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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-exposure-to-violence-linked-to-later-firearm-use/" 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 exposure to violence linked to later firearm use</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 19th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>An analysis of data from a 10-year longitudinal study of emerging adults found that individuals who experienced physical abuse during childhood were more likely to report both being threatened with a firearm and threatening another person with one. Those who reported living in more dangerous neighborhoods and witnessing greater violence between their parents were also more likely to carry firearms and to have threatened someone with one. The findings were published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941241254313"><em>Psychological Reports</em></a>.</p>
<p>Firearms are the leading cause of death among children, teenagers, and emerging adults in the United States. In 2021 alone, there were more than 10,000 firearm-related deaths in this age group, with over half classified as homicides. Rates of firearm homicides among young people have been increasing for the past two decades, making it a significant public health concern.</p>
<p>Behaviors related to firearms—such as carrying a gun or using it to threaten or harm others—raise the risk of serious injury or death. Approximately 5–10% of teenagers and emerging adults report carrying a firearm each year, with rates varying across different groups. Teenagers who own firearms are more likely to engage in firearm violence as adults. About 3% of high-risk young adults report having threatened someone with a firearm, a behavior that increases the likelihood of fatal outcomes during violent encounters. </p>
<p>Experiencing firearm-related threats or injuries is associated with long-term physical and mental health problems. Young people who have been threatened with a gun are more likely to later engage in gun violence themselves, highlighting the importance of early prevention.</p>
<p>Melissa C. Osborne and her colleagues conducted the study to examine whether early experiences of violence were related to later firearm-related behaviors and encounters. They focused on three main factors: childhood physical abuse, exposure to neighborhood violence during early childhood, and witnessing interpersonal violence in the home. The researchers proposed that these early experiences might lead individuals to feel a greater need for self-protection, become more likely to associate with deviant peer groups, and internalize the idea that violence and firearms are normal—factors that could shape their future behaviors involving guns.</p>
<p>The researchers used data from an ongoing longitudinal study involving 1,042 participants who were initially recruited at age 15 and were in their mid-twenties during the most recent data collection. The participants were drawn from seven public high schools across five urban and suburban school districts in the southern United States. At the time of the last survey, the average participant age was 25.</p>
<p>Participants were asked about firearm-related behaviors, including how often they had carried a gun in the past 12 months (“Within the past 12 months, about how often would you say you’ve carried a gun with you when you were outside your home – including in your car?”), whether they had ever threatened someone with a gun, and whether they had ever been threatened with a gun themselves.</p>
<p>The study also assessed childhood physical abuse using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire – Short Form, exposure to parental violence using the Family of Origin Violence Questionnaire, experiences of bullying (“How often have you been bullied in the past 12 months?”), and perceptions of neighborhood violence (e.g., “People are scared of being robbed in my neighborhood”).</p>
<p>The results showed that individuals who reported experiencing more physical abuse in childhood were more likely to report both being threatened with a gun and threatening others with one. Those who witnessed more violence between their parents and those who reported greater neighborhood violence were more likely to carry firearms and to have threatened someone with a firearm. In contrast, being bullied was not significantly associated with any of the firearm-related outcomes.</p>
<p>“We found that early exposure to violence predicted later firearm-related behaviors and experiences. Findings further emphasize the importance of primary prevention of violence in homes and communities to address violence-related outcomes in emerging adults,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the links between early experiences and later relationship with firearms. However, it should be noted that all study participants come from a single region of the United States. Additionally, all data came from self-reports leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941241254313">Examining the Relation Between Early Violence Exposure and Firearm-Related Experiences in Emerging Adulthood: A Longitudinal Cohort Study,</a>” was authored by Melissa C. Osborne, Dennis E. Reidy, Jeff R. Temple, Annalyn DeMello, and Yu Lu.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/what-friendships-can-tell-us-about-life-satisfaction-among-singles/" 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;">What friendships can tell us about life satisfaction among singles</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 19th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70012" target="_blank">Personal Relationships</a></em> highlights how the quality and adaptability of friendships are strongly linked to the well-being of single adults in the United States. The findings suggest that feeling satisfied with friendships and being able to manage social networks dynamically are more important to single people’s emotional health than simply having many friends or frequently communicating with them.</p>
