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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-prefer-partners-with-strong-personal-growth-motivation-for-long-term-relationships/" 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 prefer partners with strong personal growth motivation for long-term relationships</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 21st 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Women prefer mates who show strong personal growth motivation, particularly for long-term relationships, according to a new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-025-00449-z"><em>Evolutionary Psychological Science</em></a>.</p>
<p>Across human societies, choosing partners who can support long-term wellbeing, stability, and mutual investment is a central part of romantic decision-making. Traits that signal maturity, commitment, and fidelity tend to be especially valued in long-term relationships, whereas short-term preferences often focus more on immediate attraction or novelty.</p>
<p>Researchers have examined the cues people rely on when judging whether someone can meet their emotional, practical, or reproductive goals. Within this work, scholars have become increasingly interested in growth motivation—a person’s desire to broaden their perspective, develop wisdom, and pursue meaningful experiences—as a possible indicator of long-term partner quality.</p>
<p>In this study, Mitch Brown and colleagues examined whether people prefer partners who show strong growth motivation, and whether that preference shifts when considering short-term versus long-term relationships. They focused on two forms of growth described in humanistic psychology.</p>
<p>Experiential growth refers to pursuing happiness and wellbeing through experiences that offer hedonic satisfaction but ultimately deepen a sense of meaning. Reflective growth, in contrast, involves cultivating wisdom through thoughtful self-reflection and is linked to psychological maturity and prosocial tendencies.</p>
<p>Because both forms of growth motivation are associated with wellbeing and long-term developmental goals, the authors reasoned that individuals who exhibit them may signal maturity, investment potential, and relational stability, qualities especially relevant when evaluating long-term partners.</p>
<p>In the pilot study, 66 undergraduate participants from a Southeastern university in the United States evaluated short written profiles describing individuals who showed either high or low levels of experiential or reflective growth motivation. These profiles were adapted from language used in the Growth Motivation Inventory.</p>
<p>Participants rated each target on how growth-motivated they seemed overall, as well as how much they embodied experiential or reflective growth. The goal of the pilot was to confirm that the vignettes accurately conveyed the intended levels and types of growth motivation, and that participants consistently distinguished between high-growth and low-growth profiles.</p>
<p>For the main study, the authors recruited 508 heterosexual undergraduates (375 women, 133 men; mean age ~19 years) from the same region. Participants viewed four profiles describing opposite-sex individuals who varied in growth motivation (high vs. low) and growth type (reflective vs. experiential).</p>
<p>Each participant rated every target for desirability as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate, using standard definitions provided by the researchers. They also evaluated how prone each target seemed to be to infidelity, using a single-item measure frequently used in mate-preference research.</p>
<p>In the pilot study, participants consistently judged the high-growth profiles as much more growth-motivated than the low-growth profiles, regardless of whether the vignette described experiential or reflective forms of growth. This confirmed that the vignettes successfully communicated the intended personality differences and that participants reliably perceived these differences.</p>
<p>In the main study, a clear pattern emerged. Women showed a pronounced preference for high-growth men when imagining long-term relationships, rating them as far more desirable than men with low growth motivation. This was especially true for targets described as highly experiential in their approach to growth, though reflective growth was also strongly favored. Women also showed a modest preference for reflective high-growth men in short-term contexts, but these effects were small compared to the long-term advantage.</p>
<p>Men, in contrast, did not show meaningful differences in desirability ratings based on the growth traits of the targets; they responded similarly to high-growth and low-growth women across both short-term and long-term contexts.</p>
<p>Judgments about the likelihood of infidelity produced another consistent pattern. Both men and women believed that individuals low in growth motivation were more likely to cheat than those high in growth motivation. This perception was especially strong among women and was most pronounced when the low-growth target was described as lacking reflective growth.</p>
<p>Participants appeared to intuit that people who invest little in personal development may also be less committed or reliable partners, suggesting that growth motivation may serve as a broader interpersonal signal of fidelity and relationship stability.</p>
<p>Of note is that the study sample was primarily composed of young Western undergraduates, limiting the generalizability of the findings across cultures.</p>
<p>The research “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-025-00449-z">Contextual Preferences for Growth Motivation in Mates</a>” was authored by Mitch Brown, Natalie J. Gonzalez, and Jack J. Bauer.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-identify-distinct-neural-dynamics-linked-to-general-intelligence/" 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 identify distinct neural dynamics linked to general intelligence</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 21st 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_00234" target="_blank">Imaging Neuroscience</a></em> suggests that general intelligence is supported by the brain’s ability to maintain stable, efficient, and typical connectivity patterns. The study indicates that individuals with higher cognitive abilities tend to sustain specific brain states longer and reconfigure their neural networks more efficiently than those with lower scores. These findings provide evidence that general intelligence relies on optimizing brain communication dynamics rather than simply having faster or more flexible connections overall.</p>
<p>The concept of general intelligence, often denoted as “g”, reflects an individual’s capacity to perform well across a variety of cognitive tasks. A person who excels in verbal reasoning often performs well in spatial or mathematical tasks as well. This observation has led scientists to look for shared biological mechanisms in the brain that drive this generalized performance.</p>
<p>Early theories focused on the size of specific brain regions or the strength of static connections between them. However, the brain is not a static organ. It constantly reorganizes its activity to meet changing demands. This led to the development of the Network Neuroscience Theory of Human Intelligence. This theory posits that intelligence arises from the brain’s dynamic ability to reconfigure its network topology.</p>
<p>Scientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure these changes. Most previous research looked at “static functional connectivity,” which averages brain activity over a long period. This approach misses the rapid changes that occur from moment to moment. Newer methods analyze “dynamic functional connectivity” to see how the brain transitions between different states of activity over time.</p>
<p>Previous dynamic studies largely focused on how frequently the brain switches between states. While informative, these metrics do not fully capture the nuance of network reconfiguration. They do not measure how consistent the connectivity is within a state or how similar a person’s brain patterns are to the general population. The authors of the current study sought to fill this gap by examining the stability, efficiency, and typicality of these dynamic patterns.</p>
<p>“We set out to explore a long-standing question: What is the biological basis of general intelligence? In other words, why do people who perform well on certain types of cognitive tasks like memory also tend to perform well across other cognitive tasks like attention and reasoning?” said study author Colin Hawco, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and a scientist in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.</p>
<p>“The Network Neuroscience Theory of Human Intelligence suggests that general intelligence relates to the brain’s capacity to flexibly change connections between different regions in response to different cognitive demands. We looked at how the brain transitions through different ‘brain states’, which represent patterns of connectivity across brain networks that change over time, but also repeat.” </p>
