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Automated face recognition assists with low‐prevalence face identity mismatches but can bias users

We present three experiments to study the effects of giving information about the decision of an automated face recognition (AFR) system to participants attempting to decide whether two face images show the same person. We make three contributions designed to make our results applicable to real-word use: participants are given the true response of a highly accurate AFR system; the face set reflects the mixed ethnicity of the city of London from where participants are drawn; and there are only 10% of mismatches. Participants were equally accurate when given the similarity score of the AFR system or just the binary decision but shifted their bias towards match and were over-confident on difficult pairs when given only binary information. No participants achieved the 100% accuracy of the AFR system, and they had only weak insight about their own performance.

The role of surface and structural similarities in the retrieval of realistic perceptual events

This study investigated whether structural similarities (i.e. abstract frames, e.g. once bitten twice shy) can prevail over surface similarities (i.e. contexts, e.g. restaurant) in driving the retrieval of realistic events involving dynamic, multimodal and perceptually crowded data. After watching an initial set of video clips, participants had to indicate whether a new video clip, that shared surface similarities with an initial event and structural similarities with another one, elicited a retrieval. The results of Experiment 1A showed that retrieval was more likely to be elicited by structural rather than by surface similarities. Experiment 1B confirmed that the surface similarities manipulated in this study were strong enough to elicit substantial retrievals when the competing structural match was neutralized. The pattern of results obtained in Experiment 1A remained unchanged when the number of unrelated video clips within the initial set was increased. The findings suggest that structurally based retrievals still prevail when familiar structures underlie realistic perceptual events. They open new perspectives regarding the settings that promote structurally based retrievals in educational contexts where unfamiliar principles are introduced.

Daily effects of a brief compassion‐focused intervention for self‐compassion

Interventions for increasing self-compassion are typically assessed through retrospective reports, which may not accurately capture everyday self-compassionate behaviour. Our study addresses this using experience sampling to evaluate a brief compassion-focused intervention's effects on needs for self-compassion, awareness of opportunities for self-compassion, self-compassionate behaviour and emotional responses to one's distress in daily life. Results indicated that the intervention was associated with less likelihood of reporting needs and opportunities for self-compassion but with no difference in self-compassionate actions or emotional experience. When participants acted self-compassionately, they reported more positive emotional experiences after needing self-compassion. This underscores the disparity between retrospective and ecological assessments, emphasizing the need for interventions to be evaluated in real-life contexts.

Inter‐brain synchrony is associated with greater shared identity within naturalistic conversational pairs

Inter-brain synchrony occurs between individuals who feel connected socially, but how synchrony relates to felt connectedness under naturalistic social interaction has remained enigmatic. We hypothesized that inter-brain synchrony between naturally interacting individuals might be associated with the internalization of a social identity, a link between an individual's personal identity and the social group to which the individual belongs. A convenience sample of sixty participants were split into dyads and interacted naturalistically on a social task. Through mapping EEG oscillatory waveforms onto a conceptual model categorizing the formation of a social identity within a naturalistic conversation, greater inter-brain synchrony was observed in the emergent stage within the formation of a social identity compared to earlier stages, where a social identity was not present. We provide evidence for greater neural synchrony related to higher socio-psychological connectedness during the development of social identity under naturalistic social interaction.

The differences in essential facial areas for impressions between humans and deep learning models: An eye‐tracking and explainable AI approach

This study explored the facial impressions of attractiveness, dominance and sexual dimorphism using experimental and computational methods. In Study 1, we generated face images with manipulated morphological features using geometric morphometrics. In Study 2, we conducted eye tracking and impression evaluation experiments using these images to examine how facial features influence impression evaluations and explored differences based on the sex of the face images and participants. In Study 3, we employed deep learning methods, specifically using gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM), an explainable artificial intelligence (AI) technique, to extract important features for each impression using the face images and impression evaluation results from Studies 1 and 2. The findings revealed that eye-tracking and deep learning use different features as cues. In the eye-tracking experiments, attention was focused on features such as the eyes, nose and mouth, whereas the deep learning analysis highlighted broader features, including eyebrows and superciliary arches. The computational approach using explainable AI suggests that the determinants of facial impressions can be extracted independently of visual attention.

Explainability increases trust resilience in intelligent agents

Even though artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems typically outperform human decision-makers, they are not immune to errors, leading users to lose trust in them and be less likely to use them again—a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion. The purpose of the present research was to investigate whether explainable AI (XAI) could function as a viable strategy to counter algorithm aversion. We conducted two experiments to examine how XAI influences users' willingness to continue using AI-based systems when these systems exhibit errors. The results showed that, following the observation of algorithms erring, the inclination of users to delegate decisions to or follow advice from intelligent agents significantly decreased compared to the period before the errors were revealed. However, the explainability effectively mitigated this decline, with users in the XAI condition being more likely to continue utilizing intelligent agents for subsequent tasks after seeing algorithms erring than those in the non-XAI condition. We further found that the explainability could reduce users' decision regret, and the decrease in decision regret mediated the relationship between the explainability and re-use behaviour. These findings underscore the adaptive function of XAI in alleviating negative user experiences and maintaining user trust in the context of imperfect AI.

