate these specific genes at the tested time points, suggesting different compounds might rely on distinct molecular pathways to produce their effects.
The study took place in isolated cells in a laboratory rather than in a living animal or human. Living brains contain diverse networks of interacting cell types, including specialized support cells, that a simple laboratory culture cannot fully replicate. The researchers also used a mixture of cells from both male and female rat embryos, which might mask sex-specific differences in how neurons respond to psychedelics or antidepressants.
The lack of structural effects from LSD and DMT might stem from how the specific chemical preparations interacted with the cells. The researchers used a fumarate salt form of these compounds to ensure stability in the growth medium. However, they did not add a chemical solvent, such as dimethyl sulfoxide, to help the drugs cross the cell membrane.
Recent biological research suggests that serotonergic psychedelics must enter the interior of the neuron to activate intracellular receptors and trigger growth. Without a permeation enhancer, the salt forms of LSD and DMT may simply have been unable to penetrate the lipid barrier of the cells in this specific experimental setup. Future studies using different drug formulations will be necessary to determine if LSD and DMT possess the same rapid synapse-building properties as psilocin.
The study, “Effects of serotonergic psychedelics on synaptogenesis and immediate early genes expression – comparison with ketamine, fluoxetine and lithium,” was authored by Yana Vella, Kateřina Syrová, Aneta Petrušková, Isis Koutrouli, Viera Kútna, Jan Pala, Klára Šíchová, Marek Nikolič, Vladimír Mazoch, Radek Jurok, Martin Kuchař, Zdeňka Bendová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocin-triggers-rapid-neural-growth-in-laboratory-study/
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DATE: September 3, 2026 at 02:40PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Pramipexole was associated with improvement in anhedonia and apathy, and with increased physical activity in patients with mood disorders, in a placebo-controlled trial that measured both behavioral and neurophysiologic change. https://t.co/QwlGrTY3B2
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
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DATE: September 3, 2026 at 02:40PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Pramipexole was associated with improvement in anhedonia and apathy, and with increased physical activity in patients with mood disorders, in a placebo-controlled trial that measured both behavioral and neurophysiologic change. https://t.co/QwlGrTY3B2
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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-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 02:40PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Pramipexole was associated with improvement in anhedonia and apathy, and with increased physical activity in patients with mood disorders, in a placebo-controlled trial that measured both behavioral and neurophysiologic change. https://t.co/QwlGrTY3B2
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 #Pramipexole #anhedonia #apathy #mooddisorders #placebocontrolledtrial
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DATE: September 3, 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: A new study explains why stress makes us both cooperative and defensive
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
People under acute stress may cooperate with potential allies while becoming more defensive toward the people responsible for the stressful situation, according to research published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The findings suggest that stress does not have one universal effect on social behavior; whom a person is dealing with may shape the response.
Two theories have traditionally offered different predictions about behavior under pressure. The “tend-and-befriend” account proposes that people seek affiliation and cooperate with others who could provide support. The “fight-or-flight” account proposes that threats can instead encourage withdrawal, aggression or protection of one’s own resources. Previous studies have found evidence for both patterns, prompting researchers to examine whether features of the situation can explain the inconsistency.
Laura Oswald of the University of Freiburg led a team that investigated whether the social role of an interaction partner changes behavior following acute stress. The researchers expected people to treat another, unstressed participant as a possible ally but respond more defensively to an evaluator who had helped create the stressful experience.
The final sample contained 121 healthy young adults (62 women, average age of 23.64 years). Participants first completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups. After five minutes of preparation, they gave a 12-minute speech and completed an eight-minute mental-arithmetic task before a jury wearing white coats that provided no encouraging feedback. Saliva samples, heart-rate recordings and subjective ratings confirmed whether the procedure produced a stress response.
Participants then made decisions involving real money in four established games measuring trust, trustworthiness, sharing and punishment. They completed decisions involving another participant who had not been subjected to the stress test and decisions involving a jury member who had been part of the stress test. This allowed the researchers to compare how the same stressed person treated a peer and a source of stress.
The stress hormone cortisol, heart rate and perceived stress all increased substantially during the procedure. Participants made an average of 2.52 trusting choices toward peers, compared with 2.02 toward jury members. They also made more trustworthy choices toward peers, 3.06 compared with 2.40, and more sharing choices, 2.83 compared with 2.27. Conversely, punishment was more frequent toward jury members than peers, averaging 0.74 compared with 0.54. Each difference was statistically significant.
The behavioral pattern did not differ significantly between men and women. The size of participants’ cortisol, heart-rate or perceived-stress response also did not clearly predict how differently they treated peers and jury members. The findings therefore point more strongly to the interaction partner’s role than to the measured intensity of an individual’s stress response.
As the researchers explained, “individuals adapt their behavior toward others depending on the social role of their interaction partner.” Cooperating with a peer may increase the possibility of receiving reciprocal help, while withholding cooperation from an evaluator may protect resources or help restore a sense of control.
Important caveats remain. Everyone completed the stress procedure, so the study cannot show whether stress increased cooperation with peers, decreased cooperation with jury members or produced both changes. Also, participants always dealt with peers before jury members, leaving possible order and comparison effects. Studies including a non-stress control group, friendlier evaluators and more natural interactions are needed.
The study, “Tend-and-befriend toward peers, fight-or-flight toward stressors: A dual response to stress,” was authored by Laura Oswald, Fabian Dvorak, Jeremy P. Jamieson, Markus Heinrichs and Bastian Schiller.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
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-
DATE: September 3, 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: A new study explains why stress makes us both cooperative and defensive
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
People under acute stress may cooperate with potential allies while becoming more defensive toward the people responsible for the stressful situation, according to research published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The findings suggest that stress does not have one universal effect on social behavior; whom a person is dealing with may shape the response.
Two theories have traditionally offered different predictions about behavior under pressure. The “tend-and-befriend” account proposes that people seek affiliation and cooperate with others who could provide support. The “fight-or-flight” account proposes that threats can instead encourage withdrawal, aggression or protection of one’s own resources. Previous studies have found evidence for both patterns, prompting researchers to examine whether features of the situation can explain the inconsistency.
Laura Oswald of the University of Freiburg led a team that investigated whether the social role of an interaction partner changes behavior following acute stress. The researchers expected people to treat another, unstressed participant as a possible ally but respond more defensively to an evaluator who had helped create the stressful experience.
The final sample contained 121 healthy young adults (62 women, average age of 23.64 years). Participants first completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups. After five minutes of preparation, they gave a 12-minute speech and completed an eight-minute mental-arithmetic task before a jury wearing white coats that provided no encouraging feedback. Saliva samples, heart-rate recordings and subjective ratings confirmed whether the procedure produced a stress response.
Participants then made decisions involving real money in four established games measuring trust, trustworthiness, sharing and punishment. They completed decisions involving another participant who had not been subjected to the stress test and decisions involving a jury member who had been part of the stress test. This allowed the researchers to compare how the same stressed person treated a peer and a source of stress.
The stress hormone cortisol, heart rate and perceived stress all increased substantially during the procedure. Participants made an average of 2.52 trusting choices toward peers, compared with 2.02 toward jury members. They also made more trustworthy choices toward peers, 3.06 compared with 2.40, and more sharing choices, 2.83 compared with 2.27. Conversely, punishment was more frequent toward jury members than peers, averaging 0.74 compared with 0.54. Each difference was statistically significant.
The behavioral pattern did not differ significantly between men and women. The size of participants’ cortisol, heart-rate or perceived-stress response also did not clearly predict how differently they treated peers and jury members. The findings therefore point more strongly to the interaction partner’s role than to the measured intensity of an individual’s stress response.
As the researchers explained, “individuals adapt their behavior toward others depending on the social role of their interaction partner.” Cooperating with a peer may increase the possibility of receiving reciprocal help, while withholding cooperation from an evaluator may protect resources or help restore a sense of control.