<p>“Previously, the frequency of transitions between these brain states was linked to executive functioning; the frequency of these changes might reflect the ‘flexibility’ proposed by the theory,” Hawco continued. “However, we looked beyond these more standard frequency measures, and also explored the nature of these state changes. We were especially interested in the ability to hold stable brain states, and make ‘clean’ transitions between states, as well as how typical the pattern of brain connectivity for each person was in these states.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers utilized data from the Human Connectome Project. This is a large-scale initiative designed to map the neural pathways of the human brain. The final sample included 950 young adults. The participants ranged in age from 22 to 36 years old.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed fMRI data collected while the participants were in a resting state. During these scans, individuals lay still without performing any specific task. This allows scientists to observe the intrinsic functional architecture of the brain. The team also accessed scores from ten different cognitive tests taken by the participants. These tests measured abilities such as working memory, processing speed, reading decoding, and fluid intelligence.</p>
<p>The analytical approach involved a method called Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis. This technique allows for the identification of recurring patterns of brain connectivity, referred to as “states,” at a specific point in time. The researchers identified six distinct states that the brain cycles through. State 1 represented a baseline pattern with uniform signal coherence. States 2 through 6 represented various configurations of complex networks, such as the Default Mode Network and the Frontoparietal Network.</p>
<p>After identifying these states, the researchers calculated several metrics for each participant. They looked at “frequency,” or how often and how long a person stayed in a specific state. They measured “transition distance,” which quantifies how much the brain’s connectivity pattern changes when moving from one state to another. Finally, they assessed “idiosyncrasy,” which measures how different an individual’s brain state is from the group average.</p>
<p>“We explored three main measures of brain function and related them to general intelligence: 1) frequency of changing states, measuring flexibility; 2) how well people could hold and transition brain states, measuring stability and control, and 3) how typical the connectivity was in each state, measuring how much they deviated from the ‘normal’ average,” Hawco explained. “This diverse set of measures let us characterize novel aspects of brain connectivity flexibility that relate to general intelligence.”</p>
<p>The researchers found that individuals with higher intelligence scores tended to maintain stable connectivity in specific states involving higher-order cognitive networks. Specifically, they spent more time in states characterized by interactions between attention and control networks. This suggests that the ability to sustain complex network configurations is a marker of higher cognitive ability.</p>
<p>The researchers also found a relationship between intelligence and reconfiguration efficiency. High-scoring individuals exhibited smaller connectivity changes when transitioning between similar states. Conversely, they showed larger connectivity changes when moving to distinctly different states. This implies a neural system that is precise. It conserves energy for minor adjustments but is capable of substantial reconfiguration when necessary.</p>
<p>Another significant finding was related to the concept of typicality. The researchers found that higher general intelligence was associated with having brain patterns that closely resembled the group average. In other words, the most “typical” brain patterns were linked to the best performance. This supports the idea that evolutionary processes may converge on an optimal functional organization.</p>
<p>“Finding that have a more ‘typical’ pattern of connectivity in each state was related to higher cognition was somewhat surprising,” Hawco told PsyPost. “We often think of people with higher cognition as having more unique brains, but this may not be the case at all. Our strong findings that stability when holding a brain state were also quite exciting. This aspect of brain function is generally not captured by current methods, and we think its an important window into brain functions which also has implications for our research on mental health.” </p>
<p>The researchers observed a different pattern when analyzing processing speed. While general intelligence was linked to stability, processing speed was associated with flexibility. Individuals with faster processing speeds tended to switch between states more frequently. They also showed higher idiosyncrasy, meaning their brain patterns were more unique compared to the group average.</p>
<p>This divergence suggests that different cognitive domains rely on different dynamic properties. General intelligence appears to benefit from prolonged, stable engagement of specific networks. Processing speed appears to benefit from the ability to rapidly cycle through different configurations. The contrast highlights that “better” brain function is context-dependent.</p>
<p>“Our findings suggest that higher general intelligence is linked to a person’s capacity to efficiently achieve and sustain typical connectivity patterns in states highlighting the interactions of ‘higher-order’ cognitive-processing networks,” Hawco explained. “Our study corroborates prior studies and theories linking these higher-order cognitive-processing networks to general intelligence, prior neural efficiency hypotheses for general intelligence, and adds to the hypothesis that group-averages represent optimal characteristics.”</p>
<p>“A lot of research into the brain focuses exclusively on how strong connections are on average over a longer period; this work moves into understanding patterns, and how well brain connectivity is controlled by an individual over time. It’s a really different way to think of brain function, and we think it may better capture some important aspects of cognitive function.” </p>
<p>“The effect sizes were moderate, indicating that a large portion of individual variability in intelligence is still not explained,” Hawco noted. “While expected of brain-behavior relationships, this indicates that our measures do not completely capture the aspects of brain network flexibility that relate to general intelligence. We still have a lot to understand in what drives generalized intelligence.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are some limitations. The data relies on resting-state fMRI, which may not perfectly reflect how the brain functions during active problem-solving. The relationships observed are correlational and do not prove that specific brain patterns cause higher intelligence. Additionally, the participants were all healthy young adults, limiting the generalizability of the results to other age groups or clinical populations.</p>
<p>“Intelligence research has long faced skepticism, in part because of its complex history and the way results have sometimes been misused,” Hawco said. “Early intelligence testing was tied to social hierarchies, educational inequality, and even discriminatory policies — associations that understandably left a lasting stigma. In modern times, people may also view IQ research as reductionist, assuming it tries to capture the richness of human thought or potential in a single number.”</p>
<p>“However, contemporary intelligence research is far more nuanced. It examines the neural, genetic, and environmental factors that shape reasoning, learning, and problem-solving — not to rank individuals, but to understand how the mind works. Findings from this field inform education, cognitive training, and even clinical approaches to conditions that affect thinking.”</p>
<p>“In reality, studying intelligence is not about labeling people; it’s about uncovering the biological and psychological foundations of human cognition — one of the most important scientific questions there is.”</p>
<p>Future research will likely explore these dynamics during active tasks. Observing how the brain reconfigures when challenged with a difficult problem could provide stronger evidence for the neural efficiency hypothesis. The researchers also aim to investigate these patterns across different timescales. They hope to determine if these dynamic fingerprints can predict changes in cognitive health over time.</p>
<p>“Currently, we are in the process of analyzing the relationship between brain connectivity flexibility and general intelligence both across different contexts and scales,” Hawco told PsyPost. “This study was conducted on flexibility metrics calculated from individuals during resting-state (i.e., they were not asked to do anything). Having participants do cognitively challenging tasks in the MRI may provide a ‘stress test’ of the brain for cognitive performance, so brain-behavior relationships may be stronger and thus better observed.” </p>
<p>“Furthermore, brain modulation between task and rest may be another measure of adaptive flexibility which may be of interest. In addition, this study was conducted on high-level whole-brain measures of flexibility in connectivity patterns. Flexibility at the level of regions and connections may reveal even more interesting relationships with intelligence.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_00234" target="_blank">Higher general intelligence is associated with stable, efficient, and typical dynamic functional brain connectivity patterns</a>,” was authored by Justin Ng, Ju-Chi Yu, Jamie D. Feusner, and Colin Hawco.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/229802-2/" 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;">How generative AI could change how we think and speak</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a profound impact on our economies, work and lifestyle. But could this technology also shape the way we think and speak?</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/artificial-intelligence-ai-90">AI</a> can be used to draft essays and solve problems in mere seconds that otherwise might take us minutes or hours. When we shift to an over-reliance on such tools, we arguably fail to exercise key skills such as critical thinking and our ability to use language creatively. Precedents from psychology and neuroscience research hint that we should take the possibility seriously.</p>
