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(https://www.psypost.org/adolescents-exposed-to-parental-conflict-more-likely-to-have-sleep-problems-as-emerging-adults/) Adolescents exposed to greater parental conflict more likely to have sleep problems as emerging adults
Sep 19th 2024, 10:00

An eight-year study following a group of adolescents into emerging adulthood found that individuals exposed to more conflict between their parents during adolescence tended to have more sleep problems as emerging adults. These individuals generally had lower sleep efficiency and experienced a higher number of long wake episodes. The study was published in (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2024.06.003) Sleep Health.
Many children witness conflicts between their parents. Studies indicate that over 40% of adolescents are exposed to verbal conflicts between their parents each year, while 22% witness physical conflict. Witnessing conflict, particularly violent conflict, is stressful for children and adolescents and can lead to sleep problems.
Research shows that adolescents from high-conflict homes often experience insufficient and poor-quality sleep. However, most studies only report simultaneous associations and do not follow children to determine how long these changes in sleep patterns last. Adolescence and emerging adulthood are periods of rapid transformation, and sleep problems observed in adolescence often persist into emerging adulthood.
Study author Ryan J. Kelly and his colleagues sought to examine the relationship between witnessing conflict between parents during adolescence (ages 16-18) and sleep quality in emerging adulthood (age 23). They hypothesized that greater exposure to parental conflict during adolescence would predict more sleep-related problems in emerging adulthood.
Study participants were families involved in the Family Stress and Youth Development study, an ongoing longitudinal study examining family functioning from childhood to emerging adulthood. Data used in this analysis were collected between 2012 and 2020, when participants were between 16 and 23 years old. The initial group consisted of 245 adolescents, but as participants gradually left the study over time, 189 remained by the time they reached 23 years of age.
At ages 16-18, participants reported on conflicts between their parents using the Children’s Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale. At various points during the study, participants wore actigraphs while they slept. Actigraphs are devices, usually worn on the wrist, that record body movements, allowing researchers to infer when a person is sleeping and how well.
In this study, the authors focused on three key sleep measures: time spent sleeping, sleep efficiency (the percentage of time participants spent sleeping between falling asleep and waking), and long wake episodes (the number of times participants woke and stayed awake for longer than five minutes during sleep).
Results showed that individuals who slept better at ages 16, 17, and 18 also tended to sleep better at age 23. However, participants who experienced more conflict between their parents at ages 16-18 tended to have lower sleep efficiency and a higher number of long wake episodes at age 23. The total time spent sleeping was not associated with the amount of parental conflict participants had witnessed.
“Results build on the literature to consider sleep in the family context and are among the first to illustrate that exposure to parental interpartner conflict [conflict between parents] in adolescence predicts sleep problems in emerging adulthood. Continued investigations into the antecedents of sleep problems in emerging adulthood may benefit from considering past exposure to family risk,” the study authors concluded.
While the study sheds light on the links between witnessing parental conflict and sleep quality, it also has limitations. Notably, the participants in this study rarely experienced clinical levels of sleep problems. If they did, the issues were mild. It remains unclear whether these findings can be generalized to individuals with clinical levels of sleep problems. Additionally, it is unknown how often participants continued to witness parental conflict at age 23. If this occurred frequently, it is possible that current parental conflicts, rather than past ones, were contributing to sleep problems.
The paper, “(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2024.06.003) Exposure to parental interpartner conflict in adolescence predicts sleep problems in emerging adulthood,” was authored by Ryan J. Kelly, Morgan J. Thompson, and Mona El-Sheikh.

(https://www.psypost.org/low-cognitive-ability-intensifies-the-link-between-social-media-use-and-anti-immigrant-attitudes/) Low cognitive ability intensifies the link between social media use and anti-immigrant attitudes
Sep 19th 2024, 08:00

New research has found that individuals who frequently use social media and perceive immigrants as threats are more likely to harbor negative emotions toward them. The study, published in (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1280366) Frontiers in Psychology, indicates that these effects are stronger among those with lower cognitive abilities. In contrast, individuals with higher cognitive abilities were less prone to these negative attitudes, suggesting that cognitive ability may offer some protection against emotionally charged narratives on social media.
