<table style="border:1px solid #adadad; background-color: #F3F1EC; color: #666666; padding:8px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; line-height:16px; margin-bottom:6px;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News Daily Digest (Unofficial)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/about-8-of-psychedelic-users-report-inappropriate-sexual-contact-by-guides/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">About 8% of psychedelic users report inappropriate sexual contact by guides</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 21st 2024, 10:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/psymed.2024.0011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychedelic Medicine</a></em> has shed light on the challenging and sometimes distressing experiences that people can have during psychedelic use. The research found that a significant number of individuals who used psychedelics experienced adverse effects such as fear, sadness, trembling, and loneliness during their psychedelic journeys. Even more troubling, approximately 8% of respondents reported either being a victim themselves or knowing someone who had experienced inappropriate sexual contact by a psychedelic guide or practitioner.</p>
<p>Psychedelic substances are a class of drugs known for altering perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Common examples include psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms), LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), and MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy). These substances produce profound changes in sensory perception, thought patterns, and emotional responses. People who use psychedelics often report experiencing altered states of consciousness and a sense of connection or insight that can have lasting personal significance.</p>
<p>In recent years, there has been renewed scientific and psychiatric interest in psychedelics, especially in their potential therapeutic benefits. Clinical studies have suggested that psychedelics may be effective in treating conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorders, particularly when combined with psychotherapy. Unlike traditional psychiatric medications, which often need to be taken long-term, psychedelics have been found to produce lasting psychological benefits after just one or a few guided sessions.</p>
<p>While much of the focus in psychedelic research has been on the positive outcomes, such as relief from depression or anxiety, there is less understanding of the possible negative experiences that can occur during or after psychedelic sessions. Given the increasing popularity of psychedelics for both recreational and therapeutic use, the researchers aimed to provide a clearer picture of the potential risks involved.</p>
<p>“Public interest in psychedelics may be at an all-time high and psychedelic use may also be at an all-time high. There is a lot of excitement about the potentials for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and people have read about this in popular books and in the news,” said study author <a href="https://www.buffalo.edu/cria/staff/scientists/dkruger.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Daniel J. Kruger</a>, a research scientist and research associate professor at the University at Buffalo.</p>
<p>“Although there are just a couple of states which have created legal frameworks for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, several municipalities have decriminalized psychedelics and there are hopes that psychedelics may follow a path similar to cannabis legalization in U.S. states. Still, most individuals using psychedelics do so outside of therapeutic contexts, and most psychedelic retreats are unregulated.”</p>
<p>“We are interested in advancing the public health scope of psychedelics, including harm reduction. Psychedelic experiences can be very intense and even people who have used them many times can have difficulties. There were also reports of sexual abuse in unregulated international retreats and even inappropriate behavior by therapists in U.S clinical trials. At the time we conducted the study, there were no systematic assessments of adverse experiences among psychedelic users in general.”</p>
<p>To conduct this study, Kruger and his colleagues surveyed 1,221 individuals who had used psychedelics in non-clinical settings, meaning outside of tightly controlled clinical trials. Participants were recruited through social media, email lists, and at an event advocating for psychedelics in Michigan. The survey was designed to capture a wide range of potential adverse experiences, asking participants to report on their physical and emotional reactions during psychedelic experiences, as well as whether they had ever encountered inappropriate sexual contact from someone in a guiding or therapeutic role.</p>
<p>The sample of participants was predominantly white (84.6%) and included both men and women, as well as non-binary and transgender individuals. Most participants were from the United States, with a significant portion from Michigan. On average, participants were 39 years old and had used psychedelics for a variety of reasons, including recreational, spiritual, or therapeutic purposes.</p>