A new way to conceptualize intolerance of uncertainty among adolescents: Embracing the network perspective

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a pivotal transdiagnostic risk factor in psychopathology, is defined as a dispositional incapacity to withstand uncertainty distress, driving maladaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to uncertainty. However, the intricate interplay among these components, particularly in adolescents, remains underexplored; yet understanding this interplay is crucial for supporting mental health. To address this gap, we employed a network approach to conceptualize IU in 5672 non-clinical Chinese adolescents (M age = 14.13 years, SDage = 1.96 years, range = 10–19 years, 46.6% boys), combining graphical Gaussian models (GGM) and directed acyclic graphs (DAG). Our analyses revealed a tripartite network comprising cognitive, behavioural and emotional components. Notably, ‘frustration’ and ‘work with hindrance’ emerged as key drivers, while ‘catastrophizing belief’ served as a critical bridge linking different components. These findings underscore the importance of alleviating uncertainty-induced frustration and enhancing coping skills for behavioural impediments to mitigate adolescent IU. Additionally, therapeutic interventions should prioritize modifying and re-evaluating catastrophizing beliefs related to uncertainty.

Larger comfortable interpersonal distances in adults exposed to child maltreatment: The role of depressive symptoms and social anxiety

Previous studies report a preference for larger comfortable interpersonal distance (CIPD) in individuals with child maltreatment (CM) when being approached by others. Yet, research on approaching others, as opposed to being approached, as well as on potential effects of social anxiety and depression is lacking. We investigated if CM and depressive symptoms influence CIPD and if social anxiety mediates the possible association of CM and CIPD when approaching a female stranger. One hundred ten participants with CM (CM) and 58 participants without CM (non-CM) experiences performed the stop-distance paradigm and stopped first when feeling uncomfortable (D1) and again when feeling very uncomfortable (D2). CM experiences were associated with a preference for larger CIPD, independent of depressive symptoms. All CM subtypes were associated with a larger D2. The relationship between CM and CIPD was partially mediated by social anxiety. These novel findings can help to develop interventions strengthening socially relevant skills and processes in those affected by CM, targeting alterations in social anxiety and depression.

The Status Importance Scale: Development and validation of a self‐report questionnaire for measuring how much people care about status

Although substantial research indicates that considerations about status can lead to anxiety and other negative outcomes, a valid measure of the importance individuals attribute to status is lacking. This paper introduces the Status Importance Scale (SIS), a mono-factorial 10-item self-report questionnaire that quantifies how important a person deems status to be. Five studies validate the scale showing that it has excellent internal reliability and acceptable test–retest reliability, it correlates with several related measures (supporting convergent validity), it shows little correlation with theoretically unrelated constructs (supporting discriminant validity), it is the best predictor of conspicuous consumption compared with other potential candidates (supporting concurrent validity), and it can help predicting which activities one gives importance to (further supporting concurrent validity). Finally, as hypothesized by previous literature, the last study reveals that the SIS can predict status anxiety. The SIS can contribute to research regarding important phenomena such as the detrimental psychological effects of income inequality.

Social and temporal disorientation during the Covid‐19 pandemic: An analysis of 3306 responses to a quantitative questionnaire

The societal hallmark of the Covid-19 pandemic was a set of mitigation measures such as lockdowns and curfews. The cognitive impact on the public of the resulting spatial, social and temporal constraints is still being investigated. While pandemic time has been extensively studied and mostly described as slowed down and elongated, opposite experimental patterns across national and social contexts leave open an important explanatory gap in order to understand which factor has been causally fundamental in determining the phenomenology of the crisis. In this paper, we use a quantitative questionnaire developed for measuring temporal and social disorientation on a sample of 3306 respondents during an acute phase of restrictions in France. We show that social disorientation greatly contributed to the temporal disruptions experienced during the pandemic. This result reinforces the importance for public authorities to address the compounding effect of feeling isolated during crises.

Why do people always want more? Perceived economic inequality leads people to be greedy by enhancing relative deprivation

Greedy phenomena have dramatically increased in societies. However, despite the universality of greedy behaviour, empirical research on the causes of greed is scarce. In this context, we propose that perceived economic inequality may be an important factor influencing greed. Study 1 provided primary evidence of a positive relationship between perceived economic inequality and greed, based on data from a large-scale social survey (CFPS 2018, N = 14,317). Employing well-established questionnaires, Study 2A (N = 200) and Study 2B (N = 399) revealed that perceived economic inequality positively predicts greed, with relative deprivation playing a mediating role. Study 3A (N = 200) and Study 3B (N = 200) manipulated perceived economic inequality to provide causal evidence of its effects on greed and to replicate the mediating effect of relative deprivation. Finally, Study 4 (N = 372), using a blockage manipulation design, showed that the effect of perceived economic inequality on greed significantly decreases when relative deprivation is suppressed. In summary, the results of these six studies consistently suggest that perceived economic inequality positively affects greed and that this effect is mediated by relative deprivation.

