#counseling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counseling, aggregated by home.social.
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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
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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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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #Pramipexole #anhedonia #apathy #mooddisorders #placebocontrolledtrial
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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".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #Pramipexole #anhedonia #apathy #mooddisorders #placebocontrolledtrial
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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".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
-------------------------------------------------
#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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #StressCooperation #TendAndBefriend #FightOrFlight #SocialStress #CooperationUnderPressure #TrustDecisionMaking #StressResponses #SocialInteractions #Psychoneuroendocrinology #CortisolResponses
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #StressCooperation #TendAndBefriend #FightOrFlight #SocialStress #CooperationUnderPressure #TrustDecisionMaking #StressResponses #SocialInteractions #Psychoneuroendocrinology #CortisolResponses
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #StressCooperation #TendAndBefriend #FightOrFlight #SocialStress #CooperationUnderPressure #TrustDecisionMaking #StressResponses #SocialInteractions #Psychoneuroendocrinology #CortisolResponses
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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
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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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-------------------------------------------------
#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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#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 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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-------------------------------------------------
#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
-------------------------------------------------
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 #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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-
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/
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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 06:29AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: One immune switch may help drive aging across the body
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
Aging may be partly fueled by immune cells losing their ability to clear away damaged, inflammation-promoting cells. Blocking a single receptor restored that cleanup process in mice, reducing inflammation and helping their organs, muscles, and memory remain remarkably youthful.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
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-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 06:29AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: One immune switch may help drive aging across the body
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
Aging may be partly fueled by immune cells losing their ability to clear away damaged, inflammation-promoting cells. Blocking a single receptor restored that cleanup process in mice, reducing inflammation and helping their organs, muscles, and memory remain remarkably youthful.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
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-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 06:29AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: One immune switch may help drive aging across the body
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
Aging may be partly fueled by immune cells losing their ability to clear away damaged, inflammation-promoting cells. Blocking a single receptor restored that cleanup process in mice, reducing inflammation and helping their organs, muscles, and memory remain remarkably youthful.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010717.htm
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 08:17AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
📷 Military-connected individuals! CDP is recruiting for our CAB. Your insights as a military-connected individual who has either received or provided care within the Military Health System are vital to shaping behavioral health research. E-mail [email protected] for more. https://t.co/qhSZHIgiQo
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 08:17AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
📷 Military-connected individuals! CDP is recruiting for our CAB. Your insights as a military-connected individual who has either received or provided care within the Military Health System are vital to shaping behavioral health research. E-mail [email protected] for more. https://t.co/qhSZHIgiQo
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 08:17AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
📷 Military-connected individuals! CDP is recruiting for our CAB. Your insights as a military-connected individual who has either received or provided care within the Military Health System are vital to shaping behavioral health research. E-mail [email protected] for more. https://t.co/qhSZHIgiQo
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
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DATE: September 3, 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: The surprising reason our memories become blurred as we age, according to new neuroscience research
As people get older, their brains may shift how they process and store complex memories, moving from accurately recreating specific past events to blending them into broad, inaccurate categories. This change in brain function helps explain why older adults often experience memory errors in everyday life. The findings were published in the Cerebral Cortex.
The hippocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped structure located deep within the brain that is essential for learning and memory. It helps form episodic memories, which involve linking together the specific details of a past event. A 2016 study demonstrated that the hippocampus helps retrieve these memories by re-creating the precise neural activity patterns that were present when the event was first experienced.
These neural patterns are thought to be strengthened over time after learning, a process known as memory consolidation. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that sleep, compared to wakefulness, helps consolidate weakly formed associations, binding different elements of an event together. However, as people grow older, this memory-binding process often becomes less precise.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain-scanning technique that measures neural activity by tracking changes in blood flow, scientists have recently made strides in observing this hidden phase.
“Over the past decade, research in young adults has revealed consistent evidence that we can use fMRI to understand memory storage processes (called consolidation),” said study author Ian M. McDonough, an associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University. “This is exciting because the storage process has been well validated in animals, but previously unreachable in humans, making it more theoretical and inferred than actually measurable. Given that I do aging research, I thought that this new ability to test this consolidation stage might help us understand why memory declines in old age.”
Instead of failing to link information, older adults sometimes associate too many unrelated details. A 2024 review suggested that older adults tend to form excessive, unintended associations, leading to memory confusion.
“Memory for specific associations (e.g., faces and names) we have are not simply more likely to be forgotten as we get older, but instead we are more likely to confuse the associations with other associations,” McDonough explained. “These memory confusions start in middle-age and are partially due to changes in how our memory center of the brain (the hippocampus) works.”
The authors of the new study wanted to see how the brain’s replay of information shifts across the adult lifespan, tracking how memory patterns change from the moment something is learned to when it is recalled.
“A lot of studies investigating brain function focus on one stage of the memory process (learning, storage, or retrieval),” McDonough said. “More studies are needed like this one that take a holistic perspective and attempt to integrate brain measures across these stages because they are not independent.”
For the new study, McDonough and his co-author, Destaw B. Mekbib, recruited 61 adults separated into three age groups. The sample included 17 younger adults aged 18 to 30, 21 middle-aged adults aged 50 to 60, and 23 older adults aged 61 to 74. The participants underwent fMRI scanning to observe their brain activity during the experiment.
While in the scanner, participants completed a memory task that began with a learning phase. They viewed 64 visual pairings, each featuring a neutral human face presented alongside either an everyday object or a scene. Following this learning period, the participants rested quietly with their eyes closed for five minutes while the scanner recorded their baseline brain activity.
Finally, the participants completed a memory test. They were shown the previously studied faces and asked to select the correct associated object or scene from four different options. The researchers analyzed the data to see how closely the brain activity patterns in the hippocampus matched across the three phases: learning, resting, and remembering.
The results showed a decline in memory accuracy as age increased. Younger adults correctly identified the matching pairs 36 percent of the time, while middle-aged adults answered correctly 24 percent of the time, and older adults scored 20 percent. Forgetting rates, defined as failing to make any choice before the time ran out, did not differ significantly among the three age groups.
When looking at the brain scans, the researchers found that hippocampal activity patterns generally became less stable and less consistent with increasing age. In younger adults, a high degree of similarity in brain patterns between the learning phase and the memory test predicted better overall accuracy and less forgetting. This suggests that their brains were successfully reinstating the specific details of the initial experience.
For older adults, this relationship took a different form. High pattern similarity across the memory phases actually predicted an increase in a specific type of mistake. Older adults with closely matching brain patterns across the learning, resting, and testing phases were more prone to category-level errors, such as mistakenly selecting a scene when the correct answer was an object.
“We expected that as people age, they would simply show ‘less’ of the same brain patterns that young adults show,” McDonough said. “Instead, we found that the same ‘helpful’ brain patterns linked with accurate memory in young adults were associated with memory confusions in older age. That is, those ‘helpful’ brain patterns in young were now ‘harmful’ brain patterns in older adults rather than older adults simply showing fewer of the ‘helpful’ brain patterns.”
The data also highlighted the distinct neural profile of middle age. “One misinterpretation is that although episodic memory does start to decline in middle-age, the brain patterns we found were not the same in middle and old age,” McDonough noted. “Middle-age sits in between the two age bands, which means that when young adults show positive relationships between the hippocampal patterns and memory, older adults show negative relationships, then middle-age doesn’t always show much of a relationship. So this means the brain patterns in middle-aged adults don’t look like younger or older adults exactly.”
These findings suggest that as people age, the brain may shift from replaying precise, detailed memories to replaying broader, overlapping information. The researchers tested whether physical shrinkage of the hippocampus could explain these changes, but factoring in hippocampal volume did not alter the results. The memory errors were driven by how the brain functioned and organized information across the different memory phases, rather than just the physical size of the brain region.
While these functional brain changes help explain memory decline, they are only part of the puzzle. “Although we found strong declines in episodic memory with age (which replicated decades of studies in this area), the brain effects were modest,” McDonough told PsyPost. “We explained about 30% of that age decline in memory accuracy, leaving a lot left to figure out.”
The results align with a 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which indicated that older age is associated with a progressive loss of cohesive, coordinated brain activity during memory tasks. While that earlier research measured whole-brain network synchronization, the new study examined fine-grained representational stability within the hippocampus, assessing how consistently the brain reproduces the precise patterns of neural activity that code for a specific piece of information. The findings are also in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025 showing that aging degrades the precision of brain representations during learning.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study focused almost exclusively on the hippocampus, but memory relies on a broad network of interconnected brain regions. Future research will need to explore how other areas, such as the outer layers of the brain known as the cortex, contribute to these memory transformations.
Additionally, overlapping brain patterns do not exclusively indicate that a memory is being replayed. Similar brain activity could also reflect general similarities in how a person is paying attention or processing visual information during different parts of the experiment. The participant sample also lacked individuals between the ages of 31 and 49, meaning the researchers could not map a continuous, year-by-year trajectory of how these brain changes unfold across the entire adult lifespan.
These results also require broader confirmation. “One large caveat is that the brain patterns in middle-age and older adults need to be replicated in a separate group of people,” McDonough said.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to explore ways to actively improve memory storage. These future approaches might include neurofeedback, which teaches people to voluntarily regulate their brain activity by showing them real-time readouts of their brainwaves, or neurostimulation, which applies mild electrical or magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted areas of the brain.
“Our long-term goals are to keep understanding how the brain prioritizes information during the memory storage phase and how we can leverage existing tools to change the brain during this phase to enhance memory,” McDonough said. “We are particularly interested in neurofeedback and neurostimulation techniques as a way to directly modify brain activity to enhance memory in old age.”
The study, “Aging shifts hippocampal reactivation from selective reinstatement to category-level misbinding during episodic memory,” was authored by Destaw B. Mekbib and Ian M. McDonough.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #MemoryAging #Hippocampus #EpisodicMemory #Neuroscience #AgingAndMemory #Neurofeedback #Neurostimulation #MemoryConsolidation #BrainImagining #CerebralCortex
-
DATE: September 3, 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: The surprising reason our memories become blurred as we age, according to new neuroscience research
As people get older, their brains may shift how they process and store complex memories, moving from accurately recreating specific past events to blending them into broad, inaccurate categories. This change in brain function helps explain why older adults often experience memory errors in everyday life. The findings were published in the Cerebral Cortex.
The hippocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped structure located deep within the brain that is essential for learning and memory. It helps form episodic memories, which involve linking together the specific details of a past event. A 2016 study demonstrated that the hippocampus helps retrieve these memories by re-creating the precise neural activity patterns that were present when the event was first experienced.
These neural patterns are thought to be strengthened over time after learning, a process known as memory consolidation. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that sleep, compared to wakefulness, helps consolidate weakly formed associations, binding different elements of an event together. However, as people grow older, this memory-binding process often becomes less precise.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain-scanning technique that measures neural activity by tracking changes in blood flow, scientists have recently made strides in observing this hidden phase.
“Over the past decade, research in young adults has revealed consistent evidence that we can use fMRI to understand memory storage processes (called consolidation),” said study author Ian M. McDonough, an associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University. “This is exciting because the storage process has been well validated in animals, but previously unreachable in humans, making it more theoretical and inferred than actually measurable. Given that I do aging research, I thought that this new ability to test this consolidation stage might help us understand why memory declines in old age.”
Instead of failing to link information, older adults sometimes associate too many unrelated details. A 2024 review suggested that older adults tend to form excessive, unintended associations, leading to memory confusion.
“Memory for specific associations (e.g., faces and names) we have are not simply more likely to be forgotten as we get older, but instead we are more likely to confuse the associations with other associations,” McDonough explained. “These memory confusions start in middle-age and are partially due to changes in how our memory center of the brain (the hippocampus) works.”
The authors of the new study wanted to see how the brain’s replay of information shifts across the adult lifespan, tracking how memory patterns change from the moment something is learned to when it is recalled.
“A lot of studies investigating brain function focus on one stage of the memory process (learning, storage, or retrieval),” McDonough said. “More studies are needed like this one that take a holistic perspective and attempt to integrate brain measures across these stages because they are not independent.”
For the new study, McDonough and his co-author, Destaw B. Mekbib, recruited 61 adults separated into three age groups. The sample included 17 younger adults aged 18 to 30, 21 middle-aged adults aged 50 to 60, and 23 older adults aged 61 to 74. The participants underwent fMRI scanning to observe their brain activity during the experiment.
While in the scanner, participants completed a memory task that began with a learning phase. They viewed 64 visual pairings, each featuring a neutral human face presented alongside either an everyday object or a scene. Following this learning period, the participants rested quietly with their eyes closed for five minutes while the scanner recorded their baseline brain activity.
