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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/social-anxiety-predicts-future-loneliness-study-finds-but-not-the-other-way-around/" 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;">Social anxiety predicts future loneliness, study finds — but not the other way around</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 22nd 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>New research has found that people who reported symptoms of social anxiety at the start of a five-year period were more likely to experience increased loneliness later on. In contrast, initial feelings of loneliness were not associated with later symptoms of social anxiety. The study was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724001818"><em>Psychological Medicine</em></a>.</p>
<p>Loneliness is a subjective emotional state that occurs when a person feels a lack of meaningful social connection or companionship. It is different from simply being alone; a person can feel lonely even when surrounded by others. Loneliness arises when there is a mismatch between the social relationships a person desires and those they actually have. It can be temporary—such as after a move or breakup—or chronic, persisting over time and significantly affecting well-being.</p>
<p>Loneliness can lead to emotional distress, including sadness, low self-esteem, and a sense of isolation. Prolonged loneliness has been linked to physical health problems such as weakened immune function, cardiovascular issues, and an increased risk of early mortality. It also raises the likelihood of developing mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety. While people of all ages can experience loneliness, it is especially common during major life transitions, such as adolescence, retirement, or bereavement.</p>
<p>Study author Anna C. Reinwarth and her colleagues set out to explore whether and how loneliness affects symptoms of social anxiety—and vice versa—over a five-year period in a large sample drawn from the German population. They also aimed to estimate the overall prevalence of loneliness and social anxiety symptoms in the general population.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed data from the ongoing Gutenberg Health Study, a large-scale longitudinal project based in the Rhine-Main region of Germany. The study, which began in 2007, primarily investigates cardiovascular health outcomes such as myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death. Participants were randomly selected from local registries in Mainz and the surrounding district of Mainz-Bingen, with sampling stratified by age and sex to ensure representativeness. Eligible participants were between 35 and 74 years old.</p>
<p>Participants provided sociodemographic information and completed assessments measuring loneliness (via a single-item question: “I am frequently alone/have few contacts”), social anxiety symptoms (using the three-item short form of the Social Phobia Inventory), depressive symptoms (using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9), generalized anxiety symptoms (using the two-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener), and perceived social support (using the six-item Brief Social Support Scale, BS-6).</p>
<p>Data for the current analysis came from two assessment waves: the baseline wave conducted between 2007 and 2012, and a follow-up wave conducted five years later between 2012 and 2017. In total, 15,010 people participated in the baseline wave, and 12,423 were followed up five years later. Approximately 49% of participants were women, and the average age at baseline was 55 years.</p>
<p>The results showed that 11% of participants reported feelings of loneliness, and 7% reported symptoms indicative of social anxiety. Over the five-year period, symptoms of social anxiety were found to be more stable than loneliness, although both showed some consistency over time.</p>
<p>Participants who reported higher levels of social anxiety symptoms at baseline were more likely to report increased loneliness five years later. However, initial feelings of loneliness were not significantly associated with later increases in social anxiety symptoms after adjusting for relevant factors.</p>
<p>“Findings provided evidence that symptoms of social anxiety are predictive for loneliness. Thus, prevention and intervention efforts for loneliness need to address symptoms of social anxiety,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the longitudinal links between social anxiety and loneliness. However, it should be noted that all data came from self-reports, while feelings of loneliness were assessed using a single item. This left room for reporting bias and measurement quality issues to affect the results.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724001818">Loneliness and social anxiety in the general population over time – results of a cross-lagged panel analysis,</a>” was authored by Anna C. Reinwarth, Manfred E. Beutel, Peter Schmidt, Philipp S. Wild, Thomas Münzel, Jochem König, Stavros V. Konstantinides, Jörn M. Schattenberg, Karl J. Lackner, Alexander K. Schuster, Oliver Tüscher, and Katharina Geschke.