<p>The researchers found that many individuals experienced various negative emotions during their psychedelic use. The most commonly reported adverse experience was fear, with 74.3% of respondents indicating that they had felt frightened at some point during a psychedelic trip. For some, this fear manifested as a panic that the altered state might never end or that they would lose control of their mind. Nearly half of the participants (48%) expressed fears that their altered state would last forever, while 36.5% worried they might lose their sanity.</p>
<p>Sadness was another prevalent emotional experience, reported by 58.6% of participants. This feeling of sadness was often paired with other negative emotional states like loneliness, which was experienced by 51.6% of respondents. In many cases, these emotions were fleeting and not long-lasting, but their intensity during the psychedelic experience can feel profound. Participants also reported feelings of despair (48.7%) and isolation, with some describing these states as deeply challenging moments that tested their emotional resilience.</p>
<p>Another notable finding was the physical discomfort reported by a significant number of participants. Over half (54.3%) said they experienced shaking or trembling during their psychedelic trip. This physical sensation, although not necessarily harmful, can add to the sense of loss of control, amplifying the fear and anxiety already present in some users. Other physical symptoms included pressure or weight in the chest or abdomen (37.8%) and feelings of being dead or dying (37.7%).</p>
<p>“Psychedelic experiences can have challenges, many people experience being frightened, sadness, and feel their body tremble or shake at times,” Kruger told PsyPost. “Some people experience panic, paranoia, fell that they are dead, or that the state they are in will last forever. For most people having these experiences, they are rare or happen sometimes, but they are still significant.”</p>
<p>Participants were also asked whether they knew anyone who had experienced severe adverse events, such as psychosis, as a result of psychedelic use. About one-quarter (24.5%) reported knowing someone who had experienced a serious negative event. These events ranged from acute psychological distress to more persistent issues.</p>
<p>The findings revealed gaps in the availability of support during these crucial moments. Specifically, only 39.1% of those who knew someone who experienced a severe adverse event indicated that the person had guidance before their experience. The availability of guidance during the experience was even lower, with only 30.1% reporting that knowledgeable support was present at this time. After the experience, 44% of respondents indicated that the individual received guidance, but this still left more than half without proper post-experience support.</p>
<p>“Most of the people that experienced a severe adverse event did not have guidance from someone who was knowledgeable about psychedelics,” Kruger said.</p>
<p>One of the most serious findings from the study was the report of inappropriate sexual contact during psychedelic sessions. Approximately 8% of participants stated that either they or someone they knew had been the victim of such misconduct by a psychedelic guide, sitter, or practitioner. These incidents were primarily attributed to underground guides or sitters, who are not subject to the same ethical guidelines or regulatory oversight as professionals working in a clinical setting.</p>
<p>Friends and acquaintances were also implicated in some cases, further highlighting the risks present in unregulated or informal psychedelic sessions. Although less common, some instances of abuse were reported even within formal therapeutic settings, including clinical or research studies, which points to the need for stringent oversight in all contexts where psychedelics are used.</p>
<p>“A small portion of our participants knew about an incident of inappropriate sexual contact by a psychedelic sitter, guide, or practitioner, these were mostly underground guides and friends or acquaintances,” Kruger told PsyPost. “The lack of oversight makes it more difficult to protect people, as individuals may not want to report perpetrators out of fear of getting in trouble themselves and also the difficulty of pursuing legal justice in foreign countries they may be just visiting for the retreat. Having an informed public and accessible psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy that is well regulated would be ideal.”</p>
<p>But the study — like all research — includes some caveats. “The rates we reported are estimates, we used a convenience sample of participants,” Kruger explained. “There are currently no population representative studies on these topics, as they are very expensive. The large systematic survey studies just focus on how many people are using various substances.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the findings highlight the need to develop harm-reduction strategies that minimize the risk of adverse effects. This might involve better training for psychedelic guides and therapists, as well as clearer guidelines for ethical conduct during sessions.</p>
