#psychiatry — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psychiatry, aggregated by home.social.
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Crime videos push liberal voters toward stricter laws but not the political right
When exposed to videos of retail crime, voters in a highly liberal city adopted tougher, more conservative stances on local criminal justice policies. The participants did not, however, alter their broader political identities or overall ideological leanings. These findings were published in the The Journal of Social Psychology.
In psychology, a concept called terror management theory explores how people manage their deep-seated awareness of their own mortality. The theory suggests that reminders of death or existential threats create intense anxiety. To cope with this discomfort, individuals often seek comfort in structured, predictable, and historically conservative worldviews.
Decades of research on this topic have yielded mixed results regarding how people vote under stress. Some experiments show that threats push people toward the political right. Other studies suggest that threats cause polarization, driving both liberals and conservatives further toward their respective extremes.
Recent political shifts in the United States provided a real-world testing ground for these ideas. In California, voters recently considered revising a state law known as Proposition 47. Originally designed to reduce prison populations by classifying minor thefts as misdemeanors, the law has faced intense debate in recent years. Critics have argued that the $950 threshold for a felony charge encouraged organized retail theft, as offenders faced minimal legal consequences.
University of San Francisco psychologist Violet Cheung-Blunden and her colleagues wanted to see if fear-inducing media could sway voters in a deeply liberal area. They designed two experiments to test whether videos about local crime could alter decisions on Proposition 47. The researchers also wanted to know if this exposure would change the participants’ general political identities.
In the first experiment, the research team recruited 206 adults from the San Francisco area during the week leading up to the election. The researchers asked the participants about their preexisting political beliefs, including their views on authority, immigration, and economics. The participants were then randomly assigned to watch one of two short videos.
Half of the group watched a video showing local tourist attractions, like the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, to serve as a baseline comparison. The other half watched a compilation of news clips and online videos depicting organized looting and retail theft in the city. After watching the videos, the participants completed a mock exercise to revise Proposition 47.
The participants were asked to propose the ideal dollar amount for classifying retail theft as a felony. They also had to provide the minimum and maximum amounts they would be willing to accept on a ballot. Finally, the participants rated their current overall political orientation on a scale ranging from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative.
The participants who watched the crime video proposed a markedly lower minimum and ideal dollar threshold for felony charges compared to the group that watched the tourist video. In practical terms, exposure to the crime footage prompted these voters to adopt a stricter, more punitive stance on retail theft. They became more conservative on the specific issue of criminal justice.
This shift toward a conservative policy position did not translate to a broader ideological change. The participants’ self-reported political orientation remained anchored to their initial beliefs, and they did not shift toward the political right overall. A single exposure to threatening media was not enough to uproot their overarching political identities.
The researchers also looked for evidence of political polarization. They checked whether the crime video caused initially liberal participants to become more liberal and initially conservative participants to become more conservative. The data did not support this idea, as the participants largely maintained their general ideological footing.
To ensure the reliability of these initial patterns, Cheung-Blunden and her team conducted a second experiment with 98 college students in San Francisco. This study followed a nearly identical procedure to the first one, but it took place in a controlled laboratory setting. The researchers also had all participants watch a five-minute breathing and relaxation video before viewing their assigned footage.
This relaxation step was intended to reduce baseline mood variations among the students. By calming the participants first, the researchers hoped to make any emotional reactions to the subsequent tourist or crime videos easier to measure. The results of the second experiment ended up mirroring the first.
The students exposed to the crime video proposed substantially lower dollar thresholds for felony theft across all three categories. Just like the community adults, the student participants embraced a tougher stance on crime after viewing the threatening footage. Once again, this shift toward a stricter crime policy did not alter the students’ broader political identities.
The crime video failed to move the student participants’ overall political orientation toward the right. The researchers also found no indication that the threatening footage caused the students’ general political views to become more polarized. The students’ overarching political ideologies remained stable, even as their position on a specific local policy shifted.
While the experiments show how media exposure can alter specific policy preferences, the results come with a few boundaries. The studies took place in a highly liberal city, meaning the participants likely sat further to the political left than the average American voter. The second experiment also included a high proportion of female participants, who generally reported more liberal leanings than male participants in the study.
These demographic skews mean the findings might not neatly apply to voters in more conservative or politically divided regions. Additionally, the researchers point out that their experiments measured political shifts using a mock policy threshold and a general ideology scale. Future research could incorporate a wider range of political choices, such as preferences for specific political figures in an actual election.
It is also difficult to know if the crime videos specifically triggered a deep fear of mortality, as terror management theory suggests. The footage might have simply provoked general anxiety about safety and social order. Future studies will need to directly measure the specific types of emotional discomfort that drive voters to change their minds on public policy.
The study, “Threat-Induced Conservatism in a Liberal Electorate: Issue-Based Shifts without Ideological Transformation,” was authored by Violet Cheung-Blunden, Serena Rajkumar, Yuka Hirata, Caelyn A. McDonough, and Chonhei Liao.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ThreatInducedConservatism #LiberalElectorate #CrimeMediaImpact #Proposition47 #CaliforniaPolitics #CriminalJusticePolicy #VoterBehavior #TerrorManagementTheory #PolicyThresholds #PublicOpinionShifts
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Crime videos push liberal voters toward stricter laws but not the political right
When exposed to videos of retail crime, voters in a highly liberal city adopted tougher, more conservative stances on local criminal justice policies. The participants did not, however, alter their broader political identities or overall ideological leanings. These findings were published in the The Journal of Social Psychology.
In psychology, a concept called terror management theory explores how people manage their deep-seated awareness of their own mortality. The theory suggests that reminders of death or existential threats create intense anxiety. To cope with this discomfort, individuals often seek comfort in structured, predictable, and historically conservative worldviews.
Decades of research on this topic have yielded mixed results regarding how people vote under stress. Some experiments show that threats push people toward the political right. Other studies suggest that threats cause polarization, driving both liberals and conservatives further toward their respective extremes.
Recent political shifts in the United States provided a real-world testing ground for these ideas. In California, voters recently considered revising a state law known as Proposition 47. Originally designed to reduce prison populations by classifying minor thefts as misdemeanors, the law has faced intense debate in recent years. Critics have argued that the $950 threshold for a felony charge encouraged organized retail theft, as offenders faced minimal legal consequences.
University of San Francisco psychologist Violet Cheung-Blunden and her colleagues wanted to see if fear-inducing media could sway voters in a deeply liberal area. They designed two experiments to test whether videos about local crime could alter decisions on Proposition 47. The researchers also wanted to know if this exposure would change the participants’ general political identities.
In the first experiment, the research team recruited 206 adults from the San Francisco area during the week leading up to the election. The researchers asked the participants about their preexisting political beliefs, including their views on authority, immigration, and economics. The participants were then randomly assigned to watch one of two short videos.
Half of the group watched a video showing local tourist attractions, like the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, to serve as a baseline comparison. The other half watched a compilation of news clips and online videos depicting organized looting and retail theft in the city. After watching the videos, the participants completed a mock exercise to revise Proposition 47.
The participants were asked to propose the ideal dollar amount for classifying retail theft as a felony. They also had to provide the minimum and maximum amounts they would be willing to accept on a ballot. Finally, the participants rated their current overall political orientation on a scale ranging from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative.
The participants who watched the crime video proposed a markedly lower minimum and ideal dollar threshold for felony charges compared to the group that watched the tourist video. In practical terms, exposure to the crime footage prompted these voters to adopt a stricter, more punitive stance on retail theft. They became more conservative on the specific issue of criminal justice.
This shift toward a conservative policy position did not translate to a broader ideological change. The participants’ self-reported political orientation remained anchored to their initial beliefs, and they did not shift toward the political right overall. A single exposure to threatening media was not enough to uproot their overarching political identities.
The researchers also looked for evidence of political polarization. They checked whether the crime video caused initially liberal participants to become more liberal and initially conservative participants to become more conservative. The data did not support this idea, as the participants largely maintained their general ideological footing.
To ensure the reliability of these initial patterns, Cheung-Blunden and her team conducted a second experiment with 98 college students in San Francisco. This study followed a nearly identical procedure to the first one, but it took place in a controlled laboratory setting. The researchers also had all participants watch a five-minute breathing and relaxation video before viewing their assigned footage.
This relaxation step was intended to reduce baseline mood variations among the students. By calming the participants first, the researchers hoped to make any emotional reactions to the subsequent tourist or crime videos easier to measure. The results of the second experiment ended up mirroring the first.
The students exposed to the crime video proposed substantially lower dollar thresholds for felony theft across all three categories. Just like the community adults, the student participants embraced a tougher stance on crime after viewing the threatening footage. Once again, this shift toward a stricter crime policy did not alter the students’ broader political identities.
The crime video failed to move the student participants’ overall political orientation toward the right. The researchers also found no indication that the threatening footage caused the students’ general political views to become more polarized. The students’ overarching political ideologies remained stable, even as their position on a specific local policy shifted.
While the experiments show how media exposure can alter specific policy preferences, the results come with a few boundaries. The studies took place in a highly liberal city, meaning the participants likely sat further to the political left than the average American voter. The second experiment also included a high proportion of female participants, who generally reported more liberal leanings than male participants in the study.
These demographic skews mean the findings might not neatly apply to voters in more conservative or politically divided regions. Additionally, the researchers point out that their experiments measured political shifts using a mock policy threshold and a general ideology scale. Future research could incorporate a wider range of political choices, such as preferences for specific political figures in an actual election.
It is also difficult to know if the crime videos specifically triggered a deep fear of mortality, as terror management theory suggests. The footage might have simply provoked general anxiety about safety and social order. Future studies will need to directly measure the specific types of emotional discomfort that drive voters to change their minds on public policy.
The study, “Threat-Induced Conservatism in a Liberal Electorate: Issue-Based Shifts without Ideological Transformation,” was authored by Violet Cheung-Blunden, Serena Rajkumar, Yuka Hirata, Caelyn A. McDonough, and Chonhei Liao.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ThreatInducedConservatism #LiberalElectorate #CrimeMediaImpact #Proposition47 #CaliforniaPolitics #CriminalJusticePolicy #VoterBehavior #TerrorManagementTheory #PolicyThresholds #PublicOpinionShifts
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Crime videos push liberal voters toward stricter laws but not the political right
When exposed to videos of retail crime, voters in a highly liberal city adopted tougher, more conservative stances on local criminal justice policies. The participants did not, however, alter their broader political identities or overall ideological leanings. These findings were published in the The Journal of Social Psychology.
In psychology, a concept called terror management theory explores how people manage their deep-seated awareness of their own mortality. The theory suggests that reminders of death or existential threats create intense anxiety. To cope with this discomfort, individuals often seek comfort in structured, predictable, and historically conservative worldviews.
Decades of research on this topic have yielded mixed results regarding how people vote under stress. Some experiments show that threats push people toward the political right. Other studies suggest that threats cause polarization, driving both liberals and conservatives further toward their respective extremes.
Recent political shifts in the United States provided a real-world testing ground for these ideas. In California, voters recently considered revising a state law known as Proposition 47. Originally designed to reduce prison populations by classifying minor thefts as misdemeanors, the law has faced intense debate in recent years. Critics have argued that the $950 threshold for a felony charge encouraged organized retail theft, as offenders faced minimal legal consequences.
University of San Francisco psychologist Violet Cheung-Blunden and her colleagues wanted to see if fear-inducing media could sway voters in a deeply liberal area. They designed two experiments to test whether videos about local crime could alter decisions on Proposition 47. The researchers also wanted to know if this exposure would change the participants’ general political identities.
In the first experiment, the research team recruited 206 adults from the San Francisco area during the week leading up to the election. The researchers asked the participants about their preexisting political beliefs, including their views on authority, immigration, and economics. The participants were then randomly assigned to watch one of two short videos.
Half of the group watched a video showing local tourist attractions, like the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, to serve as a baseline comparison. The other half watched a compilation of news clips and online videos depicting organized looting and retail theft in the city. After watching the videos, the participants completed a mock exercise to revise Proposition 47.
The participants were asked to propose the ideal dollar amount for classifying retail theft as a felony. They also had to provide the minimum and maximum amounts they would be willing to accept on a ballot. Finally, the participants rated their current overall political orientation on a scale ranging from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative.
The participants who watched the crime video proposed a markedly lower minimum and ideal dollar threshold for felony charges compared to the group that watched the tourist video. In practical terms, exposure to the crime footage prompted these voters to adopt a stricter, more punitive stance on retail theft. They became more conservative on the specific issue of criminal justice.
This shift toward a conservative policy position did not translate to a broader ideological change. The participants’ self-reported political orientation remained anchored to their initial beliefs, and they did not shift toward the political right overall. A single exposure to threatening media was not enough to uproot their overarching political identities.
The researchers also looked for evidence of political polarization. They checked whether the crime video caused initially liberal participants to become more liberal and initially conservative participants to become more conservative. The data did not support this idea, as the participants largely maintained their general ideological footing.
To ensure the reliability of these initial patterns, Cheung-Blunden and her team conducted a second experiment with 98 college students in San Francisco. This study followed a nearly identical procedure to the first one, but it took place in a controlled laboratory setting. The researchers also had all participants watch a five-minute breathing and relaxation video before viewing their assigned footage.
This relaxation step was intended to reduce baseline mood variations among the students. By calming the participants first, the researchers hoped to make any emotional reactions to the subsequent tourist or crime videos easier to measure. The results of the second experiment ended up mirroring the first.
The students exposed to the crime video proposed substantially lower dollar thresholds for felony theft across all three categories. Just like the community adults, the student participants embraced a tougher stance on crime after viewing the threatening footage. Once again, this shift toward a stricter crime policy did not alter the students’ broader political identities.
The crime video failed to move the student participants’ overall political orientation toward the right. The researchers also found no indication that the threatening footage caused the students’ general political views to become more polarized. The students’ overarching political ideologies remained stable, even as their position on a specific local policy shifted.
While the experiments show how media exposure can alter specific policy preferences, the results come with a few boundaries. The studies took place in a highly liberal city, meaning the participants likely sat further to the political left than the average American voter. The second experiment also included a high proportion of female participants, who generally reported more liberal leanings than male participants in the study.
These demographic skews mean the findings might not neatly apply to voters in more conservative or politically divided regions. Additionally, the researchers point out that their experiments measured political shifts using a mock policy threshold and a general ideology scale. Future research could incorporate a wider range of political choices, such as preferences for specific political figures in an actual election.
It is also difficult to know if the crime videos specifically triggered a deep fear of mortality, as terror management theory suggests. The footage might have simply provoked general anxiety about safety and social order. Future studies will need to directly measure the specific types of emotional discomfort that drive voters to change their minds on public policy.
The study, “Threat-Induced Conservatism in a Liberal Electorate: Issue-Based Shifts without Ideological Transformation,” was authored by Violet Cheung-Blunden, Serena Rajkumar, Yuka Hirata, Caelyn A. McDonough, and Chonhei Liao.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ThreatInducedConservatism #LiberalElectorate #CrimeMediaImpact #Proposition47 #CaliforniaPolitics #CriminalJusticePolicy #VoterBehavior #TerrorManagementTheory #PolicyThresholds #PublicOpinionShifts
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Celebrity admiration is linked to submission to authority, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
People who strongly admire celebrities tend to be more deferential to authority and more attached to traditional norms, according to new research published in Psychological Reports. The findings suggest that strong emotional attachments to famous figures relate to a preference for established social order and conventional norms, even after accounting for a person’s general political orientation.
People often form one-sided emotional connections with famous actors, musicians, and social media influencers. While these parasocial relationships are common and can sometimes provide a sense of community, intense celebrity admiration involves spending excessive time and effort focusing on a favorite public figure. This level of absorption is sometimes linked to negative outcomes. For instance, a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher obsession with celebrities was associated with lower performance on tests of vocabulary and fluid intelligence.
The idea that celebrity admiration might be tied to authoritarianism is not new. Researchers proposed in 2001 that people inclined to defer to authority might gravitate toward celebrities, who are often treated as authorities on a range of topics, but their study of British participants found no association between the two.
Since then, the understanding of authoritarianism has shifted. The authors of a 2010 paper argued that right-wing authoritarianism is better understood as three related but distinct sets of attitudes: authoritarianism (which involves aggression and strict control), conservatism (which focuses on submission to authority and preserving the status quo), and traditionalism (which centers on adhering to old-fashioned lifestyles and morality).
Nearly 25 years after that first study, and amid shifts in celebrity culture and politics, the researchers sought to test which specific dimensions of authoritarianism are actually associated with celebrity admiration, especially once general political ideology and demographic factors are taken into account. The team was led by Ho Huynh, a senior lecturer in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University.
“We know that celebrities have undue influence over people and that celebrities typically endorse liberal-leaning causes (e.g., climate change, immigration, abortion),” Huynh told PsyPost. “We were surprised to learn through our previous work that people who admire celebrities tend to self-identify as more politically conservative.”
“In the current work, we wanted to see if celebrity admiration would extend to right-wing authoritarianism,” Huynh continued. “This work might help to explain the contradiction of why politically conservative people in the United States might be more attracted to celebrities despite the stereotype that celebrities tend to hold liberal views.”
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 331 adults living in the United States through the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific. The sample was deliberately balanced during recruitment to contain an equal mix of self-identified liberals, moderates, and conservatives, meaning it is not nationally representative. About 54 percent of the participants were women, and all were 18 or older, with an average age of about 40.
Participants completed the brief seven-item version of the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a questionnaire that asks people to indicate their agreement with statements about their favorite famous person. This scale measures two levels of admiration. The first is a lighter, entertainment-social level, which includes enjoying keeping up with news about the celebrity or discussing them with friends. The second is a more intense, pathological level, characterized by feelings that the celebrity is a soulmate or that the fan shares a special, indescribable bond with them.
The participants also completed a survey assessing the three dimensions of right-wing authoritarianism. For example, participants rated their agreement with statements like “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Finally, they provided demographic information, including their education level, socioeconomic status, and their overall political orientation on an 11-point scale ranging from completely liberal to completely conservative.
The initial results showed that both forms of celebrity admiration were linked to higher scores on all three dimensions of authoritarianism. The links were strongest for conservatism (correlations of 0.32 for the lighter form and 0.45 for the intense form, on a scale where 0 means no relationship), moderate for traditionalism (0.19 and 0.32), and weak for authoritarian aggression (0.15 and 0.13). Only the intense form was linked to political conservatism, and modestly so (a correlation of 0.19).
To see if these links held up under closer statistical scrutiny, the researchers ran a series of models that controlled for the participants’ age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and general political orientation. This step helped rule out the possibility that the connection simply reflected factors like political conservatism, which was linked to authoritarian attitudes and to intense admiration.
After accounting for these factors, celebrity admiration consistently predicted right-wing conservatism and right-wing traditionalism. Demographics and political orientation explained about 24 percent of the variation in conservatism scores; celebrity admiration added 9 percent (lighter form) or 13 percent (intense form) on top of that. For traditionalism, it added only about 2 to 4 percent.
“The association between celebrity admiration and authoritarian submission seems to be robust and reliable, indicating that people who worship their favorite celebrity tend to prefer more dominant authorities,” Huynh explained. Asked what the average person should take away, he said: “People who report admiring their favorite celebrity are more likely to submit to authority and prefer traditional norms. These trends might help explain why people who admire celebrities may self-identify as more politically conservative.”
However, the relationship between celebrity admiration and the third dimension, authoritarianism (the demand for strict punishment of rule-breakers), did not remain robust. Once demographics and political orientation were factored in, intense admiration no longer predicted authoritarian aggression. The lighter form remained a statistically detectable predictor, but it accounted for only about 1 percent of the variation, and the authors do not consider this strong evidence of a link. The authors suggest this may be because people who heavily admire celebrities tend to see the world as fair, with people getting what they deserve, and so may feel less need to support harsh punishment for rule-breakers.
Huynh sees this boundary as an encouraging sign. “Celebrity admiration was not related to authoritarian aggression, which involves strictness and social control,” he noted. “This finding showed the limits of celebrity admiration, which is positive and worthy of optimism.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study measured these traits at a single point in time, so the direction of the relationship is unknown. Intense absorption in celebrity culture might lead someone to adopt more authority-respecting and traditional views, or people who already hold such views might be more drawn to celebrity culture. When the researchers flipped their statistical model, higher authority-submission scores also predicted more celebrity admiration, a pattern consistent with either direction.
The list of control variables was also limited, missing related traits like narcissism and a preference for social hierarchies. Additionally, the survey asked participants to focus on their favorite celebrity but did not distinguish between typical entertainers and political figures. Because modern politics has become heavily focused on personalities, admiring a politician might function differently than admiring a musician or actor.
“This research was not about political celebrities, but celebrities generally,” Huynh said. “Some people may want to view these findings through the Trump presidencies, but only 5 out of 331 people in the study listed Donald Trump as their favorite celebrity. As such, these findings represent the associations between celebrity admiration and endorsement of different aspects of right-wing authoritarianism more broadly.”
Finally, the study only included participants from the United States. Cultural values, political structures, and the nature of fame vary widely around the world, so these connections might operate differently in other countries.
Huynh suggested another direction for future work. “An interesting next step would be to examine the associations between celebrity admiration and left-wing authoritarianism (e.g., hostility toward people in power, support for censoring opposing views, and rejection of traditional values and norms),” he said.
The study, “Idols and Ideologies: Examining Associations Between Celebrity Admiration and Right-Wing Authoritarianism,” was authored by Ho Phi Huynh, Joshua L. Williams, Marla F. Jorgensen, Amy Dicke-Bohmann, and Lynn McCutcheon.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CelebrityAdmiration #AuthoritySubmission #RightWingAuthoritarianism #ConservatismTraits #Traditionalism #ParasocialRelationships #CelebrityInfluence #PsychologicalResearch #AdmirationAndPolitics #CelebrityCultureStudy
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Celebrity admiration is linked to submission to authority, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
People who strongly admire celebrities tend to be more deferential to authority and more attached to traditional norms, according to new research published in Psychological Reports. The findings suggest that strong emotional attachments to famous figures relate to a preference for established social order and conventional norms, even after accounting for a person’s general political orientation.
People often form one-sided emotional connections with famous actors, musicians, and social media influencers. While these parasocial relationships are common and can sometimes provide a sense of community, intense celebrity admiration involves spending excessive time and effort focusing on a favorite public figure. This level of absorption is sometimes linked to negative outcomes. For instance, a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher obsession with celebrities was associated with lower performance on tests of vocabulary and fluid intelligence.
The idea that celebrity admiration might be tied to authoritarianism is not new. Researchers proposed in 2001 that people inclined to defer to authority might gravitate toward celebrities, who are often treated as authorities on a range of topics, but their study of British participants found no association between the two.
Since then, the understanding of authoritarianism has shifted. The authors of a 2010 paper argued that right-wing authoritarianism is better understood as three related but distinct sets of attitudes: authoritarianism (which involves aggression and strict control), conservatism (which focuses on submission to authority and preserving the status quo), and traditionalism (which centers on adhering to old-fashioned lifestyles and morality).
Nearly 25 years after that first study, and amid shifts in celebrity culture and politics, the researchers sought to test which specific dimensions of authoritarianism are actually associated with celebrity admiration, especially once general political ideology and demographic factors are taken into account. The team was led by Ho Huynh, a senior lecturer in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University.
“We know that celebrities have undue influence over people and that celebrities typically endorse liberal-leaning causes (e.g., climate change, immigration, abortion),” Huynh told PsyPost. “We were surprised to learn through our previous work that people who admire celebrities tend to self-identify as more politically conservative.”
“In the current work, we wanted to see if celebrity admiration would extend to right-wing authoritarianism,” Huynh continued. “This work might help to explain the contradiction of why politically conservative people in the United States might be more attracted to celebrities despite the stereotype that celebrities tend to hold liberal views.”
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 331 adults living in the United States through the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific. The sample was deliberately balanced during recruitment to contain an equal mix of self-identified liberals, moderates, and conservatives, meaning it is not nationally representative. About 54 percent of the participants were women, and all were 18 or older, with an average age of about 40.
Participants completed the brief seven-item version of the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a questionnaire that asks people to indicate their agreement with statements about their favorite famous person. This scale measures two levels of admiration. The first is a lighter, entertainment-social level, which includes enjoying keeping up with news about the celebrity or discussing them with friends. The second is a more intense, pathological level, characterized by feelings that the celebrity is a soulmate or that the fan shares a special, indescribable bond with them.
The participants also completed a survey assessing the three dimensions of right-wing authoritarianism. For example, participants rated their agreement with statements like “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Finally, they provided demographic information, including their education level, socioeconomic status, and their overall political orientation on an 11-point scale ranging from completely liberal to completely conservative.
The initial results showed that both forms of celebrity admiration were linked to higher scores on all three dimensions of authoritarianism. The links were strongest for conservatism (correlations of 0.32 for the lighter form and 0.45 for the intense form, on a scale where 0 means no relationship), moderate for traditionalism (0.19 and 0.32), and weak for authoritarian aggression (0.15 and 0.13). Only the intense form was linked to political conservatism, and modestly so (a correlation of 0.19).
To see if these links held up under closer statistical scrutiny, the researchers ran a series of models that controlled for the participants’ age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and general political orientation. This step helped rule out the possibility that the connection simply reflected factors like political conservatism, which was linked to authoritarian attitudes and to intense admiration.
After accounting for these factors, celebrity admiration consistently predicted right-wing conservatism and right-wing traditionalism. Demographics and political orientation explained about 24 percent of the variation in conservatism scores; celebrity admiration added 9 percent (lighter form) or 13 percent (intense form) on top of that. For traditionalism, it added only about 2 to 4 percent.
“The association between celebrity admiration and authoritarian submission seems to be robust and reliable, indicating that people who worship their favorite celebrity tend to prefer more dominant authorities,” Huynh explained. Asked what the average person should take away, he said: “People who report admiring their favorite celebrity are more likely to submit to authority and prefer traditional norms. These trends might help explain why people who admire celebrities may self-identify as more politically conservative.”
However, the relationship between celebrity admiration and the third dimension, authoritarianism (the demand for strict punishment of rule-breakers), did not remain robust. Once demographics and political orientation were factored in, intense admiration no longer predicted authoritarian aggression. The lighter form remained a statistically detectable predictor, but it accounted for only about 1 percent of the variation, and the authors do not consider this strong evidence of a link. The authors suggest this may be because people who heavily admire celebrities tend to see the world as fair, with people getting what they deserve, and so may feel less need to support harsh punishment for rule-breakers.
Huynh sees this boundary as an encouraging sign. “Celebrity admiration was not related to authoritarian aggression, which involves strictness and social control,” he noted. “This finding showed the limits of celebrity admiration, which is positive and worthy of optimism.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study measured these traits at a single point in time, so the direction of the relationship is unknown. Intense absorption in celebrity culture might lead someone to adopt more authority-respecting and traditional views, or people who already hold such views might be more drawn to celebrity culture. When the researchers flipped their statistical model, higher authority-submission scores also predicted more celebrity admiration, a pattern consistent with either direction.
The list of control variables was also limited, missing related traits like narcissism and a preference for social hierarchies. Additionally, the survey asked participants to focus on their favorite celebrity but did not distinguish between typical entertainers and political figures. Because modern politics has become heavily focused on personalities, admiring a politician might function differently than admiring a musician or actor.
“This research was not about political celebrities, but celebrities generally,” Huynh said. “Some people may want to view these findings through the Trump presidencies, but only 5 out of 331 people in the study listed Donald Trump as their favorite celebrity. As such, these findings represent the associations between celebrity admiration and endorsement of different aspects of right-wing authoritarianism more broadly.”
Finally, the study only included participants from the United States. Cultural values, political structures, and the nature of fame vary widely around the world, so these connections might operate differently in other countries.
Huynh suggested another direction for future work. “An interesting next step would be to examine the associations between celebrity admiration and left-wing authoritarianism (e.g., hostility toward people in power, support for censoring opposing views, and rejection of traditional values and norms),” he said.
The study, “Idols and Ideologies: Examining Associations Between Celebrity Admiration and Right-Wing Authoritarianism,” was authored by Ho Phi Huynh, Joshua L. Williams, Marla F. Jorgensen, Amy Dicke-Bohmann, and Lynn McCutcheon.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CelebrityAdmiration #AuthoritySubmission #RightWingAuthoritarianism #ConservatismTraits #Traditionalism #ParasocialRelationships #CelebrityInfluence #PsychologicalResearch #AdmirationAndPolitics #CelebrityCultureStudy
-
DATE: October 5, 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: Celebrity admiration is linked to submission to authority, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
People who strongly admire celebrities tend to be more deferential to authority and more attached to traditional norms, according to new research published in Psychological Reports. The findings suggest that strong emotional attachments to famous figures relate to a preference for established social order and conventional norms, even after accounting for a person’s general political orientation.