Finally, the participants completed a memory test. They were shown the previously studied faces and asked to select the correct associated object or scene from four different options. The researchers analyzed the data to see how closely the brain activity patterns in the hippocampus matched across the three phases: learning, resting, and remembering.
The results showed a decline in memory accuracy as age increased. Younger adults correctly identified the matching pairs 36 percent of the time, while middle-aged adults answered correctly 24 percent of the time, and older adults scored 20 percent. Forgetting rates, defined as failing to make any choice before the time ran out, did not differ significantly among the three age groups.
When looking at the brain scans, the researchers found that hippocampal activity patterns generally became less stable and less consistent with increasing age. In younger adults, a high degree of similarity in brain patterns between the learning phase and the memory test predicted better overall accuracy and less forgetting. This suggests that their brains were successfully reinstating the specific details of the initial experience.
For older adults, this relationship took a different form. High pattern similarity across the memory phases actually predicted an increase in a specific type of mistake. Older adults with closely matching brain patterns across the learning, resting, and testing phases were more prone to category-level errors, such as mistakenly selecting a scene when the correct answer was an object.
“We expected that as people age, they would simply show ‘less’ of the same brain patterns that young adults show,” McDonough said. “Instead, we found that the same ‘helpful’ brain patterns linked with accurate memory in young adults were associated with memory confusions in older age. That is, those ‘helpful’ brain patterns in young were now ‘harmful’ brain patterns in older adults rather than older adults simply showing fewer of the ‘helpful’ brain patterns.”
The data also highlighted the distinct neural profile of middle age. “One misinterpretation is that although episodic memory does start to decline in middle-age, the brain patterns we found were not the same in middle and old age,” McDonough noted. “Middle-age sits in between the two age bands, which means that when young adults show positive relationships between the hippocampal patterns and memory, older adults show negative relationships, then middle-age doesn’t always show much of a relationship. So this means the brain patterns in middle-aged adults don’t look like younger or older adults exactly.”
These findings suggest that as people age, the brain may shift from replaying precise, detailed memories to replaying broader, overlapping information. The researchers tested whether physical shrinkage of the hippocampus could explain these changes, but factoring in hippocampal volume did not alter the results. The memory errors were driven by how the brain functioned and organized information across the different memory phases, rather than just the physical size of the brain region.
While these functional brain changes help explain memory decline, they are only part of the puzzle. “Although we found strong declines in episodic memory with age (which replicated decades of studies in this area), the brain effects were modest,” McDonough told PsyPost. “We explained about 30% of that age decline in memory accuracy, leaving a lot left to figure out.”
The results align with a 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which indicated that older age is associated with a progressive loss of cohesive, coordinated brain activity during memory tasks. While that earlier research measured whole-brain network synchronization, the new study examined fine-grained representational stability within the hippocampus, assessing how consistently the brain reproduces the precise patterns of neural activity that code for a specific piece of information. The findings are also in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025 showing that aging degrades the precision of brain representations during learning.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study focused almost exclusively on the hippocampus, but memory relies on a broad network of interconnected brain regions. Future research will need to explore how other areas, such as the outer layers of the brain known as the cortex, contribute to these memory transformations.
Additionally, overlapping brain patterns do not exclusively indicate that a memory is being replayed. Similar brain activity could also reflect general similarities in how a person is paying attention or processing visual information during different parts of the experiment. The participant sample also lacked individuals between the ages of 31 and 49, meaning the researchers could not map a continuous, year-by-year trajectory of how these brain changes unfold across the entire adult lifespan.
These results also require broader confirmation. “One large caveat is that the brain patterns in middle-age and older adults need to be replicated in a separate group of people,” McDonough said.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to explore ways to actively improve memory storage. These future approaches might include neurofeedback, which teaches people to voluntarily regulate their brain activity by showing them real-time readouts of their brainwaves, or neurostimulation, which applies mild electrical or magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted areas of the brain.
“Our long-term goals are to keep understanding how the brain prioritizes information during the memory storage phase and how we can leverage existing tools to change the brain during this phase to enhance memory,” McDonough said. “We are particularly interested in neurofeedback and neurostimulation techniques as a way to directly modify brain activity to enhance memory in old age.”
The study, “Aging shifts hippocampal reactivation from selective reinstatement to category-level misbinding during episodic memory,” was authored by Destaw B. Mekbib and Ian M. McDonough.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MemoryAging #Hippocampus #EpisodicMemory #Neuroscience #AgingAndMemory #Neurofeedback #Neurostimulation #MemoryConsolidation #BrainImagining #CerebralCortex
-
DATE: September 3, 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: The surprising reason our memories become blurred as we age, according to new neuroscience research
As people get older, their brains may shift how they process and store complex memories, moving from accurately recreating specific past events to blending them into broad, inaccurate categories. This change in brain function helps explain why older adults often experience memory errors in everyday life. The findings were published in the Cerebral Cortex.
The hippocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped structure located deep within the brain that is essential for learning and memory. It helps form episodic memories, which involve linking together the specific details of a past event. A 2016 study demonstrated that the hippocampus helps retrieve these memories by re-creating the precise neural activity patterns that were present when the event was first experienced.
These neural patterns are thought to be strengthened over time after learning, a process known as memory consolidation. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that sleep, compared to wakefulness, helps consolidate weakly formed associations, binding different elements of an event together. However, as people grow older, this memory-binding process often becomes less precise.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain-scanning technique that measures neural activity by tracking changes in blood flow, scientists have recently made strides in observing this hidden phase.
“Over the past decade, research in young adults has revealed consistent evidence that we can use fMRI to understand memory storage processes (called consolidation),” said study author Ian M. McDonough, an associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University. “This is exciting because the storage process has been well validated in animals, but previously unreachable in humans, making it more theoretical and inferred than actually measurable. Given that I do aging research, I thought that this new ability to test this consolidation stage might help us understand why memory declines in old age.”
Instead of failing to link information, older adults sometimes associate too many unrelated details. A 2024 review suggested that older adults tend to form excessive, unintended associations, leading to memory confusion.
“Memory for specific associations (e.g., faces and names) we have are not simply more likely to be forgotten as we get older, but instead we are more likely to confuse the associations with other associations,” McDonough explained. “These memory confusions start in middle-age and are partially due to changes in how our memory center of the brain (the hippocampus) works.”
The authors of the new study wanted to see how the brain’s replay of information shifts across the adult lifespan, tracking how memory patterns change from the moment something is learned to when it is recalled.
“A lot of studies investigating brain function focus on one stage of the memory process (learning, storage, or retrieval),” McDonough said. “More studies are needed like this one that take a holistic perspective and attempt to integrate brain measures across these stages because they are not independent.”
For the new study, McDonough and his co-author, Destaw B. Mekbib, recruited 61 adults separated into three age groups. The sample included 17 younger adults aged 18 to 30, 21 middle-aged adults aged 50 to 60, and 23 older adults aged 61 to 74. The participants underwent fMRI scanning to observe their brain activity during the experiment.
While in the scanner, participants completed a memory task that began with a learning phase. They viewed 64 visual pairings, each featuring a neutral human face presented alongside either an everyday object or a scene. Following this learning period, the participants rested quietly with their eyes closed for five minutes while the scanner recorded their baseline brain activity.
Finally, the participants completed a memory test. They were shown the previously studied faces and asked to select the correct associated object or scene from four different options. The researchers analyzed the data to see how closely the brain activity patterns in the hippocampus matched across the three phases: learning, resting, and remembering.
The results showed a decline in memory accuracy as age increased. Younger adults correctly identified the matching pairs 36 percent of the time, while middle-aged adults answered correctly 24 percent of the time, and older adults scored 20 percent. Forgetting rates, defined as failing to make any choice before the time ran out, did not differ significantly among the three age groups.
When looking at the brain scans, the researchers found that hippocampal activity patterns generally became less stable and less consistent with increasing age. In younger adults, a high degree of similarity in brain patterns between the learning phase and the memory test predicted better overall accuracy and less forgetting. This suggests that their brains were successfully reinstating the specific details of the initial experience.
For older adults, this relationship took a different form. High pattern similarity across the memory phases actually predicted an increase in a specific type of mistake. Older adults with closely matching brain patterns across the learning, resting, and testing phases were more prone to category-level errors, such as mistakenly selecting a scene when the correct answer was an object.
“We expected that as people age, they would simply show ‘less’ of the same brain patterns that young adults show,” McDonough said. “Instead, we found that the same ‘helpful’ brain patterns linked with accurate memory in young adults were associated with memory confusions in older age. That is, those ‘helpful’ brain patterns in young were now ‘harmful’ brain patterns in older adults rather than older adults simply showing fewer of the ‘helpful’ brain patterns.”
The data also highlighted the distinct neural profile of middle age. “One misinterpretation is that although episodic memory does start to decline in middle-age, the brain patterns we found were not the same in middle and old age,” McDonough noted. “Middle-age sits in between the two age bands, which means that when young adults show positive relationships between the hippocampal patterns and memory, older adults show negative relationships, then middle-age doesn’t always show much of a relationship. So this means the brain patterns in middle-aged adults don’t look like younger or older adults exactly.”
These findings suggest that as people age, the brain may shift from replaying precise, detailed memories to replaying broader, overlapping information. The researchers tested whether physical shrinkage of the hippocampus could explain these changes, but factoring in hippocampal volume did not alter the results. The memory errors were driven by how the brain functioned and organized information across the different memory phases, rather than just the physical size of the brain region.
While these functional brain changes help explain memory decline, they are only part of the puzzle. “Although we found strong declines in episodic memory with age (which replicated decades of studies in this area), the brain effects were modest,” McDonough told PsyPost. “We explained about 30% of that age decline in memory accuracy, leaving a lot left to figure out.”
The results align with a 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which indicated that older age is associated with a progressive loss of cohesive, coordinated brain activity during memory tasks. While that earlier research measured whole-brain network synchronization, the new study examined fine-grained representational stability within the hippocampus, assessing how consistently the brain reproduces the precise patterns of neural activity that code for a specific piece of information. The findings are also in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025 showing that aging degrades the precision of brain representations during learning.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study focused almost exclusively on the hippocampus, but memory relies on a broad network of interconnected brain regions. Future research will need to explore how other areas, such as the outer layers of the brain known as the cortex, contribute to these memory transformations.
Additionally, overlapping brain patterns do not exclusively indicate that a memory is being replayed. Similar brain activity could also reflect general similarities in how a person is paying attention or processing visual information during different parts of the experiment. The participant sample also lacked individuals between the ages of 31 and 49, meaning the researchers could not map a continuous, year-by-year trajectory of how these brain changes unfold across the entire adult lifespan.
These results also require broader confirmation. “One large caveat is that the brain patterns in middle-age and older adults need to be replicated in a separate group of people,” McDonough said.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to explore ways to actively improve memory storage. These future approaches might include neurofeedback, which teaches people to voluntarily regulate their brain activity by showing them real-time readouts of their brainwaves, or neurostimulation, which applies mild electrical or magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted areas of the brain.
“Our long-term goals are to keep understanding how the brain prioritizes information during the memory storage phase and how we can leverage existing tools to change the brain during this phase to enhance memory,” McDonough said. “We are particularly interested in neurofeedback and neurostimulation techniques as a way to directly modify brain activity to enhance memory in old age.”
The study, “Aging shifts hippocampal reactivation from selective reinstatement to category-level misbinding during episodic memory,” was authored by Destaw B. Mekbib and Ian M. McDonough.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MemoryAging #Hippocampus #EpisodicMemory #Neuroscience #AgingAndMemory #Neurofeedback #Neurostimulation #MemoryConsolidation #BrainImagining #CerebralCortex
-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The link between dark personality traits and online toxicity is more nuanced than expected
A new study found that individuals with more pronounced dark personality traits tend to report more engagement in uncivil online interactions. However, analysis of their actual Reddit comments did not confirm this association—dark personality traits were not associated with any of the toxicity or linguistic features of their comments. The paper was published in Computers in Human Behavior.
Online social platforms have transformed how people communicate, exchange information, and build communities. However, they have also created new opportunities for harmful behavior. Toxic and hateful speech is particularly concerning because hostile online interactions can result in psychological harm, and, in some cases, offline violence. Research increasingly suggests that such behavior is shaped not only by the design of online platforms or specific situations, but also by individual personality differences.
Particular attention has been given to the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism. These traits have been associated with behaviors such as trolling, cyberbullying, manipulation, hostility, and the production or endorsement of toxic content. For example, people with stronger sadistic tendencies may enjoy provoking or upsetting others, while psychopathic traits have been linked to more impulsive and hostile online interactions.
Because personality also influences how people communicate, researchers have become interested in whether psychological characteristics might be reflected in the language people use online. This has contributed to the development of computational approaches that attempt to infer personality traits from digital behavior and linguistic patterns.