<p>“There is a lot of investment in clinical trials to obtain FDA approval for psychedelics in specific therapeutic applications. We conduct research that complements these efforts in promoting public health more broadly, as most people are still using psychedelics outside of clinical settings, even in places where psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is legal. Legal psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is very expensive.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/psymed.2024.0011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychedelic Therapist Sexual Misconduct and Other Adverse Experiences Among a Sample of Naturalistic Psychedelic Users</a>,” was authored by Daniel J. Kruger, Jacob S. Aday, Christopher W. Fields, Nicholas Kolbman, Nicolas Glynos, Julie Barron, Moss Herberholz, and Kevin F. Boehnke.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/attractive-people-are-expected-to-be-more-generous-and-generosity-makes-them-more-attractive/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Attractive people are expected to be more generous — and generosity makes them more attractive</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 21st 2024, 08:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A new social experiment has found that people expect attractive individuals to behave more prosocially. Those who expected attractive people to behave more prosocially also tended to judge individuals who behave prosocially as more attractive. The study was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.01.013"><em>Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>Humans make judgments about others very quickly. For example, studies show that people need less than a second to form a judgment about whether another individual looks like a threat or not. Similarly, people very quickly form opinions about other people’s attractiveness, trustworthiness, intelligence, and many other important characteristics. Such snap judgments often form the basis of social interactions.</p>
<p>Attractiveness is one such important characteristic. Physical <a href="https://www.psypost.org/exclusive/relationships-sexual-health/attractiveness/">attractiveness</a> is so influential that researchers talk about a “beauty premium”—the preferential treatment physically attractive individuals receive in interactions with others. Studies indicate that attractive individuals are <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-beauty-bias-is-robust-but-irrelevant-for-accurate-predictions/">perceived as more trustworthy</a>, cooperative, and socially skilled compared to their less attractive peers.</p>
<p>However, since attractiveness is at least partly a subjective judgment, it remains unclear whether attractive individuals truly tend to possess all these positive traits, or if people simply perceive individuals with positive psychological characteristics as more attractive.</p>
<p>Study author Kajsa Hansson and her colleagues wanted to investigate the link between perceived attractiveness and prosocial behavior. They aimed to understand why people often rely on attractiveness to form expectations about the prosocial behavior of others. The authors hypothesized that attractiveness affects expectations of prosocial behavior (people expect attractive individuals to behave more prosocially) and that prosocial behavior increases perceived attractiveness. In particular, they hypothesized that people who expect attractive individuals to behave prosocially would also be more likely to find prosocially behaving individuals more attractive.</p>
<p>Study participants were 249 individuals recruited via Prolific, with 53% of them being male. Their average age was 42 years. They completed the experiment in Qualtrics, which lasted approximately 20 minutes.</p>
<p>The researchers first conducted a pre-study in which a group of 100 participants played a Dictator Game. In this game, a participant decides how much money (or tokens), from a sum they receive, to give to another player. The other player has no influence over this decision. Giving money or tokens to the other player in this game is considered prosocial behavior. The researchers recorded how much each player behaved prosocially and created avatars that resembled these players based on their facial characteristics (gender, hairstyle, and eye color).</p>
<p>The main experiment consisted of two parts. In the first part, participants were presented with eight avatars (four male, four female) of participants from the pre-study and asked to guess how many tokens the participant represented by the avatar gave to the other player in the Dictator Game. Fifty percent of the avatars were attractive, and 50% were unattractive. The researchers wanted to know whether participants believed that attractive avatars gave more tokens to the other player, i.e., behaved more prosocially.</p>
<p>In the second part, participants were presented with medium-attractive avatars and information about how many tokens each of them gave to the other person in the Dictator Game. Later, participants were asked to recall how many tokens each avatar gave and to rate the attractiveness of each avatar.</p>
<p>The results of the first part of the experiment showed that, on average, participants expected players with attractive avatars to have given 46 tokens to the other player, while they expected players with unattractive avatars to have given 36 tokens. In other words, participants believed that players with attractive avatars behaved more prosocially.</p>