People often form one-sided emotional connections with famous actors, musicians, and social media influencers. While these parasocial relationships are common and can sometimes provide a sense of community, intense celebrity admiration involves spending excessive time and effort focusing on a favorite public figure. This level of absorption is sometimes linked to negative outcomes. For instance, a 2021 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher obsession with celebrities was associated with lower performance on tests of vocabulary and fluid intelligence.
The idea that celebrity admiration might be tied to authoritarianism is not new. Researchers proposed in 2001 that people inclined to defer to authority might gravitate toward celebrities, who are often treated as authorities on a range of topics, but their study of British participants found no association between the two.
Since then, the understanding of authoritarianism has shifted. The authors of a 2010 paper argued that right-wing authoritarianism is better understood as three related but distinct sets of attitudes: authoritarianism (which involves aggression and strict control), conservatism (which focuses on submission to authority and preserving the status quo), and traditionalism (which centers on adhering to old-fashioned lifestyles and morality).
Nearly 25 years after that first study, and amid shifts in celebrity culture and politics, the researchers sought to test which specific dimensions of authoritarianism are actually associated with celebrity admiration, especially once general political ideology and demographic factors are taken into account. The team was led by Ho Huynh, a senior lecturer in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University.
“We know that celebrities have undue influence over people and that celebrities typically endorse liberal-leaning causes (e.g., climate change, immigration, abortion),” Huynh told PsyPost. “We were surprised to learn through our previous work that people who admire celebrities tend to self-identify as more politically conservative.”
“In the current work, we wanted to see if celebrity admiration would extend to right-wing authoritarianism,” Huynh continued. “This work might help to explain the contradiction of why politically conservative people in the United States might be more attracted to celebrities despite the stereotype that celebrities tend to hold liberal views.”
To investigate this, the researchers recruited 331 adults living in the United States through the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific. The sample was deliberately balanced during recruitment to contain an equal mix of self-identified liberals, moderates, and conservatives, meaning it is not nationally representative. About 54 percent of the participants were women, and all were 18 or older, with an average age of about 40.
Participants completed the brief seven-item version of the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a questionnaire that asks people to indicate their agreement with statements about their favorite famous person. This scale measures two levels of admiration. The first is a lighter, entertainment-social level, which includes enjoying keeping up with news about the celebrity or discussing them with friends. The second is a more intense, pathological level, characterized by feelings that the celebrity is a soulmate or that the fan shares a special, indescribable bond with them.
The participants also completed a survey assessing the three dimensions of right-wing authoritarianism. For example, participants rated their agreement with statements like “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Finally, they provided demographic information, including their education level, socioeconomic status, and their overall political orientation on an 11-point scale ranging from completely liberal to completely conservative.
The initial results showed that both forms of celebrity admiration were linked to higher scores on all three dimensions of authoritarianism. The links were strongest for conservatism (correlations of 0.32 for the lighter form and 0.45 for the intense form, on a scale where 0 means no relationship), moderate for traditionalism (0.19 and 0.32), and weak for authoritarian aggression (0.15 and 0.13). Only the intense form was linked to political conservatism, and modestly so (a correlation of 0.19).
To see if these links held up under closer statistical scrutiny, the researchers ran a series of models that controlled for the participants’ age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and general political orientation. This step helped rule out the possibility that the connection simply reflected factors like political conservatism, which was linked to authoritarian attitudes and to intense admiration.
After accounting for these factors, celebrity admiration consistently predicted right-wing conservatism and right-wing traditionalism. Demographics and political orientation explained about 24 percent of the variation in conservatism scores; celebrity admiration added 9 percent (lighter form) or 13 percent (intense form) on top of that. For traditionalism, it added only about 2 to 4 percent.
“The association between celebrity admiration and authoritarian submission seems to be robust and reliable, indicating that people who worship their favorite celebrity tend to prefer more dominant authorities,” Huynh explained. Asked what the average person should take away, he said: “People who report admiring their favorite celebrity are more likely to submit to authority and prefer traditional norms. These trends might help explain why people who admire celebrities may self-identify as more politically conservative.”
However, the relationship between celebrity admiration and the third dimension, authoritarianism (the demand for strict punishment of rule-breakers), did not remain robust. Once demographics and political orientation were factored in, intense admiration no longer predicted authoritarian aggression. The lighter form remained a statistically detectable predictor, but it accounted for only about 1 percent of the variation, and the authors do not consider this strong evidence of a link. The authors suggest this may be because people who heavily admire celebrities tend to see the world as fair, with people getting what they deserve, and so may feel less need to support harsh punishment for rule-breakers.
Huynh sees this boundary as an encouraging sign. “Celebrity admiration was not related to authoritarian aggression, which involves strictness and social control,” he noted. “This finding showed the limits of celebrity admiration, which is positive and worthy of optimism.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study measured these traits at a single point in time, so the direction of the relationship is unknown. Intense absorption in celebrity culture might lead someone to adopt more authority-respecting and traditional views, or people who already hold such views might be more drawn to celebrity culture. When the researchers flipped their statistical model, higher authority-submission scores also predicted more celebrity admiration, a pattern consistent with either direction.
The list of control variables was also limited, missing related traits like narcissism and a preference for social hierarchies. Additionally, the survey asked participants to focus on their favorite celebrity but did not distinguish between typical entertainers and political figures. Because modern politics has become heavily focused on personalities, admiring a politician might function differently than admiring a musician or actor.
“This research was not about political celebrities, but celebrities generally,” Huynh said. “Some people may want to view these findings through the Trump presidencies, but only 5 out of 331 people in the study listed Donald Trump as their favorite celebrity. As such, these findings represent the associations between celebrity admiration and endorsement of different aspects of right-wing authoritarianism more broadly.”
Finally, the study only included participants from the United States. Cultural values, political structures, and the nature of fame vary widely around the world, so these connections might operate differently in other countries.
Huynh suggested another direction for future work. “An interesting next step would be to examine the associations between celebrity admiration and left-wing authoritarianism (e.g., hostility toward people in power, support for censoring opposing views, and rejection of traditional values and norms),” he said.
The study, “Idols and Ideologies: Examining Associations Between Celebrity Admiration and Right-Wing Authoritarianism,” was authored by Ho Phi Huynh, Joshua L. Williams, Marla F. Jorgensen, Amy Dicke-Bohmann, and Lynn McCutcheon.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/celebrity-admiration-is-linked-to-submission-to-authority-study-finds/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CelebrityAdmiration #AuthoritySubmission #RightWingAuthoritarianism #ConservatismTraits #Traditionalism #ParasocialRelationships #CelebrityInfluence #PsychologicalResearch #AdmirationAndPolitics #CelebrityCultureStudy
-
DATE: October 5, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS NEUROSCIENCETITLE: 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for brain research tool called optogenetics
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel are the joint recipients of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden announced on Monday.
Deisseroth, a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Hegemann, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel, a professor at the University of Würzburg, Germany, developed a method that uses light, combined with genetic modifications of neurons, to switch on or off individual cells in a living brain. This makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behavior in the brain, and is being studied as a treatment for disease.
Read the rest…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/neuroscience .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Optogenetics #NobelPrize2026 #BrainResearch #LightGatedChannels #NeuroscienceBreakthrough #KarlDeisseroth #PeterHegemann #GeorgNagel #MemoryAndBehavior #Neurotech
-
DATE: October 5, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS NEUROSCIENCETITLE: 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for brain research tool called optogenetics
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel are the joint recipients of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden announced on Monday.
Deisseroth, a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Hegemann, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel, a professor at the University of Würzburg, Germany, developed a method that uses light, combined with genetic modifications of neurons, to switch on or off individual cells in a living brain. This makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behavior in the brain, and is being studied as a treatment for disease.
Read the rest…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/neuroscience .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Optogenetics #NobelPrize2026 #BrainResearch #LightGatedChannels #NeuroscienceBreakthrough #KarlDeisseroth #PeterHegemann #GeorgNagel #MemoryAndBehavior #Neurotech
-
DATE: October 5, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS NEUROSCIENCETITLE: 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for brain research tool called optogenetics
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel are the joint recipients of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden announced on Monday.
Deisseroth, a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Hegemann, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel, a professor at the University of Würzburg, Germany, developed a method that uses light, combined with genetic modifications of neurons, to switch on or off individual cells in a living brain. This makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behavior in the brain, and is being studied as a treatment for disease.
Read the rest…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/neuroscience .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Optogenetics #NobelPrize2026 #BrainResearch #LightGatedChannels #NeuroscienceBreakthrough #KarlDeisseroth #PeterHegemann #GeorgNagel #MemoryAndBehavior #Neurotech
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early neglect may disrupt how the brain fine-tunes itself during adolescence
Children exposed to severe psychosocial deprivation early in life showed lasting differences in how their brain activity developed during adolescence, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These altered brain dynamics were associated with poorer performance on a task requiring attention and self-control.
Adolescence is a major period of brain development. During these years, young people generally become faster and more accurate at controlling their attention, managing distractions, and responding to changing demands. Brain networks also become more stable and efficient, partly through a process called synaptic pruning, in which weaker connections between brain cells are eliminated and stronger ones are reinforced.
Computer models suggest that pruning helps brain activity settle back to its typical pattern more quickly after being knocked off course, which may support more efficient thinking. The researchers wanted to know whether severe deprivation early in life could interrupt this process.
Psychosocial deprivation can occur when children grow up without consistent caregiving, stimulation, and social interaction. Institutional settings may provide food and shelter but still fail to offer the stable, responsive relationships that are important for healthy development.
Led by Marta Andujar of the National Institute of Mental Health, the team used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a long-running randomized controlled trial in Romania. When the project began, young children living in state-run institutions, all younger than about two and a half, were randomly assigned either to move into high-quality foster care or to continue receiving the usual institutional care.
The analysis included 163 participants. Fifty-two had been randomly placed in foster care, and 51 had been randomly assigned to continue in institutional care, although Romanian child protection authorities later moved many children in that group to other placements. A comparison group of 60 children who had never lived in an institution was recruited from the community. Participants were assessed in follow-ups that began at ages 12, 16, and 21, with average ages at those visits of about 12.7, 16.9, and 23.3 years.
Participants completed a Flanker task, which involves responding to a central arrow while ignoring surrounding arrows that point either in the same direction or in the opposite direction. The task measures the ability to focus attention and override an automatic response.
While participants completed the task, the researchers recorded the brain’s electrical activity using electroencephalography (EEG). They then used a mathematical model to measure how quickly moment-to-moment deviations in each person’s brain activity, the ways a single trial differed from that person’s typical response, faded back toward the typical pattern. A higher value indicated that these deviations lingered longer before settling back.
Across all groups, these values decreased with age, suggesting that brain activity normally becomes quicker to stabilize during adolescence. However, participants who had experienced institutional care showed consistently higher values than those who had never been institutionalized. The foster care group did not differ from the group assigned to continued institutional care, meaning this brain measure showed no clear benefit of foster care. That contrasts with earlier findings in the same children, which showed some recovery after foster care in other brain signals, though the new study used a different and more fine-grained measure.
Behavioral results told a similar story. Never-institutionalized participants were more accurate overall than both groups with institutional histories, which did not differ from each other. On a measure combining speed and accuracy, foster care appeared to help somewhat, but the authors describe this recovery as modest and limited.
Participants whose brain activity took longer to settle also tended to perform less efficiently on the task, based on the combined measure of speed and accuracy. This link was negligible at age 12 but grew stronger at 16 and 21. Statistical analyses suggested that the neural differences accounted for part of the performance gap between participants with and without institutional histories.
“These findings demonstrate that early deprivation leaves a lasting imprint on the developmental trajectory of neural dynamics, affecting the maturation of brain systems underlying cognitive control,” the authors concluded.
The study has some limitations. Although children were randomly assigned to foster care or institutional care, the never-institutionalized comparison group was not randomized, so differences between that group and the others could partly reflect factors other than deprivation. The sample was also relatively small, and children’s placements and later life experiences varied after the trial began.
In addition, the link to synaptic pruning is an interpretation rather than a direct measurement, since EEG cannot measure connections between brain cells. The authors note that this explanation still needs to be tested directly, for example in animal studies that combine brain recordings with anatomical data.
The study, “Early psychosocial deprivation alters the refinement of neural dynamics across adolescence,” was authored by Marta Andujar, Lucrezia Liuzzi, Daniel S. Pine, Charles A. Nelson III, Charles H. Zeanah, Nathan A. Fox, and Bruno B. Averbeck.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #adolescentbraindevelopment #neuroscience #earlydeprivation #psychosocialdeprivation #cognitivecontrol #attention #EEG #pruningsynapses # fostercare #braindevelopmentresearch
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early neglect may disrupt how the brain fine-tunes itself during adolescence
Children exposed to severe psychosocial deprivation early in life showed lasting differences in how their brain activity developed during adolescence, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These altered brain dynamics were associated with poorer performance on a task requiring attention and self-control.
Adolescence is a major period of brain development. During these years, young people generally become faster and more accurate at controlling their attention, managing distractions, and responding to changing demands. Brain networks also become more stable and efficient, partly through a process called synaptic pruning, in which weaker connections between brain cells are eliminated and stronger ones are reinforced.
Computer models suggest that pruning helps brain activity settle back to its typical pattern more quickly after being knocked off course, which may support more efficient thinking. The researchers wanted to know whether severe deprivation early in life could interrupt this process.
Psychosocial deprivation can occur when children grow up without consistent caregiving, stimulation, and social interaction. Institutional settings may provide food and shelter but still fail to offer the stable, responsive relationships that are important for healthy development.
Led by Marta Andujar of the National Institute of Mental Health, the team used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a long-running randomized controlled trial in Romania. When the project began, young children living in state-run institutions, all younger than about two and a half, were randomly assigned either to move into high-quality foster care or to continue receiving the usual institutional care.
The analysis included 163 participants. Fifty-two had been randomly placed in foster care, and 51 had been randomly assigned to continue in institutional care, although Romanian child protection authorities later moved many children in that group to other placements. A comparison group of 60 children who had never lived in an institution was recruited from the community. Participants were assessed in follow-ups that began at ages 12, 16, and 21, with average ages at those visits of about 12.7, 16.9, and 23.3 years.
Participants completed a Flanker task, which involves responding to a central arrow while ignoring surrounding arrows that point either in the same direction or in the opposite direction. The task measures the ability to focus attention and override an automatic response.
While participants completed the task, the researchers recorded the brain’s electrical activity using electroencephalography (EEG). They then used a mathematical model to measure how quickly moment-to-moment deviations in each person’s brain activity, the ways a single trial differed from that person’s typical response, faded back toward the typical pattern. A higher value indicated that these deviations lingered longer before settling back.
Across all groups, these values decreased with age, suggesting that brain activity normally becomes quicker to stabilize during adolescence. However, participants who had experienced institutional care showed consistently higher values than those who had never been institutionalized. The foster care group did not differ from the group assigned to continued institutional care, meaning this brain measure showed no clear benefit of foster care. That contrasts with earlier findings in the same children, which showed some recovery after foster care in other brain signals, though the new study used a different and more fine-grained measure.
Behavioral results told a similar story. Never-institutionalized participants were more accurate overall than both groups with institutional histories, which did not differ from each other. On a measure combining speed and accuracy, foster care appeared to help somewhat, but the authors describe this recovery as modest and limited.
Participants whose brain activity took longer to settle also tended to perform less efficiently on the task, based on the combined measure of speed and accuracy. This link was negligible at age 12 but grew stronger at 16 and 21. Statistical analyses suggested that the neural differences accounted for part of the performance gap between participants with and without institutional histories.
“These findings demonstrate that early deprivation leaves a lasting imprint on the developmental trajectory of neural dynamics, affecting the maturation of brain systems underlying cognitive control,” the authors concluded.
The study has some limitations. Although children were randomly assigned to foster care or institutional care, the never-institutionalized comparison group was not randomized, so differences between that group and the others could partly reflect factors other than deprivation. The sample was also relatively small, and children’s placements and later life experiences varied after the trial began.
In addition, the link to synaptic pruning is an interpretation rather than a direct measurement, since EEG cannot measure connections between brain cells. The authors note that this explanation still needs to be tested directly, for example in animal studies that combine brain recordings with anatomical data.
The study, “Early psychosocial deprivation alters the refinement of neural dynamics across adolescence,” was authored by Marta Andujar, Lucrezia Liuzzi, Daniel S. Pine, Charles A. Nelson III, Charles H. Zeanah, Nathan A. Fox, and Bruno B. Averbeck.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #adolescentbraindevelopment #neuroscience #earlydeprivation #psychosocialdeprivation #cognitivecontrol #attention #EEG #pruningsynapses # fostercare #braindevelopmentresearch
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Early neglect may disrupt how the brain fine-tunes itself during adolescence
Children exposed to severe psychosocial deprivation early in life showed lasting differences in how their brain activity developed during adolescence, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These altered brain dynamics were associated with poorer performance on a task requiring attention and self-control.
Adolescence is a major period of brain development. During these years, young people generally become faster and more accurate at controlling their attention, managing distractions, and responding to changing demands. Brain networks also become more stable and efficient, partly through a process called synaptic pruning, in which weaker connections between brain cells are eliminated and stronger ones are reinforced.
Computer models suggest that pruning helps brain activity settle back to its typical pattern more quickly after being knocked off course, which may support more efficient thinking. The researchers wanted to know whether severe deprivation early in life could interrupt this process.
Psychosocial deprivation can occur when children grow up without consistent caregiving, stimulation, and social interaction. Institutional settings may provide food and shelter but still fail to offer the stable, responsive relationships that are important for healthy development.
Led by Marta Andujar of the National Institute of Mental Health, the team used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a long-running randomized controlled trial in Romania. When the project began, young children living in state-run institutions, all younger than about two and a half, were randomly assigned either to move into high-quality foster care or to continue receiving the usual institutional care.
The analysis included 163 participants. Fifty-two had been randomly placed in foster care, and 51 had been randomly assigned to continue in institutional care, although Romanian child protection authorities later moved many children in that group to other placements. A comparison group of 60 children who had never lived in an institution was recruited from the community. Participants were assessed in follow-ups that began at ages 12, 16, and 21, with average ages at those visits of about 12.7, 16.9, and 23.3 years.
Participants completed a Flanker task, which involves responding to a central arrow while ignoring surrounding arrows that point either in the same direction or in the opposite direction. The task measures the ability to focus attention and override an automatic response.
While participants completed the task, the researchers recorded the brain’s electrical activity using electroencephalography (EEG). They then used a mathematical model to measure how quickly moment-to-moment deviations in each person’s brain activity, the ways a single trial differed from that person’s typical response, faded back toward the typical pattern. A higher value indicated that these deviations lingered longer before settling back.
Across all groups, these values decreased with age, suggesting that brain activity normally becomes quicker to stabilize during adolescence. However, participants who had experienced institutional care showed consistently higher values than those who had never been institutionalized. The foster care group did not differ from the group assigned to continued institutional care, meaning this brain measure showed no clear benefit of foster care. That contrasts with earlier findings in the same children, which showed some recovery after foster care in other brain signals, though the new study used a different and more fine-grained measure.
Behavioral results told a similar story. Never-institutionalized participants were more accurate overall than both groups with institutional histories, which did not differ from each other. On a measure combining speed and accuracy, foster care appeared to help somewhat, but the authors describe this recovery as modest and limited.
Participants whose brain activity took longer to settle also tended to perform less efficiently on the task, based on the combined measure of speed and accuracy. This link was negligible at age 12 but grew stronger at 16 and 21. Statistical analyses suggested that the neural differences accounted for part of the performance gap between participants with and without institutional histories.
“These findings demonstrate that early deprivation leaves a lasting imprint on the developmental trajectory of neural dynamics, affecting the maturation of brain systems underlying cognitive control,” the authors concluded.
The study has some limitations. Although children were randomly assigned to foster care or institutional care, the never-institutionalized comparison group was not randomized, so differences between that group and the others could partly reflect factors other than deprivation. The sample was also relatively small, and children’s placements and later life experiences varied after the trial began.
In addition, the link to synaptic pruning is an interpretation rather than a direct measurement, since EEG cannot measure connections between brain cells. The authors note that this explanation still needs to be tested directly, for example in animal studies that combine brain recordings with anatomical data.
The study, “Early psychosocial deprivation alters the refinement of neural dynamics across adolescence,” was authored by Marta Andujar, Lucrezia Liuzzi, Daniel S. Pine, Charles A. Nelson III, Charles H. Zeanah, Nathan A. Fox, and Bruno B. Averbeck.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #adolescentbraindevelopment #neuroscience #earlydeprivation #psychosocialdeprivation #cognitivecontrol #attention #EEG #pruningsynapses # fostercare #braindevelopmentresearch
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes
During the 2024 United States presidential election, political actors and anonymous online users regularly spread false information as an open campaign strategy. A recent study identifies who promoted these hoaxes and who was targeted, revealing that political figures and regular citizens approach the creation of fake content in distinct ways. The research was published in American Behavioral Scientist.
False narratives in politics can distort public perception and erode trust in democratic systems. The spread of fabricated claims often spikes during election seasons, when voters are paying close attention to public discourse.
In the past decade, digital platforms have made it easier for people to circulate misleading material. Disinformation is characterized by the intentional spread of false content to gain a strategic advantage or cause harm.
Much of the academic research on this topic has focused on the content of fake news stories or how fast they travel across the internet. Fewer studies have examined the specific people generating and fielding these falsehoods.
Understanding the individuals who launch unverified claims and the people they target helps build a better picture of modern political communication. Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés, communication researchers at the Universitat Jaume I in Spain, led the recent project. They wanted to categorize the spreaders of political hoaxes, known as issuers, and the subjects of those hoaxes, known as recipients.
The researchers analyzed a sample of 374 false messages related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They collected these items from PolitiFact, a prominent journalistic organization that verifies political claims. The analyzed period spanned from January 2024 through the presidential inauguration in January 2025.
For each verified hoax, the research team systematically categorized multiple details. They recorded the channel where the message appeared, the specific topic, and the exact type of falsehood. They also identified the political affiliations and public roles of both the people spreading the claims and the people the claims were about.
In more than 90 percent of the cases, the team could readily identify the person or group issuing the false statement. Spreading falsehoods appears to be a normalized, public tactic rather than a secretive operation. People generating this content did not typically try to hide their identities.
The researchers suggest this reflects a political environment where actors do not fear being penalized by voters for sharing unverified claims. Anonymous online users were the most common source, responsible for nearly 40 percent of the false messages. Political candidates and celebrities or internet influencers tied for the second most common sources.
Each of these latter groups accounted for roughly 16 percent of the items. The data revealed an association between the type of person sharing the claim and the medium they used to share it. Anonymous users and influencers relied almost exclusively on social media platforms to circulate their messages.
Political candidates and public officials took a different approach. They distributed unverified claims across a wider variety of channels, including campaign rallies, television interviews, and press releases. This strategy suggests an effort to reach voters across many different formats, rather than relying solely on internet algorithms.
The subject matter of the hoaxes also varied depending on who was talking. Politicians tended to center their false statements around public policies, such as the economy, immigration, and crime.
Conversely, anonymous users and influencers focused heavily on the mechanics of the campaign itself. Their posts frequently targeted the voting process, polling numbers, or the private lives of political figures.
The study found differences in the mechanics of the deception. Political actors often used misleading content, which involves twisting real statistics or misinterpreting data to fit a specific narrative.
Anonymous users and influencers more frequently relied on false context. This occurs when real images, videos, or quotes are shared alongside fabricated background details to change their original meaning.
When looking at political affiliations, actors aligned with the Republican party issued about 73 percent of the hoaxes. Democratic actors were responsible for roughly 22 percent of the unverified claims in the sample.
Most of this fake content was designed to attack political rivals. Candidates were the primary targets, appearing as the subject in 38 percent of the analyzed items. Democratic figures were on the receiving end of about 57 percent of the falsehoods, while Republicans were targeted by about 22 percent.
The researchers also identified a growing trend of constructive disinformation. While false claims are traditionally used as attacks, Republican actors directed nearly 20 percent of their false claims at their own party or candidate in a positive manner. These messages were intended to inflate accomplishments or bolster public support, rather than tear down an opponent.
Democratic actors used this same supportive tactic, though at a lower rate of roughly 7 percent. This highlights an evolution in political deception. It shows that fake news is not strictly used as an offensive weapon against adversaries, but can also act as an artificial booster to make a candidate appear more attractive to the electorate.
The findings rely on data collected by a single fact-checking organization. Because fact-checkers cannot review every questionable statement made during an election, the sample likely does not capture all the unverified content that circulated online. The study is based on a specific subset of verified falsehoods rather than the entirety of the internet’s political discourse.
The study focuses entirely on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The communication tactics observed in this specific political environment might not translate to other countries or local political races. Future studies will need to examine elections in different global regions to see if these patterns hold steady across different political systems.
The study, “Actors of Disinformation: Issuers and Recipients of Hoaxes in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election,” was authored by Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Disinformation #ElectionHoaxes #2024Election #PoliticalDisinformation #FactCheck #Republican #PoliticalCommunication #Misinformation #VoterTrust #PublicDiscourse
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes
During the 2024 United States presidential election, political actors and anonymous online users regularly spread false information as an open campaign strategy. A recent study identifies who promoted these hoaxes and who was targeted, revealing that political figures and regular citizens approach the creation of fake content in distinct ways. The research was published in American Behavioral Scientist.
False narratives in politics can distort public perception and erode trust in democratic systems. The spread of fabricated claims often spikes during election seasons, when voters are paying close attention to public discourse.
In the past decade, digital platforms have made it easier for people to circulate misleading material. Disinformation is characterized by the intentional spread of false content to gain a strategic advantage or cause harm.
Much of the academic research on this topic has focused on the content of fake news stories or how fast they travel across the internet. Fewer studies have examined the specific people generating and fielding these falsehoods.
Understanding the individuals who launch unverified claims and the people they target helps build a better picture of modern political communication. Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés, communication researchers at the Universitat Jaume I in Spain, led the recent project. They wanted to categorize the spreaders of political hoaxes, known as issuers, and the subjects of those hoaxes, known as recipients.
The researchers analyzed a sample of 374 false messages related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They collected these items from PolitiFact, a prominent journalistic organization that verifies political claims. The analyzed period spanned from January 2024 through the presidential inauguration in January 2025.
For each verified hoax, the research team systematically categorized multiple details. They recorded the channel where the message appeared, the specific topic, and the exact type of falsehood. They also identified the political affiliations and public roles of both the people spreading the claims and the people the claims were about.
In more than 90 percent of the cases, the team could readily identify the person or group issuing the false statement. Spreading falsehoods appears to be a normalized, public tactic rather than a secretive operation. People generating this content did not typically try to hide their identities.
The researchers suggest this reflects a political environment where actors do not fear being penalized by voters for sharing unverified claims. Anonymous online users were the most common source, responsible for nearly 40 percent of the false messages. Political candidates and celebrities or internet influencers tied for the second most common sources.
Each of these latter groups accounted for roughly 16 percent of the items. The data revealed an association between the type of person sharing the claim and the medium they used to share it. Anonymous users and influencers relied almost exclusively on social media platforms to circulate their messages.
Political candidates and public officials took a different approach. They distributed unverified claims across a wider variety of channels, including campaign rallies, television interviews, and press releases. This strategy suggests an effort to reach voters across many different formats, rather than relying solely on internet algorithms.
The subject matter of the hoaxes also varied depending on who was talking. Politicians tended to center their false statements around public policies, such as the economy, immigration, and crime.
Conversely, anonymous users and influencers focused heavily on the mechanics of the campaign itself. Their posts frequently targeted the voting process, polling numbers, or the private lives of political figures.
The study found differences in the mechanics of the deception. Political actors often used misleading content, which involves twisting real statistics or misinterpreting data to fit a specific narrative.
Anonymous users and influencers more frequently relied on false context. This occurs when real images, videos, or quotes are shared alongside fabricated background details to change their original meaning.
When looking at political affiliations, actors aligned with the Republican party issued about 73 percent of the hoaxes. Democratic actors were responsible for roughly 22 percent of the unverified claims in the sample.
Most of this fake content was designed to attack political rivals. Candidates were the primary targets, appearing as the subject in 38 percent of the analyzed items. Democratic figures were on the receiving end of about 57 percent of the falsehoods, while Republicans were targeted by about 22 percent.
The researchers also identified a growing trend of constructive disinformation. While false claims are traditionally used as attacks, Republican actors directed nearly 20 percent of their false claims at their own party or candidate in a positive manner. These messages were intended to inflate accomplishments or bolster public support, rather than tear down an opponent.