<p>There is a long-standing belief that single adults tend to be lonelier and less satisfied with life than those in romantic relationships. But this stereotype overlooks the diversity of single people’s lives. Instead of comparing singles with partnered individuals, the researchers behind this study focused only on single adults to understand what makes their experiences different from each other.</p>
<p>Friendships often take on a larger role in the social lives of singles compared to those with romantic partners. Friends can provide support, companionship, and a sense of belonging. However, most past studies on friendship and well-being have not looked closely at the specific ways friendships might shape the lives of single people. The new study aimed to identify which features of friendships are most strongly tied to well-being, including life satisfaction, loneliness, and companionship.</p>
<p>The study was conducted by <a href="https://junwenhu.github.io/" target="_blank">Junwen Hu</a>, a PhD candidate, and Amanda Holmstrom, a professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Natalie Pennington, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and Jeffrey Hall, a professor at the University of Kansas, also contributed to the research.</p>
<p>The researchers told PsyPost: “Nearly one in three people in the United States is single, and the single population continues to grow. Yet mass media often portray singlehood as unhappy, lonely, and just a phase that should eventually end with a romantic partner and a ‘happily-ever-after.’ This view has recently been challenged by social psychologists like Dr. Bella DePaulo, who argues in her book Single at Heart that romantic partners are not the only source of intimacy and support. Friends—though often underappreciated in our culture—can greatly influence happiness. Therefore, we wanted to examine what kinds of friendships are linked to reduced loneliness and greater companionship and life satisfaction among Americans.”</p>
<p>The researchers collected data from two nationally representative samples of single adults in the United States—one in 2022 with 552 participants and another in 2023 with 391 participants. All participants were 18 years or older and were not involved in a romantic relationship.</p>
<p>Participants answered a series of online survey questions about their friendships and their emotional well-being. The surveys included measures of friendship satisfaction, support from friends, communication habits, and how well they felt they could maintain or grow their friendship networks. The researchers used statistical models to examine how ten different friendship-related factors were related to participants’ levels of loneliness, companionship, and overall life satisfaction.</p>
<p>One of the strongest and most consistent findings was that general satisfaction with friendships was associated with better well-being. Across both years, people who felt more satisfied with their friendships reported feeling less lonely, more accompanied, and more satisfied with life.</p>
<p>The study also found that single adults who reported difficulty maintaining or forming friendships—what the researchers called “network inadaptability”—were more likely to feel lonely, less likely to experience companionship, and less satisfied with life. This pattern held true across both samples.</p>
<p>Losing friends over the past year was also linked to higher loneliness, although the connection to life satisfaction was less consistent. Interestingly, the number of friends a person had or how tightly knit their friendship group was did not consistently predict better well-being. This suggests that simply having a large or close-knit group of friends is not enough. What seems to matter more is how well people feel they can manage the ebb and flow of their social connections.</p>
<p>Perceived support availability—how much people felt they could count on their friends when needed—was linked to greater companionship in both samples. However, its relationship to loneliness and life satisfaction was weaker and inconsistent.</p>
<p>“Being a happy single person isn’t just about having many friends or staying in a close-knit circle,” Hu and his colleagues explained. “While those factors might help to some extent, what matters more—across sociological, psychological, and communication factors—is having an adaptive and satisfying friendship network: being able to maintain old friendships and form new ones as desired, and feeling content with the friends one has. Perceiving that support is available from friends also plays a key role in fostering companionship.”</p>
<p>“These findings make sense, especially in a democratic, industrialized society where social relationships are often fluid. Being able to make thoughtful relationship decisions and cultivate a strong support network can significantly impact well-being. Interestingly, one side finding showed that while higher income was associated with increased companionship, it did not reduce loneliness. This may suggest that money can buy the presence of social contacts—but not necessarily the psychological sense of social fulfillment.”</p>
<p>In contrast to what some past theories have suggested, communication patterns with friends were less predictive of well-being than expected. Face-to-face communication, regular routines for keeping in touch, and the percentage of time spent socializing with friends did not show strong associations with emotional health. There was some evidence that more frequent online communication was linked to greater life satisfaction and companionship in the 2022 sample, but this was not found in the 2023 data.</p>