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/surprising-study-suggests-cannabis-can-improve-some-types-of-memory-in-the-aging-brain/" 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;">Surprising study suggests cannabis can improve some types of memory in the aging brain</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 22nd 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>As cannabis use continues to rise among older adults, researchers are trying to understand how it affects cognitive function during aging. A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-025-06754-6" target="_blank">Psychopharmacology</a></em> provides evidence that cannabis and its primary psychoactive ingredient, THC, may actually improve certain types of memory in aged rats — though these effects depend on sex, the method of delivery, and the specific type of cognitive task. </p>
<p>In particular, the researchers found that acute cannabis smoke improved working memory in aged male rats but impaired it in aged females. Chronic oral THC, on the other hand, enhanced working memory in aged rats of both sexes, without harming spatial memory or affecting younger rats.</p>
<p>Cannabis use is becoming increasingly common in older adults. From 2015 to 2023, the percentage of people over 65 in the United States who reported using cannabis in the past year nearly tripled. Many use it regularly, often to manage chronic pain, anxiety, or sleep problems. But while cannabis is well known to impair memory and attention in young adults, very little is known about how it affects the aging brain, which is already more vulnerable to cognitive decline. </p>
<p>In fact, previous studies in aged mice suggested that low doses of THC might improve cognitive function — a surprising finding that raised new questions about whether cannabis could actually help remediate age-related memory problems under some conditions.</p>
<p>The current study, led by <a href="https://neuroscience.ufl.edu/profile/bizon-jennifer/" target="_blank">Jennifer L Bizon</a>, aimed to explore this possibility in greater detail. The researchers wanted to know how cannabis affects two different kinds of memory — working memory (which relies on the prefrontal cortex) and spatial memory (which depends on the hippocampus) — in both young and aged rats, male and female. They also wanted to use delivery methods that reflect how people typically consume cannabis: by smoking and eating.</p>
<p>“Our interest in this topic arose from several directions. The first inspiration was a preclinical research program in which we were evaluating how cannabis smoke affects cognition and behavior,” said co-author <a href="https://psychiatry.ufl.edu/profile/setlow-barry/" target="_blank">Barry Setlow</a>, a professor and co-Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida.</p>
<p>“Most prior preclinical research on cannabinoid effects on behavior employed routes of administration (e.g., injections) that did not mirror how humans actually use cannabis, and thus we wanted to develop a more translationally-relevant model of cannabis use.”</p>
<p>“The second inspiration was from some results from our cannabis smoke research program in which we found (to our surprise at the time) that acute exposure to cannabis smoke could actually improve a form of cognition (working memory), but ONLY in those subjects that happened to have poor performance under baseline conditions. The third inspiration was from our research on age-related cognitive decline, in which we found that, like in aged humans, working memory tends to decline in aged rats.” </p>
<p>“Putting together all of these lines of research, we initially evaluated how cannabis smoke affected cognition in aging,” Setlow explained. “We then extended this work to evaluate oral THC consumption (i.e., ‘edibles’), as this is an increasingly common route of consumption in older adults.”</p>
<p>The research team carried out three experiments using young adult (6–9 months old) and aged (24–28 months old) rats. In the first experiment, they exposed rats to cannabis smoke and tested them on two different touchscreen-based memory tasks. One task measured working memory using a delayed non-match-to-sample test that depends on the prefrontal cortex. The other task measured spatial memory using a trial-unique non-matching-to-location task, which relies more heavily on the hippocampus.</p>
<p>In the second experiment, the researchers examined the effects of chronic oral THC consumption, delivered through gelatin that the rats voluntarily consumed over three weeks. These rats were also tested on the working memory task and later in the Morris water maze, a widely used test of spatial memory.</p>
<p>The third experiment measured how THC and its metabolites circulated in the body over time, depending on the method of administration. This allowed the researchers to compare how young and aged rats metabolized THC after smoking or eating it.</p>