A significant motivation behind the study was to explore how the public’s use of social media contributes to emotional and cognitive responses toward immigrants. Prior studies have shown that social media can amplify both negative and positive sentiments, but the exact pathways through which this happens—especially concerning cognitive ability—have remained unclear. The researchers also wanted to explore the role of perceived threats, such as economic or cultural displacement, which have long been shown to foster prejudice and xenophobia.
To examine how immigrants are discussed in public discourse on social media, the researchers conducted a computational text analysis of social media posts from Singapore, focusing on online communities where people freely express their thoughts and emotions. They collected posts and comments from several popular platforms, including Facebook and Reddit, over a period of six months.
This dataset included over 700,000 posts and comments, from which they filtered discussions specifically mentioning immigrants. After processing, they ended up with 86,462 posts that discussed immigration.
Once the dataset was refined, the researchers performed an emotion analysis to assess the emotional tone of the posts. They used specialized software to detect the presence of positive and negative emotions in the text, ensuring the inclusion of Singapore-specific slang and context. Additionally, they employed a topic modeling technique to identify the main themes in these discussions. Topic modeling is a method that groups related words together to understand the most frequent concerns or topics being discussed about immigrants.
The researchers found that social media discussions about immigrants were predominantly negative. Posts that mentioned immigrants contained more negative emotions—such as fear, anger, or disgust—compared to general social media posts. In terms of themes, much of the discourse revolved around perceived economic and cultural threats posed by immigrants, with frequent mentions of job competition and cultural differences. These findings suggested that social media platforms serve as spaces where negative emotions and concerns about immigration are actively expressed and shared.
To follow up on this, the researchers then conducted a national survey to investigate how informational use of social media—such as reading and sharing news—relates to anti-immigrant emotions. The researchers surveyed over 1,036 Singaporean citizens, aiming to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie anti-immigrant attitudes.
The survey asked participants about their frequency of social media use, their perceptions of immigrants as either symbolic or realistic threats, and their negative emotions toward various immigrant groups (Indians, Americans, and Malays). Participants were also tested on their cognitive ability using a standardized vocabulary-based test, which served as a measure of their information processing skills.
In this second study, the researchers explored whether symbolic and realistic threats mediated the relationship between social media use and negative emotions toward immigrants. Symbolic threats involved concerns that immigrants might undermine the cultural identity of Singapore, while realistic threats were associated with fears about job loss and overcrowding. They also examined how cognitive ability moderated these relationships, meaning they looked at how an individual’s cognitive skills affected the strength of the connection between social media use, perceived threats, and anti-immigrant emotions.
The findings of the second study showed that social media use was strongly associated with negative emotions toward immigrants, but this relationship was mediated by perceptions of symbolic and realistic threats. People who frequently used social media were more likely to view immigrants as threats, and this perception, in turn, led to stronger negative feelings like anger or fear.
Importantly, cognitive ability moderated this effect. Individuals with lower cognitive abilities were more susceptible to forming negative emotions based on threat perceptions, while those with higher cognitive abilities were less influenced by social media content in this way. This suggested that cognitive capacity plays a key role in how people interpret social media content and how susceptible they are to forming negative attitudes toward immigrants.
“Our data suggests a negative association between cognitive ability and anti-immigrant affect across all three immigrant groups,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, cognitive ability was found to moderate the mediation effect via threat perceptions for all these groups. Therefore, the role of realistic and symbolic threats in tuning social media use into prejudiced emotions is more significant in individuals with lower and moderate cognitive ability levels than in individuals with high cognitive ability.”
“The study confirms existing research explicating the direct associations and expands on it, showing that cognitive ability might influence how individuals process and evaluate information, especially sociopolitical content, on social media platforms (Pennycook and Rand, 2020). Those with lower cognitive abilities might be more prone to accepting misinformation or being influenced by biased narratives, leading to heightened prejudiced emotions (Ahmed et al., 2021a,b). This aligns with existing research that has explored direct associations between cognitive ability and prejudice, suggesting that cognitive ability can influence both direct prejudice and how users interpret sociopolitical content, culminating in prejudiced emotions.”