Study author Aldo Cerulli and his colleagues explored the relationship between dark personality traits and the textual content people post online. More specifically, they wanted to see whether dark personality traits can be reliably inferred from textual materials on social media.
Study participants were 114 U.S. individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform. After enrolling in the study, participants provided information the researchers needed to link them to their Reddit accounts. For this, the study authors developed a dedicated web application that interfaces directly with Reddit’s Application Programming Interface (API), allowing for the secure, automated collection of participant data.
The study authors used this link to collect participants’ Reddit comments. In total, this included 152,741 sentences that comprised 56,892 comments. The mean number of comments per participant was 499. By analyzing these texts, the study authors derived estimates of participants’ online toxicity, psycholinguistic characteristics, emotional expressions, contextual emotions, moral foundations, use of irony, and text-derived dark personality traits. Aside from this, study participants completed questionnaire assessments of dark personality traits (the Dark Side of Humanity Scale), cyberbullying and trolling (the Cyberbully/Troll Deviancy Scale), and six items regarding their social media use habits.
Results showed no significant associations between the self-reported dark personality traits and estimates of those traits derived computationally from participants’ text responses. Individuals whose self-reported trolling behaviors and dark personality traits, particularly Successful Psychopathy—a calculated, manipulative style combining psychopathy and Machiavellianism—were more pronounced tended to report using uncivil comments and content on social media more often. However, dark personality traits did not predict actual toxicity expressed in participants’ Reddit comments.
Unlike personality traits, participants’ own descriptions of their online behavior were associated with their actual Reddit behavior. More specifically, participants who said they often produced toxic content actually tended to have more toxic Reddit comments. Furthermore, people who reported being targets of toxicity also tended to produce more toxic comments, suggesting a form of perpetrator-victim reciprocity where exposure to hostility increases the likelihood of responding in kind.
“Our results underscore the importance of grounding computational approaches in validated psychological measures and point to the need for richer, context-aware representations to better understand the relationship between personality and online behavior,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to scientific knowledge about the associations between personality traits and online behavior. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a relatively small sample of participants and focused on Reddit comments only. Results of studies on larger samples, exploring wider sources of online behavior, and using different approaches to text analysis might differ. Additionally, the validity of estimates of psychological characteristics derived from features of text comments is unclear.
The paper, “Dark personality traits and online toxicity: Linking self-reports to Reddit activity,” was authored by Aldo Cerulli, Benedetta Tessa, Giuseppe La Selva, Oronzo Mazzeo, Lorenzo Cima, Lucia Monacis, and Stefano Cresci.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DarkTetrad #OnlineToxicity #PsychologyOfSocialMedia #RedditResearch #TrollingAndCyberbullying #Machiavellianism #Psychopathy #DarkPersonality #ComputersInHumanBehavior #TextAnalysis #LinguisticPatterns
-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The link between dark personality traits and online toxicity is more nuanced than expected
A new study found that individuals with more pronounced dark personality traits tend to report more engagement in uncivil online interactions. However, analysis of their actual Reddit comments did not confirm this association—dark personality traits were not associated with any of the toxicity or linguistic features of their comments. The paper was published in Computers in Human Behavior.
Online social platforms have transformed how people communicate, exchange information, and build communities. However, they have also created new opportunities for harmful behavior. Toxic and hateful speech is particularly concerning because hostile online interactions can result in psychological harm, and, in some cases, offline violence. Research increasingly suggests that such behavior is shaped not only by the design of online platforms or specific situations, but also by individual personality differences.
Particular attention has been given to the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism. These traits have been associated with behaviors such as trolling, cyberbullying, manipulation, hostility, and the production or endorsement of toxic content. For example, people with stronger sadistic tendencies may enjoy provoking or upsetting others, while psychopathic traits have been linked to more impulsive and hostile online interactions.
Because personality also influences how people communicate, researchers have become interested in whether psychological characteristics might be reflected in the language people use online. This has contributed to the development of computational approaches that attempt to infer personality traits from digital behavior and linguistic patterns.
Study author Aldo Cerulli and his colleagues explored the relationship between dark personality traits and the textual content people post online. More specifically, they wanted to see whether dark personality traits can be reliably inferred from textual materials on social media.
Study participants were 114 U.S. individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform. After enrolling in the study, participants provided information the researchers needed to link them to their Reddit accounts. For this, the study authors developed a dedicated web application that interfaces directly with Reddit’s Application Programming Interface (API), allowing for the secure, automated collection of participant data.
The study authors used this link to collect participants’ Reddit comments. In total, this included 152,741 sentences that comprised 56,892 comments. The mean number of comments per participant was 499. By analyzing these texts, the study authors derived estimates of participants’ online toxicity, psycholinguistic characteristics, emotional expressions, contextual emotions, moral foundations, use of irony, and text-derived dark personality traits. Aside from this, study participants completed questionnaire assessments of dark personality traits (the Dark Side of Humanity Scale), cyberbullying and trolling (the Cyberbully/Troll Deviancy Scale), and six items regarding their social media use habits.
Results showed no significant associations between the self-reported dark personality traits and estimates of those traits derived computationally from participants’ text responses. Individuals whose self-reported trolling behaviors and dark personality traits, particularly Successful Psychopathy—a calculated, manipulative style combining psychopathy and Machiavellianism—were more pronounced tended to report using uncivil comments and content on social media more often. However, dark personality traits did not predict actual toxicity expressed in participants’ Reddit comments.
Unlike personality traits, participants’ own descriptions of their online behavior were associated with their actual Reddit behavior. More specifically, participants who said they often produced toxic content actually tended to have more toxic Reddit comments. Furthermore, people who reported being targets of toxicity also tended to produce more toxic comments, suggesting a form of perpetrator-victim reciprocity where exposure to hostility increases the likelihood of responding in kind.
“Our results underscore the importance of grounding computational approaches in validated psychological measures and point to the need for richer, context-aware representations to better understand the relationship between personality and online behavior,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to scientific knowledge about the associations between personality traits and online behavior. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a relatively small sample of participants and focused on Reddit comments only. Results of studies on larger samples, exploring wider sources of online behavior, and using different approaches to text analysis might differ. Additionally, the validity of estimates of psychological characteristics derived from features of text comments is unclear.
The paper, “Dark personality traits and online toxicity: Linking self-reports to Reddit activity,” was authored by Aldo Cerulli, Benedetta Tessa, Giuseppe La Selva, Oronzo Mazzeo, Lorenzo Cima, Lucia Monacis, and Stefano Cresci.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DarkTetrad #OnlineToxicity #PsychologyOfSocialMedia #RedditResearch #TrollingAndCyberbullying #Machiavellianism #Psychopathy #DarkPersonality #ComputersInHumanBehavior #TextAnalysis #LinguisticPatterns
-
DATE: September 3, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The link between dark personality traits and online toxicity is more nuanced than expected
A new study found that individuals with more pronounced dark personality traits tend to report more engagement in uncivil online interactions. However, analysis of their actual Reddit comments did not confirm this association—dark personality traits were not associated with any of the toxicity or linguistic features of their comments. The paper was published in Computers in Human Behavior.
Online social platforms have transformed how people communicate, exchange information, and build communities. However, they have also created new opportunities for harmful behavior. Toxic and hateful speech is particularly concerning because hostile online interactions can result in psychological harm, and, in some cases, offline violence. Research increasingly suggests that such behavior is shaped not only by the design of online platforms or specific situations, but also by individual personality differences.
Particular attention has been given to the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism. These traits have been associated with behaviors such as trolling, cyberbullying, manipulation, hostility, and the production or endorsement of toxic content. For example, people with stronger sadistic tendencies may enjoy provoking or upsetting others, while psychopathic traits have been linked to more impulsive and hostile online interactions.
Because personality also influences how people communicate, researchers have become interested in whether psychological characteristics might be reflected in the language people use online. This has contributed to the development of computational approaches that attempt to infer personality traits from digital behavior and linguistic patterns.
Study author Aldo Cerulli and his colleagues explored the relationship between dark personality traits and the textual content people post online. More specifically, they wanted to see whether dark personality traits can be reliably inferred from textual materials on social media.
Study participants were 114 U.S. individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform. After enrolling in the study, participants provided information the researchers needed to link them to their Reddit accounts. For this, the study authors developed a dedicated web application that interfaces directly with Reddit’s Application Programming Interface (API), allowing for the secure, automated collection of participant data.
The study authors used this link to collect participants’ Reddit comments. In total, this included 152,741 sentences that comprised 56,892 comments. The mean number of comments per participant was 499. By analyzing these texts, the study authors derived estimates of participants’ online toxicity, psycholinguistic characteristics, emotional expressions, contextual emotions, moral foundations, use of irony, and text-derived dark personality traits. Aside from this, study participants completed questionnaire assessments of dark personality traits (the Dark Side of Humanity Scale), cyberbullying and trolling (the Cyberbully/Troll Deviancy Scale), and six items regarding their social media use habits.
Results showed no significant associations between the self-reported dark personality traits and estimates of those traits derived computationally from participants’ text responses. Individuals whose self-reported trolling behaviors and dark personality traits, particularly Successful Psychopathy—a calculated, manipulative style combining psychopathy and Machiavellianism—were more pronounced tended to report using uncivil comments and content on social media more often. However, dark personality traits did not predict actual toxicity expressed in participants’ Reddit comments.
Unlike personality traits, participants’ own descriptions of their online behavior were associated with their actual Reddit behavior. More specifically, participants who said they often produced toxic content actually tended to have more toxic Reddit comments. Furthermore, people who reported being targets of toxicity also tended to produce more toxic comments, suggesting a form of perpetrator-victim reciprocity where exposure to hostility increases the likelihood of responding in kind.
“Our results underscore the importance of grounding computational approaches in validated psychological measures and point to the need for richer, context-aware representations to better understand the relationship between personality and online behavior,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to scientific knowledge about the associations between personality traits and online behavior. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a relatively small sample of participants and focused on Reddit comments only. Results of studies on larger samples, exploring wider sources of online behavior, and using different approaches to text analysis might differ. Additionally, the validity of estimates of psychological characteristics derived from features of text comments is unclear.
The paper, “Dark personality traits and online toxicity: Linking self-reports to Reddit activity,” was authored by Aldo Cerulli, Benedetta Tessa, Giuseppe La Selva, Oronzo Mazzeo, Lorenzo Cima, Lucia Monacis, and Stefano Cresci.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DarkTetrad #OnlineToxicity #PsychologyOfSocialMedia #RedditResearch #TrollingAndCyberbullying #Machiavellianism #Psychopathy #DarkPersonality #ComputersInHumanBehavior #TextAnalysis #LinguisticPatterns
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Historical slavery predicts modern mortality gaps between Black and White Americans
A recent study has found that United States counties with a higher proportion of enslaved people in 1860 currently experience wider mortality gaps between Black and White residents. This historical legacy appears to be maintained through modern structural inequities like economic and educational disparities. The findings were published in PNAS.
Despite beliefs that racial equality has progressed in the United States, severe health disparities remain between White and Black Americans. These inequalities are reflected in rates of chronic illness, life expectancy, and overall mortality. Over the past two decades, these disparities have resulted in an estimated 1.63 million excess deaths among Black Americans.
Systemic racism theory proposes that historical injustices are not just isolated events of the past but form the foundation of ongoing social institutions. Under this framework, historical practices like chattel slavery shaped the distribution of resources, political power, and opportunities in ways that persist across generations. Because these institutions are tied to specific locations, they can create durable, place-based conditions that maintain racial hierarchies long after formal policies have ended.
When resources like education, stable housing, and health care are unequally distributed, they become social determinants of health. These determinants act as cumulative risks or protections over a person’s life. Previous research indicates that patterns of enslavement prior to the Civil War continue to predict modern disparities in income, segregation, and some specific health outcomes like heart disease.
The authors of this new study aimed to test whether historical slavery predicts modern differences in the overall death rate. They also wanted to see if this relationship is carried through specific structural inequalities, such as economic gaps and unequal college access. Additionally, the researchers sought to address a long-standing debate about whether systems of racial oppression provided broad advantages to White Americans or only benefited a small elite class.
The research, led by Manuel J. Galvan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from counties in sixteen states where slavery was legal in 1860. The team combined historical census data on the proportion of enslaved people in each county with modern health data. For their main outcome, they used age-adjusted, all-cause mortality rates from 2010 to 2020 for both non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White populations.
“I generally study what conditions create and reproduce inequality,” Galvan told PsyPost. “In the case of Black-White racial inequality in the U.S., there is a lot of historical, theoretical, and empirical research that links slavery to a wide variety of racial disparities. This project was about linking the different variables in the literature together in one model where we could evaluate how slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in 1990-2000, and mortality disparities in 2010-2020.”
