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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-find-individual-differences-in-memory-response-to-amygdala-stimulation/" 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;">Neuroscientists find individual differences in memory response to amygdala stimulation</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 31st 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13415-024-01250-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience</a></em> provides evidence that electrical stimulation of the amygdala during learning can enhance long-term memory for neutral images—but only after a delay and not for everyone. The researchers found that this stimulation can help prioritize memories for later recall, but the effect varies widely across individuals. In fact, some participants experienced memory enhancement, while others saw a decline. The best predictor of whether stimulation helped or hurt was each person’s baseline memory performance.</p>
<p>The study builds on a growing body of work exploring how the amygdala influences memory. While it’s well known that emotional events tend to be remembered better than neutral ones, this isn’t only because of their emotional content. It’s also because the brain, especially the amygdala, plays a role in prioritizing these memories for long-term storage. This prioritization process interacts with the hippocampus and other nearby regions that are responsible for encoding the details of experiences. But the researchers behind this study wanted to know whether it’s possible to stimulate the amygdala to improve memory even when emotional arousal isn’t involved.</p>
<p>In a previous study, the same research team showed that stimulating the basolateral amygdala (BLA) at low electrical levels—levels that didn’t produce any conscious emotional sensation—could enhance memory for neutral images after 24 hours. That finding suggested it might be possible to separate the memory-boosting power of the amygdala from its usual role in processing emotions. The new study set out to test this idea in a larger sample and to examine why some people benefit from stimulation while others do not.</p>
<p>To do this, the researchers recruited 31 adults who were undergoing brain monitoring for treatment-resistant epilepsy. These patients had already undergone a procedure in which depth electrodes were implanted into various brain regions, including the amygdala, to help identify the origin of their seizures. This setup gave the research team a rare opportunity to directly stimulate the amygdala while participants were awake and performing memory tasks.</p>
<p>Each participant was shown a series of neutral images—pictures of objects—and asked to judge whether the object was more often found indoors or outdoors. On half of the trials, while the image was being shown, the researchers delivered a short burst of electrical stimulation to the BLA. On the other half, there was no stimulation. Importantly, the stimulation was below the threshold of awareness, and none of the participants reported feeling anything during the trials.</p>
<p>After viewing the images, participants were tested twice: once immediately after the session, and again 24 hours later. In line with the researchers’ predictions, there was no significant difference in memory performance at the immediate test. But at the 24-hour mark, the researchers found that participants remembered the stimulated images better than the non-stimulated ones—at least on average.</p>
<p>The average, however, masked a striking degree of individual variation. Some participants showed strong memory enhancement after amygdala stimulation, others showed no change, and a few actually performed worse on stimulated trials. This led the researchers to investigate what personal factors might be driving these differences.</p>
<p>The most consistent predictor was each person’s baseline memory performance, assessed before surgery using standard neuropsychological tests. People who scored lower on these baseline tests were more likely to experience a strong effect—whether positive or negative—from the stimulation. In contrast, individuals with high baseline memory tended to show little or no change. This suggests that stimulation may interact with existing memory function, enhancing weak systems or disrupting already well-functioning ones.</p>
<p>Other factors also played a role. There were hints of sex differences, with males more likely to show strong memory enhancement and females more likely to show no effect or even impairment. However, these sex differences did not reach statistical significance in all analyses. Additionally, participants who showed more frequent abnormal brain activity (known as interictal epileptiform discharges, or IEDs) during the task tended to show greater variability in response to stimulation. This could mean that the brain’s baseline state during learning—its electrical activity and susceptibility to interference—affects how well stimulation works.</p>
<p>The location of the stimulation electrode within the amygdala and its distance from nearby brain structures such as the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and perirhinal cortex was also examined. However, the researchers found no consistent relationship between proximity to these regions and memory outcomes. This was somewhat unexpected, given that past research has shown that stimulating certain parts of the medial temporal lobe can either help or harm memory, depending on the precise target.</p>
<p>The study’s findings point to the importance of personalizing neuromodulation strategies. While amygdala stimulation appears to hold promise as a tool for enhancing memory, especially in people with memory impairments, it’s clear that one-size-fits-all approaches are unlikely to be effective. Instead, understanding who is most likely to benefit—and under what conditions—will be key to developing safe and effective therapeutic uses.</p>
<p>As with any study involving neurosurgical patients, there are limitations. All of the participants had epilepsy, and many were taking medications that can affect memory. The sample size, while larger than previous work in this area, was still relatively small. Additionally, the researchers combined data from three slightly different sub-experiments that varied in how and when stimulation was delivered. Although this allowed them to examine a wider range of stimulation conditions, it also added complexity to the analysis.</p>
