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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/women-feel-unsafe-when-objectified-but-may-still-self-sexualize-if-the-man-is-attractive-or-wealthy/" 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;">Women feel unsafe when objectified—but may still self-sexualize if the man is attractive or wealthy</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 23rd 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Two studies conducted in China suggest that a sexually objectifying gaze from a male partner increases women’s safety-related anxiety, regardless of the partner’s attractiveness or socioeconomic status. However, this heightened anxiety did not reduce women’s tendency to self-sexualize when the partner was described as attractive or high in socioeconomic status. The findings were published in the <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.70018"><em>Asian Journal of Social Psychology</em></a>.</p>
<p>Self-sexualization refers to the act of presenting oneself in a sexually suggestive manner. Women may engage in this behavior to gain attention, approval, or social and economic advantages. Examples of self-sexualization include wearing revealing clothing, adopting provocative poses, or emphasizing sexual attractiveness in social media images. While some individuals view self-sexualization as a form of empowerment and personal expression, others argue that it may reinforce sexual objectification and harmful gender stereotypes.</p>
<p>Psychological research indicates that frequent self-sexualization tends to be associated with increased self-objectification—where individuals begin to view themselves primarily from an external or evaluative perspective. This mindset has been linked to negative outcomes such as body dissatisfaction, appearance-related anxiety, and impaired cognitive performance in certain contexts.</p>
<p>Cultural and media influences, particularly the widespread sexualization of women in advertising and entertainment, may increase the likelihood of self-sexualizing behavior. Still, individual motivations vary widely, from personal confidence and enjoyment to internalized social pressures.</p>
<p>Study authors Dingcheng Gu and Lijun Zheng set out to examine how safety anxiety triggered by sexual objectification might influence women’s self-sexualization choices in a romantic context. Specifically, they wanted to know whether the presence of objectifying behavior would deter women from self-sexualizing—and whether this effect would depend on the perceived attractiveness or socioeconomic status of the man engaging in the objectification. To investigate this, they conducted two experiments.</p>
<p>In the first experiment, 147 heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 25 were recruited from an urban Chinese university. Participants read a short scenario asking them to imagine being on a blind date with a man. The scenario varied along two dimensions: the man was described either as having high socioeconomic status (e.g., highly educated with a good income) or low socioeconomic status. Additionally, the scenario either included or omitted a sexually objectifying gaze. In the objectifying condition, participants were told: “As you chat, you notice that he seems distracted, and you feel that he is observing your body, his gaze wandering over you.”</p>
<p>After reading the scenario, participants were asked to choose between two dresses that varied in how revealing they were. This served as a behavioral measure of self-sexualization, with selection of the more revealing dress interpreted as a higher degree of self-sexualization. Participants also completed a questionnaire assessing their level of state safety anxiety—that is, how concerned they would feel for their personal safety in the imagined situation.</p>
<p>The second experiment followed a similar design with a new group of 181 heterosexual women in the same age range, also recruited from the same university. This time, the scenario manipulated the attractiveness of the male date instead of his socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>Across both studies, imagining a sexually objectifying gaze from the male date reliably increased participants’ reported safety anxiety. This effect occurred regardless of whether the man was described as attractive or not, or as high or low in socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>However, safety anxiety only translated into a reduction in self-sexualization when the man was described as unattractive or of low socioeconomic status. In those conditions, women were more likely to choose the less revealing dress. By contrast, when the man was described as attractive or high in status, women’s self-sexualization levels remained elevated—even though they still reported feeling anxious about their safety.</p>
<p>According to the authors, these findings suggest that women may weigh both safety concerns and potential benefits when making decisions about how to present themselves in contexts shaped by sexual objectification. As they write, “our female participants tended to take both safety and resources into account when making decisions about their sexual attractiveness under the culture of sexual objectification.”</p>
<p>The study adds to the growing body of research examining how women navigate objectification in social and romantic contexts, particularly when weighing competing incentives like risk avoidance and potential social or economic gain.</p>
<p>However, the researchers acknowledge several limitations. The study relied on imagined scenarios and self-report measures, which may not fully reflect real-world behavior. Participants might have responded differently in actual social situations. Additionally, because the sample consisted entirely of young Chinese women, the findings may not generalize to other age groups, cultures, or social contexts.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.70018">Effects of sexually objectifying gaze on women’s self-sexualization in a mating context: The tradeoff between safety pursuit and resource pursuit</a>,” was authored by Dingcheng Gu and Lijun Zheng.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/most-tiktok-videos-about-birth-control-are-unreliable-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Most TikTok videos about birth control are unreliable, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 23rd 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/psrh.70025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health</a></em> suggests that popular TikTok videos about contraception are often misleading, low in quality, and rarely created by medical professionals. Researchers found that these videos frequently promote “natural” methods over hormonal options and sometimes express distrust in healthcare providers—raising concerns about how social media may be influencing reproductive health decisions.</p>
