#psychiatry — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psychiatry, aggregated by home.social.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#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.
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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.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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/
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-
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/
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#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/
-------------------------------------------------
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-
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/
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-
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #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.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #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.
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #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...
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#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...
-------------------------------------------------
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#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
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-------------------------------------------------
#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
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DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Removing Confederate Monuments Does Not Seem to Change Racial Bias
Source: PsyPost
A recent investigation into whether the presence or removal of Confederate monuments affects racial prejudice found no evidence that these statues cause changes in people's biases. The findings suggest that while these monuments are deeply tied to historical inequalities, simply being exposed to them does not directly alter subconscious or conscious racial attitudes, and there is no evidence that removing them from public squares does either.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ConfederateMonuments #RacialBias #PublicMonuments #HistoricalInequality #StatuesAndBias #SocialPsychology #MonumentDebate #RacismResearch #PublicSquares #RemovingMonuments
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DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Removing Confederate Monuments Does Not Seem to Change Racial Bias
Source: PsyPost
A recent investigation into whether the presence or removal of Confederate monuments affects racial prejudice found no evidence that these statues cause changes in people's biases. The findings suggest that while these monuments are deeply tied to historical inequalities, simply being exposed to them does not directly alter subconscious or conscious racial attitudes, and there is no evidence that removing them from public squares does either.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ConfederateMonuments #RacialBias #PublicMonuments #HistoricalInequality #StatuesAndBias #SocialPsychology #MonumentDebate #RacismResearch #PublicSquares #RemovingMonuments
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 05:20AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Removing Confederate Monuments Does Not Seem to Change Racial Bias
Source: PsyPost
A recent investigation into whether the presence or removal of Confederate monuments affects racial prejudice found no evidence that these statues cause changes in people's biases. The findings suggest that while these monuments are deeply tied to historical inequalities, simply being exposed to them does not directly alter subconscious or conscious racial attitudes, and there is no evidence that removing them from public squares does either.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ConfederateMonuments #RacialBias #PublicMonuments #HistoricalInequality #StatuesAndBias #SocialPsychology #MonumentDebate #RacismResearch #PublicSquares #RemovingMonuments
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Conscientiousness outshines cognitive ability in predicting leadership among West Point cadets
Academic records and standardized test scores accurately forecast whether a student will succeed in the classroom. When it comes to forecasting leadership potential, personality traits such as conscientiousness carry the most weight. A recent study published in Military Psychology synthesized decades of data on United States Military Academy cadets to show how different admission criteria relate to later academic, physical, and leadership performance.
The United States Military Academy at West Point aims to produce officers capable of leading soldiers in complex, unpredictable, and potentially hostile environments. To identify candidates with this potential, the academy uses a highly structured admissions process. The process evaluates cognitive abilities, physical fitness, and non-cognitive traits. Cognitive traits are typically measured by standardized test scores and high school grades.
In its earliest days, admission to West Point was based primarily on congressional nominations and basic literacy tests. Over the past century, the academy has continually refined its criteria. The modern admissions process relies on a composite ranking called the Whole Candidate Score. This score weights a candidate’s academic ability, leadership potential, and physical ability to provide a comprehensive profile of their potential.
Once admitted, cadet performance is tracked across three distinct domains. The Academic Performance Score reflects grades in core coursework. The Military Performance Score encompasses evaluations from summer training and leadership ratings from cadet positions. The Physical Performance Score includes physical education grades and standardized fitness tests.
To study the psychological aspects of candidate success, researchers often use the Five-Factor Model of personality. This framework categorizes broad personality traits into openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. Conscientiousness involves impulse control, goal-directed behavior, and a tendency to follow established rules.
Another popular psychological concept is grit, which describes a person’s perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Researchers also study hardiness. Hardiness is considered a blend of commitment, a sense of control, and a willingness to embrace new challenges.
While researchers have studied West Point admission criteria for decades, no one had combined these findings into a single statistical review. Psychology researchers Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel from the University of Minnesota sought to fill this gap. They wanted to understand exactly how well different cognitive and non-cognitive variables predict success in the three main areas of cadet life.
To conduct their review, Elliott and Kuncel performed a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a statistical method that pools data from multiple individual studies to identify overarching trends that a single study might miss. The researchers gathered data from 15 published and unpublished sources representing 21 independent samples. Their combined dataset included a large sample of 29,102 cadets from West Point graduating classes between 1949 and 2022.
The researchers extracted the statistical relationships between pre-admission variables and the actual performance outcomes measured during the cadets’ time at the academy. They applied mathematical corrections to the data to account for the reliability of the measurements used in the original studies. They also adjusted the numbers to account for the fact that West Point cadets are a highly selected group. Admitted cadets usually have higher test scores and better physical fitness than the general population, which can statistically limit the range of the data.
The analysis revealed that cognitive predictors functioned exactly as expected for classroom outcomes. Standardized test scores and high school class rank were strongly associated with academic success. Traditional cognitive measures had a much weaker relationship with military leadership performance, however.