<p>The second part of the experiment revealed that avatars of players who gave more tokens to the other party were perceived as more attractive. On the 0-100 attractiveness scale, selfish players were, on average, rated as 45, while prosocial players were rated as 48. This happened even though all avatars in this part of the experiment were of medium attractiveness. Finally, the results showed that individuals who believe attractive people to be prosocial also tend to see prosocial individuals as more attractive.</p>
<p>“Taken together, our study reveals a fascinating link between attractiveness and prosocial behavior. We found that people often expect attractive individuals to behave more generously. However, the reverse is also true: generous individuals are perceived as more attractive. By discovering this bi-directional relationship, the study enhances our comprehension of the dynamic nature of human social perception, which is shaped by a mix of subtle cues, expectations, and biases. Understanding this can help us challenge our biases, leading to fairer judgments and actions,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on an intriguing link between prosocial behavior and perceptions of attractiveness. However, it was an online experiment using avatars, and the prosocial behavior studied was simply the distribution of game tokens, which had limited real-world value for participants. If a study were to include rating real, physically present people instead of avatars and involved more demanding prosocial behaviors, the results might differ.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.01.013">The beauty of prosocial behavior: The bi-directional link between attractiveness and prosocial behavior,</a>” was authored by Kajsa Hansson, Hooman Habibnia, Minou Goetze, and Susann Fiedler.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-triggered-academic-exodus-study-suggests/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover triggered academic exodus, study suggests</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 21st 2024, 06:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A recent study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096524000416"><em>PS: Political Science & Politics</em></a> examined the impact of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now known as “X,” on academic engagement with the platform. The researchers found that academics were less active on Twitter after Musk took over in October 2022, with a notable decrease in the number of tweets, including original posts, replies, retweets, and quote tweets. The drop in activity was particularly evident among verified accounts, suggesting that academics with higher profiles reduced their Twitter usage more than others.</p>
<p>Twitter has long served as a valuable platform for academics to communicate with their peers, policymakers, and the public. Academics used the platform to discuss research, share insights, and participate in public discourse. However, when Elon Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022, he introduced sweeping changes that affected how the platform operated.</p>
<p>These changes included mass layoffs, the reinstatement of previously suspended accounts, and a shift in content moderation policies. Many users, including academics, expressed concerns about the platform’s new direction, with some deciding to leave or reduce their participation.</p>
<p>Given the anecdotal evidence of academics abandoning Twitter, the researchers aimed to systematically investigate whether this was a widespread phenomenon and to identify when and among whom the drop in engagement occurred. The new study sought to understand how Musk’s ownership influenced academic activity on Twitter and whether different types of users were more likely to disengage from the platform.</p>
<p>“We were interested in this topic because Twitter has been an important platform for academic communication and networking, especially among social scientists,” said study author Kevin Munger, an assistant professor who holds the Chair of Computational Social Science in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute.</p>
<p>“Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in late 2022 brought significant changes to the platform, and we wanted to empirically examine how this affected academics’ engagement with Twitter. As researchers who study social media and online behavior, we saw this as an opportunity to quantitatively analyze a major shift in an important academic communications channel.”</p>
<p>The researchers used a snowball sampling method to compile a dataset of over 15,700 academic Twitter accounts from the fields of political science, economics, sociology, and psychology. They collected data on these accounts’ activity before and after Elon Musk’s official takeover of Twitter, focusing on changes in the number of active accounts (those displaying any activity on a given day) and the frequency of tweets, including original tweets, retweets, replies, and quote tweets.</p>
<p>The researchers looked at several types of engagement, including original tweets, retweets, replies, and quote tweets. To determine when changes in engagement occurred, the researchers employed a Bayesian Change-Point Analysis (BCPA). This statistical method allowed them to pinpoint when a structural shift in academic Twitter usage took place.</p>