Important caveats remain. Everyone completed the stress procedure, so the study cannot show whether stress increased cooperation with peers, decreased cooperation with jury members or produced both changes. Also, participants always dealt with peers before jury members, leaving possible order and comparison effects. Studies including a non-stress control group, friendlier evaluators and more natural interactions are needed.
The study, “Tend-and-befriend toward peers, fight-or-flight toward stressors: A dual response to stress,” was authored by Laura Oswald, Fabian Dvorak, Jeremy P. Jamieson, Markus Heinrichs and Bastian Schiller.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #StressCooperation #TendAndBefriend #FightOrFlight #SocialStress #CooperationUnderPressure #TrustDecisionMaking #StressResponses #SocialInteractions #Psychoneuroendocrinology #CortisolResponses
-
DATE: September 3, 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: A new study explains why stress makes us both cooperative and defensive
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
People under acute stress may cooperate with potential allies while becoming more defensive toward the people responsible for the stressful situation, according to research published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The findings suggest that stress does not have one universal effect on social behavior; whom a person is dealing with may shape the response.
Two theories have traditionally offered different predictions about behavior under pressure. The “tend-and-befriend” account proposes that people seek affiliation and cooperate with others who could provide support. The “fight-or-flight” account proposes that threats can instead encourage withdrawal, aggression or protection of one’s own resources. Previous studies have found evidence for both patterns, prompting researchers to examine whether features of the situation can explain the inconsistency.
Laura Oswald of the University of Freiburg led a team that investigated whether the social role of an interaction partner changes behavior following acute stress. The researchers expected people to treat another, unstressed participant as a possible ally but respond more defensively to an evaluator who had helped create the stressful experience.
The final sample contained 121 healthy young adults (62 women, average age of 23.64 years). Participants first completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups. After five minutes of preparation, they gave a 12-minute speech and completed an eight-minute mental-arithmetic task before a jury wearing white coats that provided no encouraging feedback. Saliva samples, heart-rate recordings and subjective ratings confirmed whether the procedure produced a stress response.
Participants then made decisions involving real money in four established games measuring trust, trustworthiness, sharing and punishment. They completed decisions involving another participant who had not been subjected to the stress test and decisions involving a jury member who had been part of the stress test. This allowed the researchers to compare how the same stressed person treated a peer and a source of stress.
The stress hormone cortisol, heart rate and perceived stress all increased substantially during the procedure. Participants made an average of 2.52 trusting choices toward peers, compared with 2.02 toward jury members. They also made more trustworthy choices toward peers, 3.06 compared with 2.40, and more sharing choices, 2.83 compared with 2.27. Conversely, punishment was more frequent toward jury members than peers, averaging 0.74 compared with 0.54. Each difference was statistically significant.
The behavioral pattern did not differ significantly between men and women. The size of participants’ cortisol, heart-rate or perceived-stress response also did not clearly predict how differently they treated peers and jury members. The findings therefore point more strongly to the interaction partner’s role than to the measured intensity of an individual’s stress response.
As the researchers explained, “individuals adapt their behavior toward others depending on the social role of their interaction partner.” Cooperating with a peer may increase the possibility of receiving reciprocal help, while withholding cooperation from an evaluator may protect resources or help restore a sense of control.
Important caveats remain. Everyone completed the stress procedure, so the study cannot show whether stress increased cooperation with peers, decreased cooperation with jury members or produced both changes. Also, participants always dealt with peers before jury members, leaving possible order and comparison effects. Studies including a non-stress control group, friendlier evaluators and more natural interactions are needed.
The study, “Tend-and-befriend toward peers, fight-or-flight toward stressors: A dual response to stress,” was authored by Laura Oswald, Fabian Dvorak, Jeremy P. Jamieson, Markus Heinrichs and Bastian Schiller.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/a-new-study-explains-why-stress-makes-us-both-cooperative-and-defensive/
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #StressCooperation #TendAndBefriend #FightOrFlight #SocialStress #CooperationUnderPressure #TrustDecisionMaking #StressResponses #SocialInteractions #Psychoneuroendocrinology #CortisolResponses
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Harsh parenting predicts teenage depression and aggression through different types of repetitive thinking
Harsh disciplinary tactics like yelling and physical punishment predict a higher likelihood of depression and aggressive behavior in teenagers over time. A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders indicates that these negative outcomes arise because adolescents get stuck in repetitive cycles of angry or sad thoughts. The research illustrates how a parent’s attempts to control behavior through strictness can ultimately harm a child’s psychological development.
Across the globe, many parents use psychological pressure or corporal punishment to manage their children’s behavior. In traditional Chinese culture, these methods are often viewed through the lens of family ethics and duty. Maxims suggesting that beating shows love and scolding shows care frame strict discipline as a form of parental responsibility. Psychologists Yanli Hou and Caina Li of Shaanxi Normal University wanted to test if this cultural acceptance buffers the harm of harsh parenting or if it still negatively affects youth development.
Previous research mostly examined these parenting tactics in Western countries using single snapshot surveys. The research team designed a longitudinal study to observe how family dynamics influence mental health over several years. They focused on a mental habit called rumination, which involves repeatedly dwelling on distressing feelings and their causes rather than finding solutions to problems. The researchers suspected that adolescents facing harsh punishment at home might develop ruminative habits as a way to process the stress.
Rumination generally takes two forms that serve distinct psychological functions. Sadness rumination occurs when a person obsessively thinks about feelings of loss, helplessness, or worthlessness. According to psychological theories of emotion, sadness usually prompts people to withdraw from a situation and retreat. Anger rumination happens when someone repeatedly focuses on perceived injustices and desires for retaliation. Anger typically energizes a person to confront obstacles and take action.
Hou, Li, and their colleagues tracked 878 junior high school students in China over three years. During the first year, the roughly twelve-year-old students completed questionnaires reporting how often they experienced harsh discipline from their parents. These behaviors included psychological aggression, mild physical punishment like pinching, and physical abuse like kicking. One year later, the students took a survey measuring how frequently they engaged in sadness and anger rumination.
During the third year, the researchers measured the students’ symptoms of depression along with their levels of reactive and proactive aggression. Reactive aggression involves lashing out in response to a perceived threat or frustration. Proactive aggression is planned, goal-directed behavior intended to assert dominance or harm someone else. By separating these measurements across three years, the team could track the sequence of emotional and behavioral changes.
The researchers first tested a model that separated the emotional pathways, looking at whether sadness and anger each predicted specific behavioral outcomes. They found that harsh parenting in the first year predicted higher levels of both sadness and anger rumination in the second year. From there, the pathways split as expected. Sadness rumination predicted symptoms of depression in the third year, while anger rumination predicted both reactive and proactive aggression.
When analyzing boys and girls separately, the researchers noticed distinct patterns based on social expectations. In many cultures, boys are socialized to be strong and unyielding, leading them to process stress through anger and aggression. Girls are often expected to be emotionally sensitive and relationship-oriented, which can make them more prone to internalizing stress as sadness. In the initial model, sadness leading to depression was a prominent pathway for boys, while anger leading to aggression was a highly prominent pathway for girls.
Next, the team tested a combined model to see how these emotional processes overlap in reality. Real-life emotions are rarely isolated, and people often experience sadness and anger simultaneously. When analyzing both types of rumination and both outcomes at the same time, sadness rumination emerged as a broader risk factor. In this combined analysis, sadness rumination predicted both later depression and aggressive behavior.
The specific link between anger rumination and aggression disappeared when the researchers accounted for the heavy overlap between sad and angry thoughts. This overlap suggests that dwelling on sadness drains a person’s cognitive resources. When a teenager is exhausted by persistent sadness, they have a harder time regulating impulses, making them more likely to act out aggressively. For girls in particular, prolonged sadness from harsh discipline appeared to intertwine with frustration, ultimately elevating the risk of reactive and proactive aggression.