<p>With over two billion users, TikTok has become a major source of health information—especially among young adults in their reproductive years. Its appeal lies in its short, engaging videos and powerful recommendation algorithm, which personalizes content based on a user’s behavior. This can increase exposure to health information but may also create “filter bubbles,” where users repeatedly encounter the same views without access to alternative perspectives.</p>
<p>Given that contraceptive decisions often involve private, stigmatized topics, platforms like TikTok can offer a unique space for people to seek guidance outside of formal medical settings. But the popularity of non-expert content, including influencers who may lack any formal health training, raises the risk that inaccurate or one-sided information is shaping beliefs and behaviors around birth control. Prior studies have explored the quality of contraceptive information on other platforms, but few have focused on TikTok specifically.</p>
<p>To address this gap, the research team set out to systematically assess the reliability and quality of contraceptive content on TikTok, particularly around methods like the birth control pill and fertility awareness techniques. Their goal was to understand who is creating this content, what kind of information is being shared, and whether viewers are being misinformed.</p>
<p>“Research has shown that many young people nowadays are turning to social media for health information, including contraception. I’ve noticed this myself with my daughters and their friends, and I realized that not everything they see online is accurate. As a former general practitioner now working in public health research, this really stood out to me, so I decided to explore what kind of information is being shared online and how it might influence young people’s decisions,” said study author Caroline de Moel-Mandel, a lecturer and researcher at La Trobe University.</p>
<p>Between August and September 2023, the researchers searched TikTok using a fresh account set to mimic an 18-year-old female user in Australia. This strategy helped them avoid personalized algorithmic recommendations and better reflect what a typical new user might encounter. They selected the top five most-viewed hashtags related to contraceptive methods—#birthcontrol, #contraception, #thepill, #naturalbirthcontrol, and #cycletracking—and pulled the 20 most popular videos from each tag, resulting in a sample of 100 English-language videos.</p>
<p>Each video was assessed for basic information, such as the creator’s background, views, likes, and stated purpose. The researchers grouped creators into five categories: general uploaders (everyday users or influencers), medical professionals, hormone health coaches (self-identified), health educators (including naturopaths and wellness coaches), and online companies. They also evaluated whether videos expressed support or rejection of hormonal methods and whether they expressed trust or distrust in healthcare providers.</p>
<p>To measure content quality, the researchers used a tool called DISCERN, which rates the reliability and accuracy of health information. While DISCERN was originally developed for written material, it has been adapted for use with online video content. Each video received a score based on how clearly it presented its aims, explained treatment options, cited sources, and discussed risks and benefits.</p>
<p>The results point to a widespread presence of low-quality contraceptive content on TikTok. Collectively, the 100 videos had over 4.85 billion views. Yet only 10% were created by licensed medical professionals. The vast majority came from general uploaders, hormone health coaches, and health educators—groups that often lack formal medical training.</p>
<p>Videos from these non-clinical creators often promoted fertility awareness or cycle tracking methods. Over half of all videos (53%) explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, and 34% expressed some level of distrust toward health professionals or medical advice. Most of the creators expressing these views based them on personal experiences or anecdotal advice.</p>
<p>“While we anticipated that much of the information on this platform would be incorrect or incomplete, we were genuinely surprised to find that over half of the video creators explicitly rejected hormonal birth control, including the pill, injections, implants, and hormonal IUDs,” de Moel-Mandel told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“Even more concerning, one in three uploaders expressed distrust toward healthcare professionals, often based on personal experiences or unverified opinions and anecdotal advice. This widespread rejection of evidence-based methods and medical guidance reflects a deeper issue of misinformation and mistrust that could have serious public health implications.”</p>
<p>The DISCERN scores suggest that the overall quality and reliability of the videos were poor. The median total score was 27 out of a possible 75. Videos by medical professionals scored the highest, but even these were rated as poor quality on average. The lowest-scoring videos came from hormone health coaches and general uploaders. This pattern held across multiple dimensions, including how well the videos explained how different contraceptive methods work and whether they discussed both benefits and risks.</p>
<p>Some videos went beyond standard methods to promote unproven alternatives such as papaya seeds or coconut oil as contraceptives. These posts did not include evidence-based evaluations or warnings about risks.</p>
<p>Notably, the creators who expressed distrust in hormonal birth control or health professionals were overwhelmingly white, female-presenting, and in their late twenties to early forties. Many framed their content as empowering or as an effort to “reclaim” their bodies from medical systems they viewed as dismissive or coercive.</p>