<p>When rats were exposed to cannabis smoke, the effects on working memory varied depending on age and sex. Among young rats, cannabis smoke had no detectable effect on memory performance. But in aged rats, the results were strikingly different. In males, cannabis smoke improved working memory performance, especially at longer delays — the point at which age-related deficits typically emerge. In contrast, aged females showed impaired performance after cannabis smoke exposure. </p>
<p>When THC was consumed orally over several weeks, it produced a more consistent improvement in working memory among aged rats. Both males and females showed enhanced accuracy after three weeks of THC consumption, particularly at longer delay intervals, where aging tends to impair performance. Importantly, this cognitive boost was not seen in young adult rats, suggesting that the effects are specific to age-related deficits.</p>
<p>These effects were specific to working memory; the same rats showed no significant changes in their performance on the spatial memory task, regardless of sex or age. In the spatial memory task (the Morris water maze), neither young nor aged rats showed any significant change in performance after chronic oral THC. </p>
<p>“We were somewhat surprised that cannabis/THC only seemed to benefit working memory (mediated by prefrontal cortex), and forms of learning and memory mediated by the hippocampus/medial temporal lobe,” Setlow told PsyPost. “This surprise was in part due previous work in rodents showing that the latter forms of cognition can benefit from low doses of THC.”</p>
<p>To better understand why THC affected the rats differently based on age and sex, the researchers analyzed how it was metabolized. After smoking cannabis, peak blood levels of THC occurred about 10 minutes later in both young and aged rats, with no statistically significant differences between groups. After oral THC, peak levels of its main metabolite (11-COOH-THC) appeared around 30 to 60 minutes later. </p>
<p>Interestingly, aged rats showed lower levels of this metabolite than younger rats, but only after oral administration. These findings suggest that differences in THC metabolism alone are unlikely to explain the observed cognitive effects.</p>
<p>“Although cannabis tends to have adverse or neutral effects on cognition in young adults (which is the population most studied in the context of cannabis use), our data, alongside other preclinical and clinical research, suggests that it may have beneficial effects on cognition as well,” Setlow said. “This said, it is important to emphasize that such beneficial effects likely occur only at low doses, and only in specific areas of cognition.”</p>
<p>The researchers offered a few possible explanations for the age-specific benefits of THC. One theory involves the brain’s inhibitory signaling systems. In the prefrontal cortex, cannabinoid receptors are located on inhibitory neurons that help regulate the activity of pyramidal neurons, which are essential for working memory. Aging is associated with increased inhibition in the prefrontal cortex, which may contribute to cognitive decline. By activating cannabinoid receptors, THC might reduce this inhibition, allowing for more effective neuronal signaling — especially in brains that have become too suppressed.</p>
<p>Another possibility involves inflammation. Aging is linked to increased brain inflammation, which can interfere with cognition. THC has known anti-inflammatory effects, including reducing the activity of microglia (immune cells in the brain) and decreasing levels of inflammatory molecules. These effects may take time to emerge, which could explain why chronic oral THC improved memory only after several weeks of consumption.</p>
<p>And what about the impairments in working memory in aged females? One explanation for this could be related to baseline performance. In this study, aged female rats performed at levels similar to young adults before cannabis exposure, while aged males were more impaired. Earlier work showed that cannabis improves memory only in animals with lower baseline performance, which might explain why the same dose helped males but harmed females.</p>
<p>As with all research, there are caveats to consider. “Although rats mirror many (maybe most) features of human cognitive aging, there are still obvious differences,” Setlow noted. “In addition, we evaluated only a few aspects of cognitive performance, using a small number of cannabis/THC doses and schedules of administration that do not reflect the full range of human cannabis use. Finally, the doses of cannabis/THC we used were fairly low, and thus any cognitive benefits in older adults might not be obtained with higher doses such as those that might produce intoxication.”</p>