The study relies on self-reported questionnaires, which depend on the students accurately remembering their parents’ behaviors and their own feelings. The students all attended private schools in a single geographic area, meaning the results might look different in rural communities or different cultural contexts. Because the researchers did not measure the students’ initial levels of rumination in the first year, the study cannot definitively prove that harsh parenting caused the repetitive thinking.
Future research could track these thought patterns more frequently, perhaps using daily diary applications, to observe exactly how angry and sad thoughts evolve over shorter periods. Researchers could also incorporate observations from teachers or parents to provide a more comprehensive view of the adolescents’ behavior. Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that parents should consider alternative disciplinary methods, as strict punishments correspond with long-term emotional distress and behavioral issues.
The study, “When love harms: Longitudinal effects of harsh parenting on adolescents’ depressive symptoms and reactive – proactive aggression,” was authored by Yanli Hou, Shengcheng Song, Ruonan Guo, and Caina Li.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #HarshParenting #TeenDepression #YouthAggression #Rumination #SadnessRumination #AngerRumination #PositiveDiscipline #MentalHealthAwareness #AdolescentDevelopment #ParentingResearch
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Harsh parenting predicts teenage depression and aggression through different types of repetitive thinking
Harsh disciplinary tactics like yelling and physical punishment predict a higher likelihood of depression and aggressive behavior in teenagers over time. A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders indicates that these negative outcomes arise because adolescents get stuck in repetitive cycles of angry or sad thoughts. The research illustrates how a parent’s attempts to control behavior through strictness can ultimately harm a child’s psychological development.
Across the globe, many parents use psychological pressure or corporal punishment to manage their children’s behavior. In traditional Chinese culture, these methods are often viewed through the lens of family ethics and duty. Maxims suggesting that beating shows love and scolding shows care frame strict discipline as a form of parental responsibility. Psychologists Yanli Hou and Caina Li of Shaanxi Normal University wanted to test if this cultural acceptance buffers the harm of harsh parenting or if it still negatively affects youth development.
Previous research mostly examined these parenting tactics in Western countries using single snapshot surveys. The research team designed a longitudinal study to observe how family dynamics influence mental health over several years. They focused on a mental habit called rumination, which involves repeatedly dwelling on distressing feelings and their causes rather than finding solutions to problems. The researchers suspected that adolescents facing harsh punishment at home might develop ruminative habits as a way to process the stress.
Rumination generally takes two forms that serve distinct psychological functions. Sadness rumination occurs when a person obsessively thinks about feelings of loss, helplessness, or worthlessness. According to psychological theories of emotion, sadness usually prompts people to withdraw from a situation and retreat. Anger rumination happens when someone repeatedly focuses on perceived injustices and desires for retaliation. Anger typically energizes a person to confront obstacles and take action.
Hou, Li, and their colleagues tracked 878 junior high school students in China over three years. During the first year, the roughly twelve-year-old students completed questionnaires reporting how often they experienced harsh discipline from their parents. These behaviors included psychological aggression, mild physical punishment like pinching, and physical abuse like kicking. One year later, the students took a survey measuring how frequently they engaged in sadness and anger rumination.
During the third year, the researchers measured the students’ symptoms of depression along with their levels of reactive and proactive aggression. Reactive aggression involves lashing out in response to a perceived threat or frustration. Proactive aggression is planned, goal-directed behavior intended to assert dominance or harm someone else. By separating these measurements across three years, the team could track the sequence of emotional and behavioral changes.
The researchers first tested a model that separated the emotional pathways, looking at whether sadness and anger each predicted specific behavioral outcomes. They found that harsh parenting in the first year predicted higher levels of both sadness and anger rumination in the second year. From there, the pathways split as expected. Sadness rumination predicted symptoms of depression in the third year, while anger rumination predicted both reactive and proactive aggression.
When analyzing boys and girls separately, the researchers noticed distinct patterns based on social expectations. In many cultures, boys are socialized to be strong and unyielding, leading them to process stress through anger and aggression. Girls are often expected to be emotionally sensitive and relationship-oriented, which can make them more prone to internalizing stress as sadness. In the initial model, sadness leading to depression was a prominent pathway for boys, while anger leading to aggression was a highly prominent pathway for girls.
Next, the team tested a combined model to see how these emotional processes overlap in reality. Real-life emotions are rarely isolated, and people often experience sadness and anger simultaneously. When analyzing both types of rumination and both outcomes at the same time, sadness rumination emerged as a broader risk factor. In this combined analysis, sadness rumination predicted both later depression and aggressive behavior.
The specific link between anger rumination and aggression disappeared when the researchers accounted for the heavy overlap between sad and angry thoughts. This overlap suggests that dwelling on sadness drains a person’s cognitive resources. When a teenager is exhausted by persistent sadness, they have a harder time regulating impulses, making them more likely to act out aggressively. For girls in particular, prolonged sadness from harsh discipline appeared to intertwine with frustration, ultimately elevating the risk of reactive and proactive aggression.
The study relies on self-reported questionnaires, which depend on the students accurately remembering their parents’ behaviors and their own feelings. The students all attended private schools in a single geographic area, meaning the results might look different in rural communities or different cultural contexts. Because the researchers did not measure the students’ initial levels of rumination in the first year, the study cannot definitively prove that harsh parenting caused the repetitive thinking.
Future research could track these thought patterns more frequently, perhaps using daily diary applications, to observe exactly how angry and sad thoughts evolve over shorter periods. Researchers could also incorporate observations from teachers or parents to provide a more comprehensive view of the adolescents’ behavior. Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that parents should consider alternative disciplinary methods, as strict punishments correspond with long-term emotional distress and behavioral issues.
The study, “When love harms: Longitudinal effects of harsh parenting on adolescents’ depressive symptoms and reactive – proactive aggression,” was authored by Yanli Hou, Shengcheng Song, Ruonan Guo, and Caina Li.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HarshParenting #TeenDepression #YouthAggression #Rumination #SadnessRumination #AngerRumination #PositiveDiscipline #MentalHealthAwareness #AdolescentDevelopment #ParentingResearch
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Harsh parenting predicts teenage depression and aggression through different types of repetitive thinking
Harsh disciplinary tactics like yelling and physical punishment predict a higher likelihood of depression and aggressive behavior in teenagers over time. A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders indicates that these negative outcomes arise because adolescents get stuck in repetitive cycles of angry or sad thoughts. The research illustrates how a parent’s attempts to control behavior through strictness can ultimately harm a child’s psychological development.
Across the globe, many parents use psychological pressure or corporal punishment to manage their children’s behavior. In traditional Chinese culture, these methods are often viewed through the lens of family ethics and duty. Maxims suggesting that beating shows love and scolding shows care frame strict discipline as a form of parental responsibility. Psychologists Yanli Hou and Caina Li of Shaanxi Normal University wanted to test if this cultural acceptance buffers the harm of harsh parenting or if it still negatively affects youth development.
Previous research mostly examined these parenting tactics in Western countries using single snapshot surveys. The research team designed a longitudinal study to observe how family dynamics influence mental health over several years. They focused on a mental habit called rumination, which involves repeatedly dwelling on distressing feelings and their causes rather than finding solutions to problems. The researchers suspected that adolescents facing harsh punishment at home might develop ruminative habits as a way to process the stress.
Rumination generally takes two forms that serve distinct psychological functions. Sadness rumination occurs when a person obsessively thinks about feelings of loss, helplessness, or worthlessness. According to psychological theories of emotion, sadness usually prompts people to withdraw from a situation and retreat. Anger rumination happens when someone repeatedly focuses on perceived injustices and desires for retaliation. Anger typically energizes a person to confront obstacles and take action.