<p>The study highlights the growing influence of social media on medical decision-making, especially among younger users. On a platform where negative experiences and controversial opinions tend to drive engagement, videos that challenge conventional medical advice are more likely to gain traction. But the content that gains popularity is not always the most accurate—or the most helpful when making health-related decisions.</p>
<p>“People should be aware that the vast majority of TikTok videos on contraception are not created by medical professionals and generally contain inaccurate or incomplete information not based on medical evidence,” de Moel-Mandel explained. “These videos commonly criticize hormonal birth control and promote natural methods without acknowledging their limitations, such as the need for strict consistency, partner cooperation, and reduced effectiveness when used alone.”</p>
<p>“This misinformation can lead to unsafe contraceptive choices, increasing the risk of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It is therefore essential to remain critical about the information encountered online and seek guidance from trusted healthcare professionals when making decisions about reproductive health.”</p>
<p>At the same time, the study acknowledges that not all users are simply being misled—they are also responding to dissatisfaction with how contraceptive care is delivered. Many creators described feeling dismissed or pressured by healthcare providers. These concerns reflect longstanding critiques of contraceptive counseling, where the focus on preventing pregnancy sometimes overshadows users’ concerns about side effects or autonomy.</p>
<p>The study provides a timely snapshot of contraceptive misinformation on TikTok, but it does have some limitations. The sample included only 100 videos, all in English, and was drawn at one point in time. TikTok’s algorithm and trending topics change rapidly, which means the content available to users can shift over days or weeks.</p>
<p>“As with any research, there are a few limitations that should be considered,” de Moel-Mandel noted. “Our sample, captured at a single point in time, was relatively small and confined to English-language videos, which may not reflect broader trends. We used a tool designed for written health information to assess video content, which introduced some subjectivity, although we aimed to address this by including a third reviewer to resolve notable rating discrepancies. Finally, we categorized video creators based on self-reported data, which may not always have been entirely accurate.”</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that future studies should explore how TikTok content affects contraceptive decisions, particularly among younger viewers. There is also a need to better understand the role of non-clinical influencers in shaping attitudes toward birth control.</p>
<p>“We are currently initiating a new and relevant project that still in the early stages. More details will be shared as the project progresses,” de Moel-Mandel said.</p>
<p>“I would like to add that TikTok and other social media platforms, can also offer valuable public health opportunities, as they allow people from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations to access health information and support. When used responsibly, these platforms can be powerful tools, especially when accurate information is shared by relatable creators who advocate for safe and effective practices. Collaborating with such influencers can help ensure messages resonate and encourage informed decision-making.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/psrh.70025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Do You Know What Birth Control Actually Does to Your Body?’: Assessing Contraceptive Information on TikTok</a>,” was authored by Caroline de Moel-Mandel, Arielle Donnelly, and Megan Bugden.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/researchers-fed-7-9-million-speeches-into-ai-and-what-they-found-upends-our-understanding-of-language/" 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 fed 7.9 million speeches into AI—and what they found upends our understanding of language</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 23rd 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>When the meaning of a word shifts, do people of all ages follow the trend—or do younger generations lead while older speakers remain linguistically stuck in the past? A large-scale linguistic analysis published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2426815122" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a></em> suggests that semantic change is more inclusive than previously believed. While younger individuals tend to be slightly quicker to adopt new meanings, older speakers typically follow within a few years, and in some cases, even lead the way.</p>
<p>This finding runs counter to a long-standing view in sociolinguistics that language evolves primarily through generational turnover. Instead, the results point to a more dynamic process in which speakers of all ages participate in real-time shifts in how words are used.</p>
<p>The researchers set out to test a foundational assumption in the study of language change: whether older individuals maintain stable linguistic patterns over their lives, or whether they update their language use in response to changes in the broader speech community.</p>
<p>For decades, sociolinguists have relied on the “apparent time” method, which compares the language of older and younger people at a single point in time to infer changes across generations. This method hinges on the idea that adult language use is relatively fixed. If, instead, older speakers are regularly adjusting to current trends, then these assumptions may not hold—particularly when it comes to how the meanings of words evolve.</p>
<p>Although prior research has largely supported the generational-change model, especially when it comes to pronunciation and grammatical structures, the question of whether word meanings follow the same pattern has remained relatively unexplored, especially at scale.</p>