<p>“We were surprised that communication-related factors did not yield many significant effects, even though theory suggests that, for example, maintaining routine interaction with friends can be beneficial,” the researchers said. “It’s possible that these effects were already accounted for by variables like perceived availability of support. More research is needed to disentangle these relationships.”</p>
<p>Altogether, the researchers’ statistical models explained between 24% and 36% of the variation in loneliness, companionship, and life satisfaction among single adults. This means that these friendship factors captured a meaningful part of what contributes to well-being in this group.</p>
<p>However, because the data were collected at a single point in time, the researchers cannot determine whether friendships improve well-being or whether people who already feel better are more likely to build satisfying friendships. Longitudinal research that tracks these variables over time would help clarify these patterns.</p>
<p>Additionally, the study focused on friendship structure and interaction patterns rather than the content of conversations or the emotional tone of those relationships. Future studies could explore what kinds of support or interactions are most beneficial for singles.</p>
<p>“We hope this research contributes to a broader effort to center the well-being of single people as a heterogeneous group,” the researchers said. “People may be single by choice or by circumstance, and there are both happily single individuals and those who struggle with singleness. Rather than comparing single people to married people in ways that frame the latter as superior, we hope future work will explore the diversity of single experiences and the factors that drive well-being within this group.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70012" target="_blank">What Friendship Characteristics Are Associated With Well-Being Among Unpartnered Individuals in the United States?</a>,” was authored by Junwen M. Hu, Amanda J. Holmstrom, Natalie Pennington, and Jeffrey A. Hall.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscience-parents-anxiety-sensitivity-linked-to-teens-brain-patterns-during-emotional-challenges/" 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;">Parent’s anxiety sensitivity linked to teen’s brain patterns during emotional challenges</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 19th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>Children of parents who are highly sensitive to anxiety may show distinct patterns of brain activity when processing emotions, according to a new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/examining-the-unique-contribution-of-parent-anxiety-sensitivity-on-adolescent-neural-responses-during-an-emotion-regulation-task/B1F10D30E5AFDA4BC1E92E55209EB44D" target="_blank">Development and Psychopathology</a></em>. The researchers found that higher anxiety sensitivity in parents was linked to differences in how early adolescents’ brains respond when they’re asked to either embrace or regulate their emotional reactions to unpleasant or neutral images.</p>
<p>Many young people struggle with internalizing problems like anxiety and depression during early adolescence—a time when the brain is undergoing major emotional and social development. These problems can carry serious consequences, including academic difficulties, strained relationships, and a higher risk of long-term mental health issues. Identifying early influences that may increase a child’s vulnerability is a major goal of developmental research.</p>
<p>One characteristic that may play a role is anxiety sensitivity. This refers to the fear of physical signs of anxiety, such as a racing heart or nausea, and the belief that these symptoms could lead to harm—either physically, socially, or psychologically. Anxiety sensitivity is not a disorder in itself but may contribute to the development of emotional problems, particularly when combined with difficulties in regulating emotion.</p>
<p>Previous studies have shown that anxiety sensitivity can run in families, with parents potentially shaping their children’s emotional development through behavior, communication, and modeling. However, researchers had not yet examined how a parent’s level of anxiety sensitivity might influence the way their child’s brain handles emotional situations. The current study aimed to fill this gap by looking at how parents’ anxiety sensitivity relates to brain activation patterns in their children during an emotion regulation task.</p>
<p>“Heightened anxiety is increasingly impacting youth around the world, and studies show that the development of pathological levels of anxiety can be influenced by children’s parents, both biologically and in parenting behaviors,” said study author Leah D. Church, a graduate Student in clinical science at the University of Delaware and member of the <a href="https://sites.udel.edu/jmsp/" target="_blank">Connectomics of Anxiety and Depression (CAD) Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“Specifically, highly anxious parents may show avoidant and dysregulated behaviors that their children observe and begin to display themselves. We were interested in exploring understanding what brain functions were related to this transmission of anxious behavior from parent to child. To do so, we examined how parent’s levels of anxiety, specifically <em>anxiety sensitivity</em> (i.e., the fear of anxiety-related physical symptoms), was related to their children’s brain activity when the kids were asked to control their emotions. This could tell us whether disruptions in how children’s brains regulate emotion could be a way in which parental anxiety led to anxiety in their children.”</p>