These cognitive scores were almost entirely unrelated to physical performance, with the exception of a small positive link between math scores and physical outcomes. The authors note this small link might reflect an indirect effect where individuals who apply sustained effort to learning math also apply discipline to physical training.
When evaluating personality traits, the researchers found that conscientiousness emerged as the most powerful non-cognitive predictor of leader performance. Cadets who scored high in conscientiousness also performed better academically and physically. Other major personality traits, such as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, showed little to no relationship with leadership ratings.
The researchers also looked at grit, which is often cited as a highly desired trait in military culture. They found that grit had only a modest relationship with leadership performance. It demonstrated an even smaller positive relationship with academic and physical outcomes. Hardiness showed a very weak relationship with leadership.
These results indicate that conscientiousness plays an outsized role in a cadet’s ability to navigate the rigorous environment of a military academy. The trait involves planning, self-discipline, and long-term orientation. These characteristics align closely with strict institutional standards. Cadets who internalize these behaviors tend to set an example for others to follow, a habit that is associated with effective leadership.
The authors suggest that selection systems could benefit from incorporating measurements of conscientiousness. Cognitive measures like the SAT are excellent at predicting who will pass classes, but they miss the personality elements associated with leadership. Adding personality assessments to the admissions process could help institutions select candidates with a broader range of the skills needed to succeed.
A primary limitation of this research is its reliance on self-reported personality assessments. Traits like conscientiousness are highly desirable in competitive admissions environments. Applicants might intentionally alter their survey responses to appear more organized or disciplined than they actually are, a phenomenon known as social desirability bias. This bias can artificially inflate a candidate’s apparent qualifications.
To address the issue of biased self-reporting, future research could explore observer-based assessments. Having teachers, coaches, or peers rate an applicant’s personality could provide a more accurate picture of their character. Admissions systems could also use forced-choice personality tests, which require applicants to choose between equally desirable options. These formats make the tests harder to manipulate.
Future studies could also examine how well these admission variables relate to outcomes long after graduation. Tracking junior officers as they advance in their military careers would help determine if the traits associated with success at West Point also predict long-term occupational achievement. Linking pre-commissioning data with career milestones could reveal the ideal mix of personality traits required in complex operational environments.
The study, “Brain, personality, and leadership: A meta-analysis of performance predictors among West Point cadets,” was authored by Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #WestPointLeadership #ConscientiousnessMatters #PersonalityOverIQ #LeadershipPrediction #CadetPerformance #MilitaryPsychology #NonCognitiveTraits #GritVsConscientiousness #AdmissionsStrategy #PersonalityAssessment
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Conscientiousness outshines cognitive ability in predicting leadership among West Point cadets
Academic records and standardized test scores accurately forecast whether a student will succeed in the classroom. When it comes to forecasting leadership potential, personality traits such as conscientiousness carry the most weight. A recent study published in Military Psychology synthesized decades of data on United States Military Academy cadets to show how different admission criteria relate to later academic, physical, and leadership performance.
The United States Military Academy at West Point aims to produce officers capable of leading soldiers in complex, unpredictable, and potentially hostile environments. To identify candidates with this potential, the academy uses a highly structured admissions process. The process evaluates cognitive abilities, physical fitness, and non-cognitive traits. Cognitive traits are typically measured by standardized test scores and high school grades.
In its earliest days, admission to West Point was based primarily on congressional nominations and basic literacy tests. Over the past century, the academy has continually refined its criteria. The modern admissions process relies on a composite ranking called the Whole Candidate Score. This score weights a candidate’s academic ability, leadership potential, and physical ability to provide a comprehensive profile of their potential.
Once admitted, cadet performance is tracked across three distinct domains. The Academic Performance Score reflects grades in core coursework. The Military Performance Score encompasses evaluations from summer training and leadership ratings from cadet positions. The Physical Performance Score includes physical education grades and standardized fitness tests.
To study the psychological aspects of candidate success, researchers often use the Five-Factor Model of personality. This framework categorizes broad personality traits into openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. Conscientiousness involves impulse control, goal-directed behavior, and a tendency to follow established rules.
Another popular psychological concept is grit, which describes a person’s perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Researchers also study hardiness. Hardiness is considered a blend of commitment, a sense of control, and a willingness to embrace new challenges.
While researchers have studied West Point admission criteria for decades, no one had combined these findings into a single statistical review. Psychology researchers Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel from the University of Minnesota sought to fill this gap. They wanted to understand exactly how well different cognitive and non-cognitive variables predict success in the three main areas of cadet life.
To conduct their review, Elliott and Kuncel performed a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a statistical method that pools data from multiple individual studies to identify overarching trends that a single study might miss. The researchers gathered data from 15 published and unpublished sources representing 21 independent samples. Their combined dataset included a large sample of 29,102 cadets from West Point graduating classes between 1949 and 2022.
The researchers extracted the statistical relationships between pre-admission variables and the actual performance outcomes measured during the cadets’ time at the academy. They applied mathematical corrections to the data to account for the reliability of the measurements used in the original studies. They also adjusted the numbers to account for the fact that West Point cadets are a highly selected group. Admitted cadets usually have higher test scores and better physical fitness than the general population, which can statistically limit the range of the data.