To understand how historical slavery might connect to modern health, the researchers looked at data on structural inequalities from the years 1990 to 2000. These included measures of residential segregation, overall economic inequality, racial disparities in poverty, and differences in college attainment. Using data from up to 901 counties, they constructed statistical models that accounted for various historical geographic and economic factors.
The team found that modern mortality gaps closely track the historical presence of slavery. In counties where 0 percent of the population was enslaved in 1860, the modern mortality rate was slightly higher for Black residents, with 11 additional deaths per 100,000 people compared to White residents. In counties with the highest historical enslavement rates, the gap was nearly 20 times larger.
In those areas, which had up to 92 percent of their population enslaved in 1860, the model estimated 214 additional deaths per 100,000 for Black Americans compared to White Americans. Specifically, the data indicates that for every 10 percent increase in the historical enslaved population, there are 13.6 more deaths per 100,000 among Black Americans today. At the same time, every 10 percent increase in historical enslavement predicts 8.5 fewer deaths per 100,000 among White Americans.
“These are rate differences, but they describe real people,” Galvan noted. “A county-level gap in age-adjusted mortality is a gap in how many people reach the next birthday.”
“The most important takeaway is that historical slavery predicts contemporary Black-White mortality disparities across U.S. counties, even when the authors use an unusually rigorous design to address alternative explanations,” Kimmo Eriksson, a professor of applied mathematics at Mälardalen University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Sweden, told PsyPost. Eriksson, who was not involved in the study, noted that the research “provides strong evidence that institutions and inequalities originating in slavery continue to have measurable health consequences today.”
“The findings largely extend a substantial literature linking slavery to contemporary racial inequalities, but they do so using stronger methods and a health outcome of fundamental importance,” Eriksson added. “The most novel and surprising result is that greater historical slavery was associated not only with higher Black mortality but also with lower White mortality.”
This pattern provides evidence for the competition perspective, which suggests that systemic racial oppression generated widespread material and health advantages for White populations at the expense of Black populations. The researchers also found that this widening mortality gap is largely carried by modern structural inequalities. By measuring these specific pathways, the study illustrates how historical institutions shape everyday life today.
Counties with higher historical enslavement rates tend to have greater economic inequality, wider Black-White poverty gaps, and larger disparities in college attainment. When these economic and educational factors were factored into the models, they fully accounted for the link between historical slavery and modern mortality disparities. This suggests that the legacy of slavery continues to operate primarily through these enduring socioeconomic divides.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that increases in school segregation were independently associated with higher racial disparities in health outcomes, including life expectancy and early mortality. That earlier study, which tracked changes in school and residential segregation across a broad set of health metrics rather than the historical legacy of slavery on adult mortality, similarly found that racial segregation predicts wider Black-White health disparities at the county level.
To evaluate if the link between slavery and mortality might be causal rather than coincidental, the researchers used an analytical technique based on the suitability of the soil for growing cotton. Since cotton suitability is a natural geographic feature that heavily dictated where slavery was economically viable, it acts as a neutral proxy. The models showed that slavery predicted by cotton suitability was still strongly linked to modern mortality disparities, structural inequalities, and educational gaps.
“I think people find the whole thing surprising, ‘how could it be that something from 166 years ago could be influencing life today?'” Galvan said. “But, what was surprising for me was how robust the findings were. The supplemental materials are full of attempts to find alternative explanations.”
“We tried to poke holes in our analysis and kept finding evidence consistent with our theoretical model: That slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in the ’90s and 2000s, which predicts Black-White mortality disparities today,” he added.
Eriksson placed high confidence in the main findings. “The authors use multiple complementary analyses and take causal identification more seriously than is typical in this literature,” he said.
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. Because the study relies on historical data and observations rather than a controlled experiment, the statistical models cannot completely rule out the influence of unmeasured variables. Although the researchers adjusted for many historical and modern factors, they note that their findings provide a plausible causal pathway rather than definitive proof of causation.
“From what I’ve read on social media, the main misinterpretation I’ve seen is that some people are motivated to dismiss the findings by simply saying, ‘correlation is not causation,'” Galvan explained. “But the paper does not report a simple correlation.”
“While it is true that the paper is observational and cannot fully check for a causal relationship between the variables, we implemented a causal identification strategy and find evidence that increases the plausibility of causal inference,” he said. “We also looked for evidence of alternative models to our causal model, and did not find support for those alternatives. I encourage people who feel skeptical to read the paper, it is completely open access.”
Eriksson advised some caution regarding the exact mechanisms benefiting White Americans. “My confidence is somewhat lower regarding the interpretation of why White mortality is lower in counties with more historical slavery, because several plausible mechanisms could generate that pattern,” he said. “Readers should be careful not to interpret the study as showing that an otherwise identical White individual would necessarily have better survival chances if placed in a county with a history of greater inequality.”
“The analysis identifies long-run effects on places and populations, not directly on individuals,” Eriksson continued. “Contemporary county populations have been shaped by generations of migration and demographic change, which may contribute to the observed pattern. The data also cannot determine whether the apparent benefits were broadly shared among White residents or concentrated among particular socioeconomic groups.”
“I would most like to see research that disentangles the mechanisms behind the lower White mortality finding, especially the roles of migration, population composition, and socioeconomic stratification within the White population,” Eriksson added. “That would help clarify whether the result reflects broad-based benefits, selective retention of advantaged groups, or some combination of the two.”
The study also measured structural inequalities using snapshots of data from specific time periods. For instance, the poverty data does not capture how deeply poverty may be entrenched across multiple generations within a community. Similarly, by focusing only on college attainment, the analysis does not account for inequalities earlier in the education system, such as disciplinary differences or resources in primary and secondary schools.
“The average person tends to think of health disparities as primarily a consequence of individual choices, but our paper suggests that things outside of our control, like skin color and county history are also shaping our health,” Galvan said. “I also hope that the paper helps people see the role of policy in shaping health.”
“Racial discrimination, through slavery or otherwise, was a policy choice that continues to shape life in the U.S.,” he pointed out. “But that’s also hopeful! If discriminatory policy created an unequal world, egalitarian policy could create a more equitable world.”
Future research might explore the specific timing of other historically discriminatory policies, such as redlining and mass incarceration, to see how they co-occurred and compounded these health inequalities. Untangling these historical events could help policymakers design structural interventions that expand access to resources and improve health outcomes. Such efforts could address the deep-rooted origins of racial health disparities.
“I am generally interested in how historical and structural inequalities influence psychological outcomes,” Galvan added. “My current work shifts attention from how structural inequality is related to mortality to how it is related to psychological variables, like how people perceive and react to inequality, their policy beliefs, and their biases.”
The study, “https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas“>Historical slavery predicts contemporary disparities in mortality between Black and White Americans,” was authored by Manuel J. Galvan, B. Keith Payne, Keely A. Muscatell, Julian M. Rucker, and Paschal Sheeran.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #HistoricalSlavery #RacialHealthDisparities #BlackWhiteMortality #StructuralInequality #PlaceBasedHealth #HealthEquity #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #PolicyAndHealth #SystemicRacism #CausalInference
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Historical slavery predicts modern mortality gaps between Black and White Americans
A recent study has found that United States counties with a higher proportion of enslaved people in 1860 currently experience wider mortality gaps between Black and White residents. This historical legacy appears to be maintained through modern structural inequities like economic and educational disparities. The findings were published in PNAS.
Despite beliefs that racial equality has progressed in the United States, severe health disparities remain between White and Black Americans. These inequalities are reflected in rates of chronic illness, life expectancy, and overall mortality. Over the past two decades, these disparities have resulted in an estimated 1.63 million excess deaths among Black Americans.
Systemic racism theory proposes that historical injustices are not just isolated events of the past but form the foundation of ongoing social institutions. Under this framework, historical practices like chattel slavery shaped the distribution of resources, political power, and opportunities in ways that persist across generations. Because these institutions are tied to specific locations, they can create durable, place-based conditions that maintain racial hierarchies long after formal policies have ended.
When resources like education, stable housing, and health care are unequally distributed, they become social determinants of health. These determinants act as cumulative risks or protections over a person’s life. Previous research indicates that patterns of enslavement prior to the Civil War continue to predict modern disparities in income, segregation, and some specific health outcomes like heart disease.
The authors of this new study aimed to test whether historical slavery predicts modern differences in the overall death rate. They also wanted to see if this relationship is carried through specific structural inequalities, such as economic gaps and unequal college access. Additionally, the researchers sought to address a long-standing debate about whether systems of racial oppression provided broad advantages to White Americans or only benefited a small elite class.
The research, led by Manuel J. Galvan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from counties in sixteen states where slavery was legal in 1860. The team combined historical census data on the proportion of enslaved people in each county with modern health data. For their main outcome, they used age-adjusted, all-cause mortality rates from 2010 to 2020 for both non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White populations.
“I generally study what conditions create and reproduce inequality,” Galvan told PsyPost. “In the case of Black-White racial inequality in the U.S., there is a lot of historical, theoretical, and empirical research that links slavery to a wide variety of racial disparities. This project was about linking the different variables in the literature together in one model where we could evaluate how slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in 1990-2000, and mortality disparities in 2010-2020.”
To understand how historical slavery might connect to modern health, the researchers looked at data on structural inequalities from the years 1990 to 2000. These included measures of residential segregation, overall economic inequality, racial disparities in poverty, and differences in college attainment. Using data from up to 901 counties, they constructed statistical models that accounted for various historical geographic and economic factors.
The team found that modern mortality gaps closely track the historical presence of slavery. In counties where 0 percent of the population was enslaved in 1860, the modern mortality rate was slightly higher for Black residents, with 11 additional deaths per 100,000 people compared to White residents. In counties with the highest historical enslavement rates, the gap was nearly 20 times larger.
In those areas, which had up to 92 percent of their population enslaved in 1860, the model estimated 214 additional deaths per 100,000 for Black Americans compared to White Americans. Specifically, the data indicates that for every 10 percent increase in the historical enslaved population, there are 13.6 more deaths per 100,000 among Black Americans today. At the same time, every 10 percent increase in historical enslavement predicts 8.5 fewer deaths per 100,000 among White Americans.
“These are rate differences, but they describe real people,” Galvan noted. “A county-level gap in age-adjusted mortality is a gap in how many people reach the next birthday.”
“The most important takeaway is that historical slavery predicts contemporary Black-White mortality disparities across U.S. counties, even when the authors use an unusually rigorous design to address alternative explanations,” Kimmo Eriksson, a professor of applied mathematics at Mälardalen University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Sweden, told PsyPost. Eriksson, who was not involved in the study, noted that the research “provides strong evidence that institutions and inequalities originating in slavery continue to have measurable health consequences today.”
“The findings largely extend a substantial literature linking slavery to contemporary racial inequalities, but they do so using stronger methods and a health outcome of fundamental importance,” Eriksson added. “The most novel and surprising result is that greater historical slavery was associated not only with higher Black mortality but also with lower White mortality.”
This pattern provides evidence for the competition perspective, which suggests that systemic racial oppression generated widespread material and health advantages for White populations at the expense of Black populations. The researchers also found that this widening mortality gap is largely carried by modern structural inequalities. By measuring these specific pathways, the study illustrates how historical institutions shape everyday life today.
Counties with higher historical enslavement rates tend to have greater economic inequality, wider Black-White poverty gaps, and larger disparities in college attainment. When these economic and educational factors were factored into the models, they fully accounted for the link between historical slavery and modern mortality disparities. This suggests that the legacy of slavery continues to operate primarily through these enduring socioeconomic divides.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that increases in school segregation were independently associated with higher racial disparities in health outcomes, including life expectancy and early mortality. That earlier study, which tracked changes in school and residential segregation across a broad set of health metrics rather than the historical legacy of slavery on adult mortality, similarly found that racial segregation predicts wider Black-White health disparities at the county level.
To evaluate if the link between slavery and mortality might be causal rather than coincidental, the researchers used an analytical technique based on the suitability of the soil for growing cotton. Since cotton suitability is a natural geographic feature that heavily dictated where slavery was economically viable, it acts as a neutral proxy. The models showed that slavery predicted by cotton suitability was still strongly linked to modern mortality disparities, structural inequalities, and educational gaps.
“I think people find the whole thing surprising, ‘how could it be that something from 166 years ago could be influencing life today?'” Galvan said. “But, what was surprising for me was how robust the findings were. The supplemental materials are full of attempts to find alternative explanations.”
“We tried to poke holes in our analysis and kept finding evidence consistent with our theoretical model: That slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in the ’90s and 2000s, which predicts Black-White mortality disparities today,” he added.
Eriksson placed high confidence in the main findings. “The authors use multiple complementary analyses and take causal identification more seriously than is typical in this literature,” he said.