<p>But the findings are in line with <a href="https://www.psypost.org/surprising-link-between-cannabis-use-and-cognitive-decline-uncovered-after-analyzing-decades-of-data/" target="_blank">a long-term study of over 5,000 Danish men</a>, which found that those who had used cannabis at some point in their lives experienced slightly less cognitive decline over a 44-year period compared to those who had never used it. However, the difference was small—about 1.3 IQ points—and may not have real-world significance.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that future studies should investigate how other components of cannabis, especially CBD, affect cognitive aging. They also recommend longer-term studies to determine whether the benefits of chronic THC persist over time or lead to tolerance or other unwanted effects. Finally, understanding the biological mechanisms that drive sex differences in response to cannabis will be important for developing age- and sex-specific treatments.</p>
<p>“Some of our long-term goals include expanding our investigation of routes and regimens of cannabis/cannabinoid administration, to determine the breadth of conditions in which they influence cognitive performance in aging,” Setlow said. “Other goals include investigation of the neurobiological mechanisms by which cannabis/THC provides cognitive benefits in aging, so as to be able to more selectively target these mechanisms and ultimately develop more efficacious treatments for age-related cognitive decline.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-025-06754-6" target="_blank">Effects of cannabis smoke and oral Δ9THC on cognition in young adult and aged rats</a>,” was authored by Sabrina Zequeira, Emely A. Gazarov, Alara A. Güvenli, Erin C. Berthold, Alexandria S. Senetra, Marcelo Febo, Takato Hiranita, Lance R. McMahon, Abhisheak Sharma, Christopher R. McCurdy, Barry Setlow, and Jennifer L. Bizon.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/these-psychologists-correctly-predicted-trumps-2024-victory-based-on-a-single-factor/" 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;">These psychologists correctly predicted Trump’s 2024 victory based on a single factor</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 22nd 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p><strong>Before a single ballot was counted in the 2024 election, researchers had already forecast the winner—based not on polls, but on how optimistically each candidate explained negative events in their speeches.</strong></p>
<p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2025.2530464" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Journal of Positive Psychology</a></em> suggests that Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election may have been anticipated by analyzing how optimistically he explained negative events during the final weeks of the campaign. Although both Trump and Kamala Harris began the race with similar levels of optimism, Trump’s explanations for bad events became increasingly hopeful as the election approached. This shift, the researchers found, predicted not only the winner but also the size of the victory.</p>
<p>Past research has shown that the way presidential candidates talk about negative events—whether they see these problems as temporary or permanent, isolated or widespread—can predict electoral outcomes. In particular, an optimistic explanatory style, where problems are framed as specific and fixable, has been linked to electoral success. Earlier studies relied on nomination speeches, looking at a single moment in the campaign.</p>
<p>But modern campaigns are long, dynamic, and data-rich, offering more chances to understand how messaging changes over time. With the tools of positive psychology and political discourse analysis available, the researchers aimed to find out whether changes in optimism across the campaign—not just at the start—could help explain who wins.</p>
<p>The study was partly inspired by conversations between Abigail P. Blyler, the study’s lead author, and Martin Seligman, a founder of positive psychology and the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Their discussion during a university course on the science of well-being coincided with the unfolding 2024 race.</p>
<p>“Last spring, I was a teaching assistant for a new, one-time course Dr. Seligman was offering for Penn undergraduates: ‘Science of Well-Being.’ The course walked students through the history of positive psychology,” Blyler told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“One pillar of that history includes work on optimism, pessimism, and political outcomes. Lightning didn’t necessarily strike, but rather the interest emerged in conversation with Dr. Seligman in the wake of the course. It just so happened we were standing before an important historical moment: a hyper-documented political race and we had a tool/technique (CAVE) to answer the question: who will win? In other words, the prior literature, the method, and the moment all lined up!”</p>
<p>To study changes in optimism, the researchers examined campaign speeches and interviews from both Trump and Harris, focusing only on how each candidate explained negative events. These included issues that were framed as threats, harms, or challenges for either the country or the candidate personally.</p>