<p>The researchers also note that while their stimulation protocol did not produce subjective emotional effects, they can’t entirely rule out the possibility that it influenced unconscious emotional processes. Future studies could explore whether adjusting the intensity or timing of stimulation can further optimize memory outcomes, and whether these methods can be safely used in non-epileptic populations, including older adults or individuals with memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13415-024-01250-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Exploring individual differences in amygdala-mediated memory modulation</a>,” was authored by Martina K. Hollearn, Joseph R. Manns, Lou T. Blanpain, Stephan B. Hamann, Kelly Bijanki, Robert E. Gross, Daniel L. Drane, Justin M. Campbell, Krista L. Wahlstrom, Griffin F. Light, Aydin Tasevac, Phillip Demarest, Peter Brunner, Jon T. Willie, and Cory S. Inman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/mindfulness-boosts-generosity-only-for-group-oriented-individuals/" 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;">Mindfulness boosts generosity only for group-oriented individuals</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 31st 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>New research suggests that being a mindful person doesn’t automatically mean being a more helpful one. A study published in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-024-02512-5"><em>Mindfulness</em></a> found that people who scored high on trait mindfulness — a natural tendency to be present and nonjudgmental in daily life — were more likely to help others only if they saw themselves as connected to others. On the other hand, mindful people who viewed themselves as more independent were no more helpful, and sometimes even less so. These findings highlight the importance of social identity in shaping how mindfulness influences our behavior toward others.</p>
<p>Mindfulness has long been associated with benefits for personal well-being, like reducing anxiety and improving self-awareness. But whether it leads people to behave more kindly or generously has been harder to pin down. Some studies suggest mindfulness boosts empathy and cooperation. Others find little to no effect, or even that mindfulness can make people more self-focused. This inconsistency led the researchers to suspect that the social context in which mindfulness operates might play a key role — especially how people see themselves in relation to others.</p>
<p>“I was a religious studies major in college, and I was always interested in the idea that certain religious practices seemed to reflect and/or mesh with broader cultural trends,” said study author Michael Poulin, an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo and director of <a href="https://www.scopelabbuffalo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Stress, Coping, and Prosocial Engagement Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“I recalled reading an argument that Buddhism (from which mindfulness grew) flourished in East Asia in part because those societies already emphasized the idea of quieting the self in order to promote group harmony. When that came to mind more recently, I found myself wondering if there were certain tensions between mindfulness (originally a Buddhist practice) and Western society, in which the self is so dominant.”</p>
<p>The researchers were especially interested in something called “self-construal,” or how people define themselves. Do they see themselves as part of a group, or as individuals? Do they value equality and harmony, or hierarchy and competition? Past studies showed that people with a more interdependent sense of self — those who view themselves as connected to others — were more likely to act kindly after mindfulness training. Those with an independent self-construal — who value uniqueness and autonomy — were sometimes less helpful.</p>
<p>This study asked whether those same patterns would appear with trait mindfulness — a stable tendency to be mindful — rather than just momentary mindfulness from a brief meditation. The researchers also wanted to dig deeper into the types of independence and interdependence that might shape the effects of mindfulness.</p>
<p>Some people might see themselves as part of a group that values equality (horizontal interdependence), while others belong to groups that value hierarchy and authority (vertical interdependence). On the independent side, some might see everyone as equals doing their own thing (horizontal individualism), while others strive to compete and rise above the rest (vertical individualism).</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the researchers recruited 149 undergraduate students from a large university in the United States. Before coming to the lab, each participant completed a battery of questionnaires. These assessed their levels of trait mindfulness, how interdependent or independent they were, and whether they leaned more toward horizontal or vertical forms of these social views.</p>
<p>When participants arrived at the lab, they were told the study was about “meditation and the self.” They read a newspaper article about a local charity that helps poor and homeless individuals in the area. Afterward, they were asked a few questions and told the study was complete — but since they still had time left in the session, the experimenter offered them the chance to help the charity by stuffing envelopes with flyers. The number of envelopes each person stuffed was used as the measure of prosocial behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers found that mindfulness did not have the same effect for everyone. People who scored high on collective interdependence — those who felt closely connected to groups they belonged to — became significantly more helpful as mindfulness increased. On average, they stuffed about nine more envelopes for each increase in mindfulness. But those who scored low on this collective identity actually helped less the more mindful they were.</p>
<p>A similar pattern emerged for independence. People low in both horizontal and vertical individualism — those who didn’t strongly identify as self-reliant or competitive — showed more helping behavior as their mindfulness increased. But for people who strongly identified as independent or competitive, mindfulness didn’t boost helping, and in some cases was linked to doing less.</p>
<p>The researchers used a statistical technique called zero-inflated Poisson regression to account for the fact that many people stuffed zero envelopes and that helping varied widely across the group. After accounting for multiple comparisons using a correction method, they found that three factors consistently shaped the relationship between mindfulness and helping: collective self-construal, horizontal individualism, and vertical individualism. Vertical collectivism showed a weaker influence that disappeared when other factors were considered together.</p>