<p>There are several precedents for technology reconfiguring our minds, rather than just assisting them. Research shows that people who rely on GPS tend to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S107158191830171X?via%3Dihub">lose part of their ability</a> to form mental maps.</p>
<p>London taxi drivers once memorised hundreds of streets before the advent of satellite navigation. These drivers developed enlarged hippocampi as a result of this. The hippocampus is the brain region associated with spatial memory.</p>
<p>In one of his most <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-5401-1_4">striking studies</a>, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky examined patients who suffered from aphasia, a disorder that impairs the ability to understand or produce speech.</p>
<p>When asked to say “snow is black” or to misname a colour, they could not. Their minds resisted any separation between words and things. Vygotsky saw this as the loss of a key ability: to use language as an instrument for thinking creatively, and going beyond what is given to us.</p>
<p>Could an over-reliance on AI produce similar problems? When language comes pre-packaged from screens, feeds, or AI systems, the link between thought and speech may begin to wither.</p>
<p>In education, students are <a href="https://www.hepi.ac.uk/reports/student-generative-ai-survey-2025/">using generative AI</a> to compose essays, summarise books, and solve problems in seconds. Within an academic culture already shaped by competition, performance metrics, and quick results, such tools promise efficiency at the cost of reflection.</p>
<p>Many teachers will recognise those students who produce eloquent, grammatically flawless texts but reveal little understanding of what they have written. This represents the quiet erosion of thinking as a creative activity.</p>
<h2>Quick solutions</h2>
<p><a href="https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7">A systematic review</a>, published in 2024, found that over-reliance on AI affected people’s cognitive abilities, as individuals increasingly favoured quick solutions over slow ones.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01787-8">A study</a> that surveyed 285 students at universities in Pakistan and China found that using AI adversely affected human decision making and made people lazy. The researchers said: “AI performs repetitive tasks in an automated manner and does not let humans memorise, use analytical mind skills, or use cognition.”</p>
<p>There is also an extensive body of work <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/language-attrition/E01D99C677868227CED2DEB9E35E5E56">on language attrition</a>. This is the loss of proficiency in language which can be seen in real-world scenarios. For example, people tend to lose proficiency in their first language when they move to an environment where a different language is spoken. The neurolinguist Michel Paradis says that “attrition is the result of long-term lack of stimulation”.</p>
<p>The psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-10268-000">thought and language co-evolved</a>. They were not born together, but through human development they fused in what he called verbal thought. Under this scenario, language is not a mere container for ideas, but is the very medium through which ideas take shape.</p>
<p>The child begins with a world full of sensations but poor in words. Through language, that chaotic field becomes intelligible. As we grow, our relationship with language deepens. Play becomes imagination and imagination becomes abstract thought. The adolescent learns to translate emotions into concepts, to reflect rather than react.</p>
<p>This capacity for abstraction liberates us from the immediacy of experience. It allows us to project ourselves into the future, to reshape the world, to remember and to hope.</p>
<p>But this fragile relationship can decay when language is dictated rather than discovered. The result is a culture of immediacy, dominated by emotion without understanding, expression without reflection. Students, and increasingly all of us, risk becoming editors of what has already been said, where the future is built only from recycled fragments of yesterday’s data.</p>
<p>The implications reach beyond education. Whoever controls the digital<br>
infrastructure of language also controls the boundaries of imagination and debate. To surrender language to algorithms is to outsource not only communication but sovereignty – the power to define the world we share. Democracies depend on the slow work of thinking through words.</p>
<p>When that work is replaced by automated fluency, political life risks dissolving into slogans generated by no one in particular. This does not mean that AI must be rejected. For those who have already formed a deep, reflective relationship with language, such tools can be helpful allies – extensions of thought rather than substitutes for it.</p>
<p>What needs defending is the conceptual beauty of language: the freedom to build meaning through one’s own search for words. Yet defending this freedom requires more than awareness – it demands practice.</p>
<p>To resist the collapse of meaning, we must restore language to its living, bodily dimension, the difficult, joyful labour of finding words for our thoughts. Only by doing so can we reclaim the freedom to imagine, to deliberate, and to reinvent the future.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/267118/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
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<p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-generative-ai-could-change-how-we-think-and-speak-267118">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/increased-neural-flexibility-may-signal-brain-network-breakdown-in-alzheimers/" 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;">Increased neural flexibility may signal brain network breakdown in Alzheimer’s</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study suggests that the communication patterns within the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease are less stable than in their healthy peers. This increased “neural flexibility,” particularly within the brain’s visual system, may also help predict which individuals are likely to transition to dementia. The findings were recently published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/13872877251360025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease</a></em>.</p>
<p>The human brain can be thought of as a complex and dynamic network, where different regions constantly communicate to support our thoughts and actions. Scientists map these communication pathways using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which tracks blood flow as an indirect measure of brain activity. This allows them to identify “functional networks,” which are groups of brain regions that consistently activate together, much like a team of colleagues working on a project.</p>
<p>Traditionally, research has examined these networks in a static way, creating a single snapshot of the brain’s overall connectivity pattern. However, brain activity is not static; it changes from moment to moment. A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and Columbia University sought to explore these dynamic changes in the context of Alzheimer’s disease. They were interested in a specific measure called neural flexibility, which quantifies how frequently a brain region switches its allegiance from one functional network to another over a short period.</p>
<p>The research team, led by Seonjoo Lee, an expert in mental health data science at Columbia University, investigated whether this measure of network instability could offer new insights into Alzheimer’s disease. They hypothesized that the breakdown of brain structure associated with the disease might lead to higher neural flexibility. They also explored whether this measure could serve as an early indicator for individuals at risk of developing dementia.</p>
<p>To conduct their analysis, the scientists utilized data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a large-scale project that tracks the progression of the disease over many years. Their study included 862 older adults who were categorized into one of three groups: cognitively normal, having mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or having a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Each participant underwent a resting-state fMRI scan, where they lay quietly in the scanner without performing any specific task.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed the brain scan data using a “sliding-window” method. Instead of looking at the entire scan at once, they broke it down into many short, overlapping time segments. For each segment, they identified the distinct communities of brain regions that were actively communicating. By comparing these communities from one window to the next, they could calculate a neural flexibility score for each brain region, representing how often it changed its network membership.</p>
<p>The results showed that, on a global level, the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease exhibited significantly higher neural flexibility than the brains of cognitively normal participants. This indicates a greater degree of instability in their brain network organization. This pattern of increased flexibility was also observed in six of the twelve specific functional networks the team examined, including networks involved in attention, memory retrieval, and sensory-motor functions.</p>