<p>“What led us to explore the topic was the fact that a simple question hadn’t really been answered yet — when words change meaning, do people of all ages follow?” said Gaurav Kamath, a PhD student in linguistics at McGill University and the lead author on the paper. “It’s an important question for language change more broadly, because (i) sociolinguists often assume that older speakers are a window into the past (which is true only if they DO NOT adopt changes), and (ii) it tells us something about our individual capacity to change how we speak, even as adults. Plus, language change is generally a fun, relatable thing to study.”</p>
<p>To address this gap, the research team analyzed more than 7.9 million U.S. Congressional speeches delivered between 1873 and 2010. These speeches were given by thousands of speakers whose ages were known at the time of each speech, providing a rare opportunity to track linguistic behavior over nearly 140 years while also controlling for speaker age.</p>
<p>The researchers focused on a set of approximately 100 words that were likely to have undergone meaning change during the 20th century. Examples include words like “monitor,” “articles,” “satellite,” and “outstanding.” Each of these words was examined for multiple possible meanings—referred to as “senses”—using advanced language models that predicted the context-based usage of each word. These predicted meanings were then grouped using clustering algorithms to identify distinct senses of each word.</p>
<p>For example, the word “articles” could refer to physical goods, legal provisions, or written stories. By analyzing the context in which the word appeared and modeling the rise or fall of each sense over time, the researchers could chart how meanings shifted across different time periods.</p>
<p>To determine whether age influenced the adoption of new meanings, the team used statistical models that predicted the likelihood a speaker would use a given word sense, based on both the year and the speaker’s age. These models estimated whether older speakers used outdated senses or whether they adopted newer senses at a slower or faster rate compared to their younger colleagues.</p>
<p>The researchers also performed a Bayesian meta-analysis to calculate an average age-related lag across all word senses. This allowed them to quantify just how much slower older speakers were to adopt new meanings, if at all.</p>
<p>Across the dataset, the researchers found that word meaning changes were overwhelmingly driven by a collective shift in usage across time rather than by generational replacement alone. While younger speakers tended to adopt newer meanings slightly earlier, older speakers were not far behind. On average, an older speaker lagged a younger speaker by about two to three years when it came to adopting a new word meaning.</p>
<p>In many cases, this lag was so minimal that older speakers could not be considered linguistically “behind.” For instance, an older member of Congress in the 1960s might use the newer sense of a word like “articles” only a few years after a younger colleague had already started doing so. In a minority of cases, older speakers actually led the shift—such as with the geopolitical sense of the word “satellite,” which gained prominence during the Cold War era.</p>
<p>“The main result, that older speakers are highly adaptable to new word meanings, was itself a surprise,” Kamath told PsyPost. “But the even bigger surprise was that for some of the words we looked at, we even found evidence of older speakers being the ones <em>leading</em> the change.”</p>
<p>The results provide evidence that meaning change tends to be a “zeitgeist” effect—a product of the cultural and temporal moment—rather than a strict generational handoff. Even at the individual level, speakers adjusted their usage over time. When examining a handful of prolific speakers who used the same word frequently across decades, the researchers observed noticeable within-person changes in how those words were used, tracking closely with broader shifts in usage patterns.</p>
<p>“In a nutshell, older people DO pick up new meanings of words,” Kamath explained. “Another way of putting it — this is evidence that your parents/grandparents are in fact capable of using words like “sick” (i.e. “cool”) or “model” (i.e. “AI model”) in their increasingly dominant new senses.”</p>
<p>These findings carry implications for how linguists model and interpret language change. If older speakers frequently adopt contemporary usages, then differences observed in cross-sectional data may not fully capture the speed or nature of ongoing change. In fact, apparent time comparisons may underestimate the extent of change already underway, as the linguistic behavior of older speakers quickly converges with that of younger ones.</p>
<p>The results also demonstrate the power of computational approaches to studying semantic change at scale. By leveraging large text corpora, speaker metadata, and advanced natural language processing models, researchers were able to draw conclusions that would be difficult to reach using smaller-scale observational studies.</p>
<p>“We think that this study shows the potential to use tools from Natural Language Processing (NLP) to study human language, and hope that it inspires further work that uses NLP tools for linguistic inquiry,” Kamath said.</p>
<p>But there are some limitations. The study focused exclusively on adult speakers, as membership in the U.S. Congress requires individuals to be at least 25 or 30 years old. Since teenagers and young adults are often the earliest adopters of linguistic innovation, this analysis may miss the very beginning of certain shifts in meaning.</p>
<p>The dataset also reflects a specific sociopolitical group—U.S. legislators—who tend to share certain demographic characteristics, especially in earlier decades. The results may not fully generalize to the broader population or to speakers outside the United States.</p>
<p>“The main limitation to keep in mind is that we looked at Congressional speeches,” Kamath said. “We relied on this genre of data because it was the only kind of data that allowed us to keep track of thousands of speakers’ ages over ~140 years. But the downside is that the speakers we studied (members of Congress) are not at all socially representative. Women and minorities are underrepresented, and just as importantly, our study did not include language from adolescents, who are typically at the forefront of language change.”</p>
<p>In addition, while the language models used in this study were generally effective at identifying distinct meanings, they are not infallible. Some errors in sense classification likely remain, particularly in cases where word usage is ambiguous or infrequent.</p>