Democratic actors used this same supportive tactic, though at a lower rate of roughly 7 percent. This highlights an evolution in political deception. It shows that fake news is not strictly used as an offensive weapon against adversaries, but can also act as an artificial booster to make a candidate appear more attractive to the electorate.
The findings rely on data collected by a single fact-checking organization. Because fact-checkers cannot review every questionable statement made during an election, the sample likely does not capture all the unverified content that circulated online. The study is based on a specific subset of verified falsehoods rather than the entirety of the internet’s political discourse.
The study focuses entirely on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The communication tactics observed in this specific political environment might not translate to other countries or local political races. Future studies will need to examine elections in different global regions to see if these patterns hold steady across different political systems.
The study, “Actors of Disinformation: Issuers and Recipients of Hoaxes in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election,” was authored by Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Disinformation #ElectionHoaxes #2024Election #PoliticalDisinformation #FactCheck #Republican #PoliticalCommunication #Misinformation #VoterTrust #PublicDiscourse
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes
During the 2024 United States presidential election, political actors and anonymous online users regularly spread false information as an open campaign strategy. A recent study identifies who promoted these hoaxes and who was targeted, revealing that political figures and regular citizens approach the creation of fake content in distinct ways. The research was published in American Behavioral Scientist.
False narratives in politics can distort public perception and erode trust in democratic systems. The spread of fabricated claims often spikes during election seasons, when voters are paying close attention to public discourse.
In the past decade, digital platforms have made it easier for people to circulate misleading material. Disinformation is characterized by the intentional spread of false content to gain a strategic advantage or cause harm.
Much of the academic research on this topic has focused on the content of fake news stories or how fast they travel across the internet. Fewer studies have examined the specific people generating and fielding these falsehoods.
Understanding the individuals who launch unverified claims and the people they target helps build a better picture of modern political communication. Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés, communication researchers at the Universitat Jaume I in Spain, led the recent project. They wanted to categorize the spreaders of political hoaxes, known as issuers, and the subjects of those hoaxes, known as recipients.
The researchers analyzed a sample of 374 false messages related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They collected these items from PolitiFact, a prominent journalistic organization that verifies political claims. The analyzed period spanned from January 2024 through the presidential inauguration in January 2025.
For each verified hoax, the research team systematically categorized multiple details. They recorded the channel where the message appeared, the specific topic, and the exact type of falsehood. They also identified the political affiliations and public roles of both the people spreading the claims and the people the claims were about.
In more than 90 percent of the cases, the team could readily identify the person or group issuing the false statement. Spreading falsehoods appears to be a normalized, public tactic rather than a secretive operation. People generating this content did not typically try to hide their identities.
The researchers suggest this reflects a political environment where actors do not fear being penalized by voters for sharing unverified claims. Anonymous online users were the most common source, responsible for nearly 40 percent of the false messages. Political candidates and celebrities or internet influencers tied for the second most common sources.
Each of these latter groups accounted for roughly 16 percent of the items. The data revealed an association between the type of person sharing the claim and the medium they used to share it. Anonymous users and influencers relied almost exclusively on social media platforms to circulate their messages.
Political candidates and public officials took a different approach. They distributed unverified claims across a wider variety of channels, including campaign rallies, television interviews, and press releases. This strategy suggests an effort to reach voters across many different formats, rather than relying solely on internet algorithms.
The subject matter of the hoaxes also varied depending on who was talking. Politicians tended to center their false statements around public policies, such as the economy, immigration, and crime.
Conversely, anonymous users and influencers focused heavily on the mechanics of the campaign itself. Their posts frequently targeted the voting process, polling numbers, or the private lives of political figures.
The study found differences in the mechanics of the deception. Political actors often used misleading content, which involves twisting real statistics or misinterpreting data to fit a specific narrative.
Anonymous users and influencers more frequently relied on false context. This occurs when real images, videos, or quotes are shared alongside fabricated background details to change their original meaning.
When looking at political affiliations, actors aligned with the Republican party issued about 73 percent of the hoaxes. Democratic actors were responsible for roughly 22 percent of the unverified claims in the sample.
Most of this fake content was designed to attack political rivals. Candidates were the primary targets, appearing as the subject in 38 percent of the analyzed items. Democratic figures were on the receiving end of about 57 percent of the falsehoods, while Republicans were targeted by about 22 percent.
The researchers also identified a growing trend of constructive disinformation. While false claims are traditionally used as attacks, Republican actors directed nearly 20 percent of their false claims at their own party or candidate in a positive manner. These messages were intended to inflate accomplishments or bolster public support, rather than tear down an opponent.
Democratic actors used this same supportive tactic, though at a lower rate of roughly 7 percent. This highlights an evolution in political deception. It shows that fake news is not strictly used as an offensive weapon against adversaries, but can also act as an artificial booster to make a candidate appear more attractive to the electorate.
The findings rely on data collected by a single fact-checking organization. Because fact-checkers cannot review every questionable statement made during an election, the sample likely does not capture all the unverified content that circulated online. The study is based on a specific subset of verified falsehoods rather than the entirety of the internet’s political discourse.
The study focuses entirely on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The communication tactics observed in this specific political environment might not translate to other countries or local political races. Future studies will need to examine elections in different global regions to see if these patterns hold steady across different political systems.
The study, “Actors of Disinformation: Issuers and Recipients of Hoaxes in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election,” was authored by Alba Córdoba-Cabús and Andreu Casero-Ripollés.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Disinformation #ElectionHoaxes #2024Election #PoliticalDisinformation #FactCheck #Republican #PoliticalCommunication #Misinformation #VoterTrust #PublicDiscourse
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic pornography use is linked to craving, shame, depression, and loneliness, meta-analysis finds
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 111 samples found that problematic pornography use tends to be higher among people who report stronger cravings, more sexual shame, depression, loneliness, emotion dysregulation, and moral disapproval of pornography. The strength of these links varied widely across studies and may partly depend on how problematic use was measured. The paper was published in Addictive Behaviors Reports.
In modern times, pornography is widely accessible through the internet. Many people worldwide use it without problems in their daily lives. However, for some individuals, pornography use becomes difficult to control and begins to interfere with relationships, work, sexual functioning, or emotional well-being. This pattern is often called problematic pornography use.
Problematic pornography use is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Rather, it is an umbrella term for a range of self-reported difficulties, such as feeling unable to control one’s use, being preoccupied with pornography, or feeling distressed about it. It is less about how often pornography is viewed than about whether use feels compulsive or causes significant distress or impairment.
Researchers have examined a range of factors linked to problematic pornography use. These include impulsivity, difficulties with emotion regulation, loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, and a tendency to use pornography as a way of coping with negative emotions. Sexual factors, such as high sexual desire or dissatisfaction with one’s sex life, also seem to play a role for some people.
In addition, moral or religious conflict about pornography can intensify feelings of guilt and distress, sometimes making people perceive their use as more problematic than its behavioral pattern alone would suggest. Easy availability, privacy, novelty, and the virtually unlimited variety of online sexual content may further reinforce repeated use in susceptible individuals.
These different perspectives are reflected in the questionnaires researchers use. Some measures focus mainly on loss of control, such as unsuccessful attempts to cut back, compulsive use, or continued use despite negative consequences. These are known as dysregulation-oriented measures. Others focus more on the emotional distress associated with pornography use, such as guilt, shame, worry, or moral conflict, and are known as distress-oriented measures.
Study author Sonay Sheikhi and colleagues at Kharazmi University in Tehran, Iran, conducted a systematic review of existing studies to identify psychological characteristics associated with problematic pornography use. They also conducted a meta-analysis, a statistical technique that combines results across studies, to estimate how strong these associations are. In addition, they examined whether the strength of these associations depended on which kind of measure a study had used.
The researchers searched the PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, and supplemented the results with searches of Google Scholar, Iranian databases (SID, Magiran, and Noormags), and gray literature sources such as the Open Access Theses and Dissertations database. They included studies published in English or Persian between 2012 and 2025.
In the search, they used keywords related to problematic pornography use (e.g., problematic pornography use, pornography addiction, compulsive pornography use, problematic online pornography use, cyber pornography) combined with terms referring to psychological correlates (e.g., impulsivity, emotion regulation, attachment, craving, moral incongruence, depression, anxiety, and personality).
The search identified over 38,000 unique records, from which the authors selected 925 full-text documents for review. Of these, 97 articles met the inclusion criteria. Together, they described 111 independent samples totaling 121,728 participants. The average participant age was about 27.5 years, and around 46% of participants were women.
The studies were published between 2012 and 2025, with about 85% of participants coming from studies published between 2017 and 2025. Nearly all of the data were collected online.
The psychological characteristics most strongly associated with problematic pornography use were craving (a strong desire to view pornography) and sexual shame, each with an average correlation of 0.54. Correlations range from −1 to 1, with values near zero indicating no relationship. The weakest associations were with the personality trait of extraversion and with indicators of family environment, both close to zero.
Problematic pornography use was also associated with depression (0.32), emotion dysregulation (0.29), moral disapproval, meaning the belief that pornography is morally wrong (0.27), and loneliness (0.23). The craving and sexual shame estimates, however, were each based on only four or five studies, compared with 12 to 21 studies for these other characteristics.
Results also varied widely from study to study. For most characteristics, the range in which future studies’ results would be expected to fall was wide and often included values near zero, meaning a given study could find a much weaker association or none at all. The authors therefore describe the pooled results as average tendencies rather than effects that apply equally across all populations.
The authors also examined whether the type of measure mattered. Studies using dysregulation-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with impulsivity and craving, whereas studies using distress-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with shame and moral disapproval. However, the authors describe these patterns as descriptive, and formal statistical tests found few reliable differences between the two kinds of measures.
In one case, the subgroup results ran against this pattern: religiousness was more strongly associated with problematic use in studies using dysregulation-oriented measures than in those using distress-oriented ones. The authors conclude that measurement differences may account for some, but not all, of the variation across studies.
“Across the available evidence, PPU [problematic pornography use] was associated with a broad range of psychological variables spanning behavioral self-regulation, emotional functioning, interpersonal processes, and evaluative distress. However, the magnitude of these associations varied considerably across psychological domains and across studies, indicating that PPU cannot be adequately characterized as a single, homogeneous construct,” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on the psychological characteristics linked to problematic pornography use. However, the authors note that the studies they analyzed were predominantly cross-sectional, meaning they measured everything at a single point in time, which rules out conclusions about cause and effect or about which came first. Additionally, most studies relied on self-report questionnaires for both pornography use and psychological characteristics, which the authors say may have inflated some of the observed associations.
The authors also note that their two categories of measures are rough groupings, since many questionnaires capture both loss of control and distress. The differences between them should not be read as evidence of distinct types of problematic pornography use.
The paper, “Psychological correlates of problematic pornography use: A systematic review and meta-analysis of measurement and conceptualization differences,” was authored by Sonay Sheikhi, Shahram Mohammadkhani, and Mehdi Akbari.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ProblematicPornographyUse #PornographyAddiction #Craving #SexualShame #Depression #Loneliness #EmotionDysregulation #MoralDisapproval #MentalHealth #MetaAnalysis
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic pornography use is linked to craving, shame, depression, and loneliness, meta-analysis finds
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 111 samples found that problematic pornography use tends to be higher among people who report stronger cravings, more sexual shame, depression, loneliness, emotion dysregulation, and moral disapproval of pornography. The strength of these links varied widely across studies and may partly depend on how problematic use was measured. The paper was published in Addictive Behaviors Reports.
In modern times, pornography is widely accessible through the internet. Many people worldwide use it without problems in their daily lives. However, for some individuals, pornography use becomes difficult to control and begins to interfere with relationships, work, sexual functioning, or emotional well-being. This pattern is often called problematic pornography use.
Problematic pornography use is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Rather, it is an umbrella term for a range of self-reported difficulties, such as feeling unable to control one’s use, being preoccupied with pornography, or feeling distressed about it. It is less about how often pornography is viewed than about whether use feels compulsive or causes significant distress or impairment.
Researchers have examined a range of factors linked to problematic pornography use. These include impulsivity, difficulties with emotion regulation, loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, and a tendency to use pornography as a way of coping with negative emotions. Sexual factors, such as high sexual desire or dissatisfaction with one’s sex life, also seem to play a role for some people.
In addition, moral or religious conflict about pornography can intensify feelings of guilt and distress, sometimes making people perceive their use as more problematic than its behavioral pattern alone would suggest. Easy availability, privacy, novelty, and the virtually unlimited variety of online sexual content may further reinforce repeated use in susceptible individuals.
These different perspectives are reflected in the questionnaires researchers use. Some measures focus mainly on loss of control, such as unsuccessful attempts to cut back, compulsive use, or continued use despite negative consequences. These are known as dysregulation-oriented measures. Others focus more on the emotional distress associated with pornography use, such as guilt, shame, worry, or moral conflict, and are known as distress-oriented measures.
Study author Sonay Sheikhi and colleagues at Kharazmi University in Tehran, Iran, conducted a systematic review of existing studies to identify psychological characteristics associated with problematic pornography use. They also conducted a meta-analysis, a statistical technique that combines results across studies, to estimate how strong these associations are. In addition, they examined whether the strength of these associations depended on which kind of measure a study had used.
The researchers searched the PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, and supplemented the results with searches of Google Scholar, Iranian databases (SID, Magiran, and Noormags), and gray literature sources such as the Open Access Theses and Dissertations database. They included studies published in English or Persian between 2012 and 2025.
In the search, they used keywords related to problematic pornography use (e.g., problematic pornography use, pornography addiction, compulsive pornography use, problematic online pornography use, cyber pornography) combined with terms referring to psychological correlates (e.g., impulsivity, emotion regulation, attachment, craving, moral incongruence, depression, anxiety, and personality).
The search identified over 38,000 unique records, from which the authors selected 925 full-text documents for review. Of these, 97 articles met the inclusion criteria. Together, they described 111 independent samples totaling 121,728 participants. The average participant age was about 27.5 years, and around 46% of participants were women.
The studies were published between 2012 and 2025, with about 85% of participants coming from studies published between 2017 and 2025. Nearly all of the data were collected online.
The psychological characteristics most strongly associated with problematic pornography use were craving (a strong desire to view pornography) and sexual shame, each with an average correlation of 0.54. Correlations range from −1 to 1, with values near zero indicating no relationship. The weakest associations were with the personality trait of extraversion and with indicators of family environment, both close to zero.
Problematic pornography use was also associated with depression (0.32), emotion dysregulation (0.29), moral disapproval, meaning the belief that pornography is morally wrong (0.27), and loneliness (0.23). The craving and sexual shame estimates, however, were each based on only four or five studies, compared with 12 to 21 studies for these other characteristics.
Results also varied widely from study to study. For most characteristics, the range in which future studies’ results would be expected to fall was wide and often included values near zero, meaning a given study could find a much weaker association or none at all. The authors therefore describe the pooled results as average tendencies rather than effects that apply equally across all populations.
The authors also examined whether the type of measure mattered. Studies using dysregulation-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with impulsivity and craving, whereas studies using distress-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with shame and moral disapproval. However, the authors describe these patterns as descriptive, and formal statistical tests found few reliable differences between the two kinds of measures.
In one case, the subgroup results ran against this pattern: religiousness was more strongly associated with problematic use in studies using dysregulation-oriented measures than in those using distress-oriented ones. The authors conclude that measurement differences may account for some, but not all, of the variation across studies.
“Across the available evidence, PPU [problematic pornography use] was associated with a broad range of psychological variables spanning behavioral self-regulation, emotional functioning, interpersonal processes, and evaluative distress. However, the magnitude of these associations varied considerably across psychological domains and across studies, indicating that PPU cannot be adequately characterized as a single, homogeneous construct,” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on the psychological characteristics linked to problematic pornography use. However, the authors note that the studies they analyzed were predominantly cross-sectional, meaning they measured everything at a single point in time, which rules out conclusions about cause and effect or about which came first. Additionally, most studies relied on self-report questionnaires for both pornography use and psychological characteristics, which the authors say may have inflated some of the observed associations.
The authors also note that their two categories of measures are rough groupings, since many questionnaires capture both loss of control and distress. The differences between them should not be read as evidence of distinct types of problematic pornography use.
The paper, “Psychological correlates of problematic pornography use: A systematic review and meta-analysis of measurement and conceptualization differences,” was authored by Sonay Sheikhi, Shahram Mohammadkhani, and Mehdi Akbari.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ProblematicPornographyUse #PornographyAddiction #Craving #SexualShame #Depression #Loneliness #EmotionDysregulation #MoralDisapproval #MentalHealth #MetaAnalysis
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Problematic pornography use is linked to craving, shame, depression, and loneliness, meta-analysis finds
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 111 samples found that problematic pornography use tends to be higher among people who report stronger cravings, more sexual shame, depression, loneliness, emotion dysregulation, and moral disapproval of pornography. The strength of these links varied widely across studies and may partly depend on how problematic use was measured. The paper was published in Addictive Behaviors Reports.
In modern times, pornography is widely accessible through the internet. Many people worldwide use it without problems in their daily lives. However, for some individuals, pornography use becomes difficult to control and begins to interfere with relationships, work, sexual functioning, or emotional well-being. This pattern is often called problematic pornography use.
Problematic pornography use is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Rather, it is an umbrella term for a range of self-reported difficulties, such as feeling unable to control one’s use, being preoccupied with pornography, or feeling distressed about it. It is less about how often pornography is viewed than about whether use feels compulsive or causes significant distress or impairment.
Researchers have examined a range of factors linked to problematic pornography use. These include impulsivity, difficulties with emotion regulation, loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, and a tendency to use pornography as a way of coping with negative emotions. Sexual factors, such as high sexual desire or dissatisfaction with one’s sex life, also seem to play a role for some people.
In addition, moral or religious conflict about pornography can intensify feelings of guilt and distress, sometimes making people perceive their use as more problematic than its behavioral pattern alone would suggest. Easy availability, privacy, novelty, and the virtually unlimited variety of online sexual content may further reinforce repeated use in susceptible individuals.
These different perspectives are reflected in the questionnaires researchers use. Some measures focus mainly on loss of control, such as unsuccessful attempts to cut back, compulsive use, or continued use despite negative consequences. These are known as dysregulation-oriented measures. Others focus more on the emotional distress associated with pornography use, such as guilt, shame, worry, or moral conflict, and are known as distress-oriented measures.
Study author Sonay Sheikhi and colleagues at Kharazmi University in Tehran, Iran, conducted a systematic review of existing studies to identify psychological characteristics associated with problematic pornography use. They also conducted a meta-analysis, a statistical technique that combines results across studies, to estimate how strong these associations are. In addition, they examined whether the strength of these associations depended on which kind of measure a study had used.
The researchers searched the PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, and supplemented the results with searches of Google Scholar, Iranian databases (SID, Magiran, and Noormags), and gray literature sources such as the Open Access Theses and Dissertations database. They included studies published in English or Persian between 2012 and 2025.
In the search, they used keywords related to problematic pornography use (e.g., problematic pornography use, pornography addiction, compulsive pornography use, problematic online pornography use, cyber pornography) combined with terms referring to psychological correlates (e.g., impulsivity, emotion regulation, attachment, craving, moral incongruence, depression, anxiety, and personality).
The search identified over 38,000 unique records, from which the authors selected 925 full-text documents for review. Of these, 97 articles met the inclusion criteria. Together, they described 111 independent samples totaling 121,728 participants. The average participant age was about 27.5 years, and around 46% of participants were women.
The studies were published between 2012 and 2025, with about 85% of participants coming from studies published between 2017 and 2025. Nearly all of the data were collected online.
The psychological characteristics most strongly associated with problematic pornography use were craving (a strong desire to view pornography) and sexual shame, each with an average correlation of 0.54. Correlations range from −1 to 1, with values near zero indicating no relationship. The weakest associations were with the personality trait of extraversion and with indicators of family environment, both close to zero.
Problematic pornography use was also associated with depression (0.32), emotion dysregulation (0.29), moral disapproval, meaning the belief that pornography is morally wrong (0.27), and loneliness (0.23). The craving and sexual shame estimates, however, were each based on only four or five studies, compared with 12 to 21 studies for these other characteristics.
Results also varied widely from study to study. For most characteristics, the range in which future studies’ results would be expected to fall was wide and often included values near zero, meaning a given study could find a much weaker association or none at all. The authors therefore describe the pooled results as average tendencies rather than effects that apply equally across all populations.
The authors also examined whether the type of measure mattered. Studies using dysregulation-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with impulsivity and craving, whereas studies using distress-oriented measures tended to show stronger associations with shame and moral disapproval. However, the authors describe these patterns as descriptive, and formal statistical tests found few reliable differences between the two kinds of measures.
In one case, the subgroup results ran against this pattern: religiousness was more strongly associated with problematic use in studies using dysregulation-oriented measures than in those using distress-oriented ones. The authors conclude that measurement differences may account for some, but not all, of the variation across studies.
“Across the available evidence, PPU [problematic pornography use] was associated with a broad range of psychological variables spanning behavioral self-regulation, emotional functioning, interpersonal processes, and evaluative distress. However, the magnitude of these associations varied considerably across psychological domains and across studies, indicating that PPU cannot be adequately characterized as a single, homogeneous construct,” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on the psychological characteristics linked to problematic pornography use. However, the authors note that the studies they analyzed were predominantly cross-sectional, meaning they measured everything at a single point in time, which rules out conclusions about cause and effect or about which came first. Additionally, most studies relied on self-report questionnaires for both pornography use and psychological characteristics, which the authors say may have inflated some of the observed associations.
The authors also note that their two categories of measures are rough groupings, since many questionnaires capture both loss of control and distress. The differences between them should not be read as evidence of distinct types of problematic pornography use.
The paper, “Psychological correlates of problematic pornography use: A systematic review and meta-analysis of measurement and conceptualization differences,” was authored by Sonay Sheikhi, Shahram Mohammadkhani, and Mehdi Akbari.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ProblematicPornographyUse #PornographyAddiction #Craving #SexualShame #Depression #Loneliness #EmotionDysregulation #MoralDisapproval #MentalHealth #MetaAnalysis
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Women and underrepresented minorities have higher tenure-track placement rates in the political science job market
Getting a tenure-track faculty position is often the primary goal for doctoral students, but the odds of landing one are notoriously low. A recent analysis of the political science job market suggests that while the prestige of a candidate’s university is linked to the type of academic institution they end up at, it does not actually predict whether they will secure a professorship. The research, published in PS: Political Science & Politics, indicates that having a strong publication record, studying a high-demand field, and being a female or an underrepresented minority candidate are stronger predictors of finding a tenure-track academic job.
A tenure-track professorship is a university teaching and research position that can eventually lead to a permanent, lifelong appointment. In many academic fields, the competition for these roles is intense, with far more new graduates than available openings.
Past research analyzing this system has pointed to a rigid prestige hierarchy. For instance, a 2022 study of faculty hiring across the United States found that a small minority of elite universities supply the vast majority of professors. Similarly, a 2025 analysis of political science departments indicated that the top 20 percent of programs produced 75 percent of tenure-track faculty at U.S. doctoral departments, while the bottom half produced less than 5 percent.
These past studies tend to imply that graduating from a top-tier university is the only reliable way to get a job in academia. But that approach relies on looking backward at the people who already secured positions at major research universities. This method can introduce bias.
First, it ignores the fact that elite universities often have much larger graduate programs, meaning they naturally produce more job applicants. Second, it overlooks professorships at the thousands of colleges and universities that only offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees. About 17,000 people teach political science in the United States, but only about 3,000 work at doctoral departments, meaning studies that look only at those departments miss more than 80 percent of faculty jobs.
“Existing work has claimed that where one earns the PhD is critical to whether they find a professor job, and some even suggested closing more than half of PhD programs,” Scott W. Desposato, the Simón Bolívar Chair of Latin American Studies and a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told PsyPost.
“But this body of work assesses placements by looking at professors at PhD-granting programs. Thus, they don’t control for the size of the PhD program (bigger programs should have more placements, even if their training is the same as smaller programs) and they ignore the many professor jobs at small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and other universities that don’t have phD programs.”
“As I write in the paper, it’s like studying fitness by seeing which country won the most medals in the Olympics and concluding that the best way to be healthy is to move to that country,” Desposato continued. “That would be a crazy way to study fitness, and it’s the wrong way to study the academic labor market.”
“Faculty are full of advice about what students should do to succeed on the job market,” he said. “But their recommendations are based on anecdotal observations. We try to be systematic and scientific in our research so why wouldn’t we want some real evidence from which to make recommendations to our PhD students?”
To get a more accurate picture of how hiring works, Desposato identified a group of active job seekers and checked on their outcomes a year later. The researcher collected data on 413 political science candidates who were actively on the academic job market during the 2023 to 2024 hiring cycle. The candidates were identified from the “Job Market Candidate” pages on various university websites in the fall of 2023. The sample only included candidates who were either finalizing their dissertations or had recently graduated, excluding anyone who already held a tenure-track job or had graduated before 2023.
Using the candidates’ websites and resumes, the researcher recorded a variety of details. These included the rank of their university, their specific field of study, their teaching experience, any awards they had won, and their publication record. To assess publications, the study tracked both the number of articles and the prestige of the journals in which they were published.
The researcher also coded the candidates’ perceived gender and underrepresented minority (URM) status based on names, pronouns, identity-specific awards, personal statements, and appearance. Candidates perceived as Black, Latino, or Native American were classified as URM, a measure meant to approximate how hiring committees might see them.
In the fall of 2024, the researcher checked back to see what types of jobs the candidates had secured. By that time, about 26 percent of the candidates had accepted tenure-track professorships. Surprisingly, the prestige of the university where a candidate earned their degree had virtually no bearing on whether they secured one of these positions.
Placement rates showed no consistent pattern by rank: the top 10 departments placed 25 percent of their candidates, while departments ranked 71st or lower placed 35 percent. The results suggest that graduating from an elite institution does not guarantee a job, nor does graduating from a lower-ranked program automatically disqualify a candidate. However, lower-ranked programs were thinly represented in the data, as only 13 of the 60 lower-ranked departments listed candidates online. The lowest-ranked group’s 35 percent placement rate largely reflected the University of Missouri, which placed nine of its 16 candidates; the rest of that group placed just five of 24 candidates.
While institutional rank did not predict if a candidate got a job, it did predict what kind of job they got. Candidates from top-ranked programs were much more likely to secure postdoctoral fellowships, which are temporary research positions that often serve as stepping stones to tenure-track jobs. When elite candidates did land tenure-track roles, they mostly went to universities that also grant doctoral degrees. By contrast, candidates from lower-ranked programs were more likely to find tenure-track positions at smaller colleges and universities that do not have doctoral programs, or they took temporary teaching positions.
More than 70 percent of candidates held some kind of academic job a year later. Among candidates who were already postdoctoral fellows when the study began, 30 percent landed tenure-track jobs, compared with 15 percent of those working as visiting lecturers.
Publishing was among the strongest predictors of landing a tenure-track job. Candidates without any published research had a placement rate of just 16 percent, compared with 32 percent for those with one to three publications. In statistical models, the researcher compared hypothetical candidates to a baseline: a non-minority man studying American politics at the 30th-ranked department who had not yet finished his degree and had no publications. That baseline candidate had an estimated 27 percent probability of landing a professorship.
If that same candidate had co-authored an article in the American Political Science Review, a top journal, the probability rose to 41 percent. A solo-authored article in that journal was associated with a probability of roughly 52 percent, nearly double the baseline, though this estimate was less statistically certain. Only about 5 percent of candidates had published in a top journal at all. Teaching experience, on the other hand, did not seem to help: candidates with seven or more teaching roles had a lower placement rate of 18 percent.
The candidate’s field of study and demographic identity were also linked to their job market outcomes. Applicants specializing in American politics were the most successful, with nearly 40 percent finding a tenure-track position, compared with 20 to 24 percent in other fields. That year, there were about as many job listings in American politics (118) as American politics candidates (118), whereas comparative politics had 189 candidates for 71 listings.
When looking at demographics, the study found no evidence that female or URM candidates faced hiring disadvantages. In fact, these identities were associated with higher placement rates. The raw placement rates for tenure-track jobs were 19 percent for non-minority men, 32 percent for non-minority women, 36 percent for URM women, and 39 percent for URM men. In the researcher’s statistical models, a baseline non-minority male candidate had a 27 percent probability of securing a tenure-track job.
By comparison, a URM male candidate had a 47 percent probability, and female candidates sat at roughly 44 percent. However, this advantage only appeared for positions at doctoral universities; for jobs at colleges without doctoral programs, gender and minority status were not significantly linked to placement. These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that women applying for tenure-track faculty positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines experienced hiring equality or advantages compared to men with matching qualifications. Desposato’s own analysis of the American Political Science Association’s placement survey data from 2017 to 2025 found the same advantages for female, minority, and American politics candidates.