Staying in control: Characterizing the mechanisms underlying cognitive control in high and low arousal states

Throughout the day, humans show natural fluctuations in arousal that impact cognitive function. To study the behavioural dynamics of cognitive control during high and low arousal states, healthy participants performed an auditory conflict task during high-intensity physical exercise (N = 39) or drowsiness (N = 33). In line with the pre-registered hypotheses, conflict and conflict adaptation effects were preserved during both altered arousal states. Overall task performance was markedly poorer during low arousal, but not for high arousal. Modelling behavioural dynamics with drift diffusion analysis revealed evidence accumulation and non-decision time decelerated, and decisional boundaries became wider during low arousal, whereas high arousal was unexpectedly associated with a decrease in the interference of task-irrelevant information processing. These findings show how arousal differentially modulates cognitive control at both sides of normal alertness, and further validate drowsiness and physical exercise as key experimental models to disentangle the interaction between physiological fluctuations on cognitive dynamics.

Counselling children and adolescents: Working in school and clinical mental health settings (Special Indian edition) By Jolie Ziomek‐Daigle, New York, NY: Routledge. 2017. UK £ 56.99. ISBN: 9780367240356

Mirroring brains: How we understand others from the inside By Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia. Translated by Frances Andersen, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2023. Hardcover US$ 46.99. ISBN: 9780198871705

Issue Information

Protecting against misinformation: Evaluating the effectiveness of three techniques to reduce memory conformity

The memory conformity effect occurs when people witness a given incident (e.g. a crime) then talk to each other about it, and the statement of one person affects the memory account of the other person with respect to this incident. The aim of this article is to improve the quality of witness testimony by verifying the effectiveness of three methods that aim to reduce memory conformity effect: (1) an extended warning against misinformation; (2) a method based on information about memory functioning and its fallibility and (3) a method consisting in motivating participants to resist influence and demonstrating their individual vulnerability to it. In the presented experiment, the innovative MORI technique was used to study the memory conformity effect. This technique allows a pair of participants to sit beside each other, look at the same screen and see a different version of the same criminal event. In the next stages, the subjects are asked to answer a series of questions about different details, thereby introducing mutual misinformation; then, the participants perform an individual memory test. In the experimental conditions, this test was preceded by one of the three tested methods in each group, with the aim of determining their effectiveness in reducing memory conformity. It turns out that the implementation of an extended warning against misinformation eliminated the memory conformity effect, while the application of two other methods led to a reduction (but not complete elimination) of the studied phenomenon.

Conceptualizing transgender experiences in psychology: Do we have a ‘true’ gender?

Psychological research has acknowledged that the commonly accepted definitions of ‘transgender’, ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ within psychological research have resulted in limitations in accounting for the lived realities of transgender individuals. Such limitations include, but are not limited to, the continued pathologization of transgender experiences through idealizing sex and gender congruence and incapacity to account for non-normative and non-binary transition pathways. This paper provides a review of these limitations to first demonstrate how the incongruence definition of ‘transgender’ is reliant on the idea of a ‘true’ gender, and next suggest that problematising the idea of a ‘true’ gender allows new conceptions of transgender experiences to be advanced. To undertake this problematization, the work of Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed is used to consider how gender could be conceptualized otherwise in psychology and then applied to transgender experiences. In all, this paper theorizes transgender experiences without a reliance on the assertion of a true gender, to suggest instead a focus on contextualized transgender experiences. Last, the limitations and implications of this definition of transgender are briefly discussed. Overall, transgender experiences are conceptualized as those experiences that run counter to the dominant (re)production of binary sexed gender.

Plinko: Eliciting beliefs to build better models of statistical learning and mental model updating

Prior beliefs are central to Bayesian accounts of cognition, but many of these accounts do not directly measure priors. More specifically, initial states of belief heavily influence how new information is assumed to be utilized when updating a particular model. Despite this, prior and posterior beliefs are either inferred from sequential participant actions or elicited through impoverished means. We had participants to play a version of the game ‘Plinko’, to first elicit individual participant priors in a theoretically agnostic manner. Subsequent learning and updating of participant beliefs was then directly measured. We show that participants hold various priors that cluster around prototypical probability distributions that in turn influence learning. In follow-up studies, we show that participant priors are stable over time and that the ability to update beliefs is influenced by a simple environmental manipulation (i.e., a short break). These data reveal the importance of directly measuring participant beliefs rather than assuming or inferring them as has been widely done in the literature to date. The Plinko game provides a flexible and fecund means for examining statistical learning and mental model updating.

