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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/researchers-identify-the-optimal-dose-of-urban-greenness-for-boosting-mental-well-being/" 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 identify the optimal dose of urban greenness for boosting mental well-being</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 23rd 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new analysis suggests that when it comes to the mental health benefits of urban green spaces, a moderate amount is best. The research, which synthesized four decades of studies, found that the relationship between the quantity of greenery and mental well-being follows an inverted U-shaped pattern, where benefits decline after a certain point. This finding challenges the simpler idea that more green space is always better and was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00285-z" target="_blank">Nature Cities</a></em>.</p>
<p>Researchers have long established a connection between exposure to nature and improved mental health for city dwellers. However, the exact nature of this relationship has been unclear. Bin Jiang, Jiali Li, and a team of international collaborators recognized a growing problem in the field. Early studies often suggested a straightforward linear connection, implying that any increase in greenness would lead to better mental health outcomes. This made it difficult for city planners to determine how much green space was optimal for public well-being. </p>
<p>More recent studies started to show curved, non-linear patterns, but because they used different methods and were conducted in various contexts, the evidence remained fragmented and inconclusive. Without a clear, general understanding of this dose-response relationship, urban planners and policymakers lack the scientific guidance needed to allocate land and resources to maximize mental health benefits for residents. The team aimed to resolve this by searching for a generalized pattern across the entire body of existing research.</p>
<p>To achieve their goal, the scientists conducted a meta-analysis, a type of study that statistically combines the results of many previous independent studies. Their first step was a systematic search of major scientific databases for all empirical studies published between 1985 and 2025 that examined the link between a measured “dose” of greenness and mental health responses. This exhaustive search initially identified over 128,000 potential articles. The researchers then applied a strict set of criteria to filter this large pool, narrowing it down to 133 studies that directly measured a quantitative relationship between greenness and mental health outcomes like stress, anxiety, depression, or cognitive function.</p>
<p>From this collection of 133 studies, the team focused on a subset of 69 that measured the “intensity” of greenness, as this was the most commonly studied variable and provided enough data for a robust analysis. They further divided these studies into two categories based on how greenness was measured. The first category was “eye-level greenness,” which captures the amount of vegetation a person sees from a ground-level perspective, such as when walking down a street. The second was “top-down greenness,” which is measured from aerial or satellite imagery and typically represents the percentage of an area covered by tree canopy or other vegetation.</p>
<p>A significant challenge in combining so many different studies is that they use various scales and metrics. To address this, the researchers standardized the data. They converted the mental health outcomes from all studies onto a common scale ranging from negative one to one. They also re-analyzed images from the original papers to calculate the percentage of greenness in a consistent way across all studies. After standardizing the data, they extracted representative points from each study’s reported dose-response curve and combined them into two large datasets, one for eye-level greenness and one for top-down greenness.</p>
<p>With all the data points compiled and standardized, the researchers performed a curve-fitting analysis. They tested several mathematical models, including a straight line (linear model), a power-law curve, and a quadratic model, which produces an inverted U-shape. The results showed that for both eye-level and top-down greenness, the quadratic model was the best fit for the collective data. This indicates that as the amount of greenness increases from zero, mental health benefits rise, reach a peak at a moderate level, and then begin to decline as the amount of greenness becomes very high.</p>
<p>The analysis identified specific thresholds for these effects. For eye-level greenness, the peak mental health benefit occurred at 53.1 percent greenness. The range considered “highly beneficial,” representing the top five percent of positive effects, was between 46.2 and 59.5 percent. Any positive effect, which the researchers termed a “non-adverse effect,” was observed in a broader range from 25.3 to 80.2 percent. Outside of this range, at very low or very high levels of eye-level greenness, the effects were associated with negative mental health responses.</p>
<p>The findings for top-down greenness were similar. The optimal dose for the best effect was found to be 51.2 percent. The highly beneficial range was between 43.1 and 59.2 percent, and the non-adverse range spanned from 21.1 to 81.7 percent. These specific figures provide practical guidance for urban design, suggesting target percentages for vegetation cover that could yield the greatest psychological rewards for communities.</p>
<p>The researchers propose several reasons why this inverted U-shaped pattern exists. At very low levels of greenness, an environment can feel barren or desolate, which may increase feelings of stress or anxiety. As greenery is introduced, the environment becomes more restorative. </p>
<p>However, at extremely high levels of greenness, a landscape can become too dense. This might reduce natural light, obstruct views, and create a feeling of being closed-in or unsafe, potentially leading to anxiety or a sense of unease. A dense, complex environment may also require more mental effort to process, leading to cognitive fatigue rather than restoration. A moderate dose appears to strike a balance, offering nature’s restorative qualities without becoming overwhelming or threatening.</p>
<p>The study’s authors acknowledge some limitations. By combining many diverse studies, some nuance is lost, as different populations, cultures, and types of mental health measures are grouped together. The analysis was also limited to the intensity of greenness; there was not enough consistent data available to perform a similar analysis on the frequency or duration of visits to green spaces, which are also important factors. </p>
<p>Additionally, very few of the original studies examined environments with extremely high levels of greenness, so the downward slope of the curve at the highest end is based more on statistical prediction than on a large volume of direct observation.</p>
<p>Future research could build on this foundation by investigating these other dimensions of nature exposure, such as the duration of visits or the biodiversity within green spaces. More studies are also needed that specifically test the effects of very high doses of greenness to confirm the predicted decline in benefits. Expanding this work to differentiate between types of vegetation, like trees versus shrubs or manicured parks versus wilder areas, could provide even more refined guidance for urban planning. </p>
<p>Despite these limitations, this comprehensive analysis provides a new, evidence-based framework for understanding how to design healthier cities, suggesting that the goal should not simply be to maximize greenness, but to optimize it.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00285-z" target="_blank">A generalized relationship between dose of greenness and mental health response</a>,” was authored by Bin Jiang, Jiali Li, Peng Gong, Chris Webster, Gunter Schumann, Xueming Liu, and Pongsakorn Suppakittpaisarn.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/are-conservatives-more-rigid-thinkers-rival-scientists-have-come-to-a-surprising-conclusion/" 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;">Are conservatives more rigid thinkers? Rival scientists have come to a surprising conclusion</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 23rd 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new pair of large-scale studies finds that while political conservatives and ideological extremists are slightly less likely to update their beliefs when presented with new evidence, these effects are very small. The research, published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70071" target="_blank">Political Psychology</a></em>, suggests that broad, sweeping claims about a strong connection between a person’s political views and their cognitive rigidity are likely not justified.</p>