“The effect sizes for URM/female were particularly large,” Desposato pointed out. “Members of those identities had a much higher placement rate than white/Asian males.”
“The most striking finding was that departmental rank had so little effect on placements, whereas both female gender and minority status had such large effects compared to the other predictors,” Artur Nilsson, a professor of personality psychology at the University of Bergen who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “That publications and research topics matter too is not surprising.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study provides an observational snapshot of a single hiring cycle, meaning it cannot demonstrate that specific factors directly caused people to be hired. For example, a strong publication record might improve a candidate’s chances by impressing a search committee, or it might simply be a byproduct of writing a very good dissertation, which the committee also recognizes.
The models accounted for broad subfields, such as American or comparative politics, but not for narrower research specialties that might have been in higher demand. “These are observational data with tons of selection issues,” the researcher explained. “For example, why are URM candidates placed at double the rate of non-URM males? This might simply be that those candidates were studying more popular fields.”
“Or, it may be that non-URM candidates have better alternatives to academia and are leaving for those positions,” he continued. “Or, it may be that there is discrimination based on identity. It could be all of these! This is just one year’s worth of data, from a unique moment of racial reckoning, but it deserves some consideration.”
There are also many unmeasured variables that influence hiring decisions, such as a candidate’s interview skills, the strength of their recommendation letters, and the overall quality of their research. Additionally, the data collection relied on which candidates academic departments chose to list on their public websites. This means some job seekers were likely missed, especially those from programs outside the United States or those whose departments do not maintain such directories.
It is also unclear whether the hiring trends apply to other countries or disciplines. “The main caveat is that these findings represent a specific job market at a particular point in time, subject to the idiosyncrasies of the U.S. system,” Nilsson said. “Their generalizability is difficult to estimate.”
Because the academic job search often takes several years, tracking outcomes after a single year may not capture the full trajectory of a candidate’s career. Looking ahead, Desposato hopes to apply the same approach to other fields and follow candidates for several years. He noted that upcoming experimental studies on hiring by other scholars will also help address these limitations.
He argued that graduate programs should release hard numbers on how their students fare, since many advertise an “excellent placement record” to prospective students without backing it up. “It’s not clear what ‘excellent placement record’ can mean when 75% of candidates did not have professor jobs after a year on the job market,” he added. “We owe it to our PhD students and prospective students to be honest about the job market and what they are signing up for when they start a PhD program, and we should make sure there are non-academic pathways for our PhD students.”
“This is especially true given demographic change,” Desposato concluded. “Many small colleges are going to close as enrollments decline. Most of those colleges offer political science or government as a major, and those professor jobs just won’t exist anymore. I expect a difficult academic job market for PhD candidates for the foreseeable future.”
The study, “Where You Go, What You Do, Who You Are: Predictors of Political Science Job-Market Outcomes, 2023–2024,” was authored by Scott W. Desposato.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PoliticalScienceJobs #AcademicCareerInsights #TenureTrackSuccess #URMAndWomenInAcademe #PublicationPower #AmericanPolitics #FacultyHiringTrends #HigherEducationResearch #PhDJobMarket #DiversityInAcademia
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Women and underrepresented minorities have higher tenure-track placement rates in the political science job market
Getting a tenure-track faculty position is often the primary goal for doctoral students, but the odds of landing one are notoriously low. A recent analysis of the political science job market suggests that while the prestige of a candidate’s university is linked to the type of academic institution they end up at, it does not actually predict whether they will secure a professorship. The research, published in PS: Political Science & Politics, indicates that having a strong publication record, studying a high-demand field, and being a female or an underrepresented minority candidate are stronger predictors of finding a tenure-track academic job.
A tenure-track professorship is a university teaching and research position that can eventually lead to a permanent, lifelong appointment. In many academic fields, the competition for these roles is intense, with far more new graduates than available openings.
Past research analyzing this system has pointed to a rigid prestige hierarchy. For instance, a 2022 study of faculty hiring across the United States found that a small minority of elite universities supply the vast majority of professors. Similarly, a 2025 analysis of political science departments indicated that the top 20 percent of programs produced 75 percent of tenure-track faculty at U.S. doctoral departments, while the bottom half produced less than 5 percent.
These past studies tend to imply that graduating from a top-tier university is the only reliable way to get a job in academia. But that approach relies on looking backward at the people who already secured positions at major research universities. This method can introduce bias.
First, it ignores the fact that elite universities often have much larger graduate programs, meaning they naturally produce more job applicants. Second, it overlooks professorships at the thousands of colleges and universities that only offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees. About 17,000 people teach political science in the United States, but only about 3,000 work at doctoral departments, meaning studies that look only at those departments miss more than 80 percent of faculty jobs.
“Existing work has claimed that where one earns the PhD is critical to whether they find a professor job, and some even suggested closing more than half of PhD programs,” Scott W. Desposato, the Simón Bolívar Chair of Latin American Studies and a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told PsyPost.
“But this body of work assesses placements by looking at professors at PhD-granting programs. Thus, they don’t control for the size of the PhD program (bigger programs should have more placements, even if their training is the same as smaller programs) and they ignore the many professor jobs at small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and other universities that don’t have phD programs.”
“As I write in the paper, it’s like studying fitness by seeing which country won the most medals in the Olympics and concluding that the best way to be healthy is to move to that country,” Desposato continued. “That would be a crazy way to study fitness, and it’s the wrong way to study the academic labor market.”
“Faculty are full of advice about what students should do to succeed on the job market,” he said. “But their recommendations are based on anecdotal observations. We try to be systematic and scientific in our research so why wouldn’t we want some real evidence from which to make recommendations to our PhD students?”
To get a more accurate picture of how hiring works, Desposato identified a group of active job seekers and checked on their outcomes a year later. The researcher collected data on 413 political science candidates who were actively on the academic job market during the 2023 to 2024 hiring cycle. The candidates were identified from the “Job Market Candidate” pages on various university websites in the fall of 2023. The sample only included candidates who were either finalizing their dissertations or had recently graduated, excluding anyone who already held a tenure-track job or had graduated before 2023.
Using the candidates’ websites and resumes, the researcher recorded a variety of details. These included the rank of their university, their specific field of study, their teaching experience, any awards they had won, and their publication record. To assess publications, the study tracked both the number of articles and the prestige of the journals in which they were published.
The researcher also coded the candidates’ perceived gender and underrepresented minority (URM) status based on names, pronouns, identity-specific awards, personal statements, and appearance. Candidates perceived as Black, Latino, or Native American were classified as URM, a measure meant to approximate how hiring committees might see them.
In the fall of 2024, the researcher checked back to see what types of jobs the candidates had secured. By that time, about 26 percent of the candidates had accepted tenure-track professorships. Surprisingly, the prestige of the university where a candidate earned their degree had virtually no bearing on whether they secured one of these positions.
Placement rates showed no consistent pattern by rank: the top 10 departments placed 25 percent of their candidates, while departments ranked 71st or lower placed 35 percent. The results suggest that graduating from an elite institution does not guarantee a job, nor does graduating from a lower-ranked program automatically disqualify a candidate. However, lower-ranked programs were thinly represented in the data, as only 13 of the 60 lower-ranked departments listed candidates online. The lowest-ranked group’s 35 percent placement rate largely reflected the University of Missouri, which placed nine of its 16 candidates; the rest of that group placed just five of 24 candidates.
While institutional rank did not predict if a candidate got a job, it did predict what kind of job they got. Candidates from top-ranked programs were much more likely to secure postdoctoral fellowships, which are temporary research positions that often serve as stepping stones to tenure-track jobs. When elite candidates did land tenure-track roles, they mostly went to universities that also grant doctoral degrees. By contrast, candidates from lower-ranked programs were more likely to find tenure-track positions at smaller colleges and universities that do not have doctoral programs, or they took temporary teaching positions.
More than 70 percent of candidates held some kind of academic job a year later. Among candidates who were already postdoctoral fellows when the study began, 30 percent landed tenure-track jobs, compared with 15 percent of those working as visiting lecturers.
Publishing was among the strongest predictors of landing a tenure-track job. Candidates without any published research had a placement rate of just 16 percent, compared with 32 percent for those with one to three publications. In statistical models, the researcher compared hypothetical candidates to a baseline: a non-minority man studying American politics at the 30th-ranked department who had not yet finished his degree and had no publications. That baseline candidate had an estimated 27 percent probability of landing a professorship.
If that same candidate had co-authored an article in the American Political Science Review, a top journal, the probability rose to 41 percent. A solo-authored article in that journal was associated with a probability of roughly 52 percent, nearly double the baseline, though this estimate was less statistically certain. Only about 5 percent of candidates had published in a top journal at all. Teaching experience, on the other hand, did not seem to help: candidates with seven or more teaching roles had a lower placement rate of 18 percent.
The candidate’s field of study and demographic identity were also linked to their job market outcomes. Applicants specializing in American politics were the most successful, with nearly 40 percent finding a tenure-track position, compared with 20 to 24 percent in other fields. That year, there were about as many job listings in American politics (118) as American politics candidates (118), whereas comparative politics had 189 candidates for 71 listings.
When looking at demographics, the study found no evidence that female or URM candidates faced hiring disadvantages. In fact, these identities were associated with higher placement rates. The raw placement rates for tenure-track jobs were 19 percent for non-minority men, 32 percent for non-minority women, 36 percent for URM women, and 39 percent for URM men. In the researcher’s statistical models, a baseline non-minority male candidate had a 27 percent probability of securing a tenure-track job.
By comparison, a URM male candidate had a 47 percent probability, and female candidates sat at roughly 44 percent. However, this advantage only appeared for positions at doctoral universities; for jobs at colleges without doctoral programs, gender and minority status were not significantly linked to placement. These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that women applying for tenure-track faculty positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines experienced hiring equality or advantages compared to men with matching qualifications. Desposato’s own analysis of the American Political Science Association’s placement survey data from 2017 to 2025 found the same advantages for female, minority, and American politics candidates.
“The effect sizes for URM/female were particularly large,” Desposato pointed out. “Members of those identities had a much higher placement rate than white/Asian males.”
“The most striking finding was that departmental rank had so little effect on placements, whereas both female gender and minority status had such large effects compared to the other predictors,” Artur Nilsson, a professor of personality psychology at the University of Bergen who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “That publications and research topics matter too is not surprising.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study provides an observational snapshot of a single hiring cycle, meaning it cannot demonstrate that specific factors directly caused people to be hired. For example, a strong publication record might improve a candidate’s chances by impressing a search committee, or it might simply be a byproduct of writing a very good dissertation, which the committee also recognizes.
The models accounted for broad subfields, such as American or comparative politics, but not for narrower research specialties that might have been in higher demand. “These are observational data with tons of selection issues,” the researcher explained. “For example, why are URM candidates placed at double the rate of non-URM males? This might simply be that those candidates were studying more popular fields.”
“Or, it may be that non-URM candidates have better alternatives to academia and are leaving for those positions,” he continued. “Or, it may be that there is discrimination based on identity. It could be all of these! This is just one year’s worth of data, from a unique moment of racial reckoning, but it deserves some consideration.”
There are also many unmeasured variables that influence hiring decisions, such as a candidate’s interview skills, the strength of their recommendation letters, and the overall quality of their research. Additionally, the data collection relied on which candidates academic departments chose to list on their public websites. This means some job seekers were likely missed, especially those from programs outside the United States or those whose departments do not maintain such directories.
It is also unclear whether the hiring trends apply to other countries or disciplines. “The main caveat is that these findings represent a specific job market at a particular point in time, subject to the idiosyncrasies of the U.S. system,” Nilsson said. “Their generalizability is difficult to estimate.”
Because the academic job search often takes several years, tracking outcomes after a single year may not capture the full trajectory of a candidate’s career. Looking ahead, Desposato hopes to apply the same approach to other fields and follow candidates for several years. He noted that upcoming experimental studies on hiring by other scholars will also help address these limitations.
He argued that graduate programs should release hard numbers on how their students fare, since many advertise an “excellent placement record” to prospective students without backing it up. “It’s not clear what ‘excellent placement record’ can mean when 75% of candidates did not have professor jobs after a year on the job market,” he added. “We owe it to our PhD students and prospective students to be honest about the job market and what they are signing up for when they start a PhD program, and we should make sure there are non-academic pathways for our PhD students.”
“This is especially true given demographic change,” Desposato concluded. “Many small colleges are going to close as enrollments decline. Most of those colleges offer political science or government as a major, and those professor jobs just won’t exist anymore. I expect a difficult academic job market for PhD candidates for the foreseeable future.”
The study, “Where You Go, What You Do, Who You Are: Predictors of Political Science Job-Market Outcomes, 2023–2024,” was authored by Scott W. Desposato.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PoliticalScienceJobs #AcademicCareerInsights #TenureTrackSuccess #URMAndWomenInAcademe #PublicationPower #AmericanPolitics #FacultyHiringTrends #HigherEducationResearch #PhDJobMarket #DiversityInAcademia
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Women and underrepresented minorities have higher tenure-track placement rates in the political science job market
Getting a tenure-track faculty position is often the primary goal for doctoral students, but the odds of landing one are notoriously low. A recent analysis of the political science job market suggests that while the prestige of a candidate’s university is linked to the type of academic institution they end up at, it does not actually predict whether they will secure a professorship. The research, published in PS: Political Science & Politics, indicates that having a strong publication record, studying a high-demand field, and being a female or an underrepresented minority candidate are stronger predictors of finding a tenure-track academic job.
A tenure-track professorship is a university teaching and research position that can eventually lead to a permanent, lifelong appointment. In many academic fields, the competition for these roles is intense, with far more new graduates than available openings.
Past research analyzing this system has pointed to a rigid prestige hierarchy. For instance, a 2022 study of faculty hiring across the United States found that a small minority of elite universities supply the vast majority of professors. Similarly, a 2025 analysis of political science departments indicated that the top 20 percent of programs produced 75 percent of tenure-track faculty at U.S. doctoral departments, while the bottom half produced less than 5 percent.
These past studies tend to imply that graduating from a top-tier university is the only reliable way to get a job in academia. But that approach relies on looking backward at the people who already secured positions at major research universities. This method can introduce bias.
First, it ignores the fact that elite universities often have much larger graduate programs, meaning they naturally produce more job applicants. Second, it overlooks professorships at the thousands of colleges and universities that only offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees. About 17,000 people teach political science in the United States, but only about 3,000 work at doctoral departments, meaning studies that look only at those departments miss more than 80 percent of faculty jobs.
“Existing work has claimed that where one earns the PhD is critical to whether they find a professor job, and some even suggested closing more than half of PhD programs,” Scott W. Desposato, the Simón Bolívar Chair of Latin American Studies and a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told PsyPost.
“But this body of work assesses placements by looking at professors at PhD-granting programs. Thus, they don’t control for the size of the PhD program (bigger programs should have more placements, even if their training is the same as smaller programs) and they ignore the many professor jobs at small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and other universities that don’t have phD programs.”
“As I write in the paper, it’s like studying fitness by seeing which country won the most medals in the Olympics and concluding that the best way to be healthy is to move to that country,” Desposato continued. “That would be a crazy way to study fitness, and it’s the wrong way to study the academic labor market.”
“Faculty are full of advice about what students should do to succeed on the job market,” he said. “But their recommendations are based on anecdotal observations. We try to be systematic and scientific in our research so why wouldn’t we want some real evidence from which to make recommendations to our PhD students?”
To get a more accurate picture of how hiring works, Desposato identified a group of active job seekers and checked on their outcomes a year later. The researcher collected data on 413 political science candidates who were actively on the academic job market during the 2023 to 2024 hiring cycle. The candidates were identified from the “Job Market Candidate” pages on various university websites in the fall of 2023. The sample only included candidates who were either finalizing their dissertations or had recently graduated, excluding anyone who already held a tenure-track job or had graduated before 2023.
Using the candidates’ websites and resumes, the researcher recorded a variety of details. These included the rank of their university, their specific field of study, their teaching experience, any awards they had won, and their publication record. To assess publications, the study tracked both the number of articles and the prestige of the journals in which they were published.
The researcher also coded the candidates’ perceived gender and underrepresented minority (URM) status based on names, pronouns, identity-specific awards, personal statements, and appearance. Candidates perceived as Black, Latino, or Native American were classified as URM, a measure meant to approximate how hiring committees might see them.
In the fall of 2024, the researcher checked back to see what types of jobs the candidates had secured. By that time, about 26 percent of the candidates had accepted tenure-track professorships. Surprisingly, the prestige of the university where a candidate earned their degree had virtually no bearing on whether they secured one of these positions.
Placement rates showed no consistent pattern by rank: the top 10 departments placed 25 percent of their candidates, while departments ranked 71st or lower placed 35 percent. The results suggest that graduating from an elite institution does not guarantee a job, nor does graduating from a lower-ranked program automatically disqualify a candidate. However, lower-ranked programs were thinly represented in the data, as only 13 of the 60 lower-ranked departments listed candidates online. The lowest-ranked group’s 35 percent placement rate largely reflected the University of Missouri, which placed nine of its 16 candidates; the rest of that group placed just five of 24 candidates.
While institutional rank did not predict if a candidate got a job, it did predict what kind of job they got. Candidates from top-ranked programs were much more likely to secure postdoctoral fellowships, which are temporary research positions that often serve as stepping stones to tenure-track jobs. When elite candidates did land tenure-track roles, they mostly went to universities that also grant doctoral degrees. By contrast, candidates from lower-ranked programs were more likely to find tenure-track positions at smaller colleges and universities that do not have doctoral programs, or they took temporary teaching positions.
More than 70 percent of candidates held some kind of academic job a year later. Among candidates who were already postdoctoral fellows when the study began, 30 percent landed tenure-track jobs, compared with 15 percent of those working as visiting lecturers.
Publishing was among the strongest predictors of landing a tenure-track job. Candidates without any published research had a placement rate of just 16 percent, compared with 32 percent for those with one to three publications. In statistical models, the researcher compared hypothetical candidates to a baseline: a non-minority man studying American politics at the 30th-ranked department who had not yet finished his degree and had no publications. That baseline candidate had an estimated 27 percent probability of landing a professorship.
If that same candidate had co-authored an article in the American Political Science Review, a top journal, the probability rose to 41 percent. A solo-authored article in that journal was associated with a probability of roughly 52 percent, nearly double the baseline, though this estimate was less statistically certain. Only about 5 percent of candidates had published in a top journal at all. Teaching experience, on the other hand, did not seem to help: candidates with seven or more teaching roles had a lower placement rate of 18 percent.
The candidate’s field of study and demographic identity were also linked to their job market outcomes. Applicants specializing in American politics were the most successful, with nearly 40 percent finding a tenure-track position, compared with 20 to 24 percent in other fields. That year, there were about as many job listings in American politics (118) as American politics candidates (118), whereas comparative politics had 189 candidates for 71 listings.
When looking at demographics, the study found no evidence that female or URM candidates faced hiring disadvantages. In fact, these identities were associated with higher placement rates. The raw placement rates for tenure-track jobs were 19 percent for non-minority men, 32 percent for non-minority women, 36 percent for URM women, and 39 percent for URM men. In the researcher’s statistical models, a baseline non-minority male candidate had a 27 percent probability of securing a tenure-track job.
By comparison, a URM male candidate had a 47 percent probability, and female candidates sat at roughly 44 percent. However, this advantage only appeared for positions at doctoral universities; for jobs at colleges without doctoral programs, gender and minority status were not significantly linked to placement. These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that women applying for tenure-track faculty positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines experienced hiring equality or advantages compared to men with matching qualifications. Desposato’s own analysis of the American Political Science Association’s placement survey data from 2017 to 2025 found the same advantages for female, minority, and American politics candidates.
“The effect sizes for URM/female were particularly large,” Desposato pointed out. “Members of those identities had a much higher placement rate than white/Asian males.”
“The most striking finding was that departmental rank had so little effect on placements, whereas both female gender and minority status had such large effects compared to the other predictors,” Artur Nilsson, a professor of personality psychology at the University of Bergen who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. “That publications and research topics matter too is not surprising.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study provides an observational snapshot of a single hiring cycle, meaning it cannot demonstrate that specific factors directly caused people to be hired. For example, a strong publication record might improve a candidate’s chances by impressing a search committee, or it might simply be a byproduct of writing a very good dissertation, which the committee also recognizes.
The models accounted for broad subfields, such as American or comparative politics, but not for narrower research specialties that might have been in higher demand. “These are observational data with tons of selection issues,” the researcher explained. “For example, why are URM candidates placed at double the rate of non-URM males? This might simply be that those candidates were studying more popular fields.”
“Or, it may be that non-URM candidates have better alternatives to academia and are leaving for those positions,” he continued. “Or, it may be that there is discrimination based on identity. It could be all of these! This is just one year’s worth of data, from a unique moment of racial reckoning, but it deserves some consideration.”
There are also many unmeasured variables that influence hiring decisions, such as a candidate’s interview skills, the strength of their recommendation letters, and the overall quality of their research. Additionally, the data collection relied on which candidates academic departments chose to list on their public websites. This means some job seekers were likely missed, especially those from programs outside the United States or those whose departments do not maintain such directories.
It is also unclear whether the hiring trends apply to other countries or disciplines. “The main caveat is that these findings represent a specific job market at a particular point in time, subject to the idiosyncrasies of the U.S. system,” Nilsson said. “Their generalizability is difficult to estimate.”
Because the academic job search often takes several years, tracking outcomes after a single year may not capture the full trajectory of a candidate’s career. Looking ahead, Desposato hopes to apply the same approach to other fields and follow candidates for several years. He noted that upcoming experimental studies on hiring by other scholars will also help address these limitations.
He argued that graduate programs should release hard numbers on how their students fare, since many advertise an “excellent placement record” to prospective students without backing it up. “It’s not clear what ‘excellent placement record’ can mean when 75% of candidates did not have professor jobs after a year on the job market,” he added. “We owe it to our PhD students and prospective students to be honest about the job market and what they are signing up for when they start a PhD program, and we should make sure there are non-academic pathways for our PhD students.”
“This is especially true given demographic change,” Desposato concluded. “Many small colleges are going to close as enrollments decline. Most of those colleges offer political science or government as a major, and those professor jobs just won’t exist anymore. I expect a difficult academic job market for PhD candidates for the foreseeable future.”
The study, “Where You Go, What You Do, Who You Are: Predictors of Political Science Job-Market Outcomes, 2023–2024,” was authored by Scott W. Desposato.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PoliticalScienceJobs #AcademicCareerInsights #TenureTrackSuccess #URMAndWomenInAcademe #PublicationPower #AmericanPolitics #FacultyHiringTrends #HigherEducationResearch #PhDJobMarket #DiversityInAcademia
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: New study links sexual objectification at home to young women’s difficulty saying no to unwanted sex
New research suggests that women who received sexually objectifying messages from their families while growing up tend to view themselves more as objects as young adults, a mindset that was in turn linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, communicating sexual desires, and experiencing orgasm. The authors propose that these early family experiences may lead women to internalize an outsider’s view of their bodies, which could make it harder to assert their sexual needs. The study was published in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
Sexual objectification occurs when a person is valued primarily for their physical appearance and treated as an object of sexual desire rather than a complete human being. While this is often discussed as a broader cultural issue, many women first encounter these pressures within their own homes. Sexual objectification in the family of origin involves hearing comments from relatives about body shape, receiving pressure to look attractive, or witnessing family members make sexualized comments about other women.
“Women are subjected to chronic and multiple forms of sexual objectification throughout their lives, in which their bodies are valued for their physical appearance and sexual appeal and treated as sexual objects,” Dawn M. Szymanski, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Greta Hacker, a doctoral student at the university, told PsyPost, summarizing the theory their work builds on. “Sexual objectification experienced early in life can be especially impactful.”
According to objectification theory, a framework the study draws on, women who are repeatedly exposed to these attitudes often begin to view themselves through the same critical lens, a process known as self-objectification. Instead of focusing on how they feel or what they are capable of, individuals who self-objectify tend to constantly monitor their own physical appearance from an outsider’s perspective.
Previous research has documented the negative mental health outcomes of being treated as a sexual object. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, which was also led by Szymanski, indicated that women working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments experienced higher levels of anxiety and disordered eating.
Less is known about how objectifying experiences within the family shape a woman’s sexual well-being later in life. The research team aimed to explore how early family messages might translate into young women’s sexual experiences. Specifically, the authors wanted to see if these experiences influenced sexual agency, which is the ability to freely communicate sexual desires to a partner and refuse unwanted sexual activities.
“Previous research indicates gender disparities in sexual functioning,” the researchers explained. “For example, heterosexual women are less likely to report experiencing orgasm during sexual activity with another person than heterosexual men.” The authors cite a 2018 national survey in which 65% of heterosexual women said they usually or always orgasm during partnered sex, compared with 86% of lesbian women and 95% of heterosexual men.
“Past research also indicates that psychosocial factors are more important in understanding these disparities than physiological factors,” the researchers noted. “Our study extends this line of research by applying objectification theory and research on the importance of early family environments to increasing our understanding of factors associated with sex-related outcomes in young adult college women.”
The researchers also looked at orgasm, an important component of sexual pleasure and a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction. The psychological and relational aspects of sex play an important role in whether women experience orgasm. Supporting this, a 2026 study of Italian adults indicated that women’s orgasms are heavily tied to relationship dimensions like emotional closeness and how much partners agree on important matters in their relationship.
Szymanski and her team suspected that by fostering self-objectification, early family experiences might interrupt a woman’s ability to focus on her own pleasure and communicate her needs, setting the stage for fewer orgasms.
To investigate these associations, the researchers surveyed 700 young adult women at a university, recruited through a psychology research pool in exchange for course credit. The participants had an average age of about 19, and the vast majority identified as White and heterosexual. Sixty-two percent were first-year students, 56% were in a romantic relationship, and all had prior partnered sexual experience. They completed a series of online questionnaires assessing their past and current experiences.
The survey included a measure asking how often family members made comments about their appearance or the bodies of other women while they were growing up. The questionnaire also measured the women’s current levels of self-objectification, their anxiety about how their bodies look during sex, and their ability to assert their sexual boundaries and desires. A subset of 533 women who had engaged in sexual activity over the previous month answered questions about how frequently, easily, and with how much satisfaction they experienced orgasms. The researchers controlled for relationship status in their analysis, as being in a committed relationship often influences sexual communication and satisfaction.
The findings point to a pattern connecting early family messages to current sexual behaviors. Women who reported more sexual objectification in their families tended to report more self-objectification as young adults, a moderate association. The links described below, from family experiences to sexual agency and orgasm, were smaller.
Self-objectification also statistically linked family experiences to lower sexual agency. Women who reported more family objectification tended to self-objectify more, and that was in turn associated with more difficulty refusing unwanted sex and communicating their sexual desires to partners. Family objectification was also directly linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, even after accounting for self-objectification.
When looking at the women who had recently engaged in sexual activity, the researchers found that sexual objectification in the family was indirectly linked to lower rates of orgasm. This connection operated through a chain of psychological and behavioral factors. Higher self-objectification was linked to less ability to refuse unwanted sex and communicate sexual desires, which was in turn associated with fewer orgasms, less satisfaction with orgasms, and greater difficulty reaching climax. Overall, the full statistical model explained 21% of the variation in the women’s orgasm scores.
“Our findings suggest that experiencing sexual objectification in one’s family of origin is important in understanding women’s sexual experiences and sexual functioning in young adulthood,” the authors concluded.
Self-objectification was linked to more anxiety about body image during sex, but this anxiety was not a statistically significant predictor of orgasm once the women’s ability to communicate and to refuse sex was taken into account. The authors called this surprising, since earlier studies had pointed to body self-consciousness as a key link, and suggested that what a woman does during sex, such as voicing what she needs, may matter more for orgasm than how she feels about her body.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on the women’s own reports, including recollections of family experiences from years earlier, which may not always be accurate. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the results cannot establish a timeline of cause and effect. It is possible that other unmeasured factors play a role in these dynamics.
The sample also consisted primarily of young, White, heterosexual women attending a university. The findings might not apply to women from different cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, or age groups. Future studies tracking individuals over several years could provide evidence for how family messages shape sexual development over time.
The study, “Sexual Objectification in Family of Origin, Self-Objectification, Sexual Agency, and Young Adult College Women’s Orgasm,” was authored by Dawn M. Szymanski and Greta Hacker.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #SexualObjectification #SelfObjectification #SexualAgency #OrgasmSatisfaction #UniversityStudy #WomenEmpowerment #ConsentMatters #RelationshipDynamics #BodyImageAnxiety #SexualWellBeing
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: New study links sexual objectification at home to young women’s difficulty saying no to unwanted sex
New research suggests that women who received sexually objectifying messages from their families while growing up tend to view themselves more as objects as young adults, a mindset that was in turn linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, communicating sexual desires, and experiencing orgasm. The authors propose that these early family experiences may lead women to internalize an outsider’s view of their bodies, which could make it harder to assert their sexual needs. The study was published in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
Sexual objectification occurs when a person is valued primarily for their physical appearance and treated as an object of sexual desire rather than a complete human being. While this is often discussed as a broader cultural issue, many women first encounter these pressures within their own homes. Sexual objectification in the family of origin involves hearing comments from relatives about body shape, receiving pressure to look attractive, or witnessing family members make sexualized comments about other women.