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. Because the study relies on historical data and observations rather than a controlled experiment, the statistical models cannot completely rule out the influence of unmeasured variables. Although the researchers adjusted for many historical and modern factors, they note that their findings provide a plausible causal pathway rather than definitive proof of causation.
“From what I’ve read on social media, the main misinterpretation I’ve seen is that some people are motivated to dismiss the findings by simply saying, ‘correlation is not causation,'” Galvan explained. “But the paper does not report a simple correlation.”
“While it is true that the paper is observational and cannot fully check for a causal relationship between the variables, we implemented a causal identification strategy and find evidence that increases the plausibility of causal inference,” he said. “We also looked for evidence of alternative models to our causal model, and did not find support for those alternatives. I encourage people who feel skeptical to read the paper, it is completely open access.”
Eriksson advised some caution regarding the exact mechanisms benefiting White Americans. “My confidence is somewhat lower regarding the interpretation of why White mortality is lower in counties with more historical slavery, because several plausible mechanisms could generate that pattern,” he said. “Readers should be careful not to interpret the study as showing that an otherwise identical White individual would necessarily have better survival chances if placed in a county with a history of greater inequality.”
“The analysis identifies long-run effects on places and populations, not directly on individuals,” Eriksson continued. “Contemporary county populations have been shaped by generations of migration and demographic change, which may contribute to the observed pattern. The data also cannot determine whether the apparent benefits were broadly shared among White residents or concentrated among particular socioeconomic groups.”
“I would most like to see research that disentangles the mechanisms behind the lower White mortality finding, especially the roles of migration, population composition, and socioeconomic stratification within the White population,” Eriksson added. “That would help clarify whether the result reflects broad-based benefits, selective retention of advantaged groups, or some combination of the two.”
The study also measured structural inequalities using snapshots of data from specific time periods. For instance, the poverty data does not capture how deeply poverty may be entrenched across multiple generations within a community. Similarly, by focusing only on college attainment, the analysis does not account for inequalities earlier in the education system, such as disciplinary differences or resources in primary and secondary schools.
“The average person tends to think of health disparities as primarily a consequence of individual choices, but our paper suggests that things outside of our control, like skin color and county history are also shaping our health,” Galvan said. “I also hope that the paper helps people see the role of policy in shaping health.”
“Racial discrimination, through slavery or otherwise, was a policy choice that continues to shape life in the U.S.,” he pointed out. “But that’s also hopeful! If discriminatory policy created an unequal world, egalitarian policy could create a more equitable world.”
Future research might explore the specific timing of other historically discriminatory policies, such as redlining and mass incarceration, to see how they co-occurred and compounded these health inequalities. Untangling these historical events could help policymakers design structural interventions that expand access to resources and improve health outcomes. Such efforts could address the deep-rooted origins of racial health disparities.
“I am generally interested in how historical and structural inequalities influence psychological outcomes,” Galvan added. “My current work shifts attention from how structural inequality is related to mortality to how it is related to psychological variables, like how people perceive and react to inequality, their policy beliefs, and their biases.”
The study, “https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas“>Historical slavery predicts contemporary disparities in mortality between Black and White Americans,” was authored by Manuel J. Galvan, B. Keith Payne, Keely A. Muscatell, Julian M. Rucker, and Paschal Sheeran.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #HistoricalSlavery #RacialHealthDisparities #BlackWhiteMortality #StructuralInequality #PlaceBasedHealth #HealthEquity #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #PolicyAndHealth #SystemicRacism #CausalInference
-
DATE: September 3, 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: Historical slavery predicts modern mortality gaps between Black and White Americans
A recent study has found that United States counties with a higher proportion of enslaved people in 1860 currently experience wider mortality gaps between Black and White residents. This historical legacy appears to be maintained through modern structural inequities like economic and educational disparities. The findings were published in PNAS.
Despite beliefs that racial equality has progressed in the United States, severe health disparities remain between White and Black Americans. These inequalities are reflected in rates of chronic illness, life expectancy, and overall mortality. Over the past two decades, these disparities have resulted in an estimated 1.63 million excess deaths among Black Americans.
Systemic racism theory proposes that historical injustices are not just isolated events of the past but form the foundation of ongoing social institutions. Under this framework, historical practices like chattel slavery shaped the distribution of resources, political power, and opportunities in ways that persist across generations. Because these institutions are tied to specific locations, they can create durable, place-based conditions that maintain racial hierarchies long after formal policies have ended.
When resources like education, stable housing, and health care are unequally distributed, they become social determinants of health. These determinants act as cumulative risks or protections over a person’s life. Previous research indicates that patterns of enslavement prior to the Civil War continue to predict modern disparities in income, segregation, and some specific health outcomes like heart disease.
The authors of this new study aimed to test whether historical slavery predicts modern differences in the overall death rate. They also wanted to see if this relationship is carried through specific structural inequalities, such as economic gaps and unequal college access. Additionally, the researchers sought to address a long-standing debate about whether systems of racial oppression provided broad advantages to White Americans or only benefited a small elite class.
The research, led by Manuel J. Galvan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from counties in sixteen states where slavery was legal in 1860. The team combined historical census data on the proportion of enslaved people in each county with modern health data. For their main outcome, they used age-adjusted, all-cause mortality rates from 2010 to 2020 for both non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White populations.
“I generally study what conditions create and reproduce inequality,” Galvan told PsyPost. “In the case of Black-White racial inequality in the U.S., there is a lot of historical, theoretical, and empirical research that links slavery to a wide variety of racial disparities. This project was about linking the different variables in the literature together in one model where we could evaluate how slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in 1990-2000, and mortality disparities in 2010-2020.”
To understand how historical slavery might connect to modern health, the researchers looked at data on structural inequalities from the years 1990 to 2000. These included measures of residential segregation, overall economic inequality, racial disparities in poverty, and differences in college attainment. Using data from up to 901 counties, they constructed statistical models that accounted for various historical geographic and economic factors.
The team found that modern mortality gaps closely track the historical presence of slavery. In counties where 0 percent of the population was enslaved in 1860, the modern mortality rate was slightly higher for Black residents, with 11 additional deaths per 100,000 people compared to White residents. In counties with the highest historical enslavement rates, the gap was nearly 20 times larger.
In those areas, which had up to 92 percent of their population enslaved in 1860, the model estimated 214 additional deaths per 100,000 for Black Americans compared to White Americans. Specifically, the data indicates that for every 10 percent increase in the historical enslaved population, there are 13.6 more deaths per 100,000 among Black Americans today. At the same time, every 10 percent increase in historical enslavement predicts 8.5 fewer deaths per 100,000 among White Americans.
“These are rate differences, but they describe real people,” Galvan noted. “A county-level gap in age-adjusted mortality is a gap in how many people reach the next birthday.”
“The most important takeaway is that historical slavery predicts contemporary Black-White mortality disparities across U.S. counties, even when the authors use an unusually rigorous design to address alternative explanations,” Kimmo Eriksson, a professor of applied mathematics at Mälardalen University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Sweden, told PsyPost. Eriksson, who was not involved in the study, noted that the research “provides strong evidence that institutions and inequalities originating in slavery continue to have measurable health consequences today.”
“The findings largely extend a substantial literature linking slavery to contemporary racial inequalities, but they do so using stronger methods and a health outcome of fundamental importance,” Eriksson added. “The most novel and surprising result is that greater historical slavery was associated not only with higher Black mortality but also with lower White mortality.”
This pattern provides evidence for the competition perspective, which suggests that systemic racial oppression generated widespread material and health advantages for White populations at the expense of Black populations. The researchers also found that this widening mortality gap is largely carried by modern structural inequalities. By measuring these specific pathways, the study illustrates how historical institutions shape everyday life today.
Counties with higher historical enslavement rates tend to have greater economic inequality, wider Black-White poverty gaps, and larger disparities in college attainment. When these economic and educational factors were factored into the models, they fully accounted for the link between historical slavery and modern mortality disparities. This suggests that the legacy of slavery continues to operate primarily through these enduring socioeconomic divides.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that increases in school segregation were independently associated with higher racial disparities in health outcomes, including life expectancy and early mortality. That earlier study, which tracked changes in school and residential segregation across a broad set of health metrics rather than the historical legacy of slavery on adult mortality, similarly found that racial segregation predicts wider Black-White health disparities at the county level.
To evaluate if the link between slavery and mortality might be causal rather than coincidental, the researchers used an analytical technique based on the suitability of the soil for growing cotton. Since cotton suitability is a natural geographic feature that heavily dictated where slavery was economically viable, it acts as a neutral proxy. The models showed that slavery predicted by cotton suitability was still strongly linked to modern mortality disparities, structural inequalities, and educational gaps.
“I think people find the whole thing surprising, ‘how could it be that something from 166 years ago could be influencing life today?'” Galvan said. “But, what was surprising for me was how robust the findings were. The supplemental materials are full of attempts to find alternative explanations.”
“We tried to poke holes in our analysis and kept finding evidence consistent with our theoretical model: That slavery in 1860 predicts structural inequality in the ’90s and 2000s, which predicts Black-White mortality disparities today,” he added.
Eriksson placed high confidence in the main findings. “The authors use multiple complementary analyses and take causal identification more seriously than is typical in this literature,” he said.
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. Because the study relies on historical data and observations rather than a controlled experiment, the statistical models cannot completely rule out the influence of unmeasured variables. Although the researchers adjusted for many historical and modern factors, they note that their findings provide a plausible causal pathway rather than definitive proof of causation.
“From what I’ve read on social media, the main misinterpretation I’ve seen is that some people are motivated to dismiss the findings by simply saying, ‘correlation is not causation,'” Galvan explained. “But the paper does not report a simple correlation.”
“While it is true that the paper is observational and cannot fully check for a causal relationship between the variables, we implemented a causal identification strategy and find evidence that increases the plausibility of causal inference,” he said. “We also looked for evidence of alternative models to our causal model, and did not find support for those alternatives. I encourage people who feel skeptical to read the paper, it is completely open access.”
Eriksson advised some caution regarding the exact mechanisms benefiting White Americans. “My confidence is somewhat lower regarding the interpretation of why White mortality is lower in counties with more historical slavery, because several plausible mechanisms could generate that pattern,” he said. “Readers should be careful not to interpret the study as showing that an otherwise identical White individual would necessarily have better survival chances if placed in a county with a history of greater inequality.”
“The analysis identifies long-run effects on places and populations, not directly on individuals,” Eriksson continued. “Contemporary county populations have been shaped by generations of migration and demographic change, which may contribute to the observed pattern. The data also cannot determine whether the apparent benefits were broadly shared among White residents or concentrated among particular socioeconomic groups.”
“I would most like to see research that disentangles the mechanisms behind the lower White mortality finding, especially the roles of migration, population composition, and socioeconomic stratification within the White population,” Eriksson added. “That would help clarify whether the result reflects broad-based benefits, selective retention of advantaged groups, or some combination of the two.”
The study also measured structural inequalities using snapshots of data from specific time periods. For instance, the poverty data does not capture how deeply poverty may be entrenched across multiple generations within a community. Similarly, by focusing only on college attainment, the analysis does not account for inequalities earlier in the education system, such as disciplinary differences or resources in primary and secondary schools.
“The average person tends to think of health disparities as primarily a consequence of individual choices, but our paper suggests that things outside of our control, like skin color and county history are also shaping our health,” Galvan said. “I also hope that the paper helps people see the role of policy in shaping health.”
“Racial discrimination, through slavery or otherwise, was a policy choice that continues to shape life in the U.S.,” he pointed out. “But that’s also hopeful! If discriminatory policy created an unequal world, egalitarian policy could create a more equitable world.”
Future research might explore the specific timing of other historically discriminatory policies, such as redlining and mass incarceration, to see how they co-occurred and compounded these health inequalities. Untangling these historical events could help policymakers design structural interventions that expand access to resources and improve health outcomes. Such efforts could address the deep-rooted origins of racial health disparities.
“I am generally interested in how historical and structural inequalities influence psychological outcomes,” Galvan added. “My current work shifts attention from how structural inequality is related to mortality to how it is related to psychological variables, like how people perceive and react to inequality, their policy beliefs, and their biases.”
The study, “https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas“>Historical slavery predicts contemporary disparities in mortality between Black and White Americans,” was authored by Manuel J. Galvan, B. Keith Payne, Keely A. Muscatell, Julian M. Rucker, and Paschal Sheeran.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HistoricalSlavery #RacialHealthDisparities #BlackWhiteMortality #StructuralInequality #PlaceBasedHealth #HealthEquity #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #PolicyAndHealth #SystemicRacism #CausalInference
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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DATE: September 2, 2026 at 11:44PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831015150.htm
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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DATE: September 2, 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: Psilocybin therapy shows strong potential for treating cocaine addiction
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
Two newly published studies suggest that psychedelic compounds may offer a novel approach to treating cocaine addiction. A clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open found that psilocybin combined with psychotherapy helped people stop using cocaine. A complementary animal study published in Addiction Biology indicates that while psychedelics can help unlearn drug-seeking behaviors, pairing them with the right environmental support might be needed to prevent long-term relapse.