<p>The study was conducted as an “adversarial collaboration,” a unique scientific approach where researchers with opposing viewpoints team up to design a study they all agree is a fair test of their competing ideas. This method is intended to reduce the biases that can arise when scientists design studies that might favor their own pre-existing theories. The goal was to find a definitive answer to a long-debated question: Is a rigid way of thinking associated with a particular political ideology?</p>
<p>“There is a rich and longstanding history of examining the relations between political ideology and rigidity,” said corresponding author Shauan Bowes, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “Much of this research has been rife with debate, and it is a vast and complex literature. An adversarial collaboration brings together disagreeing scholars to examine a research question, affording the opportunity for more accurate and nuanced research. Here, the adversaries were hoping to provide additional clarity on the nature of the relations between political ideology and rigidity, testing three different primary hypotheses.”</p>
<p>For decades, psychologists have explored the underpinnings of political beliefs. One prominent idea has been the “rigidity-of-the-right” hypothesis. This perspective suggests that conservative ideology is rooted in a less flexible thinking style and a greater need for certainty. According to this view, these traits make conservatives less open to changing their minds.</p>
<p>A second perspective offers a different explanation, known as the symmetry model. Proponents of this view argue that psychological motivations to fit in with a group and avoid social punishment can lead to rigid thinking in people of any political persuasion. They propose that there is no inherent reason to believe one side of the political spectrum would be more or less flexible than the other; any differences would depend on the specific topic being discussed.</p>
<p>A third idea is the “rigidity-of-extremes” hypothesis. This theory posits that inflexibility is not about being left or right, but about being at the ideological fringes. People with extreme political views, whether on the far left or the far right, may be more rigid in their thinking than political moderates. Extreme ideologies often provide simple, clear-cut answers to complex societal problems, which can foster a high degree of certainty and a reluctance to consider alternative viewpoints.</p>
<p>A major challenge in this area of research has been defining and measuring “rigidity.” The term has been used in many different ways, and many popular measures have been criticized for containing questions that are already biased toward a certain political ideology. </p>
<p>To overcome this, the collaborating researchers first reviewed dozens of ways rigidity has been measured. After a thorough process of elimination, they unanimously agreed on one operationalization they all considered valid and unbiased: evidence-based belief updating. This simply means measuring how much a person changes their belief about a statement after being shown evidence that supports it. A person who shows less belief change is considered more rigid.</p>
<p>Before launching their main studies, the team conducted a pretest with over 2,000 participants. Their aim was to find pairs of political statements that were ideologically balanced. They generated statements that made arguments friendly to both liberal and conservative viewpoints on the same topic. For example, one statement suggested that people who are liberal on social issues score higher on intelligence tests, while its counterpart suggested people who are fiscally conservative score higher. By analyzing how people with different ideologies rated these statements, the researchers selected pairs that showed no overall bias, ensuring the main studies would be a fair test.</p>
<p>In the first study, nearly 2,500 American participants were asked to rate their agreement with several political statements. After giving an initial rating, they were shown a short piece of information from a credible source, like a university, that supported the statement. For example, a statement might read, “The U.S. economy performs better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents,” followed by evidence from a research institution supporting that claim. Participants then rated the same statement a second time. The researchers measured the change between the first and second ratings to calculate a belief updating score.</p>
<p>The results of this first study showed a weak but statistically significant relationship. People who identified as socially or generally conservative updated their beliefs slightly less than liberals did. The analysis also found that general political extremism was associated with less belief updating. However, the size of these effects was very small. For instance, a one standard deviation increase in conservatism or extremism resulted in a change of less than 1.5 points on a 200-point scale of belief updating.</p>
<p>“I was surprised by how the results were consistently quite small,” Bowes told PsyPost. “Previous studies may have conflated ideology and rigidity measures, which can artificially inflate effect sizes. Because the adversaries intentionally designed an ideology-neutral measure of rigidity, the results were small. And, from my perspective, they were smaller than I would have initially presumed.”</p>
<p>The second study aimed to replicate and build upon the first. This time, the research team recruited more than 3,700 U.S. participants, making a special effort to include more people from the extreme ends of the political spectrum. They also made the evidence presented to participants more engaging, designing it to look like a blog post from a research institution. The fundamental procedure remained the same: participants rated a statement before and after seeing evidence for it.</p>
<p>The findings from the second study mirrored those of the first. Once again, general and social conservatism were weakly associated with less belief updating. In this larger sample with more extremists, all measures of extremism were also significantly linked to less belief updating. People on the far right tended to be slightly more rigid than people on the far left. Despite these consistent patterns, the effects remained tiny and, from a practical standpoint, negligible.</p>
<p>By combining the data from both studies, the researchers created a large dataset of over 6,000 participants. This combined analysis confirmed the earlier findings. Conservatism and extremism were both associated with slightly less willingness to change one’s mind in the face of evidence. But the size of these relationships was consistently very small, suggesting that a person’s political ideology is a very poor predictor of how much they will update their beliefs in this kind of task.</p>
<p>The authors, representing all sides of the original debate, came to a shared conclusion. Centrists and moderates showed the most belief updating, or the least rigidity. When comparing groups, people on the political right, especially the far right, were slightly more rigid. However, the weakness and inconsistency of these effects across different measures of ideology mean that the practical importance of this connection is questionable. </p>
<p>“The relations between political ideology and rigidity, which in this context was belief rigidity (i.e., less willing to update one’s views after being presented with evidence), are generally small, which calls into question the practical importance of ideological differences in rigidity in this context,” Bowes explained. “There was semi-consistent support for the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (conservatives are more rigid than liberals) and rigidity-of-extremes (political extremes are more extreme than political moderates) hypothesis.” </p>
<p>“That said, the adversaries acknowledge that because the results are quite small and only semi-consistent, one could reasonably interpret the results as lending support to symmetry perspectives (the left and right are equally rigid but about different topics). ”</p>
<p>The team suggests that instead of asking the broad question of who is more rigid, researchers should focus on identifying the specific contexts and issues that might cause rigidity to appear more strongly in certain groups.</p>