Opposing sequential biases in direction and time reproduction: Influences of task relevance and working memory

Our current perception and decision-making are shaped by recent experiences, a phenomenon known as serial dependence. While serial dependence is well-documented in visual perception and has been recently explored in time perception, their functional similarities across non-temporal and temporal domains remain elusive, particularly in relation to task relevance and working memory load. To address this, we designed a unified experimental paradigm using coherent motion stimuli to test both direction and time reproduction. The direction and time tasks were randomly mixed across trials. Additionally, we introduced pre-cue versus post-cue settings in separate experiments to manipulate working memory load during the encoding phase. We found attractive biases in time reproduction but repulsive biases in direction estimation. Notably, the temporal attraction was more pronounced when the preceding task was also time-related. In contrast, the direction repulsion remained unaffected by the nature of the preceding task. Additionally, both attractive and repulsive biases were enhanced by the post-cue compared to the pre-cue. Our findings suggest that opposing sequential effects in non-temporal and temporal domains may originate from different processing stages linked to sensory adaptation and post-perceptual processes involving working memory.

Loneliness is associated with more trust but worse trustworthiness expectations

Subjective feelings of loneliness emerge due to unsatisfactory social relationships, representing a major risk for mental and physical well-being. Despite its social nature, evidence on how loneliness affects social behaviours and expectations is lacking. Using Bayesian analyses and economic games, we show in three different studies that lonelier individuals trusted their partners to a greater extent despite less favourable trustworthiness expectations, showing a greater discrepancy between their trusting behaviours and their expectations of others' trustworthiness. Such discrepancy was reversed in extravert individuals who also reported to be less lonely. These results provide evidence on two opposing effects of loneliness as a motivator for social connections and promoter of social withdrawal, and demonstrate the moderating role of personality traits. This work contributes to a better understanding of how loneliness impacts social behaviour and social expectations, with important downstream clinical implications for varying health conditions associated with heightened feelings of loneliness.

First impressions: Do faces with scars and palsies influence warmth, competence and humanization?

A glance is enough to assign psychological attributes to others. Attractiveness is associated with positive attributes (‘beauty-is-good’ stereotype). Here, we raise the question of a similar but negative bias. Are people with facial anomalies associated with negative personal characteristics? We hypothesized that biases against faces with anomalies arise because of negative stereotypes (less warmth and competence) and forms of dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic). We enrolled 1493 mTurk participants (N = 1306 after exclusion) to assess 31 traits of photographed people using 60 pairs of photographs of the same person before and after plastic surgery. Half anomalous faces had a scar and the other half had a palsy. To calculate warmth and competence, we conducted a principal components analysis of the 31 attributes. Animalistic dehumanization was assessed by averaging reverse-scored ratings corresponding to moral sensibility and rationality/logic, and mechanistic dehumanization by averaging across reverse-scored ratings corresponding to emotional responsiveness and interpersonal warmth. We found that both kinds of anomalous faces were seen as less warm, competent and were dehumanized. Our findings suggest that an ‘anomalous-is-bad’ stereotype generalizes regardless of the aetiology of the anomaly. This effect may be related to a reverse halo effect, that is, the horn effect.

Post‐collaborative benefits: A meta‐analysis of the effect of collaboration on subsequent individual retrieval

Collaboration has an essential role in memory, and how to appropriately use it to affect individual memory positively is a matter of concern. The meta-analysis generally assessed the effect of collaboration on subsequent individual retrieval, registered on the PROSPERO platform and adhering to the PRISMA guidelines, using the Web of Science, Science Direct, CNKI and WanFang databases with post-collaborative memory as the main subject, screened studies published up to December 31, 2023, a total of 64 studies with 101 effect sizes, including 13,398 participants from 11 countries. Heterogeneity test, sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis and meta-regression analysis were performed on the included studies, while publication bias was assessed. The results found that collaboration improves subsequent individual retrieval memory more than individuals, and collaboration has a moderate facilitating effect on subsequent individual retrieval. Group size, material category, category size, collaboration phase, collaboration approach, task process and test method were among the moderating variables. The study emphasizes the role of collaboration in cognition and demonstrates the post-collaborative benefits. The conclusions are of value for developing methods to improve individual memory.

The impact of response type on affordance and spatial compatibility effects in human and object interactions

Everyday social interactions or goal-directed actions towards objects activate action plans appropriate to their affordances. The spatial compatibility of a stimulus and a response might interfere with the activation of these action plans. In the present study, we examined how framing of interactions affects the interplay between affordance and spatial compatibility effects towards humans and objects in two separate experiments. In a motor priming task designed to simultaneously assess these two effects, participants were presented with interactive hand gestures and objects with a single handle. Participants responded either with their left or right hand according to the colour mask of the stimulus, regardless of the spatial position or the affordance-related orientation of the stimulus. In Experiment 1, when responses were given by keypresses, we found independent affordance and spatial compatibility effects towards objects. Surprisingly, interactive hand gestures induced a reversed affordance effect, that is, imitative action tendencies. Changing the responses from keypresses to the performance of grasping actions in Experiment 2 drastically altered these findings, resulting in the enhancement of affordance and the elimination of spatial compatibility effects for both human and object interactions. These findings highlight the importance of contextual influences on the emergence of automatic action tendencies.

