#psychotherapy — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psychotherapy, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 18, 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: Dark personality traits predict support for violence by both Israel and Hamas
Recent psychology research indicates that while most people base their support for political violence on their personal ideological beliefs, individuals with high levels of psychopathy and sadism tend to endorse violence across the board. A new study examining attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict suggests that these specific dark personality traits are linked to support for violent actions committed by both sides. The findings were published in Personality and Individual Differences.
In the study of political psychology, a common assumption is that people evaluate violence based on their group identity and political worldview. This means individuals usually justify violence when it is committed by a group they agree with, while firmly rejecting similar violent actions when committed by opposing groups. In highly polarized situations like the conflict between Israel and Hamas, this translates to an actor-specific view of violence. An individual might support the military actions of one side, but it is unusual for them to endorse violence from both sides simultaneously.
The author of the new study, Tobias Greitemeyer of the University of Innsbruck, wanted to explore whether certain personality characteristics override this partisan loyalty. He focused on the Dark Tetrad, a grouping of four socially aversive personality traits. These traits include narcissism, which involves grandiosity and entitlement; Machiavellianism, characterized by manipulative and cynical behavior; psychopathy, marked by callousness, low empathy, and impulsive thrill-seeking; and sadism, which involves deriving pleasure from the suffering of others.
Previous investigations have linked these traits to various forms of hostility. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher scores on dark personality traits were associated with higher levels of antisemitism, showing how these characteristics can shape views on Middle Eastern geopolitics. Other research, such as a 2015 study on consumer attitudes, has shown that dark personality traits are related to a concept called moral disengagement. Moral disengagement refers to the mental gymnastics people use to justify harmful behavior, allowing them to ignore their own moral standards without feeling guilty.
To test how these traits relate to attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict, Greitemeyer conducted two separate online studies. The first study recruited 257 German-speaking participants, mostly from Austria and Germany. The participants completed a standardized questionnaire measuring their levels of the Dark Tetrad traits, as well as measures of their political orientation, their general attitudes toward war and peace, and their specific support for violent actions carried out by Israel and Hamas.
The results provided evidence for the traditional view that political violence is generally actor-specific. Support for violence by Israel and support for violence by Hamas were negatively correlated, indicating that participants who endorsed violence by one actor were less likely to endorse violence by the other. Older participants tended to show more support for Israeli actions and less support for Hamas actions. Men reported more support for Israeli military actions than women did, but there was no difference between men and women regarding support for Hamas.
When looking at personality, however, a different pattern emerged. Psychopathy and sadism were positively associated with support for violent actions by both Israel and Hamas. Individuals scoring higher in these two traits showed a generalized acceptance of violence, regardless of which side was responsible. This generalized support remained present even when the researcher accounted for the participants’ political ideologies. Narcissism and Machiavellianism, on the other hand, did not show this consistent, cross-actor support for violence.
A second study was conducted with 470 United Kingdom citizens to see if these findings would hold up in a larger sample and to explore potential psychological mechanisms. In addition to measuring the Dark Tetrad traits and support for violence by Israel and Hamas, participants completed assessments for two other variables. One was their interest in militarism, which captures a fascination with weapons, special forces, and martial arts. The other was their propensity for moral disengagement.
The second study mirrored the findings of the first. Once again, support for Israel and Hamas was negatively correlated overall, but psychopathy and sadism reliably predicted an endorsement of violence by both actors. Narcissism was only linked to support for Hamas, and Machiavellianism showed no reliable association with support for either side.
The data also indicated that interest in militarism and moral disengagement helped explain the connection between dark personality traits and support for violence, though only partially. Both militarism and moral disengagement acted as mediating factors for why psychopathy and sadism predicted support for Israeli violent actions. However, neither of these psychological mechanisms explained the link between the dark traits and support for Hamas’s violent actions, suggesting that different cognitive pathways might be at play depending on the specific actor involved.
“This confirms the work of earlier research and slightly extends it by explicitly showing that individuals scoring high on dark personality traits (especially on psychopathy and sadism) tend to exhibit support for political violence of multiple conflicted and even directly opposing groups,” said Tomislav Pavlović, a researcher working on the MOTIKA project, which focuses on understanding drivers and barriers to peaceful and violent collective action, who was not involved in the study.
“As earlier research demonstrated, individuals scoring high on dark personality traits also tend to exhibit more favorable attitudes toward violence in general,” Pavlović told PsyPost. “From this perspective, it is not surprising that individuals showing stronger support for violence as a general method of achieving goals also see it as a more acceptable method of achieving political goals.”
“The findings of this paper could be taken as an extension of existing research, indicating that endorsement of political violence is not related only to political beliefs and social identity (ideological partisanship), but also to individual differences in dark personality traits,” said Anja Wertag, a researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Croatia who was also not involved in the work. She told PsyPost the study highlights “the importance of integrating personality and political psychology perspectives in investigating violence endorsement.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in July 2024, which indicated that psychopathy strongly predicted support for military violence against civilians among Russian residents. The results also align with another 2024 study showing that higher psychopathy is associated with greater attitudinal support for politically motivated violence across multiple countries. Additionally, the conclusions echo a 2021 study that linked psychopathic traits to support for violent social change, regardless of whether that violence was endorsed by left-wing or right-wing groups.
But as with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. The data rely on self-reported questionnaires, meaning participants might have altered their answers to appear more socially acceptable, especially on sensitive political topics. The samples were also non-representative groups of internet users from Europe, which limits how broadly the findings can be applied to the general public or to populations directly involved in the conflict.
“It is important to note that the Dark Tetrad traits explained only a modest amount of the variance in support for Israeli and Hamas violent actions – ranging from 5 to 8%,” Wertag noted. She added that because “all Dark Tetrad traits are multidimensional and the current study used only a brief measure to assess them, future research should include broader measures of dark traits to enable a clearer view of the relations between different aspects of the dark traits and violence endorsement.”
Pavlović pointed out another geographical limitation regarding the samples. “Finally, it is worth mentioning that none of the samples were from Israel or Gaza,” he said. “Therefore, (at least) the majority of participants perceive the conflict from the perspective of relatively neutral bystanders. We cannot tell whether these results would be replicated had the study been conducted on participants whose nations are involved in conflict.”
The cross-sectional design of the studies also means the research cannot determine cause and effect. It is possible that consuming media about political violence alters a person’s psychological state, rather than personality traits alone driving their political attitudes. Future research could investigate whether these patterns hold true in other geopolitical conflicts and explore other psychological mechanisms, such as a lack of empathic concern for victims, that might bridge the gap between dark personality traits and support for war.
“While dark personality traits and support for political violence are correlated, this relationship may reflect a third underlying variable (such as experience of violence),” Pavlović explained. “Furthermore, support for political violence should not be equated with actual participation in violent acts.”
Wertag agreed, warning against leaping to broad conclusions. “I am concerned about a possible overinterpretation of the results regarding the link between violence endorsement, regardless of the side, and psychopathy and sadism due to the above-mentioned methodological constraints,” she said. “The results also do not imply that personality traits are more important than political orientation; they simply highlight that both matter. Finally, the results say nothing about the actual tendency toward violent behavior.”
The study, “When darkness overrides partisanship: Psychopathy and sadism predict support for violence on both sides of the Israel–Hamas conflict,” was authored by Tobias Greitemeyer.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DarkTriad #Psychopathy #Sadism #IsraelHamas #PoliticalViolence #MoralDisengagement #Militarism #PersonalityPsychology #ConflictResearch #ViolenceEndorsement
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DATE: September 18, 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: Dark personality traits predict support for violence by both Israel and Hamas
Recent psychology research indicates that while most people base their support for political violence on their personal ideological beliefs, individuals with high levels of psychopathy and sadism tend to endorse violence across the board. A new study examining attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict suggests that these specific dark personality traits are linked to support for violent actions committed by both sides. The findings were published in Personality and Individual Differences.
In the study of political psychology, a common assumption is that people evaluate violence based on their group identity and political worldview. This means individuals usually justify violence when it is committed by a group they agree with, while firmly rejecting similar violent actions when committed by opposing groups. In highly polarized situations like the conflict between Israel and Hamas, this translates to an actor-specific view of violence. An individual might support the military actions of one side, but it is unusual for them to endorse violence from both sides simultaneously.
The author of the new study, Tobias Greitemeyer of the University of Innsbruck, wanted to explore whether certain personality characteristics override this partisan loyalty. He focused on the Dark Tetrad, a grouping of four socially aversive personality traits. These traits include narcissism, which involves grandiosity and entitlement; Machiavellianism, characterized by manipulative and cynical behavior; psychopathy, marked by callousness, low empathy, and impulsive thrill-seeking; and sadism, which involves deriving pleasure from the suffering of others.
Previous investigations have linked these traits to various forms of hostility. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher scores on dark personality traits were associated with higher levels of antisemitism, showing how these characteristics can shape views on Middle Eastern geopolitics. Other research, such as a 2015 study on consumer attitudes, has shown that dark personality traits are related to a concept called moral disengagement. Moral disengagement refers to the mental gymnastics people use to justify harmful behavior, allowing them to ignore their own moral standards without feeling guilty.
To test how these traits relate to attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict, Greitemeyer conducted two separate online studies. The first study recruited 257 German-speaking participants, mostly from Austria and Germany. The participants completed a standardized questionnaire measuring their levels of the Dark Tetrad traits, as well as measures of their political orientation, their general attitudes toward war and peace, and their specific support for violent actions carried out by Israel and Hamas.
The results provided evidence for the traditional view that political violence is generally actor-specific. Support for violence by Israel and support for violence by Hamas were negatively correlated, indicating that participants who endorsed violence by one actor were less likely to endorse violence by the other. Older participants tended to show more support for Israeli actions and less support for Hamas actions. Men reported more support for Israeli military actions than women did, but there was no difference between men and women regarding support for Hamas.
When looking at personality, however, a different pattern emerged. Psychopathy and sadism were positively associated with support for violent actions by both Israel and Hamas. Individuals scoring higher in these two traits showed a generalized acceptance of violence, regardless of which side was responsible. This generalized support remained present even when the researcher accounted for the participants’ political ideologies. Narcissism and Machiavellianism, on the other hand, did not show this consistent, cross-actor support for violence.
A second study was conducted with 470 United Kingdom citizens to see if these findings would hold up in a larger sample and to explore potential psychological mechanisms. In addition to measuring the Dark Tetrad traits and support for violence by Israel and Hamas, participants completed assessments for two other variables. One was their interest in militarism, which captures a fascination with weapons, special forces, and martial arts. The other was their propensity for moral disengagement.
The second study mirrored the findings of the first. Once again, support for Israel and Hamas was negatively correlated overall, but psychopathy and sadism reliably predicted an endorsement of violence by both actors. Narcissism was only linked to support for Hamas, and Machiavellianism showed no reliable association with support for either side.
The data also indicated that interest in militarism and moral disengagement helped explain the connection between dark personality traits and support for violence, though only partially. Both militarism and moral disengagement acted as mediating factors for why psychopathy and sadism predicted support for Israeli violent actions. However, neither of these psychological mechanisms explained the link between the dark traits and support for Hamas’s violent actions, suggesting that different cognitive pathways might be at play depending on the specific actor involved.
“This confirms the work of earlier research and slightly extends it by explicitly showing that individuals scoring high on dark personality traits (especially on psychopathy and sadism) tend to exhibit support for political violence of multiple conflicted and even directly opposing groups,” said Tomislav Pavlović, a researcher working on the MOTIKA project, which focuses on understanding drivers and barriers to peaceful and violent collective action, who was not involved in the study.
“As earlier research demonstrated, individuals scoring high on dark personality traits also tend to exhibit more favorable attitudes toward violence in general,” Pavlović told PsyPost. “From this perspective, it is not surprising that individuals showing stronger support for violence as a general method of achieving goals also see it as a more acceptable method of achieving political goals.”
“The findings of this paper could be taken as an extension of existing research, indicating that endorsement of political violence is not related only to political beliefs and social identity (ideological partisanship), but also to individual differences in dark personality traits,” said Anja Wertag, a researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Croatia who was also not involved in the work. She told PsyPost the study highlights “the importance of integrating personality and political psychology perspectives in investigating violence endorsement.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in July 2024, which indicated that psychopathy strongly predicted support for military violence against civilians among Russian residents. The results also align with another 2024 study showing that higher psychopathy is associated with greater attitudinal support for politically motivated violence across multiple countries. Additionally, the conclusions echo a 2021 study that linked psychopathic traits to support for violent social change, regardless of whether that violence was endorsed by left-wing or right-wing groups.
But as with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. The data rely on self-reported questionnaires, meaning participants might have altered their answers to appear more socially acceptable, especially on sensitive political topics. The samples were also non-representative groups of internet users from Europe, which limits how broadly the findings can be applied to the general public or to populations directly involved in the conflict.
“It is important to note that the Dark Tetrad traits explained only a modest amount of the variance in support for Israeli and Hamas violent actions – ranging from 5 to 8%,” Wertag noted. She added that because “all Dark Tetrad traits are multidimensional and the current study used only a brief measure to assess them, future research should include broader measures of dark traits to enable a clearer view of the relations between different aspects of the dark traits and violence endorsement.”
Pavlović pointed out another geographical limitation regarding the samples. “Finally, it is worth mentioning that none of the samples were from Israel or Gaza,” he said. “Therefore, (at least) the majority of participants perceive the conflict from the perspective of relatively neutral bystanders. We cannot tell whether these results would be replicated had the study been conducted on participants whose nations are involved in conflict.”
The cross-sectional design of the studies also means the research cannot determine cause and effect. It is possible that consuming media about political violence alters a person’s psychological state, rather than personality traits alone driving their political attitudes. Future research could investigate whether these patterns hold true in other geopolitical conflicts and explore other psychological mechanisms, such as a lack of empathic concern for victims, that might bridge the gap between dark personality traits and support for war.
“While dark personality traits and support for political violence are correlated, this relationship may reflect a third underlying variable (such as experience of violence),” Pavlović explained. “Furthermore, support for political violence should not be equated with actual participation in violent acts.”
Wertag agreed, warning against leaping to broad conclusions. “I am concerned about a possible overinterpretation of the results regarding the link between violence endorsement, regardless of the side, and psychopathy and sadism due to the above-mentioned methodological constraints,” she said. “The results also do not imply that personality traits are more important than political orientation; they simply highlight that both matter. Finally, the results say nothing about the actual tendency toward violent behavior.”
The study, “When darkness overrides partisanship: Psychopathy and sadism predict support for violence on both sides of the Israel–Hamas conflict,” was authored by Tobias Greitemeyer.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DarkTriad #Psychopathy #Sadism #IsraelHamas #PoliticalViolence #MoralDisengagement #Militarism #PersonalityPsychology #ConflictResearch #ViolenceEndorsement
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DATE: September 18, 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: Dark personality traits predict support for violence by both Israel and Hamas
Recent psychology research indicates that while most people base their support for political violence on their personal ideological beliefs, individuals with high levels of psychopathy and sadism tend to endorse violence across the board. A new study examining attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict suggests that these specific dark personality traits are linked to support for violent actions committed by both sides. The findings were published in Personality and Individual Differences.
In the study of political psychology, a common assumption is that people evaluate violence based on their group identity and political worldview. This means individuals usually justify violence when it is committed by a group they agree with, while firmly rejecting similar violent actions when committed by opposing groups. In highly polarized situations like the conflict between Israel and Hamas, this translates to an actor-specific view of violence. An individual might support the military actions of one side, but it is unusual for them to endorse violence from both sides simultaneously.
The author of the new study, Tobias Greitemeyer of the University of Innsbruck, wanted to explore whether certain personality characteristics override this partisan loyalty. He focused on the Dark Tetrad, a grouping of four socially aversive personality traits. These traits include narcissism, which involves grandiosity and entitlement; Machiavellianism, characterized by manipulative and cynical behavior; psychopathy, marked by callousness, low empathy, and impulsive thrill-seeking; and sadism, which involves deriving pleasure from the suffering of others.
Previous investigations have linked these traits to various forms of hostility. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost indicated that higher scores on dark personality traits were associated with higher levels of antisemitism, showing how these characteristics can shape views on Middle Eastern geopolitics. Other research, such as a 2015 study on consumer attitudes, has shown that dark personality traits are related to a concept called moral disengagement. Moral disengagement refers to the mental gymnastics people use to justify harmful behavior, allowing them to ignore their own moral standards without feeling guilty.
To test how these traits relate to attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas conflict, Greitemeyer conducted two separate online studies. The first study recruited 257 German-speaking participants, mostly from Austria and Germany. The participants completed a standardized questionnaire measuring their levels of the Dark Tetrad traits, as well as measures of their political orientation, their general attitudes toward war and peace, and their specific support for violent actions carried out by Israel and Hamas.