<p>The research team collected verbatim transcripts from each candidate’s nomination speech, their debate on September 10, and 24 other speeches or interviews (12 from each candidate) spanning mid-September to October 27, just days before the November 5 election. From these materials, they identified 1,389 instances in which a candidate discussed a bad event and explained why it happened.</p>
<p>The team used a method called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) to analyze these statements. CAVE is a tool developed in psychology to measure explanatory style by scoring how people describe the causes of negative events. Trained raters assessed each explanation on two dimensions: stability (how lasting the problem appeared to be) and globality (how widespread or important the problem seemed).</p>
<p>For example, blaming a bad outcome on a single, short-term policy failure scored as more optimistic, while saying a problem stemmed from deep, ongoing societal rot scored as more pessimistic. Higher combined scores reflected a more hopeless outlook, while lower scores indicated greater optimism.</p>
<p>The researchers calculated mean “hopelessness” scores across four campaign periods: (1) the nomination and debate period, (2) September 12 to October 10, (3) October 15 to October 19, and (4) October 21 to October 27. They then compared these scores between the candidates and across time.</p>
<p>To ensure their results weren’t being driven by other speech characteristics, the team also used a widely accepted linguistic analysis tool (LIWC-22) to evaluate each candidate’s emotional tone, focus on past versus future, and use of agency-related language (words that reflect confidence and control). These additional analyses helped test whether optimism was truly a unique factor or just another way of measuring positive mood or assertiveness.</p>
<p>Finally, to prevent hindsight bias, the researchers encrypted their findings and shared them with third-party verifiers before the election results were known, only revealing the encryption key after voting had concluded.</p>
<p>The most striking finding was that Trump’s optimism increased significantly over the final weeks of the campaign, while Harris’s optimism remained mostly steady. At the start of the campaign, including the nomination speeches and first debate, Trump and Harris had nearly identical levels of optimism. But in the closing days, Trump’s language became much more hopeful. His explanations for negative events shifted from permanent and pervasive causes to ones that seemed more temporary and solvable.</p>
<p>By contrast, Harris did not show a comparable change. While her level of optimism fluctuated slightly, there was no meaningful upward trend.</p>
<p>Trump’s late-campaign optimism correlated with his eventual win. Not only did he win the election, but the size of his victory mirrored the size of his optimism shift. This was especially notable given that most public polls had forecast a tight race or slight edge for Harris.</p>
<p>Another important finding was the sheer volume of negative events mentioned by each candidate. Trump discussed over 1,000 bad events during the campaign, more than four times the number mentioned by Harris. Yet he paired many of these references with optimistic explanations. This combination of spotlighting problems while offering hope may have enhanced his appeal, activating voter concern while reassuring them that he had solutions.</p>
<p>“We’ve understood from prior studies that how an individual naturally describes the causes of a bad event can tell us whether the individual is relatively optimistic or pessimistic,” Blyler said. “In the simplest sense, if I tend to attribute the bad things in my life to something related to me (e.g., a trait, a behavior; i.e., it’s my fault) and I believe it will persist forever, and I believe it will affect everything else in my life—attributes we call: internal, stable, global, then I’m very likely a pessimistic person.”</p>
<p>“Yet, if my tendency is to attribute the bad things in my life to causes that are outside myself, temporary, and specific (i.e., only affecting a narrow slice of my life), then I’m probably on the optimistic side of the spectrum. What we saw overwhelmingly with Trump is that while he named many more negative events, he attributed the causes largely to things outside of himself; affirmed they would not last forever (i.e., he would fix them upon entering office); and in many cases, the causes were specific.”</p>
<p>“It was not as if Trump was always more optimistic, rather; it was in the final weeks (mid to late October) that Trump became significantly more optimistic,” Blyler noted.</p>
<p>To test whether these results could have been driven by general emotional tone or confidence rather than optimism specifically, the researchers looked at other linguistic features. Optimism was largely independent from the use of positive or negative emotion, time-focused language, or agency. While agency was moderately related to optimism, only optimism showed a sharp divergence between the two candidates at the end of the campaign. This suggests that the optimism scores measured something distinctive, not just how confident or emotional the candidates appeared.</p>