While the study provides valuable insights, it is important to recognize its limitations. The study focused mainly on cognitive ability and its moderating effect, but other individual differences, such as personality traits or educational background, could also play a significant role in shaping attitudes toward immigrants. Further research could explore these variables to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how people form opinions about immigrants.
Future studies could also adopt a longitudinal design, tracking changes in attitudes over time to better determine the causal relationships between social media use, perceived threats, cognitive ability, and the development of anti-immigrant emotions. Additionally, more work could be done to analyze specific types of social media content (e.g., news articles, opinion posts, or videos) to understand which formats or platforms are most influential in shaping attitudes.
The study, “(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1280366/full) Social media and anti-immigrant prejudice: a multi-method analysis of the role of social media use, threat perceptions, and cognitive ability,” was authored by Saifuddin Ahmed, Kokil Jaidka, Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen, Mengxuan Cai, Anfan Chen, Claire Stravato Emes, Valerie Yu, and Arul Chib.

(https://www.psypost.org/fascinating-brain-imaging-research-sheds-light-on-a-fundamental-mechanism-of-human-cognition/) Fascinating neuroscience research reveals a key mechanism underlying human cognition
Sep 19th 2024, 06:00

How does the brain adapt to different levels of mental challenge? A new neuroimaging study reveals that when we engage in more complex cognitive tasks, our brain activity becomes not only richer in detail but also more streamlined. The findings suggest that the brain adjusts its patterns of activity to match the demands of the task, allowing for more efficient processing during mentally challenging activities.
The study, published in the (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400082121) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was driven by a desire to understand how the brain manages different cognitive demands. Previous research by the same team had revealed the brain’s remarkable ability to reconstruct missing data from minimal measurements, raising questions about why the brain can generate such detailed and efficient activity patterns with limited input.
“Several years ago, my co-author and graduate student at the time, Lucy Owen, and I came out with (https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/30/10/5333/5851264?login=false) a precursor to this study, where we found something very surprising,” explained study author Jeremy Manning, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College and director of the (https://www.context-lab.com/) Contextual Dynamics Lab.
“At the time, we were working with neurosurgical patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor for seizure activity. A challenge with working with those recordings is that our brains contain roughly a hundred billion neurons, but we can only safely implant around a few hundred wires into someone’s brain. So there is a massive undersampling problem: for every measurement we take, we miss roughly a billion others! We wanted to understand how much of that ‘missing’ data we could reliably and accurately reconstruct using statistical ‘hacks.'”
“We were very surprised to find that just a few hundred measurements from an essentially random sampling of locations throughout someone’s brain could give us enough information to fill in an accurate guess about activity patterns throughout their entire brain, at millimeter-scale resolutions (roughly on par with the best fMRI available today), but at millisecond-scale sampling rates (roughly 1000 times faster than fMRI),” Manning said. “If human language was similarly efficient, I’d be able to tell you the details of every Wikipedia article just by speaking a dozen or so words.”
“In that initial study, we were primarily concerned with the ‘how’ and ‘what’ aspects of our approach: in other words, we reported how we built our model and generated guesses, how we validated the guesses, and the circumstances that affected accuracy, and so on. But it left us with a much deeper question that we weren’t able to answer back then: why is it possible to reconstruct what nearly our entire brain is doing at a given moment, using a comparatively miniscule number of measurements? That led us down a rabbit hole of additional questions about the fundamental properties of brain activity patterns. Our findings are reported in this new study.”
To answer these deeper questions about how the brain adjusts its activity to match cognitive demands, the researchers examined a dataset collected from previous neuroimaging experiments. These experiments involved functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of participants as they listened to different audio recordings.
Some participants listened to a coherent, seven-minute story, while others listened to a scrambled version of the story, in which either the paragraphs or individual words were randomly ordered. A final group underwent a resting state scan with no auditory stimulus, meant to simulate a condition of minimal cognitive engagement.
The goal was to analyze how the brain’s activity changed under these varying levels of cognitive demand. In a high-demand task—following a coherent story—the brain has to actively process and organize information to make sense of the narrative. In contrast, during the scrambled story conditions, the brain’s task is less cognitively challenging because the information is less meaningful. The resting state condition provided a baseline measure of brain activity in the absence of any specific cognitive task.
