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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/early-social-exclusion-linked-to-loneliness-and-rise-in-dark-triad-traits-study-finds/" 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;">Early social exclusion linked to loneliness and rise in Dark Triad traits, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 9th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A study in China reported that early social ostracism, being ignored and excluded by others, may lead to loneliness. In turn, loneliness may foster the development of Dark Triad personality traits. These traits may develop as coping mechanisms in response to prolonger social stress and vulnerability. The research was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.13018"><em>Journal of Personality</em></a>.</p>
<p>The Dark Triad refers to three socially aversive personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Narcissism is characterized by excessive self-focus, a sense of superiority, and a constant need for admiration. Machiavellianism involves manipulation, deceit, and a cynical view of human nature. Psychopathy is marked by impulsivity, lack of empathy, and antisocial behavior.</p>
<p>Although these traits are distinct, they often overlap and share a tendency toward self-interest at the expense of others. Individuals high in Dark Triad traits are more likely to engage in exploitative, deceptive, or aggressive behaviors. These traits are linked to poor interpersonal relationships, unethical decision-making, and, in some cases, short-term social success.</p>
<p>Study authors Junwei Pu and Xiong Gan aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying the development of Dark Triad traits. They hypothesized that social ostracism (the perception of being ignored or excluded), loneliness, and Dark Triad traits would be positively associated across different time points. They also proposed that social ostracism leads to loneliness, which in turn fosters the development of these traits.</p>
<p>The study included 294 adolescents between the ages of 15 and 18, recruited from three public middle schools in Jingzhou City, China. Of the participants, 168 were boys. Data were collected across three waves between October 2022 and April 2023. During this period, 64 participants dropped out, leaving a final sample of 230 for analysis.</p>
<p>At each time point, participants completed assessments of social ostracism (using the Ostracism Experience Scale for Adolescents; e.g., “I felt excluded from a group”), loneliness (using the UCLA Loneliness Scale), and Dark Triad traits (using the Dark Triad Scale).</p>
<p>The results showed that social ostracism at the first time point was associated with increased loneliness and higher levels of Dark Triad traits at later time points. Statistical analyses supported the hypothesis that early experiences of social ostracism can lead to loneliness, which may subsequently promote the development of Dark Triad traits.</p>
<p>“The results revealed a unidirectional effect from social ostracism (T1) to Dark Triad traits (T3), with loneliness (T2) acting as a mediator. This suggests the crucial role of early experiences of social ostracism and loneliness in the development of Dark Triad traits,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the developmental underpinnings of Dark Triad traits. However, the data were collected at relatively close time points and all participants came from three middle schools in the same city. Results of longer longitudinal studies and studies on other demographic groups might differ.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.13018">The Potential Roles of Social Ostracism and Loneliness in the Development of Dark Triad Traits in Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study,</a>” was authored by Junwei Pu and Xiong Gan.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-psychology-research-confirms-the-power-of-singing-to-infants/" 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 psychology research confirms the power of singing to infants</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 9th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Parents across the world sing to their babies every day—soothing them, amusing them, or simply connecting with them. But does this instinctive behavior have measurable long-term benefits for infants’ emotional well-being? A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.14246" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Child Development</a></em> suggests it does. In a randomized trial, researchers found that encouraging parents to sing more frequently led to sustained increases in infant mood, even after the intervention ended. The same benefits did not appear for caregivers themselves, but the study shows the powerful role music can play in early development.</p>
<p>The research builds on decades of work emphasizing how the early caregiving environment shapes long-term health outcomes. Warmth, responsiveness, and consistency from caregivers are essential features of a healthy attachment relationship in infancy. But families vary widely in the support and resources they have to provide this environment, and simple, accessible interventions can make a difference. This study tested one such intervention: increasing the amount of infant-directed singing in the home.</p>
<p>Previous studies have shown that singing can calm infants more effectively than speech, reduce distress, and even influence physiological markers of arousal. Musical activities have also been linked to better parent-child bonding and improved parental mood in some cases. However, most of this research focused on short-term responses. The current study aimed to find out whether singing has a cumulative effect—specifically, whether encouraging more singing over several weeks could lead to general improvements in infant mood outside of immediate music-related situations.</p>