<p>Although the study found that Trump’s late surge in optimism predicted the election outcome, the researchers cautioned against assuming a cause-and-effect relationship. It’s possible that Trump’s shift reflected internal campaign data showing favorable trends, which in turn boosted his mood and shaped his messaging. Alternatively, the change in his messaging style could have influenced public perception and voting behavior. The study could not distinguish between these possibilities.</p>
<p>Still, the findings raise intriguing questions about how candidates talk about problems. The research suggests that optimism in political speech is not fixed, but can shift during a campaign and that this shift may matter more than previously recognized. It also challenges the assumption that focusing on negative events hurts a candidate. In this case, Trump’s frequent references to problems, when combined with increasingly hopeful explanations, may have enhanced his appeal.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2025.2530464" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimism predicted Trump’s victory: explanatory style during the 2024 presidential campaign</a>,” was authored by Abigail P. Blyler, D. Cepeda, A. Michael, A. Shahi, S. Tousignant, R. Wainer, and M. Seligman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/researchers-explore-the-role-of-social-and-sexual-attractiveness-in-hiring-decisions/" 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;">Researchers explore the role of social and sexual attractiveness in hiring decisions</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 21st 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>People tend to say that they prioritize social warmth and vitality over physical beauty when evaluating others in both personal and professional contexts, according to a new study published in the <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03134-1" target="_blank">Archives of Sexual Behavior</a></em>. But these self-reported ideals might not fully match how decisions actually play out in the real world.</p>
<p>The concept of attractiveness has long been studied in psychology, evolutionary biology, and even management. Although it’s widely accepted that attractive individuals often enjoy social and professional advantages—like higher salaries and more positive evaluations—most studies have looked at isolated aspects of attractiveness, like facial symmetry or grooming.</p>
<p>The new study aimed to take a more comprehensive view by investigating “erotic capital,” a concept introduced by sociologist Catherine Hakim. Erotic capital refers to a collection of traits that make a person attractive to others in social, romantic, or professional settings. It includes five elements: five elements: beauty, social attractiveness, sexual attractiveness, liveliness, and social presentation.</p>
<p>Beauty refers to features like facial symmetry, clear skin, and a proportional body—traits often associated with physical appeal. Social attractiveness includes friendliness, warmth, empathy, and the ability to connect easily with others; these traits make a person pleasant and approachable. Sexual attractiveness involves a person’s sex appeal or charisma, which may be expressed through body language, confidence, or the way they emphasize their physical or intellectual assets. </p>
<p>Liveliness reflects a person’s energy, humor, curiosity, and optimism—characteristics that can make someone feel engaging and full of life. Finally, social presentation refers to how someone styles or presents themselves, including clothing, grooming, makeup, accessories, and overall personal appearance. </p>
<p>The researchers wanted to see whether people take these traits into account when meeting someone new or making professional judgments like hiring or performance evaluations. They were particularly interested in how these traits are weighed in employment decisions, which are often assumed to be based purely on merit or qualifications.</p>
<p>The research was carried out in Poland using an anonymous online survey that reached 471 respondents, including 344 women and 127 men. Most participants were under the age of 30 and had some professional experience. About one-third had experience conducting job interviews, and more than half had evaluated colleagues or subordinates in a work setting.</p>
<p>Participants were asked to rate how much 23 specific traits influenced their impression of another person across three hypothetical situations: meeting someone in a private setting, interviewing a job candidate, and evaluating a colleague they already knew. These 23 traits were grouped under the five dimensions of erotic capital.</p>
<p>For example, social attractiveness included qualities like friendliness, empathy, and the ability to make others feel comfortable. Liveliness referred to traits like optimism, humor, and energetic behavior. Presentation covered appearance-related choices like hairstyle, clothing, and accessories. Sexual attractiveness included whether someone highlighted their physical or intellectual assets or exhibited femininity or masculinity. Beauty referred to physical features such as facial symmetry and body proportions.</p>