<p>The study included 146 adolescents with an average age of about 12 years old, and their parents—most of whom were biological mothers. The researchers recruited families from the Delaware area. Adolescents completed a functional MRI scan while participating in an emotion regulation task. During this task, they viewed both neutral and emotionally negative images and were asked either to react naturally to the images or to use a distancing strategy to regulate their emotions.</p>
<p>Before the scan, parents and adolescents each completed a questionnaire assessing their own anxiety sensitivity. For parents, the questions focused on how much they feared bodily sensations associated with anxiety. For example, they rated how much they agreed with statements like “When I have trouble thinking clearly, I worry that something is wrong with me.” Children answered similar questions tailored to their age.</p>
<p>During the scanning session, the researchers measured activity in various parts of the brain as the adolescents engaged with the emotional images, either by reacting or regulating. They then examined whether the parents’ level of anxiety sensitivity was associated with the adolescents’ brain responses—while statistically controlling for the children’s own levels of anxiety sensitivity.</p>
<p>The results showed that parents’ anxiety sensitivity was associated with how their children’s brains responded when they were told to embrace, rather than regulate, their emotional reactions. Specifically, higher parental anxiety sensitivity was linked to increased activation in several brain areas involved in attention, evaluation of emotional information, and top-down control of behavior. These regions included parts of the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.</p>
<p>The strongest effects appeared when adolescents were instructed to react naturally to the images. In this condition, children of more anxiety-sensitive parents showed greater activation in brain regions involved in assessing the importance or threat level of stimuli. This pattern suggests that these children may be more attuned or reactive to emotional information in their environment, possibly because they have learned to model their parent’s heightened sensitivity to anxiety cues.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the association between parent anxiety sensitivity and adolescent brain activation was much weaker—or even absent—when the children were asked to regulate their emotions. In fact, the only brain region where parent anxiety sensitivity predicted activation in both react and regulate conditions was a section of the right orbitofrontal cortex. In this area, higher parental anxiety sensitivity was linked to more activity during the react condition and less activity during the regulate condition.</p>
<p>“We thought that parent anxiety would be related to brain differences related to <em>regulating</em> emotion, but instead found differences in how the children’s brains <em>reacted</em> to encountering emotional scenes,” Church told PsyPost. “This was surprising, because it seems that difficulty controlling emotions is not the problem, but instead that kids of anxious parents are reacting more strongly to the environment in general.”</p>
<p>Notably, these findings were specific to parental anxiety sensitivity, independent of the adolescents’ own levels of anxiety sensitivity. That means the observed effects cannot be explained simply by anxious tendencies in the children themselves.</p>
<p>The findings provide evidence that a parent’s sensitivity to anxiety-related symptoms may be reflected in their child’s brain functioning during emotional challenges. Children may not necessarily inherit these brain patterns genetically; instead, they might acquire them through observing how their parents respond to stress or emotional discomfort in everyday life. In families where parents show heightened concern about anxiety symptoms, children might learn to pay closer attention to emotional cues, leading to greater brain engagement in those areas that process and evaluate emotional information.</p>
<p>Alternatively, these brain patterns may reflect the child’s adaptations to a high-anxiety family environment. Adolescents may become more attuned to emotionally charged situations because they’ve learned—consciously or not—that these events matter a great deal to their parents. That could increase their own emotional reactivity over time, especially in settings where they are not actively trying to manage their emotions.</p>
<p>“We found that parent’s anxiety levels were related to differences in how their children’s brains reacted to seeing social scenes,” Church explained. “This was true even when we took the kid’s own anxiety into account, showing that our findings are not just due to anxiety the children already have. This underscores that disturbances in how children’s brains react emotionally to the world may be a way in which parental anxiety leads to anxiety in their children. Because we found brain differences in regions responsible for directing our attention to threat, our interpretation of these findings is that children watch their parents’ emotional responses to the world and later model this behavior.”</p>
<p>While the study had a relatively large sample for a brain imaging study, the participants were mostly white and non-Hispanic, limiting the generalizability of the findings. The parent group was also overwhelmingly composed of biological mothers, so the role of fathers or other caregivers remains less clear.</p>
<p>The study design was cross-sectional, meaning it cannot determine whether high parent anxiety sensitivity directly leads to changes in the child’s brain, or whether the observed brain patterns emerge due to other environmental or inherited factors. Longitudinal studies would be needed to track how these relationships evolve over time and to identify whether these early brain differences predict later emotional or mental health outcomes.</p>
