Psychology Research Digest
British Journal of Psychology
The British Journal of Psychology is the flagship journal of the British Psychological Society, publishing cutting-edge, multidisciplinary psychological research with major theoretical or methodological contributions across different sections of psychology. With a commitment to open science, the journal enjoys a wide international readership. It features empirical studies and critical reviews that address contemporary or modern topics or issues by integrating different specialisms of psychology or interdisciplinary work with contributions from or to psychology theory or practice.
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.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Introducing the British Psychological Society Journal's landmark issue on co‐produced research
British Journal of Psychology, Volume 117, Issue 3, Page 793-794, August 2026.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Issue Information
British Journal of Psychology, Volume 117, Issue 3, Page i-iv, August 2026.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Demystifying the mist: Why do individuals hesitate to accept AI educational services?
Rapid advances in AI technology are fuelling the proliferation of AI applications across industries, including educational services. With the allure of intelligent tutoring, individuals now face the choice of their educational approach—either parental engagement or utilizing AI educational services. This research employs an experimental design approach to examine individuals' decision-making processes involving AI educational services. Across five studies, we observe that, relative to AI educational services, parental engagement induces less guilt, receives a higher valuation and increases individuals' willingness to recommend it to others. We attribute these preferences to a perceived parental responsibility. Intrinsic attribution and conformity promote individuals' WOM. This research is the first to uncover the impact of educational approaches on individuals' guilt and downstream behaviours in the AI-in-Education field, shedding light on attribution as its underlying mechanism and offering actionable strategies to enhance individuals' WOM. The findings offer novel insights to AI-human interaction psychological research and hold practical implications for AI-in-Education industry practitioners.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>On how people describe paintings with mirrors
Since antiquity humans have been fascinated by mirrors; yet, when asked to predict what is made visible in the reflection, or to interpret a scene with a mirror, observers make systematic errors. Many observers claim that a character in a scene is looking at themselves when their reflection is visible, despite not sharing the same viewpoint. The first part of the study consisted of a survey of artworks containing mirrors, and the creation of a catalogue. The second part, using 21 artworks and an online methodology (N = 97), confirmed that the Venus effect impacts most participants. The third part (N = 101) tested whether the effect relates to cognitive/emotional perspective-taking – taking the perspective of someone else – or visual perspective-taking – understanding what can be seen from a certain viewpoint. We related the magnitude of the Venus effect to scores on the AQ test (as a measure of cognitive/emotional perspective-taking) and the ROMP test (as a measure of visual perspective-taking). AQ scores did not predict the Venus effect, and ROMP scores did. We conclude that the Venus effect is likely to occur because people fail to understand what can be seen from a given viewpoint.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Universal threads: Shared sociopolitical roots and consequences of extrasensory perception and pseudoscientific beliefs
While irrational beliefs cluster together, their content differs widely, from beliefs about collective memories shaping biological properties (pseudoscientific) to those about premonition (extrasensory). This difference might extend further—they might reflect a similar information processing style but be differently embedded in worldviews; for example, pseudoscientific beliefs are typically endorsed by conservatives. Across three studies (two preregistered) in two post-conflict countries (total N = 1042), followed by an internal meta-analysis, we investigated whether pseudoscientific and extrasensory perception beliefs (1) are related to a less analytical but more intuitive thinking style, prone to contradictions and fatalistic thinking, but (2) are differentially linked to a conservative, authoritarian and ethnocentric worldview, and (3) are differentially related to past use of non-evidence-based practices, extrasensory perception experiences and civic activism. As expected, both beliefs were similarly predicted by information processing style. However, they were also similarly predicted by authoritarian and, to a lesser extent, ethnocentric views. Moreover, both beliefs were tied to similar behavioural patterns. We argue that the relationship among a conservative worldview, irrational beliefs and socially relevant behaviours is important for understanding how public policies get politicized.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Perinatal women dominantly protect—rather than submissively cede—resources when interacting with threatening‐looking others
When competing for resources, people appear particularly sensitive to social cues of threat, tending to submissively cede resources to more (vs. less) threatening-looking others. This tendency appears especially pronounced among those that are physically weaker and thus more vulnerable to harm. One phase of adult life during which humans are particularly vulnerable is the perinatal period, the months leading up to and immediately after parturition (giving birth). Previous evidence and models of parental care and motivation suggest that individuals would be especially sensitive to threats during this phase. Accordingly, here we tested for the first time the preregistered prediction that perinatal (vs. non-perinatal) women would submissively cede more to threatening-looking others when competing over resources. Contrary to these predictions, results showed that women in this phase (n = 86, tested at ~29 weeks gestation and 1-month postpartum) were less sensitive to social threat than were non-perinatal women (n = 53), dominantly protecting rather than submissively ceding resources against threatening-looking male strangers. These findings suggest that pregnancy may affect social and economic decision-making by reducing (rather than increasing) submissiveness to threat, consistent with a ‘maternal aggression’ response documented in many non-human mammals.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Differential relationships of positive and negative parenting styles on primary school children’s academic achievement: Learning anxiety and learning engagement matter
Parenting styles are widely recognized as influencing academic achievement; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain inadequately understood. Drawing on the dynamic systems theory and the family systems theory, the present study recruited 481 children (222 boys, Mage = 9.90 ± 0.69 years old) to investigate the longitudinal associations between positive/negative parenting styles and academic achievement and to further explore how learning anxiety and learning engagement may mediate these relationships. Results indicated that (1) negative parenting, but not positive parenting, had a negative direct effect on academic achievement; (2) both positive and negative parenting predicted higher academic achievement through increased learning engagement, but not through learning anxiety; and (3) learning anxiety and learning engagement acted as sequential mediators in the link between positive parenting styles and academic achievement. Overall, these findings highlight how parenting approaches shape children's learning and academic results by influencing their emotional and motivational characteristics from a developmental perspective.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Information and affective valence influence judgments of complexity, liking and understanding
Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiarity and expertise. We examined how people represent visual complexity and its impact on perception and evaluation, focusing on information about paintings and their affective valence on judgments of visual complexity, liking and understanding. Seventy-six participants rated 60 representational artworks of negative, neutral, and positive valence on complexity, beauty and understanding. Half of the participants received written information about each artwork. Results showed that negative artworks were judged as more complex than neutral artworks and positive ones, but this effect was attenuated by the provided information. Liking judgments increased with judged complexity, were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, for neutral than negative ones, and were higher when information was provided. Understanding judgments were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, and higher for neutral artworks than negatively valenced ones. Information increased understanding only for negative artworks, and judged complexity did not affect these judgments. In sum, the representation of the visual complexity of an image is influenced by its valence and the available information, modulating judgments of complexity and liking, but not of understanding.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Negative targets specifically enhance conscious and unconscious social attention
Humans are highly adept at utilizing various social signals, such as eye gaze and biological motion (BM), to detect important events (e.g. threat, reward) in the environment, a phenomenon termed social attention. Here we investigated whether the affective information carried by the contextual event would modulate this social attention behaviour. By introducing natural emotional pictures (negative, neutral and positive) as peripheral probing targets within the modified central cueing paradigm, we found that central BM induced a stronger attentional orienting effect towards negative targets than neutral and positive ones. Moreover, this modulation was observed in attentional effects induced by another well-known social cue (i.e. eye gaze), whereas no such effect was obtained with the non-social arrow cues. Importantly, this negativity bias persisted at the subliminal level, as shown by the significant attentional effects towards negative targets induced by unconscious social cues (i.e. BM, eye gaze). In contrast, no attentional effects were obtained with non-conscious arrow cues. Overall, these findings reveal a general enhancement of negative targets on conscious and unconscious social attention induced by different types of social signals (i.e. BM, eye gaze) and highlight the distinction of social attention compared to non-social attention in detecting potentially detrimental events.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Temporal dynamics of cue integration for sense of agency in social comparative context
Cue integration theory suggests that the sense of agency arises from the interaction of multiple cues, weighted by their reliability and availability. However, whether this integration is dynamic or static remains unclear. This study explored the potential dynamics of cue integration by examining the interplay between internal and external cues in social comparison contexts. Participants in the two experiments controlled a circle to a target location, with the circle's motion either fluent or disfluent. After completing the task, the participants received feedback on their performance relative to others, delivered in either a social (hand gestures in Experiment 1) or non-social format (arrow symbols in Experiment 2), presented either before or after they provided agency ratings. Results revealed that both socially and non-socially formatted feedback influenced agency ratings for future actions (forward modulation) as well as for past actions (backward modulation). Notably, a dynamic pattern of integration was evident only between socially formatted feedback and motion fluency: under disfluent motion, forward and backward effects of socially formatted feedback intensified over time. Conversely, with fluent motion, the impact of socially formatted feedback diminished over time. These findings underscore the complexity of cue integration, indicating a need to incorporate temporal dynamics into cue integration theory.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>The relationship between parental control types and mental health types in Chinese adolescents