<p>“Even before we conducted this study, there was already strong evidence that infant-directed singing has powerful short-term effects on babies,” said study author <a href="https://www.eunchomusic.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eun Cho</a>, a postdoctoral researcher at the Child Study Center at Yale University.</p>
<p>“We knew that when parents sing to their infants, it captures the baby’s attention and helps regulate mood and arousal. In some cases, singing even seems to be more effective than speaking—babies often stay calmer and more engaged when listening to music than to speech.”</p>
<p>“One of our previous studies showed that these calming effects don’t depend on the music being familiar. Even lullabies from different cultures and in unfamiliar languages could still effectively soothe babies. What hadn’t been clear, though, was whether these short-term benefits could build up over time. Could regular singing lead to lasting improvements in well-being for both infants and caregivers? That’s what we set out to explore in this study.”</p>
<p>The researchers conducted a 10-week online study with 110 families of infants, mostly under 6 months old. Participants were from several countries, though the majority lived in the United States or New Zealand. The study used an “offset” randomized design: one group received a four-week music enrichment intervention early in the study, while the control group received the same materials later on.</p>
<p>The intervention included karaoke-style videos of new songs, weekly newsletters with tips about incorporating singing into daily life, and infant-friendly musical books. The idea was not just to get caregivers to sing more, but also to help them feel more comfortable and engaged in doing so. Importantly, the researchers did not prescribe when or how to sing, leaving it up to parents to use music as they saw fit. The main goal was to increase singing naturally in the course of everyday caregiving.</p>
<p>To measure outcomes, the study used ecological momentary assessment—short surveys delivered to caregivers’ smartphones at random times during the day. These surveys asked about the infant’s mood, whether the baby had been fussy, what soothing methods were used, and the caregiver’s own mood and stress level. The high-frequency, real-time data allowed the researchers to capture fluctuations in behavior and emotional states without relying on parents’ memories.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the intervention successfully increased singing frequency. By the final week of the program, caregivers in the intervention group reported singing to their infants in nearly 90% of the survey windows—compared to about 65% in the control group. They also estimated singing more times per day overall, with the increase persisting even after the intervention had ended.</p>
<p>“From a methodological perspective, a particularly encouraging outcome was the high level of compliance with the study protocol—caregivers completed over 70% of the surveys across the 10-week period, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach for future developmental research,” Cho said. “This strong compliance supported our decision to move forward with a longer-term, longitudinal study, which is currently underway.”</p>
<p>Caregivers in the intervention group increasingly used singing as a way to soothe their babies when they were fussy. Although other soothing methods—like feeding or rocking—remained stable, singing rose sharply and became one of the most frequently reported strategies. Notably, caregivers were not told to use singing specifically to calm their infants.</p>
<p>“One interesting finding was how intuitively caregivers incorporated singing into soothing routines for their infants, even though the intervention did not explicitly instruct them to use singing for this purpose,” Cho told PsyPost. “Among a dozen soothing strategies, singing was the only one that showed a significant increase in use following the intervention.”</p>
<p>Most importantly, the intervention led to a general improvement in infant mood. Caregivers rated their infants’ mood more positively during the post-intervention period, even though the surveys were not linked to specific musical moments. The mood improvements were modest but consistent, and they did not appear in the control group. The effect was also replicated across two different countries, suggesting it may be broadly generalizable.</p>
<p>“You don’t need to be musically trained to make a positive impact through singing,” Cho explained. “Our findings suggest that when parents sing more often during daily routines—no matter what songs they sing or whether they can sing in tune or not—it can support their baby’s mood and emotional well-being. It’s a simple, low-cost practice that can strengthen parent-child connection and make daily life a little smoother.”</p>
<p>One concern in any caregiver-reported study is that parents might project their own feelings onto their infants. To address this, the researchers also looked at caregiver mood ratings. Interestingly, they found no changes in how parents rated their own mood across the study period. This suggests that the improvements in infant mood were not simply a byproduct of happier parents.</p>
<p>Additional analyses showed that infant and caregiver mood ratings, while somewhat correlated, responded differently to other questions—such as how stressed the caregiver felt or how socially connected they were. This further supports the idea that parents were reliably distinguishing between their own emotional states and those of their infants.</p>
<p>Still, the study has limitations. The sample skewed heavily toward White, highly educated, and economically advantaged families. Most participants already reported frequent singing before the intervention, which may have reduced the potential impact of the program. Additionally, the findings are based entirely on caregiver observations. While the use of frequent, real-time assessments helps reduce recall bias, it cannot fully rule out subtle reporting effects.</p>