<p>“We are continuing to collect data on our participants so that we can look at how these issues change over time,” Church said. “Ultimately, the long term goals are to be able to find the families that are at risk and help parents change the ways in which they are passing along their own anxiety to their children.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579425000227" target="_blank">Examining the unique contribution of parent anxiety sensitivity on adolescent neural responses during an emotion regulation task</a>,” was authored by Leah D. Church, Nadia Bounoua, Anna Stumps, Melanie A. Matyi, and Jeffrey M. Spielberg.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/key-alzheimers-protein-found-at-astonishingly-high-levels-in-healthy-newborns/" 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;">Key Alzheimer’s protein found at astonishingly high levels in healthy newborns</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 18th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A protein long blamed for the brain damage seen in Alzheimer’s disease has now been found in astonishingly high levels in healthy newborn babies, challenging decades of medical dogma.</p>
<p>The discovery could transform our understanding of both brain development and Alzheimer’s disease itself. The protein, called p-tau217, has been viewed as a hallmark of neurodegeneration – yet a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/7/3/fcaf221/8158110?login=false">new study</a> reveals it’s even more abundant in the brains of healthy infants.</p>
<p>Rather than being toxic, p-tau217 may be essential for building the brain during early development.</p>
<p>To understand why this matters, it helps to know what tau normally does. In healthy brains, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28386764/#:~:text=Tau%20is%20well%20established%20as%20a%20microtubule-associated%20protein%20in%20neurons.&text=Recent%20advances%20in%20our%20understanding%20of%20the,synaptic%20plasticity%2C%20and%20regulation%20of%20genomic%20stability.">tau</a> is a protein that helps keep brain cells stable and allows them to communicate – essential functions for memory and overall brain function. Think of it like the beams inside a building, supporting brain cells so they can function properly.</p>
<p>But in <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4072215/#:~:text=SUMMARY,success%20of%20developing%20novel%20therapies.">Alzheimer’s disease</a>, tau gets chemically changed into a different form called <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-024-03084-7">p-tau217</a>. Instead of doing its normal job, this altered protein builds up and clumps together inside brain cells, forming tangles that impair cell function and lead to memory loss typical of the disease.</p>
<p>For years, scientists have assumed high levels of p-tau217 always spell trouble. The new research suggests they’ve been wrong.</p>
<p>An international team led by the University of Gothenburg analysed blood samples from over 400 people, including healthy newborns, young adults, elderly adults and those with Alzheimer’s disease. What they found was striking.</p>
<p>Premature babies had the highest concentrations of p-tau217 of anyone tested. Full-term babies came second. The earlier the birth, the higher the protein levels – yet these infants were perfectly healthy.</p>
<p>These levels dropped sharply during the first months of life, remained very low in healthy adults, then rose again in people with Alzheimer’s – though never reaching the sky-high levels seen in newborns.</p>
<p>The pattern suggests p-tau217 plays a crucial role in early brain development, particularly in areas controlling movement and sensation that mature early in life. Rather than causing harm, the protein appears to support the building of new neural networks.</p>
<h2>Rethinking Alzheimer’s disease</h2>
<p>The implications are profound. First, the findings clarify how to interpret <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-clears-first-blood-test-used-diagnosing-alzheimers-disease">blood tests</a> for p-tau217, recently approved by US regulators to aid dementia diagnosis. High levels don’t always signal disease – in babies, they’re part of normal, healthy brain development.</p>
<p>More intriguingly, the research raises a fundamental question: why can newborn brains safely handle massive amounts of p-tau217 when the same protein wreaks havoc in older adults?</p>
<p>If scientists can unlock this protective mechanism, it could revolutionise Alzheimer’s treatment. Understanding how infant brains manage high tau levels without forming deadly tangles might reveal entirely new therapeutic approaches.</p>
<p>The findings also challenge a cornerstone of Alzheimer’s research. For decades, scientists have believed p-tau217 only increases after another protein, amyloid, starts accumulating in the brain, with amyloid triggering a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3505">cascade</a> that leads to tau tangles and dementia.</p>
<p>But newborns have no amyloid buildup, yet their p-tau217 levels dwarf those seen in Alzheimer’s patients. This suggests the proteins operate independently and that other biological processes – not just amyloid – regulate tau throughout life.</p>
<p>The research aligns with earlier animal studies. <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/9/4789">Research in mice</a> showed tau levels peak in early development then fall sharply, mirroring the human pattern. Similarly, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6751069/">studies of foetal neurons</a> found naturally high p-tau levels that decline with age.</p>
<p>If p-tau217 is vital for normal brain development, something must switch later in life to make it harmful. Understanding what flips this biological switch – from protective to destructive – could point to entirely new ways of preventing or treating Alzheimer’s.</p>