The results provided evidence for the traditional view that political violence is generally actor-specific. Support for violence by Israel and support for violence by Hamas were negatively correlated, indicating that participants who endorsed violence by one actor were less likely to endorse violence by the other. Older participants tended to show more support for Israeli actions and less support for Hamas actions. Men reported more support for Israeli military actions than women did, but there was no difference between men and women regarding support for Hamas.
When looking at personality, however, a different pattern emerged. Psychopathy and sadism were positively associated with support for violent actions by both Israel and Hamas. Individuals scoring higher in these two traits showed a generalized acceptance of violence, regardless of which side was responsible. This generalized support remained present even when the researcher accounted for the participants’ political ideologies. Narcissism and Machiavellianism, on the other hand, did not show this consistent, cross-actor support for violence.
A second study was conducted with 470 United Kingdom citizens to see if these findings would hold up in a larger sample and to explore potential psychological mechanisms. In addition to measuring the Dark Tetrad traits and support for violence by Israel and Hamas, participants completed assessments for two other variables. One was their interest in militarism, which captures a fascination with weapons, special forces, and martial arts. The other was their propensity for moral disengagement.
The second study mirrored the findings of the first. Once again, support for Israel and Hamas was negatively correlated overall, but psychopathy and sadism reliably predicted an endorsement of violence by both actors. Narcissism was only linked to support for Hamas, and Machiavellianism showed no reliable association with support for either side.
The data also indicated that interest in militarism and moral disengagement helped explain the connection between dark personality traits and support for violence, though only partially. Both militarism and moral disengagement acted as mediating factors for why psychopathy and sadism predicted support for Israeli violent actions. However, neither of these psychological mechanisms explained the link between the dark traits and support for Hamas’s violent actions, suggesting that different cognitive pathways might be at play depending on the specific actor involved.
“This confirms the work of earlier research and slightly extends it by explicitly showing that individuals scoring high on dark personality traits (especially on psychopathy and sadism) tend to exhibit support for political violence of multiple conflicted and even directly opposing groups,” said Tomislav Pavlović, a researcher working on the MOTIKA project, which focuses on understanding drivers and barriers to peaceful and violent collective action, who was not involved in the study.
“As earlier research demonstrated, individuals scoring high on dark personality traits also tend to exhibit more favorable attitudes toward violence in general,” Pavlović told PsyPost. “From this perspective, it is not surprising that individuals showing stronger support for violence as a general method of achieving goals also see it as a more acceptable method of achieving political goals.”
“The findings of this paper could be taken as an extension of existing research, indicating that endorsement of political violence is not related only to political beliefs and social identity (ideological partisanship), but also to individual differences in dark personality traits,” said Anja Wertag, a researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Croatia who was also not involved in the work. She told PsyPost the study highlights “the importance of integrating personality and political psychology perspectives in investigating violence endorsement.”
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in July 2024, which indicated that psychopathy strongly predicted support for military violence against civilians among Russian residents. The results also align with another 2024 study showing that higher psychopathy is associated with greater attitudinal support for politically motivated violence across multiple countries. Additionally, the conclusions echo a 2021 study that linked psychopathic traits to support for violent social change, regardless of whether that violence was endorsed by left-wing or right-wing groups.
But as with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. The data rely on self-reported questionnaires, meaning participants might have altered their answers to appear more socially acceptable, especially on sensitive political topics. The samples were also non-representative groups of internet users from Europe, which limits how broadly the findings can be applied to the general public or to populations directly involved in the conflict.
“It is important to note that the Dark Tetrad traits explained only a modest amount of the variance in support for Israeli and Hamas violent actions – ranging from 5 to 8%,” Wertag noted. She added that because “all Dark Tetrad traits are multidimensional and the current study used only a brief measure to assess them, future research should include broader measures of dark traits to enable a clearer view of the relations between different aspects of the dark traits and violence endorsement.”
Pavlović pointed out another geographical limitation regarding the samples. “Finally, it is worth mentioning that none of the samples were from Israel or Gaza,” he said. “Therefore, (at least) the majority of participants perceive the conflict from the perspective of relatively neutral bystanders. We cannot tell whether these results would be replicated had the study been conducted on participants whose nations are involved in conflict.”
The cross-sectional design of the studies also means the research cannot determine cause and effect. It is possible that consuming media about political violence alters a person’s psychological state, rather than personality traits alone driving their political attitudes. Future research could investigate whether these patterns hold true in other geopolitical conflicts and explore other psychological mechanisms, such as a lack of empathic concern for victims, that might bridge the gap between dark personality traits and support for war.
“While dark personality traits and support for political violence are correlated, this relationship may reflect a third underlying variable (such as experience of violence),” Pavlović explained. “Furthermore, support for political violence should not be equated with actual participation in violent acts.”
Wertag agreed, warning against leaping to broad conclusions. “I am concerned about a possible overinterpretation of the results regarding the link between violence endorsement, regardless of the side, and psychopathy and sadism due to the above-mentioned methodological constraints,” she said. “The results also do not imply that personality traits are more important than political orientation; they simply highlight that both matter. Finally, the results say nothing about the actual tendency toward violent behavior.”
The study, “When darkness overrides partisanship: Psychopathy and sadism predict support for violence on both sides of the Israel–Hamas conflict,” was authored by Tobias Greitemeyer.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #DarkTriad #Psychopathy #Sadism #IsraelHamas #PoliticalViolence #MoralDisengagement #Militarism #PersonalityPsychology #ConflictResearch #ViolenceEndorsement
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Denial of suicidal intent in adolescents after firearm injury can coexist with high-risk behaviors, necessitating assessment beyond self-report, particularly when affect appears constricted or emotionally numb. https://t.co/S3WlYtR2eN
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AdolescentMentalHealth #SuicidePrevention #FirearmInjury #HighRiskBehavior #EmotionalNumbness
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Denial of suicidal intent in adolescents after firearm injury can coexist with high-risk behaviors, necessitating assessment beyond self-report, particularly when affect appears constricted or emotionally numb. https://t.co/S3WlYtR2eN
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AdolescentMentalHealth #SuicidePrevention #FirearmInjury #HighRiskBehavior #EmotionalNumbness
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Denial of suicidal intent in adolescents after firearm injury can coexist with high-risk behaviors, necessitating assessment beyond self-report, particularly when affect appears constricted or emotionally numb. https://t.co/S3WlYtR2eN
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AdolescentMentalHealth #SuicidePrevention #FirearmInjury #HighRiskBehavior #EmotionalNumbness
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DATE: September 18, 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: High intelligence may exacerbate impulsivity in children with ADHD
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
Having a high intelligence quotient is generally thought to protect children from the most severe symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A new large study reveals that while higher intelligence is associated with better focus, specific types of high intelligence are actually linked to greater impulsivity. The research was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Inattention involves difficulty staying on task, sustaining focus, and staying organized. Hyperactivity and impulsivity involve excessive movement, fidgeting, and taking actions without thinking about the consequences.
Clinicians measure intelligence using an intelligence quotient, or IQ. A full-scale IQ score is made up of two main components. Verbal IQ measures language-based reasoning, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension. Performance IQ evaluates non-verbal skills like spatial processing, pattern recognition, and visual puzzle-solving.
Medical professionals often assume that a higher overall IQ buffers children against the daily challenges of ADHD. Some researchers suspect this perspective is too simple. They propose that high intelligence can sometimes mask underlying deficits, making diagnosis difficult, or even introduce new behavioral challenges.
Lead researchers Lu Liu and Qiujin Qian, psychiatrists at Peking University Sixth Hospital in China, wanted to examine whether the separate components of intelligence relate to different ADHD symptoms. They also aimed to see if these behavioral patterns corresponded with brain structure and daily functioning in a clinical setting.
The researchers examined a large study cohort of 5,138 children diagnosed with ADHD, ranging in age from six to 16 years old. Clinicians evaluated the children using standardized intelligence tests and established ADHD symptom rating scales filled out by guardians. The team analyzed how verbal and performance IQ scores correlated with specific symptoms like inattention and impulsivity.
Overall intelligence was linked to fewer total ADHD symptoms. When looking at the components separately, a higher verbal IQ was associated with less inattention. However, a higher verbal IQ was also linked to higher impulsivity scores, presenting a mixed outcome for highly verbal children.
Performance IQ showed a shifting developmental pattern. In younger children, higher performance IQ was associated with lower impulsivity. In adolescents aged 12 and older, the pattern formed a U-shape. This means that both the lowest and the highest performance IQ scores were linked to higher impulsivity.
To understand the cognitive mechanisms behind these behaviors, the team analyzed a subset of 3,676 children who had completed tests of executive function. Executive function refers to the mental skills needed to manage daily life and achieve goals. These skills include working memory, which is the ability to hold and use information over short periods, and inhibitory control, which is the ability to stop oneself from acting on sudden urges.
Higher verbal and performance IQ scores were both linked to better working memory. This aligns with the observation that higher intelligence is associated with less inattention, as holding information in mind helps children stay focused on tasks.
When looking at inhibitory control, performance IQ again showed a non-linear relationship. This mirrored the U-shaped pattern seen with impulsivity in the behavioral tests. The cognitive data suggested that the behavioral symptoms were rooted in measurable differences in how the children processed information.
The researchers then looked at brain anatomy in a smaller subset of 262 children who underwent magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans. They focused on the surface area of specific brain regions previously linked to attention and hyperactivity.
Higher verbal IQ was associated with a larger surface area in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex. This brain region is involved in regulating emotions, resolving conflicts, and managing impulses.
Performance IQ had a non-linear relationship with total brain surface area. These physical brain measurements provided biological evidence matching the behavioral and cognitive test results, linking physical brain structure to the children’s psychological profiles.
Finally, the team grouped 1,100 of the children based on how much their symptoms impaired their daily academic and social lives. They used statistical modeling to find natural groupings within the data based on functional impairment scores reported by parents.
The analysis revealed three distinct groups. A “mild impairment” group had the highest intelligence scores and the fewest academic problems. However, children in this group still exhibited notable impulsivity, showing that intelligence did not erase all ADHD symptoms.
A “severe academic deficit” group had the lowest intelligence scores and the most severe inattention. These children displayed minimal impulsivity, suggesting their primary struggle was with focus and learning rather than behavioral control.
A third group fell in the middle for both intelligence and symptom severity. This profiling showed that higher intelligence does not automatically translate to fewer social impairments. Highly intelligent children with ADHD may face social struggles just as severe as those with average intelligence.
Because this is an observational study, the results show associations rather than proving that high intelligence causes impulsive behavior. High verbal intelligence might simply give children the ability to navigate social situations faster. This rapid social processing could inadvertently reinforce an impulsive interaction style over time.
Additionally, the brain regions analyzed in this study were selected based on previous research conducted on the general population. They were not based specifically on children with ADHD. Brain development in children with ADHD can vary widely from the general population, meaning the selected brain regions might not tell the whole story.
Few associations in the study reached the threshold of being statistically significant after researchers corrected for multiple testing. The researchers noted that strict mathematical thresholds can sometimes mask authentic developmental processes in very large datasets, though the findings should be interpreted with that limitation in mind.
Future research using brain imaging targeted specifically at ADHD populations is needed to verify these neurological associations. Researchers might also look at how shifting social demands during adolescence influence impulsive behavior in highly intelligent children.
As adolescents develop more autonomy, what appears as a lack of impulse control might actually represent an intelligence-driven desire to test environmental boundaries. Understanding these specific profiles could help medical professionals design better, more targeted interventions for children across the entire intelligence spectrum.
The study, “The paradox of high IQ in ADHD: dissociable effects on inattention and impulsivity – insights from behavior, cognition & brain in 5138 children,” was authored by Ningning Liu, Gaoding Jia, Yinshan Wang, Litanshunbuer A, Zelin Mu, Meixue Wang, Meirong Pan, Haimei Li, Yufeng Wang, Qiujin Qian, and Lu Liu.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: September 18, 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: High intelligence may exacerbate impulsivity in children with ADHD
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
Having a high intelligence quotient is generally thought to protect children from the most severe symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A new large study reveals that while higher intelligence is associated with better focus, specific types of high intelligence are actually linked to greater impulsivity. The research was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Inattention involves difficulty staying on task, sustaining focus, and staying organized. Hyperactivity and impulsivity involve excessive movement, fidgeting, and taking actions without thinking about the consequences.
Clinicians measure intelligence using an intelligence quotient, or IQ. A full-scale IQ score is made up of two main components. Verbal IQ measures language-based reasoning, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension. Performance IQ evaluates non-verbal skills like spatial processing, pattern recognition, and visual puzzle-solving.
Medical professionals often assume that a higher overall IQ buffers children against the daily challenges of ADHD. Some researchers suspect this perspective is too simple. They propose that high intelligence can sometimes mask underlying deficits, making diagnosis difficult, or even introduce new behavioral challenges.
Lead researchers Lu Liu and Qiujin Qian, psychiatrists at Peking University Sixth Hospital in China, wanted to examine whether the separate components of intelligence relate to different ADHD symptoms. They also aimed to see if these behavioral patterns corresponded with brain structure and daily functioning in a clinical setting.
The researchers examined a large study cohort of 5,138 children diagnosed with ADHD, ranging in age from six to 16 years old. Clinicians evaluated the children using standardized intelligence tests and established ADHD symptom rating scales filled out by guardians. The team analyzed how verbal and performance IQ scores correlated with specific symptoms like inattention and impulsivity.
Overall intelligence was linked to fewer total ADHD symptoms. When looking at the components separately, a higher verbal IQ was associated with less inattention. However, a higher verbal IQ was also linked to higher impulsivity scores, presenting a mixed outcome for highly verbal children.
Performance IQ showed a shifting developmental pattern. In younger children, higher performance IQ was associated with lower impulsivity. In adolescents aged 12 and older, the pattern formed a U-shape. This means that both the lowest and the highest performance IQ scores were linked to higher impulsivity.
To understand the cognitive mechanisms behind these behaviors, the team analyzed a subset of 3,676 children who had completed tests of executive function. Executive function refers to the mental skills needed to manage daily life and achieve goals. These skills include working memory, which is the ability to hold and use information over short periods, and inhibitory control, which is the ability to stop oneself from acting on sudden urges.
Higher verbal and performance IQ scores were both linked to better working memory. This aligns with the observation that higher intelligence is associated with less inattention, as holding information in mind helps children stay focused on tasks.
When looking at inhibitory control, performance IQ again showed a non-linear relationship. This mirrored the U-shaped pattern seen with impulsivity in the behavioral tests. The cognitive data suggested that the behavioral symptoms were rooted in measurable differences in how the children processed information.
The researchers then looked at brain anatomy in a smaller subset of 262 children who underwent magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans. They focused on the surface area of specific brain regions previously linked to attention and hyperactivity.
Higher verbal IQ was associated with a larger surface area in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex. This brain region is involved in regulating emotions, resolving conflicts, and managing impulses.
Performance IQ had a non-linear relationship with total brain surface area. These physical brain measurements provided biological evidence matching the behavioral and cognitive test results, linking physical brain structure to the children’s psychological profiles.
Finally, the team grouped 1,100 of the children based on how much their symptoms impaired their daily academic and social lives. They used statistical modeling to find natural groupings within the data based on functional impairment scores reported by parents.
The analysis revealed three distinct groups. A “mild impairment” group had the highest intelligence scores and the fewest academic problems. However, children in this group still exhibited notable impulsivity, showing that intelligence did not erase all ADHD symptoms.
A “severe academic deficit” group had the lowest intelligence scores and the most severe inattention. These children displayed minimal impulsivity, suggesting their primary struggle was with focus and learning rather than behavioral control.
A third group fell in the middle for both intelligence and symptom severity. This profiling showed that higher intelligence does not automatically translate to fewer social impairments. Highly intelligent children with ADHD may face social struggles just as severe as those with average intelligence.
Because this is an observational study, the results show associations rather than proving that high intelligence causes impulsive behavior. High verbal intelligence might simply give children the ability to navigate social situations faster. This rapid social processing could inadvertently reinforce an impulsive interaction style over time.
Additionally, the brain regions analyzed in this study were selected based on previous research conducted on the general population. They were not based specifically on children with ADHD. Brain development in children with ADHD can vary widely from the general population, meaning the selected brain regions might not tell the whole story.
Few associations in the study reached the threshold of being statistically significant after researchers corrected for multiple testing. The researchers noted that strict mathematical thresholds can sometimes mask authentic developmental processes in very large datasets, though the findings should be interpreted with that limitation in mind.
Future research using brain imaging targeted specifically at ADHD populations is needed to verify these neurological associations. Researchers might also look at how shifting social demands during adolescence influence impulsive behavior in highly intelligent children.
As adolescents develop more autonomy, what appears as a lack of impulse control might actually represent an intelligence-driven desire to test environmental boundaries. Understanding these specific profiles could help medical professionals design better, more targeted interventions for children across the entire intelligence spectrum.