<p>Another limitation is the narrow scope of observed benefits. The intervention appeared to improve infant mood, but not infant arousal levels, caregiver stress, or caregiver mood. It’s possible that a longer or more structured program might have stronger or more widespread effects. In fact, the researchers are now conducting a larger, eight-month study to examine whether singing, music listening, or book reading can improve outcomes for both infants and caregivers across a longer period.</p>
<p>“This study was exploratory in nature,” Cho noted. “While we anticipated seeing broader and stronger effects of singing, we only found benefits on babies’ mood. However, even though our intervention only lasted four weeks, we already saw measurable improvements in infant mood, which is really encouraging. It suggests that with more time and support, the effects of parental singing could be even stronger—and possibly extend beyond mood.”</p>
<p>“To explore that further, we’re now running a larger, longer follow-up study here at the Yale Child Study Center. It’s called Together We Grow (<a href="https://www.togetherwegrow.study/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.togetherwegrow.study</a>), and we’re enrolling parents of babies under four months old across the United States. This new study looks at how different enrichment activities—like singing, music listening, and book reading—impact the well-being of both babies and caregivers over an eight-month period. There’s a lot we’re hoping to learn in this next phase, and we hope to share those findings in the next couple of years.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14246" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ecological Momentary Assessment Reveals Causal Effects of Music Enrichment on Infant Mood</a>,” was authored by Eun Cho, Lidya Yurdum, Ekanem Ebinne, Courtney B. Hilton, Estelle Lai, Mila Bertolo, Pip Brown, Brooke Milosh, Haran Sened, Diana I. Tamir, and Samuel A. Mehr.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychopathy-stands-out-as-key-trait-behind-uncommitted-sexual-behavior/" 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;">Psychopathy stands out as key trait behind uncommitted sexual behavior</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 9th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2025.2507789" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sexual and Relationship Therapy</a></em> sheds light on how certain personality traits are associated with people’s openness to casual, uncommitted sexual relationships. The researchers found that among the so-called “Dark Triad” traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—only psychopathy consistently predicted all aspects of sociosexuality. In contrast, traits linked to kindness and prosocial values, known as the “Light Triad,” were not significant predictors when controlling for other variables.</p>
<p>Human mating strategies vary widely. Some people prefer long-term monogamous relationships, while others pursue short-term or less committed sexual encounters. These differences are partly shaped by personality traits. Sociosexual orientation refers to a person’s general tendency toward or against casual sex. It includes three dimensions: behavior (actual experiences), attitude (moral and emotional beliefs), and desire (fantasies and impulses).</p>
<p>Previous research has linked high sociosexuality to traits from the Dark Triad—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. These traits are often associated with manipulation, impulsivity, and lack of empathy. However, past studies have largely treated these traits together, without testing which specific ones matter most when considered side by side. Moreover, research on the “Light Triad”—traits that reflect moral character and prosocial orientation—has been limited, especially in terms of how these traits relate to sociosexuality.</p>
<p>This new study aimed to fill that gap by examining the independent effects of each Dark and Light Triad trait on sociosexuality, both overall and across its three dimensions. The researchers also wanted to see whether these links differed between men and women.</p>
<p>“I’ve long been interested in how individual differences shape the ways people approach romantic relationships,” said study author <a href="https://cssh.ku.edu.tr/en/programs/psychology/faculty/?detail=true&id=BURGANCI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Betul Urganci</a>, an assistant professor of psychology at Koç University.</p>
<p>“In particular, I was intrigued by the growing literature on the Dark Triad traits which are often portrayed negatively but may serve certain strategic functions in mating behavior. At the same time, I was curious about the emerging concept of the Light Triad, which emphasizes prosocial and compassionate traits. Our goal was to explore how both the darker and lighter sides of personality relate to sociosexuality, known as people’s willingness to engage in casual sex, and to see how these traits might uniquely predict different facets of that tendency.”</p>
<p>The researchers collected data from 308 adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. The participants, who were primarily heterosexual and about evenly split between men and women, completed several personality questionnaires online. These included validated measures of Dark Triad traits, Light Triad traits, and sociosexual orientation. The sociosexual scale measured participants’ reported sexual behaviors over the past year, their comfort with uncommitted sex, and their frequency of sexual fantasies involving strangers or acquaintances. The study also collected basic demographic data, such as age, gender, and relationship status, which were used as control variables in the analysis.</p>