<p>The team then turned its attention to predicting the progression to dementia. They focused on the 617 participants who did not have dementia at the start of the study, a group composed of both cognitively normal individuals and those with mild cognitive impairment. Over a follow-up period of more than 11 years, 53 of these participants transitioned to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s-related dementia.</p>
<p>When analyzing the initial brain scans for predictors of this transition, the researchers identified a specific signal. Higher neural flexibility in the visual network at the beginning of the study was associated with a greater likelihood of a future dementia diagnosis. This suggests that dynamic changes within a network typically affected later in the disease’s progression could serve as an early warning sign. The authors propose that as core cognitive networks begin to degrade, other systems, like the visual network, may need to reorganize more frequently to help maintain function.</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledge several limitations to their work. The number of participants who converted to dementia was relatively small, which means the predictive finding, while statistically significant, did not survive a more stringent correction for multiple comparisons and should be interpreted with caution. The study population was also overwhelmingly non-Hispanic White, so it is unclear if these patterns would apply to more diverse groups.</p>
<p>Future research could build on these findings by examining neural flexibility in different populations and by using brain imaging with higher temporal resolution. It would also be beneficial to investigate the biological mechanisms underlying these changes, for example, by correlating neural flexibility with the presence of Alzheimer’s-related proteins in the brain. Despite these caveats, the study introduces a promising method for understanding the dynamic brain changes that occur in Alzheimer’s disease and offers a potential new avenue for identifying individuals at risk.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/13872877251360025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neural flexibility is higher in Alzheimer’s disease and predicts Alzheimer’s disease transition</a>,” was authored by Eleanna Varangis, Jun Liu, Yuqi Miao, Xi Zhu, Yaakov Stern, Seonjoo Lee, and For Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/support-for-black-lives-matter-may-buffer-against-the-psychological-toll-of-traumatic-viral-videos/" 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;">Support for Black Lives Matter may buffer against the psychological toll of traumatic viral videos</a>
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<p><p>New research provides evidence that support for the Black Lives Matter movement may help protect Black young adults from the negative mental health effects of viewing videos depicting police violence. While exposure to racialized traumatic media is generally linked to higher anxiety, the new study suggests that connection to the social movement buffers against depression and anxiety. The findings were published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984251386137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology</a></em>.</p>
<p>The year 2020 marked a significant period of social unrest and visibility regarding anti-Black police brutality in the United States. The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor reignited the Black Lives Matter movement and led to a surge in media coverage. This coverage frequently included graphic videos of Black individuals being harmed or killed.</p>
<p>Scholars refer to this specific type of content as racialized traumatic media. Past inquiries have established that repeated exposure to such images acts as a stressor for Black Americans. It contributes to poor mental health outcomes. This includes symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.</p>
<p>The authors of the current study sought to understand the nuances of how this media consumption impacts Black young adults. They aimed to move beyond simply establishing a link between media and distress. They wanted to identify factors that might worsen the impact or provide resilience.</p>
<p>“During 2020, we were collecting data on the impact of the pandemic on Black young adults’ health. As many readers are likely aware, there was a lot of attention on the ‘dual pandemic’ being raised in 2020 – that is, the impacts of racism and COVID-19 on Black people’s health in the United States,” said study author <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarina-aubuchon-phd/details/featured/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Katarina E. AuBuchon</a>, a research scientist at the MedStar Health Research Institute.</p>
<p>“After the death of George Floyd, there were increasing surges of videos that were highly traumatizing circulating in the media. We wanted to understand how these might impact the health of Black people in our sample. So, we put together some measures to add to our survey at the time.”</p>
<p>Specifically, the researchers focused on the potential protective role of sociopolitical involvement. The Black Lives Matter movement emphasizes community, resistance, and the fight against structural racism. The research team hypothesized that supporting this movement might offer a psychological buffer. They reasoned that it could provide a framework for processing injustice and fostering solidarity.</p>
<p>The study also examined the role of Race-Based Traumatic Stress. This concept describes the emotional injury and stress reactions resulting from experiences of racism. The researchers anticipated that individuals who were already suffering from high levels of this stress would be more vulnerable to the harms of traumatic media.</p>
<p>The research team recruited 167 Black young adults to participate in the study. The participants resided in the Eastern Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. This area includes Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Data collection took place between November 2020 and January 2021. This timing was significant as it followed the intense protests of the previous summer. The participants completed an online survey assessing various psychological and behavioral measures.</p>
<p>To measure exposure to racialized traumatic media, participants reported how often they viewed specific types of content since March 2020. This content included videos of people of their race being harmed by police. It also included distressing news about police violence and negative media regarding protests.</p>
<p>The survey measured support for the Black Lives Matter movement using a rating scale. This scale ranged from no support to strong support with active involvement. The researchers also utilized a standardized scale to assess Race-Based Traumatic Stress symptoms.</p>
<p>Participants reported their current levels of anger, anxiety, and depression. They also indicated whether they had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. The analysis controlled for variables such as gender, income, and education to isolate the effects of the media exposure.</p>
<p>The results indicated a direct association between the frequency of viewing traumatic media and increased anxiety. “We found, consistent with other studies on the topic, that exposure to traumatic videos were harmful to Black young adults’ mental health,” AuBuchon told PsyPost. “This is not surprising, particularly in the context of other work on the topic. For example,<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/adb0000957" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> we previously found</a> that for young women in favor of abortion rights in trigger law states, exposure to media about the overturn of <em>Roe v. Wade</em> related to higher alcohol use intentions.”</p>
<p>Importantly, the relationship between traumatic media exposure and mental health was not uniform across all participants. It varied significantly based on their level of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.</p>
<p>For participants who reported low levels of support for the movement, higher exposure to traumatic media predicted significantly worse outcomes. These individuals reported higher levels of both anxiety and depression as their media consumption increased.</p>
<p>In contrast, this negative relationship was not observed among participants with high support for Black Lives Matter. For these individuals, increased exposure to traumatic media was not statistically linked to higher anxiety or depression. This suggests that alignment with the movement provided a buffering effect.</p>
<p>The researchers propose that the movement may facilitate coping. It creates a sense of collective identity and purpose. This can transform feelings of helplessness into feelings of empowerment or solidarity.</p>
<p>“We found emerging evidence that activism could provide a way to help mitigate the negative effects of this traumatic media exposure,” AuBuchon explained. “This is important because it gives us a line of intervention – and one that can be important for the health of the community! So, engaging in community work and getting involved could be one key way to help promote health in periods of increasing ‘doomscrolling.’ However – our measure wasn’t perfect and this is only one study. Future work should validate our findings.”</p>