Increases in sense of purpose predict future positive changes in personality traits

This longitudinal study examined the reciprocal relationship between the Big Five personality traits and sense of purpose over a 13-year period using a nationally representative sample of American adults (N = 11,010). The random intercept cross-lagged panel model revealed unidirectional effects: increases in sense of purpose predicted subsequent increases in openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion, as well as decreases in neuroticism. Conversely, changes in personality traits did not predict future changes in sense of purpose. One potential mechanism underlying this effect might involve the link between sense of purpose and optimal self-regulatory processes and outcomes, such as successful planning, goal-directed behaviour, and self-control, which promote gradual positive changes in personality traits. Another plausible mechanism may be the association between purpose and improved subjective well-being and reduced psychological distress, which have been found to predict positive changes in personality traits. These findings challenge previous research that has interpreted cross-sectional associations as evidence that personality traits are predictive of purpose, rather than the other way around. The findings that intentionally cultivating a strong sense of purpose may facilitate positive personality change in adulthood.

Social sharing of emotion during the collective crisis of COVID‐19

We collected data from two sources – social media and online questionnaires – to investigate the emotional consequences of social sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1 tracked and analysed sentiment of tweets posted over the course of a month in the crisis period and found that users who tweeted more frequently about COVID-19 expressed decreasing negative sentiment and increasing positive sentiment over time. Granger causality tests confirmed that this association was better interpreted in the forward direction (sharing levels predicting sentiment) than in the reverse direction (sentiment predicting sharing levels). Study 2 focused on immediate emotional consequences of sharing COVID-19-related events and found that participants reported improved overall affect about an event after sharing it, especially when that event was a personal experience rather than a news story. Reported positive feelings about both kinds of events were also significantly higher after sharing. Taken together, both studies suggested that social sharing is linked with emotional relief and may therefore help people to deal with their negative experiences during a persistent collective crisis.

Orthographic character complexity modulates dynamic neural activity in skilled handwriting

Handwriting is an outstanding case of a highly complex and efficient fine motor skill. However, little is known about its neural underpinnings during continuous handwriting production. In the present study, we examined the effects of orthographic character complexity (i.e. the stroke number of a Chinese character) on both neural and behavioural activities during an EEG-based naturalistic fluent sentence-handwriting task from 102 adult Chinese native speakers. For each written character, the interval between finishing the preceding character and its onset (inter-character interval) as well as the amplitudes of the onset-synchronized event-related potential (ERP) in pre- and post-onset time windows was defined as dependent variables. The effects of character complexity and other confounding factors were analysed with linear mixed models. Character complexity increased the inter-character interval and significantly affected ERP amplitudes in both pre- and post-onset time windows. The ERP pattern in the pre-event time window exhibited a dipole-like activation in the left motor cortex, and its amplitude increased with character complexity in line with the documented relationship between the lateralized readiness potential and motor complexity. This study demonstrates the feasibility of studying neurocognitive processes in complex naturalistic motor tasks and extends our knowledge about the dynamic pattern of handwriting-related neural activities.

Listen to yourself! Prioritization of self‐associated and own voice cues

Self-cues such as one's own name or face attract attention, reflecting a bias for stimuli connected to self to be prioritized in cognition. Recent evidence suggests that even external voices can elicit this self-prioritization effect; in a voice-label matching task, external voices assigned to the Self-identity label ‘you’ elicited faster responses than those assigned to ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ (Payne et al., Br. J. Psychology, 112, 585-610). However, it is not clear whether external voices assigned to Self are prioritized over participants' own voices. We explore this issue in two experiments. In Exp 1 (N = 35), a voice-label matching task comprising three external voices confirmed that reaction time and accuracy are improved when an external voice cue is assigned to Self rather than Friend or Stranger. In Exp 2 (N = 90), one of the voice cues was replaced with a recording of the participant's own voice. Reaction time and accuracy showed a consistent advantage for the participant's own-voice, even when it was assigned to the ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ identity. These findings show that external voices can elicit self-prioritization effects if associated with Self, but they are not prioritized above individuals' own voices. This has implications for external voice production technology, suggesting own-voice imitation may be beneficial.

Facial basis of stereotypes: Judgements of warmth and competence based on cross‐group typicality/distinctiveness of faces

Human migration is an increasingly common phenomenon and migrants are at risk of disadvantageous treatment. We reasoned that migrants may receive differential treatment by locals based on the closeness of their facial features to the host average. Residents of Türkiye, the country with the largest number of refugees currently, served as participants. Because many of these refugees are of Arabic origin, we created target facial stimuli varying along the axis connecting Turkish and Arabic morphological prototypes (excluding skin colour) computed using geometric morphometrics and available databases. Participants made judgements of two universal dimensions of social perception–warmth and competence–on these faces. We predicted that participants judging faces manipulated towards the Turkish average would provide higher warmth and competence ratings compared to judging the same faces manipulated towards the Arabic average. Bayesian statistical tools were employed to estimate parameter values in multilevel models with intercorrelated varying effects. The findings did not support the prediction and revealed raters (as well as target faces) to be an important source of variation in social judgements. In the absence of simple cues (e.g. skin colour, group labels), the effect of facial morphology on social judgements may be much more complex than previously assumed.