<p>When looking at the raw correlations, all three Dark Triad traits were positively associated with sociosexual orientation. People higher in narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy were more likely to have permissive attitudes toward casual sex, stronger sexual desires, and more uncommitted sexual experiences. However, when the researchers used regression analyses to control for the overlap between the traits and other variables, psychopathy stood out as the only consistent predictor. Narcissism and Machiavellianism no longer contributed meaningful variance.</p>
<p>“Only psychopathy, not narcissism or Machiavellianism, emerged as a unique predictor when we included all three Dark Triad traits in the same model,” Urganci told PsyPost.</p>
<p>Psychopathy is characterized by impulsivity, emotional detachment, and a tendency toward thrill-seeking. The researchers suggest that these characteristics likely contribute to greater openness to uncommitted sex. People high in psychopathy may be less concerned with the emotional consequences of their actions, more inclined to take risks, and more motivated by sensation-seeking behaviors, including sexual novelty.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Light Triad traits showed only weak or inconsistent links with sociosexuality. While some negative correlations appeared in the bivariate analyses—particularly for Kantianism and Faith in Humanity—these relationships disappeared when the researchers controlled for the Dark Triad traits. In other words, the prosocial traits did not predict people’s sociosexual tendencies when accounting for darker personality features. The only exception was a small effect suggesting that, among men, higher Faith in Humanity was linked to less sociosexual behavior, although this effect was modest and not found among women.</p>
<p>“One finding that surprised us was the limited role of the Light Triad traits,” Urganci said. “We initially expected that the Light Triad traits would predict a lower tendency toward casual sex, and while we did find some weak associations, they didn’t hold up once we accounted for the Dark Triad and other variables.”</p>
<p>“The main takeaway is that not all personality traits influence mating behaviors equally. Among the traits we studied, psychopathy stood out as the strongest and most consistent predictor of interest in casual, uncommitted sex—across attitudes, desires, and behaviors. This doesn’t mean everyone high in psychopathy behaves the same way, but it does suggest that certain personality traits are linked to specific relationship strategies.”</p>
<p>It’s also important to note that the findings should not be interpreted to mean that only individuals with psychopathic traits enjoy or engage in casual sex. Sociosexual orientation exists along a continuum, and many people who are not high in psychopathy may still prefer uncommitted sexual relationships for a variety of reasons, including personal values, life stage, or cultural influences. The study highlights a statistical association, not a categorical distinction.</p>
<p>But like all research, the study has limitations. Because it relied entirely on self-report questionnaires, the findings may be affected by social desirability or inaccurate self-perceptions. Another important limitation is the study’s cross-sectional design, which prevents any firm conclusions about causality. Most participants were White, heterosexual, and in relationships.</p>
<p>“This may limit the generalizability of the findings to people in different cultures as well as single individuals,” Urganci said. “I’m interested in expanding this research cross-culturally to examine how social and cultural norms interact with individual differences to shape mating behaviors.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2025.2507789" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Examining the role of Dark and Light Triad traits on sociosexuality</a>,” was authored by Betul Urganci, Barış Sevi, Burak Dogruyol, and Ezgi Sakman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/socioeconomic-background-tied-to-distinct-brain-and-behavioral-patterns/" 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;">Socioeconomic background tied to distinct brain and behavioral patterns</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 8th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em>Nature Neuroscience</em> suggests that different aspects of socioeconomic status are associated with distinct patterns of brain structure, connectivity, and behavior—and these associations can vary depending on whether they occur in early or later stages of life. Drawing on data from more than 4,200 young adults in China, the research provides a detailed look at how family income, neighborhood adversity, and regional economic conditions relate to memory, personality traits, mental health, and brain imaging markers.</p>
<p>The findings highlight that while early-life circumstances matter, socioeconomic conditions during adolescence and early adulthood may have a stronger influence on cognitive function and mental well-being. The study also identifies specific brain regions and functional networks that may help explain how socioeconomic experiences shape behavior.</p>
<p>Socioeconomic status is widely known to influence a person’s physical and mental health. Lower status is linked to a range of conditions, including heart disease, depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. But researchers have struggled to untangle the effects of different types of disadvantage—such as low family income, unsafe neighborhoods, or poor regional infrastructure—and to determine whether timing matters, for instance, whether early-life disadvantage has different effects than experiences later in life.</p>
<p>Complicating matters further, socioeconomic status is a broad and multidimensional concept. It includes not just income, but also education, occupation, social environment, and access to resources, all of which tend to be intertwined. This makes it difficult to determine which specific aspects of disadvantage are most influential—and when they matter most.</p>