<p>“The next steps would be to find a way to broaden the scope of this research, to address the limitations mentioned above,” Kamath said. “Can we expand beyond just North American English, and include a more balanced demographic sample? What about other languages and societies? And what about speech from adolescents?”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2426815122" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Semantic change in adults is not primarily a generational phenomenon</a>,” was authored by Gaurav Kamath, Michelle Yang, Siva Reddy, Morgan Sonderegger, and Dallas Card.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/americans-broadly-agree-on-whats-woke-but-partisan-cues-still-shape-perceptions/" 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;">Americans broadly agree on what’s “woke,” but partisan cues still shape perceptions</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 22nd 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680251335650" target="_blank">Research and Politics</a></em> provides insight into how Americans conceptualize the term “woke.” While Democrats, Republicans, and Independents tend to agree on many of the attributes associated with being woke, the study found that partisanship shapes which issues, identities, and policies people associate with the label.</p>
<p>Although “woke” has become a widely used political term—especially in conservative media and Republican rhetoric—there remains little clarity about what the average person actually thinks it means. Originally used by Black civil rights activists to encourage vigilance against racial injustice, the term later gained traction in the 2010s during protests against police brutality. But as its popularity grew, so did its ambiguity. Over time, “woke” shifted from signifying a commitment to social justice to being used by the political right as a vague pejorative encompassing a range of progressive causes and behaviors.</p>
<p>The researchers aimed to explore whether this rhetorical evolution has altered how people across the political spectrum perceive the term. Specifically, they asked: What does the American public consider to be “woke”? And do definitions differ between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents?</p>
<p>To investigate public perceptions of wokeness, the researchers conducted a conjoint survey experiment. They recruited 1,126 participants living in the United States through Lucid/Cint, a platform that provides samples designed to reflect U.S. demographics in terms of age, gender, and race. While not a probability sample, this approach is commonly used in political science experiments to identify opinion patterns.</p>
<p>Each participant was shown two lists of items across five trials. The items included political parties, racial and gender identities, professions, products, policies, and public figures—many of which have been described as “woke” in recent media coverage. The task was simple: choose which of the two lists was more “woke,” based on the participant’s own understanding of the term. Across all trials, this yielded over 11,000 individual responses.</p>
<p>The researchers deliberately included both items clearly associated with progressive causes—such as Black Lives Matter or pro-choice policies—and items with weaker or more ambiguous ties to wokeness, such as professions, consumer products, and higher education institutions.</p>
<p>In addition to the main experiment, participants were also asked questions measuring authoritarian attitudes, such as support for rule-breaking leaders or political violence. These items were used to explore how broader ideological orientations might influence perceptions of wokeness.</p>
<p>The study found that certain items were broadly perceived as “woke” across the political spectrum. These included Democratic Party identifiers, transgender people, lesbian identities, Black Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and pro-choice policies. Items that were consistently viewed as anti-woke included the Republican Party, straight men, Donald Trump, book bans, the Proud Boys, and the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>Interestingly, not every political figure fell clearly on either side of the spectrum. For example, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Ron DeSantis, and Matt Gaetz were all perceived as relatively neutral, despite their strong affiliations with their respective parties. Similarly, high-profile right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty and Antifa were not reliably seen as either woke or anti-woke by respondents.</p>
<p>When the researchers examined responses by political affiliation, they found that partisanship played a defining role in how participants judged what was woke. For Republican respondents, items associated with the Democratic Party—regardless of their racial or gender content—were more likely to be seen as woke. Democratic respondents, on the other hand, tended to associate wokeness more with items that represented progressivism on race and gender issues.</p>
<p>For instance, Democrats were more likely to say that profiles containing Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, or feminist identifiers were woke. Republicans, by contrast, focused more on party cues. They were more likely to say something was woke if it included prominent Democrats or policies aligned with liberal values.</p>
<p>Independents offered a mixed picture. They were somewhat more likely to agree with Democrats when it came to gender progressivism but showed less consistency overall. Their views seemed to borrow selectively from both partisan frameworks.</p>
<p>Another layer of analysis revealed subtle but telling gender dynamics. Republican respondents often associated women and female political figures—especially Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—with wokeness, while not extending the same judgment to male Democratic figures like Joe Biden. Gender-oriented causes and groups were often more strongly linked to wokeness among Republican and Independent respondents than racial topics were. This suggests that opposition to gender progressivism may be a more potent trigger for anti-woke sentiment on the political right.</p>