Cocaine use disorder is a chronic condition in which a person compulsively seeks and uses cocaine despite negative consequences to their health, finances, and personal life. Medical treatments for the disorder have long been lacking. For example, a 2021 review evaluated available treatments for cocaine addiction, highlighting that few medical options successfully help people stop using the drug.
To address this gap, researchers have begun exploring classic psychedelics. Psilocybin is the main psychoactive compound found in certain types of mushrooms, known for altering perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Recent studies have tested its potential to treat various substance use disorders by combining the drug with professional psychological support.
The results from these trials have been encouraging. For instance, a 2022 clinical trial found that psilocybin combined with therapy substantially reduced heavy drinking in people with alcohol addiction. Similarly, a 2026 trial found that the treatment helped people quit smoking cigarettes at much higher rates than standard nicotine patches.
Building on this research progression, scientists wanted to test whether psilocybin could yield similar benefits for cocaine use disorder. At the same time, preclinical researchers, who conduct studies using animal or lab models before testing in humans, sought to understand exactly how psychedelics influence the biological and behavioral mechanisms of addiction in isolation, without the influence of human psychotherapy.
The human clinical trial was led by Peter S. Hendricks at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The team recruited 40 adults diagnosed with cocaine use disorder who wanted to quit using the drug. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either a single oral dose of psilocybin or an active placebo. An active placebo is a control substance that produces mild noticeable side effects so participants cannot easily guess they received a fake treatment. In this case, the placebo was a dose of diphenhydramine, a common antihistamine.
Both groups participated in a structured psychotherapy program that included cognitive-behavioral techniques, which are therapy methods that help people identify and change harmful thought patterns and behaviors. They attended preparation sessions before the drug administration day and integration sessions afterward to process their experiences. The researchers specifically recruited individuals from demographic groups that are often underrepresented in psychedelic research. In the final sample, 82.5 percent of participants were Black, and 65 percent reported an annual income of $20,000 or less.
The findings suggest that psilocybin paired with therapy provides a strong protective effect against cocaine use. Over the 180 days following the treatment session, participants in the psilocybin group reported substantially more days without using cocaine compared to the placebo group. During the final three months of the study, the psilocybin group had about 28 more abstinent days out of every 100 days than the control group.
Additionally, the treatment helped a portion of participants stop using the drug entirely. Over the 180-day follow-up, 30 percent of those who received psilocybin maintained complete abstinence from cocaine. By comparison, none of the participants in the placebo group achieved complete abstinence over that same period.
To understand the isolated pharmacological effects of these treatments, meaning how the drugs interact chemically with the body and brain, a related animal study was led by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Czech Republic. The team investigated how psilocybin and a different psychedelic compound, ibogaine, alter the learning processes associated with addiction. Ibogaine is a psychoactive substance derived from an African shrub that has been historically noted for its potential anti-addictive properties, though it operates differently in the brain than psilocybin.
The researchers trained male Wistar rats, a specific and widely used laboratory strain of white albino rats, to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever. After the rats developed a reliable cocaine habit, the researchers initiated an extinction phase. During this phase, pressing the lever no longer provided the drug. The goal of extinction training is for the subject to unlearn the association between the action and the reward.
On the first and fifth days of the extinction phase, the rats were given injections of either psilocybin, ibogaine, or a saline placebo. Both psychedelics accelerated the extinction process. Rats treated with ibogaine pressed the lever less frequently starting after the first dose. Those treated with psilocybin showed a similar reduction in drug-seeking behavior following the second dose. Both drugs seemed to stabilize the animals’ behavior, helping them abandon the futile lever-pressing habit more efficiently than the placebo group.
The effects, however, did not translate to total relapse prevention. Six days after the final psychedelic dose, the researchers tested the rats by reintroducing the lights and sounds that had previously been paired with cocaine delivery. This triggers cue-induced reinstatement, a model of relapse. When faced with these triggers, the rats treated with psychedelics resumed pressing the lever just as frequently as the rats given the placebo.
These animal results highlight a nuanced reality about psychedelic treatments. The pharmacological effects of compounds like psilocybin and ibogaine appear to enhance behavioral flexibility, making it easier to break old habits. Yet, without the continuous environmental support or active psychotherapy provided in the human trial, the drugs alone did not block the urge to relapse when familiar drug cues returned.
The success seen in the human trial is in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that a single dose of psilocybin paired with psychotherapy substantially reduced heavy drinking days in individuals with alcohol use disorder. The results also align with a 2026 study covered by PsyPost, which found that psilocybin and counseling produced higher rates of verified abstinence in cigarette smokers compared to standard nicotine patches.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The human clinical trial featured a relatively small number of participants, which means the exact size of the treatment effect could vary in larger populations. Additionally, it is difficult to keep participants unaware of which treatment they receive in psychedelic studies, as the perceptual effects of the drug are very obvious. In this trial, 90 percent of the participants in the psilocybin group correctly guessed their assignment, which introduces the possibility that their expectations influenced their outcomes.
For the animal study, the researchers only tested male rats to avoid behavioral variations related to reproductive cycles. Testing female animals in the future will be necessary to see if the extinction-enhancing effects apply universally. The animal model also strips away the psychological and social elements of human addiction treatment. The rats did not receive the equivalent of human psychotherapy, which might be exactly why the drugs failed to protect them from cue-induced relapse.
Future research will need to test these interventions in larger, more diverse human samples to confirm the benefits. Scientists also hope to refine animal models to better understand how therapeutic environments interact with the biological changes caused by psychedelics.
The study, “Psilocybin in the Treatment of Cocaine Use Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” was authored by Peter S. Hendricks, Sara N. Lappan, Richard C. Shelton, Adrienne C. Lahti, Karen L. Cropsey, Matthew W. Johnson, Melissa Bradley, Otto Simonsson, Lori L. Davis, Daniel H. Grossman, and Cynthia E. Ortiz.
The study, “Psilocybin and Ibogaine in Cocaine-Seeking: Extinction Enhancement Without Relapse Prevention,” was authored by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli, Vojtěch Brejtr, Marek Schwendt, Kacper Witek, Chrysostomos Charalambous, Kristýna Aleksič, Nina Miniariková, Eva Lhotková, Martin Toman, Marek Nikolič, Radek Jurok, Petra Cihlářová, Vladimír Mazoch, Pavel Ryšánek, Martin Kuchař, Klára Šíchová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PsilocybinTherapy #CocaineUseDisorder #PsychedelicResearch # AddictionTreatment #PsychotherapySupport #AbruptRelapsePrevention #AlcoholNicotineCocaine #ExtinctionTraining #PsyPost #ClinicalTrialResults
-
DATE: September 2, 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: Psilocybin therapy shows strong potential for treating cocaine addiction
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
Two newly published studies suggest that psychedelic compounds may offer a novel approach to treating cocaine addiction. A clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open found that psilocybin combined with psychotherapy helped people stop using cocaine. A complementary animal study published in Addiction Biology indicates that while psychedelics can help unlearn drug-seeking behaviors, pairing them with the right environmental support might be needed to prevent long-term relapse.
Cocaine use disorder is a chronic condition in which a person compulsively seeks and uses cocaine despite negative consequences to their health, finances, and personal life. Medical treatments for the disorder have long been lacking. For example, a 2021 review evaluated available treatments for cocaine addiction, highlighting that few medical options successfully help people stop using the drug.
To address this gap, researchers have begun exploring classic psychedelics. Psilocybin is the main psychoactive compound found in certain types of mushrooms, known for altering perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Recent studies have tested its potential to treat various substance use disorders by combining the drug with professional psychological support.
The results from these trials have been encouraging. For instance, a 2022 clinical trial found that psilocybin combined with therapy substantially reduced heavy drinking in people with alcohol addiction. Similarly, a 2026 trial found that the treatment helped people quit smoking cigarettes at much higher rates than standard nicotine patches.
Building on this research progression, scientists wanted to test whether psilocybin could yield similar benefits for cocaine use disorder. At the same time, preclinical researchers, who conduct studies using animal or lab models before testing in humans, sought to understand exactly how psychedelics influence the biological and behavioral mechanisms of addiction in isolation, without the influence of human psychotherapy.
The human clinical trial was led by Peter S. Hendricks at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The team recruited 40 adults diagnosed with cocaine use disorder who wanted to quit using the drug. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either a single oral dose of psilocybin or an active placebo. An active placebo is a control substance that produces mild noticeable side effects so participants cannot easily guess they received a fake treatment. In this case, the placebo was a dose of diphenhydramine, a common antihistamine.
Both groups participated in a structured psychotherapy program that included cognitive-behavioral techniques, which are therapy methods that help people identify and change harmful thought patterns and behaviors. They attended preparation sessions before the drug administration day and integration sessions afterward to process their experiences. The researchers specifically recruited individuals from demographic groups that are often underrepresented in psychedelic research. In the final sample, 82.5 percent of participants were Black, and 65 percent reported an annual income of $20,000 or less.
The findings suggest that psilocybin paired with therapy provides a strong protective effect against cocaine use. Over the 180 days following the treatment session, participants in the psilocybin group reported substantially more days without using cocaine compared to the placebo group. During the final three months of the study, the psilocybin group had about 28 more abstinent days out of every 100 days than the control group.
Additionally, the treatment helped a portion of participants stop using the drug entirely. Over the 180-day follow-up, 30 percent of those who received psilocybin maintained complete abstinence from cocaine. By comparison, none of the participants in the placebo group achieved complete abstinence over that same period.
To understand the isolated pharmacological effects of these treatments, meaning how the drugs interact chemically with the body and brain, a related animal study was led by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Czech Republic. The team investigated how psilocybin and a different psychedelic compound, ibogaine, alter the learning processes associated with addiction. Ibogaine is a psychoactive substance derived from an African shrub that has been historically noted for its potential anti-addictive properties, though it operates differently in the brain than psilocybin.
The researchers trained male Wistar rats, a specific and widely used laboratory strain of white albino rats, to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever. After the rats developed a reliable cocaine habit, the researchers initiated an extinction phase. During this phase, pressing the lever no longer provided the drug. The goal of extinction training is for the subject to unlearn the association between the action and the reward.
On the first and fifth days of the extinction phase, the rats were given injections of either psilocybin, ibogaine, or a saline placebo. Both psychedelics accelerated the extinction process. Rats treated with ibogaine pressed the lever less frequently starting after the first dose. Those treated with psilocybin showed a similar reduction in drug-seeking behavior following the second dose. Both drugs seemed to stabilize the animals’ behavior, helping them abandon the futile lever-pressing habit more efficiently than the placebo group.
The effects, however, did not translate to total relapse prevention. Six days after the final psychedelic dose, the researchers tested the rats by reintroducing the lights and sounds that had previously been paired with cocaine delivery. This triggers cue-induced reinstatement, a model of relapse. When faced with these triggers, the rats treated with psychedelics resumed pressing the lever just as frequently as the rats given the placebo.
These animal results highlight a nuanced reality about psychedelic treatments. The pharmacological effects of compounds like psilocybin and ibogaine appear to enhance behavioral flexibility, making it easier to break old habits. Yet, without the continuous environmental support or active psychotherapy provided in the human trial, the drugs alone did not block the urge to relapse when familiar drug cues returned.
The success seen in the human trial is in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that a single dose of psilocybin paired with psychotherapy substantially reduced heavy drinking days in individuals with alcohol use disorder. The results also align with a 2026 study covered by PsyPost, which found that psilocybin and counseling produced higher rates of verified abstinence in cigarette smokers compared to standard nicotine patches.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The human clinical trial featured a relatively small number of participants, which means the exact size of the treatment effect could vary in larger populations. Additionally, it is difficult to keep participants unaware of which treatment they receive in psychedelic studies, as the perceptual effects of the drug are very obvious. In this trial, 90 percent of the participants in the psilocybin group correctly guessed their assignment, which introduces the possibility that their expectations influenced their outcomes.
For the animal study, the researchers only tested male rats to avoid behavioral variations related to reproductive cycles. Testing female animals in the future will be necessary to see if the extinction-enhancing effects apply universally. The animal model also strips away the psychological and social elements of human addiction treatment. The rats did not receive the equivalent of human psychotherapy, which might be exactly why the drugs failed to protect them from cue-induced relapse.
Future research will need to test these interventions in larger, more diverse human samples to confirm the benefits. Scientists also hope to refine animal models to better understand how therapeutic environments interact with the biological changes caused by psychedelics.