<p>“I also think it’s important to contextualize this work in the midst of evidence of consistent inequities in mental and physical health for Black young adults. Our work contributes to a broader literature that demonstrates how racism has resounding impacts on health for Black people in America.”</p>
<p>The study also found distinct patterns regarding alcohol use. Approximately 57 percent of the sample reported drinking alcohol in the past month. The analysis showed that traumatic media exposure predicted a higher likelihood of alcohol use, but only for a specific subgroup.</p>
<p>This link was significant only for participants who already had high levels of Race-Based Traumatic Stress. For these individuals, viewing graphic content appeared to exacerbate their existing trauma. This likely triggered a need to cope through substance use.</p>
<p>The findings regarding anger presented a different pattern. The researchers found that higher levels of Race-Based Traumatic Stress were associated with increased anger. This relationship was actually stronger for those with high support for Black Lives Matter.</p>
<p>While increased anger might typically be viewed as a negative outcome, the authors offer a nuanced interpretation. In the context of social justice, anger can serve as a rational response to oppression. It functions as an approach-oriented emotion that motivates action and activism.</p>
<p>The Anger Activism Model suggests that anger, when paired with a belief in one’s ability to make change, drives participation in collective action. Consequently, the higher anger reported by supporters of the movement may represent a mobilization response rather than solely a symptom of distress.</p>
<p>“We think future work should explore how channeling anger into action may be a way to help dissipate negative impacts of anger,” AuBuchon said.</p>
<p>The study provides evidence that the impact of online trauma is not the same for everyone. It highlights how individual history and social connection shape psychological responses. However, as with all research, the study does have limitations.</p>
<p>The research utilized a cross-sectional design. This means the data represents a single snapshot in time. Consequently, the researchers cannot definitively claim that media exposure caused the mental health changes. It is possible that individuals with higher anxiety were more likely to seek out or fixate on distressing news.</p>
<p>Future studies could use longitudinal designs to track these effects over time. Real-time data collection could better capture how individuals cope immediately following a highly publicized traumatic event.</p>
<p>“I want to emphasize the rigor of this work, particularly in the context we are currently conducting science in today,” AuBuchon said. “We went through several rounds of rigorous peer review – honestly one of the most intense peer-review sessions I’ve been through! Reviewers highlighted concerns and significantly strengthened our manuscript by the time it was published.”</p>
<p>“Many people today might jump to conclusions that this work was ‘politically motivated’ – but actually this work is driven by theory and existing empirical data that demonstrate consistent inequitable health for Black people in the United States, and that traumatic media exposure likely contributes. I would encourage skeptical readers to dive into more than just this one study, and read some of the sources we cited in our introduction. The science is clear that racialized inequities in mental and physical health exist, and that racism contributes.”</p>
<p>“One other thing I would add is that we don’t see media exposure as solely an individual-level behavior,” AuBuchon continued. “As many of us are aware, our social media algorithms are carefully curated to increase engagement at the cost of mental health for social media users. So, when we think about interventions, we have to think broader than individual-level behaviors as well.”</p>
<p>The study has important implications for mental health practitioners. It suggests that therapists working with Black clients should be aware of the cumulative toll of viral videos. Exposure to police killings in the media is not a passive event but a potential activator of past trauma.</p>
<p>The findings imply that encouraging connection to social movements could be a viable therapeutic tool. For some clients, engaging in activism might serve as an adaptive coping mechanism.</p>
<p>“Just like our inclusion of BLM in our study to understand buffering factors, I’m really interested in what actions we can take to promote more equitable health,” AuBuchon added. “My research focus has moved from broader questions about racism’s influence on health to a narrower focus on the clinic and how we can promote equitable health through clinic-level interventions.</p>
<p>“As a postdoctoral fellow and now a research scientist, my work is focusing on how we can use social psychology theory and methods to identify our treatment gaps. One area I’ve really honed in on that’s deeply influenced by social cognition is communication, and psychological safety through environmental cues. So the question for me has become – what interventions can we design to promote equitable clinical environments, to lead to better patient outcomes? ”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984251386137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Racialized Traumatic Media and Black Young Adults’ Health: The Moderating Relationship of Race-Based Traumatic Stress and Black Lives Matter Support</a>,” was authored by Katarina E. AuBuchon, Michelle L. Stock, Taylor-Jo Russo, Erika Braun, Charlotte Hagerman, and Lisa Bowleg.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-examines-how-self-perceived-desirability-gaps-influence-romantic-dynamics/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study examines how self-perceived desirability gaps influence romantic dynamics</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>People who see themselves and their partners as similarly high in desirability tend to report happier, more committed romantic relationships, according to new findings published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-025-00450-6"><em>Evolutionary Psychological Science</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>Understanding why some romantic relationships thrive while others struggle is an interesting question in relationship science. One promising lens is “mate value,” a concept grounded in evolutionary theory that refers to how desirable someone is as a romantic partner. Past work shows that perceiving a partner as high in mate value is linked to greater satisfaction and commitment, but research has struggled to fully clarify how differences between partners’ mate values, known as mate value discrepancies, shape relationship functioning.</p>
<p>Building on this literature, Virgil Zeigler-Hill and colleagues set out to examine how mate value discrepancies relate to satisfaction, investment, commitment, and perceptions of alternative partners. Because mismatches in desirability can create feelings of being “under-benefited” or “over-benefited,” the authors anticipated that discrepancies might meaningfully influence how secure or satisfied individuals feel in their relationships.</p>
<p>Across two studies, the researchers surveyed individuals involved in romantic relationships lasting at least three months. Study 1 included 454 college students in the United States (18-44 years) who were primarily dating their partners. The authors assessed participants’ self-perceived mate value and their perceptions of their partner’s mate value using the 19-item Mate Value Inventory (e.g., health, attractiveness, humor).</p>
<p>Participants also completed the Investment Model Scale, which measures four aspects of relationship functioning: satisfaction (e.g., “I feel satisfied with our relationship”), investment (e.g., “I have put a great deal into our relationship that I would lose if the relationship were to end”), commitment (e.g., “I am committed to maintaining my relationship with my partner”), and perceived quality of alternative partners (e.g., “If I weren’t dating my partner, I would do fine—I would find another appealing person to date”). Participants also provided demographic information, including relationship duration, status, and sexual orientation.</p>
<p>Study 2 expanded the investigation to a larger and more diverse sample of 1,764 Israeli community members spanning ages 18-80, in both dating and married relationships. All questionnaires were translated into Hebrew using a back-translation procedure. As in Study 1, participants reported self- and partner-perceived mate value and completed measures of relationship functioning.</p>
<p>Across both studies, the findings revealed consistent patterns in how perceptions of mate value relate to relationship wellbeing. Participants who viewed both themselves and their partners as highly desirable tended to report more satisfying, committed, and invested relationships. They also generally perceived fewer appealing alternative partners when both members of the couple were seen as possessing high mate value.</p>
<p>These positive patterns were especially evident when individuals felt that their own mate value aligned closely with their partner’s, suggesting that perceived compatibility in desirability contributes to overall relationship quality. In both samples, people who believed both partners were similarly high in mate value evaluated their relationships more favorably than those who believed both were low.</p>
<p>The effects of mate value mismatches, however, depended on the direction of the discrepancy. In both the U.S. and Israeli samples, individuals who saw themselves as more desirable than their partner tended to be less satisfied, less committed, and more aware of attractive alternatives. This group also consistently reported the lowest relationship quality overall, suggesting that feeling “too good for one’s partner” might undermine a sense of stability and fulfillment.</p>