The analysis revealed that cognitive predictors functioned exactly as expected for classroom outcomes. Standardized test scores and high school class rank were strongly associated with academic success. Traditional cognitive measures had a much weaker relationship with military leadership performance, however.
These cognitive scores were almost entirely unrelated to physical performance, with the exception of a small positive link between math scores and physical outcomes. The authors note this small link might reflect an indirect effect where individuals who apply sustained effort to learning math also apply discipline to physical training.
When evaluating personality traits, the researchers found that conscientiousness emerged as the most powerful non-cognitive predictor of leader performance. Cadets who scored high in conscientiousness also performed better academically and physically. Other major personality traits, such as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, showed little to no relationship with leadership ratings.
The researchers also looked at grit, which is often cited as a highly desired trait in military culture. They found that grit had only a modest relationship with leadership performance. It demonstrated an even smaller positive relationship with academic and physical outcomes. Hardiness showed a very weak relationship with leadership.
These results indicate that conscientiousness plays an outsized role in a cadet’s ability to navigate the rigorous environment of a military academy. The trait involves planning, self-discipline, and long-term orientation. These characteristics align closely with strict institutional standards. Cadets who internalize these behaviors tend to set an example for others to follow, a habit that is associated with effective leadership.
The authors suggest that selection systems could benefit from incorporating measurements of conscientiousness. Cognitive measures like the SAT are excellent at predicting who will pass classes, but they miss the personality elements associated with leadership. Adding personality assessments to the admissions process could help institutions select candidates with a broader range of the skills needed to succeed.
A primary limitation of this research is its reliance on self-reported personality assessments. Traits like conscientiousness are highly desirable in competitive admissions environments. Applicants might intentionally alter their survey responses to appear more organized or disciplined than they actually are, a phenomenon known as social desirability bias. This bias can artificially inflate a candidate’s apparent qualifications.
To address the issue of biased self-reporting, future research could explore observer-based assessments. Having teachers, coaches, or peers rate an applicant’s personality could provide a more accurate picture of their character. Admissions systems could also use forced-choice personality tests, which require applicants to choose between equally desirable options. These formats make the tests harder to manipulate.
Future studies could also examine how well these admission variables relate to outcomes long after graduation. Tracking junior officers as they advance in their military careers would help determine if the traits associated with success at West Point also predict long-term occupational achievement. Linking pre-commissioning data with career milestones could reveal the ideal mix of personality traits required in complex operational environments.
The study, “Brain, personality, and leadership: A meta-analysis of performance predictors among West Point cadets,” was authored by Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #WestPointLeadership #ConscientiousnessMatters #PersonalityOverIQ #LeadershipPrediction #CadetPerformance #MilitaryPsychology #NonCognitiveTraits #GritVsConscientiousness #AdmissionsStrategy #PersonalityAssessment
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Conscientiousness outshines cognitive ability in predicting leadership among West Point cadets
Academic records and standardized test scores accurately forecast whether a student will succeed in the classroom. When it comes to forecasting leadership potential, personality traits such as conscientiousness carry the most weight. A recent study published in Military Psychology synthesized decades of data on United States Military Academy cadets to show how different admission criteria relate to later academic, physical, and leadership performance.
The United States Military Academy at West Point aims to produce officers capable of leading soldiers in complex, unpredictable, and potentially hostile environments. To identify candidates with this potential, the academy uses a highly structured admissions process. The process evaluates cognitive abilities, physical fitness, and non-cognitive traits. Cognitive traits are typically measured by standardized test scores and high school grades.
In its earliest days, admission to West Point was based primarily on congressional nominations and basic literacy tests. Over the past century, the academy has continually refined its criteria. The modern admissions process relies on a composite ranking called the Whole Candidate Score. This score weights a candidate’s academic ability, leadership potential, and physical ability to provide a comprehensive profile of their potential.
Once admitted, cadet performance is tracked across three distinct domains. The Academic Performance Score reflects grades in core coursework. The Military Performance Score encompasses evaluations from summer training and leadership ratings from cadet positions. The Physical Performance Score includes physical education grades and standardized fitness tests.
To study the psychological aspects of candidate success, researchers often use the Five-Factor Model of personality. This framework categorizes broad personality traits into openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. Conscientiousness involves impulse control, goal-directed behavior, and a tendency to follow established rules.
Another popular psychological concept is grit, which describes a person’s perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Researchers also study hardiness. Hardiness is considered a blend of commitment, a sense of control, and a willingness to embrace new challenges.
While researchers have studied West Point admission criteria for decades, no one had combined these findings into a single statistical review. Psychology researchers Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel from the University of Minnesota sought to fill this gap. They wanted to understand exactly how well different cognitive and non-cognitive variables predict success in the three main areas of cadet life.