<p>For decades, Alzheimer’s research has focused almost exclusively on the damage caused by abnormal proteins. This study flips that perspective, showing one of these so-called “toxic” proteins may actually play a vital, healthy role at the start of life.</p>
<p>Babies’ brains might hold the blueprint for keeping tau in check. Learning its secrets could help scientists develop better ways to preserve cognitive function as we age, transforming our approach to one of medicine’s greatest challenges.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/259838/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><em>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/babies-have-more-of-this-alzheimers-linked-protein-than-dementia-patients-study-raises-hope-for-future-treatments-259838">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/peoples-ideal-leader-isnt-hyper-masculine-new-study-shows-preference-for-androgynous-traits/" 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;">People’s ideal leader isn’t hyper-masculine — new study shows preference for androgynous traits</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 18th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>People tend to think of leaders as assertive, dominant, and unemotional—traits long associated with traditional male stereotypes. But what happens when people are asked to imagine the ideal leader, rather than the typical one? A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843251349694" target="_blank">Psychology of Women Quarterly</a></em> suggests that ideal leadership traits are more balanced than commonly assumed. </p>
<p>Past research has shown that the stereotype of a “typical leader” is overwhelmingly masculine, emphasizing agency over communality. But those traits include both positive attributes like competence and negative ones like arrogance and domineering behavior. In contrast, little is known about how people envision the ideal leader, or whether that ideal shifts based on gendered cues such as the leader’s gender or the gender composition of their staff.</p>
<p>“I’ve been studying gendered leadership cognitions for a fairly long time, starting in my first year of graduate school, and it is a topic that I continue to feel passionate about,” said study author Andrea Vial, an assistant professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and director of the <a href="https://www.socialroleslab.com/" target="_blank">Social Roles & Beliefs Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“I’m stunned by the continued scarcity of women in top leadership roles, despite the substantial gains women have made over the past six or seven decades in terms of educational accomplishments and labor market participation. I’m also stunned time and time again when high profile women with excellent qualifications and relevant experience get sidelined in favor of a man who is nowhere nearly as qualified, and I want to understand how our beliefs about gender and our beliefs about leadership roles contribute to these biases. </p>
<p>“I see my research in this area as building towards a future in which leadership and gender are not so tightly tangled in people’s minds, and where society can benefit from outstanding leaders coming from all corners.”</p>
<p>The researchers conducted two preregistered experiments with over 1,300 participants. In both studies, participants were asked to imagine an ideal leader for a company and “purchase” traits for this leader using a limited budget. This method forced participants to make choices between desirable attributes, revealing which qualities they viewed as essential versus optional. </p>
<p>The researchers focused on three key dimensions: competence (e.g., capable, intelligent), assertiveness (e.g., ambitious, self-reliant), and communality (e.g., warm, trustworthy). They also assessed preferences for avoiding negative traits, such as arrogance and cynicism, compared to avoiding low-agency traits like shyness or naivete.</p>
<p>In the first study, participants were presented with a scenario involving a steel manufacturing company—a context likely perceived as male-typed—and were randomly assigned to imagine either a male or female leader. Using three rounds of trait allocation under progressively smaller budgets, participants showed a clear preference for competence over communality when resources were limited. On average, they spent two-thirds of their initial budget on competence traits. </p>
<p>However, assertiveness did not receive the same treatment. Participants allocated roughly equal amounts to assertiveness and communality, suggesting that assertiveness was not seen as more essential than warmth or sensitivity in an ideal leader.</p>
<p>“Leaders should first and foremost be highly competent, there’s no question about that,” Vial told PsyPost. “Our studies find this competence premium, but they also show that people want leaders to be communal: to care about others, to be kind to others, to be cooperative. And these are traits we associate with women much more than with men.”</p>
<p>When it came to avoiding negative traits, people strongly preferred to eliminate characteristics like arrogance and controlling behavior rather than traits associated with low agency. This suggests that, although some aggressive traits are often tolerated in male leaders, people do not view them as part of an ideal leadership profile.</p>
<p>“When asked to choose between traits like assertiveness or dominance and traits like kindness and integrity, our studies show that people tend to gravitate toward the latter, or at least want these attributes to be well-balanced,” Vial said.</p>
<p>Interestingly, participants held these ideals regardless of whether they were envisioning a male or female leader. Contrary to predictions drawn from gender role theory, the ideal woman leader was not expected to be more communal than the ideal man leader. In fact, both were expected to be competent, moderately assertive, and not domineering. This finding contradicts the assumption that female leaders are held to different standards of warmth or kindness compared to their male counterparts—at least when considering ideals rather than real-world evaluations.</p>