<p>In contrast, perceiving oneself as less desirable than one’s partner produced different outcomes across the two cultural groups. Among Israeli adults, who were generally older and more often in long-term relationships, feeling “over-benefited” was linked to better relationship evaluations, including heightened commitment and satisfaction. However, among the U.S. college students, feeling less desirable than one’s partner was associated with insecurity rather than reassurance, corresponding to lower satisfaction and commitment.</p>
<p>These contrasting patterns suggest that relationship stage, cultural context, or the stability of the partnership may shape how individuals interpret and react to perceived mate value differences.</p>
<p>The present studies relied exclusively on self-reported perceptions of mate value rather than objective or third-party assessments, which may introduce biases and limit conclusions about actual mate value differences.</p>
<p>The research, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-025-00450-6">In the Eye of the Beholder: Mate Value and Romantic Relationship Functioning</a>,” was authored by Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Paxton Hicks, and Avi Besser.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-finds-nearly-two-thirds-of-ai-generated-citations-are-fabricated-or-contain-errors/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study finds nearly two-thirds of AI-generated citations are fabricated or contain errors</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new investigation into the reliability of advanced artificial intelligence models highlights a significant risk for scientific research. The study, published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.2196/80371" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JMIR Mental Health</a>, found that large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o frequently generate fabricated or inaccurate bibliographic citations, with these errors becoming more common when the AI is prompted on less familiar or highly specialized topics.</p>
<p>Researchers are increasingly turning to tools known as large language models, or LLMs, to help manage demanding workloads. These complex AI systems are trained on immense quantities of text from the internet and licensed databases, enabling them to produce human-like text for tasks like summarizing articles, drafting emails, or writing code.</p>
<p>One of the known limitations of these models is a tendency to produce “hallucinations,” which are confident-sounding statements that are factually incorrect or entirely made up. In academic writing, a particularly problematic form of this is the fabrication of scientific citations, which are the bedrock of scholarly communication.</p>
<p>While past studies have documented that LLMs can invent citations, it has been less clear how the nature of a given topic might influence the frequency of these errors. A team of researchers from the School of Psychology at Deakin University in Australia sought to explore this question within the field of mental health.</p>
<p>They designed an experiment to test whether the AI’s performance would change based on a topic’s public visibility and the depth of its existing scientific literature. The team’s objective was to determine if citation fabrication and accuracy rates in GPT-4o’s output systematically varied depending on the subject matter.</p>
<p>To conduct their study, the researchers prompted GPT-4o, a recent model from OpenAI, to generate six different literature reviews. These reviews centered on three mental health conditions chosen for their varying levels of public recognition and research coverage: major depressive disorder (a widely known and heavily researched condition), binge eating disorder (moderately known), and body dysmorphic disorder (a less-known condition with a smaller body of research). This selection allowed for a direct comparison of the AI’s performance on topics with different amounts of available information in its training data.</p>
<p>For each of the three disorders, the team requested two types of reviews. One prompt asked for a general overview covering symptoms, societal impacts, and treatments. The other prompt requested a specialized review focused on a narrower subject: the evidence for digital health interventions. The researchers instructed the AI to produce reviews of about 2000 words and to include at least 20 citations from peer-reviewed academic sources.</p>
<p>After generating the reviews, the researchers methodically extracted all 176 citations provided by the AI. Each reference was painstakingly verified using multiple academic databases, including Google Scholar, Scopus, and PubMed. Citations were sorted into one of three categories: fabricated (the source did not exist), real with errors (the source existed but had incorrect details like the wrong year, volume number, or author list), or fully accurate. The team then analyzed the rates of fabrication and accuracy across the different disorders and review types.</p>
<p>The analysis showed that across all six reviews, nearly one-fifth of the citations, 35 out of 176, were entirely fabricated. Of the 141 citations that corresponded to real publications, almost half contained at least one error, such as an incorrect digital object identifier, which is a unique code used to locate a specific article online. In total, nearly two-thirds of the references generated by the model were either invented or contained bibliographic mistakes.</p>
<p>The rate of citation fabrication was strongly linked to the topic. For major depressive disorder, the most well-researched condition, only 6 percent of citations were fabricated. In contrast, the fabrication rate rose sharply to 28 percent for binge eating disorder and 29 percent for body dysmorphic disorder. This suggests the AI is less reliable when generating references for subjects that are less prominent in its training data.</p>
<p>The specificity of the prompt also had an effect, particularly for less common topics. When asked to write about binge eating disorder, the specialized review on digital interventions had a much higher fabrication rate (46 percent) compared to the general overview (17 percent).</p>
<p>A similar pattern appeared in the accuracy of real citations. For major depressive disorder, the general review was significantly more accurate than the specialized one. Accuracy rates were also lowest overall for body dysmorphic disorder, where only 29 percent of real citations were free of errors.</p>
<p>The study has some limitations that the authors acknowledge. The findings are specific to one AI model, GPT-4o, and may not be representative of others. The experiment was also confined to three specific mental health topics and used straightforward prompts that did not involve advanced techniques to guide the AI’s output. Repeating the same prompt can also produce different results, and the team analyzed only a single output for each one.</p>
<p>Future research could examine a wider range of topics and AI models to see if these patterns hold. Still, the study’s results have clear implications for the academic community. Researchers using these models are advised to exercise caution and perform rigorous human verification of every reference an AI generates. The findings also suggest that academic journals and institutions may need to develop new standards and tools to safeguard the integrity of published research in an era of AI-assisted writing.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2196/80371" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Influence of Topic Familiarity and Prompt Specificity on Citation Fabrication in Mental Health Research Using Large Language Models: Experimental Study</a>,” was authored by Jake Linardon, Hannah K Jarman, Zoe McClure, Cleo Anderson, Claudia Liu, and Mariel Messer.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/gaps-in-youth-sex-education-linked-to-relationship-struggles-in-adulthood/" 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;">Gaps in youth sex education linked to relationship struggles in adulthood</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2025.2566816" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Journal of Sexual Health</a></em> suggests that gaps in early sex education may have lasting negative effects on the romantic and sexual lives of adults. The findings indicate that many adults feel their lack of knowledge regarding topics like consent, communication, and healthy relationships has contributed to difficulties in their personal lives. This research highlights a potential need for educational resources designed specifically for adults to address these lingering deficits.</p>
<p>Sexual health education has historically focused on the needs of adolescents and youth. The primary goals of these programs are often limited to preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections. However, health advocates and international bodies like the World Health Organization argue for a broader approach. They recommend comprehensive sex education that includes instruction on respect, bodily autonomy, and the emotional aspects of relationships.</p>
<p>Despite these recommendations, many educational systems in the United States do not require comprehensive instruction. Some states limit education to abstinence-only curricula, while others do not mandate sex education at all. As a result, many students leave the school system with incomplete knowledge about human sexuality. Researchers have noted that this lack of information does not simply resolve itself once a student reaches adulthood.</p>