Who tends to be a perfectionistic adolescent? Distinguishing perfectionism from excellencism and investigating the links with the Big Five and self‐esteem

Striving towards perfection is an important concept of study, given its heterogenous associations with both positive and negative outcomes. To address this matter, recent work has emphasized the need to differentiate between striving towards perfection (perfectionism) and excellence (excellencism). However, the applicability of this differentiation in adolescence remains largely unexplored, despite this life phase being particularly sensitive for the development of perfectionism. To better understand striving towards perfection in adolescence, we examined the psychometric properties of the German Scale of Perfectionism and Excellencism (SCOPE) and evaluated the nomological net with the Big Five and self-esteem in 788 German adolescents (M age = 15.49 years; 50% female). The results underscored the distinctiveness of the different strivings in adolescents but pointed to mixed evidence regarding convergent and discriminant validities. Notably, striving towards perfection was related to lower levels of openness and self-esteem but higher levels of neuroticism, whereas striving towards excellence was related to higher levels of every trait except neuroticism. Finally, most results remained consistent across genders and school types. We discuss how the differentiation between perfectionism and excellencism deepens our understanding of adolescents' perfectionistic strivings and how it might inform future research across different psychological fields.

Generative neural networks for experimental manipulation: Examining dominance‐trustworthiness face impressions with data‐efficient models

An important development in the study of face impressions was the introduction of dominance and trustworthiness as the primary and potentially orthogonal traits judged from faces. We test competing predictions of recent accounts that address evidence against the independence of these judgements. To this end we develop a version of recent ‘deep models of face impressions’ better suited for data-efficient experimental manipulation. In Study 1 (N = 128) we build impression models using 15 times less ratings per dimension than previously assumed necessary. In Study 2 (N = 234) we show how our method can precisely manipulate dominance and trustworthiness impressions of face photographs and observe how the effects' pattern of the cues of one trait on impressions of the other differs from previous accounts. We propose an altered account that stresses how a successful execution of the two judgements' functional roles requires impressions of trustworthiness and dominance to be based on cues of both traits. Finally we show our manipulation resulted in larger effect sizes using a broader array of features than previous methods. Our approach lets researchers manipulate face stimuli for various face perception studies and investigate new dimensions with minimal data collection.

Differential diagnosis of autism, attachment disorders, complex post‐traumatic stress disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder: A Delphi study

Individuals diagnosed with autism, attachment disorders, emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) can present with similar features. This renders differential and accurate diagnosis of these conditions difficult, leading to diagnostic overshadowing and misdiagnosis. The purpose of this study was to explore professionals' perspectives on the differential diagnosis of autism, attachment disorders and CPTSD in young people; and of autism, CPTSD and EUPD in adults. A co-produced three-round Delphi study gathered information through a series of questionnaires from 106 international professionals with expertise in assessing and/or diagnosing at least one of these conditions. To provide specialist guidance and data triangulation, working groups of experts by experience, clinicians and researchers were consulted. Delphi statements were considered to have reached consensus if at least 80% of participants were in agreement. Two hundred and seventy-five Delphi statements reached consensus. Overlapping and differentiating features, methods of assessment, difficulties encountered during differential diagnosis and suggestions for improvements were identified. The findings highlight current practices for differential diagnosis of autism, attachment disorders, CPTSD and EUPD in young people and adults. Areas for future research, clinical and service provision implications, were also identified.

Editorial: Introducing the British Psychological Society journals' landmark special issue on the United Nation's Sustainability Goals

Exploring the spatial interference effects elicited by social and non‐social targets: A conditional accuracy function approach

Recent studies employing the spatial interference paradigm reveal qualitative differences in congruency effects between gaze and arrow targets. Typically, arrows produce a standard congruency effect (SCE), with faster responses when target direction aligns with its location. Conversely, gaze targets often lead to a reversed congruency effect (RCE), where responses are slower in similar conditions. We explored this dissociation using the Conditional Accuracy Function (CAF) to assess accuracy across reaction time bins. Using a hierarchical linear mixed modelling approach to compare cropped eyes, and full faces as social stimuli, and arrows as non-social stimuli, we synthesized findings from 11 studies, which led to three distinct models. The results showed that with non-social targets, incongruent trials exhibited lower accuracy rates in the first bin than in subsequent bins, while congruent trials maintained stable accuracy throughout the distribution. Conversely, social targets revealed a dissociation within the fastest responses; alongside a general reduction in accuracy for both congruency conditions, congruent trials resulted in even lower accuracy rates than incongruent ones. These results suggest with gaze targets that additional information, perhaps social, in addition to the automatic capture by the irrelevant target location, is being processed during the earlier stages of processing.