“Women are subjected to chronic and multiple forms of sexual objectification throughout their lives, in which their bodies are valued for their physical appearance and sexual appeal and treated as sexual objects,” Dawn M. Szymanski, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Greta Hacker, a doctoral student at the university, told PsyPost, summarizing the theory their work builds on. “Sexual objectification experienced early in life can be especially impactful.”
According to objectification theory, a framework the study draws on, women who are repeatedly exposed to these attitudes often begin to view themselves through the same critical lens, a process known as self-objectification. Instead of focusing on how they feel or what they are capable of, individuals who self-objectify tend to constantly monitor their own physical appearance from an outsider’s perspective.
Previous research has documented the negative mental health outcomes of being treated as a sexual object. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, which was also led by Szymanski, indicated that women working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments experienced higher levels of anxiety and disordered eating.
Less is known about how objectifying experiences within the family shape a woman’s sexual well-being later in life. The research team aimed to explore how early family messages might translate into young women’s sexual experiences. Specifically, the authors wanted to see if these experiences influenced sexual agency, which is the ability to freely communicate sexual desires to a partner and refuse unwanted sexual activities.
“Previous research indicates gender disparities in sexual functioning,” the researchers explained. “For example, heterosexual women are less likely to report experiencing orgasm during sexual activity with another person than heterosexual men.” The authors cite a 2018 national survey in which 65% of heterosexual women said they usually or always orgasm during partnered sex, compared with 86% of lesbian women and 95% of heterosexual men.
“Past research also indicates that psychosocial factors are more important in understanding these disparities than physiological factors,” the researchers noted. “Our study extends this line of research by applying objectification theory and research on the importance of early family environments to increasing our understanding of factors associated with sex-related outcomes in young adult college women.”
The researchers also looked at orgasm, an important component of sexual pleasure and a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction. The psychological and relational aspects of sex play an important role in whether women experience orgasm. Supporting this, a 2026 study of Italian adults indicated that women’s orgasms are heavily tied to relationship dimensions like emotional closeness and how much partners agree on important matters in their relationship.
Szymanski and her team suspected that by fostering self-objectification, early family experiences might interrupt a woman’s ability to focus on her own pleasure and communicate her needs, setting the stage for fewer orgasms.
To investigate these associations, the researchers surveyed 700 young adult women at a university, recruited through a psychology research pool in exchange for course credit. The participants had an average age of about 19, and the vast majority identified as White and heterosexual. Sixty-two percent were first-year students, 56% were in a romantic relationship, and all had prior partnered sexual experience. They completed a series of online questionnaires assessing their past and current experiences.
The survey included a measure asking how often family members made comments about their appearance or the bodies of other women while they were growing up. The questionnaire also measured the women’s current levels of self-objectification, their anxiety about how their bodies look during sex, and their ability to assert their sexual boundaries and desires. A subset of 533 women who had engaged in sexual activity over the previous month answered questions about how frequently, easily, and with how much satisfaction they experienced orgasms. The researchers controlled for relationship status in their analysis, as being in a committed relationship often influences sexual communication and satisfaction.
The findings point to a pattern connecting early family messages to current sexual behaviors. Women who reported more sexual objectification in their families tended to report more self-objectification as young adults, a moderate association. The links described below, from family experiences to sexual agency and orgasm, were smaller.
Self-objectification also statistically linked family experiences to lower sexual agency. Women who reported more family objectification tended to self-objectify more, and that was in turn associated with more difficulty refusing unwanted sex and communicating their sexual desires to partners. Family objectification was also directly linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, even after accounting for self-objectification.
When looking at the women who had recently engaged in sexual activity, the researchers found that sexual objectification in the family was indirectly linked to lower rates of orgasm. This connection operated through a chain of psychological and behavioral factors. Higher self-objectification was linked to less ability to refuse unwanted sex and communicate sexual desires, which was in turn associated with fewer orgasms, less satisfaction with orgasms, and greater difficulty reaching climax. Overall, the full statistical model explained 21% of the variation in the women’s orgasm scores.
“Our findings suggest that experiencing sexual objectification in one’s family of origin is important in understanding women’s sexual experiences and sexual functioning in young adulthood,” the authors concluded.
Self-objectification was linked to more anxiety about body image during sex, but this anxiety was not a statistically significant predictor of orgasm once the women’s ability to communicate and to refuse sex was taken into account. The authors called this surprising, since earlier studies had pointed to body self-consciousness as a key link, and suggested that what a woman does during sex, such as voicing what she needs, may matter more for orgasm than how she feels about her body.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on the women’s own reports, including recollections of family experiences from years earlier, which may not always be accurate. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the results cannot establish a timeline of cause and effect. It is possible that other unmeasured factors play a role in these dynamics.
The sample also consisted primarily of young, White, heterosexual women attending a university. The findings might not apply to women from different cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, or age groups. Future studies tracking individuals over several years could provide evidence for how family messages shape sexual development over time.
The study, “Sexual Objectification in Family of Origin, Self-Objectification, Sexual Agency, and Young Adult College Women’s Orgasm,” was authored by Dawn M. Szymanski and Greta Hacker.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #SexualObjectification #SelfObjectification #SexualAgency #OrgasmSatisfaction #UniversityStudy #WomenEmpowerment #ConsentMatters #RelationshipDynamics #BodyImageAnxiety #SexualWellBeing
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: New study links sexual objectification at home to young women’s difficulty saying no to unwanted sex
New research suggests that women who received sexually objectifying messages from their families while growing up tend to view themselves more as objects as young adults, a mindset that was in turn linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, communicating sexual desires, and experiencing orgasm. The authors propose that these early family experiences may lead women to internalize an outsider’s view of their bodies, which could make it harder to assert their sexual needs. The study was published in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
Sexual objectification occurs when a person is valued primarily for their physical appearance and treated as an object of sexual desire rather than a complete human being. While this is often discussed as a broader cultural issue, many women first encounter these pressures within their own homes. Sexual objectification in the family of origin involves hearing comments from relatives about body shape, receiving pressure to look attractive, or witnessing family members make sexualized comments about other women.
“Women are subjected to chronic and multiple forms of sexual objectification throughout their lives, in which their bodies are valued for their physical appearance and sexual appeal and treated as sexual objects,” Dawn M. Szymanski, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Greta Hacker, a doctoral student at the university, told PsyPost, summarizing the theory their work builds on. “Sexual objectification experienced early in life can be especially impactful.”
According to objectification theory, a framework the study draws on, women who are repeatedly exposed to these attitudes often begin to view themselves through the same critical lens, a process known as self-objectification. Instead of focusing on how they feel or what they are capable of, individuals who self-objectify tend to constantly monitor their own physical appearance from an outsider’s perspective.
Previous research has documented the negative mental health outcomes of being treated as a sexual object. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, which was also led by Szymanski, indicated that women working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments experienced higher levels of anxiety and disordered eating.
Less is known about how objectifying experiences within the family shape a woman’s sexual well-being later in life. The research team aimed to explore how early family messages might translate into young women’s sexual experiences. Specifically, the authors wanted to see if these experiences influenced sexual agency, which is the ability to freely communicate sexual desires to a partner and refuse unwanted sexual activities.
“Previous research indicates gender disparities in sexual functioning,” the researchers explained. “For example, heterosexual women are less likely to report experiencing orgasm during sexual activity with another person than heterosexual men.” The authors cite a 2018 national survey in which 65% of heterosexual women said they usually or always orgasm during partnered sex, compared with 86% of lesbian women and 95% of heterosexual men.
“Past research also indicates that psychosocial factors are more important in understanding these disparities than physiological factors,” the researchers noted. “Our study extends this line of research by applying objectification theory and research on the importance of early family environments to increasing our understanding of factors associated with sex-related outcomes in young adult college women.”
The researchers also looked at orgasm, an important component of sexual pleasure and a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction. The psychological and relational aspects of sex play an important role in whether women experience orgasm. Supporting this, a 2026 study of Italian adults indicated that women’s orgasms are heavily tied to relationship dimensions like emotional closeness and how much partners agree on important matters in their relationship.
Szymanski and her team suspected that by fostering self-objectification, early family experiences might interrupt a woman’s ability to focus on her own pleasure and communicate her needs, setting the stage for fewer orgasms.
To investigate these associations, the researchers surveyed 700 young adult women at a university, recruited through a psychology research pool in exchange for course credit. The participants had an average age of about 19, and the vast majority identified as White and heterosexual. Sixty-two percent were first-year students, 56% were in a romantic relationship, and all had prior partnered sexual experience. They completed a series of online questionnaires assessing their past and current experiences.
The survey included a measure asking how often family members made comments about their appearance or the bodies of other women while they were growing up. The questionnaire also measured the women’s current levels of self-objectification, their anxiety about how their bodies look during sex, and their ability to assert their sexual boundaries and desires. A subset of 533 women who had engaged in sexual activity over the previous month answered questions about how frequently, easily, and with how much satisfaction they experienced orgasms. The researchers controlled for relationship status in their analysis, as being in a committed relationship often influences sexual communication and satisfaction.
The findings point to a pattern connecting early family messages to current sexual behaviors. Women who reported more sexual objectification in their families tended to report more self-objectification as young adults, a moderate association. The links described below, from family experiences to sexual agency and orgasm, were smaller.
Self-objectification also statistically linked family experiences to lower sexual agency. Women who reported more family objectification tended to self-objectify more, and that was in turn associated with more difficulty refusing unwanted sex and communicating their sexual desires to partners. Family objectification was also directly linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, even after accounting for self-objectification.
When looking at the women who had recently engaged in sexual activity, the researchers found that sexual objectification in the family was indirectly linked to lower rates of orgasm. This connection operated through a chain of psychological and behavioral factors. Higher self-objectification was linked to less ability to refuse unwanted sex and communicate sexual desires, which was in turn associated with fewer orgasms, less satisfaction with orgasms, and greater difficulty reaching climax. Overall, the full statistical model explained 21% of the variation in the women’s orgasm scores.
“Our findings suggest that experiencing sexual objectification in one’s family of origin is important in understanding women’s sexual experiences and sexual functioning in young adulthood,” the authors concluded.
Self-objectification was linked to more anxiety about body image during sex, but this anxiety was not a statistically significant predictor of orgasm once the women’s ability to communicate and to refuse sex was taken into account. The authors called this surprising, since earlier studies had pointed to body self-consciousness as a key link, and suggested that what a woman does during sex, such as voicing what she needs, may matter more for orgasm than how she feels about her body.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on the women’s own reports, including recollections of family experiences from years earlier, which may not always be accurate. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the results cannot establish a timeline of cause and effect. It is possible that other unmeasured factors play a role in these dynamics.
The sample also consisted primarily of young, White, heterosexual women attending a university. The findings might not apply to women from different cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, or age groups. Future studies tracking individuals over several years could provide evidence for how family messages shape sexual development over time.
The study, “Sexual Objectification in Family of Origin, Self-Objectification, Sexual Agency, and Young Adult College Women’s Orgasm,” was authored by Dawn M. Szymanski and Greta Hacker.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #SexualObjectification #SelfObjectification #SexualAgency #OrgasmSatisfaction #UniversityStudy #WomenEmpowerment #ConsentMatters #RelationshipDynamics #BodyImageAnxiety #SexualWellBeing
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: New study links sexual objectification at home to young women’s difficulty saying no to unwanted sex
New research suggests that women who received sexually objectifying messages from their families while growing up tend to view themselves more as objects as young adults, a mindset that was in turn linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, communicating sexual desires, and experiencing orgasm. The authors propose that these early family experiences may lead women to internalize an outsider’s view of their bodies, which could make it harder to assert their sexual needs. The study was published in Psychology of Women Quarterly.
Sexual objectification occurs when a person is valued primarily for their physical appearance and treated as an object of sexual desire rather than a complete human being. While this is often discussed as a broader cultural issue, many women first encounter these pressures within their own homes. Sexual objectification in the family of origin involves hearing comments from relatives about body shape, receiving pressure to look attractive, or witnessing family members make sexualized comments about other women.
“Women are subjected to chronic and multiple forms of sexual objectification throughout their lives, in which their bodies are valued for their physical appearance and sexual appeal and treated as sexual objects,” Dawn M. Szymanski, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Greta Hacker, a doctoral student at the university, told PsyPost, summarizing the theory their work builds on. “Sexual objectification experienced early in life can be especially impactful.”
According to objectification theory, a framework the study draws on, women who are repeatedly exposed to these attitudes often begin to view themselves through the same critical lens, a process known as self-objectification. Instead of focusing on how they feel or what they are capable of, individuals who self-objectify tend to constantly monitor their own physical appearance from an outsider’s perspective.
Previous research has documented the negative mental health outcomes of being treated as a sexual object. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, which was also led by Szymanski, indicated that women working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments experienced higher levels of anxiety and disordered eating.
Less is known about how objectifying experiences within the family shape a woman’s sexual well-being later in life. The research team aimed to explore how early family messages might translate into young women’s sexual experiences. Specifically, the authors wanted to see if these experiences influenced sexual agency, which is the ability to freely communicate sexual desires to a partner and refuse unwanted sexual activities.
“Previous research indicates gender disparities in sexual functioning,” the researchers explained. “For example, heterosexual women are less likely to report experiencing orgasm during sexual activity with another person than heterosexual men.” The authors cite a 2018 national survey in which 65% of heterosexual women said they usually or always orgasm during partnered sex, compared with 86% of lesbian women and 95% of heterosexual men.
“Past research also indicates that psychosocial factors are more important in understanding these disparities than physiological factors,” the researchers noted. “Our study extends this line of research by applying objectification theory and research on the importance of early family environments to increasing our understanding of factors associated with sex-related outcomes in young adult college women.”
The researchers also looked at orgasm, an important component of sexual pleasure and a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction. The psychological and relational aspects of sex play an important role in whether women experience orgasm. Supporting this, a 2026 study of Italian adults indicated that women’s orgasms are heavily tied to relationship dimensions like emotional closeness and how much partners agree on important matters in their relationship.
Szymanski and her team suspected that by fostering self-objectification, early family experiences might interrupt a woman’s ability to focus on her own pleasure and communicate her needs, setting the stage for fewer orgasms.
To investigate these associations, the researchers surveyed 700 young adult women at a university, recruited through a psychology research pool in exchange for course credit. The participants had an average age of about 19, and the vast majority identified as White and heterosexual. Sixty-two percent were first-year students, 56% were in a romantic relationship, and all had prior partnered sexual experience. They completed a series of online questionnaires assessing their past and current experiences.
The survey included a measure asking how often family members made comments about their appearance or the bodies of other women while they were growing up. The questionnaire also measured the women’s current levels of self-objectification, their anxiety about how their bodies look during sex, and their ability to assert their sexual boundaries and desires. A subset of 533 women who had engaged in sexual activity over the previous month answered questions about how frequently, easily, and with how much satisfaction they experienced orgasms. The researchers controlled for relationship status in their analysis, as being in a committed relationship often influences sexual communication and satisfaction.
The findings point to a pattern connecting early family messages to current sexual behaviors. Women who reported more sexual objectification in their families tended to report more self-objectification as young adults, a moderate association. The links described below, from family experiences to sexual agency and orgasm, were smaller.
Self-objectification also statistically linked family experiences to lower sexual agency. Women who reported more family objectification tended to self-objectify more, and that was in turn associated with more difficulty refusing unwanted sex and communicating their sexual desires to partners. Family objectification was also directly linked to more difficulty refusing unwanted sex, even after accounting for self-objectification.
When looking at the women who had recently engaged in sexual activity, the researchers found that sexual objectification in the family was indirectly linked to lower rates of orgasm. This connection operated through a chain of psychological and behavioral factors. Higher self-objectification was linked to less ability to refuse unwanted sex and communicate sexual desires, which was in turn associated with fewer orgasms, less satisfaction with orgasms, and greater difficulty reaching climax. Overall, the full statistical model explained 21% of the variation in the women’s orgasm scores.
“Our findings suggest that experiencing sexual objectification in one’s family of origin is important in understanding women’s sexual experiences and sexual functioning in young adulthood,” the authors concluded.
Self-objectification was linked to more anxiety about body image during sex, but this anxiety was not a statistically significant predictor of orgasm once the women’s ability to communicate and to refuse sex was taken into account. The authors called this surprising, since earlier studies had pointed to body self-consciousness as a key link, and suggested that what a woman does during sex, such as voicing what she needs, may matter more for orgasm than how she feels about her body.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on the women’s own reports, including recollections of family experiences from years earlier, which may not always be accurate. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the results cannot establish a timeline of cause and effect. It is possible that other unmeasured factors play a role in these dynamics.
The sample also consisted primarily of young, White, heterosexual women attending a university. The findings might not apply to women from different cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, or age groups. Future studies tracking individuals over several years could provide evidence for how family messages shape sexual development over time.
The study, “Sexual Objectification in Family of Origin, Self-Objectification, Sexual Agency, and Young Adult College Women’s Orgasm,” was authored by Dawn M. Szymanski and Greta Hacker.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #SexualObjectification #SelfObjectification #SexualAgency #OrgasmSatisfaction #UniversityStudy #WomenEmpowerment #ConsentMatters #RelationshipDynamics #BodyImageAnxiety #SexualWellBeing
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Your gut bacteria may reveal how fast your brain is aging
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
A UCLA study links faster brain aging to specific gut bacteria and chemical byproducts, with older-looking brains also associated with poorer memory, focus, and mood. The findings suggest that biological signs of brain aging may appear decades before obvious symptoms and could eventually make the gut a target for prevention.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainConnection #BrainAging #GutBacteria #Microbiome #Cognition #MemoryBoost #HealthyAging #Neurology #Biomarkers #PreventiveHealth
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Your gut bacteria may reveal how fast your brain is aging
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
A UCLA study links faster brain aging to specific gut bacteria and chemical byproducts, with older-looking brains also associated with poorer memory, focus, and mood. The findings suggest that biological signs of brain aging may appear decades before obvious symptoms and could eventually make the gut a target for prevention.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainConnection #BrainAging #GutBacteria #Microbiome #Cognition #MemoryBoost #HealthyAging #Neurology #Biomarkers #PreventiveHealth
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:28AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Your gut bacteria may reveal how fast your brain is aging
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
A UCLA study links faster brain aging to specific gut bacteria and chemical byproducts, with older-looking brains also associated with poorer memory, focus, and mood. The findings suggest that biological signs of brain aging may appear decades before obvious symptoms and could eventually make the gut a target for prevention.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214106.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainConnection #BrainAging #GutBacteria #Microbiome #Cognition #MemoryBoost #HealthyAging #Neurology #Biomarkers #PreventiveHealth
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:09AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: This common vitamin could help fight one of the deadliest brain cancers
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
High-dose vitamin B3 is showing intriguing early promise as an addition to standard glioblastoma treatment, with 82% of patients in a small trial remaining progression-free after six months. Researchers believe niacin may help revive immune cells suppressed by the cancer, but larger studies are still needed to confirm the benefit and safety.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VitaminB3 #Niacin #Glioblastoma #BrainCancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #ProgressionFree #CancerTrial #GlioblastomaTreatment #HealthyAging
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:09AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: This common vitamin could help fight one of the deadliest brain cancers
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
High-dose vitamin B3 is showing intriguing early promise as an addition to standard glioblastoma treatment, with 82% of patients in a small trial remaining progression-free after six months. Researchers believe niacin may help revive immune cells suppressed by the cancer, but larger studies are still needed to confirm the benefit and safety.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VitaminB3 #Niacin #Glioblastoma #BrainCancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #ProgressionFree #CancerTrial #GlioblastomaTreatment #HealthyAging
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:09AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: This common vitamin could help fight one of the deadliest brain cancers
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
High-dose vitamin B3 is showing intriguing early promise as an addition to standard glioblastoma treatment, with 82% of patients in a small trial remaining progression-free after six months. Researchers believe niacin may help revive immune cells suppressed by the cancer, but larger studies are still needed to confirm the benefit and safety.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001095423.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VitaminB3 #Niacin #Glioblastoma #BrainCancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #ProgressionFree #CancerTrial #GlioblastomaTreatment #HealthyAging
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Virtual reality can induce mystical experiences, new study suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
Virtual reality headsets might offer a reliable way to induce profound feelings of unity and awe typically associated with deep spiritual practices or psychedelics. A recent experiment found that viewing both fantastical imagery and realistic meditation exercises through virtual reality led many people to report complete mystical experiences, whereas viewing the exact same exercises on a standard computer screen did not. The findings were published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Psychologists define a mystical experience as a profound mental event characterized by a sense of deep connection with the universe, an altered perception of time and space, and intense positive emotions. Early psychological theorists proposed that these experiences are defined by their ineffability, meaning they defy expression in standard language. Later researchers emphasized a sense of nonduality, a state where the ordinary sense of oneself as an independently conscious being dissolves. In this state, personal boundaries blur and the individual feels a sense of oneness with all of existence.
While these profound states can occur spontaneously in daily life, researchers have historically struggled to trigger them reliably in laboratory settings using psychological methods alone. Only a small fraction of people typically achieve a complete mystical state through standard meditation, fasting, or hypnosis. Modern studies have heavily relied on psychedelic substances to reliably evoke these states. Finding non-pharmacological methods to trigger self-transcendent experiences remains an ongoing challenge for scientists studying human consciousness.
In recent years, scientists have found that immersive virtual reality can sometimes trigger these profound states at higher rates than traditional psychological methods. Western University psychologists Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen wanted to know what specific types of digital environments are best suited to create these feelings. They aimed to test whether virtual reality required highly imaginative, fantastical elements to trigger mystical states, or if simply practicing a standard breathing meditation in a realistic virtual nature setting would work just as well.
The research team also wanted to move beyond relying solely on subjective surveys. Previous studies on virtual reality and mysticism only asked participants how they felt after the simulation ended. To gain a deeper understanding of how the body reacts to these immersive environments, the investigators decided to measure the physical brain and body changes that happen during these digital encounters. This physiological data could help cross-validate the self-reported emotional outcomes.
The researchers recruited 80 young adults and divided them into two groups. Both groups viewed their respective experiences using a program called Nature Treks: Together, which simulates interactive, three-dimensional natural environments like islands and underwater landscapes. Within this digital world, users appear as bodiless spirits wearing tribal masks and gloves, floating through the space. The software allows users to relax and explore lush vegetation, fossilized rocks, and ocean life.
One group listened to a guided imagery script describing a fantastical encounter. During the first five minutes, this script guided users through normal daytime activities like walking down a path. In the second half, the narration shifted to nighttime and introduced surreal elements, such as watching animal spirits emerge from a campfire and viewing a black hole in the sky. The other group listened to a standard breath-focused guided meditation, which replaced the magical elements with a mindfulness practice focusing on internal physical sensations.
To see how the delivery method affected the participants, the researchers had everyone complete their assigned exercise twice in a counterbalanced order. Participants experienced the simulation once while wearing a fully immersive virtual reality headset, which allowed them to turn their heads and look around the environment. They also completed the exact same audio script and visual environment while watching it on a standard, flat computer monitor, keeping their eyes open and facing forward.
While the participants underwent the exercises, the researchers recorded their brain waves using wearable sensors placed on the forehead and behind the ears. This electroencephalography equipment measures the electrical activity of the central nervous system. The team also tracked heart rates and heart rate variability using chest straps. After each viewing, the participants answered extensive survey questions about their emotional states, their sense of being present in the digital environment, and the intensity of any mystical feelings.
The researchers found that the viewing format drastically changed how people responded to the exercises. Among the participants who used the virtual reality headset, 28 percent of the guided imagery group and 18 percent of the guided meditation group reported having a complete mystical experience. To meet this threshold, participants had to score at least 60 percent of the maximum possible score on each of four dimensions: feelings of unity, transcendence of time and space, intense positive mood, and ineffability. In contrast, not a single participant achieved a complete mystical experience when viewing the exact same environments on a standard computer monitor.
The virtual reality format also produced much higher ratings for specific positive emotions. Participants reported stronger feelings of awe, serenity, interest, and the perception of beauty while wearing the headsets. They also felt a much stronger sense of being physically and temporally present inside the digital world. Conversely, the standard flat-screen viewing format was associated with higher ratings of boredom and fatigue, indicating that the two-dimensional screen failed to captivate the participants’ attention in the same way.
The physical measurements aligned with the survey responses, showing a physiological shift when participants entered the immersive environment. When participants used the virtual reality headsets, their brain wave activity increased across all measured frequencies, including theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves. This elevated electrical activity suggests a heightened state of cognitive and emotional engagement. The standard monitor viewing resulted in much lower brain wave amplitudes across the board.
The heart rate data revealed a similar pattern of heightened physiological arousal. During the second half of the virtual reality exercises, participants experienced higher overall heart rates and lower heart rate variability compared to the standard monitor viewing. A decrease in heart rate variability often indicates that the nervous system is highly stimulated or engaged by external events. These physical changes indicate that the immersive digital world provoked a stronger bodily response than the flat screen.
When comparing the fantastical imagery to the realistic meditation, the researchers found remarkably few differences. Participants in virtual reality reported similar levels of mystical feelings and positive emotions regardless of whether they were imagining a magical encounter or simply focusing on their breath. The brain wave and heart rate data during the virtual reality sessions were also nearly identical between the two groups. It appears that the immersive nature of the technology itself drives the profound feelings, rather than the specific presence of magic or fantasy.
One detail to keep in mind is that the meditation group still rated their supposedly realistic virtual environment as highly dreamlike and surreal. Floating as a bodiless spirit in a pristine digital landscape might be so inherently unusual that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. This overlap could explain why the realistic meditation script produced results so similar to the fantastical imagery script. The basic visual beauty of the digital world might be powerful enough to trigger awe on its own.
The study’s physical measurements also come with technical caveats. Because the virtual reality format allowed participants to move their heads and bodies to look around, this physical movement might have introduced electrical noise into the sensor data. In the standard monitor condition, participants remained seated and were instructed to look directly at the screen. Future studies will need to account for this physical movement to ensure that the brain wave and heart rate differences are entirely due to the psychological experience rather than simple muscle activity.
Finally, having participants complete the identical scripted exercises twice might have diluted the overall intensity of their emotional responses. The extent to which an experience feels miraculous or beyond words typically decreases once a person knows exactly what to expect. Researchers will need to explore how people respond to these environments upon their very first viewing to capture the full potential of digital mysticism. Testing these experiences on diverse populations with different spiritual backgrounds could also reveal how cultural expectations shape these digital encounters.
The study, “Mystical experiences in virtual reality 2: Fantasy versus realism and psychophysiological correlates,” was authored by Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen. The research was supervised by Frewen at Western University.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VirtualRealityMysticism #DigitalMysticism #VRExperiences #MysticalExperience #ImmersiveTech #ConsciousnessResearch #MindBodyConnection # AweInTech #VirtualRealityStudy #PsyConsciousness
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Virtual reality can induce mystical experiences, new study suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
Virtual reality headsets might offer a reliable way to induce profound feelings of unity and awe typically associated with deep spiritual practices or psychedelics. A recent experiment found that viewing both fantastical imagery and realistic meditation exercises through virtual reality led many people to report complete mystical experiences, whereas viewing the exact same exercises on a standard computer screen did not. The findings were published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Psychologists define a mystical experience as a profound mental event characterized by a sense of deep connection with the universe, an altered perception of time and space, and intense positive emotions. Early psychological theorists proposed that these experiences are defined by their ineffability, meaning they defy expression in standard language. Later researchers emphasized a sense of nonduality, a state where the ordinary sense of oneself as an independently conscious being dissolves. In this state, personal boundaries blur and the individual feels a sense of oneness with all of existence.
While these profound states can occur spontaneously in daily life, researchers have historically struggled to trigger them reliably in laboratory settings using psychological methods alone. Only a small fraction of people typically achieve a complete mystical state through standard meditation, fasting, or hypnosis. Modern studies have heavily relied on psychedelic substances to reliably evoke these states. Finding non-pharmacological methods to trigger self-transcendent experiences remains an ongoing challenge for scientists studying human consciousness.