<p>The authors of the current study sought to investigate how these educational gaps persist later in life. They aimed to understand how single adults perceive the quality of the education they received in their youth. Additionally, the researchers wanted to determine if adults believe that better education would have improved their current romantic and sexual experiences. This focus on the adult perspective offers a different viewpoint from traditional studies that survey students currently in the classroom.</p>
<p>“When it comes to sex education, most of the research and debate focuses on K-12 education. We wanted to examine how adults reflect on the sex education the received when they were younger (if any) and how it affected their subsequent sexual and romantic relationships,” said study author <a href="https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/staff/hille-jessica.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jessica J. Hille</a>, the assistant director for education at the Kinsey Institute.</p>
<p>The data for the new research was drawn from the “Singles in America” study, which is an annual survey of unpartnered adults. The researchers utilized a demographically representative sample recruited through a third-party Internet research panel. The final analytic sample consisted of 3,895 single adults living in the United States. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 98 years, providing a wide cross-section of generational experiences.</p>
<p>Participants completed a detailed survey designed to assess their past learning experiences. The researchers presented a list of 16 topics related to sex, gender, and reproduction. These topics included subjects such as puberty, contraception, consent, pleasure, and how to communicate desires to a partner. For each subject, respondents indicated the source of their information, whether it was school, family, friends, or another source. They could also indicate if they never learned about the topic at all.</p>
<p>The study also measured the perceived impact of these educational experiences. Participants who reported gaps in their knowledge were asked to reflect on how additional information might have affected them. They selected from a list of potential outcomes, such as having healthier romantic relationships or possessing a better understanding of their own bodies. This retrospective assessment allowed the researchers to quantify the perceived value of sex education through the lens of lived adult experience.</p>
<p>The analysis revealed that formal schooling covered a relatively narrow range of topics for most participants. Approximately 55 percent of the respondents reported learning about reproduction or pregnancy in a school setting. Other biological and safety-focused topics, such as puberty and contraception, were covered for roughly 40 percent of the sample. These figures align with the traditional focus of American sex education on biological mechanics and disease prevention.</p>
<p>In contrast, the study found that schools rarely addressed the interpersonal and emotional aspects of sexuality. Only 17 percent of participants reported learning about consent in a classroom environment. Even fewer, approximately 7 percent, received instruction on what constitutes a healthy romantic relationship. Topics related to sexual pleasure and communication were almost entirely absent from school curricula, with only about 4 percent of respondents recalling these lessons.</p>
<p>When considering all sources of information, including family and peers, significant knowledge gaps remained for a large portion of the sample. The researchers found that approximately one-third of the participants never received any information about healthy relationships during their youth. Similarly, about one-third reported learning nothing about consent or how to navigate dating from any source.</p>
<p>The gaps were particularly pronounced regarding communication skills. Nearly 40 percent of participants indicated they never learned how to tell a partner what they wanted sexually. Additionally, more than one-third reported a lack of education regarding gender identity or what sexual initiation would feel like. These findings suggest that many adults navigated their early sexual experiences without a foundational understanding of how to interact with a partner.</p>
<p>The perceived impact of these deficits was substantial. More than 90 percent of the participants reported that receiving more information would have had a positive effect on their lives today. Specifically, 44 percent believed that better education would have led to healthier romantic relationships. This suggests a strong link in the minds of participants between early education and adult relationship quality.</p>
<p>Other benefits cited by participants included improved personal confidence and competence. Approximately 40 percent of respondents felt that comprehensive education would have increased their sexual confidence. A similar percentage believed it would have helped them understand how to be a better partner. About 35 percent of the sample indicated that better sex education would have improved their overall quality of life.</p>
<p>“Lack of sex education can affect adult relationships, and many people believe that they would have benefited from better sex education. Adults who didn’t receive this kind of education when they were younger may still need reliable resources that they can access now, outside of a school-based curriculum.”</p>
<p>There are some limitations to consider. The data relies on retrospective reports, which means participants had to recall educational experiences that may have occurred decades ago. Memory can be fallible, and perceptions of past events can shift over time.</p>
<p>The sample was also restricted to single adults, which provided a specific snapshot of the population. The experiences and perceptions of married individuals or those in long-term committed relationships might differ. Future research could examine whether these patterns hold true for coupled adults. Another area for future investigation involves the resources adults use to educate themselves later in life.</p>
<p>“I’m interested in focusing on sex education for adults. People who are no longer in school can’t benefit from K-12 programs, but they still need reliable, comprehensive information. Recently, the Kinsey Institute partnered with the educational YouTube channel Crash Course to produce <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMweg6Yx9MHP01n_yUyaf9H" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the 15-episode series Crash Course Sex Ed</a>. The evidence-based videos in the series cover topics from anatomy and reproduction to consent and pleasure.”</p>
<p>“I’m also beginning a research project to evaluate responses to Crash Course Sex Ed, particularly how adults are using it for their own education and how parents might use it to help teach their kids about sex and relationships.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2025.2566816" target="_blank" rel="noopener">If I Only Knew Then: Single Adults’ Perceptions of the Impact of Sex Education on Their Romantic and Sexual Lives</a>,” was authored by Jessica J. Hille, Justin R. Garcia, and Amanda N. Gesselman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-psychology-research-sheds-light-on-the-mystery-of-deja-vu/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New psychology research sheds light on the mystery of deja vu</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Nov 20th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research provides experimental evidence that the sensation of déjà vu can trigger an illusory feeling of being able to predict the future. The findings suggest that when people detect familiarity in a novel scene, it creates a subjective sense that they know what will happen next, even when they cannot actually predict the outcome. This study was published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103904"><em>Consciousness and Cognition</em></a>.</p>
<p>Psychologists have studied déjà vu for decades to understand why a situation can feel intensely familiar despite the individual knowing they have never encountered it before. A common feature associated with déjà vu is a “feeling of prediction.” This is the strong sensation that a person knows exactly how a moment will unfold or what is around the next corner.</p>
<p>Previous studies have identified a correlation between the intensity of the familiarity and the strength of this predictive feeling. When people report stronger déjà vu, they typically report a stronger sense of knowing the future.</p>
<p>But prior research was primarily correlational, meaning it could not definitively prove that familiarity causes the feeling of prediction. It was possible that the association arose because participants were explicitly asked about déjà vu, leading them to answer in ways that aligned with popular conceptions of the phenomenon.</p>
<p>The authors of the new study—<a href="https://andrewhuebert0.wixsite.com/ramlabusm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andrew Huebert</a> of the University of Southern Mississippi, <a href="https://hss.mnsu.edu/academic-programs/psychology/faculty-and-staff/sarah-myers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sarah Myers</a> of Minnesota State University: Mankato, and <a href="https://psychlabs.colostate.edu/human-memory/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anne Cleary</a> of Colorado State University—aimed to determine if familiarity detection itself plays a causal role.</p>