The study, “The paradox of high IQ in ADHD: dissociable effects on inattention and impulsivity – insights from behavior, cognition & brain in 5138 children,” was authored by Ningning Liu, Gaoding Jia, Yinshan Wang, Litanshunbuer A, Zelin Mu, Meixue Wang, Meirong Pan, Haimei Li, Yufeng Wang, Qiujin Qian, and Lu Liu.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ADHD #IQandADHD #VerbalIQ #PerformanceIQ #Impulsivity #Inattention #ExecutiveFunction #BrainImaging #TranslationalPsychiatry #PediatricNeurodevelopment
-
DATE: September 18, 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: High intelligence may exacerbate impulsivity in children with ADHD
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
Having a high intelligence quotient is generally thought to protect children from the most severe symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A new large study reveals that while higher intelligence is associated with better focus, specific types of high intelligence are actually linked to greater impulsivity. The research was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Inattention involves difficulty staying on task, sustaining focus, and staying organized. Hyperactivity and impulsivity involve excessive movement, fidgeting, and taking actions without thinking about the consequences.
Clinicians measure intelligence using an intelligence quotient, or IQ. A full-scale IQ score is made up of two main components. Verbal IQ measures language-based reasoning, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension. Performance IQ evaluates non-verbal skills like spatial processing, pattern recognition, and visual puzzle-solving.
Medical professionals often assume that a higher overall IQ buffers children against the daily challenges of ADHD. Some researchers suspect this perspective is too simple. They propose that high intelligence can sometimes mask underlying deficits, making diagnosis difficult, or even introduce new behavioral challenges.
Lead researchers Lu Liu and Qiujin Qian, psychiatrists at Peking University Sixth Hospital in China, wanted to examine whether the separate components of intelligence relate to different ADHD symptoms. They also aimed to see if these behavioral patterns corresponded with brain structure and daily functioning in a clinical setting.
The researchers examined a large study cohort of 5,138 children diagnosed with ADHD, ranging in age from six to 16 years old. Clinicians evaluated the children using standardized intelligence tests and established ADHD symptom rating scales filled out by guardians. The team analyzed how verbal and performance IQ scores correlated with specific symptoms like inattention and impulsivity.
Overall intelligence was linked to fewer total ADHD symptoms. When looking at the components separately, a higher verbal IQ was associated with less inattention. However, a higher verbal IQ was also linked to higher impulsivity scores, presenting a mixed outcome for highly verbal children.
Performance IQ showed a shifting developmental pattern. In younger children, higher performance IQ was associated with lower impulsivity. In adolescents aged 12 and older, the pattern formed a U-shape. This means that both the lowest and the highest performance IQ scores were linked to higher impulsivity.
To understand the cognitive mechanisms behind these behaviors, the team analyzed a subset of 3,676 children who had completed tests of executive function. Executive function refers to the mental skills needed to manage daily life and achieve goals. These skills include working memory, which is the ability to hold and use information over short periods, and inhibitory control, which is the ability to stop oneself from acting on sudden urges.
Higher verbal and performance IQ scores were both linked to better working memory. This aligns with the observation that higher intelligence is associated with less inattention, as holding information in mind helps children stay focused on tasks.
When looking at inhibitory control, performance IQ again showed a non-linear relationship. This mirrored the U-shaped pattern seen with impulsivity in the behavioral tests. The cognitive data suggested that the behavioral symptoms were rooted in measurable differences in how the children processed information.
The researchers then looked at brain anatomy in a smaller subset of 262 children who underwent magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans. They focused on the surface area of specific brain regions previously linked to attention and hyperactivity.
Higher verbal IQ was associated with a larger surface area in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex. This brain region is involved in regulating emotions, resolving conflicts, and managing impulses.
Performance IQ had a non-linear relationship with total brain surface area. These physical brain measurements provided biological evidence matching the behavioral and cognitive test results, linking physical brain structure to the children’s psychological profiles.
Finally, the team grouped 1,100 of the children based on how much their symptoms impaired their daily academic and social lives. They used statistical modeling to find natural groupings within the data based on functional impairment scores reported by parents.
The analysis revealed three distinct groups. A “mild impairment” group had the highest intelligence scores and the fewest academic problems. However, children in this group still exhibited notable impulsivity, showing that intelligence did not erase all ADHD symptoms.
A “severe academic deficit” group had the lowest intelligence scores and the most severe inattention. These children displayed minimal impulsivity, suggesting their primary struggle was with focus and learning rather than behavioral control.
A third group fell in the middle for both intelligence and symptom severity. This profiling showed that higher intelligence does not automatically translate to fewer social impairments. Highly intelligent children with ADHD may face social struggles just as severe as those with average intelligence.
Because this is an observational study, the results show associations rather than proving that high intelligence causes impulsive behavior. High verbal intelligence might simply give children the ability to navigate social situations faster. This rapid social processing could inadvertently reinforce an impulsive interaction style over time.
Additionally, the brain regions analyzed in this study were selected based on previous research conducted on the general population. They were not based specifically on children with ADHD. Brain development in children with ADHD can vary widely from the general population, meaning the selected brain regions might not tell the whole story.
Few associations in the study reached the threshold of being statistically significant after researchers corrected for multiple testing. The researchers noted that strict mathematical thresholds can sometimes mask authentic developmental processes in very large datasets, though the findings should be interpreted with that limitation in mind.
Future research using brain imaging targeted specifically at ADHD populations is needed to verify these neurological associations. Researchers might also look at how shifting social demands during adolescence influence impulsive behavior in highly intelligent children.
As adolescents develop more autonomy, what appears as a lack of impulse control might actually represent an intelligence-driven desire to test environmental boundaries. Understanding these specific profiles could help medical professionals design better, more targeted interventions for children across the entire intelligence spectrum.
The study, “The paradox of high IQ in ADHD: dissociable effects on inattention and impulsivity – insights from behavior, cognition & brain in 5138 children,” was authored by Ningning Liu, Gaoding Jia, Yinshan Wang, Litanshunbuer A, Zelin Mu, Meixue Wang, Meirong Pan, Haimei Li, Yufeng Wang, Qiujin Qian, and Lu Liu.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/high-intelligence-may-exacerbate-impulsivity-in-children-with-adhd/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ADHD #IQandADHD #VerbalIQ #PerformanceIQ #Impulsivity #Inattention #ExecutiveFunction #BrainImaging #TranslationalPsychiatry #PediatricNeurodevelopment
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 07:31AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Last chance to register for Jersey City Psychiatry 2026! 🧠
Join fellow mental health professionals October 2–3 in Jersey City, NJ, for 2 days of education, connection & conversations on the latest in psychiatric care.
Register: https://t.co/fok1Qmp3EY #JCPsych2026 https://t.co/nd7hZhBAPi
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 07:31AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Last chance to register for Jersey City Psychiatry 2026! 🧠
Join fellow mental health professionals October 2–3 in Jersey City, NJ, for 2 days of education, connection & conversations on the latest in psychiatric care.
Register: https://t.co/fok1Qmp3EY #JCPsych2026 https://t.co/nd7hZhBAPi
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #JerseyCityPsych2026 #MentalHealthEducation #PsychiatryConference #ProfessionalNetworking #RegisterNow
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 07:31AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
Last chance to register for Jersey City Psychiatry 2026! 🧠
Join fellow mental health professionals October 2–3 in Jersey City, NJ, for 2 days of education, connection & conversations on the latest in psychiatric care.
Register: https://t.co/fok1Qmp3EY #JCPsych2026 https://t.co/nd7hZhBAPi
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #JerseyCityPsych2026 #MentalHealthEducation #PsychiatryConference #ProfessionalNetworking #RegisterNow
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Alzheimers Research #NOACs #Blood Thinners #CognitiveHealth #AtrialFibrillation #WarfarinAlternatives #StrokePrevention #DementiaCare #NeurodegenerativeSupport #MedicalResearch
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Alzheimers Research #NOACs #Blood Thinners #CognitiveHealth #AtrialFibrillation #WarfarinAlternatives #StrokePrevention #DementiaCare #NeurodegenerativeSupport #MedicalResearch
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AlzheimersResearch #BloodThinners #NOACs #WarfarinAlternative #CognitiveDecline #AtrialFibrillation #StrokePrevention #AlzheimersTherapy #NeurologyNews #MedicalBreakthroughs
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #BrainAging #MeninProtein #AgingResearch #CognitiveHealth #Inflammation #BoneHealth #SkinHealth #DSerine #MiceStudy #HealthyAging
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #AlzheimersResearch #BloodThinners #NOACs #WarfarinAlternative #CognitiveDecline #AtrialFibrillation #StrokePrevention #AlzheimersTherapy #NeurologyNews #MedicalBreakthroughs
-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 12:25AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists restore a brain protein and reverse signs of aging in mice
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while the amino acid D-serine improved cognition, hinting at a potentially intriguing new target for healthy aging.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260918000437.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 05:48AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: These blood thinners may have an unexpected benefit for Alzheimer’s patients
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
Newer blood thinners may do more than prevent strokes in people with Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation. Researchers found that patients taking NOACs experienced a slower decline in cognitive function than those using warfarin or no blood thinners. The effect was modest each year but could add up over time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260917003732.htm
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-
DATE: September 18, 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: “Mankeeping” takes a toll on women’s mental health and relationship satisfaction, study suggests
A newly developed psychological survey provides a way to measure the unpaid, emotional labor that women perform to manage and maintain the social lives of their romantic partners. The research, published in Sex Roles, details the creation of a scale that captures how women experience the effects of men’s shrinking friendships. The tool offers a standardized way to study this dynamic and its impacts on relationship satisfaction and individual well-being.
The survey centers on a concept called mankeeping. This term describes the effort women exert to compensate for the decline in their male partners’ social networks. It involves behaviors like organizing social events, encouraging men to reconnect with friends, and serving as a primary or sole source of emotional support to prevent the men from becoming isolated.
The concept builds on a long history of sociological research into household and emotional labor. For instance, a 1985 study established the idea of kinkeeping, which refers to the everyday, invisible work that women typically perform to keep family members connected and preserve relational harmony.
At the same time, recent public health data indicates that men are facing a widespread decline in close friendships. A 2022 study observed that men generally face greater social isolation than women across most of their adult lives. This vulnerability is also reflected in a study covered by PsyPost in 2026, which showed that psychological distress tends to shrink men’s support networks much more severely than it does for women.
Recognizing the intersection of these two trends, researchers Angelica P. Ferrara and Dylan P. Vergara formally theorized mankeeping in a 2024 paper. They proposed that the ongoing decline in men’s friendships shifts a heavy, unreciprocated social burden onto their female partners, who act to shield the men and the relationship from the negative consequences of isolation.
“‘Mankeeping’ is something many women express that they have been doing for their partners for quite some time,” lead researcher Vincent Mancini told PsyPost. Mancini is an adjunct senior research fellow at the UWA Medical School and a senior research fellow at the UWA Centre for Child Health Research. “With loneliness being a population health crisis that has gendered features, the aim of this work was to better understand how women may engage in additional effort to help maintain their male partner’s social needs.”
Prior to this work, scientists lacked a validated survey to actually quantify the extent of mankeeping and its psychological toll. By developing a specialized scale, Mancini and his colleagues aimed to provide a reliable way to investigate how men’s loneliness reshapes the daily lives of the women who care for them. To build the scale, the researchers first drafted a large pool of questions based on the initial theory of mankeeping.
They recruited 402 women residing in the United States who had been in a heterosexual romantic relationship for at least six months. The participants rated their agreement with 62 potential scale items using a seven-point rating system. They also completed several established psychological questionnaires measuring depression, anxiety, stress, relationship burnout, relationship burden, and overall relationship satisfaction.
Through a statistical process that groups related questions together based on how participants respond, the researchers refined the survey down to 46 items spanning six distinct categories. These six factors include the actual behaviors women perform to manage their partner’s social life, the emotional impact of that labor, and a recognition that their emotional support is often unequal or unappreciated. The remaining three factors capture the woman’s appraisal of her partner’s social network status, a desire for her partner to expand his friendships, and the extent to which the partner depends on her for emotional support.
The results indicated that the survey accurately captured theoretical predictions about mankeeping. Higher scores across the mankeeping dimensions strongly correlated with lower relationship satisfaction and higher levels of relationship burden and burnout. In addition, five of the six dimensions positively correlated with women’s self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress.
“There is now a validated and useful measure that can help to assess how women engage in this effortful process to help address their partner’s unmet social needs,” Mancini said. “Women who engage in these behaviors more tended to show poorer relationship satisfaction, which may signal the importance of social connections outside the romantic relationship that can help to more widely distribute social needs.” He added that “these results, whilst preliminary, indicate fairly robust and strong effects.”
Interestingly, simply appraising that a partner lacked friends was not strongly linked to psychological distress; rather, it was the active behaviors and the resulting emotional impact that were associated with poorer mental health. The data also showed that women who held more traditional beliefs about gender roles were more likely to report engaging in mankeeping behaviors.
Next, the team sought to verify that their newly developed survey, titled the Mankeeping Scale Partner Report, operated consistently across different populations. They administered the 46-item survey to a second group of 395 romantically partnered cisgender women living in the United Kingdom. Statistical analyses confirmed that the original six-category structure fit the UK data just as well as the US data. This suggests that the survey measures the same underlying concepts regardless of which of these two countries the women reside in, establishing what researchers call measurement invariance.
Recognizing that a 46-item questionnaire can be overly long for many research or clinical settings, the scientists combined the data from both the US and UK participants, totaling 797 women. They identified the three most mathematically and theoretically strong questions from each of the six categories to create an 18-item brief version. Testing showed that this shortened survey maintained excellent reliability and produced similar associations with relationship satisfaction and psychological distress as the full-length version, offering a practical alternative for future studies.
“It is incredibly useful to have validated measures of concepts such as mankeeping, so that research can move from theory to actually testing associations with possible outcomes,” said Sara B. Chadwick, an assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. “Having a validated measure of mankeeping will allow researchers to better understand how women’s efforts to support and maintain their men partners’ social networks and emotional health are connected to a variety of outcomes for both women and men in these partnerships,” she told PsyPost.
“The development of this measure offers a clear extension of research theorizing ‘mankeeping,’ and builds on previous feminist scholarship that has aimed to conceptualize the many ways that gender norms shape women’s romantic relationships with men,” Chadwick added.
She noted that earlier research has highlighted how gender norms often position women as caregivers for their male partners in ways that mimic a parent-child dynamic. “Overall, I would say this offers an important contribution to feminist research by specifically naming the kinds of behaviors that women engage in for the sake of supporting their men partners and by creating a way for researchers to measure and thus further explore it.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The survey relies entirely on self-reported data from one partner, meaning it captures a woman’s perception of her partner’s social life rather than an objective measure of his actual friendships. A man might feel his social needs are adequately met, even if his partner appraises his network as lacking. Future studies would benefit from surveying both members of a couple simultaneously to get a complete picture of the relationship dynamics.
“It is absolutely crucial to recognize that these results at the population level might not apply in the same way to the individual/couple level,” Mancini cautioned. “Romantic couples are incredibly diverse, not every man is lonely, nor does every woman need to engage in this process. This paper should also not take away from the importance of understanding loneliness as a population health issue, that all genders can experience.”
Chadwick agreed that context is crucial, noting that emotionally supporting a partner or helping them maintain social networks can sometimes be a consensual arrangement or a necessity based on temporary life circumstances, such as moving to a new city or dealing with a period of depression.
“The behaviors listed are not in themselves problematic, even when they may be burdensome,” Chadwick explained. “The key here is consent and mutuality, or in other words, it is essential that women either have consented to an arrangement where they take on the majority of social networking and emotional labor, or that this labor is offered to women in their times of need from their men partners.”
The current data is also a single snapshot in time, which makes it impossible to determine a strict chain of cause and effect between mankeeping behaviors and declining mental health. In addition, women’s responses to the survey might be influenced by internalized societal expectations about how a romantic partner is supposed to act.
Because the study focused on populations in the US and the UK with similar cultural norms, the survey might perform differently in other cultures. Expanding the research to include non-Western populations, as well as developing a companion survey to capture how men experience and perceive this social labor, will help clarify the full scope of this dynamic.
The issue arises, she pointed out, when women are automatically expected to take on this labor. “Unfortunately of course, with the way that gender norms function, the majority of mankeeping is indeed likely to be nonconsensual and non-mutual and thus have a disproportionately negative impact on women,” Chadwick said. In future research, she hopes to see investigations into whether this support is reciprocated, noting that the labor might not have a negative impact “if women feel they are offered the same types of labor from their partner in their own time periods of loneliness or need.”
“Our team is looking to engage in some longitudinal work that can allow us to follow couples over time, so that we can better understand how the phenomenon of mankeeping unfolds over time,” Mancini explained. “Being able to also capture the experiences of male partners, and develop interventions that can bolster the relationship quality between partners are our key future priorities.” He noted that the researchers are “always happy to chat to clinicians, researchers, and communities who have thoughts and ideas about the utility of this work!”