This study investigated the relationship between parental control types and mental health categories among Chinese adolescents. About 2240 adolescents (1267 males; M age = 14.09) were recruited and completed the Parental Control Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Life Satisfaction Scale at two time points. Results revealed that adolescents' parental control could be classified into seven types, while mental health could be classified into three types. The key finding demonstrates significant dynamic interactions between these variables: at T1, the “high behavioral control-low psychological control” parental control type (e.g., behavioural guidance type) significantly promoted adolescents' transition towards more optimal mental health categories; conversely, adolescents classified in the “complete mental health” category at T1 were more likely to have parents exhibiting the “high behavioural control-low psychological control” positive parenting pattern at T2. This “virtuous cycle” pattern was confirmed, although the “vicious cycle” commonly observed in variable-centred research between psychological control and poor mental health did not fully emerge in this study. These findings elucidate the complex bidirectional relationships between perceived parental control and mental health development among Chinese adolescents.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>A novel index to measure pre‐planning in the Tower of London task: Test–retest reliability and known‐group validity
The Tower of London (TOL) is a planning task frequently used in clinical settings and research. Planning and execution times are the most common outcome variables despite yielding lower effect sizes in clinical group comparisons and lower test–retest reliability than planning accuracy. Here, it is proposed that planning time be analysed not in isolation, but in relation to the combined duration of planning and execution, yielding a novel pre-planning index (PPI). In N = 179 healthy participants, test–retest reliability analyses yielded higher absolute agreement and less intra-individual variability over two sessions for PPI than for planning and execution times. The clinical validity of PPI was probed by comparing patients known to exhibit planning deficits and healthy controls. Stroke and Parkinson's patients showed significantly lower PPI than controls, driven by reduced planning and longer execution times. There was no difference in PPI between patients with mild cognitive impairment and controls. Consistently across healthy participants and patients, the positive correlation of PPI with planning accuracy exceeded that of planning times with accuracy. Thus, this pre-planning index can enhance both the reliability and clinical validity of TOL latency variables and represents a useful complement to accuracy for measuring planning performance in health and disease.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Effects of emotional variability on social evaluations of faces: An advantage of low variability
When people see another person's face, they can quickly infer traits and make social evaluations from them, a process known as social perception of faces. Previous studies have investigated the effects of emotion on social evaluations but have mainly focused on single expressions. The present study examined how intra-individual emotional variability across multiple faces affects judgements of warmth and competence. In Experiment 1, mixed-valence sets containing both happy and angry faces were used, and emotional variability was manipulated by varying the emotional distance of faces. Results showed that the positive warmth and competence words were perceived as more appropriate to describe faces with low variability compared with high variability (Exp1a). This low-variability advantage persisted after controlling for extreme expressions and generalized to additional warm and competent traits (Exp1b). Experiments 2a and 2b tested the variability effects across happy-only, angry-only, and mixed-valence sets. Positive sets received the highest ratings, mixed-valence sets intermediate, and negative sets the lowest on both dimensions. Importantly, a significant main effect of variability emerged only for competence ratings, with low-variability faces rated higher than high-variability faces. In summary, our study indicates that low emotional variability has an advantage in social evaluations over high emotional variability.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Spatial memory under emotion: Effects across encoding, maintenance and retrieval
Emotions modulate spatial memory, yet their impact remains inconsistent across contexts. For example, fear may enhance attention to landmarks or induce spatial disorientation. Traditional emotion–memory models, mainly focused on episodic memory, fail to account for these mixed effects. We propose that emotional valence affects spatial memory as a function of both the memory phase (encoding, maintenance, retrieval) and the reference frame: egocentric (body-centred) or allocentric (environment-based). In three experiments, we manipulated the timing of emotional stimuli while participants performed spatial memory tasks. Negative emotion impaired egocentric encoding, whereas positive emotion reduced allocentric encoding. During maintenance, both valences broadly disrupted spatial performance, suggesting interference with cognitive control. At retrieval, only allocentric judgements were affected. Moreover, individual traits such as mood, interoception and alexithymia predicted egocentric more than allocentric performance. These findings support a stage-dependent model in which emotional stimuli interact dynamically with spatial representations. This framework offers a novel perspective to reconcile conflicting results in the literature and advances understanding of how affective states shape adaptive and maladaptive spatial behaviours.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Why moral judgements change across variations of trolley‐like problems
In the standard ‘trolley problem’, respondents must decide whether to save a condemned group of individuals by sacrificing a safe bystander. Although respondents often are willing to sacrifice the bystander in some circumstances (e.g., by pulling a lever), they are loath to sacrifice the bystander in others (e.g., by pushing the bystander off a footbridge). This difference in responding has been explained via a Dual Process theory of moral judgements (DPT). DPT, however, is a classic boxes-and-arrows model that only makes directional predictions. Meehl (1967, Philosophy of Science, 34, 103) cautioned against theories that only make directional predictions, explaining that they are notoriously difficult to falsify. Meehl (1967, Philosophy of Science, 34, 103) argued that researchers should follow the lead of Physics and develop computational models that make functional and point predictions. Here, we use a value-based, computational cognitive model of decision-making (Psychological Value Theory) to predict precisely both the speed and kind of response in trolley-like problems in three experiments. We show that this model accounts for the changes in choices across variations of the trolley problem with a response bias parameter.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Out of the dark – Psychological perspectives on people's fascination with true crime
The success of the true crime media genre reflects humanity's avid curiosity about violence, deviance, and murder, yet psychological research on this phenomenon is lacking. In this article, we highlight why true crime consumption may be relevant to various research fields that go beyond simple media preferences. Additionally, we present a large-scale behavioural investigation for comprehensive empirical insights into motives, and behavioural and well-being correlates of true crime consumption. In n = 307–571 participants, we (a) confirm a robust gender difference in true crime consumption in favour of women, and (b) find more general (morbid curiosity) and distinct motives (defensive vigilance, excitement) for true crime consumption. Additionally, (c) through principal component analysis, we extract five components from numerous variables (negative affectivity, antagonism, fear of crime, self-focused adaptive regulation, and affective creativity) to test for contributions to true crime consumption. Ultimately, (d) in multiple regression models, gender, income, fear of crime, and antagonism emerged as unique predictors of overall true crime consumption, though results varied for different formats (e.g., podcasts) and motives. Notably, defensive vigilance motivation (higher in women) was linked to more adaptive self-regulation. Our investigation adds to the emerging body of research on negative crime-related information seeking.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Trust learning in the repeated trust game: A meta‐analytic study
Trust involves making oneself vulnerable by relying on the expectation that others will reciprocate and act in a trustworthy manner, leading to mutual benefit. In behavioural economics and psychology, the Trust Game (TG) is a widely used paradigm to measure trust. The repeated TG is a modified version of the TG in which participants encounter the same partner(s) multiple times, allowing for reputation and trust learning. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to identify features of the repeated TG, participant characteristics, and manipulations of partner trustworthiness that affect trust learning. This is the first meta-analytic study to specifically assess trust learning in the repeated TG and included 404 effect sizes from over 8000 participants from 68 studies. Our findings indicate that the partners' behavioural trustworthiness, in the form of their reciprocation rate, is by far the most influential factor in participant trust learning (β = 3.0). Furthermore, the results reveal that manipulating prior information about partners can have an effect on the amount of learning, but only for manipulations of trustworthiness/morality. Notably, in ingroup–outgroup studies, participants learn from their partners' trustworthiness and it is not affected by their partners' group membership.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Economic inequality fosters unethical behaviour by promoting the perception of immoral and competitive normative climates
Economic inequality was found to be positively related to unethical behaviours, but the underlying psychological mechanisms have not been well studied. Through five studies, this research explored the psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions between economic inequality and unethical behaviour. Study 1 (N = 165,622) provided primary evidence for the relationship between inequality and unethical behaviour based on large-scale publicly available databases. Using well-established questionnaires, Study 2 (N = 394) indicated that economic inequality positively predicted immoral and competitive normative climates, which positively predicted unethical behaviour. Study 3 (N = 160) and Study 4 (N = 188) provided causal evidence for the effect of economic inequality and repeatedly verified the mediating roles of immoral and competitive normative climates. Study 5 (N = 300) indicated that income level moderated the effect of economic inequality on unethical behaviour by moderating the mediating effect of immoral and competitive normative climates. In societies with high inequality, participants in low-income groups perceived stronger immoral and competitive normative climates, thereby engaging in more unethical behaviours. This research offers explanations for the prevalence of unethical behaviours in unequal societies, contributing to extend the emerging literature in social-ecological psychology that explores how macro-social-ecological factors impact micro-behaviours.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>How local social norms shape global environmental action: The role of norm misperceptions in environmental attitude–behaviour cycles