<p>The results tend to support the idea that the term “woke” has experienced significant conceptual stretching. Once focused on racial injustice, the term now appears to operate as a general label for progressive ideas and identities, particularly those associated with the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>But the researchers caution that their forced-choice design may not perfectly reflect how people think about wokeness in real-world settings. Participants had to choose one list as more woke, even if both seemed equally woke—or not woke at all—to them. This may have pushed some respondents toward making artificial distinctions. Future studies could explore more open-ended or nuanced approaches to understanding how people define the term.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680251335650" target="_blank">What’s woke? Ordinary Americans’ understandings of wokeness</a>,” was authored by Benjamin M. VanDreew, Joseph B. Phillips, B. Kal Munis, and Spencer Goidel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-rewired-peoples-romantic-type-using-a-made-up-trait-heres-what-happened-next/" 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;">Scientists rewired people’s romantic “type” using a made-up trait—here’s what happened next</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 22nd 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>People often say they have a “type” when it comes to romantic partners. But how do these ideal traits actually influence how we see others—and even who we choose to date? A new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251339575" target="_blank">Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</a> offers experimental evidence that ideal partner preferences don’t just reflect who we are drawn to; they also seem to change how we perceive others and where we direct our romantic efforts. The findings suggest that ideals can lead people to see their current partners in a more flattering light and gravitate toward environments that feature partners who match their preferences.</p>
<p>There is a large body of research exploring what traits people say they want in a romantic partner—things like kindness, intelligence, or physical attractiveness. Past studies have found that these ideal preferences are linked to important outcomes, such as satisfaction and commitment. But most of this evidence has been correlational, meaning it can’t determine whether ideals cause these outcomes or merely reflect them.</p>
<p>To address this gap, researchers Ariana da Silva Frost and Paul Eastwick set out to design an experiment that could directly manipulate people’s ideal partner preferences and observe the resulting effects. Their goal was to determine which of four competing theories best explains how ideals influence perceptions, preferences, and behavior in romantic relationships.</p>
<p>Across two large experiments, the researchers tested how people’s ideal partner preferences could be shaped through experience, and how those altered ideals affected their perception of others. Both studies focused on individuals who were attracted to men and were currently in relationships.</p>
<p>The team used a gamified approach called “DateFest,” adapted from previous psychological paradigms, to manipulate participants’ preferences for a novel trait. In the first study, they invented a term—“Reditry”—to represent a trait that was actually babyfacedness or youthfulness. In the second study, they dropped the fictional label and used the real word “youthfulness.”</p>
<p>During the DateFest game, participants encountered images of 24 potential dating partners and had to decide whether or not to go on a hypothetical date with each one. Unknown to the participants, the game was rigged so that in one version of the study, people with higher Reditry (or youthfulness) tended to lead to more positive experiences, while in another version, this trait was only weakly linked to positive outcomes. This allowed the researchers to manipulate how much participants “learned” to value the trait, based on the outcomes of their choices.</p>
<p>After the game, participants answered a variety of questions about their preferences, their current romantic partner, and their perceptions of other people they knew.</p>
<p>The first study included 1,639 participants, the majority of whom were women, with an average age of 28. All were currently in romantic relationships and primarily attracted to men. Participants were randomly assigned to experience either a strong or weak version of the Reditry preference manipulation.</p>
<p>In the second study, 2,027 participants completed the same tasks, except the manipulated trait was explicitly described as youthfulness rather than using a fabricated label. This study also included additional measures to assess whether the effects could be attributed to participants trying to please the researchers or responding to demand characteristics.</p>
<p>In both studies, the researchers assessed four potential outcomes: whether participants perceived their current partner as higher in the target trait, whether the trait influenced their relationship satisfaction, whether it changed how they saw other people in their lives, and whether it influenced hypothetical choices to enter environments with more potential partners who matched the trait.</p>
<p>Across both studies, the strongest and most consistent finding was that participants who were led to value Reditry or youthfulness more also came to believe that their current partner possessed more of that trait. This finding supports what the researchers call the “motivated projection” theory—the idea that people see what they want to see in their romantic partners.</p>
<p>There was also support for what the researchers term “situation selection.” Participants who came to value the trait more strongly expressed greater interest in joining a hypothetical dating website filled with potential partners high in that trait. This suggests that ideals may influence how people shape their romantic opportunities, not just how they evaluate individuals.</p>
<p>The results for the third theory, “perceiver effects,” were more mixed. Participants who were led to value the trait more also tended to believe that their friends and themselves had more of the trait, but this effect did not always extend to strangers or disliked individuals.</p>