Hou, Li, and their colleagues tracked 878 junior high school students in China over three years. During the first year, the roughly twelve-year-old students completed questionnaires reporting how often they experienced harsh discipline from their parents. These behaviors included psychological aggression, mild physical punishment like pinching, and physical abuse like kicking. One year later, the students took a survey measuring how frequently they engaged in sadness and anger rumination.
During the third year, the researchers measured the students’ symptoms of depression along with their levels of reactive and proactive aggression. Reactive aggression involves lashing out in response to a perceived threat or frustration. Proactive aggression is planned, goal-directed behavior intended to assert dominance or harm someone else. By separating these measurements across three years, the team could track the sequence of emotional and behavioral changes.
The researchers first tested a model that separated the emotional pathways, looking at whether sadness and anger each predicted specific behavioral outcomes. They found that harsh parenting in the first year predicted higher levels of both sadness and anger rumination in the second year. From there, the pathways split as expected. Sadness rumination predicted symptoms of depression in the third year, while anger rumination predicted both reactive and proactive aggression.
When analyzing boys and girls separately, the researchers noticed distinct patterns based on social expectations. In many cultures, boys are socialized to be strong and unyielding, leading them to process stress through anger and aggression. Girls are often expected to be emotionally sensitive and relationship-oriented, which can make them more prone to internalizing stress as sadness. In the initial model, sadness leading to depression was a prominent pathway for boys, while anger leading to aggression was a highly prominent pathway for girls.
Next, the team tested a combined model to see how these emotional processes overlap in reality. Real-life emotions are rarely isolated, and people often experience sadness and anger simultaneously. When analyzing both types of rumination and both outcomes at the same time, sadness rumination emerged as a broader risk factor. In this combined analysis, sadness rumination predicted both later depression and aggressive behavior.
The specific link between anger rumination and aggression disappeared when the researchers accounted for the heavy overlap between sad and angry thoughts. This overlap suggests that dwelling on sadness drains a person’s cognitive resources. When a teenager is exhausted by persistent sadness, they have a harder time regulating impulses, making them more likely to act out aggressively. For girls in particular, prolonged sadness from harsh discipline appeared to intertwine with frustration, ultimately elevating the risk of reactive and proactive aggression.
The study relies on self-reported questionnaires, which depend on the students accurately remembering their parents’ behaviors and their own feelings. The students all attended private schools in a single geographic area, meaning the results might look different in rural communities or different cultural contexts. Because the researchers did not measure the students’ initial levels of rumination in the first year, the study cannot definitively prove that harsh parenting caused the repetitive thinking.
Future research could track these thought patterns more frequently, perhaps using daily diary applications, to observe exactly how angry and sad thoughts evolve over shorter periods. Researchers could also incorporate observations from teachers or parents to provide a more comprehensive view of the adolescents’ behavior. Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that parents should consider alternative disciplinary methods, as strict punishments correspond with long-term emotional distress and behavioral issues.
The study, “When love harms: Longitudinal effects of harsh parenting on adolescents’ depressive symptoms and reactive – proactive aggression,” was authored by Yanli Hou, Shengcheng Song, Ruonan Guo, and Caina Li.
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DATE: September 3, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: Scientists Find More Than 1,000 DNA Variants Linked to Personality Traits
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
More than one million genomes helped identify DNA variants linked to extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and more. Researchers measured how those traits influenced how people lived.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
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-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: Scientists Find More Than 1,000 DNA Variants Linked to Personality Traits
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
More than one million genomes helped identify DNA variants linked to extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and more. Researchers measured how those traits influenced how people lived.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DNAvariants #PersonalityTraits #Genetics #Extroversion #Agreeableness #Neuroticism #GenomeGenome #GeneticResearch #PersonalityScience #GenomeWideAssociationStudy
-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: Scientists Find More Than 1,000 DNA Variants Linked to Personality Traits
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
More than one million genomes helped identify DNA variants linked to extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and more. Researchers measured how those traits influenced how people lived.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality-traits.html
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DNAvariants #PersonalityTraits #Genetics #Extroversion #Agreeableness #Neuroticism #GenomeGenome #GeneticResearch #PersonalityScience #GenomeWideAssociationStudy
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Male politicians show a spike in care-oriented language during peak periods of war
A recent analysis of parliamentary speeches during the Israel-Hamas war indicates that lawmakers who frequently express a moral duty to care for others are more likely to propose constructive, repair-oriented policies. The findings suggest that female politicians consistently use more care-based language, while male politicians tend to increase their expressions of care primarily during periods of peak conflict. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“From a research perspective, we know surprisingly little about leadership when it arguably matters most — during high-strength events such as crises, let alone wars,” Alexander D. Stajkovic, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kayla S. Stajkovic of the University of California, Davis, told PsyPost. “Most leadership research has been conducted in relatively calm, low-stakes settings, yet crises are precisely when leaders face consequential decisions under remarkable uncertainty and human suffering.”
In political settings, leaders navigate intense pressures, especially during times of crisis. The central focus of the new study is a concept called ethics of care leadership. This is a leadership approach where officials balance their traditional strategic duties with an active, publicly voiced concern for the welfare of those affected by their decisions. Rather than treating care as just a personality trait, this framework views caring for others as a moral obligation that can be expressed through everyday political language and debate.
“Care for others and strength in responding to crises should not be treated as opposites in leadership,” the researchers explained. “Ethics of care leadership is not about softening or stepping back from the difficult responsibilities of the job — it is about carrying out those responsibilities while remaining attentive to the people affected by them.”
Historically, political leadership during security threats has been associated with masculine traits like toughness and dominance. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2016 found that the public tends to prefer male over female leadership when worried about terrorism. However, expectations and approaches appear to be shifting.
A 2020 study by the Stajkovics found that U.S. states led by female governors experienced fewer COVID-19 deaths early in the pandemic, with an analysis of public briefings showing that these women expressed more empathy and confidence than male governors. Interviews with members of European parliaments from a 2026 qualitative study also indicated that many lawmakers increasingly view cooperative, interpersonally sensitive behavior as a core part of good leadership, alongside traditional assertiveness.
To understand how these dynamics play out in real-world crises, the authors examined how ethics of care leadership functions during high-strength events. These are situations that create sudden upheaval and carry massive consequences for human life, such as a war. Because high-strength events unfold in waves of varying intensity, they offer a way to track whether leaders maintain a consistent moral orientation or adapt their language as the crisis escalates and stabilizes.
“Instead of treating ‘the war’ as one flat backdrop of a high-strength event, we coded each month as either a peak or sustained-high event-strength period,” the researchers noted. “That allowed us to examine not just ‘Does care matter during a crisis?’ but ‘Does care rise and fall as the crisis itself rises and falls?’ — a question that is difficult to answer without 16 months of continuous, real-world data.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed the language used in the Israeli Knesset between October 2023 and January 2025. During this 16-month period, they examined roughly 5.2 million words spoken by 152 legislators across 140 plenary sessions, which are meetings attended by all members of the legislative body.
“What makes the findings especially compelling is the setting,” the researchers pointed out. “These were not participants responding to a hypothetical leadership scenario. They were elected leaders speaking during an actual, ongoing war, tracked continuously over 16 months rather than at a single moment.”
Using natural language processing software, a branch of artificial intelligence that allows computers to read and analyze human text, the team measured how often lawmakers used words associated with care and moral concern. They also extracted 4,143 distinct policy suggestions from the transcripts.
A machine learning program, trained on examples coded by human reviewers, classified each of these policy suggestions as either constructive or combative. Constructive suggestions focused on repair, social inclusion, and long-term problem solving, while combative suggestions relied on blame, punishment, and escalation. The researchers also categorized each month of the conflict as either a period of peak intensity, marked by new escalations or major disruptions, or a sustained period, where the conflict continued without major novel developments.