In recent years, scientists have found that immersive virtual reality can sometimes trigger these profound states at higher rates than traditional psychological methods. Western University psychologists Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen wanted to know what specific types of digital environments are best suited to create these feelings. They aimed to test whether virtual reality required highly imaginative, fantastical elements to trigger mystical states, or if simply practicing a standard breathing meditation in a realistic virtual nature setting would work just as well.
The research team also wanted to move beyond relying solely on subjective surveys. Previous studies on virtual reality and mysticism only asked participants how they felt after the simulation ended. To gain a deeper understanding of how the body reacts to these immersive environments, the investigators decided to measure the physical brain and body changes that happen during these digital encounters. This physiological data could help cross-validate the self-reported emotional outcomes.
The researchers recruited 80 young adults and divided them into two groups. Both groups viewed their respective experiences using a program called Nature Treks: Together, which simulates interactive, three-dimensional natural environments like islands and underwater landscapes. Within this digital world, users appear as bodiless spirits wearing tribal masks and gloves, floating through the space. The software allows users to relax and explore lush vegetation, fossilized rocks, and ocean life.
One group listened to a guided imagery script describing a fantastical encounter. During the first five minutes, this script guided users through normal daytime activities like walking down a path. In the second half, the narration shifted to nighttime and introduced surreal elements, such as watching animal spirits emerge from a campfire and viewing a black hole in the sky. The other group listened to a standard breath-focused guided meditation, which replaced the magical elements with a mindfulness practice focusing on internal physical sensations.
To see how the delivery method affected the participants, the researchers had everyone complete their assigned exercise twice in a counterbalanced order. Participants experienced the simulation once while wearing a fully immersive virtual reality headset, which allowed them to turn their heads and look around the environment. They also completed the exact same audio script and visual environment while watching it on a standard, flat computer monitor, keeping their eyes open and facing forward.
While the participants underwent the exercises, the researchers recorded their brain waves using wearable sensors placed on the forehead and behind the ears. This electroencephalography equipment measures the electrical activity of the central nervous system. The team also tracked heart rates and heart rate variability using chest straps. After each viewing, the participants answered extensive survey questions about their emotional states, their sense of being present in the digital environment, and the intensity of any mystical feelings.
The researchers found that the viewing format drastically changed how people responded to the exercises. Among the participants who used the virtual reality headset, 28 percent of the guided imagery group and 18 percent of the guided meditation group reported having a complete mystical experience. To meet this threshold, participants had to score at least 60 percent of the maximum possible score on each of four dimensions: feelings of unity, transcendence of time and space, intense positive mood, and ineffability. In contrast, not a single participant achieved a complete mystical experience when viewing the exact same environments on a standard computer monitor.
The virtual reality format also produced much higher ratings for specific positive emotions. Participants reported stronger feelings of awe, serenity, interest, and the perception of beauty while wearing the headsets. They also felt a much stronger sense of being physically and temporally present inside the digital world. Conversely, the standard flat-screen viewing format was associated with higher ratings of boredom and fatigue, indicating that the two-dimensional screen failed to captivate the participants’ attention in the same way.
The physical measurements aligned with the survey responses, showing a physiological shift when participants entered the immersive environment. When participants used the virtual reality headsets, their brain wave activity increased across all measured frequencies, including theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves. This elevated electrical activity suggests a heightened state of cognitive and emotional engagement. The standard monitor viewing resulted in much lower brain wave amplitudes across the board.
The heart rate data revealed a similar pattern of heightened physiological arousal. During the second half of the virtual reality exercises, participants experienced higher overall heart rates and lower heart rate variability compared to the standard monitor viewing. A decrease in heart rate variability often indicates that the nervous system is highly stimulated or engaged by external events. These physical changes indicate that the immersive digital world provoked a stronger bodily response than the flat screen.
When comparing the fantastical imagery to the realistic meditation, the researchers found remarkably few differences. Participants in virtual reality reported similar levels of mystical feelings and positive emotions regardless of whether they were imagining a magical encounter or simply focusing on their breath. The brain wave and heart rate data during the virtual reality sessions were also nearly identical between the two groups. It appears that the immersive nature of the technology itself drives the profound feelings, rather than the specific presence of magic or fantasy.
One detail to keep in mind is that the meditation group still rated their supposedly realistic virtual environment as highly dreamlike and surreal. Floating as a bodiless spirit in a pristine digital landscape might be so inherently unusual that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. This overlap could explain why the realistic meditation script produced results so similar to the fantastical imagery script. The basic visual beauty of the digital world might be powerful enough to trigger awe on its own.
The study’s physical measurements also come with technical caveats. Because the virtual reality format allowed participants to move their heads and bodies to look around, this physical movement might have introduced electrical noise into the sensor data. In the standard monitor condition, participants remained seated and were instructed to look directly at the screen. Future studies will need to account for this physical movement to ensure that the brain wave and heart rate differences are entirely due to the psychological experience rather than simple muscle activity.
Finally, having participants complete the identical scripted exercises twice might have diluted the overall intensity of their emotional responses. The extent to which an experience feels miraculous or beyond words typically decreases once a person knows exactly what to expect. Researchers will need to explore how people respond to these environments upon their very first viewing to capture the full potential of digital mysticism. Testing these experiences on diverse populations with different spiritual backgrounds could also reveal how cultural expectations shape these digital encounters.
The study, “Mystical experiences in virtual reality 2: Fantasy versus realism and psychophysiological correlates,” was authored by Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen. The research was supervised by Frewen at Western University.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VirtualRealityMysticism #DigitalMysticism #VRExperiences #MysticalExperience #ImmersiveTech #ConsciousnessResearch #MindBodyConnection # AweInTech #VirtualRealityStudy #PsyConsciousness
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Virtual reality can induce mystical experiences, new study suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
Virtual reality headsets might offer a reliable way to induce profound feelings of unity and awe typically associated with deep spiritual practices or psychedelics. A recent experiment found that viewing both fantastical imagery and realistic meditation exercises through virtual reality led many people to report complete mystical experiences, whereas viewing the exact same exercises on a standard computer screen did not. The findings were published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Psychologists define a mystical experience as a profound mental event characterized by a sense of deep connection with the universe, an altered perception of time and space, and intense positive emotions. Early psychological theorists proposed that these experiences are defined by their ineffability, meaning they defy expression in standard language. Later researchers emphasized a sense of nonduality, a state where the ordinary sense of oneself as an independently conscious being dissolves. In this state, personal boundaries blur and the individual feels a sense of oneness with all of existence.
While these profound states can occur spontaneously in daily life, researchers have historically struggled to trigger them reliably in laboratory settings using psychological methods alone. Only a small fraction of people typically achieve a complete mystical state through standard meditation, fasting, or hypnosis. Modern studies have heavily relied on psychedelic substances to reliably evoke these states. Finding non-pharmacological methods to trigger self-transcendent experiences remains an ongoing challenge for scientists studying human consciousness.
In recent years, scientists have found that immersive virtual reality can sometimes trigger these profound states at higher rates than traditional psychological methods. Western University psychologists Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen wanted to know what specific types of digital environments are best suited to create these feelings. They aimed to test whether virtual reality required highly imaginative, fantastical elements to trigger mystical states, or if simply practicing a standard breathing meditation in a realistic virtual nature setting would work just as well.
The research team also wanted to move beyond relying solely on subjective surveys. Previous studies on virtual reality and mysticism only asked participants how they felt after the simulation ended. To gain a deeper understanding of how the body reacts to these immersive environments, the investigators decided to measure the physical brain and body changes that happen during these digital encounters. This physiological data could help cross-validate the self-reported emotional outcomes.
The researchers recruited 80 young adults and divided them into two groups. Both groups viewed their respective experiences using a program called Nature Treks: Together, which simulates interactive, three-dimensional natural environments like islands and underwater landscapes. Within this digital world, users appear as bodiless spirits wearing tribal masks and gloves, floating through the space. The software allows users to relax and explore lush vegetation, fossilized rocks, and ocean life.
One group listened to a guided imagery script describing a fantastical encounter. During the first five minutes, this script guided users through normal daytime activities like walking down a path. In the second half, the narration shifted to nighttime and introduced surreal elements, such as watching animal spirits emerge from a campfire and viewing a black hole in the sky. The other group listened to a standard breath-focused guided meditation, which replaced the magical elements with a mindfulness practice focusing on internal physical sensations.
To see how the delivery method affected the participants, the researchers had everyone complete their assigned exercise twice in a counterbalanced order. Participants experienced the simulation once while wearing a fully immersive virtual reality headset, which allowed them to turn their heads and look around the environment. They also completed the exact same audio script and visual environment while watching it on a standard, flat computer monitor, keeping their eyes open and facing forward.
While the participants underwent the exercises, the researchers recorded their brain waves using wearable sensors placed on the forehead and behind the ears. This electroencephalography equipment measures the electrical activity of the central nervous system. The team also tracked heart rates and heart rate variability using chest straps. After each viewing, the participants answered extensive survey questions about their emotional states, their sense of being present in the digital environment, and the intensity of any mystical feelings.
The researchers found that the viewing format drastically changed how people responded to the exercises. Among the participants who used the virtual reality headset, 28 percent of the guided imagery group and 18 percent of the guided meditation group reported having a complete mystical experience. To meet this threshold, participants had to score at least 60 percent of the maximum possible score on each of four dimensions: feelings of unity, transcendence of time and space, intense positive mood, and ineffability. In contrast, not a single participant achieved a complete mystical experience when viewing the exact same environments on a standard computer monitor.
The virtual reality format also produced much higher ratings for specific positive emotions. Participants reported stronger feelings of awe, serenity, interest, and the perception of beauty while wearing the headsets. They also felt a much stronger sense of being physically and temporally present inside the digital world. Conversely, the standard flat-screen viewing format was associated with higher ratings of boredom and fatigue, indicating that the two-dimensional screen failed to captivate the participants’ attention in the same way.
The physical measurements aligned with the survey responses, showing a physiological shift when participants entered the immersive environment. When participants used the virtual reality headsets, their brain wave activity increased across all measured frequencies, including theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves. This elevated electrical activity suggests a heightened state of cognitive and emotional engagement. The standard monitor viewing resulted in much lower brain wave amplitudes across the board.
The heart rate data revealed a similar pattern of heightened physiological arousal. During the second half of the virtual reality exercises, participants experienced higher overall heart rates and lower heart rate variability compared to the standard monitor viewing. A decrease in heart rate variability often indicates that the nervous system is highly stimulated or engaged by external events. These physical changes indicate that the immersive digital world provoked a stronger bodily response than the flat screen.
When comparing the fantastical imagery to the realistic meditation, the researchers found remarkably few differences. Participants in virtual reality reported similar levels of mystical feelings and positive emotions regardless of whether they were imagining a magical encounter or simply focusing on their breath. The brain wave and heart rate data during the virtual reality sessions were also nearly identical between the two groups. It appears that the immersive nature of the technology itself drives the profound feelings, rather than the specific presence of magic or fantasy.
One detail to keep in mind is that the meditation group still rated their supposedly realistic virtual environment as highly dreamlike and surreal. Floating as a bodiless spirit in a pristine digital landscape might be so inherently unusual that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. This overlap could explain why the realistic meditation script produced results so similar to the fantastical imagery script. The basic visual beauty of the digital world might be powerful enough to trigger awe on its own.
The study’s physical measurements also come with technical caveats. Because the virtual reality format allowed participants to move their heads and bodies to look around, this physical movement might have introduced electrical noise into the sensor data. In the standard monitor condition, participants remained seated and were instructed to look directly at the screen. Future studies will need to account for this physical movement to ensure that the brain wave and heart rate differences are entirely due to the psychological experience rather than simple muscle activity.
Finally, having participants complete the identical scripted exercises twice might have diluted the overall intensity of their emotional responses. The extent to which an experience feels miraculous or beyond words typically decreases once a person knows exactly what to expect. Researchers will need to explore how people respond to these environments upon their very first viewing to capture the full potential of digital mysticism. Testing these experiences on diverse populations with different spiritual backgrounds could also reveal how cultural expectations shape these digital encounters.
The study, “Mystical experiences in virtual reality 2: Fantasy versus realism and psychophysiological correlates,” was authored by Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen. The research was supervised by Frewen at Western University.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VirtualRealityMysticism #DigitalMysticism #VRExperiences #MysticalExperience #ImmersiveTech #ConsciousnessResearch #MindBodyConnection # AweInTech #VirtualRealityStudy #PsyConsciousness
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Virtual reality can induce mystical experiences, new study suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
Virtual reality headsets might offer a reliable way to induce profound feelings of unity and awe typically associated with deep spiritual practices or psychedelics. A recent experiment found that viewing both fantastical imagery and realistic meditation exercises through virtual reality led many people to report complete mystical experiences, whereas viewing the exact same exercises on a standard computer screen did not. The findings were published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
Psychologists define a mystical experience as a profound mental event characterized by a sense of deep connection with the universe, an altered perception of time and space, and intense positive emotions. Early psychological theorists proposed that these experiences are defined by their ineffability, meaning they defy expression in standard language. Later researchers emphasized a sense of nonduality, a state where the ordinary sense of oneself as an independently conscious being dissolves. In this state, personal boundaries blur and the individual feels a sense of oneness with all of existence.
While these profound states can occur spontaneously in daily life, researchers have historically struggled to trigger them reliably in laboratory settings using psychological methods alone. Only a small fraction of people typically achieve a complete mystical state through standard meditation, fasting, or hypnosis. Modern studies have heavily relied on psychedelic substances to reliably evoke these states. Finding non-pharmacological methods to trigger self-transcendent experiences remains an ongoing challenge for scientists studying human consciousness.
In recent years, scientists have found that immersive virtual reality can sometimes trigger these profound states at higher rates than traditional psychological methods. Western University psychologists Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen wanted to know what specific types of digital environments are best suited to create these feelings. They aimed to test whether virtual reality required highly imaginative, fantastical elements to trigger mystical states, or if simply practicing a standard breathing meditation in a realistic virtual nature setting would work just as well.
The research team also wanted to move beyond relying solely on subjective surveys. Previous studies on virtual reality and mysticism only asked participants how they felt after the simulation ended. To gain a deeper understanding of how the body reacts to these immersive environments, the investigators decided to measure the physical brain and body changes that happen during these digital encounters. This physiological data could help cross-validate the self-reported emotional outcomes.
The researchers recruited 80 young adults and divided them into two groups. Both groups viewed their respective experiences using a program called Nature Treks: Together, which simulates interactive, three-dimensional natural environments like islands and underwater landscapes. Within this digital world, users appear as bodiless spirits wearing tribal masks and gloves, floating through the space. The software allows users to relax and explore lush vegetation, fossilized rocks, and ocean life.
One group listened to a guided imagery script describing a fantastical encounter. During the first five minutes, this script guided users through normal daytime activities like walking down a path. In the second half, the narration shifted to nighttime and introduced surreal elements, such as watching animal spirits emerge from a campfire and viewing a black hole in the sky. The other group listened to a standard breath-focused guided meditation, which replaced the magical elements with a mindfulness practice focusing on internal physical sensations.
To see how the delivery method affected the participants, the researchers had everyone complete their assigned exercise twice in a counterbalanced order. Participants experienced the simulation once while wearing a fully immersive virtual reality headset, which allowed them to turn their heads and look around the environment. They also completed the exact same audio script and visual environment while watching it on a standard, flat computer monitor, keeping their eyes open and facing forward.
While the participants underwent the exercises, the researchers recorded their brain waves using wearable sensors placed on the forehead and behind the ears. This electroencephalography equipment measures the electrical activity of the central nervous system. The team also tracked heart rates and heart rate variability using chest straps. After each viewing, the participants answered extensive survey questions about their emotional states, their sense of being present in the digital environment, and the intensity of any mystical feelings.
The researchers found that the viewing format drastically changed how people responded to the exercises. Among the participants who used the virtual reality headset, 28 percent of the guided imagery group and 18 percent of the guided meditation group reported having a complete mystical experience. To meet this threshold, participants had to score at least 60 percent of the maximum possible score on each of four dimensions: feelings of unity, transcendence of time and space, intense positive mood, and ineffability. In contrast, not a single participant achieved a complete mystical experience when viewing the exact same environments on a standard computer monitor.
The virtual reality format also produced much higher ratings for specific positive emotions. Participants reported stronger feelings of awe, serenity, interest, and the perception of beauty while wearing the headsets. They also felt a much stronger sense of being physically and temporally present inside the digital world. Conversely, the standard flat-screen viewing format was associated with higher ratings of boredom and fatigue, indicating that the two-dimensional screen failed to captivate the participants’ attention in the same way.
The physical measurements aligned with the survey responses, showing a physiological shift when participants entered the immersive environment. When participants used the virtual reality headsets, their brain wave activity increased across all measured frequencies, including theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves. This elevated electrical activity suggests a heightened state of cognitive and emotional engagement. The standard monitor viewing resulted in much lower brain wave amplitudes across the board.
The heart rate data revealed a similar pattern of heightened physiological arousal. During the second half of the virtual reality exercises, participants experienced higher overall heart rates and lower heart rate variability compared to the standard monitor viewing. A decrease in heart rate variability often indicates that the nervous system is highly stimulated or engaged by external events. These physical changes indicate that the immersive digital world provoked a stronger bodily response than the flat screen.
When comparing the fantastical imagery to the realistic meditation, the researchers found remarkably few differences. Participants in virtual reality reported similar levels of mystical feelings and positive emotions regardless of whether they were imagining a magical encounter or simply focusing on their breath. The brain wave and heart rate data during the virtual reality sessions were also nearly identical between the two groups. It appears that the immersive nature of the technology itself drives the profound feelings, rather than the specific presence of magic or fantasy.
One detail to keep in mind is that the meditation group still rated their supposedly realistic virtual environment as highly dreamlike and surreal. Floating as a bodiless spirit in a pristine digital landscape might be so inherently unusual that it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. This overlap could explain why the realistic meditation script produced results so similar to the fantastical imagery script. The basic visual beauty of the digital world might be powerful enough to trigger awe on its own.
The study’s physical measurements also come with technical caveats. Because the virtual reality format allowed participants to move their heads and bodies to look around, this physical movement might have introduced electrical noise into the sensor data. In the standard monitor condition, participants remained seated and were instructed to look directly at the screen. Future studies will need to account for this physical movement to ensure that the brain wave and heart rate differences are entirely due to the psychological experience rather than simple muscle activity.
Finally, having participants complete the identical scripted exercises twice might have diluted the overall intensity of their emotional responses. The extent to which an experience feels miraculous or beyond words typically decreases once a person knows exactly what to expect. Researchers will need to explore how people respond to these environments upon their very first viewing to capture the full potential of digital mysticism. Testing these experiences on diverse populations with different spiritual backgrounds could also reveal how cultural expectations shape these digital encounters.
The study, “Mystical experiences in virtual reality 2: Fantasy versus realism and psychophysiological correlates,” was authored by Rebekka Miller, Tallulah Nyland, and Paul Frewen. The research was supervised by Frewen at Western University.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/virtual-reality-can-induce-mystical-experiences-without-psychedelics/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #VirtualRealityMysticism #DigitalMysticism #VRExperiences #MysticalExperience #ImmersiveTech #ConsciousnessResearch #MindBodyConnection # AweInTech #VirtualRealityStudy #PsyConsciousness
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study of 2.5 million children finds no link between MMR vaccine and autism
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
A new study of over 2.5 million children provides evidence that receiving the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine before age two is not associated with an increased risk of developing autism. The findings, published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, indicate that the precise timing of the immunization was not linked to a child’s likelihood of being diagnosed with the developmental condition.
Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental condition that affects how a person communicates, interacts with others, and experiences the world. The condition is currently estimated to affect about 3.2 percent of children in the United States. The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is a standard early childhood immunization that protects against three highly contagious and potentially severe viral infections.
Fears linking this routine vaccine to autism persist among some parents, frequently leading to delayed or declined immunizations. This anxiety largely stems from a 1998 case series, a report on just 12 children, that was later retracted due to scientific misconduct. Numerous large studies over the years have found no link between the vaccine and the developmental condition.
Even with this extensive body of research, observational studies on vaccine safety face built-in design challenges. Factors like a family’s healthcare habits, early parental concerns about a child’s development, and the child’s age can influence both when they get vaccinated and if they receive an autism diagnosis.
If an analysis does not adjust for the fact that children receive vaccines at different developmental stages, the results might be skewed. The research, led by Todd L. Burstain of UW Medicine, aimed to address these complexities using a more precise study design.
The authors utilized an approach known as age-anchored landmark analysis. This method groups children by the age window in which a vaccination decision is typically made, comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children within those defined age windows to reduce bias.
To carry out the research, the scientists analyzed records from Cosmos, a massive electronic health record database spanning hospitals and clinics across the United States. The dataset included 2,560,035 children who had at least one routine primary care visit between 12 and 24 months of age. The prevalence of childhood autism in this sample was 2.55 percent. The researchers focused on a specific diagnostic code for childhood autism, a narrower category than the full autism spectrum, which partly explains why the prevalence in the sample was lower than the national estimate.
The researchers excluded any children diagnosed with autism at or before 11 months of age to ensure the vaccine came before the diagnosis. The children were followed up to age eight or until December 2024. By 24 months of age, 91.4 percent of the children in the sample had received their first dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
The authors divided the children into defined age windows, such as 11.5 to 12.5 months, 12.5 to 13.5 months, and up to 24 months. Within each window, they compared children who received their first dose during that window with children who had not been vaccinated by the start of the window and remained unvaccinated throughout follow-up.
To ensure the comparison was as fair as possible, the researchers adjusted for factors that might influence both vaccination and autism diagnosis. These included the mother’s age, race and ethnicity, gestational age at birth, whether the baby was small for its gestational age or one of multiple births, diabetes or genital or urinary tract infections during pregnancy, neighborhood disadvantage, and region of the country. They avoided adjusting for factors that happen after the vaccination, which can distort the results.
Across all the age windows analyzed, the first dose of the vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of autism. In the primary analysis, covering vaccination between 11.5 and 24 months, the adjusted hazard ratio was 0.97, with a 99 percent confidence interval of 0.91 to 1.03. A hazard ratio compares how quickly new diagnoses occur in two groups, and because this range includes 1.0, the result is consistent with no difference in risk. The 0.97 estimate translates to an estimated 3 percent lower rate of diagnosis among vaccinated children, a difference that is not statistically distinguishable from zero.
In two of the later windows, 14.5 to 17.5 months and 17.5 to 24 months, vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism diagnosis, with hazard ratios of 0.90 and 0.92. The authors attribute small deviations like these to leftover bias in the data rather than to any protective effect of the vaccine.
The findings held up under different analyses. Results were essentially unchanged with more birth-related factors added (hazard ratio 0.97) and without the neighborhood measure, which was missing for 53 percent of children (hazard ratio 0.96). They also held after excluding children with only one recorded autism diagnosis.
To double-check their methodology, the researchers also tested a negative control exposure. They looked at the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine booster, which is given around 12 to 15 months to prevent bacterial infections but has no theoretical link to autism. A negative control is a comparison where no effect is expected, used to check whether a method produces false signals. The similar result for the pneumococcal booster suggests the analysis was not generating spurious links tied to routine checkups, supporting the authors’ view that leftover bias is unlikely to explain the measles, mumps, and rubella findings.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on observational medical records, meaning the researchers could not control for every single variable in a child’s life.
Notably, the dataset did not include information on a family history of autism. If parents who already have an older child with autism are more hesitant to vaccinate their younger children, this missing detail could skew the data. Such a pattern would tend to make the vaccine look protective rather than harmful. A 2015 study the authors cite, which examined U.S. children with older siblings who had autism, also found no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.
Additionally, the children who received the vaccine tended to have much longer follow-up periods in the medical system compared to the unvaccinated children, with a median of 853 days for vaccinated children versus 366 for unvaccinated. Typically, spending more time interacting with healthcare providers creates more opportunities to receive a formal diagnosis, yet the researchers still found no link between the vaccine and autism.
The requirement that children have linked birth-parent records also excluded a substantial proportion of otherwise eligible children from the analysis. This means the findings might not capture the experiences of all children receiving medical care.
Future studies could incorporate external data on family history and socioeconomic factors to provide an even sharper picture. Scientists might also test if these findings hold true for broader autism spectrum disorder diagnoses rather than the specific childhood autism diagnostic code used in this analysis.
The study, “Association Between First MMR Vaccination Before Age 2 Years and Childhood Autism in a U.S. EHR Cohort of 2.5 Million Children,” was authored by Todd L. Burstain, Dale Jacques, and Jennifer M. Burstain.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MMRVaccineAndAutism #AutismResearch #VaccinesSafety #MMRNoLinkAutism #ChildHealth #ImmunizationAwareness #PublicHealth #EHRStudy #VaccineSafety #AutismPrevention
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study of 2.5 million children finds no link between MMR vaccine and autism
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
A new study of over 2.5 million children provides evidence that receiving the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine before age two is not associated with an increased risk of developing autism. The findings, published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, indicate that the precise timing of the immunization was not linked to a child’s likelihood of being diagnosed with the developmental condition.
Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental condition that affects how a person communicates, interacts with others, and experiences the world. The condition is currently estimated to affect about 3.2 percent of children in the United States. The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is a standard early childhood immunization that protects against three highly contagious and potentially severe viral infections.
Fears linking this routine vaccine to autism persist among some parents, frequently leading to delayed or declined immunizations. This anxiety largely stems from a 1998 case series, a report on just 12 children, that was later retracted due to scientific misconduct. Numerous large studies over the years have found no link between the vaccine and the developmental condition.
Even with this extensive body of research, observational studies on vaccine safety face built-in design challenges. Factors like a family’s healthcare habits, early parental concerns about a child’s development, and the child’s age can influence both when they get vaccinated and if they receive an autism diagnosis.
If an analysis does not adjust for the fact that children receive vaccines at different developmental stages, the results might be skewed. The research, led by Todd L. Burstain of UW Medicine, aimed to address these complexities using a more precise study design.
The authors utilized an approach known as age-anchored landmark analysis. This method groups children by the age window in which a vaccination decision is typically made, comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children within those defined age windows to reduce bias.
To carry out the research, the scientists analyzed records from Cosmos, a massive electronic health record database spanning hospitals and clinics across the United States. The dataset included 2,560,035 children who had at least one routine primary care visit between 12 and 24 months of age. The prevalence of childhood autism in this sample was 2.55 percent. The researchers focused on a specific diagnostic code for childhood autism, a narrower category than the full autism spectrum, which partly explains why the prevalence in the sample was lower than the national estimate.
The researchers excluded any children diagnosed with autism at or before 11 months of age to ensure the vaccine came before the diagnosis. The children were followed up to age eight or until December 2024. By 24 months of age, 91.4 percent of the children in the sample had received their first dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
The authors divided the children into defined age windows, such as 11.5 to 12.5 months, 12.5 to 13.5 months, and up to 24 months. Within each window, they compared children who received their first dose during that window with children who had not been vaccinated by the start of the window and remained unvaccinated throughout follow-up.
To ensure the comparison was as fair as possible, the researchers adjusted for factors that might influence both vaccination and autism diagnosis. These included the mother’s age, race and ethnicity, gestational age at birth, whether the baby was small for its gestational age or one of multiple births, diabetes or genital or urinary tract infections during pregnancy, neighborhood disadvantage, and region of the country. They avoided adjusting for factors that happen after the vaccination, which can distort the results.
Across all the age windows analyzed, the first dose of the vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of autism. In the primary analysis, covering vaccination between 11.5 and 24 months, the adjusted hazard ratio was 0.97, with a 99 percent confidence interval of 0.91 to 1.03. A hazard ratio compares how quickly new diagnoses occur in two groups, and because this range includes 1.0, the result is consistent with no difference in risk. The 0.97 estimate translates to an estimated 3 percent lower rate of diagnosis among vaccinated children, a difference that is not statistically distinguishable from zero.
In two of the later windows, 14.5 to 17.5 months and 17.5 to 24 months, vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism diagnosis, with hazard ratios of 0.90 and 0.92. The authors attribute small deviations like these to leftover bias in the data rather than to any protective effect of the vaccine.
The findings held up under different analyses. Results were essentially unchanged with more birth-related factors added (hazard ratio 0.97) and without the neighborhood measure, which was missing for 53 percent of children (hazard ratio 0.96). They also held after excluding children with only one recorded autism diagnosis.
To double-check their methodology, the researchers also tested a negative control exposure. They looked at the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine booster, which is given around 12 to 15 months to prevent bacterial infections but has no theoretical link to autism. A negative control is a comparison where no effect is expected, used to check whether a method produces false signals. The similar result for the pneumococcal booster suggests the analysis was not generating spurious links tied to routine checkups, supporting the authors’ view that leftover bias is unlikely to explain the measles, mumps, and rubella findings.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on observational medical records, meaning the researchers could not control for every single variable in a child’s life.