<p>The weakest support was found for the idea that people are more satisfied in their relationships when their partner matches their ideals—known as the “preference-matching” or trait-weighting model. This effect emerged in the first study when the trait was labeled “Reditry,” but disappeared in the second study when it was labeled “youthfulness.” The researchers suggest this inconsistency may reflect the difficulty of detecting such effects when the trait has clear real-world meaning or is more resistant to reinterpretation.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the studies also showed that manipulating how much participants valued a trait could alter their interpretation of that trait. For example, participants who were induced to value youthfulness were more likely to interpret it in a positive way (as energetic or active) rather than a negative one (as immature or childish).</p>
<p>But there are limitations to keep in mind. First, both studies focused exclusively on people attracted to men and used male facial stimuli, meaning the results may not generalize to those attracted to women or nonbinary individuals. Second, all participants were in relationships, so the hypothetical nature of some tasks (like the dating website scenario) may have limited their ecological validity.</p>
<p>The traits selected for manipulation—babyfacedness and youthfulness—also have unique characteristics that may not apply to all partner ideals. Future research could apply similar methods to other traits such as ambition, kindness, or physical attractiveness.</p>
<p>Additionally, while these experiments provide strong evidence that ideals influence perception and decision-making, the underlying psychological mechanisms remain unclear. More work is needed to understand exactly how motivated reasoning and belief formation interact in shaping romantic perceptions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251339575" target="_blank">Experimental Tests of the Role of Ideal Partner Preferences in Relationships</a>,” was authored by Aline da Silva Frost and Paul W. Eastwick.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/dopamine-boosting-drug-enhances-self-control-and-reduces-drinking-in-people-with-alcohol-use-disorder/" 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;">Dopamine-boosting drug enhances self-control and reduces drinking in people with alcohol use disorder</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 22nd 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new clinical trial has found evidence that the dopamine-enhancing drug tolcapone can help improve self-control and reduce alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorder. The study, published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2025.06.003" target="_blank">Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging</a></em>, found that tolcapone increased activity in brain regions involved in inhibitory control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These changes were associated with improved performance on a self-control task and fewer drinks consumed during the trial.</p>
<p>Alcohol use disorder involves both strong motivation to consume alcohol and a reduced ability to inhibit that motivation. Brain circuits that support self-control are thought to be impaired in people with this condition. Specifically, lower dopamine signaling in the prefrontal cortex has been observed in individuals with alcohol use disorder, and this may contribute to the loss of behavioral control.</p>
<p>Previous attempts to treat alcohol use disorder with dopamine-related medications have had mixed results, possibly because these drugs influence dopamine levels across broad brain regions. In contrast, tolcapone offers a more targeted approach. It inhibits an enzyme called catechol-O-methyltransferase, which breaks down dopamine primarily in the prefrontal cortex. By increasing dopamine availability specifically in this region, tolcapone may help restore some of the self-regulatory functions that are disrupted in alcohol use disorder.</p>
<p>“Alcohol use disorder is a prevalent and devastating disease for which only three medications are currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),” said study author <a href="https://medschool.cuanschutz.edu/psychiatry/research/faculty-labs/trail-lab" target="_blank">Joseph P. Schacht</a>, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.</p>
<p>“These existing medications are believed to work by reducing craving for alcohol and/or changing its acute effects (increasing negative effects or reducing euphoric effects). A core symptom of alcohol use disorder is loss of control over drinking, and we wanted to explore whether a different kind of medication, which might increase behavioral control, might be effective for people with alcohol use disorder. </p>
<p>“We conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of tolcapone, an FDA-approved medication for Parkinson’s disease. Tolcapone inhibits the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), which degrades catecholamine neurotransmitters in the brain. This means that it can transiently increase concentrations of the neurotransmitter dopamine. We often think of dopamine as being related to reward and euphoria, but in the prefrontal cortex, dopamine is critical for many cognitive processes that involve behavioral control. We thought that, by increasing prefrontal dopamine, tolcapone might increase behavioral control among people with alcohol use disorder.”</p>
<p>The trial was conducted at the Medical University of South Carolina. Participants were adults aged 21 to 40 who met diagnostic criteria for moderate or severe alcohol use disorder. They were required to drink at least 20 standard drinks per week and were not seeking treatment for their alcohol use. A total of 64 individuals with usable brain imaging data were included in the final analysis.</p>
<p>Participants were randomly assigned to receive either tolcapone or a placebo for eight days. Tolcapone dosage was gradually increased to a maximum of 200 mg three times per day. Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after the medication period. The primary task used to measure self-control was the stop-signal task, which requires individuals to inhibit a dominant motor response when signaled.</p>
<p>The researchers also tracked participants’ alcohol consumption using a daily self-report tool. To ensure the accuracy of the brain imaging results, several quality control measures were implemented, including controlling for motion during scanning and using different MRI scanner settings as covariates in the analysis.</p>