<p>They sought to manipulate the level of familiarity a person experiences to see if it directly increases the sensation of being able to predict the future. They also sought to do this without explicitly prompting participants to think about déjà vu, thereby reducing the influence of social expectations.</p>
<p>“Previous research has shown an association between déjà vu and illusions of prediction. In other words, when people experience déjà vu, they often feel like they know exactly what will happen next,” the researchers told PsyPost. “This feeling of prediction seems to be illusory and not linked to any actual predictive ability. A proposed reason is that intense sensations of familiarity seem to drive this feeling of prediction. We aimed to find direct experimental evidence in support of this theory.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers employed a virtual reality paradigm across three separate experiments. They used a series of video clips that provided first-person tours of various virtual environments. These environments included common locations such as bowling alleys, cafeterias, and courtyards. The study utilized a concept known as the Gestalt Familiarity Hypothesis. This theory posits that déjà vu occurs when the spatial arrangement of a new scene matches a previously stored memory, even if the specific details are different.</p>
<p>Experiment 1 involved 66 undergraduate students. The procedure began with a study phase where participants watched a series of these virtual tours. To vary the strength of the memory traces, half of the scenes were presented once, while the other half were presented three times. Following this, participants entered a test phase where they viewed completely novel scenes. Although these test scenes were new, half of them shared the exact spatial layout and movement path as a scene from the study phase. The other half were entirely unstudied layouts.</p>
<p>During the test phase, the video tour would pause just before the camera made a final turn. Participants were asked to identify the studied scene that resembled the current layout. Following this recall attempt, they indicated whether the current scene felt familiar. Finally, they reported whether they had a sense of knowing which way the tour would turn next and made a specific prediction of left or right.</p>
<p>The researchers focused their analysis on trials where participants failed to recall the specific studied scene. This was to ensure that any feeling of prediction was based on a general sense of familiarity rather than an explicit memory.</p>
<p>The results indicated that test scenes sharing a layout with videos viewed three times elicited the highest rates of familiarity. These were followed by scenes resembling those viewed once, with unstudied scenes generating the lowest familiarity. Importantly, the reported feelings of prediction followed this same pattern. Higher levels of experimentally induced familiarity led to higher rates of feeling able to predict the turn.</p>
<p>“We found that manipulating familiarity directly increased feelings of prediction,” the researchers explained. “Basically, we have people watch these virtual tours of various environments. Then, later on, they watch tours of new scenes, some of which resemble studied scenes in terms of spatial layout. This can create feelings of déjà vu.”</p>
<p>However, in Experiment 1, participants demonstrated actual predictive accuracy that was above chance levels. The authors hypothesized that the order of the questions influenced this outcome. By asking participants to try to recall the source memory at the beginning of the trial, the researchers may have inadvertently helped participants access the memory before making their prediction. If the participant successfully retrieved the memory of the original path after the initial prompt, they could use that information to predict the turn correctly.</p>
<p>To address this, the researchers conducted Experiment 2 with 94 participants. This experiment mirrored the first but changed the order of the prompts. The question asking participants to recall the source memory was moved to the very end of the sequence, after they had reported their feelings of prediction and made their directional choice. This change aimed to isolate the feeling of prediction from the successful retrieval of memory.</p>
<p>The findings from Experiment 2 confirmed the illusory nature of the sensation. As in the first experiment, increased exposure to the spatial layouts led to increased feelings of familiarity and stronger feelings of prediction.</p>
<p>However, unlike the first experiment, participants’ actual accuracy in predicting the turn was no better than random guessing. This suggests that while familiarity creates a compelling subjective sense of knowing what comes next, it does not provide actual predictive ability when the specific memory remains unrecalled.</p>
<p>“We found that manipulating the spatial familiarity of the otherwise novel test scenes increased people’s feelings like they knew where to turn next,” the researchers said. “Thus, the feeling of prediction seems to be a product of environmental familiarity, rather than because of a general belief that déjà vu means an ability to predict the future or something paranormal as some may believe.”</p>
<p>Experiment 3 included 124 participants and was designed to rule out the possibility that asking about familiarity biases the participants. The researchers wanted to ensure that the act of evaluating familiarity was not what primed the feeling of prediction. Participants were divided into two groups. One group answered questions about both familiarity and prediction, similar to the previous experiments. The second group was only asked about their feelings of prediction and the direction of the turn, with no mention of familiarity.</p>
<p>The results showed that the pattern remained consistent across both groups. Even when participants were not explicitly asked to evaluate how familiar a scene felt, the spatial overlap with studied scenes still drove higher reports of feeling able to predict the outcome. This implies that the process is relatively automatic. The detection of familiarity influences the subjective feeling of prediction regardless of whether the person is consciously focusing on that familiarity.</p>
<p>A specific pattern emerged regarding the “dose” of familiarity. Across the studies, the scenes associated with layouts viewed three times consistently generated stronger effects than those viewed once. This dose-response relationship is suggestive of a causal link. It indicates that the intensity of the underlying memory trace directly calibrates the intensity of the illusory prediction.</p>
<p>“In all of our experiments, we actually never asked participants about déjà vu,” the researchers told PsyPost. “It was a little bit surprising that people did not need to be prompted about déjà vu and still experienced these feelings of prediction. The feeling of familiarity all by itself can likely contribute to an illusory sense of predicting what is going to happen next. The take home is that we have found causal evidence showing that the sense of familiarity itself can cause illusory feelings of prediction.”</p>
<p>The experiments relied exclusively on spatial layout to induce familiarity. It remains to be seen whether other forms of familiarity, such as recognizing a face or a voice without context, would trigger similar predictive illusions. This is sometimes referred to as the “butcher on the bus” phenomenon, where a person recognizes a face but cannot place it. Future work could determine if such non-spatial familiarity also generates feelings of knowing what the person will do or say next.</p>
<p>Another direction for future inquiry involves the timing of these sensations. Some evidence suggests that feelings of prediction might fade quickly, similar to how the biases associated with “tip of the tongue” states diminish over seconds. The current study noted that participants in Experiment 3 who were asked about familiarity first had slightly lower overall rates of predicted feelings than those who were not. This might suggest that the extra time taken to answer the familiarity question allowed the illusory feeling to dissipate slightly.</p>
<p>“There are a number of interesting future directions,” the researchers said. “One is whether familiarity can create feelings of prediction outside the realm of déjà vu. Like I mentioned earlier, though the focus was on déjà vu, we never specifically asked about déjà vu in this study (so that we could directly examine the role of familiarity in driving feelings of prediction). This made us wonder if familiarity can create these feelings under more normal circumstances.</p>
<p>“We are also interested in seeing if we can experimentally show that sensations of familiarity can create other related feelings. For example, we published some work a while ago on how déjà vu is also associated with a hindsight bias. That is, when people experience déjà vu, they also seem to think they predicted a random event after it happened. We would love to apply our methodology to investigate this issue as well.”</p>
<p>“Déjà vu has been such a seemingly puzzling sensation,” the researchers added. “People have many non-scientific explanations for déjà vu and the associated feelings. Only over the last decade and a half or so have we really started to be able to investigate it experimentally. We are very happy that our study can contribute to a better understanding of this seemingly puzzling sensation.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103904">Experimental evidence that illusory feelings of prediction can be caused by familiarity detection</a>,” was authored by Andrew M. Huebert, Sarah J. Myers, and Anne M. Cleary.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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