This study examines the cyclical relationship between social norms, personal costs of action and pro-environmental behaviour, using a novel dynamic path model to analyse temporal and feedback effects. Recognizing that environmental action often involves a trade-off between individual costs and social expectations, we explore how perceptions of social norms influence environmental decisions and, conversely, how individual behaviours shape norm perceptions. We investigate the roles of social norm misperceptions, where individuals misjudge the environmental commitment of peers, and normative feedback, designed to correct these misestimations, in motivating or demotivating sustainable behaviours. Through a controlled experimental design involving sequential tasks and feedback interventions, we capture how normative feedback impacts pro-environmental choices over time. Results indicate that, when normative feedback reduces the perception of social isolation around sustainable actions, pro-environmental behaviour is sustained, albeit contingent on environmental attitudes. These findings advance our understanding of normative interventions and the complex dynamics underlying environmental decision-making.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Neurodivergence and well‐being: The fulfilment of fundamental psychological needs, work‐related stress and life satisfaction
This paper presents two complementary studies on the impact of neurodivergent conditions such as autism, AD(H)D, dyslexia/dyscalculia and giftedness on well-being. In Study 1, survey data from 2157 participants in a true probabilistic sample of Dutch households show that respondents with autism and ADHD report significantly lower life satisfaction and higher levels of stress and maladjustment than neurotypical peers. Other conditions present more nuanced patterns. Study 2 builds on Self-Determination Theory and uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyse 2214 Reddit life stories, evaluating the mediating role of autonomy, competence and relatedness need fulfilment in the relationship between neurodivergence and well-being. Our results indicate that giftedness and dyslexia are positively related to psychological needs satisfaction, whereas other neurodivergent conditions are predominantly negatively associated with needs fulfilment. Indirect association analyses show that, except for ADD, the fulfilment of autonomy, competence and relatedness needs accounts for the association between neurodivergence on the one hand and life satisfaction and stress on the other hand. This study provides initial empirical evidence and contributes novel empirical insights by combining multimethod data sources and LLM-based narrative analysis, advancing our understanding of how different forms of neurodivergence affect well-being.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>Big size with big heart: The effect of body size cue on perceived forgivingness
Forgivingness, a traditionally moral trait, has been extensively studied from a first-person perspective. However, there is little empirical research that discusses it from a third-person perspective. In the current study, we examined whether body size serves as a cue from which Chinese participants infer others' forgivingness. Across five experiments, we examined the body-size–forgivingness association and, drawing on the Stereotype Content Model and Implicit Personality Theory, tested whether perceived warmth accounted for this association. Results showed that participants perceived higher weight (vs. lower weight) targets as more forgiving in an implicit association test (Experiment 1) and a slider rating task (Experiment 2). In a simulation where participants committed many errors, they preferred to invite higher weight targets rather than lower weight targets for cooperation because they thought that higher weight targets were more forgiving (Experiment 3). Additionally, compared to gluteal higher weight, abdominal higher weight was particularly linked to forgivingness (Experiment 4). Mediation analysis revealed that perceived warmth but not perceived competence mediated the effect of body size on perceived forgivingness (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that, among Chinese participants, body size can shape perceived forgivingness as a specific warmth-related moral inference.
Publication date: Fri, 03 Jul 2026 22:50:13 -0700 Access the article >>Time poverty increases self‐dehumanization through undermining belief in free will
The chronic experience of time poverty is a widespread global phenomenon with detrimental effects on cognition and well-being. However, its impact on individuals' perceptions of their own humanity remains unexplored. We hypothesized that time poverty exacerbates self-dehumanization by undermining belief in free will. Across four studies (N = 994), we tested this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrated a positive correlation between time poverty and self-dehumanization. Study 2 found that recalling a rushed experience heightened self-dehumanization compared with both the low and the control conditions. Study 3 employed a measurement-of-mediation approach to examine the mediating role of belief in free will, with Study 4 further establishing the causal mediation effect of belief in free will through a manipulation-of-mediator design. Notably, these effects persisted after controlling for potential confounds, including scarcity-related factors (financial poverty, perceived socioeconomic status, objective time poverty and low social connectedness), an individual-difference factor (money prioritization) and an affective factor (general mood). These findings illuminate the unforeseen psychological costs of an accelerated lifestyle, emphasizing the profound impact of time poverty on self-perceptions.
Publication date: Sun, 28 Jun 2026 22:08:03 -0700 Access the article >>Temporal dynamics of induced mood and its relationship with modality and individual trait
Mood induction serves as a critical experimental framework for investigating affective neural mechanisms. While neurobiological evidence suggests that affective states are inherently dynamic, research on mood induction has paid little attention to the evolving trajectories of induced moods. This study examined how the effect of mood induction unfolds over time in visual and auditory modalities, using both implicit and explicit measures. The results revealed temporal dynamics of affective states following the mood induction in a manner mainly dependent on the induced mood and the measurement type. Specifically, fear induction persistently elevated explicit negative affective states, with this persistence linked to individual depression trait. In contrast, happy induction produced comparable effects on both implicit and explicit positive states, but these effects diminished rapidly within 10 min. These observations demonstrate modality-independent patterns of mood induction across visual and auditory domains and highlight the dissociation between implicit and explicit measures in tracking affective changes over time. The study underscores the importance of analysing these temporal trajectories to better understand the functional output of neural affective regulation circuits, likely contributing to the development of more nuanced frameworks for affective research and of more personalized coping strategies to enhance affective well-being.
Publication date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:01:52 -0700 Access the article >>Less is more when time is scarce: How time poverty enhances minimalistic consumption through increased need for order
Time poverty – the chronic feeling of having insufficient time – has become pervasive in modern life, yet its influence on minimalistic consumption remains unexplored. Drawing on compensatory control theory, we propose that time poverty promotes minimalistic consumption through heightened need for order. Three experimental studies (N = 660) provide evidence. Studies 1 and 2 suggest that time poverty causally increases preference for minimalistic consumption, particularly sparse aesthetics and limited possessions, mediated by need for order (Study 1 and 2) rather than alternative mechanisms such as need for relaxation (Study 2). Study 3 shows that exposure to minimalist environments attenuates the heightened need for order among time-poor consumers, consistent with minimalism's compensatory function. These findings challenge the assumption that resource scarcity uniformly drives acquisition, revealing that temporal scarcity can promote consumption reduction through compensatory control. Our research advances understanding of time poverty's consequences, identifies a novel driver of minimalistic consumption, and reveals need for order as the key mechanism, offering insights for designing products that address the psychological needs of time-poor consumers.
Publication date: Wed, 17 Jun 2026 23:05:29 -0700 Access the article >>Time poverty and access‐based consumption: Convenience gains and risk blindness
Time poverty – the subjective experience of insufficient time – has become a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary societies, yet its psychological consequences for consumer decision-making remain underexplored. Drawing on scarcity theory, we examine how time poverty shapes preferences for access-based consumption (ABC) – temporary use without ownership – a market-mediated model transforming consumer societies worldwide. Across four studies (N = 831), we show that time poverty significantly increases ABC preferences through dual mechanisms: amplified convenience orientation while attenuated risk perception. Study 1 established the causal effect of experimentally induced time poverty on ABC preference. Study 2 demonstrated that both mediators independently explain this relationship. Studies 3a and 3b provided convergent causal evidence: experimentally enhancing each mediator significantly attenuated the time-poverty effect on ABC preference while controlling for financial scarcity, general sense of scarcity, and construal level. Together, these dual pathways – heightened convenience-seeking coupled with diminished risk sensitivity – indicate that time-poor consumers may systematically trade risk evaluation for efficiency in ABC decisions. These findings illuminate the psychological forces driving major shifts in contemporary consumption practice and carry implications for consumer welfare and public policy in increasingly time-constrained societies.
Publication date: Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:07:16 -0700 Access the article >>Contextual cues do not facilitate spontaneous face recognition
Most studies examining face recognition have used explicit recognition tasks, ignoring our ability to spontaneously recognize familiar faces when they are unexpected. The current study examined spontaneous recognition of a minor and major actor from the TV show Friends, and the extent to which spontaneous recognition is facilitated by contextual cues. In Experiment 1, we presented images of the minor actor in the context of an ongoing face-rating task. The background scene became increasingly informative across blocks. Only half of the participants spontaneously recognized the minor actor, with no influence of context. In Experiment 2, we primed the minor actor with images of a major actor from the same show. Participants were more likely to recognize the major actor than the minor actor, both spontaneously and when explicitly asked to do so. Neither the major actor prime nor the background context increased spontaneous recognition of the minor actor. We discuss constraints on spontaneous recognition and the implications of our findings for theoretical models.