<p>The results showed that academic engagement on Twitter dropped substantially following Musk’s takeover in late October 2022. The number of daily active academic accounts and the total volume of tweets declined noticeably. While overall engagement had been trending downward since 2021, a sharp drop occurred around November 19, 2022—three weeks after Musk officially took over the platform. This date coincided with Musk’s decision to reinstate former president Donald Trump’s account, which had been banned following the January 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.</p>
<p>“One somewhat surprising finding was that the biggest drop in academic Twitter engagement didn’t occur immediately when Musk took over on October 28, 2022, but rather around November 19 when he reinstated Trump’s account,” Munger told PsyPost. “This suggests that specific policy decisions, rather than just the change in ownership itself, may have been the tipping point for many academics.”</p>
<p>The researchers found that verified accounts were more likely to reduce their engagement with the platform than non-verified accounts, particularly when it came to writing original tweets and quoting others’ tweets. This pattern suggests that more prominent academics, whose accounts were previously verified, may have felt greater pressure to distance themselves from the platform following Musk’s controversial decisions.</p>
<p>However, the study did not find significant differences in the behavior of verified and non-verified users when it came to retweeting or replying to tweets, suggesting that these less reputationally significant forms of engagement were less affected by Musk’s takeover. The findings indicate that while many academics reduced their activity, those whose visibility carried more weight were more likely to step back from creating new content on the platform.</p>
<p>“The key takeaway is that Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter coincided with a significant decrease in engagement from academics on the platform, especially among more prominent scholars with verified accounts,” Munger said. “We found that academics reduced their Twitter activity, particularly in creating original content, following Musk’s takeover and especially after he reinstated Trump’s account. This suggests that changes in platform ownership and policies can have tangible effects on how scholars use social media for professional communication.”</p>
<p>Like all research, this study has its limitations. One limitation is the lack of direct evidence about the reasons why academics disengaged from Twitter. While the study shows a correlation between Musk’s takeover and the drop in activity, it does not conclusively prove that his policies or behavior directly caused the reduction in academic engagement.</p>
<p>Another challenge is the study’s reliance on Twitter’s free Application Programming Interface (API), which was removed after Musk took over. This presents a significant problem for future research on social media engagement, as it limits access to comprehensive data. The authors suggest that smaller-scale studies, surveys, or qualitative methods may be needed to explore the full impact of Musk’s changes on academic behavior.</p>
<p>“Long-term, we’re interested in understanding how changes in social media platforms affect scholarly communication and public engagement with academic research,” Munger said. “However, Twitter’s removal of free API access poses significant challenges for continuing this specific line of research. More broadly, we aim to study how social scientists adapt to changes in online platforms and find new ways to share their work and engage with peers and the public.”</p>
<p>“We believe this study highlights broader issues about the role of social media in academia and the vulnerability of these communication channels to corporate decisions. It also underscores the need for more robust, independent platforms for scholarly communication that aren’t subject to the whims of private owners or commercial interests.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/vibes-are-off-did-elon-musk-push-academics-off-twitter/28F45D508BE8F50C95F0F2BBEC48BB10">The Vibes Are Off: Did Elon Musk Push Academics Off Twitter?</a>“, was authored by James Bisbee and Kevin Munger.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/understanding-childhood-appetite-researchers-propose-new-model-linking-eating-behaviors-to-multiple-factors/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Understanding childhood appetite: Researchers propose new model linking eating behaviors to multiple factors</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 20th 2024, 14:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>In a new paper published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117338" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Social Science & Medicine</a>, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have proposed a detailed model that outlines the complex factors influencing how young children regulate their appetite. This model suggests that biological, psychological, and social factors interact to shape children’s ability to self-regulate their eating behavior, which is an important component of healthy development and a key factor in reducing the risk of childhood obesity. The model also highlights the role of a child’s temperament in modulating these interactions, offering insights into how individual differences influence eating habits.</p>