<p>“We measured people’s tendency to feel connected to others in several different ways, and we were a little surprised in the most recent study about which of the specific measures we used seemed to be the most important,” Poulin told PsyPost. “For example, we measured both individualism (the tendency to prioritize the self and one’s own goals) and collectivism (the tendency to prioritize one’s group and collective goals). These sound like they should be complete opposites, but they are not necessarily—one can be high or low in both, for example.</p>
<p>“Between these different measures, being high or low in individualism seemed to be more important than being high or low in collectivism. This was not something we expected, though it also is not against our predictions at all.”</p>
<p>These findings suggest that trait mindfulness tends to amplify people’s existing social orientations. If someone already values their group and sees themselves as connected to others, mindfulness may strengthen that sense of connection and encourage helpful action. But for people who identify strongly as independent or competitive, mindfulness might simply reinforce those views — leading them to prioritize their own goals or avoid actions that benefit others at a cost to themselves.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that mindfulness, in and of itself, is not inherently good or bad for social behavior. Instead, it may act like a mirror, reflecting and amplifying a person’s underlying social motivations. One possible reason is that mindfulness increases awareness of the self, including how a person fits into the social world. If a person’s identity includes a desire to help, mindfulness makes that clearer. But if their identity centers on standing apart or staying ahead, mindfulness might reinforce those goals instead.</p>
<p>“I think the key takeaway is that although mindfulness does a really good job of making people happier and less stressed, there is no guarantee that it will also make us morally better, especially if ‘better’ includes things like volunteering or giving to charity,” Poulin said. “The moral benefits of mindfulness seem to depend on whether people see themselves as highly connected to other people or not.”</p>
<p>However, the sample consisted of college students in the United States, who may not represent other populations. Western cultures tend to emphasize independence more than collectivism, so the effects might look different in other cultural settings.</p>
<p>“This was a sample of American college students, so we have to be careful in making generalizations,” Poulin noted. “These patterns could be different for older adults, for example, and we’d certainly expect that the results could be different in different cultures.”</p>
<p>The study also relied on observational data. Although the researchers found patterns consistent with past experiments, they did not manipulate mindfulness in this study, which limits conclusions about cause and effect.</p>
<p>“We only measured people’s descriptions of their own levels of mindfulness, so based on this study, it’s unclear whether it’s actually mindfulness affecting prosocial behavior or something else that’s associated with mindfulness,” Poulin said. “However, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976211015184" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in a previous paper</a> we did demonstrate similar effects with experimentally-manipulated levels of mindfulness, as well.”</p>
<p>Still, the findings offer new insight into when mindfulness may help us connect with others — and when it may not. The results suggest that organizations interested in promoting prosocial outcomes through mindfulness programs should consider the social orientation of their participants.</p>
<p>“I’m broadly interested in how people regulate emotions such as empathy or distress when they encounter others who are in need or suffering,” Poulin added. “Mindfulness is a very powerful emotion regulation strategy, and our findings suggest that different ways of regulating our emotions lead to different behavioral outcomes. I would like to learn more about exactly how that works!”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-024-02512-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trait Mindfulness and Prosocial Behavior: The Moderating Role of Self-Construals and Individualism</a>,” was authored by Michael J. Poulin, Lauren M. Ministero, C. Dale Shaffer-Morrison, Kathleen Finnerty, Leslie Mei, Imokhuede Nathaniel Zedomi, and Shira Gabriel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-attractiveness-research-reveals-surprising-preference-for-femininity-in-mens-faces/" 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;">New attractiveness research reveals surprising preference for femininity in men’s faces</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 31st 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-73126-001?doi=1"><em>Journal of Experimental Psychology: General</em></a> provides a more nuanced understanding of how people’s cultural background and sexual orientation jointly shape their preferences for facial femininity or masculinity. The researchers found that people from different cultures and sexual orientations have distinct preferences for facial features, and that these preferences are also influenced by the gender and ethnicity of the faces being judged. Surprisingly, across all groups studied, there was little evidence of a preference for masculine male faces.</p>
<p>The study was designed to fill a gap in the existing literature on facial attractiveness. Previous research has shown that people often find faces with more feminine or masculine features attractive, and that these preferences can influence important outcomes such as romantic interest and even job prospects.</p>
<p>However, much of that research has been limited to heterosexual, White participants in Western countries, and most of it relied on faces that were also White. The new study expands on this work by including participants from two distinct cultures—White British and East Asian Japanese—and by including bisexual participants alongside heterosexual and gay or lesbian individuals.</p>
<p>“Judgements of people’s attractiveness have important consequences. Attractiveness of course influences behaviour in sexual/romantic contexts, but also how people are perceived more generally,” said study author Thora Bjornsdottir, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Stirling.</p>
<p>“This is referred to as the ‘halo effect,’ the phenomenon whereby people who are seen as more attractive are also seen more positively in various other ways, such as being viewed as friendlier and more successful. Given this, understanding what people find attractive is important to understand.”</p>