Notably, the dataset did not include information on a family history of autism. If parents who already have an older child with autism are more hesitant to vaccinate their younger children, this missing detail could skew the data. Such a pattern would tend to make the vaccine look protective rather than harmful. A 2015 study the authors cite, which examined U.S. children with older siblings who had autism, also found no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.
Additionally, the children who received the vaccine tended to have much longer follow-up periods in the medical system compared to the unvaccinated children, with a median of 853 days for vaccinated children versus 366 for unvaccinated. Typically, spending more time interacting with healthcare providers creates more opportunities to receive a formal diagnosis, yet the researchers still found no link between the vaccine and autism.
The requirement that children have linked birth-parent records also excluded a substantial proportion of otherwise eligible children from the analysis. This means the findings might not capture the experiences of all children receiving medical care.
Future studies could incorporate external data on family history and socioeconomic factors to provide an even sharper picture. Scientists might also test if these findings hold true for broader autism spectrum disorder diagnoses rather than the specific childhood autism diagnostic code used in this analysis.
The study, “Association Between First MMR Vaccination Before Age 2 Years and Childhood Autism in a U.S. EHR Cohort of 2.5 Million Children,” was authored by Todd L. Burstain, Dale Jacques, and Jennifer M. Burstain.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MMRVaccineAndAutism #AutismResearch #VaccinesSafety #MMRNoLinkAutism #ChildHealth #ImmunizationAwareness #PublicHealth #EHRStudy #VaccineSafety #AutismPrevention
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study of 2.5 million children finds no link between MMR vaccine and autism
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
A new study of over 2.5 million children provides evidence that receiving the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine before age two is not associated with an increased risk of developing autism. The findings, published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, indicate that the precise timing of the immunization was not linked to a child’s likelihood of being diagnosed with the developmental condition.
Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental condition that affects how a person communicates, interacts with others, and experiences the world. The condition is currently estimated to affect about 3.2 percent of children in the United States. The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is a standard early childhood immunization that protects against three highly contagious and potentially severe viral infections.
Fears linking this routine vaccine to autism persist among some parents, frequently leading to delayed or declined immunizations. This anxiety largely stems from a 1998 case series, a report on just 12 children, that was later retracted due to scientific misconduct. Numerous large studies over the years have found no link between the vaccine and the developmental condition.
Even with this extensive body of research, observational studies on vaccine safety face built-in design challenges. Factors like a family’s healthcare habits, early parental concerns about a child’s development, and the child’s age can influence both when they get vaccinated and if they receive an autism diagnosis.
If an analysis does not adjust for the fact that children receive vaccines at different developmental stages, the results might be skewed. The research, led by Todd L. Burstain of UW Medicine, aimed to address these complexities using a more precise study design.
The authors utilized an approach known as age-anchored landmark analysis. This method groups children by the age window in which a vaccination decision is typically made, comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children within those defined age windows to reduce bias.
To carry out the research, the scientists analyzed records from Cosmos, a massive electronic health record database spanning hospitals and clinics across the United States. The dataset included 2,560,035 children who had at least one routine primary care visit between 12 and 24 months of age. The prevalence of childhood autism in this sample was 2.55 percent. The researchers focused on a specific diagnostic code for childhood autism, a narrower category than the full autism spectrum, which partly explains why the prevalence in the sample was lower than the national estimate.
The researchers excluded any children diagnosed with autism at or before 11 months of age to ensure the vaccine came before the diagnosis. The children were followed up to age eight or until December 2024. By 24 months of age, 91.4 percent of the children in the sample had received their first dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
The authors divided the children into defined age windows, such as 11.5 to 12.5 months, 12.5 to 13.5 months, and up to 24 months. Within each window, they compared children who received their first dose during that window with children who had not been vaccinated by the start of the window and remained unvaccinated throughout follow-up.
To ensure the comparison was as fair as possible, the researchers adjusted for factors that might influence both vaccination and autism diagnosis. These included the mother’s age, race and ethnicity, gestational age at birth, whether the baby was small for its gestational age or one of multiple births, diabetes or genital or urinary tract infections during pregnancy, neighborhood disadvantage, and region of the country. They avoided adjusting for factors that happen after the vaccination, which can distort the results.
Across all the age windows analyzed, the first dose of the vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of autism. In the primary analysis, covering vaccination between 11.5 and 24 months, the adjusted hazard ratio was 0.97, with a 99 percent confidence interval of 0.91 to 1.03. A hazard ratio compares how quickly new diagnoses occur in two groups, and because this range includes 1.0, the result is consistent with no difference in risk. The 0.97 estimate translates to an estimated 3 percent lower rate of diagnosis among vaccinated children, a difference that is not statistically distinguishable from zero.
In two of the later windows, 14.5 to 17.5 months and 17.5 to 24 months, vaccinated children had slightly lower rates of autism diagnosis, with hazard ratios of 0.90 and 0.92. The authors attribute small deviations like these to leftover bias in the data rather than to any protective effect of the vaccine.
The findings held up under different analyses. Results were essentially unchanged with more birth-related factors added (hazard ratio 0.97) and without the neighborhood measure, which was missing for 53 percent of children (hazard ratio 0.96). They also held after excluding children with only one recorded autism diagnosis.
To double-check their methodology, the researchers also tested a negative control exposure. They looked at the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine booster, which is given around 12 to 15 months to prevent bacterial infections but has no theoretical link to autism. A negative control is a comparison where no effect is expected, used to check whether a method produces false signals. The similar result for the pneumococcal booster suggests the analysis was not generating spurious links tied to routine checkups, supporting the authors’ view that leftover bias is unlikely to explain the measles, mumps, and rubella findings.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on observational medical records, meaning the researchers could not control for every single variable in a child’s life.
Notably, the dataset did not include information on a family history of autism. If parents who already have an older child with autism are more hesitant to vaccinate their younger children, this missing detail could skew the data. Such a pattern would tend to make the vaccine look protective rather than harmful. A 2015 study the authors cite, which examined U.S. children with older siblings who had autism, also found no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.
Additionally, the children who received the vaccine tended to have much longer follow-up periods in the medical system compared to the unvaccinated children, with a median of 853 days for vaccinated children versus 366 for unvaccinated. Typically, spending more time interacting with healthcare providers creates more opportunities to receive a formal diagnosis, yet the researchers still found no link between the vaccine and autism.
The requirement that children have linked birth-parent records also excluded a substantial proportion of otherwise eligible children from the analysis. This means the findings might not capture the experiences of all children receiving medical care.
Future studies could incorporate external data on family history and socioeconomic factors to provide an even sharper picture. Scientists might also test if these findings hold true for broader autism spectrum disorder diagnoses rather than the specific childhood autism diagnostic code used in this analysis.
The study, “Association Between First MMR Vaccination Before Age 2 Years and Childhood Autism in a U.S. EHR Cohort of 2.5 Million Children,” was authored by Todd L. Burstain, Dale Jacques, and Jennifer M. Burstain.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MMRVaccineAndAutism #AutismResearch #VaccinesSafety #MMRNoLinkAutism #ChildHealth #ImmunizationAwareness #PublicHealth #EHRStudy #VaccineSafety #AutismPrevention
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Psychologists identify “collective anti-mattering” as a key driver of modern political grievances
New research suggests that when people believe their social group is treated as unimportant by others, they tend to report more anger about their group’s treatment and more anxiety about its future. These feelings were in turn linked to involvement in collective action, support for strong leadership, and, among White Americans, support for punitive policies. The findings were published in European Journal of Social Psychology.
The research examines a psychological concept known as collective anti-mattering. This is the belief that one’s specific social group does not count, is ignored, or is viewed as disposable by other groups or by society at large. It expands on the idea of personal anti-mattering, which describes the painful experience of feeling personally unnoticed or unvalued by other people. Research into personal feelings of unimportance, such as a 2021 study of adolescents and young adults, indicated that feeling like one does not matter to others is a unique form of distress that predicts loneliness and depression.
“The idea grew out of research on mattering, the basic psychological need to feel that we are noticed, valued, and significant to other people,” Nassim Tabri, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University, told PsyPost. “More recent work has examined anti-mattering, which is the belief that other people actively regard you as unimportant or insignificant.”
“We examined whether people can experience something analogous at the group level: not simply ‘I don’t matter,’ but ‘people like us don’t matter,'” he explained. “Historically marginalized groups may feel that their concerns or suffering are ignored by more advantaged groups or institutions, whereas members of historically advantaged groups may sometimes feel that their group is increasingly being overlooked or displaced.”
Tabri and colleagues proposed that this same feeling can occur at the group level and influence political life. When groups feel that they are morally invisible, they may experience two distinct emotional responses: group-based anger and collective angst. Group-based anger is a reaction to perceived unfairness in the present moment. It is the feeling that one’s group is being illegitimately devalued, which often motivates people to confront the source of the injustice.
Collective angst, on the other hand, is an anxiety focused on the future. It occurs when people fear that their group’s vitality, culture, or very existence might be in jeopardy. Previous work on group dynamics, such as a 2021 set of experiments, indicated that White people reminded of demographic changes, particularly those who saw race relations as zero-sum, felt more anxiety about their group’s future, which was linked to less support for progressive social movements and more anti-immigrant sentiment.
By studying collective anti-mattering, the authors sought to understand how feeling disregarded acts as a starting point for both anger and angst. They theorized that this single feeling could push marginalized groups to demand recognition and push advantaged groups to defend their status.
To test these ideas, the researchers conducted three separate studies using data from online panels, meaning the samples were not nationally representative. In the first study, they recruited 368 Black American adults who completed questionnaires measuring their sense of collective anti-mattering, individual anti-mattering, perceived injustice toward their group, group-based anger toward White Americans, and collective angst. Finally, participants reported how often they take part in collective action on behalf of Black Americans, such as demonstrations, and how much they agreed that their group needs a strong leader who will do whatever it takes to get things done for it.
The researchers found that collective anti-mattering was distinct from personal anti-mattering and strongly predicted both group-based anger and collective angst. It was also strongly correlated with perceived injustice, but statistical analyses showed the two were separate concepts.
The two emotions, however, predicted different outcomes. Higher levels of collective angst were associated with more frequent involvement in collective action, while anger did not predict collective action. Both collective angst and group-based anger predicted greater support for a strong leader, though the items measured broad support rather than specific authoritarian actions. Across the three studies, the statistical models explained only 6% to 12% of the differences in collective action, compared to 13% to 55% for strong-leader support.
For the second study, the researchers surveyed 552 Black British citizens living in the United Kingdom to see if the patterns would hold true in a different national context. The participants completed similar measures, focusing on their perceptions of how Black British people are viewed by White British people. They also answered questions about whether they felt White British people tried to control their group’s identity, a concept known as collective autonomy restriction.
The results of the second study showed that collective anti-mattering on its own was essentially unrelated to collective action, but it was again linked to both group-based anger and collective angst. Just as with the American participants, collective angst was the emotion linked to collective action. Both anger and angst were associated with support for strong leadership. The study also showed that feeling collectively disregarded is a separate experience from feeling that one’s group is being explicitly controlled or treated as less than human.
The third study shifted focus to a historically advantaged majority group. The researchers surveyed 399 White American adults, balancing the sample between Democrats and Republicans. This time, the collective anti-mattering questions asked participants how much they felt White Americans were disregarded by other Americans or by society in general. Along with measuring anger, angst, collective action, and strong-leader support, the researchers asked participants about their political attitudes, including their support for government bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as their support for persecuting undocumented immigrants, measured with statements ranging from praising the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to supporting the use of physical force and even executions.
Believing that White Americans no longer matter to society predicted higher levels of both group-based anger and collective angst, although average levels of collective anti-mattering were much lower among White Americans (about 2.1 on a 1-to-7 scale) than among Black Americans (about 4.0) or Black British participants (about 3.5). Collective angst was again linked to more involvement in collective action and stronger support for a strong leader. Unlike in the first two studies, anger was not linked to strong-leader support.
Group-based anger, however, was linked to different outcomes. Higher levels of anger were associated with stronger support for banning diversity initiatives and a greater willingness to support punitive measures against undocumented immigrants, while collective angst was not. These effects remained consistent even when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for whether the participant was a Democrat or a Republican. This differs from the 2021 experiments described earlier, in which anxiety about the group’s future, rather than anger, was linked to anti-immigrant sentiment.
“What struck me most was the consistency of the basic psychological pattern across groups who occupy very different structural positions in society,” Tabri said. “I was also struck by what we found when we expanded the range of political outcomes examined among White Americans. In this group, anger associated with perceived disregard was, in turn, associated with greater support for punitive and exclusionary political responses, including opposition to DEI initiatives and support for punitive treatment of undocumented immigrants. This suggests that the consequences of believing that one’s group does not matter may depend on the emotion involved and the broader social and political context.”
“I would characterize the findings as meaningful but not deterministic,” he added. “Collective anti-mattering showed moderate-to-large associations with the emotional processes we examined, particularly group-based anger and collective angst, but political attitudes and behavior obviously have many causes. The practical significance, in my view, comes less from any single effect size than from the consistency of the pattern across three samples and two countries. Perceiving that one’s group is disregarded appears to capture a psychologically meaningful form of group grievance.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. All three studies relied on cross-sectional survey data, meaning the researchers measured all variables at a single point in time. Because of this, it is not possible to establish a strict chain of cause and effect between feelings of disregard, specific emotions, and political behaviors.
“We found that collective anti-mattering was associated with particular emotions and political responses in theoretically meaningful ways, but we cannot conclude from these studies alone that making people feel that their group does not matter will cause those responses,” Tabri noted. “I would also caution against interpreting the findings as equating the experiences of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Black Americans and Black British people may perceive disregard in the context of longstanding discrimination and structural inequality, whereas perceptions of disregard among White Americans can arise despite their group’s continued structural advantage.”
The researchers also emphasized how to view the study’s leadership questions. “Support for a ‘strong leader’ in our measures should not automatically be interpreted as support for authoritarianism,” Tabri said. “A strong leader can be understood as someone who protects or advances the group’s interests without necessarily rejecting democratic norms. This is one reason we distinguish strong-leader support from the more explicitly punitive and exclusionary outcomes we examined among White Americans.”
Additionally, the focus of the collective anti-mattering questions varied between the studies. In the first two studies, participants were asked about disregard from a specific majority group, while the third study asked about disregard from society more broadly. Future research could investigate whether feeling ignored by a specific group produces different political reactions than feeling ignored by social institutions as a whole.
Looking ahead, Tabri outlined plans to further investigate these dynamics. “An important next step is to establish whether collective anti-mattering actually has a causal influence on group-based emotions and behavior,” he said. “Experimental studies that manipulate perceptions of collective disregard, along with longitudinal studies that follow these processes over time, will help establish whether changes in collective anti-mattering precede changes in anger, anxiety about the group’s future, and political behavior.”
“One aspect of the concept that I think is especially important is the distinction between being treated unfairly and feeling that your group simply does not count,” Tabri said. “Injustice is about what is being done to a group; collective anti-mattering is about what people believe their group means to others—whether its concerns, welfare, and future are regarded as consequential. That distinction may help us understand some contemporary political grievances that are difficult to capture solely in terms of material interests or explicit discrimination. People and groups want not only fair outcomes but recognition that they matter.”
The study, “Collective Anti-Mattering: Belief That One’s Group Is Being Disregarded Fuels Collective Action and Authoritarian Leadership Support Among Both Advantaged and Disadvantaged Groups,” was authored by Nassim Tabri, Isabelle Boutros, and Michael J. A. Wohl.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CollectiveAntiMattering #GroupAnger #CollectiveAngst #SocialPsychology #PoliticalGrievances #StrongLeadership #DemocracyAndLeadership #GroupIdentity #InclusionDebate #PublicOpinion
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Psychologists identify “collective anti-mattering” as a key driver of modern political grievances
New research suggests that when people believe their social group is treated as unimportant by others, they tend to report more anger about their group’s treatment and more anxiety about its future. These feelings were in turn linked to involvement in collective action, support for strong leadership, and, among White Americans, support for punitive policies. The findings were published in European Journal of Social Psychology.
The research examines a psychological concept known as collective anti-mattering. This is the belief that one’s specific social group does not count, is ignored, or is viewed as disposable by other groups or by society at large. It expands on the idea of personal anti-mattering, which describes the painful experience of feeling personally unnoticed or unvalued by other people. Research into personal feelings of unimportance, such as a 2021 study of adolescents and young adults, indicated that feeling like one does not matter to others is a unique form of distress that predicts loneliness and depression.
“The idea grew out of research on mattering, the basic psychological need to feel that we are noticed, valued, and significant to other people,” Nassim Tabri, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University, told PsyPost. “More recent work has examined anti-mattering, which is the belief that other people actively regard you as unimportant or insignificant.”
“We examined whether people can experience something analogous at the group level: not simply ‘I don’t matter,’ but ‘people like us don’t matter,'” he explained. “Historically marginalized groups may feel that their concerns or suffering are ignored by more advantaged groups or institutions, whereas members of historically advantaged groups may sometimes feel that their group is increasingly being overlooked or displaced.”
Tabri and colleagues proposed that this same feeling can occur at the group level and influence political life. When groups feel that they are morally invisible, they may experience two distinct emotional responses: group-based anger and collective angst. Group-based anger is a reaction to perceived unfairness in the present moment. It is the feeling that one’s group is being illegitimately devalued, which often motivates people to confront the source of the injustice.
Collective angst, on the other hand, is an anxiety focused on the future. It occurs when people fear that their group’s vitality, culture, or very existence might be in jeopardy. Previous work on group dynamics, such as a 2021 set of experiments, indicated that White people reminded of demographic changes, particularly those who saw race relations as zero-sum, felt more anxiety about their group’s future, which was linked to less support for progressive social movements and more anti-immigrant sentiment.
By studying collective anti-mattering, the authors sought to understand how feeling disregarded acts as a starting point for both anger and angst. They theorized that this single feeling could push marginalized groups to demand recognition and push advantaged groups to defend their status.
To test these ideas, the researchers conducted three separate studies using data from online panels, meaning the samples were not nationally representative. In the first study, they recruited 368 Black American adults who completed questionnaires measuring their sense of collective anti-mattering, individual anti-mattering, perceived injustice toward their group, group-based anger toward White Americans, and collective angst. Finally, participants reported how often they take part in collective action on behalf of Black Americans, such as demonstrations, and how much they agreed that their group needs a strong leader who will do whatever it takes to get things done for it.
The researchers found that collective anti-mattering was distinct from personal anti-mattering and strongly predicted both group-based anger and collective angst. It was also strongly correlated with perceived injustice, but statistical analyses showed the two were separate concepts.
The two emotions, however, predicted different outcomes. Higher levels of collective angst were associated with more frequent involvement in collective action, while anger did not predict collective action. Both collective angst and group-based anger predicted greater support for a strong leader, though the items measured broad support rather than specific authoritarian actions. Across the three studies, the statistical models explained only 6% to 12% of the differences in collective action, compared to 13% to 55% for strong-leader support.
For the second study, the researchers surveyed 552 Black British citizens living in the United Kingdom to see if the patterns would hold true in a different national context. The participants completed similar measures, focusing on their perceptions of how Black British people are viewed by White British people. They also answered questions about whether they felt White British people tried to control their group’s identity, a concept known as collective autonomy restriction.
The results of the second study showed that collective anti-mattering on its own was essentially unrelated to collective action, but it was again linked to both group-based anger and collective angst. Just as with the American participants, collective angst was the emotion linked to collective action. Both anger and angst were associated with support for strong leadership. The study also showed that feeling collectively disregarded is a separate experience from feeling that one’s group is being explicitly controlled or treated as less than human.
The third study shifted focus to a historically advantaged majority group. The researchers surveyed 399 White American adults, balancing the sample between Democrats and Republicans. This time, the collective anti-mattering questions asked participants how much they felt White Americans were disregarded by other Americans or by society in general. Along with measuring anger, angst, collective action, and strong-leader support, the researchers asked participants about their political attitudes, including their support for government bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as their support for persecuting undocumented immigrants, measured with statements ranging from praising the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to supporting the use of physical force and even executions.
Believing that White Americans no longer matter to society predicted higher levels of both group-based anger and collective angst, although average levels of collective anti-mattering were much lower among White Americans (about 2.1 on a 1-to-7 scale) than among Black Americans (about 4.0) or Black British participants (about 3.5). Collective angst was again linked to more involvement in collective action and stronger support for a strong leader. Unlike in the first two studies, anger was not linked to strong-leader support.
Group-based anger, however, was linked to different outcomes. Higher levels of anger were associated with stronger support for banning diversity initiatives and a greater willingness to support punitive measures against undocumented immigrants, while collective angst was not. These effects remained consistent even when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for whether the participant was a Democrat or a Republican. This differs from the 2021 experiments described earlier, in which anxiety about the group’s future, rather than anger, was linked to anti-immigrant sentiment.
“What struck me most was the consistency of the basic psychological pattern across groups who occupy very different structural positions in society,” Tabri said. “I was also struck by what we found when we expanded the range of political outcomes examined among White Americans. In this group, anger associated with perceived disregard was, in turn, associated with greater support for punitive and exclusionary political responses, including opposition to DEI initiatives and support for punitive treatment of undocumented immigrants. This suggests that the consequences of believing that one’s group does not matter may depend on the emotion involved and the broader social and political context.”
“I would characterize the findings as meaningful but not deterministic,” he added. “Collective anti-mattering showed moderate-to-large associations with the emotional processes we examined, particularly group-based anger and collective angst, but political attitudes and behavior obviously have many causes. The practical significance, in my view, comes less from any single effect size than from the consistency of the pattern across three samples and two countries. Perceiving that one’s group is disregarded appears to capture a psychologically meaningful form of group grievance.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. All three studies relied on cross-sectional survey data, meaning the researchers measured all variables at a single point in time. Because of this, it is not possible to establish a strict chain of cause and effect between feelings of disregard, specific emotions, and political behaviors.
“We found that collective anti-mattering was associated with particular emotions and political responses in theoretically meaningful ways, but we cannot conclude from these studies alone that making people feel that their group does not matter will cause those responses,” Tabri noted. “I would also caution against interpreting the findings as equating the experiences of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Black Americans and Black British people may perceive disregard in the context of longstanding discrimination and structural inequality, whereas perceptions of disregard among White Americans can arise despite their group’s continued structural advantage.”
The researchers also emphasized how to view the study’s leadership questions. “Support for a ‘strong leader’ in our measures should not automatically be interpreted as support for authoritarianism,” Tabri said. “A strong leader can be understood as someone who protects or advances the group’s interests without necessarily rejecting democratic norms. This is one reason we distinguish strong-leader support from the more explicitly punitive and exclusionary outcomes we examined among White Americans.”
Additionally, the focus of the collective anti-mattering questions varied between the studies. In the first two studies, participants were asked about disregard from a specific majority group, while the third study asked about disregard from society more broadly. Future research could investigate whether feeling ignored by a specific group produces different political reactions than feeling ignored by social institutions as a whole.
Looking ahead, Tabri outlined plans to further investigate these dynamics. “An important next step is to establish whether collective anti-mattering actually has a causal influence on group-based emotions and behavior,” he said. “Experimental studies that manipulate perceptions of collective disregard, along with longitudinal studies that follow these processes over time, will help establish whether changes in collective anti-mattering precede changes in anger, anxiety about the group’s future, and political behavior.”
“One aspect of the concept that I think is especially important is the distinction between being treated unfairly and feeling that your group simply does not count,” Tabri said. “Injustice is about what is being done to a group; collective anti-mattering is about what people believe their group means to others—whether its concerns, welfare, and future are regarded as consequential. That distinction may help us understand some contemporary political grievances that are difficult to capture solely in terms of material interests or explicit discrimination. People and groups want not only fair outcomes but recognition that they matter.”
The study, “Collective Anti-Mattering: Belief That One’s Group Is Being Disregarded Fuels Collective Action and Authoritarian Leadership Support Among Both Advantaged and Disadvantaged Groups,” was authored by Nassim Tabri, Isabelle Boutros, and Michael J. A. Wohl.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CollectiveAntiMattering #GroupAnger #CollectiveAngst #SocialPsychology #PoliticalGrievances #StrongLeadership #DemocracyAndLeadership #GroupIdentity #InclusionDebate #PublicOpinion
-
DATE: October 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Psychologists identify “collective anti-mattering” as a key driver of modern political grievances
New research suggests that when people believe their social group is treated as unimportant by others, they tend to report more anger about their group’s treatment and more anxiety about its future. These feelings were in turn linked to involvement in collective action, support for strong leadership, and, among White Americans, support for punitive policies. The findings were published in European Journal of Social Psychology.
The research examines a psychological concept known as collective anti-mattering. This is the belief that one’s specific social group does not count, is ignored, or is viewed as disposable by other groups or by society at large. It expands on the idea of personal anti-mattering, which describes the painful experience of feeling personally unnoticed or unvalued by other people. Research into personal feelings of unimportance, such as a 2021 study of adolescents and young adults, indicated that feeling like one does not matter to others is a unique form of distress that predicts loneliness and depression.
“The idea grew out of research on mattering, the basic psychological need to feel that we are noticed, valued, and significant to other people,” Nassim Tabri, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University, told PsyPost. “More recent work has examined anti-mattering, which is the belief that other people actively regard you as unimportant or insignificant.”
“We examined whether people can experience something analogous at the group level: not simply ‘I don’t matter,’ but ‘people like us don’t matter,'” he explained. “Historically marginalized groups may feel that their concerns or suffering are ignored by more advantaged groups or institutions, whereas members of historically advantaged groups may sometimes feel that their group is increasingly being overlooked or displaced.”
Tabri and colleagues proposed that this same feeling can occur at the group level and influence political life. When groups feel that they are morally invisible, they may experience two distinct emotional responses: group-based anger and collective angst. Group-based anger is a reaction to perceived unfairness in the present moment. It is the feeling that one’s group is being illegitimately devalued, which often motivates people to confront the source of the injustice.
Collective angst, on the other hand, is an anxiety focused on the future. It occurs when people fear that their group’s vitality, culture, or very existence might be in jeopardy. Previous work on group dynamics, such as a 2021 set of experiments, indicated that White people reminded of demographic changes, particularly those who saw race relations as zero-sum, felt more anxiety about their group’s future, which was linked to less support for progressive social movements and more anti-immigrant sentiment.
By studying collective anti-mattering, the authors sought to understand how feeling disregarded acts as a starting point for both anger and angst. They theorized that this single feeling could push marginalized groups to demand recognition and push advantaged groups to defend their status.
To test these ideas, the researchers conducted three separate studies using data from online panels, meaning the samples were not nationally representative. In the first study, they recruited 368 Black American adults who completed questionnaires measuring their sense of collective anti-mattering, individual anti-mattering, perceived injustice toward their group, group-based anger toward White Americans, and collective angst. Finally, participants reported how often they take part in collective action on behalf of Black Americans, such as demonstrations, and how much they agreed that their group needs a strong leader who will do whatever it takes to get things done for it.
The researchers found that collective anti-mattering was distinct from personal anti-mattering and strongly predicted both group-based anger and collective angst. It was also strongly correlated with perceived injustice, but statistical analyses showed the two were separate concepts.
The two emotions, however, predicted different outcomes. Higher levels of collective angst were associated with more frequent involvement in collective action, while anger did not predict collective action. Both collective angst and group-based anger predicted greater support for a strong leader, though the items measured broad support rather than specific authoritarian actions. Across the three studies, the statistical models explained only 6% to 12% of the differences in collective action, compared to 13% to 55% for strong-leader support.
For the second study, the researchers surveyed 552 Black British citizens living in the United Kingdom to see if the patterns would hold true in a different national context. The participants completed similar measures, focusing on their perceptions of how Black British people are viewed by White British people. They also answered questions about whether they felt White British people tried to control their group’s identity, a concept known as collective autonomy restriction.
The results of the second study showed that collective anti-mattering on its own was essentially unrelated to collective action, but it was again linked to both group-based anger and collective angst. Just as with the American participants, collective angst was the emotion linked to collective action. Both anger and angst were associated with support for strong leadership. The study also showed that feeling collectively disregarded is a separate experience from feeling that one’s group is being explicitly controlled or treated as less than human.
The third study shifted focus to a historically advantaged majority group. The researchers surveyed 399 White American adults, balancing the sample between Democrats and Republicans. This time, the collective anti-mattering questions asked participants how much they felt White Americans were disregarded by other Americans or by society in general. Along with measuring anger, angst, collective action, and strong-leader support, the researchers asked participants about their political attitudes, including their support for government bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as their support for persecuting undocumented immigrants, measured with statements ranging from praising the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to supporting the use of physical force and even executions.