The authors sought to investigate two properties of brain activity: informativeness and compressibility. The authors hypothesized that these properties might shift depending on the complexity of a task, allowing the brain to strike a balance between flexibility and efficiency.
To assess the informativeness and compressibility of brain activity, the researchers used advanced computational techniques. They measured informativeness by analyzing how much specific information about the task was reflected in participants’ brain activity. Compressibility, on the other hand, was evaluated by examining how efficiently the brain’s activity patterns could be represented using fewer components or data points. A highly compressible brain pattern is one in which fewer pieces of information are needed to reconstruct the full activity.
“In the world of machine learning, the ability to reconstitute a detailed pattern from its parts is called ‘compression,'” Manning told PsyPost. “Highly compressible patterns can be accurately rebuilt from just a tiny sliver, like reconstructing the complete text of a novel from just a single word. Another related property is called ‘informativeness.’ This refers to how ‘expressive’ a sequence of patterns is– akin to the length of a novel.”
The researchers uncovered two key findings. First, brain activity was more informative and compressible when participants engaged in the more demanding task of listening to a coherent story compared to the scrambled story or resting conditions. This suggests that during higher-level cognitive tasks, the brain produces detailed, information-rich activity that is also organized efficiently. In simpler tasks, or during rest, the brain’s activity is less organized and contains less specific information.
Second, the study found that these brain patterns became more informative and compressible over time as participants continued to listen to the coherent story. As the narrative unfolded, the brain seemed to adapt by refining and optimizing its activity patterns. This pattern was less pronounced in the scrambled conditions, where the lack of a coherent structure in the story likely led to less mental engagement and, consequently, less organization in the brain’s activity.
“Going into this study, we would have guessed that ‘compression’ and ‘informativeness’ would have changed in opposite directions,” Manning said. “That would be analogous to either being able to reconstruct short novels from just a few words (perhaps under certain cognitive circumstances — representing high compressibility but low informativeness), or being able to reconstruct longer novels from more words (perhaps under different circumstances — representing low compressibility and high informativeness). Finding that compression and informativeness change in the same direction helped us to understand that these two aspects of how our brains respond can vary independently from each other.”
The researchers also took a closer look at different brain networks to see if certain regions were more affected by task complexity than others. They found that higher-order brain networks, which are typically associated with complex functions like decision-making and memory, showed more pronounced changes in informativeness and compressibility than lower-order networks, which are primarily involved in basic sensory processing. This supports the idea that the brain’s ability to adjust its activity is not uniform across all regions; instead, areas involved in more complex cognitive functions are especially responsive to task demands.
“We have known for a long time that our ‘thoughts’ come from patterns of electrical activity in our brains,” Manning told PsyPost. “What we found is that our brains seem to change the ‘language’ that those patterns are expressed in according to what we are doing. When we are highly engaged or thinking ‘deeply’ about what we are doing, our brains move into a mode where the activity patterns become both highly compressible and highly informative.”
“In other words, our brains start representing what we are doing or thinking about in a very efficient way that is also incredibly robust to data corruption.  That helped us understand why, under the right circumstances, it becomes possible to accurately guess what someone’s entire brain is doing from just a few hundred measurements.”
“When we stop being engaged, or when we think more ‘shallowly’ about what we are doing, our brains switch into a much less efficient mode, where the activity patterns become less structured, less informative, and more idiosyncratic,” Manning continued. “We’re not totally sure why this happens, but we go through some speculations in our paper.”
The research provides valuable insights into the fundamental mechanisms of human cognition. But the study, like all research, has limitations. The study only examined a specific set of tasks and stimuli, which means that the results may not apply to all types of mental activities. Additionally, the researchers used one method of measuring brain activity—fMRI—which provides a detailed view of brain activity but is limited by its relatively slow sampling rate compared to other techniques.
“We looked at data from a little over 100 participants, using one set of experimental conditions, and using one method for measuring brain activity,” Manning noted. “Although it is tempting to generalize to ‘all humans and circumstances,’ the true test of these findings, as with any study, will be in how well they replicate and generalize.”