The analysis indicated that higher expressions of care-based leadership were associated with a greater likelihood of proposing constructive policies.
“The effects are meaningful, but they should not be read as deterministic,” the Stajkovics noted, meaning one factor does not strictly guarantee an outcome. For every one-unit increase in a speaker’s care expression score, the odds of them making a constructive suggestion increased by 43 percent.
The data also pointed to differences in how men and women communicated. Overall, female legislators expressed higher levels of care-based leadership than male legislators throughout the 16 months. This higher expression of care indirectly explained why women were more likely to offer constructive policy suggestions.
However, the context of the event altered these patterns. During peak months of the conflict, expressions of care increased across the board. Notably, male politicians showed a much sharper increase in care-based language during these peak periods than female politicians did, narrowing the gender gap.
“One might expect the most threatening periods of a war to push leaders toward greater toughness, aggression, or emotional restraint,” the researchers said. “Instead, we found that male leaders tended to increase their expressions of care more sharply during exactly those periods.”
They explained that men face social pressure to appear tough, making it feel socially costly to openly express care. “But when suffering becomes visible and the stakes become extraordinarily high, the situation may provide a kind of ‘contextual license’ for men to express greater care,” they added. “In other words, extreme circumstances may temporarily loosen what society considers appropriate leadership behavior for men.”
The researchers also grouped the politicians into three distinct profiles based on their language. One group consistently showed low care expression, another maintained a stable and moderate level of care expression, and a third group showed highly responsive care expression that spiked during peak crisis months. Politicians with a stable care profile were the most likely to continue offering constructive policy suggestions even during peak months, acting as a steadying force during escalations.
A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 looked at whether female leaders causally reduced objective crisis outcomes like COVID-19 mortality rates, finding no statistical difference. The current research focuses on a different aspect of leadership, measuring gender differences in legislative speech and the expression of care during parliamentary debates rather than attempting to track objective crisis outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting the results. Because the study relies on observational data from political speeches, it cannot establish that expressing care directly causes a politician to adopt constructive policies. Instead, it highlights a strong association between the two factors.
“First, we would caution against reading this as showing that women are inherently more caring, or inherently ‘better’ leaders than men,” the researchers noted. “Women expressed more care on average, but men’s expression of care increased more substantially during peak-intensity periods. That is difficult to reconcile with a story in which care is simply a fixed trait of women.”
“‘Constructive’ should not be read as meaning anti-war, politically liberal, or the objectively correct policy,” they clarified. “We are studying the form of the proposed solution, not making a judgment about who is right in the conflict.”
It is also worth noting that what politicians suggest in a speech does not always translate into final legislative action. Parliamentary voting is often heavily influenced by party alliances and coalition requirements, meaning a leader’s verbal suggestions offer a window into their moral priorities in debate rather than a guarantee of how a law will be passed. The specific political and cultural context of the Israeli Knesset during a war also means these patterns might look different in other countries or during different types of emergencies.
“An interesting next step would be to examine how broadly these patterns generalize beyond war,” the researchers said. “War is an extreme case, but the features that make it a powerful test — novelty, disruption, high stakes, and consequences for human welfare — also characterize events such as natural disasters, public-health emergencies, humanitarian crises, and organizational crises.”
“If care were simply a luxury of leadership — something leaders could afford only when circumstances were easy — we would expect it to disappear as the crisis intensified,” they concluded. “We found close to the opposite. Expressions of care increased during peak periods, and leaders who expressed more care were more likely to put constructive alternatives into the conversation. Even in circumstances defined by conflict and polarization, escalation is not the only leadership response.”
The study, “Ethics of Care Leadership Expressions During a High-Strength Event: A Gendered Analysis of Combative Versus Constructive Policy Suggestions During the Israel–Hamas War,” was authored by Alexander D. Stajkovic, Kayla S. Stajkovic, Jenny M. Hoobler, and Frederick P. Morgeson.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #EthicsOfCareLeadership #CareInCrises #ConstructivePolicy #ParliamentarySpeech #GenderAndLeadership #WarLeadership #IsraelHamasWar #PolicyMakingInCrises #EmpathyInPolitics #PeakCrisisCommunication
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Male politicians show a spike in care-oriented language during peak periods of war
A recent analysis of parliamentary speeches during the Israel-Hamas war indicates that lawmakers who frequently express a moral duty to care for others are more likely to propose constructive, repair-oriented policies. The findings suggest that female politicians consistently use more care-based language, while male politicians tend to increase their expressions of care primarily during periods of peak conflict. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“From a research perspective, we know surprisingly little about leadership when it arguably matters most — during high-strength events such as crises, let alone wars,” Alexander D. Stajkovic, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kayla S. Stajkovic of the University of California, Davis, told PsyPost. “Most leadership research has been conducted in relatively calm, low-stakes settings, yet crises are precisely when leaders face consequential decisions under remarkable uncertainty and human suffering.”
In political settings, leaders navigate intense pressures, especially during times of crisis. The central focus of the new study is a concept called ethics of care leadership. This is a leadership approach where officials balance their traditional strategic duties with an active, publicly voiced concern for the welfare of those affected by their decisions. Rather than treating care as just a personality trait, this framework views caring for others as a moral obligation that can be expressed through everyday political language and debate.
“Care for others and strength in responding to crises should not be treated as opposites in leadership,” the researchers explained. “Ethics of care leadership is not about softening or stepping back from the difficult responsibilities of the job — it is about carrying out those responsibilities while remaining attentive to the people affected by them.”
Historically, political leadership during security threats has been associated with masculine traits like toughness and dominance. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2016 found that the public tends to prefer male over female leadership when worried about terrorism. However, expectations and approaches appear to be shifting.
A 2020 study by the Stajkovics found that U.S. states led by female governors experienced fewer COVID-19 deaths early in the pandemic, with an analysis of public briefings showing that these women expressed more empathy and confidence than male governors. Interviews with members of European parliaments from a 2026 qualitative study also indicated that many lawmakers increasingly view cooperative, interpersonally sensitive behavior as a core part of good leadership, alongside traditional assertiveness.
To understand how these dynamics play out in real-world crises, the authors examined how ethics of care leadership functions during high-strength events. These are situations that create sudden upheaval and carry massive consequences for human life, such as a war. Because high-strength events unfold in waves of varying intensity, they offer a way to track whether leaders maintain a consistent moral orientation or adapt their language as the crisis escalates and stabilizes.
“Instead of treating ‘the war’ as one flat backdrop of a high-strength event, we coded each month as either a peak or sustained-high event-strength period,” the researchers noted. “That allowed us to examine not just ‘Does care matter during a crisis?’ but ‘Does care rise and fall as the crisis itself rises and falls?’ — a question that is difficult to answer without 16 months of continuous, real-world data.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed the language used in the Israeli Knesset between October 2023 and January 2025. During this 16-month period, they examined roughly 5.2 million words spoken by 152 legislators across 140 plenary sessions, which are meetings attended by all members of the legislative body.
“What makes the findings especially compelling is the setting,” the researchers pointed out. “These were not participants responding to a hypothetical leadership scenario. They were elected leaders speaking during an actual, ongoing war, tracked continuously over 16 months rather than at a single moment.”
Using natural language processing software, a branch of artificial intelligence that allows computers to read and analyze human text, the team measured how often lawmakers used words associated with care and moral concern. They also extracted 4,143 distinct policy suggestions from the transcripts.
A machine learning program, trained on examples coded by human reviewers, classified each of these policy suggestions as either constructive or combative. Constructive suggestions focused on repair, social inclusion, and long-term problem solving, while combative suggestions relied on blame, punishment, and escalation. The researchers also categorized each month of the conflict as either a period of peak intensity, marked by new escalations or major disruptions, or a sustained period, where the conflict continued without major novel developments.