<p>To address this complexity, the researchers behind the new study set out to isolate the effects of different socioeconomic factors and time periods. Their goal was to determine how family, neighborhood, and regional economic conditions during childhood and adolescence shape adult brain and behavioral traits.</p>
<p>The research used data from the Chinese Imaging Genetics (CHIMGEN) study, a large, nationwide investigation of healthy Chinese Han young adults aged 18 to 30. From an initial pool of more than 7,000 individuals, the researchers focused on 4,228 participants who had complete data on brain imaging, behavioral traits, and socioeconomic background. These participants were drawn from 30 different research centers across China.</p>
<p>To capture socioeconomic conditions, the researchers collected information on 16 different indicators, including parental education and occupation, household income, family financial crises, neighborhood safety, and provincial-level resources like hospital beds and GDP. Each of these indicators was assessed for two life stages: early (ages 0–10) and late (ages 10+). This allowed the team to examine both the average effects of socioeconomic status over time and the distinct effects of early vs. later exposure.</p>
<p>Using statistical factor analysis, they grouped the 16 indicators into four broad dimensions of socioeconomic experience: family socioeconomic status, family adversity, neighborhood adversity, and provincial resources. Participants also completed a battery of tests assessing cognitive abilities, personality traits, and emotional well-being. In addition, they underwent advanced brain imaging, including MRI scans that measured brain structure and functional connectivity.</p>
<p>The researchers found that different socioeconomic dimensions were linked to different aspects of brain and behavior. Family socioeconomic status—measured by income, parental education, and home resources—was strongly associated with cognitive performance and brain structure. In contrast, family adversity (such as unemployment or financial crisis) and neighborhood adversity (such as exposure to violence) were more strongly related to personality and emotional traits like neuroticism, impulsivity, and depression.</p>
<p>These associations were not uniform across time. While both early and later-life socioeconomic factors showed links to brain and behavioral outcomes, the researchers found that late-stage experiences had particularly strong and unique effects. For example, higher family income and education during adolescence and early adulthood were linked to better memory and more open-minded personality traits, even after accounting for early-life conditions.</p>
<p>In terms of brain structure, higher family socioeconomic status was associated with greater volume in regions such as the cerebellum—linked to working memory—and lower volume in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in self-reflection and social cognition. The researchers also found changes in white matter integrity and functional connectivity within key networks involved in executive function and attention.</p>
<p>For instance, individuals with higher family socioeconomic status showed stronger functional connectivity in sensorimotor networks and weaker connectivity in default mode and frontoparietal networks. These differences in brain connectivity appeared to mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and behavioral traits such as openness to experience and verbal memory performance.</p>
<p>Importantly, the study also explored how changes in socioeconomic conditions over time—so-called “mobility effects”—relate to behavior. While these mobile-specific effects were not found in brain structure or connectivity, they did appear in behavior. For example, individuals who moved into more disadvantaged neighborhoods over time tended to show higher levels of neuroticism and impulsivity and lower levels of extraversion, suggesting that worsening social environments can negatively affect personality development.</p>
<p>To better understand how the brain might be involved in translating socioeconomic experiences into behavior, the researchers conducted mediation analyses. They found that changes in specific brain regions and networks helped explain some of the behavioral effects of socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>For instance, volume in a brain region that includes both the supplementary motor area and medial prefrontal cortex mediated the link between family socioeconomic status and verbal memory. Similarly, functional connectivity in the left frontoparietal network helped explain the association between higher socioeconomic status and greater openness to experience.</p>
<p>These findings point to possible neurobiological pathways through which socioeconomic factors influence cognition and personality, offering insights that could inform early interventions.</p>
<p>Although the study is large and comprehensive, it has several limitations. One issue is that the socioeconomic data were based on participants’ recall, which may be less reliable for early childhood. The data were also cross-sectional, meaning they capture a single point in time rather than tracking changes across development. This limits the ability to draw firm conclusions about causality.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the brain imaging data, while extensive, focused on specific types of structural and functional markers. Other brain mechanisms, such as neurotransmitter activity or fine-grained network dynamics, may also be involved in the links between socioeconomic experience and mental health.