Publication date: Wed, 10 Jun 2026 04:35:59 -0700 Access the article >>Coping by deceiving: Developing LYin self‐perceived self‐deception scales and exploring their links to interpersonal deception
Self-deception is complex and poses significant challenges for its measurement. The present study developed two measurement tools and explored the associations between self-perceived self-deception and various forms of other-deception. Study 1 (N = 2018) developed and validated the LYin Self-Perceived Self-Deception Tendency Questionnaire (LYin SDT) and LYin Self-Deception Awareness Scale (LYin SDA) to capture accessible self-deceptive responding tendency and subjectively experienced self-deception. The new scales were found to be related to denial coping and showed incremental validity in predicting the avoidance of threatening information and post-threat reflection, respectively. Studies 2–4 investigated how the two scales relate to interpersonal deceptive tendencies. Findings from Studies 2 (N = 301) and 3 (N = 305) showed that participants with higher LYin SDT exhibited greater self-serving dishonesty, including both explicit lies and omissions of truth. Study 4 (N = 300) applied self-relevant and interpersonal scenarios, where participants either processed information privately or decided what to disclose to others. Higher LYin SDT was related to more self-deceptive responses in self-relevant scenarios, as well as maintenance and disengagement coping tendencies in both scenarios. Together, these findings validate the two scales as effective tools for assessing self-perceived self-deception and elucidate the distinct deceiving and coping correlates.
Publication date: Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:17:40 -0700 Access the article >>Between solitude and self‐harm: A mixed‐methods study on loneliness, emotional regulation and the buffering role of social interaction in university students
This study aims to explore the self-harming behaviours and emotional regulation mechanisms among university students within the context of their experiences of loneliness. A mixed-methods design was employed. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 university students with a self-harm history or high loneliness levels to investigate their subjective loneliness experiences. In the second phase, an ecological momentary assessment approach was applied over seven consecutive days to collect quantitative data from 120 university students on loneliness, emotional regulation difficulties and self-harm urges, capturing their dynamic interrelations. Findings indicated that loneliness not only directly increased the tendency toward self-harm but also exerted an indirect effect through emotional regulation difficulties. Moreover, active social interactions were found to partially buffer this negative effect. The study deepens the understanding of psychological distress among university students by revealing the complex emotional processes underlying self-harm. The findings of this study can provide a theoretical basis for the screening and management of self-harm risk in university students' psychological outpatient clinics, thereby contributing to the optimisation of mental health service models for university students.
Publication date: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:31:18 -0700 Access the article >>Dynamics of collectivistic language and emotional expression in China's early pandemic: A social media analysis
Crises can produce contradictory responses in collectivistic cultures, yielding both solidarity and fragmentation. We propose these paradoxes can be understood by noting multiple ecological levels in collectivistic cultures that reconfigure differentially under stress. Analysing 32,042 Sina Weibo posts from China's early COVID-19 outbreak, we examined collectivistic language and emotional expression across three geographical zones and temporal periods. Results revealed ‘proximal concentration’ at the epicentre of the outbreak, characterized by heightened family/community expressions and reduced abstract rhetoric. In contrast, ‘distal amplification’ was found in peripheral regions. Furthermore, we found a psychological typhoon eye effect in people's cultural expressions such that responses in the epicentre showed increasing positive emotion despite the greatest threat. Critically, ecological levels displayed opposing emotional associations such that microsystem pronouns and macrosystem values were positively associated with positive emotions, while exosystem national identity and mesosystem family/community were negatively associated. These findings suggest collectivism reconfigures through level-specific activation with divergent emotional consequences, highlighting potential limitations of unidimensional cultural frameworks, as aggregated collectivism can mask observing these heterogeneous responses.
Publication date: Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:12:01 -0700 Access the article >>Processing visual contour contributes to the association between numerosity processing and arithmetic performance
Studies have shown that non-symbolic numerosity processing can consistently predict arithmetic performance. Visual form perception has been assumed to be fundamental for both processing, but little empirical evidence has been found for the involvement of visual form perception in numerosity processing and arithmetic performance. The current investigation will examine whether individual dependence on visual properties in numerosity processing can account for substantial variation in arithmetic performance. A total of 6329 participants aged 6 to 87 years old were recruited and divided into nine age groups. The results showed that the total contour/perimeter dominates the numerosity processing for participants in each of the nine age groups. At the individual level, the dependence of total contour/perimeter in numerosity processing indexed by the regression coefficient was larger than the dependence of other visual properties. Importantly, the dependence of total contour/perimeter consistently contributed to the arithmetic performance in each age group. The score for figure matching fully accounted for the contribution of the dependence of total contour/perimeter to arithmetic performance. The findings convergently suggest that the extraction of contour information in dot arrays is fundamental for both numerosity processing and arithmetic performance, which may stem from the shared visual form processing.
Publication date: Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:51:35 -0700 Access the article >>Social voice judgement is dyadic: Acoustic typicality and interpersonal similarity interact
The formation of social first impressions from voices is a central component of everyday social interactions. While past research has primarily investigated the effect of bottom-up voice acoustic on social voice judgements, here we widen the perspective and investigate how bottom-up acoustic and top-down interpersonal similarity interactively influence social voice judgements. We quantified acoustic distance to an average voice as a measure of acoustic typicality and combined this with interpersonal similarity between each listener-speaker pair derived from Big Five personality traits. 110 listeners rated 30 words spoken by female speakers on attractiveness, likability, trustworthiness, and dominance, and data were analysed using Generalised Additive Mixed Models to capture nonlinear and interactive effects. Across social dimensions, acoustic typicality emerged as the strongest predictor of social judgements, with more typical voices receiving the most positive ratings. However, social judgements were not determined by acoustic cues alone. For attractiveness, likability and trustworthiness, similar personalities between speaker and listener enhanced social evaluations, particularly for acoustically atypical voices. In contrast, dominance judgements were exclusively explained by acoustic typicality without significant modulation by interpersonal similarity. Together, these results show that most social voice judgements arises from a dyadic, context-sensitive integration of acoustic information and interpersonal similarity.
Publication date: Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:53:39 -0700 Access the article >>Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk‐taking behaviour
Adopting physical expressions of emotion has feedback effects on individuals' mood and behaviour; for example, adopting the expansive and contractive body language of dominance and submission can affect individuals' feelings of power. However, postural feedback paradigms almost exclusively use deliberate, active posture manipulations, which raise concerns about experimental demand effects and limit the ecological validity of the research. Here, we addressed this issue by creating an incidental manipulation of posture in which the experimental environment encouraged participants to take on either an expansive or contractive posture, and measured the effect of our manipulation on self-report and behavioural outcomes. We find that our manipulation reliably increases risk-taking behaviours (as measured by the balloon analogue risk task), an effect which is robust to confounding variables such as discomfort with the posture or awareness of the manipulation. Furthermore, posture effects on self-reported pride are partially mediated by a measure of participants' posture during the experiment (the angle of their neck), while risk-taking effects are moderated by posture and self-reported mood during the experiment. Our results suggest that aside from deliberate ‘power posing’, incidental factors which affect posture in the real world (e.g., standing desks or ergonomic setups) may have impacts on individuals' behaviour.
Publication date: Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:35:00 -0700 Access the article >>A nonlinear association between chronic stress and instrumental reward learning under Pavlovian conflict: Behavioural and computational evidence
Chronic stress, arising from prolonged exposure to unpredictable challenges, is common in everyday life and may alter cognitive processes. However, few human studies have empirically examined the association between chronic stress and reward learning, which is critical for navigating uncertain environments. This study addressed this gap by examining whether chronic stress is associated with the influence of Pavlovian bias on instrumental reward learning. A total of 111 healthy young adults participated in the study, completing an orthogonalised go/no-go task and a self-reported measure of chronic stress. Participants' chronic stress levels exhibited an inverted-U-shaped relationship with learning accuracy in the Pavlovian-conflict condition, particularly in the reward domain. Between-group analyses supported this pattern, with the moderate-stress group performing best in the Pavlovian-conflict condition of the reward domain. Computational modelling results further revealed that, compared to the moderate-stress group, the low- and high-stress groups exhibited greater reward-related Pavlovian bias and the high-stress group exhibited blunted reward sensitivity. Together, these findings suggest that the association between chronic stress and reward learning may be nonlinear. Moderate levels of chronic stress may be associated with relatively better performance in specific reward-learning contexts.