<p>“Lots of previous research shows that how feminine/masculine faces look strongly predicts their attractiveness,” Bjornsdottir explained. “However, most of this research has focused on what White heterosexual people find attractive in White faces – and that doesn’t necessarily generalize to other groups of people. Here, we wanted to test a more diverse sample to gain a better understanding of what different kinds of people find attractive in faces.</p>
<p>“We therefore recruited bisexual, gay/lesbian, and heterosexual women and men from the UK and Japan, and asked them to make judgements of East Asian and White faces’ attractiveness. Importantly, we experimentally manipulated the faces’ degree of femininity/masculinity.”</p>
<p>The researchers recruited over 1,500 participants: 1,018 White British individuals and 574 East Asian Japanese individuals, aged 18 to 40. The sample included a roughly equal number of men and women, and participants were categorized as heterosexual, bisexual, or gay/lesbian. The researchers used face images from the Chicago Face Database, selecting 160 unique faces—40 each of East Asian and White men and women. These images were digitally altered to create more masculine or more feminine versions of each face.</p>
<p>Each participant completed two different tasks. In the first, a forced-choice task, participants were shown two versions of the same face—one masculinized and one feminized—and asked to choose which one they found more attractive. In the second task, participants could use a slider to adjust the level of masculinity or femininity in a face until they thought it looked most attractive. This interactive method allowed the researchers to assess preferences more precisely and avoid forcing participants to choose between two extremes.</p>
<p>Across the board, most participants showed an overall preference for more feminine facial features, both in men’s and women’s faces. The strength of this preference was greater when participants could directly manipulate the facial features themselves (interactive task) compared to when they had to choose between two versions of a face (forced-choice task). However, this general tendency masked many specific variations depending on the participants’ culture and sexual orientation, as well as the face’s gender and ethnicity.</p>
<p>“We were surprised that we didn’t find any evidence for preferences for masculinity in men’s faces,” Bjornsdottir told PsyPost. “Previous research has found that gay men prefer masculinized faces over feminized faces, for example, and research has sometimes shown this pattern among heterosexual women. We didn’t find this for any sexual orientation or culture group – overall, people tended to prefer femininity rather than masculinity in both women’s and men’s faces. But preferences for <em>how much</em> femininity people found most attractive varied by culture and sexual orientation.”</p>
<p>Japanese participants preferred more feminine facial features than British participants did, particularly when judging men’s faces. This cultural effect was evident across sexual orientations and in both the forced-choice and interactive tasks.</p>
<p>The preferences of female participants varied significantly based on both sexual orientation and cultural background. In the United Kingdom, heterosexual women preferred femininity in women’s faces more than lesbian or bisexual women did. Lesbian and bisexual women showed a reduced preference for femininity in female faces, and bisexual women—unlike heterosexual women—also preferred greater femininity in male faces.</p>
<p>Among Japanese women, lesbian participants showed a pattern similar to their British counterparts: less preference for femininity in women’s faces and more preference for femininity in men’s faces. However, Japanese bisexual women stood out for preferring less femininity in both men’s and women’s faces compared to heterosexual Japanese women, indicating that bisexual women’s preferences do not simply fall between those of heterosexual and lesbian women but may reflect a unique pattern shaped by cultural and sexual identity together.</p>
<p>Male participants also showed differing patterns. Heterosexual men across both cultures preferred feminine features in women’s faces. However, their preferences for men’s faces varied: heterosexual men typically showed no strong preference for either femininity or masculinity in male faces.</p>
<p>Gay men generally preferred more masculine faces compared to heterosexual men, especially when judging male faces. This was consistent across both Japanese and British participants, though the pattern was stronger among Japanese men. When evaluating women’s faces, gay men tended to show weaker preferences for femininity compared to heterosexual men.</p>
<p>Bisexual men showed a different pattern altogether. In both cultures, they preferred less femininity in women’s faces compared to heterosexual men. But when it came to judging men’s faces, their preferences closely resembled those of heterosexual men—showing no strong preference for masculinity or femininity. This contrasts with gay men, who preferred more masculine male faces, suggesting that bisexual men’s preferences do not simply reflect a midpoint between heterosexual and gay men but rather follow a distinct trajectory.</p>
<p>In general, people preferred more femininity in women’s faces than in men’s faces. But how much femininity people preferred in men’s faces depended strongly on their own identity. Women attracted to men (including heterosexual and bisexual women) showed more varied preferences depending on their culture, age, and attractiveness. Lesbian and bisexual women were more likely to find feminine male faces attractive than heterosexual women were.</p>
<p>Preferences also varied depending on the ethnicity of the faces being judged. Across participants, White women’s faces were judged more attractive when they were made more feminine compared to East Asian women’s faces. In contrast, East Asian men’s faces were more attractive when feminized than White men’s faces.</p>
<p>This suggests that people were responding not just to the femininity/masculinity of a face in absolute terms but also in relation to the baseline appearance of that ethnicity. The researchers noted that East Asian faces in their sample were more feminine in shape overall than White faces, which may have influenced how participants adjusted or judged them.</p>