Believing that White Americans no longer matter to society predicted higher levels of both group-based anger and collective angst, although average levels of collective anti-mattering were much lower among White Americans (about 2.1 on a 1-to-7 scale) than among Black Americans (about 4.0) or Black British participants (about 3.5). Collective angst was again linked to more involvement in collective action and stronger support for a strong leader. Unlike in the first two studies, anger was not linked to strong-leader support.
Group-based anger, however, was linked to different outcomes. Higher levels of anger were associated with stronger support for banning diversity initiatives and a greater willingness to support punitive measures against undocumented immigrants, while collective angst was not. These effects remained consistent even when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for whether the participant was a Democrat or a Republican. This differs from the 2021 experiments described earlier, in which anxiety about the group’s future, rather than anger, was linked to anti-immigrant sentiment.
“What struck me most was the consistency of the basic psychological pattern across groups who occupy very different structural positions in society,” Tabri said. “I was also struck by what we found when we expanded the range of political outcomes examined among White Americans. In this group, anger associated with perceived disregard was, in turn, associated with greater support for punitive and exclusionary political responses, including opposition to DEI initiatives and support for punitive treatment of undocumented immigrants. This suggests that the consequences of believing that one’s group does not matter may depend on the emotion involved and the broader social and political context.”
“I would characterize the findings as meaningful but not deterministic,” he added. “Collective anti-mattering showed moderate-to-large associations with the emotional processes we examined, particularly group-based anger and collective angst, but political attitudes and behavior obviously have many causes. The practical significance, in my view, comes less from any single effect size than from the consistency of the pattern across three samples and two countries. Perceiving that one’s group is disregarded appears to capture a psychologically meaningful form of group grievance.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. All three studies relied on cross-sectional survey data, meaning the researchers measured all variables at a single point in time. Because of this, it is not possible to establish a strict chain of cause and effect between feelings of disregard, specific emotions, and political behaviors.
“We found that collective anti-mattering was associated with particular emotions and political responses in theoretically meaningful ways, but we cannot conclude from these studies alone that making people feel that their group does not matter will cause those responses,” Tabri noted. “I would also caution against interpreting the findings as equating the experiences of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Black Americans and Black British people may perceive disregard in the context of longstanding discrimination and structural inequality, whereas perceptions of disregard among White Americans can arise despite their group’s continued structural advantage.”
The researchers also emphasized how to view the study’s leadership questions. “Support for a ‘strong leader’ in our measures should not automatically be interpreted as support for authoritarianism,” Tabri said. “A strong leader can be understood as someone who protects or advances the group’s interests without necessarily rejecting democratic norms. This is one reason we distinguish strong-leader support from the more explicitly punitive and exclusionary outcomes we examined among White Americans.”
Additionally, the focus of the collective anti-mattering questions varied between the studies. In the first two studies, participants were asked about disregard from a specific majority group, while the third study asked about disregard from society more broadly. Future research could investigate whether feeling ignored by a specific group produces different political reactions than feeling ignored by social institutions as a whole.
Looking ahead, Tabri outlined plans to further investigate these dynamics. “An important next step is to establish whether collective anti-mattering actually has a causal influence on group-based emotions and behavior,” he said. “Experimental studies that manipulate perceptions of collective disregard, along with longitudinal studies that follow these processes over time, will help establish whether changes in collective anti-mattering precede changes in anger, anxiety about the group’s future, and political behavior.”
“One aspect of the concept that I think is especially important is the distinction between being treated unfairly and feeling that your group simply does not count,” Tabri said. “Injustice is about what is being done to a group; collective anti-mattering is about what people believe their group means to others—whether its concerns, welfare, and future are regarded as consequential. That distinction may help us understand some contemporary political grievances that are difficult to capture solely in terms of material interests or explicit discrimination. People and groups want not only fair outcomes but recognition that they matter.”
The study, “Collective Anti-Mattering: Belief That One’s Group Is Being Disregarded Fuels Collective Action and Authoritarian Leadership Support Among Both Advantaged and Disadvantaged Groups,” was authored by Nassim Tabri, Isabelle Boutros, and Michael J. A. Wohl.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CollectiveAntiMattering #GroupAnger #CollectiveAngst #SocialPsychology #PoliticalGrievances #StrongLeadership #DemocracyAndLeadership #GroupIdentity #InclusionDebate #PublicOpinion
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Americans often fail to notice when Democrats and Republicans are moving in the same direction
Informing people about how the political attitudes of opposing parties are moving in the same direction over time might help reduce partisan hostility. New research published in Political Psychology suggests that people frequently fail to notice how much support for certain social issues has grown within both parties. When people read about these shared trajectories of opinion change without being reminded of the current gap between parties, they tend to expect more future common ground and report slightly warmer feelings toward their political opponents.
To understand how political divides operate, psychologists often look at descriptive social norms, which are individuals’ perceptions of what other people believe or do. In politics, perceptions of these norms are frequently distorted. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicated that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate how much the opposing party dislikes them. When people assume their political opponents hold extreme or hostile views, it often drives further polarization.
Researchers often try to correct these false assumptions by presenting static norms, which describe the current level of support for a specific issue within a group. However, static norms only capture a single moment in time. Dynamic norms, on the other hand, describe how a group’s beliefs or behaviors are changing over time. A 2017 study found that showing people a trend is growing in popularity can persuade them to adopt new behaviors, even if current support is relatively low.
Applying this idea to politics requires overcoming another layer of misperception. A 2022 study indicated that Americans often misjudge how public opinion has shifted over decades, usually overestimating how much attitudes have changed, especially in a liberal direction. The authors of the new study set out to test whether correcting misperceptions about these trends could soften partisan hostility. How such a message is framed may matter: a 2021 paper argued that describing partisan divisions can make division seem like the norm and inadvertently deepen polarization.
The research was led by Trystan Loustau, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. “A lot of research shows that Democrats and Republicans have distorted perceptions of one another, and that these misperceptions can make political divisions seem larger than they really are,” Loustau told PsyPost. “But most of that work focuses on a snapshot of the present: what Democrats or Republicans believe right now. We were interested in whether people also misperceive change: even when members of both parties are moving in the same direction on an issue, do people recognize that convergence?”
“That seemed especially important because the direction people think society is moving may shape how they imagine its future,” Loustau explained. “If you believe the two parties are becoming increasingly divided, you might respond very differently to political opponents than if you believe there are areas where they are gradually finding more common ground.”
In the first study, 368 Democrats and Republicans estimated current support and changes in support for 12 social issues on which support had actually risen in both parties. The researchers found that participants systematically underestimated attitude change. Only about half of the estimates accurately recognized that support for these issues was increasing. They also underestimated current levels of support by about 12 points for Democrats and 20 points for Republicans.
Misperceptions were especially pronounced when evaluating Republicans. Only about 25 percent of Democrats’ estimates and 44 percent of Republicans’ estimates regarding Republican attitude changes were accurate, compared to 77 percent and 66 percent accuracy for Democratic attitude changes. This finding is in tension with the 2022 study: here, participants often missed real increases in support for progressive positions, especially among Republicans. The authors suggest people may expect Democrats, but not Republicans, to move left.
In addition, the researchers found a correlation between recognizing these trends and intergroup attitudes. For every additional 10 percent of estimates that correctly identified change in the opposing party, participants felt about 3 points warmer toward that party on a 0-to-100 scale. This association held after accounting for accuracy about current support, which itself was unrelated to warmth.
“Political disagreement is real, but our perceptions of it are not always accurate,” Loustau pointed out. “We may be particularly bad at noticing when attitudes are changing.”
To see if correcting these misperceptions could help, the researchers randomly assigned 1,187 partisans to a dynamic norm condition, a static norm condition, or a control condition featuring apolitical topics. The dynamic norm message provided both the past and current levels of partisan support alongside the percentage-point increases over time. The static norm message only provided current support levels.
The results indicated that the dynamic norm group expected more future common ground between parties than the control group. Combining the current support levels with the trend data did not produce broader positive changes in attitudes toward the outparty, meaning the opposing party, such as warmth or expectations of belonging. The authors suggest that presenting the current levels of support alongside the trend may have inadvertently reminded participants of the existing gaps between the parties.
For the third study, the team refined the intervention using a new sample of 1,154 participants. This time, the dynamic norm condition isolated the trend information by completely removing references to current levels of partisan support. The message focused solely on how support had grown within each party over time. Participants were randomly assigned to read the refined message, the original combined message from the second study, the static message, or the control material.
The refined message increased expected common ground and expected future feelings of belonging with the outparty. People who read it reported outparty warmth of about 32.5 on a 100-point scale, compared to 25.9 in the control group, and also rated members of the other party more positively. The researchers noted that a recent review of 77 depolarization interventions found an average gain of about 5.4 points in outparty warmth, making the refined message’s 6.6-point difference comparable to that average.
The refined message was the only one to outperform the control condition on all four of these measures. On warmth and positive evaluations, however, it did not statistically outperform the original combined message or the static message, and the static message also raised warmth relative to control. No version of the message changed how much people saw the other party as overlapping with themselves.
“What surprised me most was how much the way we presented the same information mattered,” Loustau said. “It was a useful reminder that more information is not necessarily better: emphasizing how far apart the parties remain may overshadow evidence that they are moving in the same direction.”
He added, “The broader takeaway is that focusing exclusively on today’s partisan divisions can obscure meaningful ways in which public opinion is changing.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that showing partisans how much their core personal values overlap increased perceived similarity, strengthened beliefs that compromise is possible, and made people more hopeful. That study focused on present-day overlap in values, whereas the new study focused on how opinions on specific issues have shifted over time.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The sample was an online group of participants rather than a nationally representative one, and outcomes were measured right after reading the messages, with no follow-up.
The study also relied on real statistics for issues that were primarily progressive in nature, so it is not known whether these effects would hold for conservative policies or in different political contexts. Using real polling data also meant the researchers could not test larger shifts in opinion, and many of the real changes they presented were modest.
“The effects on attitudes toward the opposing party were small, and I think it is important to be clear about that,” Loustau noted. “A brief informational message is not going to eliminate partisan polarization. At the same time, polarization is a large, persistent social problem, so even small changes produced by a relatively minimal intervention can be informative, particularly because the intervention consisted simply of changing which accurate information about public opinion people saw.”
“I would view the findings less as evidence for a single solution to polarization and more as evidence that people’s expectations about where political groups are headed can influence how they think about those groups in the present,” he observed.
It is also possible that emphasizing negative trajectories could have the opposite effect. Messages highlighting increasing disagreement or polarization might inadvertently increase hostility. Future research could explore whether this kind of dynamic messaging works for other intergroup conflicts, such as those involving race or religion, and whether the observed changes in attitude persist over longer periods of time.
“Long term, I’m interested in what happens when we encourage people to think about political differences in a more future-oriented way,” Loustau said. “Rather than focusing only on how different we are right now, I want to understand what changes when people recognize both their own and others’ capacity to change. That shared capacity may itself be a form of common ground, opening space to imagine not just what society currently looks like, but what we want our relationships and world to look like in the future.”
The study, “Partisans misperceive and are influenced by dynamic norms,” was authored by Trystan Loustau, Ashley Fabrizio, Liane Young, Jordan Wylie, and Stylianos Syropoulos.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DynamicNorms #PoliticalPolarization #CrossPartisanHope #SharedTrajectory #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPsychology #BelongingRatherThanDivision #Misperceptions #InterpartyWarmth #CivicsCommunication
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Americans often fail to notice when Democrats and Republicans are moving in the same direction
Informing people about how the political attitudes of opposing parties are moving in the same direction over time might help reduce partisan hostility. New research published in Political Psychology suggests that people frequently fail to notice how much support for certain social issues has grown within both parties. When people read about these shared trajectories of opinion change without being reminded of the current gap between parties, they tend to expect more future common ground and report slightly warmer feelings toward their political opponents.
To understand how political divides operate, psychologists often look at descriptive social norms, which are individuals’ perceptions of what other people believe or do. In politics, perceptions of these norms are frequently distorted. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicated that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate how much the opposing party dislikes them. When people assume their political opponents hold extreme or hostile views, it often drives further polarization.
Researchers often try to correct these false assumptions by presenting static norms, which describe the current level of support for a specific issue within a group. However, static norms only capture a single moment in time. Dynamic norms, on the other hand, describe how a group’s beliefs or behaviors are changing over time. A 2017 study found that showing people a trend is growing in popularity can persuade them to adopt new behaviors, even if current support is relatively low.
Applying this idea to politics requires overcoming another layer of misperception. A 2022 study indicated that Americans often misjudge how public opinion has shifted over decades, usually overestimating how much attitudes have changed, especially in a liberal direction. The authors of the new study set out to test whether correcting misperceptions about these trends could soften partisan hostility. How such a message is framed may matter: a 2021 paper argued that describing partisan divisions can make division seem like the norm and inadvertently deepen polarization.
The research was led by Trystan Loustau, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. “A lot of research shows that Democrats and Republicans have distorted perceptions of one another, and that these misperceptions can make political divisions seem larger than they really are,” Loustau told PsyPost. “But most of that work focuses on a snapshot of the present: what Democrats or Republicans believe right now. We were interested in whether people also misperceive change: even when members of both parties are moving in the same direction on an issue, do people recognize that convergence?”
“That seemed especially important because the direction people think society is moving may shape how they imagine its future,” Loustau explained. “If you believe the two parties are becoming increasingly divided, you might respond very differently to political opponents than if you believe there are areas where they are gradually finding more common ground.”
In the first study, 368 Democrats and Republicans estimated current support and changes in support for 12 social issues on which support had actually risen in both parties. The researchers found that participants systematically underestimated attitude change. Only about half of the estimates accurately recognized that support for these issues was increasing. They also underestimated current levels of support by about 12 points for Democrats and 20 points for Republicans.
Misperceptions were especially pronounced when evaluating Republicans. Only about 25 percent of Democrats’ estimates and 44 percent of Republicans’ estimates regarding Republican attitude changes were accurate, compared to 77 percent and 66 percent accuracy for Democratic attitude changes. This finding is in tension with the 2022 study: here, participants often missed real increases in support for progressive positions, especially among Republicans. The authors suggest people may expect Democrats, but not Republicans, to move left.
In addition, the researchers found a correlation between recognizing these trends and intergroup attitudes. For every additional 10 percent of estimates that correctly identified change in the opposing party, participants felt about 3 points warmer toward that party on a 0-to-100 scale. This association held after accounting for accuracy about current support, which itself was unrelated to warmth.
“Political disagreement is real, but our perceptions of it are not always accurate,” Loustau pointed out. “We may be particularly bad at noticing when attitudes are changing.”
To see if correcting these misperceptions could help, the researchers randomly assigned 1,187 partisans to a dynamic norm condition, a static norm condition, or a control condition featuring apolitical topics. The dynamic norm message provided both the past and current levels of partisan support alongside the percentage-point increases over time. The static norm message only provided current support levels.
The results indicated that the dynamic norm group expected more future common ground between parties than the control group. Combining the current support levels with the trend data did not produce broader positive changes in attitudes toward the outparty, meaning the opposing party, such as warmth or expectations of belonging. The authors suggest that presenting the current levels of support alongside the trend may have inadvertently reminded participants of the existing gaps between the parties.
For the third study, the team refined the intervention using a new sample of 1,154 participants. This time, the dynamic norm condition isolated the trend information by completely removing references to current levels of partisan support. The message focused solely on how support had grown within each party over time. Participants were randomly assigned to read the refined message, the original combined message from the second study, the static message, or the control material.
The refined message increased expected common ground and expected future feelings of belonging with the outparty. People who read it reported outparty warmth of about 32.5 on a 100-point scale, compared to 25.9 in the control group, and also rated members of the other party more positively. The researchers noted that a recent review of 77 depolarization interventions found an average gain of about 5.4 points in outparty warmth, making the refined message’s 6.6-point difference comparable to that average.
The refined message was the only one to outperform the control condition on all four of these measures. On warmth and positive evaluations, however, it did not statistically outperform the original combined message or the static message, and the static message also raised warmth relative to control. No version of the message changed how much people saw the other party as overlapping with themselves.
“What surprised me most was how much the way we presented the same information mattered,” Loustau said. “It was a useful reminder that more information is not necessarily better: emphasizing how far apart the parties remain may overshadow evidence that they are moving in the same direction.”
He added, “The broader takeaway is that focusing exclusively on today’s partisan divisions can obscure meaningful ways in which public opinion is changing.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that showing partisans how much their core personal values overlap increased perceived similarity, strengthened beliefs that compromise is possible, and made people more hopeful. That study focused on present-day overlap in values, whereas the new study focused on how opinions on specific issues have shifted over time.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The sample was an online group of participants rather than a nationally representative one, and outcomes were measured right after reading the messages, with no follow-up.
The study also relied on real statistics for issues that were primarily progressive in nature, so it is not known whether these effects would hold for conservative policies or in different political contexts. Using real polling data also meant the researchers could not test larger shifts in opinion, and many of the real changes they presented were modest.
“The effects on attitudes toward the opposing party were small, and I think it is important to be clear about that,” Loustau noted. “A brief informational message is not going to eliminate partisan polarization. At the same time, polarization is a large, persistent social problem, so even small changes produced by a relatively minimal intervention can be informative, particularly because the intervention consisted simply of changing which accurate information about public opinion people saw.”
“I would view the findings less as evidence for a single solution to polarization and more as evidence that people’s expectations about where political groups are headed can influence how they think about those groups in the present,” he observed.
It is also possible that emphasizing negative trajectories could have the opposite effect. Messages highlighting increasing disagreement or polarization might inadvertently increase hostility. Future research could explore whether this kind of dynamic messaging works for other intergroup conflicts, such as those involving race or religion, and whether the observed changes in attitude persist over longer periods of time.
“Long term, I’m interested in what happens when we encourage people to think about political differences in a more future-oriented way,” Loustau said. “Rather than focusing only on how different we are right now, I want to understand what changes when people recognize both their own and others’ capacity to change. That shared capacity may itself be a form of common ground, opening space to imagine not just what society currently looks like, but what we want our relationships and world to look like in the future.”
The study, “Partisans misperceive and are influenced by dynamic norms,” was authored by Trystan Loustau, Ashley Fabrizio, Liane Young, Jordan Wylie, and Stylianos Syropoulos.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DynamicNorms #PoliticalPolarization #CrossPartisanHope #SharedTrajectory #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPsychology #BelongingRatherThanDivision #Misperceptions #InterpartyWarmth #CivicsCommunication
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Americans often fail to notice when Democrats and Republicans are moving in the same direction
Informing people about how the political attitudes of opposing parties are moving in the same direction over time might help reduce partisan hostility. New research published in Political Psychology suggests that people frequently fail to notice how much support for certain social issues has grown within both parties. When people read about these shared trajectories of opinion change without being reminded of the current gap between parties, they tend to expect more future common ground and report slightly warmer feelings toward their political opponents.
To understand how political divides operate, psychologists often look at descriptive social norms, which are individuals’ perceptions of what other people believe or do. In politics, perceptions of these norms are frequently distorted. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicated that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate how much the opposing party dislikes them. When people assume their political opponents hold extreme or hostile views, it often drives further polarization.
Researchers often try to correct these false assumptions by presenting static norms, which describe the current level of support for a specific issue within a group. However, static norms only capture a single moment in time. Dynamic norms, on the other hand, describe how a group’s beliefs or behaviors are changing over time. A 2017 study found that showing people a trend is growing in popularity can persuade them to adopt new behaviors, even if current support is relatively low.
Applying this idea to politics requires overcoming another layer of misperception. A 2022 study indicated that Americans often misjudge how public opinion has shifted over decades, usually overestimating how much attitudes have changed, especially in a liberal direction. The authors of the new study set out to test whether correcting misperceptions about these trends could soften partisan hostility. How such a message is framed may matter: a 2021 paper argued that describing partisan divisions can make division seem like the norm and inadvertently deepen polarization.
The research was led by Trystan Loustau, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. “A lot of research shows that Democrats and Republicans have distorted perceptions of one another, and that these misperceptions can make political divisions seem larger than they really are,” Loustau told PsyPost. “But most of that work focuses on a snapshot of the present: what Democrats or Republicans believe right now. We were interested in whether people also misperceive change: even when members of both parties are moving in the same direction on an issue, do people recognize that convergence?”
“That seemed especially important because the direction people think society is moving may shape how they imagine its future,” Loustau explained. “If you believe the two parties are becoming increasingly divided, you might respond very differently to political opponents than if you believe there are areas where they are gradually finding more common ground.”
In the first study, 368 Democrats and Republicans estimated current support and changes in support for 12 social issues on which support had actually risen in both parties. The researchers found that participants systematically underestimated attitude change. Only about half of the estimates accurately recognized that support for these issues was increasing. They also underestimated current levels of support by about 12 points for Democrats and 20 points for Republicans.
Misperceptions were especially pronounced when evaluating Republicans. Only about 25 percent of Democrats’ estimates and 44 percent of Republicans’ estimates regarding Republican attitude changes were accurate, compared to 77 percent and 66 percent accuracy for Democratic attitude changes. This finding is in tension with the 2022 study: here, participants often missed real increases in support for progressive positions, especially among Republicans. The authors suggest people may expect Democrats, but not Republicans, to move left.
In addition, the researchers found a correlation between recognizing these trends and intergroup attitudes. For every additional 10 percent of estimates that correctly identified change in the opposing party, participants felt about 3 points warmer toward that party on a 0-to-100 scale. This association held after accounting for accuracy about current support, which itself was unrelated to warmth.
“Political disagreement is real, but our perceptions of it are not always accurate,” Loustau pointed out. “We may be particularly bad at noticing when attitudes are changing.”
To see if correcting these misperceptions could help, the researchers randomly assigned 1,187 partisans to a dynamic norm condition, a static norm condition, or a control condition featuring apolitical topics. The dynamic norm message provided both the past and current levels of partisan support alongside the percentage-point increases over time. The static norm message only provided current support levels.
The results indicated that the dynamic norm group expected more future common ground between parties than the control group. Combining the current support levels with the trend data did not produce broader positive changes in attitudes toward the outparty, meaning the opposing party, such as warmth or expectations of belonging. The authors suggest that presenting the current levels of support alongside the trend may have inadvertently reminded participants of the existing gaps between the parties.
For the third study, the team refined the intervention using a new sample of 1,154 participants. This time, the dynamic norm condition isolated the trend information by completely removing references to current levels of partisan support. The message focused solely on how support had grown within each party over time. Participants were randomly assigned to read the refined message, the original combined message from the second study, the static message, or the control material.
The refined message increased expected common ground and expected future feelings of belonging with the outparty. People who read it reported outparty warmth of about 32.5 on a 100-point scale, compared to 25.9 in the control group, and also rated members of the other party more positively. The researchers noted that a recent review of 77 depolarization interventions found an average gain of about 5.4 points in outparty warmth, making the refined message’s 6.6-point difference comparable to that average.
The refined message was the only one to outperform the control condition on all four of these measures. On warmth and positive evaluations, however, it did not statistically outperform the original combined message or the static message, and the static message also raised warmth relative to control. No version of the message changed how much people saw the other party as overlapping with themselves.
“What surprised me most was how much the way we presented the same information mattered,” Loustau said. “It was a useful reminder that more information is not necessarily better: emphasizing how far apart the parties remain may overshadow evidence that they are moving in the same direction.”
He added, “The broader takeaway is that focusing exclusively on today’s partisan divisions can obscure meaningful ways in which public opinion is changing.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that showing partisans how much their core personal values overlap increased perceived similarity, strengthened beliefs that compromise is possible, and made people more hopeful. That study focused on present-day overlap in values, whereas the new study focused on how opinions on specific issues have shifted over time.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The sample was an online group of participants rather than a nationally representative one, and outcomes were measured right after reading the messages, with no follow-up.
The study also relied on real statistics for issues that were primarily progressive in nature, so it is not known whether these effects would hold for conservative policies or in different political contexts. Using real polling data also meant the researchers could not test larger shifts in opinion, and many of the real changes they presented were modest.
“The effects on attitudes toward the opposing party were small, and I think it is important to be clear about that,” Loustau noted. “A brief informational message is not going to eliminate partisan polarization. At the same time, polarization is a large, persistent social problem, so even small changes produced by a relatively minimal intervention can be informative, particularly because the intervention consisted simply of changing which accurate information about public opinion people saw.”
“I would view the findings less as evidence for a single solution to polarization and more as evidence that people’s expectations about where political groups are headed can influence how they think about those groups in the present,” he observed.
It is also possible that emphasizing negative trajectories could have the opposite effect. Messages highlighting increasing disagreement or polarization might inadvertently increase hostility. Future research could explore whether this kind of dynamic messaging works for other intergroup conflicts, such as those involving race or religion, and whether the observed changes in attitude persist over longer periods of time.
“Long term, I’m interested in what happens when we encourage people to think about political differences in a more future-oriented way,” Loustau said. “Rather than focusing only on how different we are right now, I want to understand what changes when people recognize both their own and others’ capacity to change. That shared capacity may itself be a form of common ground, opening space to imagine not just what society currently looks like, but what we want our relationships and world to look like in the future.”
The study, “Partisans misperceive and are influenced by dynamic norms,” was authored by Trystan Loustau, Ashley Fabrizio, Liane Young, Jordan Wylie, and Stylianos Syropoulos.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DynamicNorms #PoliticalPolarization #CrossPartisanHope #SharedTrajectory #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPsychology #BelongingRatherThanDivision #Misperceptions #InterpartyWarmth #CivicsCommunication
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Brain Scans Reveal Which Disorders Are Linked to Faster Brain Aging
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
A massive MRI brain imaging study found that people with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, alcohol addiction, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia are associated with distinct patterns of accelerated brain aging. The strongest effects appeared with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment, while ADHD and autism showed no significant overall difference. The results were published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainAging #AlzheimersDisease #MildCognitiveImpairment #BrainHealth #MRIStudy #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #PsychiatricConditions #AgingBrain #Cognition #PLOSMedicine
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Brain Scans Reveal Which Disorders Are Linked to Faster Brain Aging
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
A massive MRI brain imaging study found that people with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, alcohol addiction, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia are associated with distinct patterns of accelerated brain aging. The strongest effects appeared with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment, while ADHD and autism showed no significant overall difference. The results were published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainAging #AlzheimersDisease #MildCognitiveImpairment #BrainHealth #MRIStudy #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #PsychiatricConditions #AgingBrain #Cognition #PLOSMedicine
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Brain Scans Reveal Which Disorders Are Linked to Faster Brain Aging
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
A massive MRI brain imaging study found that people with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, alcohol addiction, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia are associated with distinct patterns of accelerated brain aging. The strongest effects appeared with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment, while ADHD and autism showed no significant overall difference. The results were published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainAging #AlzheimersDisease #MildCognitiveImpairment #BrainHealth #MRIStudy #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #PsychiatricConditions #AgingBrain #Cognition #PLOSMedicine
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:21AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Women Declare #iamjanedoe in Solidarity with Cornell Rape Accuser
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Women, some citing their own experiences of sexual assault, are posting on social media that they are Jane Doe, in solidarity with the woman using the pseudonym in accusing fraternity members of raping her at Cornell University in 2024. In a case that has drawn national attention, the woman is suing ‌seven fraternity members and the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, and has become distressed ‌at attempts by online skeptics to reveal her...
-------------------------------------------------
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 #iamjanedoe #CornellRapeAllegations #Solidarity #SexualAssaultAwareness #FraternityCulture #SurvivorVoices #CampusSafety #MeToo #JusticeForJaneDoe #IthacaNews
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:21AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Women Declare #iamjanedoe in Solidarity with Cornell Rape Accuser
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Women, some citing their own experiences of sexual assault, are posting on social media that they are Jane Doe, in solidarity with the woman using the pseudonym in accusing fraternity members of raping her at Cornell University in 2024. In a case that has drawn national attention, the woman is suing ‌seven fraternity members and the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, and has become distressed ‌at attempts by online skeptics to reveal her...
-------------------------------------------------
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 #iamjanedoe #CornellRapeAllegations #Solidarity #SexualAssaultAwareness #FraternityCulture #SurvivorVoices #CampusSafety #MeToo #JusticeForJaneDoe #IthacaNews
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:21AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Women Declare #iamjanedoe in Solidarity with Cornell Rape Accuser
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Women, some citing their own experiences of sexual assault, are posting on social media that they are Jane Doe, in solidarity with the woman using the pseudonym in accusing fraternity members of raping her at Cornell University in 2024. In a case that has drawn national attention, the woman is suing ‌seven fraternity members and the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, and has become distressed ‌at attempts by online skeptics to reveal her...
-------------------------------------------------
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 #iamjanedoe #CornellRapeAllegations #Solidarity #SexualAssaultAwareness #FraternityCulture #SurvivorVoices #CampusSafety #MeToo #JusticeForJaneDoe #IthacaNews