The researchers suggest that future studies could examine how the brain’s ability to adjust informativeness and compressibility might apply to other cognitive processes, such as decision-making, problem-solving, or creativity. Understanding how these brain properties change in different contexts could offer new insights into the nature of cognition and how the brain adapts to a wide range of mental challenges.
Despite its limitations, the study provides a compelling look at how the brain organizes itself to meet the demands of complex tasks. The findings suggest that the brain’s ability to adapt is not just a matter of activating more areas or working harder, but rather involves fine-tuning its activity patterns to balance flexibility and efficiency.
In the long term, this line of research could help scientists better understand how the brain supports higher-level cognitive functions and what happens when these processes break down, such as in conditions like dementia or traumatic brain injury. By identifying the mechanisms that allow the brain to optimize its activity for different tasks, researchers may eventually develop new interventions or treatments to support cognitive health and recovery.
“We are deeply curious about understanding fundamental questions about how our brains work, and what makes us ‘us.’ This line of work is a tiny part of a much broader literature aimed at uncovering the neural basis of thought,” Manning said. “My website is (https://www.context-lab.com/) www.context-lab.com. It has links to all of my lab’s publications, data, and software, along with some open courses that could be of interest to people who want to learn more about this stuff.”
The study, “(https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2400082121) High-level cognition is supported by information-rich but compressible brain activity patterns,” was authored by Lucy L. W. Owen and Jeremy R. Manning.

(https://www.psypost.org/husbands-of-employed-wives-report-greater-happiness-and-self-esteem/) Husbands of employed wives report greater happiness and self-esteem
Sep 18th 2024, 16:00

A recent study published in the journal (https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12544) Personal Relationships explored the intricate links between self-esteem, happiness, and marital conflict in married couples, with particular attention to how these dynamics might differ based on whether the wife is employed. The findings suggest that marital relationships are shaped by both partners’ psychological well-being, but wives tend to have a greater influence on their husbands’ self-esteem and happiness than vice versa. Interestingly, husbands married to employed wives reported higher psychological well-being compared to those with stay-at-home wives.
Marital relationships are fundamental to the well-being of adults, yet researchers still have much to learn about how psychological factors like self-esteem and happiness interact with marital conflict over time. Although there is ample research showing that partners influence each other’s health, emotions, and behavior, there is a gap in understanding the long-term, mutual effects between self-esteem, subjective happiness, and marital conflict.
Self-esteem has long been seen as a predictor of relationship quality. People with high self-esteem are more likely to engage in behaviors that strengthen their relationships, while those with low self-esteem may struggle to maintain satisfying relationships. Happiness, too, is linked to relationship satisfaction, but the direction of influence—whether happiness leads to better relationships or vice versa—remains debated.
Additionally, previous research has suggested that wives, who often play a larger emotional role in marriage, may influence their husbands’ psychological well-being more than the reverse. In the new study, Jeong Jin Yu (a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University) aimed to fill these knowledge gaps by examining these dynamics over time in South Korean couples, while also exploring how the employment status of wives might affect these relationships.
Yu analyzed data from the (https://panel.kicce.re.kr/engpskc/index.do) Panel Study on Korean Children, a nationwide survey that has tracked families since 2008. The data for this study were collected from 1,668 married couples at three different points in time, spaced one year apart. This longitudinal approach allowed Yu to track changes in self-esteem, happiness, and marital conflict over time.
Participants included both husbands and wives who were required to be living together at the start of the study. If a couple separated or divorced during the study, they were no longer included. The couples had been married for about ten years on average, and most had one or two children. About 40 percent of the wives were employed, while nearly all of the husbands worked.
To measure self-esteem, participants responded to a series of questions that assessed how they felt about their worth and qualities. Marital conflict was measured by asking participants how often they experienced arguments or tension in their marriage. Happiness was measured by having participants rate how happy they generally felt.
Yu found that self-esteem and happiness are closely linked for both husbands and wives. High self-esteem led to increased happiness over time, and the reverse was also true: feeling happy boosted self-esteem. This positive feedback loop was present for both men and women, suggesting that feeling good about oneself is crucial for overall happiness and vice versa.