<p>“We found that both culture <em>and</em> sexual orientation simultaneously influence the degree of facial femininity/masculinity that people find most attractive,” Bjornsdottir told PsyPost. “This means that we can’t generalise what one group finds attractive to another group: for example, Japanese heterosexual women found somewhat feminine men’s faces most attractive, but British heterosexual women didn’t show a preference for femininity or masculinity in men’s faces. This further reinforces the idea that there is substantial variability in what people view as attractive, or that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Here we show that part of what influences the beholder’s eye is their culture and sexual orientation.”</p>
<p>One notable contribution of the study is its inclusion of bisexual participants, who are often excluded from research on attraction. The findings show that bisexual individuals have distinct patterns of preference that are not simply a midpoint between heterosexual and gay or lesbian preferences.</p>
<p>“Our findings provide the first evidence of what bisexual women and men find attractive in faces, as bisexual people are often excluded from research on attraction and relationships,” Bjornsdottir said. “Importantly, we show that what bisexual people find most attractive doesn’t align perfectly with what either heterosexual or gay/lesbian people find most attractive.”</p>
<p>But the study, like all research, has some limitations. “Our sample of Japanese gay and lesbian participants wasn’t as large as the rest of the groups – so we can’t draw very strong conclusions about Japanese gay/lesbian individuals’ facial femininity/masculinity preferences just from this research,” Bjornsdottir noted.</p>
<p>The study also focused only on participants from two cultures and two ethnic backgrounds, which may not reflect global diversity. Future research could include participants from more varied backgrounds and investigate whether similar patterns exist in body preferences or other aspects of physical attraction.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001720">Preferences for facial femininity/masculinity across culture and the sexual orientation spectrum</a>,” was authored by R. Thora Bjornsdottir, Iris J. Holzleitner, and Keiko Ishii.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/consciousness-remains-a-mystery-after-major-theory-showdown/" 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;">Consciousness remains a mystery after major theory showdown</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 30th 2025, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>“Theories are like toothbrushes,” it’s <a href="https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-toothbrush-problem">sometimes said</a>. “Everybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else’s.”</p>
<p>It’s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness – the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all – it’s not too far from the truth.</p>
<p>In 2022, British neuroscientist Anil Seth and I published <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-022-00587-4">a review</a> listing 22 theories based in the biology of the brain. In 2024, operating with a less restrictive scope, US public intellectual Robert Kuhn <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128?via=ihub">counted</a> more than 200.</p>
<p>It’s against this background that Nature has just <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08888-1">published</a> the results of an “adversarial collaboration” from a group called the <a href="https://www.arc-cogitate.com/project">Cogitate Consortium</a> focused on two prominent theories: global neuronal workspace theory and integrated information theory.</p>
<h2>Two big theories go head to head</h2>
<p>With so many ideas floating around and inherently elusive subject matter, testing theories has been no easy task. Indeed, debate between proponents of different theories has been vigorous and, at times, acrimonious.</p>
<p>At a particularly low point in 2023, after the initial announcement of the results Cogitate has formally published today, many experts signed an <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsr78_v1">open letter</a> arguing that integrated information theory was not only false but <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobody-knows-how-consciousness-works-but-top-researchers-are-fighting-over-which-theories-are-really-science-214074">doesn’t even qualify as scientific</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, global neuronal workspace theory and integrated information theory are two of the “big four” theories that dominate current discussions of consciousness. (The others are higher-order representation theories, and the local re-entry – or recurrency – theory.)</p>
<p>The theories are hard to summarise, but both tie consciousness to the activity of neurons in different parts of the brain.</p>
<p>Advocates of these two theories, together with a number of unaligned theorists, generated predictions from the two theories about the kinds of brain activity one would expect to be associated with consciousness.</p>
<h2>Predictions and results</h2>
<p>The group agreed that integrated information theory predicts conscious perception should be associated with sustained synchronisation and activity of signals in a part of the brain called the posterior cortex.</p>
<p>On the other hand, they said global neuronal workspace theory predicts that a process of “neural ignition” should accompany both the start and end of a stimulus. What’s more, it should be possible to decode what a person is conscious of from activity in their prefrontal cortex.</p>
<p>These hypotheses (among others) were tested by “theory-neutral” teams from across the globe.</p>
<p>The results were not decisive. Some were in line with predictions of one or other of the theories, but other results generated challenges.</p>
<p>For example, the team failed to find sustained synchronisation within the posterior cortex of the kind predicted by integrated information theory. At the same time, global neuronal workspace theory is challenged by the fact that not all contents of consciousness could be decoded from the prefrontal cortex, and by the failure to find neural ignition when the stimulus was first presented.</p>
<h2>A win for science</h2>
<p>But although this study wasn’t a win for either theory, it was a decisive win for science. It represents a clear advance in how the consciousness community approaches theory-testing.</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon for researchers to tend to look for evidence in favour of their own theory. But the seriousness of this problem in consciousness science only became clear in 2022, with the publication of an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01284-5">important paper</a> by a number of researchers involved in the Cogitate Consortium. The paper showed it was possible to predict which theory of consciousness a particular study supported based purely on its design.</p>