Publication date: Sun, 31 May 2026 22:16:08 -0700 Access the article >>Understanding considerations and priorities in health behaviours: A multi‐dimensional risk–benefit perspective
Health behaviours and decisions are complex and involve different dimensions of individuals' lives. The current study aimed to investigate considerations and their priorities in health decision and behaviour adoption via a risk–benefit framework unifying elements of mainstream models of health behaviour. We aimed to explore the core dimensions of the outcomes being considered by people and individual differences in perceived importance across dimensions. Two studies were conducted among U.S. adult residents. Study 1 (N = 295) involved eliciting qualitative responses of the health decisions or behaviours that participants encounter in their everyday life, and ratings of the associated dimensions. Study 2 (N = 400) assessed participants' ratings of the importance of outcomes and dimensions across various health decisions and behaviours. Both studies revealed that people considered dimensions beyond health risk and benefit. The dimensions varied their priorities, with health and emotional outcomes being the top considerations. Participants also showed asymmetric considerations of benefit and risk within each dimension. The latent profile analyses in Study 2 also revealed two distinct groups of individuals in risk and benefit considerations across dimensions. The findings highlight that acknowledging individual differences in the weighting and evaluation of outcomes across domains is essential for more tailored health communication and interventions.
Publication date: Sun, 24 May 2026 23:59:50 -0700 Access the article >>Task‐specific associations between holistic processing and individual differences in face memory
Whether individual differences in face identification can be predicted by holistic processing, and whether both share a common underlying mechanism, remain open questions. Past studies exploring this association have produced mixed findings, but they have typically examined only a subset of holistic processing measures, focused largely on identification tasks relying heavily on face perception rather than memory, and/or failed to examine whether the relationship between holistic processing and face identification is face-specific. The present study is the first to examine how all three traditional measures of holistic face processing—the face inversion, part-whole, and composite face tasks—relate to individual differences in memory-based face identification, while also exploring whether these relationships are independent of non-face object identification. We found that face memory was associated with the face inversion and part-whole effects, but not the composite face effect. Exploratory factor analyses revealed two mechanisms of holistic face processing. The first component was loaded moderately by face memory, inversion, and part-whole effects, while the second was loaded strongly by the composite face effect. The findings suggest that face recognition is not facilitated by a single, unitary holistic processing mechanism and highlight the need to reconsider how holistic processing is conceptualized and measured.
Publication date: Wed, 13 May 2026 22:55:55 -0700 Access the article >>Problematic smartphone use in early adolescence: Developmental heterogeneity and bidirectional links with risk factors
Smartphones offer convenience but have raised concerns about problematic smartphone use (PSU), particularly among early adolescents whose cognitive control is still developing. Examining developmental heterogeneity in PSU and its associated risk factors during this period has important theoretical and practical implications. Participants were 1821 Chinese children transitioning into early adolescence (Mage = 9.57 years; 48.5% female), followed annually for three years. Growth mixture modelling identified distinct PSU trajectories, and bidirectional associations with internal (e.g., shyness, depression, anxiety) and external factors (e.g., parental neglect, peer exclusion) were examined. Cross-lagged network analysis further assessed interval-specific variation in predictive associations. Two trajectories emerged: a low-decreasing group (intercept = 1.845, slope = −0.120) and a high-increasing group (intercept = 2.110, slope = 0.348). Early adolescents in the high-increasing group experienced more adverse environments and reported higher levels of risk factors. PSU was primarily predicted by external factors in early intervals, whereas both personal and environmental factors became influential in later intervals. These findings highlight the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of PSU and support early, targeted family-focused interventions.
Publication date: Mon, 11 May 2026 03:10:30 -0700 Access the article >>The shape of time: How temporal landmarks influence shape preference
This research investigates how temporal landmarks (such as the beginning or end of a period) influence individuals' preferences for shapes (angular vs. circular). In contrast to prior research that explored shape preferences without specific time reference points (e.g., nostalgia), we examine how temporal cues influence shape preference through explicit time reference points. We conducted three experiments manipulating temporal landmark (start vs. end) across three scenarios: the same time on different days, different times on the same day and the same time on the same day. These experiments also assessed individuals' preferences for angular versus circular shapes in both two- and three-dimensional formats. The results show that individuals at a start temporal landmark prefer angular shapes, whereas those at an end temporal landmark prefer circular shapes, which is mediated by ego depletion. We further found that temporal orientation (present vs. future) moderates the influences of temporal landmarks on individuals' shape preferences. While individuals with present temporal orientation are consistent with the main effect, individuals with future temporal orientation have an opposite behaviour (individuals at a start temporal landmark prefer circular shapes, whereas those at an end temporal landmark prefer angular shapes).
Publication date: Sun, 10 May 2026 23:26:45 -0700 Access the article >>Mindful understanding of the interconnected world: The synergistic effects of mindfulness and interconnectedness in driving collective action and autonomous motivation
The present study examined the roles of interconnectedness and mindfulness in collective action participation and the motivations underlying the participation. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, 377 participants completed measures of mindfulness, interconnectedness, collective action intention and participation at baseline, with 308 and 279 participants completing follow-up assessments 1 and 2 months later, respectively. Results showed that after accounting for baseline mindfulness, baseline interconnectedness has an indirect effect on collective action participation at 2-month follow-up through collective action intention at 1-month follow-up. Mindfulness showed no significant interaction effect with interconnectedness in predicting collective action intention or participation. In Study 2, 308 participants completed measures of mindfulness, interconnectedness, autonomous motivations and collective action at baseline, with 268 participants completing the 2-month follow-up assessment. Results showed that the effect of baseline interconnectedness on subsequent levels of autonomous motivations was contingent on baseline mindfulness, with mindfulness amplifying the beneficial effects of interconnectedness on autonomous motivations at 2-month follow-up. In addition, identified motivation was significantly associated with collective action at 2-month follow-up. These findings suggest that interconnectedness may serve as the primary intentional driver of collective action, whereas mindfulness may help translate interconnectedness into more autonomous motivation for participation.
Publication date: Fri, 08 May 2026 06:48:06 -0700 Access the article >>Shame as a mediator of the association of childhood emotional abuse with aversive cognitive perseveration in adults
Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) has been linked to response-focused emotion regulation in adulthood. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. This pre-registered study examined whether shame mediates the association between CEA history and aversive cognitive perseveration (ACP), including brooding rumination, experiential avoidance and emotional non-acceptance, in adulthood. Ninety-three undergraduates (66.6% female; age: 21.62 [7.63]) completed self-report measures of maltreatment history, trait shame and trait ACP and underwent a piloted shame induction task using a within-subject design. The assessment involved baseline and post-induction reactive-state shame and negative affect, subsequent use of reactive-state ACP and engagement strategies, followed by childhood maltreatment and trait measures. Two sets of state and trait mediation models were tested using Bayesian estimation, adjusting for reactive-state negative affect, reactive-state engagement strategies and the sum of physical abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect histories. The models primarily supported the association of shame with ACP across state and trait models. CEA history was associated with reactive-state and trait ACP through the indirect effect of trait (but not reactive-state) shame. A post-hoc moderation analysis suggested reduced post-induction shame and ACP use for moderate-to-severe CEA history, which was tentatively attributed to the involvement of aberrant stress reactivity associated with higher CEA history.
Publication date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:00:15 -0700 Access the article >>Correction to ‘Explainability increases trust resilience in intelligent agents’
British Journal of Psychology, EarlyView.
Publication date: Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:50:15 -0700 Access the article >>A meta‐analysis of perceived infectability, germ aversion, disgust and outgroup perceptions: Evaluating research on the behavioural immune system
Scholarship on the behavioural immune system suggests that people who perceive themselves as more susceptible to illnesses are more sensitive to disgust, providing an evolutionary advantage to avoid pathogenic stimuli. This sensitivity causes those with greater perceived susceptibility to be biased against outgroup members and avoid those with dissimilar immunological histories. However, the lack of a quantitative review forces researchers to derive arguments from specific empirical observations, rather than holistically drawing from averaged effects across studies. Researchers may over-rely on studies that produced atypical results, causing biases in research on perceived infectability, germ aversion, disgust and outgroup perceptions. To resolve this tension in the literature, we perform a meta-analysis of 74 sources. Our meta-analytic results demonstrate that perceived infectability produces small relations with disgust and non-significant relations with outgroup perceptions, whereas a construct commonly conflated with perceived infectability, germ aversion, produces larger relations with these two outcomes. A meta-analytic structural equation model demonstrates that the indirect effect of perceived infectability on outgroup perceptions via the mediator of disgust is not statistically significant. These findings indicate that, while perceived infectability relates to disgust, the construct does not relate to perceptions of outgroup members, counter to scholarship on the behavioural immune system.