However, when it came to the influence between spouses, Yu found that wives had a stronger impact on their husbands’ self-esteem and happiness than the other way around. Wives’ self-esteem at the start of the study was linked to their husbands’ self-esteem in subsequent years, but the reverse was not observed.
“Counter to the lay beliefs that men are independent and self-reliant or draw their self-worth from their relationships less than women, the overall findings suggest that husbands tend to derive self-esteem from their wife more than the other way around. However, husbands have minimal association with their wife’s self-esteem,” Yu wrote.
Yu also found that marital conflict had a negative effect on happiness, but not necessarily on self-esteem. Both husbands and wives who reported more conflict in their marriages were likely to feel less happy over time. Interestingly, wives’ marital conflict had a stronger impact on their husbands’ happiness and self-esteem than husbands’ conflict had on their wives. In other words, when wives were unhappy in their marriages, it had a significant emotional toll on their husbands.
Wives’ employment status emerged as an important factor in these dynamics. Husbands of employed wives reported higher self-esteem and happiness compared to husbands of stay-at-home wives. This effect may stem from the financial and emotional support that working wives provide, which can enhance a more balanced and satisfying marital relationship. Employed wives with high self-esteem were less likely to report marital conflict over time, suggesting that having a sense of personal achievement outside the home may buffer against marital tension.
In contrast, stay-at-home wives who experienced more conflict in their marriages tended to have husbands with lower self-esteem. This suggests that when wives are not employed, marital conflict may weigh more heavily on their husbands’ psychological well-being.
Yu’s study opens up several interesting avenues for future research. One important direction is to explore how these dynamics play out in different cultural contexts. South Korea has a unique cultural landscape, where traditional gender roles are shifting but still influential. It would be interesting to see if similar patterns emerge in more egalitarian societies or in cultures where gender roles are more rigidly defined.
Future research could also investigate how the dynamics between self-esteem, happiness, and marital conflict change over the course of a marriage. For instance, do these patterns look different for couples in their early years of marriage compared to those who have been married for decades? Similarly, how do these dynamics shift when children are born or when couples transition into retirement?
“Taken together, this study supports the position that although couples depend on each other for marital and psychological well-being in different ways over time, wives tend to be their husbands’ substantial source of perceived psychological well-being than the reverse,” Yu concluded. “However, the benefit of psychological well-being appears to be less for husbands of stay-at-home wives compared with husbands of employed wives.
“Future research should continue to utilize longitudinal dyadic data from both partners to better understand the multifaceted effects of interdependence, reciprocity, and gender differences on marital relationships and psychological well-being. Furthermore, such studies should analyze the dynamics both at the level of individual partners and at the couple level, shedding light on the reciprocal influences over time.”
The study, “(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pere.12544) Longitudinal dyadic interplay between marital conflict and psychological well-being incouples: The moderating roles of wives’ employment,” was published in Volume 31, Issue 2 of Personal Relationships.

(https://www.psypost.org/new-study-challenges-the-gender-equality-paradox/) New study challenges the gender-equality paradox
Sep 18th 2024, 14:00

A study published in (https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000508) Journal of Personality & Social Psychology challenges the prevailing notion of the “gender-equality paradox” by deconstructing how gender differences vary across societies with high gender equality.
The gender-equality paradox has garnered significant attention, positing that as societies become more gender-equal, gender differences in various domains like personality, attitudes, and preferences paradoxically become larger. This theory, rooted in evolutionary psychology, suggests that more gender-equal environments give individuals the freedom to express intrinsic gender differences, which then become more pronounced.
Previous research has supported this notion by examining cross-country differences in gender gaps using gender-equality indices. However, the accuracy of the methods used in these studies, particularly the reliance on difference scores to measure gender gaps, has been questioned by methodologists.
In this work, Ville-Juhani Ilmarinen and Jan-Erik Lönnqvist revisited these findings to critically examine whether the gender-equality paradox is a genuine phenomenon or simply a product of inadequate statistical methods.