The study, “Measuring Mankeeping: Development and Validation of a Scale Assessing How Women Experience the Impact of Men’s Declining Social Networks,” was authored by Vincent O. Mancini, Briana N. Guerrini, James J. Clarke, Dylan P. Vergara, Zac E. Seidler, and Angelica P. Ferrara.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #Mankeeping #MankeepingScale #WomensEmotionalLabor #RelationshipHealth #GenderNorms #LonelinessInMen #FemaleCaregiving #RelationshipSatisfaction #EmotionalSupport #SocialNetworks
-
DATE: September 18, 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: “Mankeeping” takes a toll on women’s mental health and relationship satisfaction, study suggests
A newly developed psychological survey provides a way to measure the unpaid, emotional labor that women perform to manage and maintain the social lives of their romantic partners. The research, published in Sex Roles, details the creation of a scale that captures how women experience the effects of men’s shrinking friendships. The tool offers a standardized way to study this dynamic and its impacts on relationship satisfaction and individual well-being.
The survey centers on a concept called mankeeping. This term describes the effort women exert to compensate for the decline in their male partners’ social networks. It involves behaviors like organizing social events, encouraging men to reconnect with friends, and serving as a primary or sole source of emotional support to prevent the men from becoming isolated.
The concept builds on a long history of sociological research into household and emotional labor. For instance, a 1985 study established the idea of kinkeeping, which refers to the everyday, invisible work that women typically perform to keep family members connected and preserve relational harmony.
At the same time, recent public health data indicates that men are facing a widespread decline in close friendships. A 2022 study observed that men generally face greater social isolation than women across most of their adult lives. This vulnerability is also reflected in a study covered by PsyPost in 2026, which showed that psychological distress tends to shrink men’s support networks much more severely than it does for women.
Recognizing the intersection of these two trends, researchers Angelica P. Ferrara and Dylan P. Vergara formally theorized mankeeping in a 2024 paper. They proposed that the ongoing decline in men’s friendships shifts a heavy, unreciprocated social burden onto their female partners, who act to shield the men and the relationship from the negative consequences of isolation.
“‘Mankeeping’ is something many women express that they have been doing for their partners for quite some time,” lead researcher Vincent Mancini told PsyPost. Mancini is an adjunct senior research fellow at the UWA Medical School and a senior research fellow at the UWA Centre for Child Health Research. “With loneliness being a population health crisis that has gendered features, the aim of this work was to better understand how women may engage in additional effort to help maintain their male partner’s social needs.”
Prior to this work, scientists lacked a validated survey to actually quantify the extent of mankeeping and its psychological toll. By developing a specialized scale, Mancini and his colleagues aimed to provide a reliable way to investigate how men’s loneliness reshapes the daily lives of the women who care for them. To build the scale, the researchers first drafted a large pool of questions based on the initial theory of mankeeping.
They recruited 402 women residing in the United States who had been in a heterosexual romantic relationship for at least six months. The participants rated their agreement with 62 potential scale items using a seven-point rating system. They also completed several established psychological questionnaires measuring depression, anxiety, stress, relationship burnout, relationship burden, and overall relationship satisfaction.
Through a statistical process that groups related questions together based on how participants respond, the researchers refined the survey down to 46 items spanning six distinct categories. These six factors include the actual behaviors women perform to manage their partner’s social life, the emotional impact of that labor, and a recognition that their emotional support is often unequal or unappreciated. The remaining three factors capture the woman’s appraisal of her partner’s social network status, a desire for her partner to expand his friendships, and the extent to which the partner depends on her for emotional support.
The results indicated that the survey accurately captured theoretical predictions about mankeeping. Higher scores across the mankeeping dimensions strongly correlated with lower relationship satisfaction and higher levels of relationship burden and burnout. In addition, five of the six dimensions positively correlated with women’s self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress.
“There is now a validated and useful measure that can help to assess how women engage in this effortful process to help address their partner’s unmet social needs,” Mancini said. “Women who engage in these behaviors more tended to show poorer relationship satisfaction, which may signal the importance of social connections outside the romantic relationship that can help to more widely distribute social needs.” He added that “these results, whilst preliminary, indicate fairly robust and strong effects.”
Interestingly, simply appraising that a partner lacked friends was not strongly linked to psychological distress; rather, it was the active behaviors and the resulting emotional impact that were associated with poorer mental health. The data also showed that women who held more traditional beliefs about gender roles were more likely to report engaging in mankeeping behaviors.
Next, the team sought to verify that their newly developed survey, titled the Mankeeping Scale Partner Report, operated consistently across different populations. They administered the 46-item survey to a second group of 395 romantically partnered cisgender women living in the United Kingdom. Statistical analyses confirmed that the original six-category structure fit the UK data just as well as the US data. This suggests that the survey measures the same underlying concepts regardless of which of these two countries the women reside in, establishing what researchers call measurement invariance.
Recognizing that a 46-item questionnaire can be overly long for many research or clinical settings, the scientists combined the data from both the US and UK participants, totaling 797 women. They identified the three most mathematically and theoretically strong questions from each of the six categories to create an 18-item brief version. Testing showed that this shortened survey maintained excellent reliability and produced similar associations with relationship satisfaction and psychological distress as the full-length version, offering a practical alternative for future studies.
“It is incredibly useful to have validated measures of concepts such as mankeeping, so that research can move from theory to actually testing associations with possible outcomes,” said Sara B. Chadwick, an assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. “Having a validated measure of mankeeping will allow researchers to better understand how women’s efforts to support and maintain their men partners’ social networks and emotional health are connected to a variety of outcomes for both women and men in these partnerships,” she told PsyPost.
“The development of this measure offers a clear extension of research theorizing ‘mankeeping,’ and builds on previous feminist scholarship that has aimed to conceptualize the many ways that gender norms shape women’s romantic relationships with men,” Chadwick added.
She noted that earlier research has highlighted how gender norms often position women as caregivers for their male partners in ways that mimic a parent-child dynamic. “Overall, I would say this offers an important contribution to feminist research by specifically naming the kinds of behaviors that women engage in for the sake of supporting their men partners and by creating a way for researchers to measure and thus further explore it.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The survey relies entirely on self-reported data from one partner, meaning it captures a woman’s perception of her partner’s social life rather than an objective measure of his actual friendships. A man might feel his social needs are adequately met, even if his partner appraises his network as lacking. Future studies would benefit from surveying both members of a couple simultaneously to get a complete picture of the relationship dynamics.
“It is absolutely crucial to recognize that these results at the population level might not apply in the same way to the individual/couple level,” Mancini cautioned. “Romantic couples are incredibly diverse, not every man is lonely, nor does every woman need to engage in this process. This paper should also not take away from the importance of understanding loneliness as a population health issue, that all genders can experience.”
Chadwick agreed that context is crucial, noting that emotionally supporting a partner or helping them maintain social networks can sometimes be a consensual arrangement or a necessity based on temporary life circumstances, such as moving to a new city or dealing with a period of depression.
“The behaviors listed are not in themselves problematic, even when they may be burdensome,” Chadwick explained. “The key here is consent and mutuality, or in other words, it is essential that women either have consented to an arrangement where they take on the majority of social networking and emotional labor, or that this labor is offered to women in their times of need from their men partners.”
The current data is also a single snapshot in time, which makes it impossible to determine a strict chain of cause and effect between mankeeping behaviors and declining mental health. In addition, women’s responses to the survey might be influenced by internalized societal expectations about how a romantic partner is supposed to act.
Because the study focused on populations in the US and the UK with similar cultural norms, the survey might perform differently in other cultures. Expanding the research to include non-Western populations, as well as developing a companion survey to capture how men experience and perceive this social labor, will help clarify the full scope of this dynamic.
The issue arises, she pointed out, when women are automatically expected to take on this labor. “Unfortunately of course, with the way that gender norms function, the majority of mankeeping is indeed likely to be nonconsensual and non-mutual and thus have a disproportionately negative impact on women,” Chadwick said. In future research, she hopes to see investigations into whether this support is reciprocated, noting that the labor might not have a negative impact “if women feel they are offered the same types of labor from their partner in their own time periods of loneliness or need.”
“Our team is looking to engage in some longitudinal work that can allow us to follow couples over time, so that we can better understand how the phenomenon of mankeeping unfolds over time,” Mancini explained. “Being able to also capture the experiences of male partners, and develop interventions that can bolster the relationship quality between partners are our key future priorities.” He noted that the researchers are “always happy to chat to clinicians, researchers, and communities who have thoughts and ideas about the utility of this work!”
The study, “Measuring Mankeeping: Development and Validation of a Scale Assessing How Women Experience the Impact of Men’s Declining Social Networks,” was authored by Vincent O. Mancini, Briana N. Guerrini, James J. Clarke, Dylan P. Vergara, Zac E. Seidler, and Angelica P. Ferrara.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Mankeeping #MankeepingScale #WomensEmotionalLabor #RelationshipHealth #GenderNorms #LonelinessInMen #FemaleCaregiving #RelationshipSatisfaction #EmotionalSupport #SocialNetworks
-
DATE: September 18, 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: “Mankeeping” takes a toll on women’s mental health and relationship satisfaction, study suggests
A newly developed psychological survey provides a way to measure the unpaid, emotional labor that women perform to manage and maintain the social lives of their romantic partners. The research, published in Sex Roles, details the creation of a scale that captures how women experience the effects of men’s shrinking friendships. The tool offers a standardized way to study this dynamic and its impacts on relationship satisfaction and individual well-being.
The survey centers on a concept called mankeeping. This term describes the effort women exert to compensate for the decline in their male partners’ social networks. It involves behaviors like organizing social events, encouraging men to reconnect with friends, and serving as a primary or sole source of emotional support to prevent the men from becoming isolated.
The concept builds on a long history of sociological research into household and emotional labor. For instance, a 1985 study established the idea of kinkeeping, which refers to the everyday, invisible work that women typically perform to keep family members connected and preserve relational harmony.
At the same time, recent public health data indicates that men are facing a widespread decline in close friendships. A 2022 study observed that men generally face greater social isolation than women across most of their adult lives. This vulnerability is also reflected in a study covered by PsyPost in 2026, which showed that psychological distress tends to shrink men’s support networks much more severely than it does for women.
Recognizing the intersection of these two trends, researchers Angelica P. Ferrara and Dylan P. Vergara formally theorized mankeeping in a 2024 paper. They proposed that the ongoing decline in men’s friendships shifts a heavy, unreciprocated social burden onto their female partners, who act to shield the men and the relationship from the negative consequences of isolation.
“‘Mankeeping’ is something many women express that they have been doing for their partners for quite some time,” lead researcher Vincent Mancini told PsyPost. Mancini is an adjunct senior research fellow at the UWA Medical School and a senior research fellow at the UWA Centre for Child Health Research. “With loneliness being a population health crisis that has gendered features, the aim of this work was to better understand how women may engage in additional effort to help maintain their male partner’s social needs.”
Prior to this work, scientists lacked a validated survey to actually quantify the extent of mankeeping and its psychological toll. By developing a specialized scale, Mancini and his colleagues aimed to provide a reliable way to investigate how men’s loneliness reshapes the daily lives of the women who care for them. To build the scale, the researchers first drafted a large pool of questions based on the initial theory of mankeeping.
They recruited 402 women residing in the United States who had been in a heterosexual romantic relationship for at least six months. The participants rated their agreement with 62 potential scale items using a seven-point rating system. They also completed several established psychological questionnaires measuring depression, anxiety, stress, relationship burnout, relationship burden, and overall relationship satisfaction.
Through a statistical process that groups related questions together based on how participants respond, the researchers refined the survey down to 46 items spanning six distinct categories. These six factors include the actual behaviors women perform to manage their partner’s social life, the emotional impact of that labor, and a recognition that their emotional support is often unequal or unappreciated. The remaining three factors capture the woman’s appraisal of her partner’s social network status, a desire for her partner to expand his friendships, and the extent to which the partner depends on her for emotional support.
The results indicated that the survey accurately captured theoretical predictions about mankeeping. Higher scores across the mankeeping dimensions strongly correlated with lower relationship satisfaction and higher levels of relationship burden and burnout. In addition, five of the six dimensions positively correlated with women’s self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress.
“There is now a validated and useful measure that can help to assess how women engage in this effortful process to help address their partner’s unmet social needs,” Mancini said. “Women who engage in these behaviors more tended to show poorer relationship satisfaction, which may signal the importance of social connections outside the romantic relationship that can help to more widely distribute social needs.” He added that “these results, whilst preliminary, indicate fairly robust and strong effects.”
Interestingly, simply appraising that a partner lacked friends was not strongly linked to psychological distress; rather, it was the active behaviors and the resulting emotional impact that were associated with poorer mental health. The data also showed that women who held more traditional beliefs about gender roles were more likely to report engaging in mankeeping behaviors.
Next, the team sought to verify that their newly developed survey, titled the Mankeeping Scale Partner Report, operated consistently across different populations. They administered the 46-item survey to a second group of 395 romantically partnered cisgender women living in the United Kingdom. Statistical analyses confirmed that the original six-category structure fit the UK data just as well as the US data. This suggests that the survey measures the same underlying concepts regardless of which of these two countries the women reside in, establishing what researchers call measurement invariance.
Recognizing that a 46-item questionnaire can be overly long for many research or clinical settings, the scientists combined the data from both the US and UK participants, totaling 797 women. They identified the three most mathematically and theoretically strong questions from each of the six categories to create an 18-item brief version. Testing showed that this shortened survey maintained excellent reliability and produced similar associations with relationship satisfaction and psychological distress as the full-length version, offering a practical alternative for future studies.
“It is incredibly useful to have validated measures of concepts such as mankeeping, so that research can move from theory to actually testing associations with possible outcomes,” said Sara B. Chadwick, an assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. “Having a validated measure of mankeeping will allow researchers to better understand how women’s efforts to support and maintain their men partners’ social networks and emotional health are connected to a variety of outcomes for both women and men in these partnerships,” she told PsyPost.
“The development of this measure offers a clear extension of research theorizing ‘mankeeping,’ and builds on previous feminist scholarship that has aimed to conceptualize the many ways that gender norms shape women’s romantic relationships with men,” Chadwick added.
She noted that earlier research has highlighted how gender norms often position women as caregivers for their male partners in ways that mimic a parent-child dynamic. “Overall, I would say this offers an important contribution to feminist research by specifically naming the kinds of behaviors that women engage in for the sake of supporting their men partners and by creating a way for researchers to measure and thus further explore it.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The survey relies entirely on self-reported data from one partner, meaning it captures a woman’s perception of her partner’s social life rather than an objective measure of his actual friendships. A man might feel his social needs are adequately met, even if his partner appraises his network as lacking. Future studies would benefit from surveying both members of a couple simultaneously to get a complete picture of the relationship dynamics.
“It is absolutely crucial to recognize that these results at the population level might not apply in the same way to the individual/couple level,” Mancini cautioned. “Romantic couples are incredibly diverse, not every man is lonely, nor does every woman need to engage in this process. This paper should also not take away from the importance of understanding loneliness as a population health issue, that all genders can experience.”
Chadwick agreed that context is crucial, noting that emotionally supporting a partner or helping them maintain social networks can sometimes be a consensual arrangement or a necessity based on temporary life circumstances, such as moving to a new city or dealing with a period of depression.
“The behaviors listed are not in themselves problematic, even when they may be burdensome,” Chadwick explained. “The key here is consent and mutuality, or in other words, it is essential that women either have consented to an arrangement where they take on the majority of social networking and emotional labor, or that this labor is offered to women in their times of need from their men partners.”
The current data is also a single snapshot in time, which makes it impossible to determine a strict chain of cause and effect between mankeeping behaviors and declining mental health. In addition, women’s responses to the survey might be influenced by internalized societal expectations about how a romantic partner is supposed to act.
Because the study focused on populations in the US and the UK with similar cultural norms, the survey might perform differently in other cultures. Expanding the research to include non-Western populations, as well as developing a companion survey to capture how men experience and perceive this social labor, will help clarify the full scope of this dynamic.
The issue arises, she pointed out, when women are automatically expected to take on this labor. “Unfortunately of course, with the way that gender norms function, the majority of mankeeping is indeed likely to be nonconsensual and non-mutual and thus have a disproportionately negative impact on women,” Chadwick said. In future research, she hopes to see investigations into whether this support is reciprocated, noting that the labor might not have a negative impact “if women feel they are offered the same types of labor from their partner in their own time periods of loneliness or need.”
“Our team is looking to engage in some longitudinal work that can allow us to follow couples over time, so that we can better understand how the phenomenon of mankeeping unfolds over time,” Mancini explained. “Being able to also capture the experiences of male partners, and develop interventions that can bolster the relationship quality between partners are our key future priorities.” He noted that the researchers are “always happy to chat to clinicians, researchers, and communities who have thoughts and ideas about the utility of this work!”