<p>The research team, led by Sehyun Ju, a doctoral student in Human Development and Family Studies, recognizes that childhood obesity and unhealthy eating habits are often discussed in terms of personal willpower—advice like “eat less and exercise more” is commonly given. However, this simplistic view ignores the numerous factors that influence a child’s relationship with food.</p>
<p>Previous studies have shown that a child’s ability to regulate their eating is influenced by a variety of factors, but many of these studies focused on individual components rather than a more comprehensive, integrated view. For example, some research has explored the role of biological signals such as hunger and satiety, while others have looked at psychological traits like emotional regulation. This new model seeks to unify these perspectives, presenting a holistic view of how various influences—biological, psychological, and social—combine to affect a child’s eating behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers also wanted to address gaps in the understanding of how individual differences, especially temperament, affect appetite self-regulation. For example, some children may be more sensitive to environmental food cues, while others may have a stronger biological drive to eat in response to stress. By incorporating temperament into the model, the researchers aim to explain why some children are more susceptible to unhealthy eating behaviors than others, even when exposed to similar environments.</p>
<p>“My interest in this topic stems from the desire to understand the complexities of early childhood appetite self-regulation development. The ability to regulate food intake is guided by internal physiological cues, but unique patterns of food approach and withdrawal behaviors arise from the interaction between a child’s temperament, internal biopsychological processes, and the external environment,” Ju explained.</p>
<p>“In developing the Biopsychosocial Pathways Model, our goal was to provide a comprehensive framework to explain how biological, psychological, and social systems interact in shaping a child’s capacity for appetite self-regulation. This model highlights that appetite self-regulation not only involves the regulation of hunger and satiety signals but also the psychological processing and regulation of external influences. The model emphasizes the role of temperament in moderating these interactions, offering valuable insights into how individual differences in eating behaviors emerge in early childhood.”</p>
<p>The Biopsychosocial Pathways Model integrates three major categories of influence: biological, psychological, and social factors. Each of these plays a role in shaping how children manage their appetite and develop eating behaviors.</p>
<p><strong>Biological Factors</strong>: These include sensory experiences, the body’s hunger and satiety signals, and the interaction between the brain and the gut. The gut microbiome, in particular, plays a significant role in regulating hunger and satiety, as well as influencing mood and emotional responses, which in turn can affect how children approach food.</p>
<p><strong>Psychological Factors</strong>: Emotional regulation, stress management, and cognitive control are key elements of psychological influence on eating behavior. Children may use food to regulate their emotions, such as eating for comfort during stressful times. Additionally, the reward system in the brain plays a role in whether children seek out food for pleasure or emotional fulfillment.</p>
<p><strong>Social Factors</strong>: Parental behavior, culture, food insecurity, and the home environment are significant social factors. The way parents feed their children—whether by using food as a reward, enforcing strict dietary rules, or offering support during meals—can influence children’s relationship with food. Socioeconomic factors, such as food availability and family income, also shape children’s food choices and access to healthy food options.</p>
<p>One key aspect of this model is the way individual temperament interacts with these influences. Temperament refers to a child’s inherent behavioral and emotional characteristics, such as openness to new experiences, emotional sensitivity, or impulsivity. The study suggests that temperament can modify how children react to food-related stimuli and how they respond to parental feeding practices. For instance, a child who is highly sensitive to negative emotions may respond poorly to pressure from parents to eat certain foods, while a child who is more open to novelty may be more willing to try new, healthy foods.</p>
<p>Another critical element of the model is the developmental stage of the child. Infants, for example, primarily rely on physiological cues to regulate their appetite, while older children begin to incorporate psychological factors such as emotional responses to food. As children grow, they develop greater self-control and the ability to manage their emotions, which affects their eating behaviors. By the preschool years, children’s ability to regulate their appetite is shaped not only by biological cues but also by external influences, including the behavior of caregivers and peers.</p>