<p>The researchers found that participants who received tolcapone showed improvements in inhibitory control. This was measured by shorter stop-signal reaction times, indicating that they were better able to withhold a response when prompted. They also showed more behavioral adjustment after making errors, another indicator of improved self-regulation. These improvements were not seen in the placebo group.</p>
<p>In addition to changes in behavior, tolcapone also increased activity in brain areas involved in self-control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These increases were only observed in the tolcapone group. Notably, individuals who showed greater increases in activation in these areas also tended to report less alcohol consumption during the trial.</p>
<p>“We suspected that greater tolcapone-induced prefrontal cortex activation might be related to better performance on the task, but were pleasantly surprised to find that it was also related to less alcohol consumption,” Schacht told PsyPost. “This suggests that tolcapone’s effect on behavioral control in the brain scanner translated to changes in real-world behavior.”</p>
<p>The researchers also found changes in how brain regions communicated with each other. Tolcapone increased connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and two other brain regions—the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex—that are also involved in emotion regulation and cognitive control. These enhanced connections were linked to better task performance and fewer drinks consumed, but again, only in participants who received tolcapone.</p>
<p>The results provide evidence that boosting dopamine levels specifically in the prefrontal cortex may help restore self-control in people with alcohol use disorder. This has been a longstanding goal in addiction research, but previous approaches have struggled to achieve this without unintended effects in other parts of the brain.</p>
<p>By showing that tolcapone can influence both brain activity and real-world drinking behavior, the findings suggest that targeted dopamine modulation could be a promising therapeutic approach. The inferior frontal gyrus, in particular, emerged as a central hub in the network supporting self-regulation, with its activity and connectivity predicting both task performance and drinking outcomes.</p>
<p>“We used brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure activity in the prefrontal cortex while people engaged in a simple behavioral control task,” Schacht summarized. “We found that tolcapone, relative to placebo, increased activation of a brain region called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and that increased activation of this region was associated with better behavioral control (better performance on the task) and less alcohol consumption during the time people were taking the medication. This suggests that medications like tolcapone that affect prefrontal dopamine might be a novel strategy for treating alcohol use disorder.”</p>
<p>While the mechanism appears to be related to dopamine, the researchers caution that other neurotransmitter systems—such as norepinephrine and glutamate—could also be involved. Additional studies will be needed to disentangle these contributions and to examine whether the effects of tolcapone extend beyond self-control to other aspects of alcohol use disorder, such as craving or mood regulation.</p>
<p>Although the findings are promising, some limitations should be noted. The sample size, while sufficient for the planned analyses, was relatively small. Larger trials will be needed to confirm these results and assess how long the benefits of tolcapone might last. The study also excluded people with psychiatric comorbidities or other substance use disorders, so the generalizability of the findings to more diverse clinical populations remains uncertain.</p>
<p>In addition, the researchers were not able to test genetic differences in how participants responded to the drug. The study was designed to examine whether genetic variation in a dopamine-related gene (COMT rs4680) affected the drug’s impact, but the number of participants in each genetic subgroup was too small to draw firm conclusions. Prior studies suggest that people with certain genetic variants may respond more strongly to tolcapone, and this will be an important area for future research.</p>
<p>“Although it is approved for Parkinson’s disease, tolcapone has the potential for liver toxicity, which can be dangerous among people who may have alcohol-associated liver disease,” Schacht noted. “In this study, we used tolcapone under very controlled conditions (people had to have normal liver function to participate, and they took the medication for only 8 days). There are several approved COMT inhibitors that are not toxic to the liver, but they do not cross the blood-brain barrier like tolcapone does. We hope that COMT inhibitors that are brain-penetrant but not hepatotoxic will be developed in the near future.”</p>
<p>There is also a need to better understand whether the effects of tolcapone are specific to improving inhibition of alcohol-related impulses or whether they reflect a broader enhancement of executive function. Future studies could compare how the drug affects brain responses to alcohol cues versus non-alcohol-related tasks, or examine whether it changes patterns of decision-making or emotional regulation in everyday life.</p>
<p>“We are currently <a href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03904498" target="_blank">completing a large study</a> in which we are testing tolcapone among people with alcohol use disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,” Schacht said. “This is a population for which improvements in behavioral control might be especially impactful. We hope to publish our findings within the next year.”</p>
<p>“More efficacious medications for alcohol use disorder are badly needed. This study was one small step towards a larger goal within the alcohol research community of identifying novel medications to help improve the treatment of this disease.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2025.06.003" target="_blank">Effects of COMT suppression in a randomized trial on the neural correlates of inhibitory processing among people with Alcohol Use Disorder</a>,” was authored by Drew E. Winters and Joseph P. Schacht.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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