The study, “Psilocybin in the Treatment of Cocaine Use Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” was authored by Peter S. Hendricks, Sara N. Lappan, Richard C. Shelton, Adrienne C. Lahti, Karen L. Cropsey, Matthew W. Johnson, Melissa Bradley, Otto Simonsson, Lori L. Davis, Daniel H. Grossman, and Cynthia E. Ortiz.
The study, “Psilocybin and Ibogaine in Cocaine-Seeking: Extinction Enhancement Without Relapse Prevention,” was authored by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli, Vojtěch Brejtr, Marek Schwendt, Kacper Witek, Chrysostomos Charalambous, Kristýna Aleksič, Nina Miniariková, Eva Lhotková, Martin Toman, Marek Nikolič, Radek Jurok, Petra Cihlářová, Vladimír Mazoch, Pavel Ryšánek, Martin Kuchař, Klára Šíchová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PsilocybinTherapy #CocaineUseDisorder #PsychedelicResearch # AddictionTreatment #PsychotherapySupport #AbruptRelapsePrevention #AlcoholNicotineCocaine #ExtinctionTraining #PsyPost #ClinicalTrialResults
-
DATE: September 2, 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: Psilocybin therapy shows strong potential for treating cocaine addiction
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
Two newly published studies suggest that psychedelic compounds may offer a novel approach to treating cocaine addiction. A clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open found that psilocybin combined with psychotherapy helped people stop using cocaine. A complementary animal study published in Addiction Biology indicates that while psychedelics can help unlearn drug-seeking behaviors, pairing them with the right environmental support might be needed to prevent long-term relapse.
Cocaine use disorder is a chronic condition in which a person compulsively seeks and uses cocaine despite negative consequences to their health, finances, and personal life. Medical treatments for the disorder have long been lacking. For example, a 2021 review evaluated available treatments for cocaine addiction, highlighting that few medical options successfully help people stop using the drug.
To address this gap, researchers have begun exploring classic psychedelics. Psilocybin is the main psychoactive compound found in certain types of mushrooms, known for altering perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Recent studies have tested its potential to treat various substance use disorders by combining the drug with professional psychological support.
The results from these trials have been encouraging. For instance, a 2022 clinical trial found that psilocybin combined with therapy substantially reduced heavy drinking in people with alcohol addiction. Similarly, a 2026 trial found that the treatment helped people quit smoking cigarettes at much higher rates than standard nicotine patches.
Building on this research progression, scientists wanted to test whether psilocybin could yield similar benefits for cocaine use disorder. At the same time, preclinical researchers, who conduct studies using animal or lab models before testing in humans, sought to understand exactly how psychedelics influence the biological and behavioral mechanisms of addiction in isolation, without the influence of human psychotherapy.
The human clinical trial was led by Peter S. Hendricks at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The team recruited 40 adults diagnosed with cocaine use disorder who wanted to quit using the drug. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either a single oral dose of psilocybin or an active placebo. An active placebo is a control substance that produces mild noticeable side effects so participants cannot easily guess they received a fake treatment. In this case, the placebo was a dose of diphenhydramine, a common antihistamine.
Both groups participated in a structured psychotherapy program that included cognitive-behavioral techniques, which are therapy methods that help people identify and change harmful thought patterns and behaviors. They attended preparation sessions before the drug administration day and integration sessions afterward to process their experiences. The researchers specifically recruited individuals from demographic groups that are often underrepresented in psychedelic research. In the final sample, 82.5 percent of participants were Black, and 65 percent reported an annual income of $20,000 or less.
The findings suggest that psilocybin paired with therapy provides a strong protective effect against cocaine use. Over the 180 days following the treatment session, participants in the psilocybin group reported substantially more days without using cocaine compared to the placebo group. During the final three months of the study, the psilocybin group had about 28 more abstinent days out of every 100 days than the control group.
Additionally, the treatment helped a portion of participants stop using the drug entirely. Over the 180-day follow-up, 30 percent of those who received psilocybin maintained complete abstinence from cocaine. By comparison, none of the participants in the placebo group achieved complete abstinence over that same period.
To understand the isolated pharmacological effects of these treatments, meaning how the drugs interact chemically with the body and brain, a related animal study was led by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Czech Republic. The team investigated how psilocybin and a different psychedelic compound, ibogaine, alter the learning processes associated with addiction. Ibogaine is a psychoactive substance derived from an African shrub that has been historically noted for its potential anti-addictive properties, though it operates differently in the brain than psilocybin.
The researchers trained male Wistar rats, a specific and widely used laboratory strain of white albino rats, to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever. After the rats developed a reliable cocaine habit, the researchers initiated an extinction phase. During this phase, pressing the lever no longer provided the drug. The goal of extinction training is for the subject to unlearn the association between the action and the reward.
On the first and fifth days of the extinction phase, the rats were given injections of either psilocybin, ibogaine, or a saline placebo. Both psychedelics accelerated the extinction process. Rats treated with ibogaine pressed the lever less frequently starting after the first dose. Those treated with psilocybin showed a similar reduction in drug-seeking behavior following the second dose. Both drugs seemed to stabilize the animals’ behavior, helping them abandon the futile lever-pressing habit more efficiently than the placebo group.
The effects, however, did not translate to total relapse prevention. Six days after the final psychedelic dose, the researchers tested the rats by reintroducing the lights and sounds that had previously been paired with cocaine delivery. This triggers cue-induced reinstatement, a model of relapse. When faced with these triggers, the rats treated with psychedelics resumed pressing the lever just as frequently as the rats given the placebo.
These animal results highlight a nuanced reality about psychedelic treatments. The pharmacological effects of compounds like psilocybin and ibogaine appear to enhance behavioral flexibility, making it easier to break old habits. Yet, without the continuous environmental support or active psychotherapy provided in the human trial, the drugs alone did not block the urge to relapse when familiar drug cues returned.
The success seen in the human trial is in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that a single dose of psilocybin paired with psychotherapy substantially reduced heavy drinking days in individuals with alcohol use disorder. The results also align with a 2026 study covered by PsyPost, which found that psilocybin and counseling produced higher rates of verified abstinence in cigarette smokers compared to standard nicotine patches.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The human clinical trial featured a relatively small number of participants, which means the exact size of the treatment effect could vary in larger populations. Additionally, it is difficult to keep participants unaware of which treatment they receive in psychedelic studies, as the perceptual effects of the drug are very obvious. In this trial, 90 percent of the participants in the psilocybin group correctly guessed their assignment, which introduces the possibility that their expectations influenced their outcomes.
For the animal study, the researchers only tested male rats to avoid behavioral variations related to reproductive cycles. Testing female animals in the future will be necessary to see if the extinction-enhancing effects apply universally. The animal model also strips away the psychological and social elements of human addiction treatment. The rats did not receive the equivalent of human psychotherapy, which might be exactly why the drugs failed to protect them from cue-induced relapse.
Future research will need to test these interventions in larger, more diverse human samples to confirm the benefits. Scientists also hope to refine animal models to better understand how therapeutic environments interact with the biological changes caused by psychedelics.
The study, “Psilocybin in the Treatment of Cocaine Use Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” was authored by Peter S. Hendricks, Sara N. Lappan, Richard C. Shelton, Adrienne C. Lahti, Karen L. Cropsey, Matthew W. Johnson, Melissa Bradley, Otto Simonsson, Lori L. Davis, Daniel H. Grossman, and Cynthia E. Ortiz.
The study, “Psilocybin and Ibogaine in Cocaine-Seeking: Extinction Enhancement Without Relapse Prevention,” was authored by Isis Rita Anzel Koutrouli, Vojtěch Brejtr, Marek Schwendt, Kacper Witek, Chrysostomos Charalambous, Kristýna Aleksič, Nina Miniariková, Eva Lhotková, Martin Toman, Marek Nikolič, Radek Jurok, Petra Cihlářová, Vladimír Mazoch, Pavel Ryšánek, Martin Kuchař, Klára Šíchová, and Tomáš Páleníček.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-shows-strong-potential-for-treating-cocaine-addiction/
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 2, 2026 at 05:00PM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 2, 2026 at 05:00PM
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 2, 2026 at 05:00PM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
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DATE: September 2, 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: Physical attractiveness appears to shape family planning accuracy for young women
Young adults who are not in a romantic relationship often vastly overestimate their likelihood of having children before age thirty, while those who are married predict their family planning with remarkable accuracy. These differences in expectations, along with the role that physical attractiveness plays in women’s family trajectories, reveal how early social circumstances shape long-term personal forecasts. The research was published in The Economic Journal.
People make many life choices, such as pursuing graduate education or saving money, based on when they expect to start a family. Getting accurate data on these expectations is difficult because few surveys ask people to predict their future and then follow up years later to see what actually happened. Economists Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner set out to measure this gap between expectations and reality. They wanted to see if relationship status or other personal traits influence how accurately young adults predict their own family planning.
The researchers used data from the Berea Panel Study, a survey that tracked students from Berea College in Kentucky from their college entrance through ten years after graduation. They focused on 355 individuals who were childless at age twenty-four and followed them until age thirty. At age twenty-four, participants estimated the percent chance that they would have their first child at various future ages. The researchers then compared these predictions to the actual birth records reported by the participants over the following years.
Overall, twenty-four-year-olds overestimated how soon they would become parents. As a group, they predicted a 57.6 percent chance of having a child before age thirty, but only 36.1 percent actually did. The researchers found that relationship status at age twenty-four heavily predicted this gap between expectations and reality.
Married individuals had very accurate expectations, predicting a 76 percent chance of early parenthood and experiencing a 69.2 percent actual rate. Those with a boyfriend or girlfriend overestimated their chances, predicting 57.6 percent compared to an actual 32.2 percent. Single individuals were the most inaccurate, predicting a 42.8 percent chance but only reaching a 13.1 percent outcome.
To understand why single individuals were so far off the mark, the researchers looked at their predictions regarding marriage. Participants had also estimated their likelihood of tying the knot before age thirty. The researchers calculated how much of the miscalculation regarding children was tied to miscalculations about weddings.
Single individuals were highly overoptimistic about finding a spouse by age thirty. They predicted a nearly 50 percent chance of marriage, but only 21.5 percent actually married by that age. The researchers calculated that this overestimation of marriage accounted for a large portion of the error in their family planning predictions. When these single individuals reached age thirty and realized they had fewer children than expected, they tended to heavily revise their total lifetime expectations downward.
The researchers also investigated whether physical attractiveness played a role in these trajectories. They used a peer-rating system based on student ID photos. On average, forty-seven student evaluators rated each participant’s photo on a five-point scale. The evaluators were other college students, making their assessments highly relevant to the dating and marriage environment of the study group. The researchers then mapped these peer ratings against the participants’ family expectations and their eventual outcomes.
A higher attractiveness rating was associated with a higher likelihood of having children before age thirty. However, this pattern was driven entirely by the women in the sample. For women, a one-point increase on the five-point attractiveness scale predicted a massive jump in the likelihood of early motherhood. For men, peer-rated attractiveness had almost zero association with early fatherhood.
The survey data showed that participants accurately perceived this gender difference. Women with higher attractiveness ratings predicted higher chances of early motherhood for themselves, aligning with reality. Men did not factor attractiveness into their own predictions, which matched their eventual outcomes.
Even within the married group, which was generally accurate, attractiveness played a role. Married women with above-average attractiveness ratings had nearly perfect predictions about their early motherhood. Married women with below-average attractiveness ratings overestimated their likelihood of having children before age thirty.
The study relies on a sample from a single liberal arts college with a primarily lower-income student body, meaning the patterns might not universally apply to the broader population. The attractiveness metric was based on a single ID photo taken around the time of college enrollment. A single photograph may not capture physical presence, personal style, or changes in appearance over a decade.
The researchers controlled for self-reported personality traits like intelligence, communication skills, and outgoingness, and the association between attractiveness and family outcomes remained strong. However, in observational survey data, unmeasured social or environmental factors could still influence both relationship status and family planning.
The study, “Fertility Beliefs and Outcomes: The Role of Relationship Status and Attractiveness,” was authored by Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner.
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DATE: September 2, 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: Physical attractiveness appears to shape family planning accuracy for young women
Young adults who are not in a romantic relationship often vastly overestimate their likelihood of having children before age thirty, while those who are married predict their family planning with remarkable accuracy. These differences in expectations, along with the role that physical attractiveness plays in women’s family trajectories, reveal how early social circumstances shape long-term personal forecasts. The research was published in The Economic Journal.
People make many life choices, such as pursuing graduate education or saving money, based on when they expect to start a family. Getting accurate data on these expectations is difficult because few surveys ask people to predict their future and then follow up years later to see what actually happened. Economists Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner set out to measure this gap between expectations and reality. They wanted to see if relationship status or other personal traits influence how accurately young adults predict their own family planning.