The researchers analyzed data from three large cross-cultural datasets, focusing on examining specific country-level data for both men and women, rather than simply calculating a difference score between genders, which has been the traditional method used in past research.
In Study 1, they used data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to explore gender differences in attitudes toward science. This involved analyzing three key variables: science self-efficacy (SSE), broad interest in science, and enjoyment of science. The sample sizes for these analyses were substantial, with 384,897 individuals from 61 countries for SSE, 330,681 individuals from 50 countries for broad interest in science, and 396,470 individuals from 61 countries for enjoyment of science.
The main predictor for these attitudes was the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), a widely used measure of gender equality that takes into account factors such as political empowerment, economic participation, and educational attainment.
In Study 2, the authors examined economic preferences across 75 countries, using data on variables such as altruism, trust, patience, risk-taking, and reciprocity. The participant count ranged from 73,177 to 74,443, depending on the specific economic preference analyzed. To assess gender differences, they reconstructed a composite Gender Equality Index (GEI), which included the GGGI, along with other country-level indicators like labor force participation and the number of years since women’s suffrage.
The results from Study 1 revealed that the gender-equality paradox did not apply universally across all science attitudes. For science self-efficacy and broad interest in science, gender differences did not significantly increase in more gender-equal countries. However, in the case of enjoyment of science, a modest widening of the gender gap was observed, primarily driven by a decrease in girls’ enjoyment of science in highly gender-equal societies. This result challenged the simplistic interpretation of the paradox, showing that boys’ and girls’ attitudes do not always diverge in more gender-equal environments.
In Study 2, the results were more complex. For variables like altruism, both men’s and women’s scores shifted in response to gender equality, but men showed a lower level of altruism in gender-equal countries, while both men and women exhibited greater patience. However, the gender gap in patience increased slightly because the change was more pronounced for men.
In other domains, such as trust and risk-taking, the differences were less clear-cut, with gender gaps either remaining stable or showing smaller, non-significant changes. Although gender differences might increase in more gender-equal societies, the patterns are domain-specific and not as uniform as the paradox suggests.
One limitation is the reliance on publicly available datasets, which constrained the scope of this reanalysis.
The research, “(https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000508) Deconstructing the Gender-Equality Paradox”, was authored by Ville-Juhani Ilmarinen and Jan-Erik Lönnqvist.

(https://www.psypost.org/can-childhood-tablet-use-fuel-anger-outbursts-new-research-suggests-a-weak-connection/) Can childhood tablet use fuel anger outbursts? New research suggests a weak connection
Sep 18th 2024, 12:00

A recent study published in (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2822089) JAMA Pediatrics has found a connection between the use of tablets by young children and their tendency to express anger and frustration. Researchers observed that children who spent more time using tablets at age 3.5 were slightly more likely to show signs of frustration by age 4.5. In turn, children who displayed more frustration at age 4.5 were modestly more likely to use tablets more frequently by age 5.5. These findings highlight the potential bidirectional relationship between tablet use and emotional regulation in preschool-aged children.
Tablet use has become a common part of early childhood, with surveys showing that most four-year-olds in the United States own their own mobile devices. The amount of time young children spend on screens has also been steadily rising. In 2020, the average daily screen time for a child was about five minutes; by 2022, it had jumped to nearly an hour. The features of tablets, including their bright, fast-changing visuals and access to customizable content, make them particularly appealing to children. Parents often find tablets helpful in keeping children occupied during routine activities, such as dining out or completing household chores.
However, early childhood is also a critical period for developing emotional regulation skills, particularly the ability to manage frustration and anger. During these years, children are learning how to handle emotions through social interactions, play, and guidance from caregivers. There are concerns that excessive tablet use might interfere with these learning opportunities, potentially hindering emotional development. At the same time, parents may be more likely to use screens as a tool to calm their children during emotional outbursts, potentially reinforcing a cycle of screen dependency.
Given the rise in tablet use and the importance of emotional regulation in early childhood, the researchers aimed to explore the possible connections between screen time and children’s ability to manage frustration. They wanted to know if tablet use led to more emotional difficulties or if children prone to emotional outbursts were more likely to end up using tablets as a coping mechanism.