Unpacking interplays between competitiveness, cooperativeness, and social comparison orientation: A network psychometric approach and replication

Emerging evidence highlights the role of social comparison in competition and cooperation, yet the dynamics among competitiveness, cooperativeness, and social comparison orientation (SCO) remain underexplored. In the present study, we sought to unravel these complex interplays employing graphical Gaussian models (GGMs) and characterize the network structures utilizing cross-sectional data derived from 1073 Chinese participants. A pre-registered independent sample (n = 1348) served to examine the replicability and robustness of our initial findings. Moreover, we explored the Bayesian networks (i.e., directed acyclic graphs) to delve into their probabilistic directed dependencies. Our analysis identified an interpersonal co-opetition network where SCO bridges competitiveness and cooperativeness, emphasizing the key influence of the desire to surpass others. We also found a significant gender effect on the levels of these orientations but not on the network patterns. Additionally, the replication sample offered validation for the resultant network structure and its key nodes. In sum, these findings provide a new insight into the symbiotic relationship between competitiveness and cooperativeness within the framework of social comparison, offering significant theoretical and practical implications.

Positive and negative touch differentially modulate metacognitive memory judgements for emotional stimuli

Touch plays a crucial role in providing humans with information from the external environment and can be perceived by humans as positively or negatively valenced. It is well documented that touch can differentially influence social functions, but very little is known about how touch can modulate (meta)cognition. Utilizing a within-subject design, participants were exposed to (a) positive, (b) negative, and (c) no touch, alongside encoding of emotionally valenced (positive and negative) images. After a 20-minute delay, participants completed a Yes/No recognition task to investigate how touch influenced memory-related decision components (e.g. criterion, confidence). Results showed that, compared to the control condition, both positive and negative touch were associated with overall lower confidence ratings, a less liberal response bias and slower response times. Interestingly, for correct recognitions, only negative touch (vs. no touch) led to inappropriately lower confidence and slower response times while both confidence and response time remained unaltered in positive touch. Our findings provide the first evidence that positive and negative touch differentially interact with metacognitive memory-related decisions. Altered metacognitive judgements after being touched could have significant consequences in applied settings, such as situations of eyewitness testimony.

People have different expectations for their own versus others' use of AI‐mediated communication tools

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance human communication, for example, by improving the quality of our writing, voice or appearance. However, AI mediated communication also has risks—it may increase deception, compromise authenticity or yield widespread mistrust. As a result, both policymakers and technology firms are developing approaches to prevent and reduce potentially unacceptable uses of AI communication technologies. However, we do not yet know what people believe is acceptable or what their expectations are regarding usage. Drawing on normative psychology theories, we examine people's judgements of the acceptability of open and secret AI use, as well as people's expectations of their own and others' use. In two studies with representative samples (Study 1: N = 477; Study 2: N = 765), we find that people are less accepting of secret than open AI use in communication, but only when directly compared. Our results also suggest that people believe others will use AI communication tools more than they would themselves and that people do not expect others' use to align with their expectations of what is acceptable. While much attention has been focused on transparency measures, our results suggest that self-other differences are a central factor for understanding people's attitudes and expectations for AI-mediated communication.

Scoping review on natural language processing applications in counselling and psychotherapy

Recent years have witnessed some rapid and tremendous progress in natural language processing (NLP) techniques that are used to analyse text data. This study endeavours to offer an up-to-date review of NLP applications by examining their use in counselling and psychotherapy from 1990 to 2021. The purpose of this scoping review is to identify trends, advancements, challenges and limitations of these applications. Among the 41 papers included in this review, 4 primary study purposes were identified: (1) developing automated coding; (2) predicting outcomes; (3) monitoring counselling sessions; and (4) investigating language patterns. Our findings showed a growing trend in the number of papers utilizing advanced machine learning methods, particularly neural networks. Unfortunately, only a third of the articles addressed the issues of bias and generalizability. Our findings provided a timely systematic update, shedding light on concerns related to bias, generalizability and validity in the context of NLP applications in counselling and psychotherapy.

Assessing novelty, feasibility and value of creative ideas with an unsupervised approach using GPT‐4

Creativity is defined by three key factors: novelty, feasibility and value. While many creativity tests focus primarily on novelty, they often neglect feasibility and value, thereby limiting their reflection of real-world creativity. In this study, we employ GPT-4, a large language model, to assess these three dimensions in a Japanese-language Alternative Uses Test (AUT). Using a crowdsourced evaluation method, we acquire ground truth data for 30 question items and test various GPT prompt designs. Our findings show that asking for multiple responses in a single prompt, using an ‘explain first, rate later’ design, is both cost-effective and accurate (r = .62, .59 and .33 for novelty, feasibility and value, respectively). Moreover, our method offers comparable accuracy to existing methods in assessing novelty, without the need for training data. We also evaluate additional models such as GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4 Omni and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Comparable performance across these models demonstrates the universal applicability of our prompt design. Our results contribute a straightforward platform for instant AUT evaluation and provide valuable ground truth data for future methodological research.