The analysis indicated that higher expressions of care-based leadership were associated with a greater likelihood of proposing constructive policies.
“The effects are meaningful, but they should not be read as deterministic,” the Stajkovics noted, meaning one factor does not strictly guarantee an outcome. For every one-unit increase in a speaker’s care expression score, the odds of them making a constructive suggestion increased by 43 percent.
The data also pointed to differences in how men and women communicated. Overall, female legislators expressed higher levels of care-based leadership than male legislators throughout the 16 months. This higher expression of care indirectly explained why women were more likely to offer constructive policy suggestions.
However, the context of the event altered these patterns. During peak months of the conflict, expressions of care increased across the board. Notably, male politicians showed a much sharper increase in care-based language during these peak periods than female politicians did, narrowing the gender gap.
“One might expect the most threatening periods of a war to push leaders toward greater toughness, aggression, or emotional restraint,” the researchers said. “Instead, we found that male leaders tended to increase their expressions of care more sharply during exactly those periods.”
They explained that men face social pressure to appear tough, making it feel socially costly to openly express care. “But when suffering becomes visible and the stakes become extraordinarily high, the situation may provide a kind of ‘contextual license’ for men to express greater care,” they added. “In other words, extreme circumstances may temporarily loosen what society considers appropriate leadership behavior for men.”
The researchers also grouped the politicians into three distinct profiles based on their language. One group consistently showed low care expression, another maintained a stable and moderate level of care expression, and a third group showed highly responsive care expression that spiked during peak crisis months. Politicians with a stable care profile were the most likely to continue offering constructive policy suggestions even during peak months, acting as a steadying force during escalations.
A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 looked at whether female leaders causally reduced objective crisis outcomes like COVID-19 mortality rates, finding no statistical difference. The current research focuses on a different aspect of leadership, measuring gender differences in legislative speech and the expression of care during parliamentary debates rather than attempting to track objective crisis outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting the results. Because the study relies on observational data from political speeches, it cannot establish that expressing care directly causes a politician to adopt constructive policies. Instead, it highlights a strong association between the two factors.
“First, we would caution against reading this as showing that women are inherently more caring, or inherently ‘better’ leaders than men,” the researchers noted. “Women expressed more care on average, but men’s expression of care increased more substantially during peak-intensity periods. That is difficult to reconcile with a story in which care is simply a fixed trait of women.”
“‘Constructive’ should not be read as meaning anti-war, politically liberal, or the objectively correct policy,” they clarified. “We are studying the form of the proposed solution, not making a judgment about who is right in the conflict.”
It is also worth noting that what politicians suggest in a speech does not always translate into final legislative action. Parliamentary voting is often heavily influenced by party alliances and coalition requirements, meaning a leader’s verbal suggestions offer a window into their moral priorities in debate rather than a guarantee of how a law will be passed. The specific political and cultural context of the Israeli Knesset during a war also means these patterns might look different in other countries or during different types of emergencies.
“An interesting next step would be to examine how broadly these patterns generalize beyond war,” the researchers said. “War is an extreme case, but the features that make it a powerful test — novelty, disruption, high stakes, and consequences for human welfare — also characterize events such as natural disasters, public-health emergencies, humanitarian crises, and organizational crises.”
“If care were simply a luxury of leadership — something leaders could afford only when circumstances were easy — we would expect it to disappear as the crisis intensified,” they concluded. “We found close to the opposite. Expressions of care increased during peak periods, and leaders who expressed more care were more likely to put constructive alternatives into the conversation. Even in circumstances defined by conflict and polarization, escalation is not the only leadership response.”
The study, “Ethics of Care Leadership Expressions During a High-Strength Event: A Gendered Analysis of Combative Versus Constructive Policy Suggestions During the Israel–Hamas War,” was authored by Alexander D. Stajkovic, Kayla S. Stajkovic, Jenny M. Hoobler, and Frederick P. Morgeson.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #EthicsOfCareLeadership #CareInCrises #ConstructivePolicy #ParliamentarySpeech #GenderAndLeadership #WarLeadership #IsraelHamasWar #PolicyMakingInCrises #EmpathyInPolitics #PeakCrisisCommunication
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Male politicians show a spike in care-oriented language during peak periods of war
A recent analysis of parliamentary speeches during the Israel-Hamas war indicates that lawmakers who frequently express a moral duty to care for others are more likely to propose constructive, repair-oriented policies. The findings suggest that female politicians consistently use more care-based language, while male politicians tend to increase their expressions of care primarily during periods of peak conflict. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“From a research perspective, we know surprisingly little about leadership when it arguably matters most — during high-strength events such as crises, let alone wars,” Alexander D. Stajkovic, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kayla S. Stajkovic of the University of California, Davis, told PsyPost. “Most leadership research has been conducted in relatively calm, low-stakes settings, yet crises are precisely when leaders face consequential decisions under remarkable uncertainty and human suffering.”
In political settings, leaders navigate intense pressures, especially during times of crisis. The central focus of the new study is a concept called ethics of care leadership. This is a leadership approach where officials balance their traditional strategic duties with an active, publicly voiced concern for the welfare of those affected by their decisions. Rather than treating care as just a personality trait, this framework views caring for others as a moral obligation that can be expressed through everyday political language and debate.
“Care for others and strength in responding to crises should not be treated as opposites in leadership,” the researchers explained. “Ethics of care leadership is not about softening or stepping back from the difficult responsibilities of the job — it is about carrying out those responsibilities while remaining attentive to the people affected by them.”
Historically, political leadership during security threats has been associated with masculine traits like toughness and dominance. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2016 found that the public tends to prefer male over female leadership when worried about terrorism. However, expectations and approaches appear to be shifting.
A 2020 study by the Stajkovics found that U.S. states led by female governors experienced fewer COVID-19 deaths early in the pandemic, with an analysis of public briefings showing that these women expressed more empathy and confidence than male governors. Interviews with members of European parliaments from a 2026 qualitative study also indicated that many lawmakers increasingly view cooperative, interpersonally sensitive behavior as a core part of good leadership, alongside traditional assertiveness.
To understand how these dynamics play out in real-world crises, the authors examined how ethics of care leadership functions during high-strength events. These are situations that create sudden upheaval and carry massive consequences for human life, such as a war. Because high-strength events unfold in waves of varying intensity, they offer a way to track whether leaders maintain a consistent moral orientation or adapt their language as the crisis escalates and stabilizes.
“Instead of treating ‘the war’ as one flat backdrop of a high-strength event, we coded each month as either a peak or sustained-high event-strength period,” the researchers noted. “That allowed us to examine not just ‘Does care matter during a crisis?’ but ‘Does care rise and fall as the crisis itself rises and falls?’ — a question that is difficult to answer without 16 months of continuous, real-world data.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed the language used in the Israeli Knesset between October 2023 and January 2025. During this 16-month period, they examined roughly 5.2 million words spoken by 152 legislators across 140 plenary sessions, which are meetings attended by all members of the legislative body.
“What makes the findings especially compelling is the setting,” the researchers pointed out. “These were not participants responding to a hypothetical leadership scenario. They were elected leaders speaking during an actual, ongoing war, tracked continuously over 16 months rather than at a single moment.”
Using natural language processing software, a branch of artificial intelligence that allows computers to read and analyze human text, the team measured how often lawmakers used words associated with care and moral concern. They also extracted 4,143 distinct policy suggestions from the transcripts.
A machine learning program, trained on examples coded by human reviewers, classified each of these policy suggestions as either constructive or combative. Constructive suggestions focused on repair, social inclusion, and long-term problem solving, while combative suggestions relied on blame, punishment, and escalation. The researchers also categorized each month of the conflict as either a period of peak intensity, marked by new escalations or major disruptions, or a sustained period, where the conflict continued without major novel developments.