“Tablet use by young children has increased rapidly over the last few years. Since early childhood is a sensitive time for the development of emotional regulation skills, we wanted to better understand associations between preschool-aged children’s tablet use and their management of anger and frustration,” said study author (https://www.digitalchildlab.com/) Caroline Fitzpatrick, a professor of child development at the Université de Sherbrooke and visiting research fellow at the University of Johannesburg.
The study followed a group of 315 children in Nova Scotia, Canada, over a two-year period, starting when the children were 3.5 years old. Data were collected annually when the children were 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years old. Parents provided information about how much time their child spent using tablets each week, with categories ranging from “never” to “more than five hours a day.” Researchers converted these responses into a continuous measure of tablet use, estimating daily screen time for each child.
The children’s emotional regulation skills, specifically their proneness to anger and frustration, were assessed using a standardized questionnaire completed by the parents. The questionnaire included items that gauged how often the child became frustrated or angry in response to everyday situations, such as being told to go to bed.
The researchers employed a statistical method that allowed them to examine changes in both tablet use and emotional behavior within individual children over time. This approach was designed to account for each child’s baseline characteristics, such as temperament and family background, to better understand the direct relationship between tablet use and emotional regulation.
The researchers found that higher levels of tablet use at age 3.5 were associated with more frequent expressions of anger and frustration by age 4.5. The researchers found that for every one-hour increase in daily tablet use at age 3.5, there was a 22 percent increase in the intensity of emotional outbursts by age 4.5. This means that children who used tablets more at 3.5 showed a slightly higher tendency to express anger and frustration one year later, but the effect was not dramatic.
But the relationship didn’t stop there. Children who displayed more frustration and anger at age 4.5 were, in turn, more likely to use tablets more frequently by age 5.5. This suggests a bidirectional relationship—meaning that tablet use and emotional outbursts may feed into each other. As children use tablets more, they may struggle to regulate their emotions, and as they struggle to manage emotions, parents may be more likely to offer screens as a coping tool.
“We recommend that parents and early childhood professionals closely monitor tablet use by young children, especially with younger preschoolers,” Fitzpatrick said. “We also advise avoiding using tablets as a tool to regulate young children’s emotions.”
Interestingly, while the relationship between tablet use and emotional regulation was clear at these specific ages, there was no evidence that the effects of tablet use or anger carried over in a stable way year to year. In other words, while tablet use and emotional outbursts were linked at certain points, these behaviors were not fixed over time.
“We expected that higher levels of anger and frustration at age 3 would contribute to more tablets use one year later by age 4. We did not observe this association,” Fitzpatrick told PsyPost. “However, we did observe that higher levels of anger and frustration at age 4 contributed to more tablet use by age 5.”
While the study provides important insights into the link between tablet use and emotional regulation, it also has several limitations. One key limitation is the relatively small effect sizes observed. For example, an increase in tablet use at age 3.5 was linked to only a slight increase in anger and frustration by age 4.5, and similarly, higher frustration levels at 4.5 were associated with a modest increase in tablet use by age 5.5.
Although these changes were statistically significant, they were not large. However, even small changes can be meaningful in child development, as they may accumulate over time or interact with other factors to have a broader impact.
Additionally, the study relied on a convenience sample, meaning participants were recruited from specific locations and may not represent the broader population. Moreover, it took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have influenced both tablet use and emotional behavior in ways that might not be typical in other times.
Lastly, both tablet use and emotional behaviors were reported by parents, which could introduce bias, and the quality of content or the context in which children used tablets was not accounted for. Future research should consider these factors to better understand the full impact of screen time on emotional regulation.
“We are currently conducting a replication of the study we conducted during the pandemic in a post-pandemic context,” Fitzpatrick said.
The study, “(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2822089) Early-Childhood Tablet Use and Outbursts of Anger,” was authored by Caroline Fitzpatrick, Pedro Mario Pan, Annie Lemieux, Elizabeth Harvey, Fabricio de Andrade Rocha, and Gabrielle Garon-Carrier.

Forwarded by:
Michael Reeder LCPC
Baltimore, MD

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