Publication date: Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:16:06 -0700 Access the article >>From barriers to benefits: A personalized sleep intervention enhances sleep duration and emotional health in chronic short sleepers
This pilot study evaluated a personalized sleep intervention incorporating motivational interviewing techniques to address sleep barriers, along with tailored sleep hygiene and extension for chronic short sleepers. Eleven university students completed a 14-day sequential intervention (baseline, sleep hygiene and a combined phase adding 90-min extension), assessed via actigraphy, daily diaries, ecological momentary assessments and qualitative interviews. The intervention was highly feasible. Total sleep time increased from 5.01 h (baseline) to 5.62 h (sleep hygiene) and 6.67 h (combined phase), alongside reduced bedtime procrastination and improved sleep hygiene practices. Multilevel modelling suggested that sleep hygiene increased time in bed (+0.72 h) and morning vitality, while sleep extension further extended time in bed (+1.49 h) and total sleep time (+0.55 h). Emotional benefits were linked to within-person increases in sleep duration. Qualitative findings highlighted heterogeneous barriers and the importance of context-based personalization. These preliminary results support the potential of personalized sleep interventions to improve sleep and emotional health in chronic short sleepers, warranting further controlled trials.
Publication date: Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:16:17 -0700 Access the article >>Discrimination in autism as measured by minimal group and sheer difference experiments
Autistic individuals often show fewer social biases than neurotypical people. Whether they show fewer discriminatory tendencies is however unclear. The present study examined discriminatory tendencies in autistic versus neurotypical individuals in the minimal group paradigm and the novel ‘sheer difference’ paradigm. Seventy-five autistic and neurotypical participants were recruited for each group, totalling 150 participants. In the ‘sheer difference’ paradigm, participants received a coin toss outcome in each trial, after which they were tasked to assign points to a single other participant who had received the same versus a different coin flip outcome. In the minimal group paradigm, participants were assigned to a group based on coin flips, and then, they assigned points to members of their own group versus the other group. The ‘sheer difference’ paradigm contributes to the study's aims by testing in autism whether discrimination can also follow from individual rather than group-based difference versus sameness. We found that discriminatory tendencies can come about on both individual and group levels. We did not find clear differences between autistic and neurotypical populations, with implications for the way in which we conceptualize discrimination and understand autism.
Publication date: Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:29:16 -0700 Access the article >>Habitus of doubt? The role of social class narcissism in shaping psychological help conspiracy beliefs
Collective narcissism is known to fuel anti-scientific attitudes. However, its role in shaping conspiracy beliefs portraying those who use psychology to help others as manipulative or controlling remains largely unexplored. We argue that social class narcissism (i.e., exaggerated belief in the superiority of one's social group, along with sensitivity to criticism and hostility towards other groups) would foster psychological help conspiracy beliefs. Across three cross-sectional studies (N = 1863) among Polish and American participants, social class narcissism correlated with stronger psychological help conspiracy beliefs. In an experimental Study 2 (N = 1371), primed social class narcissism increased such beliefs. The last two studies further showed that social class narcissism was linked to negative attitudes towards psychological help via higher psychological help conspiracy beliefs (Studies 3–4) and lower mental health literacy (Study 4). Our findings highlight the importance of incorporating social identities into interventions targeting anti-scientific attitudes in psychology.
Publication date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:53:19 -0700 Access the article >>Relations among daily symptoms of depression
Research has often treated depression as a unitary construct, relying on severity scores or diagnostic thresholds; however, recent studies emphasize that depression is a heterogeneous disorder characterized by dynamic symptom interactions. We aimed to identify unique relations among depressive symptoms when examined longitudinally. We used a 28-day daily diary design in young adults (N = 363). Three symptom networks, estimated from Bayesian structural equation modelling, identified key symptoms that (1) predicted other symptoms within individuals over time (within-subject temporal), (2) co-occurred within the same day (within-subject contemporaneous) and (3) clustered across individuals (between-subject). Results revealed that (1) at the within-subject level, higher levels of sleep disturbance, sad mood, and concentration difficulties predicted higher levels of multiple symptoms the following day, (2) at the within-subject level, sad mood, anhedonia, and fatigue tended to co-occur with many other symptoms and (3) at the between-subject level, individuals with higher levels of anhedonia, anxiety and concentration difficulties tended to experience a broader range of depressive symptoms. These findings underscore the complexity of depressive symptom interactions and highlight potential ways in which depression may manifest. Future research should explore the identified relations to clarify causal relations among symptoms as well as trait-level vulnerability to symptoms.
Publication date: Fri, 10 Apr 2026 03:50:28 -0700 Access the article >>The developmental trajectories of working memory updating from early childhood to adolescence: A meta‐analysis
Working memory updating is a crucial cognitive function for learning and academic achievement that develops significantly throughout childhood and adolescence. Despite the varieties of existing tasks to measure children's working memory updating, its overall developmental trajectory and task-specific developmental patterns remain inadequately understood. This meta-analysis examined 99 studies (N = 35,858 participants) on working memory updating performance in individuals aged 3 to 17 years, using a range of updating paradigms. Results revealed three key findings. Firstly, a significant positive developmental trend with the largest improvements was observed in early to middle childhood (ages 3–8) (d = 2.29). Secondly, meta-regression analyses revealed that while both linear and quadratic models adequately described the developmental trajectory, the quadratic model provides superior fit, indicating steeper improvements in early childhood that gradually level off in adolescence. Thirdly, task-specific analyses demonstrated distinct developmental patterns: backward recall tasks exhibited the strongest age-related improvement (β = .21), whereas n-back and selective updating tasks showed relatively flat trajectories. Together these findings suggest that working memory updating follows a curvilinear developmental progression with substantial task-specific variations. This comprehensive analysis provides valuable insights for understanding the development of working memory updating and practical implications for age-appropriate cognitive function measures.
Publication date: Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:52:12 -0700 Access the article >>Serial dependence in time perception requires consistent motor responses, not shared memory alone
Serial dependence—the bias from recent experience on present response—has been attributed to shared memory representations, yet previous studies yielded contradictory findings about whether consistent motor responses are required. To address this debate in time perception, we tested whether serial dependence emerges when tasks share identical stimulus features but differ only in response modes. We interleaved temporal reproduction and bisection tasks using a post-cue design that held duration encoding constant while varying motor output across trials. Grounded in binding and retrieval in action control (BRAC) theory, we hypothesized that response-feature binding retrieval drives serial dependence. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), we dissociated perceptual (stimulus-driven) and decisional (response-driven) components. With the same task, we replicated repulsive perceptual serial dependence and attractive decisional carryover. Critically, both effects vanished across tasks despite identical stimulus processing—demonstrating that response-mode consistency, not shared memory alone, drives sequential biases in temporal judgements. Our SEM approach uncovered repulsive perceptual influences that standard regression missed, highlighting its power to isolate overlapping effects. These findings reveal that response-specific reactivation of event files underpins serial dependence in temporal decision-making.
Publication date: Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:51:08 -0700 Access the article >>Attention and vigilance advantages related to formal musical training across childhood, adolescence and young adulthood
Attention and vigilance are fundamental cognitive abilities that develop throughout childhood and adolescence and have been associated with cognitively demanding activities such as formal musical training. This cross-sectional study examined whether individuals engaged in long-term musical training show superior attention and vigilance compared with matched controls without such training. Participants (N = 268; ages 8–34 years) were drawn from two samples of children, adolescents and adults, with musicians and nonmusicians matched on a wide array of demographic and lifestyle variables using multivariate propensity-score matching. Attentional performance was assessed using the ANTI-Vea, a validated computerized task that measures two components of vigilance – executive and arousal vigilance. Moreover, we applied advanced behavioural modelling given their sensitivity to the complex developmental trajectories in vigilance. For many indices, musically trained participants outperformed nonmusicians at all ages, with overall faster responses, fewer attentional lapses, detecting more vigilance targets and lower variability in arousal vigilance trials. Other group differences became more pronounced with age, indicating a possible dosage effect. Crucially, these findings remained after extensive control for confounders. Although the advantages associated with musical training were modest and the correlational study design, they are consistent with the hypothesis that music practice may foster domain-general cognitive skills.
Publication date: Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Access the article >>The effects of implicit emotion regulation on impulsive choice
Impulsive choice is closely associated with heightened engagement in risk-related behaviours, and emotion regulation may play a critical role in how immediate emotions influence choice outcomes, with different strategies producing distinct effects. Grounded in the Affective Information Theory and the Appraisal-Tendency Framework, we investigated the effects of two widely adopted implicit emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, on impulsive choice across specific emotional states through two experiments. Results revealed that individuals exhibited a stronger preference for larger-later (LL) rewards under happiness compared to anger, while no significant difference emerged in preference for delayed options between anger and fear conditions. Both implicit cognitive reappraisal and implicit expressive suppression strategies effectively reduced the selection proportion of smaller-sooner (SS) rewards with comparable efficacy. Furthermore, both strategies demonstrated significant regulatory effects on anger, happiness and fear, with implicit expressive suppression potentially exhibiting superior applicability for fear modulation. These findings enrich theories of emotion regulation and refine the theoretical framework linking emotional states to choice behaviour, offering novel directions for interventions aimed at reducing impulsive choice.