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study provides a more nuanced picture of how different types of socioeconomic disadvantage at different points in life influence the brain and behavior. It suggests that while early life matters, adolescence and young adulthood remain critical windows for improving life conditions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-01882-w" target="_blank">Distinct effects of early-stage and late-stage socioeconomic factors on brain and behavioral traits</a>,” was authored by Qiang Xu, Su Lui, Yuan Ji, Jingliang Cheng, Long Jiang Zhang, Bing Zhang, Wenzhen Zhu, Zuojun Geng, Guangbin Cui, Quan Zhang, Weihua Liao, Yongqiang Yu, Hui Zhang, Bo Gao, Xiaojun Xu, Tong Han, Zhenwei Yao, Wen Qin, Feng Liu, Meng Liang, Jilian Fu, Jiayuan Xu, Peng Zhang, Wei Li, Dapeng Shi, Caihong Wang, Jia-Hong Gao, Zhihan Yan, Feng Chen, Jiance Li, Jing Zhang, Dawei Wang, Wen Shen, Yanwei Miao, Junfang Xian, Meiyun Wang, Zhaoxiang Ye, Xiaochu Zhang, Xi-Nian Zuo, Kai Xu, Shijun Qiu, Chunshui Yu, and The CHIMGEN Consortium.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/do-dark-personality-traits-predict-vote-choices-in-u-s-presidential-elections/" 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;">Do dark personality traits predict vote choices in U.S. presidential elections?</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 8th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.70055" target="_blank">International Journal of Psychology</a></em> sheds light on how personality traits, moral decision-making, and political attitudes are linked to voting behavior in the 2020 United States presidential election. The researchers found that political attitudes—particularly support for social hierarchy and authoritarian views—were stronger predictors of vote choice than personality traits like narcissism or sadism. However, moral priorities such as caring and fairness also played a meaningful role.</p>
<p>The study was based on the idea that political behavior is influenced not only by social factors like age, race, and education, but also by internal traits such as personality, values, and political beliefs. While traditional research often focuses on broad personality models like the “Big Five,” the authors of this study explored more targeted traits that might relate directly to political orientation.</p>
<p>In particular, they examined the so-called “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits: psychopathy, characterized by impulsivity and a lack of empathy; sadism, or the tendency to enjoy others’ suffering; narcissism, involving entitlement and self-importance; and Machiavellianism, which reflects manipulative, calculating behavior. These traits have been linked in past research to political conservatism and support for hierarchical systems.</p>
<p>To provide balance, the researchers also included “light” personality traits known as the Light Triad, which capture a more prosocial orientation. These include Kantianism, or treating others as ends rather than means; humanism, which emphasizes the inherent worth of every individual; and faith in humanity, or believing people are generally good.</p>
<p>Beyond personality, the researchers also examined political attitudes—such as social dominance orientation (the belief that some groups should dominate others), right-wing authoritarianism (submission to traditional authorities), and left-wing authoritarianism (favoring strict enforcement of progressive values)—alongside moral preferences rooted in Moral Foundations Theory, including care, fairness, purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority.</p>
<p>“We were hoping to inform the Trump vs. Biden 2024 election but by the time the papers was even reviewed, it was already too late,” said study author Peter Karl Jonason, a full professor at Vizja University and the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and editor-in-chief of <em>Advances in Cognitive Psychology</em> and the <em>International Journal of Psychology</em>.</p>
<p>The study involved 280 adults in the United States who either voted in the 2020 presidential election or reported who they would have voted for. Participants were recruited through an online platform and compensated for their time. They completed a series of surveys that measured their personality traits, political attitudes, and moral values.</p>
<p>To assess moral values, the researchers used a decision-making task in which participants repeatedly chose between pairs of moral principles, such as “care” versus “fairness,” or “purity” versus “liberty.” This allowed the researchers to examine actual decision preferences rather than simply asking participants to rate agreement with various statements.</p>
<p>Vote choice was categorized into three groups: support for Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or a third-party candidate. The researchers then compared how personality traits, political attitudes, and moral choices differed across these groups, and whether these differences varied by gender.</p>
<p>Jonason and his colleagues found that political attitudes—particularly right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation—were the strongest predictors of vote choice. Trump supporters, for example, scored much higher on these measures than Biden supporters. In contrast, Biden voters were more likely to score high on left-wing authoritarianism, which involves strict support for progressive values and punishing those seen as regressive.</p>
<p>Moral decision-making also helped differentiate voters. Biden voters tended to choose care and fairness more often than Trump supporters, suggesting a greater focus on compassion and justice. Trump voters placed greater importance on purity and liberty, which may reflect concerns about cultural contamination and personal freedom. These findings align with previous research that ties liberal ideologies to individual-focused moral values and conservative ideologies to group-based moral concerns.</p>