The study, “Measuring Mankeeping: Development and Validation of a Scale Assessing How Women Experience the Impact of Men’s Declining Social Networks,” was authored by Vincent O. Mancini, Briana N. Guerrini, James J. Clarke, Dylan P. Vergara, Zac E. Seidler, and Angelica P. Ferrara.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #Mankeeping #MankeepingScale #WomensEmotionalLabor #RelationshipHealth #GenderNorms #LonelinessInMen #FemaleCaregiving #RelationshipSatisfaction #EmotionalSupport #SocialNetworks
-
DATE: September 18, 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: “Mankeeping” takes a toll on women’s mental health and relationship satisfaction, study suggests
A newly developed psychological survey provides a way to measure the unpaid, emotional labor that women perform to manage and maintain the social lives of their romantic partners. The research, published in Sex Roles, details the creation of a scale that captures how women experience the effects of men’s shrinking friendships. The tool offers a standardized way to study this dynamic and its impacts on relationship satisfaction and individual well-being.
The survey centers on a concept called mankeeping. This term describes the effort women exert to compensate for the decline in their male partners’ social networks. It involves behaviors like organizing social events, encouraging men to reconnect with friends, and serving as a primary or sole source of emotional support to prevent the men from becoming isolated.
The concept builds on a long history of sociological research into household and emotional labor. For instance, a 1985 study established the idea of kinkeeping, which refers to the everyday, invisible work that women typically perform to keep family members connected and preserve relational harmony.
At the same time, recent public health data indicates that men are facing a widespread decline in close friendships. A 2022 study observed that men generally face greater social isolation than women across most of their adult lives. This vulnerability is also reflected in a study covered by PsyPost in 2026, which showed that psychological distress tends to shrink men’s support networks much more severely than it does for women.
Recognizing the intersection of these two trends, researchers Angelica P. Ferrara and Dylan P. Vergara formally theorized mankeeping in a 2024 paper. They proposed that the ongoing decline in men’s friendships shifts a heavy, unreciprocated social burden onto their female partners, who act to shield the men and the relationship from the negative consequences of isolation.
“‘Mankeeping’ is something many women express that they have been doing for their partners for quite some time,” lead researcher Vincent Mancini told PsyPost. Mancini is an adjunct senior research fellow at the UWA Medical School and a senior research fellow at the UWA Centre for Child Health Research. “With loneliness being a population health crisis that has gendered features, the aim of this work was to better understand how women may engage in additional effort to help maintain their male partner’s social needs.”
Prior to this work, scientists lacked a validated survey to actually quantify the extent of mankeeping and its psychological toll. By developing a specialized scale, Mancini and his colleagues aimed to provide a reliable way to investigate how men’s loneliness reshapes the daily lives of the women who care for them. To build the scale, the researchers first drafted a large pool of questions based on the initial theory of mankeeping.
They recruited 402 women residing in the United States who had been in a heterosexual romantic relationship for at least six months. The participants rated their agreement with 62 potential scale items using a seven-point rating system. They also completed several established psychological questionnaires measuring depression, anxiety, stress, relationship burnout, relationship burden, and overall relationship satisfaction.
Through a statistical process that groups related questions together based on how participants respond, the researchers refined the survey down to 46 items spanning six distinct categories. These six factors include the actual behaviors women perform to manage their partner’s social life, the emotional impact of that labor, and a recognition that their emotional support is often unequal or unappreciated. The remaining three factors capture the woman’s appraisal of her partner’s social network status, a desire for her partner to expand his friendships, and the extent to which the partner depends on her for emotional support.
The results indicated that the survey accurately captured theoretical predictions about mankeeping. Higher scores across the mankeeping dimensions strongly correlated with lower relationship satisfaction and higher levels of relationship burden and burnout. In addition, five of the six dimensions positively correlated with women’s self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress.
“There is now a validated and useful measure that can help to assess how women engage in this effortful process to help address their partner’s unmet social needs,” Mancini said. “Women who engage in these behaviors more tended to show poorer relationship satisfaction, which may signal the importance of social connections outside the romantic relationship that can help to more widely distribute social needs.” He added that “these results, whilst preliminary, indicate fairly robust and strong effects.”
Interestingly, simply appraising that a partner lacked friends was not strongly linked to psychological distress; rather, it was the active behaviors and the resulting emotional impact that were associated with poorer mental health. The data also showed that women who held more traditional beliefs about gender roles were more likely to report engaging in mankeeping behaviors.
Next, the team sought to verify that their newly developed survey, titled the Mankeeping Scale Partner Report, operated consistently across different populations. They administered the 46-item survey to a second group of 395 romantically partnered cisgender women living in the United Kingdom. Statistical analyses confirmed that the original six-category structure fit the UK data just as well as the US data. This suggests that the survey measures the same underlying concepts regardless of which of these two countries the women reside in, establishing what researchers call measurement invariance.
Recognizing that a 46-item questionnaire can be overly long for many research or clinical settings, the scientists combined the data from both the US and UK participants, totaling 797 women. They identified the three most mathematically and theoretically strong questions from each of the six categories to create an 18-item brief version. Testing showed that this shortened survey maintained excellent reliability and produced similar associations with relationship satisfaction and psychological distress as the full-length version, offering a practical alternative for future studies.
“It is incredibly useful to have validated measures of concepts such as mankeeping, so that research can move from theory to actually testing associations with possible outcomes,” said Sara B. Chadwick, an assistant professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. “Having a validated measure of mankeeping will allow researchers to better understand how women’s efforts to support and maintain their men partners’ social networks and emotional health are connected to a variety of outcomes for both women and men in these partnerships,” she told PsyPost.
“The development of this measure offers a clear extension of research theorizing ‘mankeeping,’ and builds on previous feminist scholarship that has aimed to conceptualize the many ways that gender norms shape women’s romantic relationships with men,” Chadwick added.
She noted that earlier research has highlighted how gender norms often position women as caregivers for their male partners in ways that mimic a parent-child dynamic. “Overall, I would say this offers an important contribution to feminist research by specifically naming the kinds of behaviors that women engage in for the sake of supporting their men partners and by creating a way for researchers to measure and thus further explore it.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The survey relies entirely on self-reported data from one partner, meaning it captures a woman’s perception of her partner’s social life rather than an objective measure of his actual friendships. A man might feel his social needs are adequately met, even if his partner appraises his network as lacking. Future studies would benefit from surveying both members of a couple simultaneously to get a complete picture of the relationship dynamics.
“It is absolutely crucial to recognize that these results at the population level might not apply in the same way to the individual/couple level,” Mancini cautioned. “Romantic couples are incredibly diverse, not every man is lonely, nor does every woman need to engage in this process. This paper should also not take away from the importance of understanding loneliness as a population health issue, that all genders can experience.”
Chadwick agreed that context is crucial, noting that emotionally supporting a partner or helping them maintain social networks can sometimes be a consensual arrangement or a necessity based on temporary life circumstances, such as moving to a new city or dealing with a period of depression.
“The behaviors listed are not in themselves problematic, even when they may be burdensome,” Chadwick explained. “The key here is consent and mutuality, or in other words, it is essential that women either have consented to an arrangement where they take on the majority of social networking and emotional labor, or that this labor is offered to women in their times of need from their men partners.”
The current data is also a single snapshot in time, which makes it impossible to determine a strict chain of cause and effect between mankeeping behaviors and declining mental health. In addition, women’s responses to the survey might be influenced by internalized societal expectations about how a romantic partner is supposed to act.
Because the study focused on populations in the US and the UK with similar cultural norms, the survey might perform differently in other cultures. Expanding the research to include non-Western populations, as well as developing a companion survey to capture how men experience and perceive this social labor, will help clarify the full scope of this dynamic.
The issue arises, she pointed out, when women are automatically expected to take on this labor. “Unfortunately of course, with the way that gender norms function, the majority of mankeeping is indeed likely to be nonconsensual and non-mutual and thus have a disproportionately negative impact on women,” Chadwick said. In future research, she hopes to see investigations into whether this support is reciprocated, noting that the labor might not have a negative impact “if women feel they are offered the same types of labor from their partner in their own time periods of loneliness or need.”
“Our team is looking to engage in some longitudinal work that can allow us to follow couples over time, so that we can better understand how the phenomenon of mankeeping unfolds over time,” Mancini explained. “Being able to also capture the experiences of male partners, and develop interventions that can bolster the relationship quality between partners are our key future priorities.” He noted that the researchers are “always happy to chat to clinicians, researchers, and communities who have thoughts and ideas about the utility of this work!”
The study, “Measuring Mankeeping: Development and Validation of a Scale Assessing How Women Experience the Impact of Men’s Declining Social Networks,” was authored by Vincent O. Mancini, Briana N. Guerrini, James J. Clarke, Dylan P. Vergara, Zac E. Seidler, and Angelica P. Ferrara.
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 04:30AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: Opinion: More young men are coming to me for plastic surgery. The way I think about them has changed
There are more men sitting in my plastic surgery waiting room now than ever before. If I had to choose one word to describe the men I see today, it would be “influenced.”
Procedures on men in the U.S. have grown by 4%, a rate that makes men the fastest growing population in aesthetics. In 2024, men underwent 1.6 million minimally invasive cosmetic procedures and almost 100,000 surgical procedures in the United States.
Read the rest…
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STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 04:30AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: Opinion: More young men are coming to me for plastic surgery. The way I think about them has changed
There are more men sitting in my plastic surgery waiting room now than ever before. If I had to choose one word to describe the men I see today, it would be “influenced.”
Procedures on men in the U.S. have grown by 4%, a rate that makes men the fastest growing population in aesthetics. In 2024, men underwent 1.6 million minimally invasive cosmetic procedures and almost 100,000 surgical procedures in the United States.
Read the rest…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 04:30AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: Opinion: More young men are coming to me for plastic surgery. The way I think about them has changed
There are more men sitting in my plastic surgery waiting room now than ever before. If I had to choose one word to describe the men I see today, it would be “influenced.”
Procedures on men in the U.S. have grown by 4%, a rate that makes men the fastest growing population in aesthetics. In 2024, men underwent 1.6 million minimally invasive cosmetic procedures and almost 100,000 surgical procedures in the United States.
Read the rest…
-------------------------------------------------
STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Polls Show Most Americans Agree on One Thing: Opposition to AI
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
There's not much the American people agree on these days. From Trump Steaks to plastic straws, from vaccines to Teslas, it's hard to pinpoint a topic that hasn't been polarized by politics. But a series of new surveys suggest Americans may have finally found an area of agreement: opposition to artificial intelligence. In fact, nearly two out of three Americans now say there is at least a moderate risk that AI will destroy humanity.
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DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Polls Show Most Americans Agree on One Thing: Opposition to AI
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
There's not much the American people agree on these days. From Trump Steaks to plastic straws, from vaccines to Teslas, it's hard to pinpoint a topic that hasn't been polarized by politics. But a series of new surveys suggest Americans may have finally found an area of agreement: opposition to artificial intelligence. In fact, nearly two out of three Americans now say there is at least a moderate risk that AI will destroy humanity.
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Polls Show Most Americans Agree on One Thing: Opposition to AI
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
There's not much the American people agree on these days. From Trump Steaks to plastic straws, from vaccines to Teslas, it's hard to pinpoint a topic that hasn't been polarized by politics. But a series of new surveys suggest Americans may have finally found an area of agreement: opposition to artificial intelligence. In fact, nearly two out of three Americans now say there is at least a moderate risk that AI will destroy humanity.
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: OpenAI Discloses New "Concerning" Behavior
Source: DW- top stories
OpenAI revealed new incidents Wednesday in which its artificial intelligence has behaved in "unexpected or concerning" ways, including models attempting to "cheat." In one case, a model tried to upload files to the internet that it had created itself, only to cite them later and present them as reliable sources. In another case, a model, after failing to find the requested information, fabricated it and attempted to conceal that it had done so.
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: OpenAI Discloses New "Concerning" Behavior
Source: DW- top stories
OpenAI revealed new incidents Wednesday in which its artificial intelligence has behaved in "unexpected or concerning" ways, including models attempting to "cheat." In one case, a model tried to upload files to the internet that it had created itself, only to cite them later and present them as reliable sources. In another case, a model, after failing to find the requested information, fabricated it and attempted to conceal that it had done so.
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-
DATE: September 18, 2026 at 03:37AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: OpenAI Discloses New "Concerning" Behavior
Source: DW- top stories
OpenAI revealed new incidents Wednesday in which its artificial intelligence has behaved in "unexpected or concerning" ways, including models attempting to "cheat." In one case, a model tried to upload files to the internet that it had created itself, only to cite them later and present them as reliable sources. In another case, a model, after failing to find the requested information, fabricated it and attempted to conceal that it had done so.
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DATE: September 17, 2026 at 10:00PM
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: Everyday physical activity is linked to a major boost in energy and mood
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
People tended to feel more energetic and positive when they were more physically active than usual, and they were also more likely to become active after reporting better well-being, according to a large analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Physical activity includes more than organized exercise. It can involve walking, household movement, commuting and other everyday activities. Affective well-being refers to a person’s momentary emotional state, including whether they feel happy or unhappy, energized or tired, calm or tense, and generally good or bad.
Earlier research has often linked exercise with improved mood, but studies conducted in laboratories or through occasional questionnaires may not accurately reflect people’s ordinary lives. Researchers have increasingly used wearable movement monitors and smartphone surveys to record what people are doing and how they feel throughout the day. However, these studies have used different methods and have produced mixed results.
The current researchers aimed to combine this evidence and determine whether physical activity and well-being were related in both directions. They also wanted to distinguish changes within individuals from differences between individuals. This distinction matters because a person who is generally active may also be happier for other reasons, such as better health, social support or living conditions.
Led by Johanna Rehder of the University of Salzburg in Austria, the team analyzed 67 datasets from 14 countries. The study included 8,223 participants, with an average age of 36.33 years. Sex or gender information was available for 8,190 participants: 54.93% were female and 0.06% were nonbinary.
Participants wore accelerometers, small devices that objectively record movement, for periods ranging from one to 100 days. They also received smartphone prompts asking them to report their current well-being. Across the datasets, participants provided 321,345 well-being ratings linked to nearly 1 million hours of movement measurements.
The researchers examined five aspects of well-being: positive feelings, negative feelings, overall pleasantness, energy and calmness. They assessed both whether physical activity came before later changes in well-being and whether well-being came before later physical activity.
Within individuals, physical activity was consistently associated with greater energy, more positive feelings and better overall pleasantness. The strongest relationship involved energetic arousal—the feeling of being awake, alert and energized. In practical terms, moving from sitting to walking was associated with a 0.62-point increase in energetic arousal on a 1-to-4 scale. The same comparison was associated with a 0.24-point increase in positive feelings and a 0.16-point increase in pleasantness. Physical activity did not, however, show a consistent relationship with negative feelings such as sadness or anxiety.
Physical activity was also linked with feeling less calm. This does not necessarily mean that movement made people distressed. It may reflect the fact that being active is associated with feeling more alert and stimulated rather than relaxed.
The relationship also operated in the opposite direction. When people reported feeling better and more energetic than their own average, they tended to be more physically active afterward, whereas feeling calmer was associated with less subsequent activity. Negative feelings, however, did not show a consistent relationship with later activity. At the level of differences between people, physical activity was most consistently associated with positive feelings and pleasantness.
The strength of the associations varied substantially among individuals. Age, body mass index, sex or gender and whether measurements were taken on a weekday or weekend explained some of this variation. For instance, younger adults and those with a lower body mass index showed stronger positive emotional responses linked to physical activity. Additionally, the energy boost from being active was more pronounced on weekends than on weekdays, and women felt more energized after activity than men.
The authors concluded that “the results document the critical relevance of [physical activity]–[affective well-being] relations in everyday life.”
Important limitations remain. For example, the datasets were observational, so they cannot establish that physical activity directly improves well-being or that positive feelings cause later activity. The studies also differed in the devices they used, how often participants reported their feelings and how well-being was defined.
The study, “An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of How Physical Activity Relates to Affective Well-being in Daily Life,” was authored by Johanna Rehder, Irina Timm, Gesa Berretz, Iris Reinhard, Andreas B. Neubauer, Onur Güntürkün, Keisuke Takano, Walter Bierbauer, Miriam Cabrita, Matthew Bourke, Joshua Smyth, Jinhyuk Kim, Johannes Michalak, Joshua Curtiss, Björn Pannicke, Jacob B. Gallagher, Ana M. Abrantes, Toru Nakamura, Yoshiharu Yamamoto, Paul Cook, Lena M. Wieland, Birte von Haaren-Mack, Bryan McCormick, Justin Hachenberger, Tomas Vetrovsky, Benjamin Henwood, Louise Poppe, Gorden Sudeck, Laura Hollands, Andrea B. Goldschmidt, Lynn Martire, Martina Kanning, Jaclyn P. Maher, Yu-Mei Li, Ulrich Reininghaus, Corina Berli, Caroline Seiferth, Derek J. Hevel, Kate Leger, Amanda E. Staiano, Almut Zeeck, Stefano Calza, Yue Liao, Geralyn R. Ruissen, the CoCA Consortium, Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger, Matthias Haucke, Loree T. Pham, Siwei Liu, Mark C. Thomas, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Genevieve F. Dunton, Steriani Elavsky, Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer, Marco Giurgiu, Julian Packheiser and Markus Reichert.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
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-
DATE: September 17, 2026 at 10:00PM
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: Everyday physical activity is linked to a major boost in energy and mood
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
People tended to feel more energetic and positive when they were more physically active than usual, and they were also more likely to become active after reporting better well-being, according to a large analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Physical activity includes more than organized exercise. It can involve walking, household movement, commuting and other everyday activities. Affective well-being refers to a person’s momentary emotional state, including whether they feel happy or unhappy, energized or tired, calm or tense, and generally good or bad.