<p>The vast majority of attempts to “test” theories of consciousness have been conducted by advocates of those very theories. As a result, many studies have focused on confirming theories (rather than finding flaws, or falsifying them).</p>
<h2>No changing minds</h2>
<p>The first achievement of this collaboration was getting rival theorists to agree on testable predictions of the two theories. This was especially challenging as both the global workspace and integrated information theories are framed in very abstract terms.</p>
<p>Another achievement was to run the the same experiments in different labs – a particularly difficult challenge given those labs were not committed to the theories in question.</p>
<p>In the early stages of the project, the team took <a href="https://www.arc-cogitate.com/how">advice from Israeli-US psychologist Daniel Kahneman</a>, the architect of the idea of adversarial collaborations for research.</p>
<p>Kahneman said not to expect the results to change anyone’s mind, even if they decisively favoured one theory over another. Scientists are committed to their theories, he pointed out, and will cling to them even in the face of counter-evidence.</p>
<h2>The usefulness of irrationality</h2>
<p>This kind of irrational stubbornness may seem like a problem, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right systems in place, it can even help to advance science.</p>
<p>Given we don’t know which theoretical approach to consciousness is most likely to be right, the scientific community ought to tackle consciousness from a variety of perspectives.</p>
<p>The research <em>community</em> needs ways to correct itself. However, it’s useful for individual scientists to stick to their theoretical guns, and continue to work within a particular theory even in the face of problematic findings.</p>
<h2>A hard nut to crack</h2>
<p>Consciousness is a hard nut to crack. We don’t yet know whether it will yield to the current methods of consciousness science, or whether it requires a revolution in our concepts or methods (or perhaps both).</p>
<p>What is clear, however, is that if we’re going to untangle the problem of subjective experience, the scientific community will need to embrace this model of collaborative research.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/255610/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
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<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-consciousness-work-duelling-scientists-tested-two-big-theories-but-found-no-winner-255610">original article</a>.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/sheriff-partisanship-doesnt-appear-to-shape-extremist-violence-in-the-united-states/" 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;">Sheriff partisanship doesn’t appear to shape extremist violence in the United States</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 30th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>The political affiliation of elected sheriffs in the United States does not appear to influence the local incidence of extremist violence, according to a new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129251334100"><em>Political Research Quarterly</em></a>. Drawing on over a decade of data, the study found no evidence that Republican or Democratic sheriffs differ in their impact on the frequency of politically motivated attacks by right-wing or left-wing extremists in the counties they serve.</p>
<p>The researcher behind the study, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/stevenrosenzweig">Steven C. Rosenzweig</a> of Boston University, was motivated by growing concerns about political polarization, radicalization, and the rising incidence of extremist violence in the United States—particularly from far-right groups. Given previous evidence from countries in the Global South showing that elected officials’ party affiliations can influence violence levels, Rosenzweig set out to test whether a similar pattern holds in the Global North.</p>
<p>“I primarily study political violence in the Global South. Previous research (including my own) from countries such as India, Pakistan, and Indonesia has found that the partisanship of elected officials can affect the local incidence of political violence, depending on the identity of the violent actors and their victims, and their relationship to the relevant officials,” explained Rosenzweig, an assistant professor of political science and author of <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3SoQ4kr">Voter Backlash and Elite Misperception</a></em>.</p>
<p>“However, given the high levels of partisan polarization and radicalization on the American right, as well as the fact that the United States has a strange law enforcement institution—sheriffs—where leadership is selected in partisan elections, I began to wonder: might partisanship affect the incidence of political violence in the United States as well? In particular, might the partisanship of sheriffs affect the likelihood of right-wing or left-wing violence in the counties they oversee? Might this dynamic extend to a Global North democracy like the United States, especially given its somewhat unique political context?”</p>
<p>Unlike most law enforcement officials, sheriffs are elected directly by voters in partisan races, often in highly polarized political climates. They wield significant power and discretion, including decisions about arrests, detention, and cooperation with other law enforcement agencies. Some sheriffs have been publicly linked to far-right movements and have even appeared at events involving extremist rhetoric. These factors make U.S. sheriffs a plausible group through which partisan influences might shape law enforcement responses to violence.</p>
<p>To assess whether sheriffs’ partisanship affects political violence, Rosenzweig constructed a large dataset covering over 10,000 county-years across 37 states between 2004 and 2018. He matched partisan sheriff election results to incidents of extremist violence reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The incidents included any politically motivated acts of actual or threatened violence by non-state actors, with perpetrators classified as right-wing or left-wing based on their stated motives and affiliations.</p>
<p>Two main research strategies were used. First, a regression discontinuity design focused on “close-call” elections where the margin between candidates was narrow, providing a natural experiment for comparing counties that elected sheriffs from different parties. Second, a difference-in-differences analysis tracked counties over time where the sheriff’s partisan affiliation changed, allowing for broader inferences beyond tight races. Both methods found no statistically significant relationship between sheriff partisanship and the occurrence of extremist violence.</p>