The analysis indicated that higher expressions of care-based leadership were associated with a greater likelihood of proposing constructive policies.
“The effects are meaningful, but they should not be read as deterministic,” the Stajkovics noted, meaning one factor does not strictly guarantee an outcome. For every one-unit increase in a speaker’s care expression score, the odds of them making a constructive suggestion increased by 43 percent.
The data also pointed to differences in how men and women communicated. Overall, female legislators expressed higher levels of care-based leadership than male legislators throughout the 16 months. This higher expression of care indirectly explained why women were more likely to offer constructive policy suggestions.
However, the context of the event altered these patterns. During peak months of the conflict, expressions of care increased across the board. Notably, male politicians showed a much sharper increase in care-based language during these peak periods than female politicians did, narrowing the gender gap.
“One might expect the most threatening periods of a war to push leaders toward greater toughness, aggression, or emotional restraint,” the researchers said. “Instead, we found that male leaders tended to increase their expressions of care more sharply during exactly those periods.”
They explained that men face social pressure to appear tough, making it feel socially costly to openly express care. “But when suffering becomes visible and the stakes become extraordinarily high, the situation may provide a kind of ‘contextual license’ for men to express greater care,” they added. “In other words, extreme circumstances may temporarily loosen what society considers appropriate leadership behavior for men.”
The researchers also grouped the politicians into three distinct profiles based on their language. One group consistently showed low care expression, another maintained a stable and moderate level of care expression, and a third group showed highly responsive care expression that spiked during peak crisis months. Politicians with a stable care profile were the most likely to continue offering constructive policy suggestions even during peak months, acting as a steadying force during escalations.
A study covered by PsyPost in 2024 looked at whether female leaders causally reduced objective crisis outcomes like COVID-19 mortality rates, finding no statistical difference. The current research focuses on a different aspect of leadership, measuring gender differences in legislative speech and the expression of care during parliamentary debates rather than attempting to track objective crisis outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting the results. Because the study relies on observational data from political speeches, it cannot establish that expressing care directly causes a politician to adopt constructive policies. Instead, it highlights a strong association between the two factors.
“First, we would caution against reading this as showing that women are inherently more caring, or inherently ‘better’ leaders than men,” the researchers noted. “Women expressed more care on average, but men’s expression of care increased more substantially during peak-intensity periods. That is difficult to reconcile with a story in which care is simply a fixed trait of women.”
“‘Constructive’ should not be read as meaning anti-war, politically liberal, or the objectively correct policy,” they clarified. “We are studying the form of the proposed solution, not making a judgment about who is right in the conflict.”
It is also worth noting that what politicians suggest in a speech does not always translate into final legislative action. Parliamentary voting is often heavily influenced by party alliances and coalition requirements, meaning a leader’s verbal suggestions offer a window into their moral priorities in debate rather than a guarantee of how a law will be passed. The specific political and cultural context of the Israeli Knesset during a war also means these patterns might look different in other countries or during different types of emergencies.
“An interesting next step would be to examine how broadly these patterns generalize beyond war,” the researchers said. “War is an extreme case, but the features that make it a powerful test — novelty, disruption, high stakes, and consequences for human welfare — also characterize events such as natural disasters, public-health emergencies, humanitarian crises, and organizational crises.”
“If care were simply a luxury of leadership — something leaders could afford only when circumstances were easy — we would expect it to disappear as the crisis intensified,” they concluded. “We found close to the opposite. Expressions of care increased during peak periods, and leaders who expressed more care were more likely to put constructive alternatives into the conversation. Even in circumstances defined by conflict and polarization, escalation is not the only leadership response.”
The study, “Ethics of Care Leadership Expressions During a High-Strength Event: A Gendered Analysis of Combative Versus Constructive Policy Suggestions During the Israel–Hamas War,” was authored by Alexander D. Stajkovic, Kayla S. Stajkovic, Jenny M. Hoobler, and Frederick P. Morgeson.
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DATE: September 3, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Escaping absolute poverty boosts adult cognitive abilities, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/escaping-absolute-poverty-boosts-adult-cognitive-abilities/
A recent evaluation of China’s nationwide anti-poverty campaign shows that escaping absolute poverty can boost adult cognitive abilities. The research, published in the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, suggests that comprehensive poverty reduction policies improve both factual knowledge and abstract reasoning by elevating physical health, educational investment, and job opportunities. These results indicate that providing resources and security to disadvantaged populations can yield measurable changes in mental capacity.
Poverty is often defined simply as a lack of income, but economists increasingly view it as a deprivation of human capabilities. According to this framework, financial scarcity prevents people from converting available resources into healthy, productive lives. When people experience chronic financial stress, the mental burden of survival can crowd out the attention and working memory needed for learning and planning. Medical and biological research supports this view, showing that persistent poverty can induce psychological distress that actively diminishes an individual’s mental bandwidth.
To see if large-scale social policies can actually repair these mental capacities, public affairs researchers Yuhang He and Dian Chen of Zhejiang University, along with economist Huawei He of the Central University of Finance and Economics, examined China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation policy. Launched nationwide in 2015, this massive government initiative aimed to eliminate absolute poverty by providing targeted financial credit, healthcare, and employment support to low-income households. Instead of just looking at whether people made more money, the research team wanted to know if this comprehensive support package improved the underlying cognitive abilities of the adults who participated in the program.
The researchers used data from the China Family Panel Studies, a large ongoing survey that tracks the social and economic status of individuals across the country. They focused on adults from households that either fell below the national poverty line or were officially registered for the poverty alleviation program in 2014. The survey data allowed the team to control for a wide range of personal and regional factors, including age, marital status, household size, and local economic development. To measure cognitive ability, the team analyzed scores from standardized tests administered during the survey between 2010 and 2018.
The tests measured two distinct forms of mental capacity. The first is crystallized intelligence, which relies on accumulated knowledge and experience. This was measured through word recognition and mathematical calculation tasks. The second is fluid intelligence, which involves the ability to solve new problems, identify patterns, and use working memory, independent of past learning. Fluid intelligence was measured using memory tests and number sequence reasoning.
The researchers compared the test scores of adults who received poverty alleviation support with those who did not, looking at how the scores changed before and after the policy was implemented. The analysis showed that adults benefiting from the poverty alleviation program experienced marked improvements in both forms of intelligence. The policy led to an average increase of nearly five points on tests of crystallized intelligence and about half a point on tests of fluid intelligence. These cognitive gains were present across various groups, but the extent of the improvement varied based on personal characteristics and geography.
The cognitive benefits were largest in western China, where poverty was historically more severe and the policy directed more concentrated resources. The type of cognitive improvement also depended on a person’s age, gender, and educational background. Older adults and individuals with lower levels of education saw their crystallized intelligence increase the most. This pattern suggests that basic improvements in living conditions can help people catch up on fundamental, knowledge-based skills that they might have missed out on earlier in life.
In contrast, adults with higher levels of education experienced larger gains in fluid intelligence. These individuals likely possessed the foundational learning skills required to translate better economic security into higher-order problem-solving and abstract reasoning. The researchers also found differences in how the policy affected men and women. Women demonstrated much larger improvements in crystallized intelligence than men did.
The researchers suggest this might be related to traditional household roles, where women often handle more caregiving responsibilities. When a poverty alleviation policy improves basic living conditions and health, it may disproportionately relieve the domestic burdens placed on women, allowing for greater gains in knowledge-based abilities. Additionally, non-working individuals experienced slightly larger improvements in cognition compared to the working population, likely because they faced stronger health and economic barriers prior to the policy’s implementation.
To understand how the policy boosted test scores, the researchers analyzed three potential pathways. First, they looked at health outcomes, finding that the poverty alleviation program elevated both self-reported physical health and mental health. Better health correlated with higher cognitive scores, likely because a reduced disease burden and less anxiety free up mental energy for information processing. A body free from chronic pain and a mind free from constant financial anxiety can dedicate more resources to reasoning and memory.