Identifying subtypes in persons, situations and person–situation interactions: Categorical latent state–trait modelling approaches

The latent state–trait theory posits that a psychological construct may reflect stable influences specific to a person (i.e., trait), ephemeral influences from situations (i.e., state), and interactions between them (i.e., state–trait interactions). Researchers conventionally apply mixture modelling to explore heterogeneity in variables by identifying homogenous classes with respect to the measured variable, yet rarely distinguishing between person- and situation-specific classes. The current study introduces novel categorical latent state–trait models to identify subgroups in states and traits, quantifying the effects of person-specific classes, situation-specific classes, and person–situation interactions. The proposed models are applied to an empirical dataset. We discuss statistical inference, effect size measures, and model visualization for the proposed models. Based on realistic parameter values from the empirical dataset, preliminary simulation studies were conducted to investigate models’ performances. Bayesian estimation in the proposed models allows flexible testing of a wide range of hypotheses related to state, trait, and interaction effects. We discuss limitations and future directions.

Decoding the language of first impressions: Comparing models of first impressions of faces derived from free‐text descriptions and trait ratings

First impressions formed from facial appearance predict important social outcomes. Existing models of these impressions indicate they are underpinned by dimensions of Valence and Dominance, and are typically derived by applying data reduction methods to explicit ratings of faces for a range of traits. However, this approach is potentially problematic because the trait ratings may not fully capture the dimensions on which people spontaneously assess faces. Here, we used natural language processing to extract ‘topics’ directly from participants' free-text descriptions (i.e., their first impressions) of 2222 face images. Two topics emerged, reflecting first impressions related to positive emotional valence and warmth (Topic 1) and negative emotional valence and potential threat (Topic 2). Next, we investigated how these topics were related to Valence and Dominance components derived from explicit trait ratings. Collectively, these components explained only ~44% of the variance in the topics extracted from free-text descriptions and suggested that first impressions are underpinned by correlated valence dimensions that subsume the content of existing trait-rating-based models. Natural language offers a promising new avenue for understanding social cognition, and future work can examine the predictive utility of natural language and traditional data-driven models for impressions in varying social contexts.

Explanation strategies in humans versus current explainable artificial intelligence: Insights from image classification

Explainable AI (XAI) methods provide explanations of AI models, but our understanding of how they compare with human explanations remains limited. Here, we examined human participants' attention strategies when classifying images and when explaining how they classified the images through eye-tracking and compared their attention strategies with saliency-based explanations from current XAI methods. We found that humans adopted more explorative attention strategies for the explanation task than the classification task itself. Two representative explanation strategies were identified through clustering: One involved focused visual scanning on foreground objects with more conceptual explanations, which contained more specific information for inferring class labels, whereas the other involved explorative scanning with more visual explanations, which were rated higher in effectiveness for early category learning. Interestingly, XAI saliency map explanations had the highest similarity to the explorative attention strategy in humans, and explanations highlighting discriminative features from invoking observable causality through perturbation had higher similarity to human strategies than those highlighting internal features associated with higher class score. Thus, humans use both visual and conceptual information during explanation, which serve different purposes, and XAI methods that highlight features informing observable causality match better with human explanations, potentially more accessible to users.

Unveiling the factors of aesthetic preferences with explainable AI

The allure of aesthetic appeal in images captivates our senses, yet the underlying intricacies of aesthetic preferences remain elusive. In this study, we pioneer a novel perspective by utilizing several different machine learning (ML) models that focus on aesthetic attributes known to influence preferences. Our models process these attributes as inputs to predict the aesthetic scores of images. Moreover, to delve deeper and obtain interpretable explanations regarding the factors driving aesthetic preferences, we utilize the popular Explainable AI (XAI) technique known as SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP). Our methodology compares the performance of various ML models, including Random Forest, XGBoost, Support Vector Regression, and Multilayer Perceptron, in accurately predicting aesthetic scores, and consistently observing results in conjunction with SHAP. We conduct experiments on three image aesthetic benchmarks, namely Aesthetics with Attributes Database (AADB), Explainable Visual Aesthetics (EVA), and Personalized image Aesthetics database with Rich Attributes (PARA), providing insights into the roles of attributes and their interactions. Finally, our study presents ML models for aesthetics research, alongside the introduction of XAI. Our aim is to shed light on the complex nature of aesthetic preferences in images through ML and to provide a deeper understanding of the attributes that influence aesthetic judgements.

Understanding anxiety through uncertainty quantification

Uncertainty has been a central concept in psychological theories of anxiety. However, this concept has been plagued by divergent connotations and operationalizations. The lack of consensus hinders the current search for cognitive and biological mechanisms of anxiety, jeopardizes theory creation and comparison, and restrains translation of basic research into improved diagnoses and interventions. Drawing upon uncertainty decomposition in Bayesian Decision Theory, we propose a well-defined conceptual structure of uncertainty in cognitive and clinical sciences, with a focus on anxiety. We discuss how this conceptual structure provides clarity and can be naturally applied to existing frameworks of psychopathology research. Furthermore, it allows formal quantification of various types of uncertainty that can benefit both research and clinical practice in the era of computational psychiatry.