To conduct their review, Elliott and Kuncel performed a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a statistical method that pools data from multiple individual studies to identify overarching trends that a single study might miss. The researchers gathered data from 15 published and unpublished sources representing 21 independent samples. Their combined dataset included a large sample of 29,102 cadets from West Point graduating classes between 1949 and 2022.
The researchers extracted the statistical relationships between pre-admission variables and the actual performance outcomes measured during the cadets’ time at the academy. They applied mathematical corrections to the data to account for the reliability of the measurements used in the original studies. They also adjusted the numbers to account for the fact that West Point cadets are a highly selected group. Admitted cadets usually have higher test scores and better physical fitness than the general population, which can statistically limit the range of the data.
The analysis revealed that cognitive predictors functioned exactly as expected for classroom outcomes. Standardized test scores and high school class rank were strongly associated with academic success. Traditional cognitive measures had a much weaker relationship with military leadership performance, however.
These cognitive scores were almost entirely unrelated to physical performance, with the exception of a small positive link between math scores and physical outcomes. The authors note this small link might reflect an indirect effect where individuals who apply sustained effort to learning math also apply discipline to physical training.
When evaluating personality traits, the researchers found that conscientiousness emerged as the most powerful non-cognitive predictor of leader performance. Cadets who scored high in conscientiousness also performed better academically and physically. Other major personality traits, such as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, showed little to no relationship with leadership ratings.
The researchers also looked at grit, which is often cited as a highly desired trait in military culture. They found that grit had only a modest relationship with leadership performance. It demonstrated an even smaller positive relationship with academic and physical outcomes. Hardiness showed a very weak relationship with leadership.
These results indicate that conscientiousness plays an outsized role in a cadet’s ability to navigate the rigorous environment of a military academy. The trait involves planning, self-discipline, and long-term orientation. These characteristics align closely with strict institutional standards. Cadets who internalize these behaviors tend to set an example for others to follow, a habit that is associated with effective leadership.
The authors suggest that selection systems could benefit from incorporating measurements of conscientiousness. Cognitive measures like the SAT are excellent at predicting who will pass classes, but they miss the personality elements associated with leadership. Adding personality assessments to the admissions process could help institutions select candidates with a broader range of the skills needed to succeed.
A primary limitation of this research is its reliance on self-reported personality assessments. Traits like conscientiousness are highly desirable in competitive admissions environments. Applicants might intentionally alter their survey responses to appear more organized or disciplined than they actually are, a phenomenon known as social desirability bias. This bias can artificially inflate a candidate’s apparent qualifications.
To address the issue of biased self-reporting, future research could explore observer-based assessments. Having teachers, coaches, or peers rate an applicant’s personality could provide a more accurate picture of their character. Admissions systems could also use forced-choice personality tests, which require applicants to choose between equally desirable options. These formats make the tests harder to manipulate.
Future studies could also examine how well these admission variables relate to outcomes long after graduation. Tracking junior officers as they advance in their military careers would help determine if the traits associated with success at West Point also predict long-term occupational achievement. Linking pre-commissioning data with career milestones could reveal the ideal mix of personality traits required in complex operational environments.
The study, “Brain, personality, and leadership: A meta-analysis of performance predictors among West Point cadets,” was authored by Benjamin J. Elliott and Nathan R. Kuncel.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #WestPointLeadership #ConscientiousnessMatters #PersonalityOverIQ #LeadershipPrediction #CadetPerformance #MilitaryPsychology #NonCognitiveTraits #GritVsConscientiousness #AdmissionsStrategy #PersonalityAssessment
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Hormone therapy before frozen embryo transfer is tied to larger babies but not to differences in early childhood IQ
Children conceived through frozen embryo transfers prepared with hormone replacement therapy tend to score about the same on early childhood intelligence tests as those conceived using natural cycle protocols. The hormone method was, however, linked to a higher rate of unusually large babies and more admissions to newborn care units. The research was published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology.
Assisted reproductive technology provides medical procedures to help people achieve pregnancy, and advancements in freezing techniques have made frozen embryo transfer increasingly common. In this procedure, an embryo created in a laboratory is frozen, thawed at a later date, and then placed into the mother’s uterus. Preparing the lining of the uterus to receive the embryo is a necessary step. The timing must align closely so that the uterus is ready when the embryo is introduced.
For women who have regular menstrual periods, doctors generally use one of two methods to prepare the uterus. The natural cycle method relies on the woman’s own hormonal cycle to naturally thicken the uterine lining. Medical staff monitor this cycle, sometimes use an injection to trigger ovulation, and then provide a supplemental progesterone-like drug to support early pregnancy.
In contrast, the hormone replacement therapy method lacks natural ovulation. Instead, patients take external hormones, specifically estrogen and progesterone, to artificially build up the lining and prepare it for the embryo.
While hormone replacement therapy is widely used, it relies on adding estrogen from medication, which alters the mother’s internal hormone levels. Prior studies provide evidence that being exposed to unusually high levels of estrogen during early pregnancy might be linked to changes in an offspring’s brain development.
The research, led by Xiaomeng Shi, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu of Zhejiang University, aimed to compare the cognitive function of children conceived through these two different uterine preparation methods. By analyzing past intelligence assessments of children between three and six years old, an age range the authors note is too young for puberty to affect the results, the researchers hoped to provide better guidance for patients choosing an embryo transfer protocol.
The research team looked at medical records and follow-up assessments from a reproductive center in China. Out of 1,538 recruited families, 790 children born from single, non-twin pregnancies met the criteria and made the final sample. These children were born to mothers who had regular menstrual cycles and underwent frozen, early-stage embryo transfers between 2004 and 2017.
Blastocyst transfers, which involve embryos developed a few days longer in the laboratory, were excluded from the analysis. Out of the included children, 434 were conceived using the natural cycle method, and 356 were conceived using the hormone replacement therapy method.
At the follow-up visits, trained assessors evaluated the children’s cognitive function using a standardized intelligence test adapted for Chinese children. The test measured verbal intelligence through tasks like vocabulary and comprehension, and performance intelligence using mazes, block design, and a matching task. Together, these scores provided a full-scale intelligence quotient, or IQ. To reduce bias, the assessors did not know which embryo transfer method each child’s mother had used.
The researchers also gathered extensive medical data to account for variables that might influence a child’s intelligence. In their statistical model, they adjusted for the year of transfer, the parents’ ages and body mass index, a measure of weight relative to height. They also accounted for the fertilization method, how long the embryo was frozen, uterine lining thickness, the mother’s estrogen level, length of pregnancy, and newborn unit admissions.
The results indicated that the cognitive function of children born after hormone replacement therapy was similar to that of children born after the natural cycle method. The researchers found no statistically significant differences in verbal intelligence, performance intelligence, or full-scale IQ scores between the two groups. After adjustment, the hormone group’s full-scale IQ averaged about two points lower, a gap that fell just short of statistical significance. The results argue against a large difference but cannot rule out a small one.
Rates of what the researchers defined as intellectual disability, an IQ below 80, were similar regardless of how the mother’s uterus was prepared. This threshold is higher than the usual clinical cutoff of about 70. After adjustment, the hormone group scored slightly higher on the vocabulary subtest. The authors did not correct for running many comparisons and describe these secondary results as exploratory, so this single difference may reflect chance.
The scientists also broke the data down by the child’s sex and by the specific fertilization method used. They looked at sex because biological differences can sometimes lead to different sensitivities to the environment inside the womb. They looked at the fertilization method, separating standard in vitro fertilization from intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg.
Earlier studies disagree on whether this injection procedure is tied to cognitive differences. In all of these smaller groups, the researchers still found no statistically significant differences in IQ scores between the two uterine preparation protocols.
The authors propose that estrogen levels in the hormone therapy group may fall below the levels tied to cognitive problems in earlier research, though the study did not test this directly. The typical level in the hormone group, measured in the mother’s blood shortly before the transfer, was about a third higher than in the natural cycle group. However, levels varied much more widely, and about a quarter of mothers in the hormone group had levels more than four times the typical natural cycle level.
Looking at the birth records, the study noted that babies in the hormone therapy group had a higher chance of being born unusually large for their gestational age, meaning heavier than 90 percent of babies born at the same point in pregnancy. Specifically, 22.2 percent of the babies in the hormone group were classified as large, compared to 15.2 percent in the natural cycle group. The babies in the hormone group also had a higher rate of admission to newborn care units, at 14.6 percent versus 9.0 percent for the natural cycle group. The major reasons for these newborn care unit admissions included jaundice, respiratory system diseases, and preterm birth.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. Because the study looked back at past medical records rather than randomly assigning patients to a protocol, unmeasured factors such as the parents’ lifestyle, family socioeconomic status, or the child’s early educational environment might influence the results. The timeline of treatments was also not evenly distributed, with hormone therapy becoming much more common in the later years of the study period. The analysis adjusted for transfer year, but changes in clinical and laboratory practice over that period could still affect the comparison.
There is also a chance of over-adjustment in the statistical model. By controlling for factors like estrogen levels and length of pregnancy, which are part of the pathway being studied or possible downstream effects, the model could potentially hide a real effect. The unadjusted results also showed no statistically significant differences, so the main conclusion does not depend entirely on these adjustments.
Additionally, the findings may not apply to blastocyst transfers, which are now common in modern clinics, or to women who do not ovulate regularly. Finally, the children were followed only up to age six. Future studies could track cognitive abilities into the teenage years to see if any subtle differences emerge over time.
The study, “Cognitive function in offspring born after frozen embryo transfer following hormone replacement therapy cycles versus natural cycles: a retrospective cohort study,” was authored by Xiaomeng Shi, Xiaojing Wu, Aqiong Xie, Shuangying Liu, Xiaoqian Zhou, Yingzhi Yang, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #FrozenEmbryoTransfer #HormoneReplacementTherapy #NaturalCycleVsHormoneCycle #EmbryoTransferResearch #PediatricIQ #ChildDevelopment #AssistedReproduction #IVFNews #BirthOutcomes #NewbornCareUnits
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Hormone therapy before frozen embryo transfer is tied to larger babies but not to differences in early childhood IQ
Children conceived through frozen embryo transfers prepared with hormone replacement therapy tend to score about the same on early childhood intelligence tests as those conceived using natural cycle protocols. The hormone method was, however, linked to a higher rate of unusually large babies and more admissions to newborn care units. The research was published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology.
Assisted reproductive technology provides medical procedures to help people achieve pregnancy, and advancements in freezing techniques have made frozen embryo transfer increasingly common. In this procedure, an embryo created in a laboratory is frozen, thawed at a later date, and then placed into the mother’s uterus. Preparing the lining of the uterus to receive the embryo is a necessary step. The timing must align closely so that the uterus is ready when the embryo is introduced.
For women who have regular menstrual periods, doctors generally use one of two methods to prepare the uterus. The natural cycle method relies on the woman’s own hormonal cycle to naturally thicken the uterine lining. Medical staff monitor this cycle, sometimes use an injection to trigger ovulation, and then provide a supplemental progesterone-like drug to support early pregnancy.
In contrast, the hormone replacement therapy method lacks natural ovulation. Instead, patients take external hormones, specifically estrogen and progesterone, to artificially build up the lining and prepare it for the embryo.
While hormone replacement therapy is widely used, it relies on adding estrogen from medication, which alters the mother’s internal hormone levels. Prior studies provide evidence that being exposed to unusually high levels of estrogen during early pregnancy might be linked to changes in an offspring’s brain development.
The research, led by Xiaomeng Shi, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu of Zhejiang University, aimed to compare the cognitive function of children conceived through these two different uterine preparation methods. By analyzing past intelligence assessments of children between three and six years old, an age range the authors note is too young for puberty to affect the results, the researchers hoped to provide better guidance for patients choosing an embryo transfer protocol.
The research team looked at medical records and follow-up assessments from a reproductive center in China. Out of 1,538 recruited families, 790 children born from single, non-twin pregnancies met the criteria and made the final sample. These children were born to mothers who had regular menstrual cycles and underwent frozen, early-stage embryo transfers between 2004 and 2017.
Blastocyst transfers, which involve embryos developed a few days longer in the laboratory, were excluded from the analysis. Out of the included children, 434 were conceived using the natural cycle method, and 356 were conceived using the hormone replacement therapy method.
At the follow-up visits, trained assessors evaluated the children’s cognitive function using a standardized intelligence test adapted for Chinese children. The test measured verbal intelligence through tasks like vocabulary and comprehension, and performance intelligence using mazes, block design, and a matching task. Together, these scores provided a full-scale intelligence quotient, or IQ. To reduce bias, the assessors did not know which embryo transfer method each child’s mother had used.
The researchers also gathered extensive medical data to account for variables that might influence a child’s intelligence. In their statistical model, they adjusted for the year of transfer, the parents’ ages and body mass index, a measure of weight relative to height. They also accounted for the fertilization method, how long the embryo was frozen, uterine lining thickness, the mother’s estrogen level, length of pregnancy, and newborn unit admissions.
The results indicated that the cognitive function of children born after hormone replacement therapy was similar to that of children born after the natural cycle method. The researchers found no statistically significant differences in verbal intelligence, performance intelligence, or full-scale IQ scores between the two groups. After adjustment, the hormone group’s full-scale IQ averaged about two points lower, a gap that fell just short of statistical significance. The results argue against a large difference but cannot rule out a small one.
Rates of what the researchers defined as intellectual disability, an IQ below 80, were similar regardless of how the mother’s uterus was prepared. This threshold is higher than the usual clinical cutoff of about 70. After adjustment, the hormone group scored slightly higher on the vocabulary subtest. The authors did not correct for running many comparisons and describe these secondary results as exploratory, so this single difference may reflect chance.
The scientists also broke the data down by the child’s sex and by the specific fertilization method used. They looked at sex because biological differences can sometimes lead to different sensitivities to the environment inside the womb. They looked at the fertilization method, separating standard in vitro fertilization from intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg.
Earlier studies disagree on whether this injection procedure is tied to cognitive differences. In all of these smaller groups, the researchers still found no statistically significant differences in IQ scores between the two uterine preparation protocols.
The authors propose that estrogen levels in the hormone therapy group may fall below the levels tied to cognitive problems in earlier research, though the study did not test this directly. The typical level in the hormone group, measured in the mother’s blood shortly before the transfer, was about a third higher than in the natural cycle group. However, levels varied much more widely, and about a quarter of mothers in the hormone group had levels more than four times the typical natural cycle level.
Looking at the birth records, the study noted that babies in the hormone therapy group had a higher chance of being born unusually large for their gestational age, meaning heavier than 90 percent of babies born at the same point in pregnancy. Specifically, 22.2 percent of the babies in the hormone group were classified as large, compared to 15.2 percent in the natural cycle group. The babies in the hormone group also had a higher rate of admission to newborn care units, at 14.6 percent versus 9.0 percent for the natural cycle group. The major reasons for these newborn care unit admissions included jaundice, respiratory system diseases, and preterm birth.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. Because the study looked back at past medical records rather than randomly assigning patients to a protocol, unmeasured factors such as the parents’ lifestyle, family socioeconomic status, or the child’s early educational environment might influence the results. The timeline of treatments was also not evenly distributed, with hormone therapy becoming much more common in the later years of the study period. The analysis adjusted for transfer year, but changes in clinical and laboratory practice over that period could still affect the comparison.
There is also a chance of over-adjustment in the statistical model. By controlling for factors like estrogen levels and length of pregnancy, which are part of the pathway being studied or possible downstream effects, the model could potentially hide a real effect. The unadjusted results also showed no statistically significant differences, so the main conclusion does not depend entirely on these adjustments.
Additionally, the findings may not apply to blastocyst transfers, which are now common in modern clinics, or to women who do not ovulate regularly. Finally, the children were followed only up to age six. Future studies could track cognitive abilities into the teenage years to see if any subtle differences emerge over time.
The study, “Cognitive function in offspring born after frozen embryo transfer following hormone replacement therapy cycles versus natural cycles: a retrospective cohort study,” was authored by Xiaomeng Shi, Xiaojing Wu, Aqiong Xie, Shuangying Liu, Xiaoqian Zhou, Yingzhi Yang, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu.
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DATE: October 3, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Hormone therapy before frozen embryo transfer is tied to larger babies but not to differences in early childhood IQ
Children conceived through frozen embryo transfers prepared with hormone replacement therapy tend to score about the same on early childhood intelligence tests as those conceived using natural cycle protocols. The hormone method was, however, linked to a higher rate of unusually large babies and more admissions to newborn care units. The research was published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology.
Assisted reproductive technology provides medical procedures to help people achieve pregnancy, and advancements in freezing techniques have made frozen embryo transfer increasingly common. In this procedure, an embryo created in a laboratory is frozen, thawed at a later date, and then placed into the mother’s uterus. Preparing the lining of the uterus to receive the embryo is a necessary step. The timing must align closely so that the uterus is ready when the embryo is introduced.
For women who have regular menstrual periods, doctors generally use one of two methods to prepare the uterus. The natural cycle method relies on the woman’s own hormonal cycle to naturally thicken the uterine lining. Medical staff monitor this cycle, sometimes use an injection to trigger ovulation, and then provide a supplemental progesterone-like drug to support early pregnancy.
In contrast, the hormone replacement therapy method lacks natural ovulation. Instead, patients take external hormones, specifically estrogen and progesterone, to artificially build up the lining and prepare it for the embryo.
While hormone replacement therapy is widely used, it relies on adding estrogen from medication, which alters the mother’s internal hormone levels. Prior studies provide evidence that being exposed to unusually high levels of estrogen during early pregnancy might be linked to changes in an offspring’s brain development.
The research, led by Xiaomeng Shi, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu of Zhejiang University, aimed to compare the cognitive function of children conceived through these two different uterine preparation methods. By analyzing past intelligence assessments of children between three and six years old, an age range the authors note is too young for puberty to affect the results, the researchers hoped to provide better guidance for patients choosing an embryo transfer protocol.
The research team looked at medical records and follow-up assessments from a reproductive center in China. Out of 1,538 recruited families, 790 children born from single, non-twin pregnancies met the criteria and made the final sample. These children were born to mothers who had regular menstrual cycles and underwent frozen, early-stage embryo transfers between 2004 and 2017.
Blastocyst transfers, which involve embryos developed a few days longer in the laboratory, were excluded from the analysis. Out of the included children, 434 were conceived using the natural cycle method, and 356 were conceived using the hormone replacement therapy method.
At the follow-up visits, trained assessors evaluated the children’s cognitive function using a standardized intelligence test adapted for Chinese children. The test measured verbal intelligence through tasks like vocabulary and comprehension, and performance intelligence using mazes, block design, and a matching task. Together, these scores provided a full-scale intelligence quotient, or IQ. To reduce bias, the assessors did not know which embryo transfer method each child’s mother had used.
The researchers also gathered extensive medical data to account for variables that might influence a child’s intelligence. In their statistical model, they adjusted for the year of transfer, the parents’ ages and body mass index, a measure of weight relative to height. They also accounted for the fertilization method, how long the embryo was frozen, uterine lining thickness, the mother’s estrogen level, length of pregnancy, and newborn unit admissions.
The results indicated that the cognitive function of children born after hormone replacement therapy was similar to that of children born after the natural cycle method. The researchers found no statistically significant differences in verbal intelligence, performance intelligence, or full-scale IQ scores between the two groups. After adjustment, the hormone group’s full-scale IQ averaged about two points lower, a gap that fell just short of statistical significance. The results argue against a large difference but cannot rule out a small one.
Rates of what the researchers defined as intellectual disability, an IQ below 80, were similar regardless of how the mother’s uterus was prepared. This threshold is higher than the usual clinical cutoff of about 70. After adjustment, the hormone group scored slightly higher on the vocabulary subtest. The authors did not correct for running many comparisons and describe these secondary results as exploratory, so this single difference may reflect chance.
The scientists also broke the data down by the child’s sex and by the specific fertilization method used. They looked at sex because biological differences can sometimes lead to different sensitivities to the environment inside the womb. They looked at the fertilization method, separating standard in vitro fertilization from intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg.
Earlier studies disagree on whether this injection procedure is tied to cognitive differences. In all of these smaller groups, the researchers still found no statistically significant differences in IQ scores between the two uterine preparation protocols.
The authors propose that estrogen levels in the hormone therapy group may fall below the levels tied to cognitive problems in earlier research, though the study did not test this directly. The typical level in the hormone group, measured in the mother’s blood shortly before the transfer, was about a third higher than in the natural cycle group. However, levels varied much more widely, and about a quarter of mothers in the hormone group had levels more than four times the typical natural cycle level.
Looking at the birth records, the study noted that babies in the hormone therapy group had a higher chance of being born unusually large for their gestational age, meaning heavier than 90 percent of babies born at the same point in pregnancy. Specifically, 22.2 percent of the babies in the hormone group were classified as large, compared to 15.2 percent in the natural cycle group. The babies in the hormone group also had a higher rate of admission to newborn care units, at 14.6 percent versus 9.0 percent for the natural cycle group. The major reasons for these newborn care unit admissions included jaundice, respiratory system diseases, and preterm birth.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. Because the study looked back at past medical records rather than randomly assigning patients to a protocol, unmeasured factors such as the parents’ lifestyle, family socioeconomic status, or the child’s early educational environment might influence the results. The timeline of treatments was also not evenly distributed, with hormone therapy becoming much more common in the later years of the study period. The analysis adjusted for transfer year, but changes in clinical and laboratory practice over that period could still affect the comparison.
There is also a chance of over-adjustment in the statistical model. By controlling for factors like estrogen levels and length of pregnancy, which are part of the pathway being studied or possible downstream effects, the model could potentially hide a real effect. The unadjusted results also showed no statistically significant differences, so the main conclusion does not depend entirely on these adjustments.
Additionally, the findings may not apply to blastocyst transfers, which are now common in modern clinics, or to women who do not ovulate regularly. Finally, the children were followed only up to age six. Future studies could track cognitive abilities into the teenage years to see if any subtle differences emerge over time.
The study, “Cognitive function in offspring born after frozen embryo transfer following hormone replacement therapy cycles versus natural cycles: a retrospective cohort study,” was authored by Xiaomeng Shi, Xiaojing Wu, Aqiong Xie, Shuangying Liu, Xiaoqian Zhou, Yingzhi Yang, Minyue Tang, and Yimin Zhu.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #FrozenEmbryoTransfer #HormoneReplacementTherapy #NaturalCycleVsHormoneCycle #EmbryoTransferResearch #PediatricIQ #ChildDevelopment #AssistedReproduction #IVFNews #BirthOutcomes #NewbornCareUnits
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DATE: October 3, 2026 at 01:27PM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Did Musk's AI Chatbot Lead Trump to Capture Venezuela's President?
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
In December 2025, about a month before the U.S. invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, President Trump had a secret meeting with Elon Musk, Time magazine reports. This was roughly seven months after Musk left his Trump administration role at the Department of Government Efficiency. During this meeting, Trump "spent hours" talking to Musk's Grok chatbot, including asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of...
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MuskGrokChatbot #TrumpVenezuelaPlot #NicolasMaduro #VenezuelaCapture #USInvasion2025 #TechPolitics #ElonMusk #GrokAI #TimeMagazineReport #PoliticalAIShadows
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DATE: October 3, 2026 at 01:27PM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Did Musk's AI Chatbot Lead Trump to Capture Venezuela's President?
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
In December 2025, about a month before the U.S. invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, President Trump had a secret meeting with Elon Musk, Time magazine reports. This was roughly seven months after Musk left his Trump administration role at the Department of Government Efficiency. During this meeting, Trump "spent hours" talking to Musk's Grok chatbot, including asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of...
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MuskGrokChatbot #TrumpVenezuelaPlot #NicolasMaduro #VenezuelaCapture #USInvasion2025 #TechPolitics #ElonMusk #GrokAI #TimeMagazineReport #PoliticalAIShadows
-
DATE: October 3, 2026 at 01:27PM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Did Musk's AI Chatbot Lead Trump to Capture Venezuela's President?
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
In December 2025, about a month before the U.S. invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, President Trump had a secret meeting with Elon Musk, Time magazine reports. This was roughly seven months after Musk left his Trump administration role at the Department of Government Efficiency. During this meeting, Trump "spent hours" talking to Musk's Grok chatbot, including asking how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of...
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MuskGrokChatbot #TrumpVenezuelaPlot #NicolasMaduro #VenezuelaCapture #USInvasion2025 #TechPolitics #ElonMusk #GrokAI #TimeMagazineReport #PoliticalAIShadows