The researchers used data from the Berea Panel Study, a survey that tracked students from Berea College in Kentucky from their college entrance through ten years after graduation. They focused on 355 individuals who were childless at age twenty-four and followed them until age thirty. At age twenty-four, participants estimated the percent chance that they would have their first child at various future ages. The researchers then compared these predictions to the actual birth records reported by the participants over the following years.
Overall, twenty-four-year-olds overestimated how soon they would become parents. As a group, they predicted a 57.6 percent chance of having a child before age thirty, but only 36.1 percent actually did. The researchers found that relationship status at age twenty-four heavily predicted this gap between expectations and reality.
Married individuals had very accurate expectations, predicting a 76 percent chance of early parenthood and experiencing a 69.2 percent actual rate. Those with a boyfriend or girlfriend overestimated their chances, predicting 57.6 percent compared to an actual 32.2 percent. Single individuals were the most inaccurate, predicting a 42.8 percent chance but only reaching a 13.1 percent outcome.
To understand why single individuals were so far off the mark, the researchers looked at their predictions regarding marriage. Participants had also estimated their likelihood of tying the knot before age thirty. The researchers calculated how much of the miscalculation regarding children was tied to miscalculations about weddings.
Single individuals were highly overoptimistic about finding a spouse by age thirty. They predicted a nearly 50 percent chance of marriage, but only 21.5 percent actually married by that age. The researchers calculated that this overestimation of marriage accounted for a large portion of the error in their family planning predictions. When these single individuals reached age thirty and realized they had fewer children than expected, they tended to heavily revise their total lifetime expectations downward.
The researchers also investigated whether physical attractiveness played a role in these trajectories. They used a peer-rating system based on student ID photos. On average, forty-seven student evaluators rated each participant’s photo on a five-point scale. The evaluators were other college students, making their assessments highly relevant to the dating and marriage environment of the study group. The researchers then mapped these peer ratings against the participants’ family expectations and their eventual outcomes.
A higher attractiveness rating was associated with a higher likelihood of having children before age thirty. However, this pattern was driven entirely by the women in the sample. For women, a one-point increase on the five-point attractiveness scale predicted a massive jump in the likelihood of early motherhood. For men, peer-rated attractiveness had almost zero association with early fatherhood.
The survey data showed that participants accurately perceived this gender difference. Women with higher attractiveness ratings predicted higher chances of early motherhood for themselves, aligning with reality. Men did not factor attractiveness into their own predictions, which matched their eventual outcomes.
Even within the married group, which was generally accurate, attractiveness played a role. Married women with above-average attractiveness ratings had nearly perfect predictions about their early motherhood. Married women with below-average attractiveness ratings overestimated their likelihood of having children before age thirty.
The study relies on a sample from a single liberal arts college with a primarily lower-income student body, meaning the patterns might not universally apply to the broader population. The attractiveness metric was based on a single ID photo taken around the time of college enrollment. A single photograph may not capture physical presence, personal style, or changes in appearance over a decade.
The researchers controlled for self-reported personality traits like intelligence, communication skills, and outgoingness, and the association between attractiveness and family outcomes remained strong. However, in observational survey data, unmeasured social or environmental factors could still influence both relationship status and family planning.
The study, “Fertility Beliefs and Outcomes: The Role of Relationship Status and Attractiveness,” was authored by Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #FertilityBeliefs #FamilyPlanning #AttractivenessDating #WomenAndFertility #EarlyMotherhood #RelationshipStatus #SocialDiffusion #TheEconomicJournal #PredictingParenthood #GenderDifferencesInOutcomes
-
DATE: September 2, 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: Physical attractiveness appears to shape family planning accuracy for young women
Young adults who are not in a romantic relationship often vastly overestimate their likelihood of having children before age thirty, while those who are married predict their family planning with remarkable accuracy. These differences in expectations, along with the role that physical attractiveness plays in women’s family trajectories, reveal how early social circumstances shape long-term personal forecasts. The research was published in The Economic Journal.
People make many life choices, such as pursuing graduate education or saving money, based on when they expect to start a family. Getting accurate data on these expectations is difficult because few surveys ask people to predict their future and then follow up years later to see what actually happened. Economists Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner set out to measure this gap between expectations and reality. They wanted to see if relationship status or other personal traits influence how accurately young adults predict their own family planning.
The researchers used data from the Berea Panel Study, a survey that tracked students from Berea College in Kentucky from their college entrance through ten years after graduation. They focused on 355 individuals who were childless at age twenty-four and followed them until age thirty. At age twenty-four, participants estimated the percent chance that they would have their first child at various future ages. The researchers then compared these predictions to the actual birth records reported by the participants over the following years.
Overall, twenty-four-year-olds overestimated how soon they would become parents. As a group, they predicted a 57.6 percent chance of having a child before age thirty, but only 36.1 percent actually did. The researchers found that relationship status at age twenty-four heavily predicted this gap between expectations and reality.
Married individuals had very accurate expectations, predicting a 76 percent chance of early parenthood and experiencing a 69.2 percent actual rate. Those with a boyfriend or girlfriend overestimated their chances, predicting 57.6 percent compared to an actual 32.2 percent. Single individuals were the most inaccurate, predicting a 42.8 percent chance but only reaching a 13.1 percent outcome.
To understand why single individuals were so far off the mark, the researchers looked at their predictions regarding marriage. Participants had also estimated their likelihood of tying the knot before age thirty. The researchers calculated how much of the miscalculation regarding children was tied to miscalculations about weddings.
Single individuals were highly overoptimistic about finding a spouse by age thirty. They predicted a nearly 50 percent chance of marriage, but only 21.5 percent actually married by that age. The researchers calculated that this overestimation of marriage accounted for a large portion of the error in their family planning predictions. When these single individuals reached age thirty and realized they had fewer children than expected, they tended to heavily revise their total lifetime expectations downward.
The researchers also investigated whether physical attractiveness played a role in these trajectories. They used a peer-rating system based on student ID photos. On average, forty-seven student evaluators rated each participant’s photo on a five-point scale. The evaluators were other college students, making their assessments highly relevant to the dating and marriage environment of the study group. The researchers then mapped these peer ratings against the participants’ family expectations and their eventual outcomes.
A higher attractiveness rating was associated with a higher likelihood of having children before age thirty. However, this pattern was driven entirely by the women in the sample. For women, a one-point increase on the five-point attractiveness scale predicted a massive jump in the likelihood of early motherhood. For men, peer-rated attractiveness had almost zero association with early fatherhood.
The survey data showed that participants accurately perceived this gender difference. Women with higher attractiveness ratings predicted higher chances of early motherhood for themselves, aligning with reality. Men did not factor attractiveness into their own predictions, which matched their eventual outcomes.
Even within the married group, which was generally accurate, attractiveness played a role. Married women with above-average attractiveness ratings had nearly perfect predictions about their early motherhood. Married women with below-average attractiveness ratings overestimated their likelihood of having children before age thirty.
The study relies on a sample from a single liberal arts college with a primarily lower-income student body, meaning the patterns might not universally apply to the broader population. The attractiveness metric was based on a single ID photo taken around the time of college enrollment. A single photograph may not capture physical presence, personal style, or changes in appearance over a decade.
The researchers controlled for self-reported personality traits like intelligence, communication skills, and outgoingness, and the association between attractiveness and family outcomes remained strong. However, in observational survey data, unmeasured social or environmental factors could still influence both relationship status and family planning.
The study, “Fertility Beliefs and Outcomes: The Role of Relationship Status and Attractiveness,” was authored by Yifan Gong, Tyler Skura, Ralph Stinebrickner, and Todd Stinebrickner.
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DATE: September 2, 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: Heavy caffeine drinkers sleep less but have deeper sleep, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/heavy-caffeine-drinkers-sleep-less-but-have-deeper-sleep-study-finds/
A recent study using UK Biobank and HypnoLaus cohort data found that individuals drinking four or more caffeinated beverages per day tend to have shorter total sleep time compared to those drinking three or fewer caffeinated drinks per day. While statistical models estimated reductions in sleep length varying from 11 to 229 minutes, the researchers noted that the highest estimates were likely unrealistic, with more reliable causal matching pointing to a reduction of about 11 to 13 minutes per night. The paper was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Caffeine has been part of human diets for centuries. It is now considered the most widely consumed psychoactive substance in the world. Caffeine occurs naturally in foods and beverages such as coffee, tea, and chocolate. It is added to many energy drinks. Because of this, the regular consumption of caffeine is extremely common.
When intentionally consuming caffeine-rich beverages, people generally do it to feel more alert and energetic, to improve concentration, or to cope with stress. They also consume caffeine-rich beverages because they enjoy their taste and smell, and because these drinks are parts of social customs that facilitate social interaction (e.g. drinking coffee or tea). Because caffeine use is so widespread, its possible effects on health have attracted considerable scientific interest.
One particularly important topic related to caffeine consumption is sleep. Sleep supports essential processes ranging from memory and emotional regulation to immune and cardiovascular functioning. However, studies have shown that caffeine can make it harder to fall asleep, that it shortens sleep duration, reduces sleep efficiency, and alters the depth and structure of sleep.
Moreover, studies looking for substances that help people avoid sleepiness and stay awake regularly examine the effects of caffeine. However, much of this evidence comes from controlled laboratory experiments in which regular caffeine users temporarily abstain before receiving caffeine or consume caffeine as an experimental treatment, situations that may differ substantially from everyday consumption.
Study author Benjamin Stucky and his colleagues conducted a Mendelian randomization study with the goal of estimating the causal effect of habitual caffeine intake on sleep quality. A Mendelian randomization study uses naturally occurring genetic differences associated with a studied characteristic to test whether that characteristic is likely to have a causal effect on an outcome. In this case, study authors wanted to estimate the effects of different habitual caffeine consumption levels on both objective and subjective sleep characteristics recorded at home.
The study authors used data from the UK Biobank and the HypnoLaus cohort. The UK Biobank is a very large open access prospective study conducted in the UK involving a total of 485,511 participants. The HypnoLaus cohort is a population-based study conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its dataset contains data on caffeine intake, genetic data, and objective sleep characteristics data collected using at-home polysomnography (a comprehensive sleep study that records brain waves, oxygen levels, heart rate, and breathing) for 1,702 participants. The polysomnography data were collected during one night.
The study authors used UK Biobank data to estimate the association between various gene variants and caffeine intake, and the HypnoLaus data to estimate the association between each gene variant and objective and subjective measures of sleep quality. Aside from genetic data, study authors used data on the consumption of caffeinated beverages, expressed as the number of cups per day, and data on sleep characteristics.
The sleep characteristics included total sleep time, sleep latency (the time between lights-off and N2 sleep, the second stage of non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, which is a light-to-moderate stage characterized by slower brain activity), number of awakenings during the night, percentage of REM sleep per total sleep time, and some characteristics of EEG (electroencephalogram) activity during sleep, which measures the brain’s electrical signals. Participants also completed self-report assessments of sleep quality (the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), daytime sleepiness (the Epworth Sleepiness Scale) and morningness-eveningness (the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire).
The results showed that participants’ self-rated sleep quality and morningness-eveningness (i.e., whether they are an evening or a morning person) did not depend on the consumption of caffeinated beverages. However, statistical models revealed that four or more caffeinated beverages consumed per day shorten total sleep time compared to three or fewer caffeinated drinks per day.
The estimated reduction in sleep length varied from 11 to 229 minutes, though the researchers caution that the higher end of this range is an overestimation caused by statistical uncertainty in the genetic modeling. Interestingly, the shorter sleep in high habitual caffeine consumers was characterized by increased non-rapid-eye-movement sleep depth (as indicated by a specific pattern of electrical brain activity known as delta power).
“The data show that high habitual caffeine intake alters the characteristics of sleep in the general population, while sparing the major physiological principles of sleep-wake regulation possibly due to adaptation,” the study authors concluded. In other words, while people slept less, their bodies compensated by sleeping more deeply, maintaining the natural homeostatic balance of sleep.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the likely effects of caffeine on sleep quality. However, it should be noted that the key piece of data the study was based on the number of cups of caffeinated beverages consumed per day was self-reported, leaving room for recall bias and estimation errors to have affected the results. Additionally, the study did not take into account the type of caffeinated beverage consumed, even though different beverages can contain substantially different amounts of caffeine. It also did not consider dietary sources of caffeine that are not beverages.
The paper, “Community-based causal evidence that high habitual caffeine consumption alters distinct polysomnography-derived sleep variables,” was authored by Benjamin Stucky, Leonard Henckel, Marloes H. Maathuis, José Haba-Rubio, Pedro Marques-Vidal, Francesca Siclari, Raphaël Heinzer, and Hans-Peter Landolt.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/heavy-caffeine-drinkers-sleep-less-but-have-deeper-sleep-study-finds/
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