<p>Even when narrowing the analysis to counties where sheriffs played a dominant law enforcement role or to counties with larger or smaller departments, the results held steady. Rosenzweig also tested for the possibility that the null results were due to weak statistical power, but equivalence testing showed that any partisan effect would have to be extremely small—so small that it would be unlikely to matter in real-world terms.</p>
<p>To better understand why partisanship had no measurable effect on violence, Rosenzweig explored several possible explanations. One is that sheriffs from both parties may genuinely agree that political violence should be prevented, regardless of ideology. Alternatively, even if sheriffs differ in their private views, the structure of American law enforcement may constrain them from acting on those preferences. Departments may be too bureaucratized or professionalized for an individual sheriff to exert significant influence over how extremist threats are addressed.</p>
<p>Another possible explanation involves electoral incentives. Voters, regardless of party, tend to oppose political violence. Competitive elections may pressure sheriffs to crack down on extremism across the board to avoid losing public support. However, Rosenzweig found limited support for this theory. Even in counties with uncompetitive sheriff elections, partisan affiliation still had no measurable effect on extremist violence.</p>
<p>Rosenzweig also examined whether sheriffs affiliated with far-right movements, such as the “constitutional sheriff” ideology, might be exceptions. Yet even in counties where such sheriffs held office, the incidence of right-wing violence was not significantly higher. This suggests that, while some sheriffs may hold extreme views, these do not necessarily translate into increased tolerance or encouragement of extremist violence at the local level.</p>
<p>“The main takeaway is that, at least in the period that I study (2007–2018), sheriffs’ partisanship does not affect the local incidence of extremist violence,” Rosenzweig told PsyPost. “Across multiple research designs and analyses, the lack of any such effect is consistent. I’m unable to identify a clear explanation for why such an effect exists in several Global South contexts but not the United States, but the results are reassuring.”</p>
<p>“Still, we should be cautious in extending the results to the current context, which includes the January 6th attack and its aftermath, the pardoning of its participants, and the further politicization of law enforcement and deterioration in the rule of law.”</p>
<p>The study also cannot fully explain why partisan differences in rhetoric and ideology do not lead to differences in enforcement outcomes. It is possible that institutional constraints, professional norms, or public pressure keep sheriffs from acting on partisan preferences, but more research is needed to identify the dominant mechanism.</p>
<p>Despite these open questions, the study provides one of the most rigorous tests to date of whether partisanship among elected law enforcement officials influences political violence in the United States. The answer, at least for now, appears to be no. Even in a highly polarized political environment, the sheriffs tasked with maintaining law and order seem to respond to extremist violence in largely similar ways, regardless of whether they wear a red or blue badge. Whether this remains true in the future is a question for ongoing research and public vigilance.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129251334100">Partisan Law Enforcement and Extremist Violence: Evidence from U.S. Sheriffs</a>,” was published on April 19, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/east-asians-more-open-to-chatbot-companionship-than-westerners/" 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;">East Asians more open to chatbot companionship than Westerners</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 30th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220221251317950"><em>Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology</em></a> suggests that cultural background influences how people feel about socially interacting with artificial intelligence. Researchers found that East Asian participants expected to enjoy conversations with chatbots more than their Western counterparts, highlighting key differences in attitudes toward AI companionship.</p>
<p>As AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT and Xiaoice become increasingly embedded in daily life, questions arise about how people perceive them. While some rely on these chatbots for productivity, others engage with them for emotional support. In East Asia, social chatbots have millions of users and even assist with caregiving, but cultural attitudes toward AI companionship remain a subject of debate.</p>
<p>Previous studies have presented mixed findings, with some suggesting Westerners embrace robots more, while others found East Asians to be more accepting. To investigate further, a research team led by Dunigan P. Folk from the University of British Columbia in Canada conducted two studies comparing perspectives between Western and East Asian groups.</p>
<p>In total, 1,659 participants were recruited. The first study surveyed 675 university students of East Asian and European descent in Canada. The second study expanded the research to include 984 Chinese and Japanese adults living in China, Japan, and the United States.</p>
<p>Across both studies, participants reported how much they would expect to enjoy a hypothetical conversation with a chatbot. They also responded to questions about how they would feel if someone else formed a social connection with a chatbot. Anthropomorphism—the tendency to attribute human characteristics to non-human entities—and exposure to advanced technology were also measured.</p>
<p>The results showed a clear pattern: participants from East Asian backgrounds were more open to forming emotional connections with chatbots compared to those from European backgrounds.</p>
<p>In Study 1, East Asian students who were not born in Canada expected to enjoy a conversation with AI more than East Asian students who were Canadian-born. East Asian students were also less uncomfortable with the idea of others bonding with AI compared to students of European heritage. In Study 2, Chinese and Japanese adults displayed more positive attitudes toward human–chatbot conversations than American adults.</p>
<p>Folk and colleagues highlight anthropomorphism as a key factor behind these cultural differences. East Asian participants were more likely to perceive AI as possessing human-like qualities, which may make interactions with chatbots feel more natural.</p>