Publication date: Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:44:48 -0700 Access the article >>No evidence that same‐language subtitles improve children's reading fluency
High-profile campaigns globally have argued that same-language television subtitles may help children improve their reading. In this intervention study, we tested the causal hypothesis that exposure to subtitles improves children's reading fluency. We tested 127 British children in Years 2 and 3 before and after a 6-week home-based intervention, in which children were randomly assigned to an experimental group that watched television with English subtitles or a control group that watched television without subtitles. Children's reading fluency was assessed via two standard tests of reading fluency and their engagement with subtitles while watching videos, measured with eye-tracking. Results showed that both groups improved their reading fluency over 6 weeks. Crucially, there was no evidence that subtitle exposure (of around 66 hr on average) drove an improvement in reading fluency, or that greater subtitle exposure provided any additional benefit. We conclude that same-language subtitles are unlikely to improve children's reading fluency. However, the primary school reading curriculum has a positive impact on reading fluency that can be observed over a relatively short time-scale.
Publication date: Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:00:48 -0700 Access the article >>The effectiveness of implementation intentions in children: A systematic review and meta‐analysis
Self-regulation abilities in childhood are important for long-term academic achievement and healthy development. As self-regulatory abilities are still developing, ‘simple’ interventions are needed to foster self-regulation. Implementation intentions are simple plans that could promote goal achievement in children. However, little is known about their overall effectiveness and moderating factors in children. This registered report presents a systematic review of the literature and a meta-analysis of the effects of implementation intentions on children's goal achievement. The meta-analysis included a total of 52 effect sizes from 42 studies (N = 12,957, M age = 10.67 years), published between 1975 and 2025. Overall, we found a small-to-medium effect of implementation intentions in children (Hedge's g = 0.31, 95% CI [0.21; 0.41]). Study heterogeneity was high (Q(51) = 146.47, p < .001, I 2 = 65.2%). The effects were stronger in studies with younger children and (in some analyses) children with ADHD, suggesting that implementation intentions are particularly effective when self-regulation abilities are limited. Future research should increase conceptual and methodological rigour. In addition, research and practice should aim to support children in forming strong mental representations of plans, generating high-quality plans themselves and using implementation intentions as a meta-strategy.
Publication date: Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:40:28 -0800 Access the article >>Suppressing food‐related memories via think/no‐think: Effective retrieval inhibition across weight status
Inhibitory control plays a critical role in regulating eating behaviour. While previous research focused primarily on motor inhibition (e.g. go/no-go tasks), the role of memory suppression remains underexplored. This study employed a food-specific think/no-think (TNT) paradigm to investigate two questions: (1) whether individuals can intentionally suppress food-related memories, and whether suppression performance is associated with body mass index (BMI); and (2) whether memory suppression reduces subjective food valuation. Sixty-one young female participants completed a TNT task and subsequently rated food items for liking and wanting. Results showed that recall accuracy for suppressed (No-think) items was significantly lower than for both retrieved (Think) and Baseline items, indicating suppression-induced forgetting. However, food-related memory suppression performance was not associated with BMI. Moreover, memory suppression did not significantly alter subjective ratings of liking or wanting. These findings suggest that food-related memories can be deliberately suppressed regardless of BMI, but such suppression may not influence food valuation directly. Further studies are needed to determine whether such memory suppression has any downstream impact on eating behaviour and to identify mechanisms beyond mere changes in valuation.
Publication date: Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:23:53 -0800 Access the article >>Too good to be true: Synthetic AI faces are more average than real faces and super‐recognizers know it
The AI revolution has produced synthetic faces that often appear more human than photos of real people. We tested whether individual differences in human face recognition ability explain variation in discriminating AI from real faces. Super-recognizers – people with exceptional ability to recognize human faces (N = 36) – outperformed a typical sample by 15% and by 7% compared to a group of higher performing, motivated control participants (Cohen's d = 0.55; N = 89). Individual difference analysis revealed that this pattern reflected a positive association between human face recognition and AI face discrimination abilities. AI discrimination ability was also associated with individuals' sensitivity to the ‘hyper-average’ appearance of AI faces. Deep neural networks optimized for face identity processing confirmed a more central distribution of AI faces in face-space. Moreover, centrality was associated with a higher probability of super-recognizers judging the faces as AI, but this pattern was not observed for controls. Super-recognizers' correct interpretation of hyper-averageness as a cue to artificiality constitutes the first mechanistic link between evolved expertise in face processing and AI face detection and addresses a common misconception regarding the structure of human face space.
Publication date: Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800 Access the article >>Expressive suppression strengthens coherence between arousal intensity and arousal interpretation
Interpretations of physiological arousal may be a key pathway connecting stress-related physiological arousal intensity to physiological and affective consequences of stress. Expressive suppression is linked to increased perceptions of stressors as threatening, which may exacerbate associations between physiological arousal intensity and interpretations of physiological arousal as debilitative. However, the effect of expressive suppression on the association between perceptions of physiological arousal intensity and interpretation remains untested. A sample of 224 undergraduate students completed two psychological acute stress tasks and rated the intensity of their perceived physiological arousal and whether they believed this physiological arousal to be facilitative or debilitative. Before the second stress task, half of the participants were randomly assigned to be instructed to engage in expressive suppression during the task; the remaining participants were instructed to not suppress their emotional expressions. Experimental group assignment moderated associations between physiological arousal intensity and interpretation. In the suppression group, within-person increases in physiological arousal intensity were more strongly associated with more debilitative physiological interpretations. The present study suggests that engaging in expressive suppression during stress causes increases in the intensity of perceived physiological arousal to be interpreted as more debilitating, with implications for stress-related anxiety.
Publication date: Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:20:13 -0800 Access the article >>Exploring the associations of generalized trust, climate change conspiracy beliefs and freecycling: Empirical evidence from 34 cultures
This study examined the relationships between generalized trust, climate change conspiracy beliefs and freecycling – a community-based free-item sharing pro-environmental behaviour. It also explored the role of societal factors in relation to participation in freecycling, as well as how they are associated with these relationships. Using a panel method, we conducted an online survey with 16,773 participants, stratified by age, gender and region across 34 countries/societies. Key findings indicate that generalized trust and, unexpectedly, climate change conspiracy beliefs are positively associated with freecycling participation. Our exploratory results show that freecycling is more prevalent in developing societies, characterized by stronger beliefs in reward for application and religiosity, a lesser emphasis on uncertainty avoidance and a preference for short-term over long-term orientation. Cross-level moderation analysis indicates that generalized trust is more strongly linked to freecycling in developing societies; its association with freecycle giving is also stronger in cultures with lower reward for application. Climate change conspiracy beliefs are more strongly linked to freecycling in societies with lower uncertainty avoidance. By addressing gaps in the existing literature, particularly the need for cross-cultural comparisons, our research offers valuable insights into the construct of freecycling. As we navigate the complexities of hyperconsumerism and climate change conspiracy beliefs, scepticism towards mainstream narratives may sometimes be associated with individuals seeking alternative, grassroots solutions. Promoting freecycling could encourage sustainability, strengthening community connections and empowering individuals to take direct action in response to their doubts, potentially contributing to a more resilient and environmentally aware society.
Publication date: Fri, 23 Jan 2026 22:04:34 -0800 Access the article >>Borderline personality mediates the link between attachment insecurities and subjective working memory deficits: The role of pre‐emptive and post‐emptive strategies
Individuals with attachment insecurities, particularly attachment anxiety, often report subjective working memory deficits (SWMD). However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. In this project, we propose that borderline personality disorder (BPD) features help explain this link. We tested this model across three studies, including one preregistered study, conducted with Russian, Turkish, and Polish samples. In Study 1, both attachment anxiety and avoidance predicted SWMD, with the former effect being stronger than the latter. The indirect effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance on SWMD via BPD were significant, with the former effect being stronger as the latter. Study 2 introduced gaze anxiety as an additional mediator, revealing that attachment avoidance had stronger indirect effects via gaze anxiety, a potential pre-emptive strategy, while attachment anxiety's effect was stronger via BPD, a potential post-emptive pathway. In preregistered Study 3, reflective functioning mediated the associations between attachment insecurities and SWMD, contrary to our moderation hypothesis. Importantly, relationships between attachment anxiety and SWMD remained robust after controlling for personality traits and personality disorders. Results are consistent with the role of different regulatory strategies in explaining how attachment insecurities contribute to subjective cognitive difficulties.