<p>When it came to private life, participants said they valued friendliness, empathy, and warmth the most—traits under the dimension of social attractiveness. Liveliness was also highly rated, suggesting that energy and curiosity contribute significantly to how people form personal connections. In contrast, traits related to physical appearance, like a fit body or symmetrical face, were seen as relatively less important.</p>
<p>During hypothetical job interviews, the pattern was similar. Respondents said they would be most influenced by a candidate’s friendliness, appropriate clothing, and ability to relate to others. Presentation and social skills were rated more highly than physical attractiveness or sex appeal. The same general trend emerged when participants imagined evaluating a coworker they had known for some time.</p>
<p>Across all three contexts, social attractiveness and liveliness consistently stood out as the most influential dimensions. Traits associated with beauty and sexual attractiveness were often rated lower, especially in professional settings.</p>
<p>However, these findings came with notable gender differences. Men tended to place more weight on sexual attractiveness than women did. Women gave higher ratings to social warmth, energy, and presentation. Age also played a role: younger participants gave more importance to sex appeal, while older respondents placed greater emphasis on vitality and personal presentation.</p>
<p>Even though most respondents said beauty was not especially influential in hiring or evaluation decisions, the researchers noted that these responses diverged from existing literature. Prior research has consistently shown that physical attractiveness does affect employment outcomes—often in ways people may not consciously recognize.</p>
<p>The researchers caution that their findings may reflect what people think they should say rather than how they actually behave. Because the questions were hypothetical, participants may have been influenced by social desirability bias—a tendency to give responses that seem acceptable or fair, rather than admitting to biases they might hold unconsciously.</p>
<p>This effect may be especially strong in professional scenarios, where respondents could feel pressure to downplay the importance of beauty or sexual attractiveness. The authors suggest that some participants might have answered based on what they believe is right or politically correct, rather than what truly influences their judgments.</p>
<p>This gap between ideals and real-world behavior raises important questions. If people claim that physical attractiveness doesn’t matter in hiring, but empirical evidence shows otherwise, then unconscious biases may still be affecting decision-making in subtle ways. Recognizing this disconnect is essential for understanding how people navigate workplace dynamics—and for promoting fairer employment practices.</p>
<p>The researchers plan to build on this work by examining real-world hiring and performance evaluation experiences and by considering how both assessors and those being assessed perceive the role of erotic capital. They also hope to investigate how conscious and unconscious judgments differ, and whether certain traits are more or less important depending on job type or organizational culture.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03134-1" target="_blank">Erotic Capital: The Role of Attractiveness in Employment and Private Life</a>,” was authored by Katarzyna Wojtaszczyk and Marzena Syper‑Jędrzejak.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-2024-presidential-campaign-negatively-affected-sleep-for-17-of-u-s-adults/" 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;">Study: 2024 presidential campaign negatively affected sleep for 17% of U.S. adults</a>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2025.04.004" target="_blank">Sleep Health</a></em> provides evidence that major political events, such as the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, can negatively impact sleep for a significant portion of the population. Survey data from a nationally representative sample showed that about 17% of American adults—roughly 45 million people—reported worse sleep during the campaign season. These sleep problems were not evenly distributed across the population, with older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, and those without children in the home more likely to be affected.</p>
<p>Although previous research has documented how election night itself can disrupt sleep patterns, the broader period leading up to elections—when campaign messaging dominates media coverage—has been largely overlooked. Stress caused by ongoing political developments can accumulate over time, potentially disturbing sleep well before ballots are cast.</p>