<p>The study did have some limitations. The research was conducted with American participants at a specific point in time, and the findings might not apply to other countries or different political eras. It also focused on only one type of rigidity, belief updating, and did not examine other forms, such as personality traits associated with inflexibility. Future studies could explore these relationships over time or in different cultural contexts to see if the patterns hold.</p>
<p>“We only studied belief rigidity, which is one form of rigidity,” Bowes noted. “We do not want to make sweeping claims about rigidity writ large and encourage others to examine whether our results do or do not held when examining other manifestations of rigidity.” </p>
<p>“I think it would be immensely beneficial to examine additional forms of rigidity in relation to political ideology and consider boundary conditions. That is, there are likely contexts where the relationship is much stronger, and we should be focusing on that question rather than ‘overall, who is more rigid in general?'”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70071" target="_blank">An adversarial collaboration on the rigidity-of-the-right, symmetry thesis, or rigidity-of-extremes: The answer depends on the question</a>,” was authored by Shauna M. Bowes, Cory J. Clark, Lucian Gideon Conway III, Thomas Costello, Danny Osborne, Philip E. Tetlock, and Jan-Willem van Prooijen.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-uncover-how-the-brain-builds-a-unified-reality-from-fragmented-predictions/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Neuroscientists uncover how the brain builds a unified reality from fragmented predictions</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 23rd 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study provides evidence that the human brain constructs our seamless experience of the world by first breaking it down into separate predictive models. These distinct models, which forecast different aspects of reality like context, people’s intentions, and potential actions, are then unified in a central hub to create our coherent, ongoing subjective experience. The research was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63522-y" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a></em>.</p>
<p>The scientists behind the new study proposed that our world model is fragmented into at least three core domains. The first is a “State” model, which represents the abstract context or situation we are in. The second is an “Agent” model, which handles our understanding of other people, their beliefs, their goals, and their perspectives. The third is an “Action” model, which predicts the flow of events and possible paths through a situation. </p>
<p>“There’s a long-held tradition, and with good evidence that the mind is composed of many, different modules specialized for distinct computations. This is obvious in perception with modules dedicated to faces and places. This is not obvious in higher-order, more abstract domains which drives our subjective experience. The problem with this is non-trivial. If it does have multiple modules, how can we have our experience seemingly unified?” explained study author <a href="https://fahd7yazin.github.io/" target="_blank">Fahd Yazin</a>, a medical doctor who’s currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh. </p>
<p>“In learning theories, there are distinct computations needed to form what is called a world model. We need to infer from sensory observations what state we are in (context). For e.g. if you go to a coffee shop, the state is that you’re about to get a coffee. But if you find that the machine is out-of- order, then the current state is you’re not going to get it. Similarly, you need to have a frame of reference (frame) to put these states in. For instance, you want to go to the next shop but your friend had a bad experience there previously, you need to take their perspective (or frame) into account. You possibly had a plan of getting a coffee and chat, but now you’re willing to adapt a new plan (action transitions) of getting a matcha drink instead.”</p>
<p>“You’re able to do all these things in a deceptively simple way because various modules can coordinate their output, or predictions together. And switch between various predictions effortlessly. So, if we disrupt their ongoing predictions in a natural and targeted way, you can get two things. The brain regions dedicated to these predictions, and how they influence our subjective experience.”</p>
<p>To explore this, the research team conducted a series of experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. In the main experiment, a group of 111 young adults watched an eight-minute suspenseful excerpt from an Alfred Hitchcock film, “Bang! You’re Dead!” while inside a scanner. They were given no specific instructions other than to watch the movie, allowing the scientists to observe brain activity during a naturalistic experience. </p>
<p>To understand when participants’ predictions were being challenged and updated, the researchers collected data from separate groups of people who watched the same film online. These participants were asked to press a key whenever their understanding of the movie’s context (State), a character’s beliefs (Agent), or the likely course of events (Action) suddenly changed. By combining the responses from many individuals, the scientists created timelines showing the precise moments when each type of belief was most likely to be updated.</p>
<p>Analyzing the brain scans from the movie-watching group, the scientists found a clear division of labor in the midline prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with higher-level thought. When the online raters indicated a change in the movie’s context, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex became more active in the scanned participants. When a character’s perspective or intentions became clearer, the anteromedial prefrontal cortex showed more activity. And when the plot took a turn that changed the likely sequence of future events, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was engaged.</p>
<p>The researchers also found that these moments of belief updating corresponded to significant shifts in the brain’s underlying neural patterns. Using a computational method called a Hidden Markov Model, they identified moments when the stable patterns of activity in each prefrontal region abruptly transitioned. These neural transitions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex aligned closely with updates to “State” beliefs. </p>
<p>Similarly, transitions in the anteromedial prefrontal cortex coincided with “Agent” updates, and those in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex matched “Action” updates. This provides evidence that when our predictions about the world are proven wrong, it triggers not just a momentary spike in activity, but a more sustained shift in the neural processing of that specific brain region.</p>
<p>Having established that predictions are handled by separate modules, the researchers next sought to identify where these fragmented predictions come together. They focused on the precuneus, a region located toward the back of the brain that is known to be a major hub within the default mode network, a large-scale brain network involved in internal thought. </p>
<p>By analyzing the functional connectivity, or the degree to which different brain regions activate in sync, they found that during belief updates, each specialized prefrontal region showed increased communication with the precuneus. This suggests the precuneus acts as an integration center, receiving the updated information from each predictive module.</p>
<p>To further investigate this integration, the team examined the similarity of multivoxel activity patterns between brain regions. They discovered a dynamic process they call “multithreaded integration.” When participants’ beliefs about the movie’s context were being updated, the activity patterns in the precuneus became more similar to the patterns in the “State” region of the prefrontal cortex. </p>
<p>When beliefs about characters were changing, the precuneus’s patterns aligned more with the “Agent” region. This indicates that the precuneus flexibly syncs up with whichever predictive module is most relevant at a given moment, effectively weaving the separate threads of prediction into a single, coherent representation.</p>
<p>The scientists then connected this integration process to subjective experience. Using separate ratings of emotional arousal, a measure of how engaged and immersed viewers were in the film, they found that the activity of the precuneus closely tracked the emotional ups and downs of the movie. The individual prefrontal regions did not show this strong relationship. </p>
<p>What’s more, individuals whose brains showed stronger integration between the prefrontal cortex and the precuneus also had more similar overall brain responses to the movie. This suggests that the way our brain integrates these fragmented predictions directly shapes our shared subjective reality. </p>