Earlier research has often linked exercise with improved mood, but studies conducted in laboratories or through occasional questionnaires may not accurately reflect people’s ordinary lives. Researchers have increasingly used wearable movement monitors and smartphone surveys to record what people are doing and how they feel throughout the day. However, these studies have used different methods and have produced mixed results.
The current researchers aimed to combine this evidence and determine whether physical activity and well-being were related in both directions. They also wanted to distinguish changes within individuals from differences between individuals. This distinction matters because a person who is generally active may also be happier for other reasons, such as better health, social support or living conditions.
Led by Johanna Rehder of the University of Salzburg in Austria, the team analyzed 67 datasets from 14 countries. The study included 8,223 participants, with an average age of 36.33 years. Sex or gender information was available for 8,190 participants: 54.93% were female and 0.06% were nonbinary.
Participants wore accelerometers, small devices that objectively record movement, for periods ranging from one to 100 days. They also received smartphone prompts asking them to report their current well-being. Across the datasets, participants provided 321,345 well-being ratings linked to nearly 1 million hours of movement measurements.
The researchers examined five aspects of well-being: positive feelings, negative feelings, overall pleasantness, energy and calmness. They assessed both whether physical activity came before later changes in well-being and whether well-being came before later physical activity.
Within individuals, physical activity was consistently associated with greater energy, more positive feelings and better overall pleasantness. The strongest relationship involved energetic arousal—the feeling of being awake, alert and energized. In practical terms, moving from sitting to walking was associated with a 0.62-point increase in energetic arousal on a 1-to-4 scale. The same comparison was associated with a 0.24-point increase in positive feelings and a 0.16-point increase in pleasantness. Physical activity did not, however, show a consistent relationship with negative feelings such as sadness or anxiety.
Physical activity was also linked with feeling less calm. This does not necessarily mean that movement made people distressed. It may reflect the fact that being active is associated with feeling more alert and stimulated rather than relaxed.
The relationship also operated in the opposite direction. When people reported feeling better and more energetic than their own average, they tended to be more physically active afterward, whereas feeling calmer was associated with less subsequent activity. Negative feelings, however, did not show a consistent relationship with later activity. At the level of differences between people, physical activity was most consistently associated with positive feelings and pleasantness.
The strength of the associations varied substantially among individuals. Age, body mass index, sex or gender and whether measurements were taken on a weekday or weekend explained some of this variation. For instance, younger adults and those with a lower body mass index showed stronger positive emotional responses linked to physical activity. Additionally, the energy boost from being active was more pronounced on weekends than on weekdays, and women felt more energized after activity than men.
The authors concluded that “the results document the critical relevance of [physical activity]–[affective well-being] relations in everyday life.”
Important limitations remain. For example, the datasets were observational, so they cannot establish that physical activity directly improves well-being or that positive feelings cause later activity. The studies also differed in the devices they used, how often participants reported their feelings and how well-being was defined.
The study, “An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of How Physical Activity Relates to Affective Well-being in Daily Life,” was authored by Johanna Rehder, Irina Timm, Gesa Berretz, Iris Reinhard, Andreas B. Neubauer, Onur Güntürkün, Keisuke Takano, Walter Bierbauer, Miriam Cabrita, Matthew Bourke, Joshua Smyth, Jinhyuk Kim, Johannes Michalak, Joshua Curtiss, Björn Pannicke, Jacob B. Gallagher, Ana M. Abrantes, Toru Nakamura, Yoshiharu Yamamoto, Paul Cook, Lena M. Wieland, Birte von Haaren-Mack, Bryan McCormick, Justin Hachenberger, Tomas Vetrovsky, Benjamin Henwood, Louise Poppe, Gorden Sudeck, Laura Hollands, Andrea B. Goldschmidt, Lynn Martire, Martina Kanning, Jaclyn P. Maher, Yu-Mei Li, Ulrich Reininghaus, Corina Berli, Caroline Seiferth, Derek J. Hevel, Kate Leger, Amanda E. Staiano, Almut Zeeck, Stefano Calza, Yue Liao, Geralyn R. Ruissen, the CoCA Consortium, Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger, Matthias Haucke, Loree T. Pham, Siwei Liu, Mark C. Thomas, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Genevieve F. Dunton, Steriani Elavsky, Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer, Marco Giurgiu, Julian Packheiser and Markus Reichert.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
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DATE: September 17, 2026 at 10:00PM
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: Everyday physical activity is linked to a major boost in energy and mood
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
People tended to feel more energetic and positive when they were more physically active than usual, and they were also more likely to become active after reporting better well-being, according to a large analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Physical activity includes more than organized exercise. It can involve walking, household movement, commuting and other everyday activities. Affective well-being refers to a person’s momentary emotional state, including whether they feel happy or unhappy, energized or tired, calm or tense, and generally good or bad.
Earlier research has often linked exercise with improved mood, but studies conducted in laboratories or through occasional questionnaires may not accurately reflect people’s ordinary lives. Researchers have increasingly used wearable movement monitors and smartphone surveys to record what people are doing and how they feel throughout the day. However, these studies have used different methods and have produced mixed results.
The current researchers aimed to combine this evidence and determine whether physical activity and well-being were related in both directions. They also wanted to distinguish changes within individuals from differences between individuals. This distinction matters because a person who is generally active may also be happier for other reasons, such as better health, social support or living conditions.
Led by Johanna Rehder of the University of Salzburg in Austria, the team analyzed 67 datasets from 14 countries. The study included 8,223 participants, with an average age of 36.33 years. Sex or gender information was available for 8,190 participants: 54.93% were female and 0.06% were nonbinary.
Participants wore accelerometers, small devices that objectively record movement, for periods ranging from one to 100 days. They also received smartphone prompts asking them to report their current well-being. Across the datasets, participants provided 321,345 well-being ratings linked to nearly 1 million hours of movement measurements.
The researchers examined five aspects of well-being: positive feelings, negative feelings, overall pleasantness, energy and calmness. They assessed both whether physical activity came before later changes in well-being and whether well-being came before later physical activity.
Within individuals, physical activity was consistently associated with greater energy, more positive feelings and better overall pleasantness. The strongest relationship involved energetic arousal—the feeling of being awake, alert and energized. In practical terms, moving from sitting to walking was associated with a 0.62-point increase in energetic arousal on a 1-to-4 scale. The same comparison was associated with a 0.24-point increase in positive feelings and a 0.16-point increase in pleasantness. Physical activity did not, however, show a consistent relationship with negative feelings such as sadness or anxiety.
Physical activity was also linked with feeling less calm. This does not necessarily mean that movement made people distressed. It may reflect the fact that being active is associated with feeling more alert and stimulated rather than relaxed.
The relationship also operated in the opposite direction. When people reported feeling better and more energetic than their own average, they tended to be more physically active afterward, whereas feeling calmer was associated with less subsequent activity. Negative feelings, however, did not show a consistent relationship with later activity. At the level of differences between people, physical activity was most consistently associated with positive feelings and pleasantness.
The strength of the associations varied substantially among individuals. Age, body mass index, sex or gender and whether measurements were taken on a weekday or weekend explained some of this variation. For instance, younger adults and those with a lower body mass index showed stronger positive emotional responses linked to physical activity. Additionally, the energy boost from being active was more pronounced on weekends than on weekdays, and women felt more energized after activity than men.
The authors concluded that “the results document the critical relevance of [physical activity]–[affective well-being] relations in everyday life.”
Important limitations remain. For example, the datasets were observational, so they cannot establish that physical activity directly improves well-being or that positive feelings cause later activity. The studies also differed in the devices they used, how often participants reported their feelings and how well-being was defined.
The study, “An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of How Physical Activity Relates to Affective Well-being in Daily Life,” was authored by Johanna Rehder, Irina Timm, Gesa Berretz, Iris Reinhard, Andreas B. Neubauer, Onur Güntürkün, Keisuke Takano, Walter Bierbauer, Miriam Cabrita, Matthew Bourke, Joshua Smyth, Jinhyuk Kim, Johannes Michalak, Joshua Curtiss, Björn Pannicke, Jacob B. Gallagher, Ana M. Abrantes, Toru Nakamura, Yoshiharu Yamamoto, Paul Cook, Lena M. Wieland, Birte von Haaren-Mack, Bryan McCormick, Justin Hachenberger, Tomas Vetrovsky, Benjamin Henwood, Louise Poppe, Gorden Sudeck, Laura Hollands, Andrea B. Goldschmidt, Lynn Martire, Martina Kanning, Jaclyn P. Maher, Yu-Mei Li, Ulrich Reininghaus, Corina Berli, Caroline Seiferth, Derek J. Hevel, Kate Leger, Amanda E. Staiano, Almut Zeeck, Stefano Calza, Yue Liao, Geralyn R. Ruissen, the CoCA Consortium, Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger, Matthias Haucke, Loree T. Pham, Siwei Liu, Mark C. Thomas, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Genevieve F. Dunton, Steriani Elavsky, Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer, Marco Giurgiu, Julian Packheiser and Markus Reichert.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/everyday-physical-activity-is-linked-to-a-major-boost-in-energy-and-mood/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PhysicalActivity #EnergyBoost #MoodBoost #EverydayMovement #WellBeing #AffectiveWellBeing #EnergyAndMood #ActiveLifestyle #WeekendEnergy #WearableTech
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DATE: September 17, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brain waves predict sexual side effects of common depression medications
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
Measuring brain activity before starting depression medication might help doctors predict which patients will experience sexual side effects. A recent study shows that a specific brain wave pattern related to serotonin can forecast whether a patient will struggle to reach orgasm after taking common antidepressants. The research was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
Depression often brings a host of challenging symptoms, with sexual difficulties being highly prevalent. Between 40 and 60 percent of people with major depressive disorder experience sexual disturbances as part of their condition. While treating depression can sometimes improve a person’s sex life as their mood lifts, the medications themselves frequently cause new problems.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, usually referred to as SSRIs, are the most common medications prescribed for depression. SSRIs work by increasing the availability of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain. Higher serotonin levels help alleviate depressive symptoms but also inhibit sexual function in many individuals.
Between 40 and 70 percent of patients taking SSRIs report adverse reactions such as diminished sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused, or trouble reaching orgasm. These side effects can drastically affect a person’s quality of life and relationships. As a result, many patients stop taking their antidepressants altogether.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen. Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen led the research team. They wanted to find a way to predict individual susceptibility to these side effects before a prescription is written.
The researchers focused on a biological marker called the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials. This marker is measured using an electroencephalogram, or EEG, which records electrical activity in the brain through sensors placed on the scalp. The measure tracks how the brain reacts to sounds of increasing volume.
Previous research suggests that this auditory brain response acts as an inverse indicator of serotonin activity in the central nervous system. A weaker brain response to louder sounds indicates higher baseline serotonin activity. The researchers hypothesized that people who already have high serotonin activity before starting medication might be pushed over a threshold by SSRIs, triggering sexual side effects.
The research team analyzed data from 90 unmedicated patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The participants were between the ages of 18 and 57, and roughly three-quarters of the group were women. None of the patients had taken antidepressant medication for at least two months prior to the study.
Before starting any treatment, each participant underwent an EEG recording. During this session, they listened to a series of tones at five different volume levels, ranging from 60 to 100 decibels. The researchers calculated the auditory brain response for each patient based on how their brain waves changed as the tones grew louder.
Alongside the brain scans, the researchers assessed each patient’s baseline sexual function using clinical questionnaires. They also measured blood levels of testosterone. Afterward, 86 of the participants began treatment with the SSRI escitalopram for eight weeks.
During the treatment period, clinicians monitored the patients for changes in their depression symptoms and the emergence of side effects. If a patient did not respond well to escitalopram or experienced intolerable side effects by week four, they were offered a switch to a different type of antidepressant called duloxetine. Seven patients made this switch.
At the end of the eight weeks, the clinicians formally rated the severity of any medication-induced sexual side effects. The researchers then ran statistical models to see if the pretreatment brain wave measurements corresponded to the side effects observed at the end of the trial.
The analysis revealed a robust link between baseline brain activity and later sexual difficulties. Patients who displayed a weaker brain response to increasing sound volume prior to treatment experienced higher rates of SSRI-induced orgasmic dysfunction. This specific brain wave pattern accurately predicted distressing orgasmic dysfunction 87 percent of the time.
The researchers also looked at whether the brain marker could predict a loss of sexual desire. They found a marginal association between the brain response and decreased libido, though it was not as strong as the link to orgasmic dysfunction. The brain marker was entirely unrelated to the occurrence of erectile dysfunction in the male participants.
When the team incorporated pretreatment blood testosterone levels into their predictive models, the changes in accuracy were not statistically significant. The auditory brain response alone, combined with basic demographic information and the patient’s baseline sexual function, was sufficient for predicting the side effects.
The researchers also examined the participants’ sexual function before any medication was introduced. They found that the auditory brain response was not associated with the level of sexual dysfunction caused directly by the depression itself. The brain marker appears specifically linked to how the body reacts to the introduction of the SSRI medication.
Because the biological mechanism for orgasm relies heavily on specific serotonin receptors, the researchers suggest that the brain marker is capturing the precise neurological pathway disrupted by SSRIs. In contrast, sexual desire involves a wider network of brain chemicals, which might explain why the brain marker was less predictive of decreased libido.
The study relied on an open-label design, meaning both the patients and the clinicians knew which medication was being administered. Without a placebo control group, some of the observed changes in sexual function could be related to natural fluctuations in the illness rather than the medication alone. The study participants were also relatively young, with an average age of 27.5 years, which may limit how well the findings apply to older adults.
Because a small portion of the group switched from escitalopram to duloxetine halfway through the trial, the results capture the effects of two different antidepressants. The researchers did perform a secondary analysis isolating only the patients on escitalopram, which produced the same outcome. Even so, testing the brain marker against a single medication in a more standardized protocol would provide firmer conclusions.
Moving forward, the research team aims to test this biological marker in more diverse groups of patients in standard clinical settings. If the auditory brain response proves reliable across broader populations, it could eventually serve as a routine screening tool. Doctors could use the test to identify patients at high risk for sexual side effects and prescribe alternative antidepressants that act on different brain chemicals.
The study, “Serotonergic activity estimated by EEG loudness-dependent auditory evoked potentials as a predictor of sexual SSRI side effects,” was authored by Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir, Cheng-Teng Ip, Vibe G. Frokjaer, Annamaria Giraldi, Martin Balslev Jørgensen, and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
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DATE: September 17, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brain waves predict sexual side effects of common depression medications
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
Measuring brain activity before starting depression medication might help doctors predict which patients will experience sexual side effects. A recent study shows that a specific brain wave pattern related to serotonin can forecast whether a patient will struggle to reach orgasm after taking common antidepressants. The research was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
Depression often brings a host of challenging symptoms, with sexual difficulties being highly prevalent. Between 40 and 60 percent of people with major depressive disorder experience sexual disturbances as part of their condition. While treating depression can sometimes improve a person’s sex life as their mood lifts, the medications themselves frequently cause new problems.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, usually referred to as SSRIs, are the most common medications prescribed for depression. SSRIs work by increasing the availability of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain. Higher serotonin levels help alleviate depressive symptoms but also inhibit sexual function in many individuals.
Between 40 and 70 percent of patients taking SSRIs report adverse reactions such as diminished sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused, or trouble reaching orgasm. These side effects can drastically affect a person’s quality of life and relationships. As a result, many patients stop taking their antidepressants altogether.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen. Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen led the research team. They wanted to find a way to predict individual susceptibility to these side effects before a prescription is written.
The researchers focused on a biological marker called the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials. This marker is measured using an electroencephalogram, or EEG, which records electrical activity in the brain through sensors placed on the scalp. The measure tracks how the brain reacts to sounds of increasing volume.
Previous research suggests that this auditory brain response acts as an inverse indicator of serotonin activity in the central nervous system. A weaker brain response to louder sounds indicates higher baseline serotonin activity. The researchers hypothesized that people who already have high serotonin activity before starting medication might be pushed over a threshold by SSRIs, triggering sexual side effects.