Publication date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 03:09:11 -0800 Access the article >>Testing the impact of fallacies and contrarian claims in climate change misinformation
Climate misinformation reduces public acceptance of climate change and undermines support for mitigation policies. This study explored the impact of different types of climate misinformation, examining through content-based and logic-based frameworks. The content-based framework was based on a taxonomy of contrarian claims consisting of five categories—it's not real, it's not us, it's not bad, climate solutions won't work and scientists are not reliable. The logic-based framework examined six rhetorical techniques used in science denial arguments—misrepresentation, false equivalence, oversimplification, red herring, cherry picking and slothful induction. We experimentally tested 30 misinformation examples, crossing five content categories with six fallacies. Participants rated the perceived veracity of misinformation as well as the likelihood of interacting with it. We found no main effect of fallacy on perceived veracity or likelihood to interact but did find a main effect of content category, with the fourth category (climate solutions won't work) perceived as most veracious. We also found that content categories interacted with political ideology, replicating past research into the polarizing effect of climate misinformation. Specifically, the most polarizing categories of misinformation were those targeting climate solutions or attacking climate scientists. Our results highlight the need to prioritize combatting misinformation that targets solutions and scientists.
Publication date: Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:22:14 -0800 Access the article >>Denialist vs. warmist climate change conspiracy beliefs: Ideological roots, psychological correlates and environmental implications
In the current research, we use network analysis to examine the structure, ideological foundations and correlates of climate change conspiracy theories, distinguishing between denialist and warmist beliefs. Denialist beliefs, typically endorsed on the political right, claim that climate change is exaggerated, whereas warmist beliefs, more prevalent on the left, allege the suppression of climate science and the downplaying of climate change. Across four studies, these beliefs showed a weak and unstable positive correlation but were reliably connected via indirect associations with general conspiracy beliefs and negatively through opposing relationships with denial of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and conservatism. General conspiracy beliefs and denial of ACC were not directly connected but were instead related indirectly through climate-specific conspiracy beliefs: positively via denialist and negatively via warmist. We found no evidence across studies for an association between climate change conspiracy beliefs and indices of non-rational thinking. Finally, denialist beliefs were negatively associated with pro-environmental intentions, environmental concern, policy support and collective guilt, whereas warmist beliefs were positively related to these outcomes, except for environmental concern, where no significant relationship emerged. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing ideological variants of climate change conspiracy beliefs to contextualize their psychological significance and potential impacts.
Publication date: Mon, 13 Oct 2025 22:08:59 -0700 Access the article >>Sampling and processing of climate change information and disinformation across three diverse countries
In the media, accurate climate information and climate disinformation often coexist and present competing narratives about climate change. Whereas previous research documented detrimental effects of disinformation on climate beliefs, little is known about how people seek climate-related content and how this varies between cross-cultural contexts. In a preregistered experiment, we studied how individuals sequentially sample and process Pro- and Anti-climate statements across 15 rounds. Participants from the United States, China, and Germany (N total = 2226) freely sampled real-world climate-related statements, retrieved from Twitter and validated in previous studies. Overall, reading both Pro- and Anti-climate statements influenced climate concern in all countries. Participants preferred statements that were better aligned with their initial climate beliefs, and this confirmatory tendency intensified the more information had been sampled. Moreover, participants' confirmatory evaluation (i.e., accepting aligned and rejecting opposing messages) increased over time. While climate concern was mostly stable, in the United States, climate concern levels and box choices mutually reinforced each other, leading to greater polarization within the sample over the course of the experiment. The paradigm offers new perspectives on how people process and navigate conflicting narratives about climate change.
Publication date: Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:45:09 -0700 Access the article >>Not that different after all: Pro‐environmental social norms predict pro‐environmental behaviour (also) among those believing in conspiracy theories
Social norms are powerful predictors of pro-environmental behaviour. At the same time, conspiracy beliefs are prevalent that can reduce individuals' efforts to act pro-environmentally and might impede the influence of social norms. Across three cross-sectional studies in three countries (Germany, UK, US; total N = 1037), we investigated the interplay between different types of social norm perceptions and conspiracy beliefs in predicting everyday pro-environmental behaviour. Against two out of three hypotheses, we found no evidence that conspiracy beliefs moderated the relationship between perceived social norms and self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. Rather, perceiving higher pro-environmental social (especially subjective and injunctive) norms was associated with more frequent pro-environmental behaviour – also among those with stronger conspiracy beliefs. Conspiracy beliefs (especially those related to climate change) were, in turn, related to less pro-environmental behaviour. These findings shed light on the social factors that might influence individuals believing in conspiracy theories and give reason for optimism regarding the possibility to overcome their climate inaction via normative influence.
Publication date: Mon, 15 Sep 2025 23:05:38 -0700 Access the article >>Advice‐taking in carbon footprint assessments: How psychological and cultural factors shape reliance on experts' advice
In this pre-registered experiment conducted in the Netherlands and Türkiye (N total = 550), we investigated how the source of advice (peer vs. expert) influences people's decision-making when assessing the carbon footprint of a flight between two cities. We also examined whether this effect was influenced by their conspiracy mentality, collective narcissism, epistemic individualism, and climate change scepticism. Our findings suggest that people overall rely more on experts' advice than peers', especially in the Netherlands compared with Türkiye. Moreover, individuals high in conspiracy beliefs, epistemic individualism, and collective narcissism reduced the weight advantage typically given to expert advice over peer advice. Only a specific form of climate change scepticism (i.e., trend scepticism) showed similar effects. Overall, our results indicate that individuals who value their own opinion and harbour distrust towards experts or science tend to discount expert advice.
Publication date: Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:40:43 -0700 Access the article >>Fighting fire with fire: Prebunking with the use of a plausible meta‐conspiracy framing
Prebunking can be used to pre-emptively refute conspiracy narratives. We developed a new approach to prebunking – fighting fire with fire – which introduces a plausible ‘meta-conspiracy’ suggesting that conspiracy theories are deliberately spread as part of a wider conspiracy. In two preregistered intervention studies, prebunking specific COVID-19 vaccine (Study 1, N = 720) and climate change (Study 2, N = 1077) conspiracy theories (e.g. that climate change is a hoax), with or without this meta-conspiracy framing, did not reduce beliefs in these specific conspiracy theories. However, some notable findings emerged. First, both fighting fire with fire and standard prebunking (Study 2) increased belief in plausible meta-conspiracies that questioned the original specific conspiracy theories. Second, across both studies, specific conspiracy beliefs negatively predicted behavioural intentions, while beliefs in meta-conspiracies positively predicted them. Third, specific conspiracy beliefs were negatively related to belief in plausible meta-conspiracies in both intervention studies (cf: Pilot Study). While this approach did not reduce specific conspiracy beliefs, it increased beliefs that were negatively associated with them and which were positively linked to behavioural intentions. We discuss these null effects and their implications for effective prebunking among conspiracy believers.
Publication date: Mon, 08 Sep 2025 02:36:52 -0700 Access the article >>The gateway (mis)belief model: How misinformation impacts perceptions of scientific consensus and attitudes towards climate change
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity, necessitating immediate action to combat its consequences. Although there is a nearly unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused, misinformation doubting its causes continues to circulate widely. In this study, we test the Gateway (mis)Belief Model (GmBM) which assumes that misinformation affects perceived scientific consensus negatively, which then cascades down to lower support for public action to mitigate climate change via changes in key beliefs about the issue. We present a reanalysis of data from two online studies in which U.S. participants (N 1 = 207, N 2 = 755) were exposed to misinformation using a pre-post mixed design manipulating assessments of the scientific consensus on climate change. Results showed that misinformation indeed leads to lower estimations of scientific consensus, which cascade down to lower support for public action via corresponding beliefs. However, the pattern of significance of direct effects did not exactly replicate those in the original GBM, though misinformation still had negative direct (Experiments 1–2) and indirect effects (Experiment 2) on several downstream climate outcomes. These findings are further affirmed by an internal meta-analysis. Overall, this study highlights the negative impact of misinformation on climate attitudes and policy support.
Publication date: Mon, 01 Sep 2025 22:09:52 -0700 Access the article >>Blueprint of a smokescreen: Introducing the validated climate disinformation corpus for behavioural research on combating climate disinformation
Behavioural science research has the potential to develop evidence-based strategies to fight disinformation about climate science and climate mitigation action; however, this research has yet to be conducted systematically with validated sets of climate disinformation stimuli. Here, we present the Climate Disinformation Corpus, a collection of climate disinformation statements designed to systematize experimental research testing future disinformation interventions. Using computational social science techniques, we gathered climate disinformation stimuli from the social media platform Twitter/X. We identified 78 statements containing disinformation about the existence, the causes, the consequences of climate change, the reliability and objectivity of climate scientists, and arguing for the delay of climate policies. The Climate Disinformation Corpus showed good heterogeneity across 15 validation measures (e.g., perceived persuasiveness, perceived trustworthiness, and sharing intentions) in a validation study involving a representative sample of N = 503 British participants. Furthermore, the climate disinformation statements were correlated with four individual differences measures related to belief in climate science and support for climate actions, congruently with theoretical expectations. We conclude with practical suggestions on implementing the Climate Disinformation Corpus in disinformation research according to different research questions.
Publication date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 21:49:15 -0700 Access the article >>