<p>“At any given time, multiple predictions may compete or coexist, and our experience can shift depending on which predictions are integrated that best align with reality,” Yazin told PsyPost. “People whose brains make and integrate predictions in similar ways are likely to have more similar experiences, while differences in prediction patterns may explain why individuals perceive the same reality differently. This approach provides new insight into how shared realities and personal differences arise, offering a framework for understanding human cognition.”</p>
<p>To confirm these findings were not specific to one movie or to visual information, the team replicated the key analyses using a different dataset where participants listened to a humorous spoken-word story. They found the same modular system in the prefrontal cortex and the same integrative role for the Precuneus, demonstrating that this is a general mechanism for how the brain models the world, regardless of the sensory input.</p>
<p>“We replicated the main findings across a different cohort, sensory modality and emotional content (stimuli), making these findings robust to idiosyncratic factors,” Yazin said. “These results were observed when people were experiencing stimuli (movie/story) in a completely uninterrupted and uninstructed manner, meaning our experience is continuously rebuilt and adapted into a coherent unified stream despite it originating in a fragmented manner.”</p>
<p>“Our experience is not just a simple passive product of our sensory reality. It is actively driven by our predictions. And these come in different flavors; about our contexts we find ourselves in, about other people and about our plans of the immediate future. Each of these gets updated as the sensory reality agrees (or disagrees) with our predictions. And integrates with that reality to form our ‘current’ experience.” </p>
<p>“We have multiple such predictions internally, and at any given time our experience can toggle between these depending on how the reality fits them,” Yazin explained. “In other words, our original experience is a product of fragmented and distributed predictions integrated into a unified whole. And people with similar way of predicting and integrating, would have similar experiences from the reality than people who are dissimilar.”</p>
<p>“More importantly, it brings the default mode network, a core network in the human brain into the table as a central network driving our core phenomenal experience. It’s widely implicated in learning, inference, imagination, memory recall and in dysfunctions to these. Our results offer a framework to fractionate this network by computations of its core components.”</p>
<p>But as with all research, the study has some limitations. The analysis is correlational, meaning it shows associations between brain activity and belief updates but cannot definitively prove causation. Also, because the researchers used naturalistic stories, the different types of updates were not always completely independent; a single plot twist could sometimes cause a viewer to update their understanding of the context, a character, and the future plot all at once.</p>
<p>Still, the consistency of the findings across two very different naturalistic experiences provides strong support for a new model of human cognition. “Watching a suspenseful movie and listening to a comedic story feels like two very different experience but the fact that they have similar underlying regions with similar specialized processes for generating predictions was counterintuitive,” Yazin told PsyPost. “And that we could observe it in this data was something unexpected.”</p>
<p>Future research will use more controlled, artificially generated stimuli to better isolate the computations happening within each module. </p>
<p>“We’re currently exploring the nature of these computations in more depth,” Yazin said. “In naturalistic stimuli as we’ve used now, it is impossible to fully separate domains (the contributions of people and contexts are intertwined in such settings). It brings richness but you lose experimental control. Similarly, the fact that these prefrontal regions were sensitive regardless of content and sensory information means there is possibly an invariant computation going on within them. We’re currently investigating these using controlled stimuli and probabilistic models to answer these questions.”</p>
<p>“For the last decade or so, there’s been two cultures in cognitive neuroscience,” he added. “One is using highly controlled stimuli, and leveraging stimulus properties to ascertain regional involvement to that function to various degrees. Second is using full-on naturalistic stimuli (movies, narratives, games) to understand how humans experience the world with more ecological accuracy. Each has brought unique and incomparable insights.” </p>
<p>“We feel studies on subjective experience/phenomenal consciousness has focused more on the former because it is easier to control (perceptual features/changes), but there’s a rich tradition and methods in the latter school that may help uncover more intractable problems in novel ways. Episodic ,emory and semantic processing are two great examples of this, where using naturalistic stimuli opened up connections and findings that were completely new to each of those fields.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63522-y" target="_blank">Fragmentation and multithreading of experience in the default-mode network</a>,” was authored by Fahd Yazin, Gargi Majumdar, Neil Bramley, and Paul Hoffman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/controlled-fear-might-temporarily-alter-brain-patterns-linked-to-depression/" 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;">Controlled fear might temporarily alter brain patterns linked to depression</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 22nd 2025, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>A study has found that engaging with frightening entertainment, such as horror films, is associated with temporary changes in brain network activity common in depression. The research also found that individuals with moderate depressive symptoms may require a more intense scare to experience peak enjoyment, hinting at an intriguing interplay between fear, pleasure, and emotion regulation. These findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S529004" target="_blank">Psychology Research and Behavior Management</a></em>.</p>
<p>The investigation was conducted by researchers Yuting Zhan of Ningxia University and Xu Ding of Shandong First Medical University. Their work was motivated by a long-standing psychological puzzle known as the fear-pleasure paradox: why people voluntarily seek out and enjoy frightening experiences. While this phenomenon is common, little was known about how it functions in individuals with depression, a condition characterized by persistent low mood, difficulty experiencing pleasure, and altered emotional processing.</p>
<p>The researchers were particularly interested in specific brain network dysfunctions observed in depression. In many individuals with depression, the default mode network, a brain system active during self-referential thought and mind-wandering, is overly connected to the salience network, which detects important external and internal events. This hyperconnectivity is thought to contribute to rumination, where a person gets stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts about themselves. Zhan and Ding proposed that an intense, controlled fear experience might temporarily disrupt these patterns by demanding a person’s full attention, pulling their focus away from internal thoughts and onto the external environment.</p>
<p>To explore this, the researchers designed a two-part study. The first study aimed to understand the psychological and physiological reactions to recreational fear across a spectrum of depressive symptoms. It involved 216 adult participants who were grouped based on the severity of their depressive symptoms, ranging from minimal to severe. These participants were exposed to a professionally designed haunted attraction. Throughout the experience, their heart rate was monitored, and saliva samples were collected to measure cortisol, a hormone related to stress. After each scary scenario, participants rated their level of fear and enjoyment.</p>
<p>The results of this first study confirmed a pattern seen in previous research: the relationship between fear and enjoyment looked like an inverted “U”. This means that as fear intensity increased, enjoyment also increased, but only up to a certain point. After that “sweet spot” of optimal fear, more intense fear led to less enjoyment. The study revealed that the severity of a person’s depression significantly affected this relationship. </p>