The research team analyzed data from 90 unmedicated patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The participants were between the ages of 18 and 57, and roughly three-quarters of the group were women. None of the patients had taken antidepressant medication for at least two months prior to the study.
Before starting any treatment, each participant underwent an EEG recording. During this session, they listened to a series of tones at five different volume levels, ranging from 60 to 100 decibels. The researchers calculated the auditory brain response for each patient based on how their brain waves changed as the tones grew louder.
Alongside the brain scans, the researchers assessed each patient’s baseline sexual function using clinical questionnaires. They also measured blood levels of testosterone. Afterward, 86 of the participants began treatment with the SSRI escitalopram for eight weeks.
During the treatment period, clinicians monitored the patients for changes in their depression symptoms and the emergence of side effects. If a patient did not respond well to escitalopram or experienced intolerable side effects by week four, they were offered a switch to a different type of antidepressant called duloxetine. Seven patients made this switch.
At the end of the eight weeks, the clinicians formally rated the severity of any medication-induced sexual side effects. The researchers then ran statistical models to see if the pretreatment brain wave measurements corresponded to the side effects observed at the end of the trial.
The analysis revealed a robust link between baseline brain activity and later sexual difficulties. Patients who displayed a weaker brain response to increasing sound volume prior to treatment experienced higher rates of SSRI-induced orgasmic dysfunction. This specific brain wave pattern accurately predicted distressing orgasmic dysfunction 87 percent of the time.
The researchers also looked at whether the brain marker could predict a loss of sexual desire. They found a marginal association between the brain response and decreased libido, though it was not as strong as the link to orgasmic dysfunction. The brain marker was entirely unrelated to the occurrence of erectile dysfunction in the male participants.
When the team incorporated pretreatment blood testosterone levels into their predictive models, the changes in accuracy were not statistically significant. The auditory brain response alone, combined with basic demographic information and the patient’s baseline sexual function, was sufficient for predicting the side effects.
The researchers also examined the participants’ sexual function before any medication was introduced. They found that the auditory brain response was not associated with the level of sexual dysfunction caused directly by the depression itself. The brain marker appears specifically linked to how the body reacts to the introduction of the SSRI medication.
Because the biological mechanism for orgasm relies heavily on specific serotonin receptors, the researchers suggest that the brain marker is capturing the precise neurological pathway disrupted by SSRIs. In contrast, sexual desire involves a wider network of brain chemicals, which might explain why the brain marker was less predictive of decreased libido.
The study relied on an open-label design, meaning both the patients and the clinicians knew which medication was being administered. Without a placebo control group, some of the observed changes in sexual function could be related to natural fluctuations in the illness rather than the medication alone. The study participants were also relatively young, with an average age of 27.5 years, which may limit how well the findings apply to older adults.
Because a small portion of the group switched from escitalopram to duloxetine halfway through the trial, the results capture the effects of two different antidepressants. The researchers did perform a secondary analysis isolating only the patients on escitalopram, which produced the same outcome. Even so, testing the brain marker against a single medication in a more standardized protocol would provide firmer conclusions.
Moving forward, the research team aims to test this biological marker in more diverse groups of patients in standard clinical settings. If the auditory brain response proves reliable across broader populations, it could eventually serve as a routine screening tool. Doctors could use the test to identify patients at high risk for sexual side effects and prescribe alternative antidepressants that act on different brain chemicals.
The study, “Serotonergic activity estimated by EEG loudness-dependent auditory evoked potentials as a predictor of sexual SSRI side effects,” was authored by Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir, Cheng-Teng Ip, Vibe G. Frokjaer, Annamaria Giraldi, Martin Balslev Jørgensen, and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
-------------------------------------------------
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DATE: September 17, 2026 at 08:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brain waves predict sexual side effects of common depression medications
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
Measuring brain activity before starting depression medication might help doctors predict which patients will experience sexual side effects. A recent study shows that a specific brain wave pattern related to serotonin can forecast whether a patient will struggle to reach orgasm after taking common antidepressants. The research was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
Depression often brings a host of challenging symptoms, with sexual difficulties being highly prevalent. Between 40 and 60 percent of people with major depressive disorder experience sexual disturbances as part of their condition. While treating depression can sometimes improve a person’s sex life as their mood lifts, the medications themselves frequently cause new problems.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, usually referred to as SSRIs, are the most common medications prescribed for depression. SSRIs work by increasing the availability of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain. Higher serotonin levels help alleviate depressive symptoms but also inhibit sexual function in many individuals.
Between 40 and 70 percent of patients taking SSRIs report adverse reactions such as diminished sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused, or trouble reaching orgasm. These side effects can drastically affect a person’s quality of life and relationships. As a result, many patients stop taking their antidepressants altogether.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen. Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen led the research team. They wanted to find a way to predict individual susceptibility to these side effects before a prescription is written.
The researchers focused on a biological marker called the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials. This marker is measured using an electroencephalogram, or EEG, which records electrical activity in the brain through sensors placed on the scalp. The measure tracks how the brain reacts to sounds of increasing volume.
Previous research suggests that this auditory brain response acts as an inverse indicator of serotonin activity in the central nervous system. A weaker brain response to louder sounds indicates higher baseline serotonin activity. The researchers hypothesized that people who already have high serotonin activity before starting medication might be pushed over a threshold by SSRIs, triggering sexual side effects.
The research team analyzed data from 90 unmedicated patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The participants were between the ages of 18 and 57, and roughly three-quarters of the group were women. None of the patients had taken antidepressant medication for at least two months prior to the study.
Before starting any treatment, each participant underwent an EEG recording. During this session, they listened to a series of tones at five different volume levels, ranging from 60 to 100 decibels. The researchers calculated the auditory brain response for each patient based on how their brain waves changed as the tones grew louder.
Alongside the brain scans, the researchers assessed each patient’s baseline sexual function using clinical questionnaires. They also measured blood levels of testosterone. Afterward, 86 of the participants began treatment with the SSRI escitalopram for eight weeks.
During the treatment period, clinicians monitored the patients for changes in their depression symptoms and the emergence of side effects. If a patient did not respond well to escitalopram or experienced intolerable side effects by week four, they were offered a switch to a different type of antidepressant called duloxetine. Seven patients made this switch.
At the end of the eight weeks, the clinicians formally rated the severity of any medication-induced sexual side effects. The researchers then ran statistical models to see if the pretreatment brain wave measurements corresponded to the side effects observed at the end of the trial.
The analysis revealed a robust link between baseline brain activity and later sexual difficulties. Patients who displayed a weaker brain response to increasing sound volume prior to treatment experienced higher rates of SSRI-induced orgasmic dysfunction. This specific brain wave pattern accurately predicted distressing orgasmic dysfunction 87 percent of the time.
The researchers also looked at whether the brain marker could predict a loss of sexual desire. They found a marginal association between the brain response and decreased libido, though it was not as strong as the link to orgasmic dysfunction. The brain marker was entirely unrelated to the occurrence of erectile dysfunction in the male participants.
When the team incorporated pretreatment blood testosterone levels into their predictive models, the changes in accuracy were not statistically significant. The auditory brain response alone, combined with basic demographic information and the patient’s baseline sexual function, was sufficient for predicting the side effects.
The researchers also examined the participants’ sexual function before any medication was introduced. They found that the auditory brain response was not associated with the level of sexual dysfunction caused directly by the depression itself. The brain marker appears specifically linked to how the body reacts to the introduction of the SSRI medication.
Because the biological mechanism for orgasm relies heavily on specific serotonin receptors, the researchers suggest that the brain marker is capturing the precise neurological pathway disrupted by SSRIs. In contrast, sexual desire involves a wider network of brain chemicals, which might explain why the brain marker was less predictive of decreased libido.
The study relied on an open-label design, meaning both the patients and the clinicians knew which medication was being administered. Without a placebo control group, some of the observed changes in sexual function could be related to natural fluctuations in the illness rather than the medication alone. The study participants were also relatively young, with an average age of 27.5 years, which may limit how well the findings apply to older adults.
Because a small portion of the group switched from escitalopram to duloxetine halfway through the trial, the results capture the effects of two different antidepressants. The researchers did perform a secondary analysis isolating only the patients on escitalopram, which produced the same outcome. Even so, testing the brain marker against a single medication in a more standardized protocol would provide firmer conclusions.
Moving forward, the research team aims to test this biological marker in more diverse groups of patients in standard clinical settings. If the auditory brain response proves reliable across broader populations, it could eventually serve as a routine screening tool. Doctors could use the test to identify patients at high risk for sexual side effects and prescribe alternative antidepressants that act on different brain chemicals.
The study, “Serotonergic activity estimated by EEG loudness-dependent auditory evoked potentials as a predictor of sexual SSRI side effects,” was authored by Gudrun Dilja Ketilsdottir, Cheng-Teng Ip, Vibe G. Frokjaer, Annamaria Giraldi, Martin Balslev Jørgensen, and Kristian H. Reveles Jensen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-sexual-side-effects-of-common-depression-medications/
-------------------------------------------------
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DATE: September 17, 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: For a teen with a rare memory condition, the past constantly hijacks the present
A recent study has found that a teenager with an exceptionally powerful memory for his own life experiences also experiences an unusually high rate of memories popping into his mind without any effort. The research suggests that this exceptional memory ability might be driven by an increased sensitivity to memory triggers in the environment rather than just a general tendency to daydream. The findings were published in Cortex.
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory is a rare condition where a person can recall past personal events with extreme accuracy and detail. People with this ability can often remember the exact day of the week, the weather, and personal activities for almost any given date in their past. For years, scientists mostly focused on how well adults with this condition could intentionally search their memories when asked a specific question.
However, the current understanding of memory highlights that remembering is not always a deliberate choice. Often, memories come to us involuntarily, sparked by a passing smell, a word, or an emotion. Recent research has started to explore this spontaneous side of remembering. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 demonstrated that this exceptional memory ability can be verified in early adolescence. Building on this, a 2026 case study provided survey-based evidence that a person with this condition experienced a highly elevated rate of involuntary memories popping into their mind.
“People with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory are remarkably good at retrieving events from their personal past, and their memories are often described as coming to mind very quickly and effortlessly,” said Krystian Barzykowski, a professor at the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University and head of the Applied Memory Research Laboratory in Poland. “Yet most previous research has examined what happens when these individuals are asked to remember, rather than whether memories also enter consciousness spontaneously, without any intention to retrieve them.”
These earlier studies relied primarily on people keeping diaries or answering questionnaires about their own thoughts. The research, led by Barzykowski and his colleagues, aimed to test whether this influx of spontaneous memories holds up under controlled laboratory conditions. The scientists wanted to measure involuntary thoughts objectively in a teenager who reported having this rare memory condition.
“We therefore wanted to know whether exceptional autobiographical memory is also associated with unusually frequent involuntary memories—those everyday moments when something from your past simply ‘pops’ into mind—and, importantly, to measure this experimentally rather than relying only on questionnaires or diaries,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
The researchers worked with a 16-year-old male from Poland, referred to as KCL, who had contacted them about his unusual memory. He told the scientists that he felt a constant influx of memories in his daily life and could remember events from at least half the days of his life. To verify his abilities, the researchers first gave him a set of standardized memory quizzes.
“I would also emphasize that our participant himself contacted us because he had begun to realize that the way he remembered his life was unusual,” Barzykowski noted. “It is quite possible that some people with unusually strong autobiographical memory do not realize how exceptional their memory is until they begin to reflect on how much of their personal past they can actually retrieve.”
They asked him to recall the exact dates of recent public events and to retrieve verifiable news stories and personal memories from randomly selected calendar dates. For each answer, KCL had to rate how confident he was and whether he felt he was genuinely remembering the event, knowing it as a fact, or just guessing.
His performance was compared against a group of eight typical adults and one matched 16-year-old boy. On a quiz asking for the dates of public events, KCL scored 51 percent, while the comparison group averaged about 20 percent. On a random dates quiz, KCL successfully recalled details for 83 percent of the prompts, far exceeding the comparison group’s average of 29 percent. This confirmed that his abilities were far above average and met the formal criteria for Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.
“After systematic testing, his performance exceeded established HSAM thresholds on both the Public Dates and Random Dates screening tasks,” Barzykowski said. “This makes the study an interesting example of how an unusual subjective experience can eventually lead to a testable scientific question.”
To test involuntary memories, the researchers used a computer-based vigilance task. KCL and a separate comparison group of 36 young adults watched a continuous stream of horizontal lines on a screen and had to press a button whenever a rare vertical line appeared. The task was designed to be simple but repetitive, allowing the mind a chance to wander.
Throughout this repetitive task, random everyday phrases appeared on the screen as potential memory triggers. At unpredictable moments, the task paused, and the participants were asked to type out exactly what they were thinking about right before the interruption. They also had to rate how focused they were on the task and whether their thoughts were intentional or spontaneous. This method catches thoughts as they happen, reducing the need for people to actively monitor or remember their own daydreams.
The researchers found that KCL’s mind wandered about as often as the people in the comparison group. He also recognized the random phrases at the same rate as the other participants, showing he was paying a normal amount of attention to the screen. However, the content of his wandering mind was remarkably different.
While the comparison group reported that about 39 percent of their wandering thoughts were memories of the past, 87 percent of KCL’s off-task thoughts were involuntary personal memories. This pattern indicates that KCL does not simply have a more distracted or wandering mind in general. Instead, his spontaneous thoughts are heavily biased toward his own past experiences.
“The difference in involuntary remembering was quite striking for a single case,” Barzykowski explained. “Statistically, his frequency of involuntary memories was almost three standard deviations above the comparison-group mean and fell within the extreme upper range.”
“What I found particularly interesting was the selectivity of the effect,” the researcher added. “KCL was not simply having more spontaneous thoughts overall; rather, when his mind moved away from the task, those thoughts were disproportionately memories of his personal past. Even more strikingly, we did not see a corresponding increase in spontaneous thoughts about the future, suggesting that the effect may specifically concern access to stored autobiographical experiences rather than spontaneous cognition in general.”
In additional questionnaires, KCL reported a much higher confidence in his memory abilities than typical people. He scored especially high on an assessment of his episodic memory, which involves recalling specific personal experiences. Yet, he described his actual feeling of remembering, such as the vividness and emotional intensity of his memories, as being quite similar to how the general population experiences memories.
“Another interesting result was that his general subjective phenomenology of remembering was not dramatically unusual,” Barzykowski said. “So HSAM may not necessarily mean that every memory feels fundamentally different; the crucial difference may instead lie in how readily memories become accessible.”
This distinction highlights the difference between how much information a brain stores and how easily it can be retrieved. “One important misconception is that HSAM means having a photographic or infallible memory. It does not,” Barzykowski emphasized. “Our findings concern accessibility—how readily autobiographical information can be retrieved or enter awareness—not perfect accuracy, and previous research shows that people with HSAM can still be susceptible to memory distortions like everyone else.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. Because KCL lived far from the researchers, all tests were conducted remotely over video calls with screen sharing. While the researchers supervised the sessions closely, remote testing offers less control over the physical environment than an in-person laboratory visit.
Additionally, this research focuses on a single individual. The findings highlight a specific pattern of involuntary memory in one teenager, but it remains to be seen if all people with this rare memory ability experience the same frequency of unprompted memories.
“The other major caveat is that this is one individual, so we cannot assume that every person with HSAM will show the same pattern,” Barzykowski noted. “Our results should therefore be viewed as strong evidence about this particular case and as a basis for hypotheses that now need to be tested across additional people with HSAM.”
The study also relied on the participant’s own descriptions of his thoughts to determine what qualified as a personal memory during the computer task. While this is the standard method for measuring spontaneous thoughts, it still requires a degree of personal judgment. Future studies might combine these thought sampling tasks with physiological measurements, such as eye tracking or brain imaging, to better understand how these memories emerge.
Moving forward, the team hopes to explore what lowers the threshold for these memories to surface. “The next step is to determine whether this pattern generalizes across a larger group of people with HSAM,” Barzykowski said. “In particular, we want to understand why autobiographical memories become so accessible: whether incidental cues activate their memories more strongly, whether the threshold for a memory entering consciousness is lower, and whether heightened sensitivity to internal or external cues contributes to this process.”
The study’s authors see extreme cases like KCL’s as a valuable tool for decoding the basic mechanics of memory. “By studying an extreme case of autobiographical accessibility, we may learn more about why some memories spontaneously enter awareness while countless others remain outside consciousness,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
“So, if you feel that your memory for your own past is exceptionally good—or exceptionally poor—we would be very interested to hear from you and, where possible, to assess your memory scientifically,” he added.