Second, the researchers observed changes in how families spent their money. Households in the poverty program spent more on education and training, which in turn correlated with better cognitive performance. By reducing the direct costs of education and increasing the visible rewards of acquiring new skills, the policy likely encouraged adults to engage in more learning activities. Finally, the policy improved employment rates, placing more adults in work environments that require daily problem-solving, time planning, and social interaction.
While the research provides evidence that the poverty alleviation policy as a whole improved cognitive test scores, the specific mechanisms driving these changes are only associative. Because the researchers did not evaluate the health, education, and employment initiatives as isolated experiments, they cannot definitively say which individual component caused the cognitive gains. The poverty policy was evaluated as a single comprehensive package. This makes it difficult to pinpoint whether medical insurance support, for example, was more effective at boosting cognition than job training or infrastructure development.
The data used in the analysis also have limits regarding the types of cognition measured and the timeline of the effects. The standardized tests only captured crystallized and fluid intelligence, meaning they did not measure other mental skills like social cognition, creativity, or specific executive functions. Because the nationwide policy is relatively recent, the available survey data only covers a few years after its implementation. Future research will need to track participants over a longer period to see if these cognitive improvements persist throughout a person’s life and help prevent future financial hardship.
The study, “Does targeted poverty alleviation improve cognitive ability? Evidence from a quasi-experiment in China,” was authored by Yuhang He, Dian Chen, and Huawei He.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/escaping-absolute-poverty-boosts-adult-cognitive-abilities/
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PovertyAlleviationCognition #CognitiveBenefitsOfPovertyReduction #ChinaPovertyPolicy #TargetedPovertyAlleviation #CrystallizedVsFluidIntelligence #HealthEducationEmploymentImpact #EconomicSecurityCognitiveBoost #WomenCognitionGains #EducationSpendingMatters #MindBandwidthAndPoverty
-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Escaping absolute poverty boosts adult cognitive abilities, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/escaping-absolute-poverty-boosts-adult-cognitive-abilities/
A recent evaluation of China’s nationwide anti-poverty campaign shows that escaping absolute poverty can boost adult cognitive abilities. The research, published in the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, suggests that comprehensive poverty reduction policies improve both factual knowledge and abstract reasoning by elevating physical health, educational investment, and job opportunities. These results indicate that providing resources and security to disadvantaged populations can yield measurable changes in mental capacity.
Poverty is often defined simply as a lack of income, but economists increasingly view it as a deprivation of human capabilities. According to this framework, financial scarcity prevents people from converting available resources into healthy, productive lives. When people experience chronic financial stress, the mental burden of survival can crowd out the attention and working memory needed for learning and planning. Medical and biological research supports this view, showing that persistent poverty can induce psychological distress that actively diminishes an individual’s mental bandwidth.
To see if large-scale social policies can actually repair these mental capacities, public affairs researchers Yuhang He and Dian Chen of Zhejiang University, along with economist Huawei He of the Central University of Finance and Economics, examined China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation policy. Launched nationwide in 2015, this massive government initiative aimed to eliminate absolute poverty by providing targeted financial credit, healthcare, and employment support to low-income households. Instead of just looking at whether people made more money, the research team wanted to know if this comprehensive support package improved the underlying cognitive abilities of the adults who participated in the program.
The researchers used data from the China Family Panel Studies, a large ongoing survey that tracks the social and economic status of individuals across the country. They focused on adults from households that either fell below the national poverty line or were officially registered for the poverty alleviation program in 2014. The survey data allowed the team to control for a wide range of personal and regional factors, including age, marital status, household size, and local economic development. To measure cognitive ability, the team analyzed scores from standardized tests administered during the survey between 2010 and 2018.
The tests measured two distinct forms of mental capacity. The first is crystallized intelligence, which relies on accumulated knowledge and experience. This was measured through word recognition and mathematical calculation tasks. The second is fluid intelligence, which involves the ability to solve new problems, identify patterns, and use working memory, independent of past learning. Fluid intelligence was measured using memory tests and number sequence reasoning.
The researchers compared the test scores of adults who received poverty alleviation support with those who did not, looking at how the scores changed before and after the policy was implemented. The analysis showed that adults benefiting from the poverty alleviation program experienced marked improvements in both forms of intelligence. The policy led to an average increase of nearly five points on tests of crystallized intelligence and about half a point on tests of fluid intelligence. These cognitive gains were present across various groups, but the extent of the improvement varied based on personal characteristics and geography.
The cognitive benefits were largest in western China, where poverty was historically more severe and the policy directed more concentrated resources. The type of cognitive improvement also depended on a person’s age, gender, and educational background. Older adults and individuals with lower levels of education saw their crystallized intelligence increase the most. This pattern suggests that basic improvements in living conditions can help people catch up on fundamental, knowledge-based skills that they might have missed out on earlier in life.
In contrast, adults with higher levels of education experienced larger gains in fluid intelligence. These individuals likely possessed the foundational learning skills required to translate better economic security into higher-order problem-solving and abstract reasoning. The researchers also found differences in how the policy affected men and women. Women demonstrated much larger improvements in crystallized intelligence than men did.
The researchers suggest this might be related to traditional household roles, where women often handle more caregiving responsibilities. When a poverty alleviation policy improves basic living conditions and health, it may disproportionately relieve the domestic burdens placed on women, allowing for greater gains in knowledge-based abilities. Additionally, non-working individuals experienced slightly larger improvements in cognition compared to the working population, likely because they faced stronger health and economic barriers prior to the policy’s implementation.
To understand how the policy boosted test scores, the researchers analyzed three potential pathways. First, they looked at health outcomes, finding that the poverty alleviation program elevated both self-reported physical health and mental health. Better health correlated with higher cognitive scores, likely because a reduced disease burden and less anxiety free up mental energy for information processing. A body free from chronic pain and a mind free from constant financial anxiety can dedicate more resources to reasoning and memory.
Second, the researchers observed changes in how families spent their money. Households in the poverty program spent more on education and training, which in turn correlated with better cognitive performance. By reducing the direct costs of education and increasing the visible rewards of acquiring new skills, the policy likely encouraged adults to engage in more learning activities. Finally, the policy improved employment rates, placing more adults in work environments that require daily problem-solving, time planning, and social interaction.
While the research provides evidence that the poverty alleviation policy as a whole improved cognitive test scores, the specific mechanisms driving these changes are only associative. Because the researchers did not evaluate the health, education, and employment initiatives as isolated experiments, they cannot definitively say which individual component caused the cognitive gains. The poverty policy was evaluated as a single comprehensive package. This makes it difficult to pinpoint whether medical insurance support, for example, was more effective at boosting cognition than job training or infrastructure development.
The data used in the analysis also have limits regarding the types of cognition measured and the timeline of the effects. The standardized tests only captured crystallized and fluid intelligence, meaning they did not measure other mental skills like social cognition, creativity, or specific executive functions. Because the nationwide policy is relatively recent, the available survey data only covers a few years after its implementation. Future research will need to track participants over a longer period to see if these cognitive improvements persist throughout a person’s life and help prevent future financial hardship.
The study, “Does targeted poverty alleviation improve cognitive ability? Evidence from a quasi-experiment in China,” was authored by Yuhang He, Dian Chen, and Huawei He.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/escaping-absolute-poverty-boosts-adult-cognitive-abilities/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PovertyAlleviationCognition #CognitiveBenefitsOfPovertyReduction #ChinaPovertyPolicy #TargetedPovertyAlleviation #CrystallizedVsFluidIntelligence #HealthEducationEmploymentImpact #EconomicSecurityCognitiveBoost #WomenCognitionGains #EducationSpendingMatters #MindBandwidthAndPoverty