<p>Individuals with moderate depression experienced their peak enjoyment at higher levels of fear compared to those with minimal depression. Their physiological data showed a similar pattern, with the moderate depression group showing the most pronounced cortisol stress response. In contrast, participants with the most severe depressive symptoms showed a much flatter response curve, indicating they experienced less differentiation in enjoyment across various fear levels.</p>
<p>The second study used neuroimaging to examine the brain mechanisms behind these responses. For this part, 84 participants with mild-to-moderate depression were recruited. While inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, participants watched a series of short clips from horror films. They had resting-state scans taken before and after the film clips to compare their baseline brain activity with their activity after the fear exposure.</p>
<p>The neuroimaging data provided a window into the brain’s reaction. During the scary clips, participants showed increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region critical for emotion regulation and processing safety signals. The analysis also revealed that after watching the horror clips, the previously observed hyperconnectivity between the default mode network and the salience network was temporarily reduced. For a short period after the fear exposure, the connectivity in the brains of these participants with depression more closely resembled patterns seen in individuals without depression. This change was temporary, beginning to revert to baseline by the end of the post-exposure scan.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the researchers found a direct link between these brain changes and the participants’ reported feelings. A greater reduction in the connectivity between the default mode network and salience network was correlated with higher ratings of enjoyment. Similarly, stronger activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the fear experience was associated with greater positive feelings after the experiment. These findings suggest that the controlled fear experience may have been engaging the brain’s emotion-regulation systems, momentarily shifting brain function away from patterns associated with rumination.</p>
<p>The authors acknowledge several limitations to their study. The research primarily included individuals with mild-to-moderate depression, so the findings may not apply to those with severe depression. The study was also unable to control for individual differences like prior exposure to horror media or co-occurring anxiety disorders, which could influence reactions. Another consideration is that a laboratory or controlled haunted house setting does not perfectly replicate how people experience recreational fear in the real world.</p>
<p>Additionally, the observed changes in brain connectivity were temporary, and the correlational design of the study means it cannot prove that the fear experience caused a change in mood, only that they are associated. The researchers also did not include a high-arousal, non-fearful control condition, such as watching thrilling action movie clips, making it difficult to say if the effects are specific to fear or to general emotional arousal.</p>
<p>Future research is needed to explore these findings further. Such studies could investigate a wider range of participants and fear stimuli, track individuals over a longer period to see if the neural changes have any lasting effects, and conduct randomized controlled trials to establish a causal link. Developing comprehensive safety protocols would be essential before any potential therapeutic application could be considered, as intense fear could be distressing for some vulnerable individuals. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S529004" target="_blank">Fear-Pleasure Paradox in Recreational Fear: Neural Correlates and Therapeutic Potential in Depression</a>,” was published June 27, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/lsd-might-have-a-small-positive-effect-when-used-to-treat-substance-use-disorders/" 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;">LSD might have a small positive effect when used to treat substance use disorders</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 22nd 2025, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A meta-analytic study looking into the safety and efficacy of LSD for treating mental health disorders found that its effectiveness largely depends on the type of disorder. While the analysis found no conclusive evidence for treating anxiety or depression, the analyzed studies indicated that LSD has a small but statistically significant positive effect when used to treat substance use disorders. The paper was published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116622" target="_blank">Psychiatry Research</a></em>.</p>
<p>LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is a powerful hallucinogenic drug first synthesized in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. It is derived from lysergic acid, a substance found in the ergot fungus that grows on rye and other grains.</p>
<p>LSD is known for its profound psychological effects, called a “trip,” which can include visual and auditory hallucinations, an altered sense of time, and intense emotional experiences. It is usually taken orally, on small pieces of paper called “blotters” that are soaked in the drug. The effects typically begin within 30 to 90 minutes after ingestion and can last up to 12 hours. The experience can be pleasant or frightening depending on the user’s mood, environment, and dose. LSD does not cause physical addiction, but it can lead to psychological dependence and tolerance. Some users report lasting changes in perception, such as visual distortions or flashbacks, long after use.</p>
<p>In most countries, LSD is classified as an illegal substance due to its potent effects and potential risks. Despite this, it is being studied for potential therapeutic uses in treating anxiety, depression, and addiction under controlled medical conditions.</p>
<p>Study authors Maria Helha Fernandes-Nascimento and her colleagues wanted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of LSD in the treatment of various mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders in patients over 18 years of age. They conducted a systematic review and a meta-analysis, a method that involves statistically integrating the findings of multiple previous studies.</p>
<p>These authors searched nine databases of scientific publications, including Embase, PubMed, and Scopus, to find studies conducted on adults that investigated the efficacy and safety of LSD. They focused on randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—studies where researchers actively assign participants to receive either LSD or a control treatment. They excluded observational studies where researchers only recorded participants’ pre-existing use of LSD.</p>
<p>Their initial search identified 3,133 records. However, after removing duplicates and publications that did not meet their strict criteria, they ended up with a set of 11 studies to be included in the analysis. All of these 11 studies were double-blind, meaning that neither the participants nor the researchers administering the treatment knew who was receiving LSD versus a control substance (like a placebo or a different active drug).</p>
<p>Results showed that LSD administration was associated with a small, statistically significant beneficial effect on substance use disorders. Notably, the effects on substance use disorders reported by different studies were very consistent with one another, which increases confidence in this particular finding.</p>
<p>Regarding safety, the authors noted that the evidence was difficult to interpret. While five of the 11 studies (45%) did not report any adverse events, the paper suggests this may reflect poor reporting standards in the older trials rather than an actual absence of side effects. Other studies in the analysis did report adverse events, including serious ones such as acute anxiety and delusions during an LSD session, seizures, and cases requiring extended hospitalization.</p>