<p>“Chinese [participants] scored higher than both American and Japanese participants in measures of anthropomorphism of technology… Japanese, too, exhibited significantly higher levels of anthropomorphism than Americans. Such differences are consistent with the idea that cultures rooted in historically animistic Eastern religions are more likely to humanize robots in the present day,” Folk and colleagues explained.</p>
<p>Beyond cultural philosophy, the researchers also examined exposure to technology. The study noted that repeated exposure to AI-powered social chatbots in East Asia could contribute to greater familiarity and acceptance, although exposure alone did not fully account for the differences in attitudes.</p>
<p>Despite these findings, the study had limitations. Participants responded to hypothetical scenarios rather than engaging with real chatbots, so actual behaviors may differ. Additionally, the research focused on a limited set of cultural groups, which may restrict the generalizability of the results.</p>
<p>The study, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00220221251317950">“Cultural Variation in Attitudes Toward Social Chatbots</a>,” was authored by Dunigan P. Folk, Chenxi Wu, and Steven J. Heine.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/frequent-fights-may-explain-why-neurotic-people-feel-less-satisfied-in-relationships/" 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;">Frequent fights may explain why neurotic people feel less satisfied in relationships</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 30th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study found that various negative behaviors — particularly conflict tactics such as yelling at a partner, isolating from them, or expressing anger — help explain the negative association between neuroticism and relationship satisfaction. Individuals high in neuroticism may be more likely to engage in these behaviors, which can erode satisfaction in their romantic relationships. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2024.2307448"><em>Sexual and Relationship Therapy</em></a>.</p>
<p>Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by a tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, sadness, irritability, and emotional instability. People high in neuroticism are more likely to perceive situations as threatening and to respond with intense emotional reactions. They often struggle with stress management and are more prone to mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.</p>
<p>Neuroticism is one of the five major dimensions in the Big Five model of personality. Individuals with low levels of neuroticism tend to be emotionally stable, calm, and less reactive to stress. The trait is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, including early life experiences. High levels of neuroticism have been linked to difficulties in relationships, poorer job performance, and reduced well-being.</p>
<p>Study author Alexyss Lange and her colleagues proposed that three main components of neuroticism — depression, anxiety, and angry hostility — might help explain why individuals with high neuroticism tend to be less satisfied in their relationships. The researchers hypothesized that neuroticism leads people to engage in more negative behaviors and fewer positive behaviors in daily life, which in turn reduces relationship satisfaction. To test this, they conducted a daily diary study.</p>
<p>The study included 202 adults who had been in an exclusive romantic relationship for at least one year and living with their partner for at least one year. Participants were recruited through Craigslist advertisements in a mid-sized town in the Northeastern United States. Of the sample, 100 participants were women. Compensation was up to $6.50, depending on how many daily diary entries they completed.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the study, participants completed assessments of relationship satisfaction (using the Hendrick’s Relationship Assessment Scale) and personality (using the Big Five Inventory-2). The study lasted seven days. Each day, participants reported how satisfied they felt in their relationship and whether they engaged in any of 64 specified behaviors. At the end of the week, they completed the relationship satisfaction assessment again.</p>
<p>As expected, individuals high in neuroticism reported lower relationship satisfaction, both in the initial survey and in their daily diary entries.</p>
<p>To facilitate analysis, the researchers grouped the 64 behaviors into two categories: positive and negative. Positive behaviors included actions such as expressing love, starting a conversation, showing gratitude, giving compliments, and tackling difficult tasks with the partner. Negative behaviors included being upset with the partner, asking for forgiveness, isolating oneself, expressing anger, and insulting the partner.</p>
<p>The researchers also identified a smaller subset of negative behaviors they labeled “conflict tactics,” which specifically involve managing conflict in dysfunctional ways. These behaviors included yelling at the partner, arguing in front of others, leaving conflicts unresolved, and isolating from the partner.</p>
<p>They then tested a statistical model suggesting that neuroticism increases the likelihood of negative behaviors and decreases the likelihood of positive behaviors — and that these behaviors in turn influence relationship satisfaction. The findings showed that negative behaviors, but not positive behaviors, mediated the link between neuroticism and lower satisfaction. Moreover, conflict tactics emerged as a particularly strong mediator of this relationship.</p>
<p>“Taken all together, our research suggests that neuroticism is associated with more frequent negative relational behaviors, and specifically poorer conflict management behaviors. We also found that these behaviors alone decrease relationship satisfaction, but that they also are mechanisms through which neuroticism works to decrease relationship satisfaction,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>While the study provides important insight into the behavioral link between neuroticism and relationship quality, it has limitations. Notably, it did not include data from participants’ partners. As a result, the role of partners’ behavior and reactions remains unknown.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2024.2307448">Neuroticism’s ties to relationship satisfaction: the role of conflict tactic behaviors</a>,” was authored by Alexyss Lange, Benjamin Rasmussen, Charlotte R. Esplin, Margaret S. Clark, and Scott S. Braithwaite.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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