<p>“We had anticipated that people might want female leaders in particular to ideally be communal rather than dominant, and we were a bit surprised not to find much of a difference between people’s notions of ideal female leaders and ideal male leaders,” Vial said. “In fact, we sometimes found that people wanted male leaders to be ideally more communal than dominant.”</p>
<p>In the second study, the researchers introduced another contextual variable: the gender makeup of the leader’s staff. Participants were told the staff consisted of either mostly men or mostly women, allowing the researchers to test whether communal traits would be prioritized more when the leader would be managing women. Again, participants strongly prioritized competence over communality, regardless of staff gender composition. Assertiveness and communality were valued about equally. </p>
<p>However, there was modest evidence that participants placed slightly more emphasis on communal traits when the staff was mostly women, aligning with cultural assumptions that women prefer kinder or more supportive leadership styles.</p>
<p>The researchers also explored whether people’s own roles in the workplace influenced their leadership ideals. Participants who identified as managers were more likely to prioritize assertiveness in female leaders compared to male leaders, possibly as a way of compensating for stereotypes that women lack assertiveness. </p>
<p>On the other hand, non-managers placed greater emphasis on communality when imagining leaders of predominantly female teams. These exploratory findings suggest that leadership ideals may be shaped not only by the leader’s characteristics but also by the social identity and professional experience of the observer.</p>
<p>Across both experiments, one result remained consistent: traits associated with “dark” agency, such as arrogance or dominance, were strongly rejected in ideal leaders. Participants allocated significantly more of their limited budget to avoiding these negative traits than to avoiding traits associated with low agency. This finding held true regardless of whether the leader was male or female, suggesting a broad consensus that tyrannical or manipulative behavior is incompatible with good leadership.</p>
<p>The researchers interpret these findings as evidence that leadership ideals are more aspirational and gender-balanced than descriptive stereotypes of actual leaders. While competence continues to be viewed as non-negotiable, traits associated with interpersonal warmth are valued as much as—if not more than—assertiveness. In this sense, the ideal leader profile deviates from the hyper-masculine norm and embraces a blend of traditionally male and female traits.</p>
<p>“The studies show that people’s ideas of what would make someone a great leader (the ‘ideal’ leader) align with ideas of women more than previously thought,” Vial told PsyPost. “As a whole, our studies reveal that the ingredients that make someone an ‘ideal leader’ are high doses of competence, communal and dominant traits in equal measure, and avoiding negative aspects of agency (like arrogance). This notion that people’s mental picture of an ideal leader is in alignment with the way people see women may encourage aspiring female leaders, who are often concerned about how others will view them (given that the typical leader is masculine).”</p>
<p>Still, the study has limitations. While the budget allocation method offers a more realistic way to assess trade-offs between desirable traits, it cannot fully capture the complexity of real-world leadership judgments. People may respond differently when evaluating actual leaders they work with or observe in the media. Also, the scenarios in the study focused on generalized leadership roles and did not account for variation across different industries, cultural settings, or leadership challenges.</p>
<p>Future research could expand on these findings by examining how leadership ideals shift in female-dominated professions or by exploring how race and ethnicity intersect with gender to influence leadership expectations. The authors also suggest looking more closely at the role of workplace culture—particularly environments dominated by masculine norms—and how that might shape both leadership ideals and evaluations of men and women in positions of authority.</p>
<p>“I want to shed further light on the boundaries of our tendency to think of leaders as ‘masculine men,'” Vial explained. “Social psychological research on gendered leadership cognitions has a long history, but we’ve barely scratched the surface and we need to extend our inquiry to contexts that are under investigated (e.g., leadership cognitions in female-typed occupational contexts), leader attributes that are not usually studied (e.g., negative aspects of agency, morality component of communality), and intersectional leader identities.”</p>
<p>“Another critical long-term goal is to investigate the role of workplace culture in shaping gendered leadership cognitions, gender gaps in leadership aspiration, and perceptions of male and female leaders. There is a surge in research (including my own) looking at the way that workplace culture can become imbued with gender role norms (e.g., masculine workplace norms or feminine workplace norms), influencing employee behavior, affect, cognition, and motivation, and contributing to gender gaps in interest and participation.” </p>