<p>“The effectiveness of LSD appears to vary significantly depending on the type of mental disorder treated. Results suggest a positive effect on substance use disorders. High heterogeneity requires caution and highlights the need for more double-blind RCTs [randomized controlled trials],” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the exploration of the potential use of LSD in treating mental health disorders. However, the authors note that most of the studies included in their analysis were conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, with only three studies conducted in more recent years, underscoring a need for modern research.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116622">Efficacy and Safety of LSD in the treatment of mental and substance use disorders: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials,</a>” was authored by Maria Helha Fernandes-Nascimento, Priscila Weber, and Andre Brooking Negrao.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-bdsm-research-reveals-links-between-sexual-roles-relationship-hierarchy-and-social-standing/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New BDSM research reveals links between sexual roles, relationship hierarchy, and social standing</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 22nd 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study explores how sexual preferences for dominance and submission relate to an individual’s general position in society and their behavior toward others outside of intimate activity. The research found that a person’s tendency toward submission in everyday life is strongly connected to experiencing subordination within their partner relationship, as well as holding a lower social status and less education. These findings offer insight into the vulnerability of some practitioners of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism (BDSM), suggesting that interpersonal power dynamics are often consistent across life domains. The research was published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2557498" target="_blank">Deviant Behavior</a></em>.</p>
<p>Researchers, led by Eva Jozifkova of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, aimed to clarify the complex relationship between sexual arousal by power dynamics and a person’s hierarchical behavior in daily life. Previous academic work had established that a person’s dominant or submissive personality often aligns with their sexual preferences. However, it remained uncertain whether the hierarchical roles people enjoy in sex translated directly into their conduct with their long-term partner outside of the bedroom, or how they behaved generally toward people in their community.</p>
<p>Many people who practice BDSM, often distinguish between the roles they adopt during sex and their roles in a long-term relationship. Some maintain a slight hierarchical difference in their relationships around the clock, while others strictly limit the power dynamic to sexual play. Given the variety of patterns, the researchers wanted to test several ideas about this alignment, ranging from the view that sexual hierarchy is merely playful and unrelated to daily life, to the perspective that sexual roles reflect a person’s consistent social rank.</p>
<p>The study sought to test whether an individual’s tendency to dominate or submit to others reflected their sexual preferences and their hierarchical arrangement with their partner. The concept being explored was whether a person’s position in the social world “coheres” with their position in intimate relationships and sexual behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers collected data using an online questionnaire distributed primarily through websites and social media forums geared toward practitioners of BDSM in the Czech Republic. The final analysis included data from 421 heterosexual and bisexual men and women who actively engaged in these practices with a partner.</p>
<p>Participants completed detailed questions about their socioeconomic status, education, age, and, importantly, their feelings of hierarchy during sexual encounters and in their ongoing partner relationships outside of sexual activity. To measure their general tendency toward submissiveness or dominance in daily life toward others, the researchers used a modified instrument called the Life Scale.</p>
<p>The Life Scale assessed an individual’s perceived hierarchical standing, based on how often they experienced feelings of subordination or felt their opinions were disregarded by others. The higher the score on this scale, the more submissive the person reported being in their interactions with people generally.</p>
<p>The researchers separated participants into groups based on their sexual arousal preference for dominance (Dominant), submissiveness (Submissive), both (called Switch), or neither (called Without). To analyze how these various factors affected the Life Scale score, a statistical method known as univariate analysis of variance models was employed. This method allowed the researchers to examine the influence of multiple variables simultaneously on the reported level of submissiveness in everyday life.</p>
<p>Analyzing the self-reported experiences of the participants, the study found a noticeable alignment between preferred sexual role and general relationship dynamics for many individuals. Among those who were sexually aroused by being dominant, 55 percent reported experiencing a feeling of superiority over their partner outside of sexual activity as well. Similarly, 46 percent of individuals sexually aroused by being submissive also experienced subordination in their relationship outside of sex. This shows that for nearly half of the sample, the preferred sexual role did extend partially into the non-sexual relationship.</p>
<p>For the group who reported being aroused by both dominance and submissiveness, the Switches, the pattern was different. A significant majority, 75 percent, reported experiencing both polarities during sexual activity. However, outside of sex, only 13 percent of Switches reported feeling both dominance and submissiveness in their relationship, while half of this group reported experiencing neither hierarchical feeling in the relationship. This suggests that the Switch group is less likely to carry hierarchical dynamics into their non-sexual partnership.</p>
<p>Experience of dominance and submission in sex was reported even by people who were not primarily aroused by hierarchy. More than half of those in the Without group, 60 percent, experienced such feelings during sex. Significantly, 75 percent of this group did not report feeling hierarchy in their relationship outside of sex.</p>
<p>In general, individuals who were aroused by only dominance or only submissiveness experienced the respective polarity they preferred more often in sex than in their relationships. The experience of the non-preferred, or opposite, polarity during sex and in relationships was infrequent for the Dominant and Submissive groups.</p>
<p>The main statistical findings emerged from the analysis linking these experiences to the Life Scale score, which measured submissiveness in interaction with all people, not just a partner. The final model revealed that several factors combined to predict higher levels of submissiveness in daily life.</p>
<p>Respondents who felt more submissive toward others were consistently those who reported experiencing subordination in their non-sexual relationship with their partner. This higher level of submissiveness was also observed in individuals who did not report feelings of superiority over their partner, either during sex or in the relationship generally.</p>
<p>Beyond partner dynamics, a person’s general social standing played a powerful role. Individuals who reported higher submissiveness toward others had lower socioeconomic status, lower education levels, and were younger than 55 years of age.</p>
<p>The effect of experiencing submissiveness in the partner relationship was particularly potent, increasing the measure of submissiveness toward other people by two and a half units on the Life Scale. Conversely, experiencing feelings of dominance in the relationship or during sex decreased the Life Scale score by about 1.4 to 1.5 units, indicating less submissiveness in daily life.</p>
<p>The researchers found that gender was not a decisive factor in predicting submissiveness in this model, suggesting that the underlying hierarchical patterns observed apply across both men and women in the sample. The findings overall supported the idea that a person’s hierarchical position in their intimate relationship is related to their hierarchical position in society, aligning with the “Social Rank Hypothesis” and the “Coherence Hypothesis” proposed by the authors. This means that, contrary to some popular notions, sex and relationship hierarchy do not typically function as a “compensation” for an individual’s status in the outside world.</p>