<p>Interestingly, third-party voters emerged as a psychologically distinct group. Compared to Biden voters, they scored higher in psychopathy, held more conservative political attitudes, and showed stronger concerns with purity. Compared to Trump voters, they were more left-wing authoritarian, indicating support for enforcing progressive values, and placed greater emphasis on fairness. This suggests that third-party voters may reject both major candidates either because of ideological extremity or because of moral objections, depending on the direction of their attitudes.</p>
<p>In terms of personality traits, the study found no meaningful relationship between voting behavior and either dark or light traits. Although men, on average, scored higher in traits like Machiavellianism and sadism, and women tended to score higher in humanism and moral concern for care, these traits did not help predict who people voted for. This supports the idea that such broad personality traits may not be very useful for understanding specific behaviors like electoral choices.</p>
<p>“Light and dark personality traits are nearly worthless in predicting voting,” Jonason told PsyPost. “Moral values play a minor role, but a larger role in determining third party voting. Political attitudes — left or right — are, unsurprisingly, primary predictors of voting behavior. I was disappointed to learn how irrelevant the Dark Tetrad was but I was not surprised. Traits are distal, general processes and can really only link to political behaviors through more proximal factors like attitudes.”</p>
<p>The study — like all research — includes some limitations. First, the sample included relatively few Trump or third-party voters, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Online recruitment platforms also tend to attract younger and more liberal participants, which could further skew the data.</p>
<p>Second, the study focused only on the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which occurred under unique circumstances including the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread political unrest. These conditions may have influenced voting behavior in ways that do not generalize to other elections.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the findings indicate that to understand political behavior, it may be more productive to focus on values and attitudes that are closely tied to policy preferences and group identity, rather than relying on personality frameworks that are too broad for specific predictions. </p>
<p>Regarding future research, Jonason said “this was a one-off, I think. We are more interested in moral choices and how they might be a function of contextual variance.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.70055" target="_blank">Political Attitudes and Moral Decisions, Not Personality, Predict 2020 US Presidential Choice</a>,” was authored by Peter K. Jonason, Ömer Erdoğan, Aaron Hoegn, S. Brian Hood.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/anxious-depressed-individuals-underestimate-themselves-even-when-theyre-right/" 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;">Anxious-depressed individuals underestimate themselves even when they’re right</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jun 8th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57040-0" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a></em> sheds light on why individuals with anxiety and depression often remain underconfident in their abilities—even when their actual performance is intact. The study found that people with more anxious-depressive symptoms are less responsive to moments when they feel confident, which may prevent them from building a more accurate and positive overall belief in their capabilities. Interestingly, these individuals still responded normally to external feedback, suggesting that the underconfidence stems from how they integrate their own confidence experiences.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted the study to better understand how people with anxious-depression symptoms form beliefs about their own abilities—a process known as metacognition. Although earlier studies had shown a link between depression, anxiety, and underconfidence, they had not clarified the mechanisms behind this bias. The key question was whether these individuals misinterpret their moment-to-moment confidence, ignore successes, or overweight negative feedback.</p>
<p>“Previous work has shown that people with subclinical anxiety and depression symptoms can have unreasonably low self-beliefs in their abilities despite being able to perform as well as others. We wanted to study how such self-beliefs are maintained despite evidence to the contrary, as this can help provide insight into how we can potentially mitigate such low self-beliefs,” said study author Sucharit Katyal, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen.</p>
<p>To investigate, the researchers ran two large experiments with a total of over 500 participants recruited online. They measured two types of confidence: “local” confidence, or how sure participants were in their decisions on individual trials, and “global” confidence, which referred to how well they thought they were performing across a block of trials. They also manipulated feedback during tasks to test how participants updated their global confidence based on either internal cues (local confidence) or external evaluations (feedback).</p>
<p>Participants completed perception and memory tasks in a gamified setting. In the perception task, they judged which type of fruit appeared more often on the screen. In the memory task, they identified which fruit had been in a previous array. After each decision, they rated their confidence in that choice. Occasionally, they received feedback from a fictional “auditor” about whether their choice had been correct. At the end of each block, participants estimated how many answers they thought they had gotten right—this was the global self-performance estimate.</p>
<p>The researchers designed feedback blocks where correct responses were more or less likely to be followed by positive feedback, allowing them to manipulate participants’ perceived success independently of actual performance. This setup mimicked real-life scenarios where a person may receive more encouragement or criticism, regardless of how well they are doing.</p>