<p>“Individual children may develop different underlying motivations to approach food, influenced by reward and emotional processing in response to their unique socio-environmental experiences, shaped by their temperamental characteristics,” Ju told PsyPost. “A key takeaway is that a child’s eating regulation cannot be solely attributed to their conscious decision-making or voluntary control. Supporting children in building healthy relationships with food—while preventing them from being driven by stress, negative emotions, or pleasure-seeking in the absence of hunger—requires an understanding of how they subjectively experience their external food environment and how these experiences influence their food approach and withdrawal patterns.”</p>
<p>The study provides a robust framework for future research on appetite self-regulation, particularly in the context of childhood obesity prevention. One area the researchers are eager to explore is the role of parental behavior during mealtimes. Ju and her colleagues are already conducting studies that involve videotaping family mealtimes to observe how parents and children interact over food. By studying these interactions, the researchers hope to identify specific behaviors that either support or hinder a child’s ability to regulate their appetite.</p>
<p>“I plan to empirically test the pathways outlined in the model, investigating how environmental factors, such as family dynamics, parenting practices surrounding emotion and eating, and food availability, uniquely contribute to an individual’s internal regulatory mechanisms, particularly in relation to child temperament,” Ju said. “The findings from these studies will offer valuable insights into children’s appetite self-regulation, helping to account for individual differences in biobehavioral characteristics. Ultimately, this research will contribute to promoting healthy eating habits and reducing the risk of childhood obesity.”</p>
<p>“I am particularly excited about the potential implications of findings from future studies testing the pathways in this model,” she added. “By examining the interactive influences of a child’s temperament and biopsychosocial factors, we can identify factors that are more likely to contribute to developing a dysregulated approach to food based on temperamental characteristics. This approach will allow tailored interventions to better support children’s individual needs, promote healthy eating habits, and reduce the risk of obesity by addressing the environmental factors that pose greater risks for each child.”</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624007925" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Biopsychosocial pathways model of early childhood appetite self-regulation: Temperament as a key to modulation of interactions among systems</a>,” was authored by Sehyun Ju, Brent A. McBride, Merin Oleschuk, and Kelly K. Bost.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/childhood-trauma-linked-to-altered-fear-learning-a-potential-pathway-to-ptsd/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Childhood trauma linked to altered fear learning: A potential pathway to PTSD</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 20th 2024, 12:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/alterations-in-fear-learning-as-a-mechanism-linking-childhood-exposure-to-violence-with-ptsd-symptoms-a-longitudinal-study/B7E1CAE2509AE906CB8848A49AE108AD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychological Medicine</a></em> suggests that childhood trauma may alter the way children learn to respond to fear, which could contribute to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adolescence. The researchers found that children who had experienced trauma showed heightened physiological responses to threatening stimuli during a fear-learning task. This heightened response, in turn, was linked to an increase in PTSD symptoms over time.</p>
<p>Childhood trauma is unfortunately common, with nearly half of all children in the United States experiencing some form of adversity. Such experiences, which include physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and community violence, have been linked to a wide range of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Given the widespread impact of early trauma, researchers have been working to understand how these experiences contribute to the development of mental health issues, with the ultimate goal of developing interventions to help prevent these problems.</p>
<p>“Prior work has shown that youth who have more traumatic experiences (e.g., abuse, experiences of violence) during childhood show differences in how they respond to fearful stimuli through the process of fear learning, but there has been little prior consensus in the direction of these associations,” said study author <a href="https://sdlab.fas.harvard.edu/people/laura-machlin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Laura Machlin</a>, who conducted the research while a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.</p>
<p>“I was interested in leveraging a large longitudinal sample of children with a wide range of early life experiences, including traumatic experiences, to directly address if children who have greater trauma-related experiences, controlling for other experiences, would have differences in how they learn about new fearful stimuli. Additionally, I was interested in if changes in how youth respond to fearful stimuli would be associated with greater risk for psychopathology symptoms over time.”</p>