<p>“Some of this research has found, for example, an association between strong masculinity workplace norms and toxic leadership,” Vial continued. “I want to further examine how gendered workplace cultures influence how leaders behave, what people expect and want from leaders, and how these perceptions in turn may contribute to gender gaps in leadership in male-typed and female-typed occupational contexts.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843251349694" target="_blank">What an Ideal Leader Should (and Shouldn’t) Be Like: Gendered Prescriptions and Proscriptions for Leaders</a>,” was authored by Andrea C. Vial and Fabiola A. M. Dorn.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/chronic-pain-rewires-how-the-brain-processes-punishment-new-research-suggests/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Chronic pain rewires how the brain processes punishment, new research suggests</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 18th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A study of adults with chronic inflammatory arthritis found that these individuals have heightened sensitivity to punishment (i.e., losses) compared to healthy controls. They also showed greater neural activity associated with punishment prediction errors in several brain regions. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae408"><em>Brain</em></a>.</p>
<p>Chronic pain and fatigue are persistent conditions that often occur together and can significantly impair daily functioning. Chronic pain refers to long-lasting pain that continues for months or years beyond the normal healing period. Fatigue in this context goes beyond ordinary tiredness—it is a profound, ongoing exhaustion that rest does not fully relieve.</p>
<p>These symptoms can result from various medical issues, such as fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases, or prolonged stress. Pain and fatigue often reinforce one another: pain can deplete energy, while fatigue can reduce pain tolerance. Both can interfere with sleep, creating a vicious cycle. Emotional effects such as depression and anxiety are common and may intensify the perception of both symptoms. People with chronic pain and fatigue often experience difficulties with concentration, physical activity, and maintaining social relationships.</p>
<p>Study author Flavia Mancini and her colleagues set out to explore whether individuals with chronic pain and fatigue show distinct patterns in how they make reward and loss decisions—and whether these differences correspond to specific patterns of brain activity.</p>
<p>The authors noted that reward and loss decision-making underlies much of everyday behavior, and that the ability to pursue benefits and avoid negative outcomes might be altered in the presence of chronic pain and fatigue.</p>
<p>The study included 29 patients with chronic inflammatory arthritis and 28 healthy individuals as controls. The average age of the patient group was 54 years, and 27 of them were women. The average age of the control group was 52 years, with 18 women. Chronic inflammatory arthritis is a long-lasting autoimmune condition marked by persistent joint inflammation, pain, swelling, and stiffness, which can lead to joint damage and reduced mobility over time.</p>
<p>Participants underwent brain imaging using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while completing a four-armed bandit decision-making task. In this task, they chose between four abstract boxes shown on a screen. Each choice had a changing and independent probability of resulting in a gain of £1, a loss of £1, both, or neither. These probabilities fluctuated gradually over time, requiring participants to continuously learn about rewards and losses separately. This setup allowed researchers to isolate reward and punishment learning.</p>
<p>Participants also gave blood samples, which were analyzed for inflammatory markers. In addition, they wore actigraphs—wrist-worn devices that measure movement—continuously for 5 to 7 days to monitor activity levels. They also recorded daily pain and fatigue ratings.</p>
<p>The results showed that participants with chronic pain were more sensitive to punishments—that is, to negative outcomes in the task. They also exhibited greater brain activity when outcomes deviated from their expectations about losses (i.e., punishment prediction errors). This increased activity was observed in the right posterior insular cortex, putamen, pallidum, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Additional analyses showed that connectivity within the insula—specifically, its centrality in brain networks—was associated with how much pain and fatigue participants reported during the task.</p>
<p>The putamen and pallidum are involved in movement regulation and habit formation. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a key role in executive functions like working memory, decision-making, and cognitive control. The insula integrates bodily sensations with emotional and cognitive states. Its posterior portion, particularly the right posterior insular cortex, processes physical sensations such as pain, temperature, and internal body awareness.</p>
<p>“The findings of this exploratory study suggest that pain and fatigue in chronic pain relate to objective behavioural changes in loss-decision making, which can be mapped to a specific pattern of activity in brain circuits of motivation and decision-making,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the neural underpinnings and psychological consequences of chronic pain. However, it should be noted that all the study participants with chronic pain suffered from inflammatory arthritis. Findings on individuals suffering from other conditions that result in chronic pain may differ.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae408">Enhanced behavioural and neural sensitivity to punishments in chronic pain and fatigue</a>,” was authored by Flavia Mancini, Pranav Mahajan, Anna á V Guttesen, Jakub Onysk, Ingrid Scholtes, Nicholas Shenker, Michael Lee, and Ben Seymour.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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