<p>Many Americans report feeling exhausted and angry when thinking about politics. According to Pew Research polling, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-dismal-views-of-the-nations-politics/" target="_blank">nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults</a> often feel worn out by current political discourse, and over half frequently feel angry. Given that stress is a well-known factor that contributes to poor sleep, the researchers set out to determine whether the extended presidential campaign season had measurable effects on sleep health across different segments of the population.</p>
<p>The researchers also wanted to explore whether certain groups might be more vulnerable to sleep disruption during this period. Past studies have often relied on small or homogeneous samples, so this study aimed to produce more generalizable findings by drawing from a nationally representative sample.</p>
<p>The National Sleep Foundation partnered with Ipsos Public Affairs to conduct a nationwide online survey between September 19 and 30, 2024—roughly six weeks before the presidential election. A total of 1,421 U.S. adults participated in the survey. The sample was drawn using address-based random sampling methods to ensure it reflected the broader U.S. population, with intentional oversampling of Black and Hispanic individuals to allow for subgroup comparisons.</p>
<p>The survey included questions on sleep duration and sleep quality, using items from the Sleep Health Index. Respondents were asked to rate their sleep quality on a five-point scale ranging from excellent to poor. They also answered whether they felt the 2024 presidential election campaign had negatively impacted their sleep. Response options included “very negative impact,” “negative impact,” or “no negative impact.”</p>
<p>After screening out respondents who completed the survey too quickly or skipped the election-related question, the final analytic sample included 1,364 participants. The researchers used statistical weighting techniques to ensure the results matched U.S. census demographics.</p>
<p>Seventeen percent of respondents said that the 2024 presidential campaign negatively impacted their sleep. While this means that the majority did not experience sleep disruption, the minority that did is large in absolute numbers—potentially affecting tens of millions of Americans.</p>
<p>People who reported sleep disruption also tended to sleep less on weekends and rated their sleep quality more poorly. On average, those who said the election affected their sleep got about 6.98 hours of sleep on weekend nights, compared to 7.41 hours for those who did not report an impact. They also reported worse sleep quality, scoring an average of 3.36 on the sleep quality scale, versus 3.05 for unaffected individuals.</p>
<p>The study found some notable demographic differences. Older adults—those 65 and older—were more likely to report a negative impact on sleep than younger participants. Adults who identified as non-Hispanic and categorized as “Other” in terms of race and ethnicity (such as Asian, Native American, or multiracial) reported the highest rates of disrupted sleep. In contrast, Hispanic adults were less likely to report any negative effect.</p>
<p>Employment status and household composition also played a role. Both full-time workers and unemployed adults were more likely to report poor sleep due to the election compared to those working part-time. Adults without children at home were also more likely to report an impact than those living with children, a somewhat surprising finding given that children often contribute to sleep disruptions in other contexts.</p>
<p>Political affiliation, sex, marital status, and education level were not linked to differences in reported election-related sleep disruption. This suggests that the stress of the campaign season cuts across ideological lines and demographic categories that are often thought to divide the electorate.</p>
<p>While the study offers evidence that political campaigns can affect sleep for some people, it does have limitations. One issue is the reliance on self-report measures. Although these are widely used in sleep research, they can be influenced by memory errors or personal bias. The study also did not include objective sleep measures such as data from sleep tracking devices or sleep diaries.</p>
<p>A key factor not included in this study is individual stress levels, which may be a key driver of both sleep quality and emotional reactions to politics. Future research might explore whether psychological traits—like anxiety sensitivity, emotional reactivity, or even media consumption habits—moderate how political events affect sleep. It may also be helpful to look at whether certain messaging strategies used during campaigns, such as those that highlight threats or provoke outrage, are more likely to disrupt sleep.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2025.04.004" target="_blank">The impact of the 2024 US presidential election campaign on population sleep: A representative survey from National Sleep Foundation</a>,” was authored by Joseph M. Dzierzewski, Alysa N. Miller, Spencer A. Nielson, and Natalie D. Dautovich.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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