<p>The research points to the existence of a consistent behavioral pattern linked to tendencies toward dominance or submissiveness in interpersonal relationships that seems to be natural for some people. The researchers suggest that because power polarization in relationships and sex can be eroticizing, it should be practiced with consideration, especially given the observed link between submissiveness in relationships and lower social status in general. They stress the importance of moderation and maintaining a return to a non-polarized state, often referred to as aftercare, following intense sexual interactions.</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledged several limitations inherent in the study design. Since the data were collected solely through online platforms popular within the BDSM community, the sample may not fully represent all practitioners. People with limited internet access or older individuals may have been underrepresented. The Life Scale instrument, while simple and effective for an online survey, provides a basic assessment of hierarchical status, and future research could employ more extensive psychological measures.</p>
<p>Because the study focused exclusively on practitioners of BDSM, the researchers were unable to compare their level of general life submissiveness with individuals in the broader population who do not practice these sexual behaviors. Future studies should aim to include comparison groups from the general population to solidify the understanding of these personality patterns.</p>
<p>Despite these constraints, the results provide practical implications. The researchers suggest that simple questions about hierarchical feelings in sex and relationships can be useful in therapeutic settings to understand a client’s orientation and potentially predict their vulnerability to external pressures or relationship risk. The clear relationship observed between the Life Scale and social status highlights that submissive individuals may already face a great deal of pressure from society, pointing to the need for social support.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2557498" target="_blank">The Link Between Sexual Dominance Preference and Social Behavior in BDSM Sex Practitioners</a>,” was authored by Eva Jozifkova, Marek Broul, Ivana Lovetinska, Jan Neugebauer, and Ivana Stolova.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-common-cognitive-bias-is-fueling-distrust-in-election-outcomes-according-to-new-psychology-research/" 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;">A common cognitive bias is fueling distrust in election outcomes, according to new psychology research</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 22nd 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new scientific paper suggests that a common, unconscious mental shortcut may partly explain why many people believe in election fraud. The research indicates that the order in which votes are reported can bias perceptions, making a legitimate late comeback by a candidate seem suspicious. This work was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976251355594" target="_blank">Psychological Science</a></em>.</p>
<p>The research was motivated by <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-research-shows-2020-u-s-vote-counts-were-extraordinarily-accurate-contradicting-fraud-claims/" target="_blank">the false allegations of fraud</a> that followed the 2020 United States presidential election. Previous work by political scientists and psychologists has identified several factors that contribute to these beliefs. For example, messages from political leaders can influence the views of their supporters. Another explanation is the “winner effect,” which suggests people are more likely to see an election as illegitimate <a href="https://www.psypost.org/losers-likely-believe-conspiracy-theories-study-finds/" target="_blank">if their preferred party loses</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, research on motivated reasoning highlights how a person’s desire to maintain a positive view of their political party can lead them to question an unfavorable outcome. Personality differences may also play a part, as some individuals are more predisposed to viewing events as the result of a conspiracy.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, a team of researchers led by André Vaz of Ruhr University Bochum proposed that a more fundamental cognitive mechanism could also be at play. They investigated whether the sequential reporting of partial vote counts, a standard practice in news media, could inadvertently sow distrust. They theorized that beliefs in fraud might be fueled by a phenomenon known as the cumulative redundancy bias.</p>
<p>This bias describes how our impressions are shaped by the progression of a competition. When we repeatedly see one competitor in the lead, it creates a strong mental impression of their dominance. This has been observed in various contexts, including judgments of sports teams and stock market performance. The core idea is that the repeated observation of a competitor being ahead leaves a lasting impression on observers that is not entirely erased even when the final result shows they have lost. The human mind seems to struggle with discounting information once it has been processed.</p>
<p>The order in which information is presented can be arbitrary, like the order in which votes are counted, yet it can leave a lasting, skewed perception of the competitors. This was evident in the 2020 election in states like Georgia, where early-counted ballots often favored Donald Trump. This occurred in part because his supporters were more likely to vote in person, and those votes were often tallied first. </p>
<p>In contrast, ballots counted later tended to favor Joe Biden, as his voters made greater use of mail-in voting, and many counties counted those mail-in ballots last. Additionally, populous urban counties, which tend to be more Democratic, were often slower to report their results than more rural counties. This created a dramatic late shift in the lead, which the study’s authors suggest is a prime scenario for the cumulative redundancy bias to take effect.</p>
<p>To test this hypothesis, the scientists conducted a series of seven studies with participants from the United States and the United Kingdom. The first study tested whether the cumulative redundancy bias would appear in a simulated election. Participants watched the vote count for a school representative election between two fictional candidates, “Peter” and “Robert.” In both scenarios, Peter won by the same final margin. The only difference was the order of the count. In an “early-lead” condition, Peter took the lead from the beginning. In a “late-lead” condition, he trailed Robert until the very last ballots were counted. </p>
<p>The results showed that participants rated Peter more favorably and predicted he would be more successful in the future when he had an early lead. When Peter won with a late lead, participants actually rated the loser, Robert, as the better candidate.</p>
<p>The second study used the same setup but tested for perceptions of fraud. After the simulated vote count, participants were told that rumors of a rigged election had emerged. When the winner had secured a late lead, participants found it significantly more likely that the vote count had been manipulated and that the wrong candidate had won compared to when the winner had an early lead.</p>
<p>To make the simulation more realistic, a third study presented the vote counts as percentages, similar to how news outlets report them, instead of raw vote totals. The researchers found the same results. Observing a candidate come from behind to win late in the count made participants more suspicious of fraud.</p>
<p>The fourth study brought the experiment even closer to reality. The researchers used the actual vote-count progression from the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia, which showed a candidate trailing for most of the count before winning at the end. To avoid partisan bias, participants were told they were observing a recent election in an unnamed Eastern European country. One group saw the actual vote progression, where the eventual winner took the lead late. The other group saw the same data but in a reversed order, creating a scenario where the winner led from the start. Once again, participants who saw the candidate come from behind were more likely to believe the election was manipulated.</p>
<p>Building on this, the fifth study investigated if these fraud suspicions could arise even before the election was decided. Participants watched a vote count that stopped just before completion, at a point when one candidate had just overtaken the longtime leader. Participants were then asked how likely it was that the vote was being manipulated in favor of either candidate. In the scenario mirroring the 2020 Georgia count, people found it more likely that the election was being manipulated in favor of the candidate who just took the lead. In the reversed scenario, they found it more likely that the election was being manipulated in favor of the candidate who was losing their early lead.</p>