<p>The study was based on a sample of 215 children between the ages of 10 and 13, all of whom were part of a larger, long-term study. The researchers were particularly interested in children who had experienced varying levels of adversity, including both trauma (such as abuse or exposure to violence) and deprivation (such as neglect or lack of emotional support). The goal was to determine whether trauma and deprivation were linked to changes in fear learning and to track how these changes might relate to the development of mental health issues over time.</p>
<p>At the start of the study, both the children and their parents completed questionnaires and interviews about the children’s experiences of trauma and deprivation, as well as their current mental health symptoms. A few weeks later, the children participated in a fear conditioning task, a widely used psychological test designed to measure how well participants learn to distinguish between threatening and non-threatening stimuli.</p>
<p>In this task, the children were exposed to two different cues: one that was consistently followed by an unpleasant stimulus (a mild shock or loud noise, for example) and one that was not. The children’s physiological responses, specifically their skin conductance (a measure of sweat gland activity often used as an indicator of fear or arousal), were recorded during the task.</p>
<p>Two years after the initial testing, the children’s mental health symptoms were assessed again to see if their fear learning responses had predicted any changes in symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, or externalizing behaviors (such as aggression or rule-breaking).</p>
<p>The study’s results provided important insights into the relationship between childhood trauma, fear learning, and mental health. The researchers found that children who had experienced more trauma showed heightened skin conductance responses to the threatening cue during the fear conditioning task. This means that these children were more physiologically reactive to the stimulus they associated with danger, suggesting an increased sensitivity to potential threats. These heightened responses were not observed in children who had experienced deprivation without trauma, suggesting that trauma, specifically, was driving these changes in fear learning.</p>
<p>The researchers also found that the heightened fear response in these children was linked to an increase in PTSD symptoms over the two-year follow-up period. In other words, children who had experienced more trauma and who showed a stronger physiological response to fear were more likely to develop or worsen PTSD symptoms as they grew older.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the study did not find a similar link between altered fear learning and other types of mental health issues, such as anxiety or externalizing behaviors. This suggests that the changes in fear learning observed in traumatized children may be specifically related to PTSD rather than to psychopathology more generally.</p>
<p>“We found that youth with more trauma-related experiences could more easily differentiate between a fearful stimulus and a safe stimulus while passively learning about these stimuli measured through differences in skin conductance response, which is an indirect measure of the level of arousal caused by stimuli,” Machlin told PsyPost. “This increase in arousal to a new fearful stimulus was associated with greater PTSD symptoms over time in early adolescence in youth with more trauma-related experiences. Overall, this work suggests that differences in how youth learn about new fearful stimuli may be one mechanism through which having more trauma-related experiences in childhood confers risk for PTSD symptoms in youth.”</p>
<p>Though this study offers important new insights, it also comes with a few caveats. First, the sample was not a clinical one, meaning that while the children reported symptoms of PTSD and other mental health issues, they were not formally diagnosed with these conditions. Future research might benefit from looking at children who have been clinically diagnosed with PTSD to see if the findings hold true in more severely affected populations.</p>
<p>“This sample includes children drawn from a longitudinal study who were 10 to 13 years old and is not a clinical sample diagnosed with a specific disorder,” Machlin said. “This work should be replicated in a clinical sample.”</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study offers important evidence that altered fear learning may be one pathway through which childhood trauma leads to the development of PTSD. This finding could help inform interventions aimed at reducing trauma-related mental health issues in adolescents.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724001569" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alterations in fear learning as a mechanism linking childhood exposure to violence with PTSD symptoms: a longitudinal study</a>,” was authored by Laura Machlin, Margaret A. Sheridan, Lucy A. Lurie, Steven W. Kasparek, Stephanie Gyuri Kim, Matthew Peverill, John McClellan France, Madeline M. Robertson, Tanja Jovanovic, Liliana J. Lengua, and Katie A. McLaughlin.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><s><small><a href="#" style="color:#ffffff;"><a href="https://blogtrottr.com/unsubscribe/565/DY9DKf">unsubscribe from this feed</a></a></small></s></p>