<p>Both experiments showed that feedback had a strong influence on global confidence. Participants who received mostly positive feedback in a block felt more confident about their performance, even though their accuracy had not changed. Those who received mostly negative feedback felt less confident. This demonstrated that global confidence could be shifted without altering task performance. Interestingly, these effects even carried over to new blocks without feedback and sometimes across different tasks, suggesting that feedback had a lasting influence.</p>
<p>But when the researchers looked at how local confidence influenced global confidence, a striking pattern emerged. People with higher anxious-depression symptoms were less likely to let moments of high confidence improve their overall self-assessment. While they still reported how confident they felt on individual trials, they didn’t seem to take that into account when judging how well they had performed overall. This blunted sensitivity to high confidence seemed to maintain their global underconfidence, even when their performance was good.</p>
<p>To better understand this pattern, the researchers used computational modeling. They tested different models that could explain how people with anxious-depression symptoms update their beliefs about themselves. One model suggested they might ignore their own local confidence; another suggested they might respond more strongly to negative feedback; a third proposed a general bias to rate themselves lower regardless of experience.</p>
<p>The results pointed clearly to the first model. The best-fitting explanation was that people with anxious-depression symptoms failed to incorporate their high-confidence experiences into their broader self-beliefs. They were not more affected by negative feedback than others, nor did they show a general tendency to underestimate themselves across the board. The problem appeared specific to the internal learning process—how they used their own confidence signals to build a bigger picture of their abilities.</p>
<p>“We had expected that people with low self-beliefs would be disproportionately sensitive to negative feedback, but we did not find this to be the case,” Katyal told PsyPost. “Instead, they were more sensitive to only their own past low confidence when they did the task.”</p>
<p>To test whether these effects extended beyond the task itself, the researchers also looked at participants’ self-beliefs in a separate task. They asked participants to rate how well a set of positive and negative adjectives described them. Those who had received mostly negative feedback during the earlier tasks were more likely to endorse negative self-descriptions afterward. This suggests that the effects of skewed feedback and internal confidence processing may shape how people view themselves more broadly, not just within a specific task.</p>
<p>“We also found that receiving negative feedback, even on an online gamified type task, can hamper people’s more global self-esteem – not just related to cognitive task performance but how they feel about themselves more generally,” Katyal said.</p>
<p>The findings help explain why people with anxiety and depression often hold negative views of their competence and may avoid new challenges—even when they have the skills to succeed. Their global underconfidence may persist not because they perform poorly or receive too much criticism, but because they do not fully recognize or internalize the moments when they feel capable.</p>
<p>The study also suggests that feedback interventions could help. Because people with anxious-depressive symptoms responded normally to external feedback, well-calibrated positive reinforcement might help shift their global confidence in a more accurate direction. The effects of feedback were strong, extended across domains, and even influenced broader self-beliefs, making it a promising tool for future interventions.</p>
<p>“Some people hold unreasonably low self-beliefs in their abilities despite performing well, sometimes known commonly as the ‘imposter syndrome.’ Here, we find that such low self-beliefs are maintained by underconfident people due to reduced sensitivity to past situations when they had high confidence on performing tasks of those abilities and higher sensitivity to situations when they had low confidence,” Katyal told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“However, underconfident people were not differentially sensitive to past instances of positive and negative feedback about their abilities. This implies that it can be helpful for people with low self-beliefs to rely on external feedback from peers who can give them accurate assessment of their abilities and not rely solely on their internal self-assessments.”</p>
<p>But the study has limitations. Although the sample included individuals with elevated symptoms, it did not include people with formal clinical diagnoses. Future research is needed to confirm whether these findings apply to clinical populations. Additionally, while feedback helped shift confidence in the short term, it is unclear how long these changes last or how best to sustain them. More work is needed to explore how feedback-based interventions could be designed to produce lasting improvements in self-beliefs and mental health.</p>
<p>“The study was conducted on large online participant samples, so it needs to be replicated in other populations to be globally applicable,” Katyal said.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57040-0" target="_blank">Distorted learning from local metacognition supports transdiagnostic underconfidence</a>,” was authored by Sucharit Katyal, Quentin JM Huys, Raymond J. Dolan, and <a href="https://metacoglab.org/" target="_blank">Stephen M. Fleming</a>.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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