<p>During the actual 2020 election, officials and news commentators provided explanations for the shifting vote counts, such as differences in when urban and rural counties reported their results. The sixth study tested if such explanations could reduce the bias. All participants saw the late-lead scenario, but one group was given an explanation for why the lead changed. The results showed that while the explanation did reduce the belief in fraud, it did not eliminate it. People were still significantly more suspicious of a late comeback than would be expected.</p>
<p>The final study addressed partisanship directly. American participants who identified as either Democrats or Republicans were shown a vote count explicitly labeled as being from the 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. As expected, political affiliation had a strong effect, with Republicans being more likely to suspect fraud in favor of Biden and Democrats being more likely to suspect fraud in favor of Trump. </p>
<p>However, the cumulative redundancy bias still had a clear impact. For both Republicans and Democrats, seeing Biden take a late lead increased suspicions of a pro-Biden manipulation compared to seeing a scenario where he led from the start. This suggests the cognitive bias operates independently of, and in addition to, partisan motivations.</p>
<p>The researchers note that their findings are based on participants recruited from an online platform and may not represent all populations. The studies also focus on the perception of vote counting, not on other potential election issues like voter registration or suppression. However, the consistent results across seven different experiments provide strong evidence that the way election results are communicated can unintentionally create distrust. </p>
<p>The authors suggest that the sequential reporting of vote counts could be revised to mitigate these effects. While simply waiting until all votes are counted could be one solution, they acknowledge that a lack of information might also breed suspicion. Better public education about vote counting procedures or the use of more advanced forecasting models that provide context beyond live totals could be alternative ways to present results without fueling false perceptions of fraud.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976251355594" target="_blank">‘Stop the Count!’—How Reporting Partial Election Results Fuels Beliefs in Election Fraud</a>,” was authored by André Vaz, Moritz Ingendahl, André Mata, and Hans Alves.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-report-the-first-molecular-evidence-connecting-childhood-intelligence-to-a-longer-life/" 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 report the first molecular evidence connecting childhood intelligence to a longer life</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 22nd 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new scientific analysis has uncovered a direct genetic link between higher cognitive function in childhood and a longer lifespan. The findings suggest that some of the same genetic factors influencing a child’s intelligence are also associated with how long they will live. This research, published in the peer-reviewed journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.61373/gp025l.0098" target="_blank">Genomic Psychiatry</a></em>, offers the first molecular evidence connecting childhood intellect and longevity through shared genetic foundations.</p>
<p>For many years, scientists in a field known as cognitive epidemiology have observed a consistent pattern: children who score higher on intelligence tests tend to live longer. A major review of this phenomenon, which analyzed data from over one million people, found that for a standard increase in cognitive test scores in youth, there was a 24 percent lower risk of death over several decades. The reasons for this connection have long been a subject of debate, with questions about whether it was due to lifestyle, socioeconomic status, or some underlying biological factor.</p>
<p>Previous genetic studies have identified an association between cognitive function in adults and longevity. A problem with using adult data, however, is the possibility of reverse causation. Poor health in later life can negatively affect a person’s cognitive abilities and simultaneously shorten their life. This makes it difficult to determine if genes are linking intelligence to longevity, or if later-life health issues are simply confounding the results by impacting both traits at the same time.</p>
<p>To overcome this challenge, a team of researchers led by W. David Hill at the University of Edinburgh sought to examine the genetic relationship using intelligence data from childhood, long before adult health problems could become a complicating factor. Their goal was to see if the well-documented association between youthful intelligence and a long life had a basis in shared genetics. This approach would provide a cleaner look at any potential biological connections between the two traits.</p>
<p>The researchers did not collect new biological samples or test individuals directly. Instead, they performed a sophisticated statistical analysis of data from two very large existing genetic databases. They used summary results from a genome-wide association study on childhood cognitive function, which contained genetic information from 12,441 individuals. This type of study scans the entire genetic code of many people to find tiny variations associated with a particular trait.</p>
<p>They then took this information and compared it to data from another genome-wide association study focused on longevity. This second dataset was much larger, containing genetic information related to the lifespan of the parents of 389,166 people. By applying a technique called linkage disequilibrium score regression, the scientists were able to estimate the extent to which the same genetic variants were associated with both childhood intelligence and a long life.</p>
<p>The analysis revealed a positive and statistically significant genetic correlation between childhood cognitive function and parental longevity. The correlation estimate was 0.35, which indicates a moderate overlap in the genetic influences on both traits. This result provides strong evidence that the connection between being a brighter child and living a longer life is, at least in part, explained by a shared genetic architecture. The same genes that contribute to higher intelligence in youth appear to also contribute to a longer lifespan.</p>
<p>The researchers explain that this shared genetic influence, a concept known as pleiotropy, could operate in a few different ways. The presence of a genetic correlation is consistent with multiple biological models, and the methods used in this study cannot definitively separate them. One possible explanation falls under a model of horizontal pleiotropy, where a set of genes independently affects both brain development and bodily health.</p>
<p>This idea supports what some scientists call the “system integrity” hypothesis. According to this view, certain genetic makeups produce a human system, both brain and body, that is inherently more robust. Such a system would be better at withstanding environmental challenges and the wear and tear of aging, leading to both better cognitive performance and greater longevity.</p>
<p>Another possibility is a model of vertical pleiotropy. In this scenario, the genetic link is more like a causal chain of events. Genes primarily influence childhood cognitive function. Higher cognitive function then enables individuals to make choices and navigate environments that are more conducive to good health and a long life. For example, higher intelligence is linked to achieving more education, which in turn is associated with better occupations, greater health literacy, and healthier behaviors, all of which promote longevity.</p>
<p>A limitation of this work is its inability to distinguish between these different potential mechanisms. The study confirms that a genetic overlap exists, but it does not tell us exactly how that overlap functions biologically. The research identifies an average shared genetic effect across the genome. It does not provide information about which specific genes or biological pathways are responsible for this link. Additional work is needed to identify the precise regions of the genome that drive this genetic correlation between early-life cognitive function and how long a person lives.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.61373/gp025l.0098" target="_blank">Shared genetic etiology between childhood cognitive function and longevity</a>,” was authored by W. David Hill and Ian J. Deary.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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