The study, “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) in a 16-Year-Old Male: Investigating Involuntary Autobiographical Memory With Questionnaire and Laboratory Methods,” was authored by Krystian Barzykowski, Valerio Santangelo, Lia Kvavilashvili, and Chris J. A. Moulin. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #HSAM #HighlySuperiorAutobiographicalMemory #involuntarymemories #memoryresearch #autobiographicalmemory #memorytriggers #teenmemory #memorystudy #brainscience #cortex2026
-
DATE: September 17, 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: For a teen with a rare memory condition, the past constantly hijacks the present
A recent study has found that a teenager with an exceptionally powerful memory for his own life experiences also experiences an unusually high rate of memories popping into his mind without any effort. The research suggests that this exceptional memory ability might be driven by an increased sensitivity to memory triggers in the environment rather than just a general tendency to daydream. The findings were published in Cortex.
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory is a rare condition where a person can recall past personal events with extreme accuracy and detail. People with this ability can often remember the exact day of the week, the weather, and personal activities for almost any given date in their past. For years, scientists mostly focused on how well adults with this condition could intentionally search their memories when asked a specific question.
However, the current understanding of memory highlights that remembering is not always a deliberate choice. Often, memories come to us involuntarily, sparked by a passing smell, a word, or an emotion. Recent research has started to explore this spontaneous side of remembering. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 demonstrated that this exceptional memory ability can be verified in early adolescence. Building on this, a 2026 case study provided survey-based evidence that a person with this condition experienced a highly elevated rate of involuntary memories popping into their mind.
“People with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory are remarkably good at retrieving events from their personal past, and their memories are often described as coming to mind very quickly and effortlessly,” said Krystian Barzykowski, a professor at the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University and head of the Applied Memory Research Laboratory in Poland. “Yet most previous research has examined what happens when these individuals are asked to remember, rather than whether memories also enter consciousness spontaneously, without any intention to retrieve them.”
These earlier studies relied primarily on people keeping diaries or answering questionnaires about their own thoughts. The research, led by Barzykowski and his colleagues, aimed to test whether this influx of spontaneous memories holds up under controlled laboratory conditions. The scientists wanted to measure involuntary thoughts objectively in a teenager who reported having this rare memory condition.
“We therefore wanted to know whether exceptional autobiographical memory is also associated with unusually frequent involuntary memories—those everyday moments when something from your past simply ‘pops’ into mind—and, importantly, to measure this experimentally rather than relying only on questionnaires or diaries,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
The researchers worked with a 16-year-old male from Poland, referred to as KCL, who had contacted them about his unusual memory. He told the scientists that he felt a constant influx of memories in his daily life and could remember events from at least half the days of his life. To verify his abilities, the researchers first gave him a set of standardized memory quizzes.
“I would also emphasize that our participant himself contacted us because he had begun to realize that the way he remembered his life was unusual,” Barzykowski noted. “It is quite possible that some people with unusually strong autobiographical memory do not realize how exceptional their memory is until they begin to reflect on how much of their personal past they can actually retrieve.”
They asked him to recall the exact dates of recent public events and to retrieve verifiable news stories and personal memories from randomly selected calendar dates. For each answer, KCL had to rate how confident he was and whether he felt he was genuinely remembering the event, knowing it as a fact, or just guessing.
His performance was compared against a group of eight typical adults and one matched 16-year-old boy. On a quiz asking for the dates of public events, KCL scored 51 percent, while the comparison group averaged about 20 percent. On a random dates quiz, KCL successfully recalled details for 83 percent of the prompts, far exceeding the comparison group’s average of 29 percent. This confirmed that his abilities were far above average and met the formal criteria for Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.
“After systematic testing, his performance exceeded established HSAM thresholds on both the Public Dates and Random Dates screening tasks,” Barzykowski said. “This makes the study an interesting example of how an unusual subjective experience can eventually lead to a testable scientific question.”
To test involuntary memories, the researchers used a computer-based vigilance task. KCL and a separate comparison group of 36 young adults watched a continuous stream of horizontal lines on a screen and had to press a button whenever a rare vertical line appeared. The task was designed to be simple but repetitive, allowing the mind a chance to wander.
Throughout this repetitive task, random everyday phrases appeared on the screen as potential memory triggers. At unpredictable moments, the task paused, and the participants were asked to type out exactly what they were thinking about right before the interruption. They also had to rate how focused they were on the task and whether their thoughts were intentional or spontaneous. This method catches thoughts as they happen, reducing the need for people to actively monitor or remember their own daydreams.
The researchers found that KCL’s mind wandered about as often as the people in the comparison group. He also recognized the random phrases at the same rate as the other participants, showing he was paying a normal amount of attention to the screen. However, the content of his wandering mind was remarkably different.
While the comparison group reported that about 39 percent of their wandering thoughts were memories of the past, 87 percent of KCL’s off-task thoughts were involuntary personal memories. This pattern indicates that KCL does not simply have a more distracted or wandering mind in general. Instead, his spontaneous thoughts are heavily biased toward his own past experiences.
“The difference in involuntary remembering was quite striking for a single case,” Barzykowski explained. “Statistically, his frequency of involuntary memories was almost three standard deviations above the comparison-group mean and fell within the extreme upper range.”
“What I found particularly interesting was the selectivity of the effect,” the researcher added. “KCL was not simply having more spontaneous thoughts overall; rather, when his mind moved away from the task, those thoughts were disproportionately memories of his personal past. Even more strikingly, we did not see a corresponding increase in spontaneous thoughts about the future, suggesting that the effect may specifically concern access to stored autobiographical experiences rather than spontaneous cognition in general.”
In additional questionnaires, KCL reported a much higher confidence in his memory abilities than typical people. He scored especially high on an assessment of his episodic memory, which involves recalling specific personal experiences. Yet, he described his actual feeling of remembering, such as the vividness and emotional intensity of his memories, as being quite similar to how the general population experiences memories.
“Another interesting result was that his general subjective phenomenology of remembering was not dramatically unusual,” Barzykowski said. “So HSAM may not necessarily mean that every memory feels fundamentally different; the crucial difference may instead lie in how readily memories become accessible.”
This distinction highlights the difference between how much information a brain stores and how easily it can be retrieved. “One important misconception is that HSAM means having a photographic or infallible memory. It does not,” Barzykowski emphasized. “Our findings concern accessibility—how readily autobiographical information can be retrieved or enter awareness—not perfect accuracy, and previous research shows that people with HSAM can still be susceptible to memory distortions like everyone else.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. Because KCL lived far from the researchers, all tests were conducted remotely over video calls with screen sharing. While the researchers supervised the sessions closely, remote testing offers less control over the physical environment than an in-person laboratory visit.
Additionally, this research focuses on a single individual. The findings highlight a specific pattern of involuntary memory in one teenager, but it remains to be seen if all people with this rare memory ability experience the same frequency of unprompted memories.
“The other major caveat is that this is one individual, so we cannot assume that every person with HSAM will show the same pattern,” Barzykowski noted. “Our results should therefore be viewed as strong evidence about this particular case and as a basis for hypotheses that now need to be tested across additional people with HSAM.”
The study also relied on the participant’s own descriptions of his thoughts to determine what qualified as a personal memory during the computer task. While this is the standard method for measuring spontaneous thoughts, it still requires a degree of personal judgment. Future studies might combine these thought sampling tasks with physiological measurements, such as eye tracking or brain imaging, to better understand how these memories emerge.
Moving forward, the team hopes to explore what lowers the threshold for these memories to surface. “The next step is to determine whether this pattern generalizes across a larger group of people with HSAM,” Barzykowski said. “In particular, we want to understand why autobiographical memories become so accessible: whether incidental cues activate their memories more strongly, whether the threshold for a memory entering consciousness is lower, and whether heightened sensitivity to internal or external cues contributes to this process.”
The study’s authors see extreme cases like KCL’s as a valuable tool for decoding the basic mechanics of memory. “By studying an extreme case of autobiographical accessibility, we may learn more about why some memories spontaneously enter awareness while countless others remain outside consciousness,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
“So, if you feel that your memory for your own past is exceptionally good—or exceptionally poor—we would be very interested to hear from you and, where possible, to assess your memory scientifically,” he added.
The study, “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) in a 16-Year-Old Male: Investigating Involuntary Autobiographical Memory With Questionnaire and Laboratory Methods,” was authored by Krystian Barzykowski, Valerio Santangelo, Lia Kvavilashvili, and Chris J. A. Moulin. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #HSAM #HighlySuperiorAutobiographicalMemory #involuntarymemories #memoryresearch #autobiographicalmemory #memorytriggers #teenmemory #memorystudy #brainscience #cortex2026
-
DATE: September 17, 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: For a teen with a rare memory condition, the past constantly hijacks the present
A recent study has found that a teenager with an exceptionally powerful memory for his own life experiences also experiences an unusually high rate of memories popping into his mind without any effort. The research suggests that this exceptional memory ability might be driven by an increased sensitivity to memory triggers in the environment rather than just a general tendency to daydream. The findings were published in Cortex.
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory is a rare condition where a person can recall past personal events with extreme accuracy and detail. People with this ability can often remember the exact day of the week, the weather, and personal activities for almost any given date in their past. For years, scientists mostly focused on how well adults with this condition could intentionally search their memories when asked a specific question.
However, the current understanding of memory highlights that remembering is not always a deliberate choice. Often, memories come to us involuntarily, sparked by a passing smell, a word, or an emotion. Recent research has started to explore this spontaneous side of remembering. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 demonstrated that this exceptional memory ability can be verified in early adolescence. Building on this, a 2026 case study provided survey-based evidence that a person with this condition experienced a highly elevated rate of involuntary memories popping into their mind.
“People with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory are remarkably good at retrieving events from their personal past, and their memories are often described as coming to mind very quickly and effortlessly,” said Krystian Barzykowski, a professor at the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University and head of the Applied Memory Research Laboratory in Poland. “Yet most previous research has examined what happens when these individuals are asked to remember, rather than whether memories also enter consciousness spontaneously, without any intention to retrieve them.”
These earlier studies relied primarily on people keeping diaries or answering questionnaires about their own thoughts. The research, led by Barzykowski and his colleagues, aimed to test whether this influx of spontaneous memories holds up under controlled laboratory conditions. The scientists wanted to measure involuntary thoughts objectively in a teenager who reported having this rare memory condition.
“We therefore wanted to know whether exceptional autobiographical memory is also associated with unusually frequent involuntary memories—those everyday moments when something from your past simply ‘pops’ into mind—and, importantly, to measure this experimentally rather than relying only on questionnaires or diaries,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
The researchers worked with a 16-year-old male from Poland, referred to as KCL, who had contacted them about his unusual memory. He told the scientists that he felt a constant influx of memories in his daily life and could remember events from at least half the days of his life. To verify his abilities, the researchers first gave him a set of standardized memory quizzes.
“I would also emphasize that our participant himself contacted us because he had begun to realize that the way he remembered his life was unusual,” Barzykowski noted. “It is quite possible that some people with unusually strong autobiographical memory do not realize how exceptional their memory is until they begin to reflect on how much of their personal past they can actually retrieve.”
They asked him to recall the exact dates of recent public events and to retrieve verifiable news stories and personal memories from randomly selected calendar dates. For each answer, KCL had to rate how confident he was and whether he felt he was genuinely remembering the event, knowing it as a fact, or just guessing.
His performance was compared against a group of eight typical adults and one matched 16-year-old boy. On a quiz asking for the dates of public events, KCL scored 51 percent, while the comparison group averaged about 20 percent. On a random dates quiz, KCL successfully recalled details for 83 percent of the prompts, far exceeding the comparison group’s average of 29 percent. This confirmed that his abilities were far above average and met the formal criteria for Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.
“After systematic testing, his performance exceeded established HSAM thresholds on both the Public Dates and Random Dates screening tasks,” Barzykowski said. “This makes the study an interesting example of how an unusual subjective experience can eventually lead to a testable scientific question.”
To test involuntary memories, the researchers used a computer-based vigilance task. KCL and a separate comparison group of 36 young adults watched a continuous stream of horizontal lines on a screen and had to press a button whenever a rare vertical line appeared. The task was designed to be simple but repetitive, allowing the mind a chance to wander.
Throughout this repetitive task, random everyday phrases appeared on the screen as potential memory triggers. At unpredictable moments, the task paused, and the participants were asked to type out exactly what they were thinking about right before the interruption. They also had to rate how focused they were on the task and whether their thoughts were intentional or spontaneous. This method catches thoughts as they happen, reducing the need for people to actively monitor or remember their own daydreams.
The researchers found that KCL’s mind wandered about as often as the people in the comparison group. He also recognized the random phrases at the same rate as the other participants, showing he was paying a normal amount of attention to the screen. However, the content of his wandering mind was remarkably different.
While the comparison group reported that about 39 percent of their wandering thoughts were memories of the past, 87 percent of KCL’s off-task thoughts were involuntary personal memories. This pattern indicates that KCL does not simply have a more distracted or wandering mind in general. Instead, his spontaneous thoughts are heavily biased toward his own past experiences.
“The difference in involuntary remembering was quite striking for a single case,” Barzykowski explained. “Statistically, his frequency of involuntary memories was almost three standard deviations above the comparison-group mean and fell within the extreme upper range.”
“What I found particularly interesting was the selectivity of the effect,” the researcher added. “KCL was not simply having more spontaneous thoughts overall; rather, when his mind moved away from the task, those thoughts were disproportionately memories of his personal past. Even more strikingly, we did not see a corresponding increase in spontaneous thoughts about the future, suggesting that the effect may specifically concern access to stored autobiographical experiences rather than spontaneous cognition in general.”
In additional questionnaires, KCL reported a much higher confidence in his memory abilities than typical people. He scored especially high on an assessment of his episodic memory, which involves recalling specific personal experiences. Yet, he described his actual feeling of remembering, such as the vividness and emotional intensity of his memories, as being quite similar to how the general population experiences memories.
“Another interesting result was that his general subjective phenomenology of remembering was not dramatically unusual,” Barzykowski said. “So HSAM may not necessarily mean that every memory feels fundamentally different; the crucial difference may instead lie in how readily memories become accessible.”
This distinction highlights the difference between how much information a brain stores and how easily it can be retrieved. “One important misconception is that HSAM means having a photographic or infallible memory. It does not,” Barzykowski emphasized. “Our findings concern accessibility—how readily autobiographical information can be retrieved or enter awareness—not perfect accuracy, and previous research shows that people with HSAM can still be susceptible to memory distortions like everyone else.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. Because KCL lived far from the researchers, all tests were conducted remotely over video calls with screen sharing. While the researchers supervised the sessions closely, remote testing offers less control over the physical environment than an in-person laboratory visit.
Additionally, this research focuses on a single individual. The findings highlight a specific pattern of involuntary memory in one teenager, but it remains to be seen if all people with this rare memory ability experience the same frequency of unprompted memories.
“The other major caveat is that this is one individual, so we cannot assume that every person with HSAM will show the same pattern,” Barzykowski noted. “Our results should therefore be viewed as strong evidence about this particular case and as a basis for hypotheses that now need to be tested across additional people with HSAM.”
The study also relied on the participant’s own descriptions of his thoughts to determine what qualified as a personal memory during the computer task. While this is the standard method for measuring spontaneous thoughts, it still requires a degree of personal judgment. Future studies might combine these thought sampling tasks with physiological measurements, such as eye tracking or brain imaging, to better understand how these memories emerge.
Moving forward, the team hopes to explore what lowers the threshold for these memories to surface. “The next step is to determine whether this pattern generalizes across a larger group of people with HSAM,” Barzykowski said. “In particular, we want to understand why autobiographical memories become so accessible: whether incidental cues activate their memories more strongly, whether the threshold for a memory entering consciousness is lower, and whether heightened sensitivity to internal or external cues contributes to this process.”
The study’s authors see extreme cases like KCL’s as a valuable tool for decoding the basic mechanics of memory. “By studying an extreme case of autobiographical accessibility, we may learn more about why some memories spontaneously enter awareness while countless others remain outside consciousness,” Barzykowski told PsyPost.
“So, if you feel that your memory for your own past is exceptionally good—or exceptionally poor—we would be very interested to hear from you and, where possible, to assess your memory scientifically,” he added.
The study, “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) in a 16-Year-Old Male: Investigating Involuntary Autobiographical Memory With Questionnaire and Laboratory Methods,” was authored by Krystian Barzykowski, Valerio Santangelo, Lia Kvavilashvili, and Chris J. A. Moulin. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #HSAM #HighlySuperiorAutobiographicalMemory #involuntarymemories #memoryresearch #autobiographicalmemory #memorytriggers #teenmemory #memorystudy #brainscience #cortex2026
-
DATE: September 17, 2026 at 05:53PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
6.4 Million Email Addresses Exposed in @McKesson Hack https://t.co/N7Qcba94Sx
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
-
DATE: September 17, 2026 at 05:53PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
6.4 Million Email Addresses Exposed in @McKesson Hack https://t.co/N7Qcba94Sx
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
-
DATE: September 17, 2026 at 05:53PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
6.4 Million Email Addresses Exposed in @McKesson Hack https://t.co/N7Qcba94Sx
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
-
DATE: September 17, 2026 at 05:53PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
6.4 Million Email Addresses Exposed in @McKesson Hack https://t.co/N7Qcba94Sx
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering