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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/the-psychology-behind-societys-fixation-on-incels/" 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;">The psychology behind society’s fixation on incels</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 22nd 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Incels capture extraordinary public attention not because they are especially numerous or violent, but because their stories tap into deep-rooted psychological biases that make them unusually memorable and shareable, according to a review published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-026-00466-6"><em>Evolutionary Psychological Science</em></a>.</p>
<p>Incels (short for “<a href="https://www.psypost.org/landmark-study-sheds-light-on-the-psychological-roots-of-incel-beliefs-and-behaviors/">involuntary celibates</a>”) are an online subculture whose members define themselves by a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships, often grounded in a “black-pill” belief that physical attractiveness largely determines male mating success and is difficult or impossible to change. In recent years, incels have become <a href="https://www.psypost.org/struggles-with-masculinity-drive-men-into-incel-communities/">a recurring focus</a> of academic research across psychology, sociology, criminology, political science, and media studies.</p>
<p>They have also featured prominently in documentaries, scripted television, podcasts, and political debate. This visibility is striking given the relatively small size of incel communities and the comparatively limited number of documented incel-linked killings worldwide. The disparity between scale and attention motivates the paper’s central puzzle: why do incels loom so large in public discourse?</p>
<p>For first author William Costello, the project began with both intellectual curiosity and personal mentorship. “It was very gratifying to get to publish an article with the scholar who first taught me about the theory. I became interested in this topic during my master’s degree, when my co-author Alberto Acerbi introduced me to cultural attraction theory. As he was explaining the framework, it struck me that incel narratives seemed to check almost every box for what makes ideas culturally ‘sticky’—they involve sex, status, moral outrage, coalitional psychology, threat towards women, and norm violations.”</p>
<p>He added, “At the time, this was more of an intuition, but it quickly became clear that it was correct. Incels continued to attract an enormous amount of academic, political, media, and cultural attention that seems wildly disproportionate to their size and actual level of threat.”</p>
<p>Costello explained, “this paper grew out of the desire to explain why that is happening and what the consequences of elevating such a marginal group to such cultural prominence might be.”</p>
<p>Reflecting on the irony of the project, he said, “I laugh when I think that I might be the only researcher in the world who publishes a paper explaining the potential downsides to his own research topic commanding so much cultural attention!”</p>
<p>Costello and Acerbi synthesized research from cultural evolution, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and studies of online information spread to build an explanatory framework. Their analysis centers on cultural attraction theory, which proposes that ideas persist and spread not simply because they are copied faithfully, but because they are reconstructed in similar ways across individuals when they align with common features of human cognition.</p>
<p>By integrating this framework with evolutionary psychology, the researchers argue that humans are biased toward information domains that historically carried high stakes for survival and reproduction. The paper identifies which of these “cognitively attractive” features are embedded in incel narratives and examines how their combination makes those narratives particularly likely to circulate widely in contemporary media environments.</p>
<p>The authors argue that incel discourse bundles together several psychologically powerful themes at once. First, it centers on sex and status—two domains that are evolutionarily consequential and culturally salient. Because mating success is closely tied to perceptions of rank and masculinity, stories of male sexual exclusion are inherently attention-grabbing. Second, the incel identity is “minimally counterintuitive.” Incels are recognizable as ordinary young men, yet they openly organize their identity around sexual failure, defying common gendered expectations and thereby increasing memorability.</p>
<p>The narrative also activates moralized disgust and protectiveness toward women, particularly when misogynistic rhetoric or violence is involved. Add to this negativity bias—the tendency for negative and threatening information to command disproportionate attention—and coalitional psychology, which frames social life in terms of “us versus them,” and incel stories become especially potent in media ecosystems.</p>
<p>Costello and Acerbi further discuss evolved vigilance toward potentially dangerous unpartnered young men and the possibility of evolutionary mismatch. Psychological threat-detection systems may be hypersensitive to cues that resemble historically dangerous patterns even when contemporary levels of violence are comparatively low.</p>
<p>“One key lesson is that we should be more reflective about why certain topics dominate public attention. Media narratives often succeed not because they are the most accurate, but because they push deep psychological buttons—such as tribal ingroup–outgroup thinking, moral outrage, and fear of threat. Recognizing these dynamics can help people resist being swept up in moral panics.”</p>
<p>Costello also emphasized the importance of evidence-based decision-making. “Another important lesson is that policy decisions should be grounded in sober, empirical research rather than emotionally compelling dramatizations (e.g., <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31806037/">Adolescence</a>).”</p>
<p>He added, “As a researcher, it is concerning to see public debate sometimes privilege verisimilitude—the appearance of truth—over evidence-based reality. Fiction can stimulate discussion, but any meaningful interventions or policies must remain firmly anchored in rigorous data rather than cultural virality alone.”</p>
<p>Looking ahead, there are several unresolved questions. “A major open question concerns the effectiveness—and potential unintended consequences—of proposed interventions, such as screening the television drama Adolescence in schools. At present, there is no evidence that this approach will reduce harm, and there is a real possibility it could backfire.”</p>
<p>“Concerns raised by educators, parents, and mental-health professionals include developmental appropriateness, classroom disruption, and the lack of structured guidance or evaluation. There is also a risk that highly moralized portrayals may alienate some young men rather than encourage open dialogue.”</p>
<p>“More worryingly,” he warned, “intense cultural focus can sometimes inadvertently reward notoriety. Research on mass violence shows that some perpetrators actively seek out ideologies that maximize attention. Understanding whether certain forms of coverage unintentionally amplify these dynamics is an urgent priority for future research.”</p>
<p>When asked about any caveats, Costello said, “Yes. Explaining <em>why</em> incel narratives attract attention does not mean minimizing the harm caused by misogyny or the real distress such rhetoric can provoke. Caution toward groups associated with misogynistic language is understandable, especially given historical patterns of violence from single young men.”</p>
<p>“At the same time, it is important to remember that most incels are not violent and primarily struggle with <a href="https://www.psypost.org/incels-exhibit-reduced-psychological-well-being-and-a-greater-tendency-for-interpersonal-victimhood-study-finds/">mental-health difficulties</a>.”</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-026-00466-6">Why Incels Capture Attention: A Cultural Attraction Theory Perspective</a>,” was authored by William Costello and Alberto Acerbi.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/what-is-the-highest-iq-ever-recorded-the-truth-behind-the-numbers/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">What is the highest IQ ever recorded? The truth behind the numbers</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 22nd 2026, 07:00</div>
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<p><p>If you search for the highest IQ on record, you will likely encounter the number 228, attributed to columnist Marilyn vos Savant, or the number 230, attributed to mathematician Terence Tao. However, psychometricians view these astronomical figures with skepticism. While both individuals are undeniably exceptional, the specific numbers attached to their names require context.</p>
<p>The term IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is one of the most recognized acronyms in the world. It is a score derived from a set of standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence. Psychologists generally agree that IQ tests measure a trait known as general intelligence, often abbreviated as <em>g</em>. This concept refers to a broad mental capacity that influences performance across a wide variety of cognitive tasks. When a person takes an IQ test, they are not being tested on their knowledge of trivia or facts.</p>
<p>Instead, they are tested on their ability to reason, solve novel problems, and recognize patterns. The tests also measure working memory, which is the ability to hold and manipulate information in the mind over a short period. A useful analogy is to think of <em>g</em> as the computing power of a computer’s processor. A higher score suggests a processor that can handle complex information quickly and accurately.</p>
<p>So how did vos Savant and Tae end up with such high IQ scores? To understand the distinction between internet legend and verified ability, one must look past the simple numerical scores and examine the documented histories of these two intellectuals, beginning with Tao.</p>
<h2><strong>The Early Life of a Mathematical Prodigy</strong></h2>
<p>Terence Tao is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a winner of the Fields Medal, which is often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. He is widely considered one of the smartest living individuals.</p>
<p>While popular culture frequently assigns him a definitive IQ of 230, the reality of his intellect is best understood through the assessments conducted during his childhood. Two primary academic sources, a 1984 study by Ken Clements and a 2006 retrospective by Michelle Muratori and colleagues, provide a detailed record of this singular mind.</p>
<p>The story of Tao’s precociousness begins remarkably early. According to a 1984 article in Educational Studies in Mathematics by Ken Clements, a mathematics educator who assessed Tao directly, the boy learned to read and write at the age of two simply by watching Sesame Street. By the time he was seven years old, he was living a dual academic life.</p>
<p>He spent part of his day at a primary school in Australia for general studies and the rest of his time at a local high school studying Year 11 and Year 12 physics and mathematics. His high school teacher noted that there was very little he actually taught the seven-year-old, as Tao would finish all the coursework lessons ahead of the rest of the class.</p>
<p><strong>Quantifying Genius: SATs and Estimations</strong></p>
<p>The quantification of his intelligence, which leads to the high IQ estimates often cited today, comes from specific testing data. In his 1984 assessment, Clements administered the Australian Council for Educational Research Operations Test to the then seven-year-old Tao. This test measures the ability to perform mathematical operations. Tao achieved a perfect score of 60 out of 60, a feat Clements had never seen in a primary-school-aged child.</p>
<p>Later, the researcher Julian Stanley from Johns Hopkins University provided an even more standardized metric. As detailed in a 2006 <em>Gifted Child Quarterly</em> article, Stanley sent the Tao family the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) when Terence was just eight years old.</p>
<p>The SAT is a standardized exam generally taken by university-bound high school students in the United States. On the mathematics section, the eight-year-old Tao scored a 760 out of a possible 800. Researchers Julian Stanley and Miraca Gross utilized these raw scores to calculate his estimated IQ. Based on the statistical rarity of an 8-year-old scoring 760 on the SAT, the extrapolated IQ was estimated to be between 220 and 230.</p>
<p>However, Tao himself has downplayed the astronomical estimates derived from these childhood tests. Writing <a href="https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifted-education/">on his own website</a>, he argued that the test is “extremely noisy at these scales” and a more realistic estimate is simply an IQ “greater than 175.”</p>
<p>“This was documented in the book <em>Exceptionally Gifted Children</em> by Miraca Gross, where I was given the pseudonym ‘Adrian Seng’… But there is no reason to expect that this ratio would continue in my later years,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>Cognitive Style and “Radical Acceleration”</strong></p>
<p>Beyond the raw numbers, the researchers observed a specific cognitive style in the young Tao. Clements noted in his 1984 study that Tao possessed a distinct preference for analytic thinking over visual imagery. Analytic thinking involves using logic, symbols, and formulas to solve problems, while visual imagery relies on picturing shapes and movements in the mind.</p>
<p>When Clements administered a space visualization test that required mentally rotating shapes, Tao performed well but made errors that he did not make in pure algebra. When asked to explain his methods, Tao revealed that he tried to use mathematical rules to verify the position of the shapes rather than simply imagining them turning. This indicated a mind that naturally gravitated toward the structure of syntax and symbols rather than spatial intuition.</p>
<p>The educational strategy used to nurture this talent was unique. His parents, Billy and Grace Tao, opted for what researchers call radical acceleration, but they applied it with a twist. As described in the <em>Gifted Child Quarterly</em>, they did not simply push him into university at age 10 to study everything.</p>
<p>Instead, they staggered his grade levels. At age seven, he was taking high school math but remained in primary school for spelling and social studies. This allowed him to maintain social contact with his age peers while his intellectual needs were met in specific subjects. His father, Billy Tao, noted that this prevented the burnout often associated with child prodigies.</p>
<p><strong>From Cognitive Sprinter to Marathon Runner</strong></p>
<p>Billy Tao later used a running metaphor to describe his son’s development. He viewed Terence’s early years as those of a “sprinter,” characterized by rapid progression through standard curriculum. However, to become a true mathematician, Terence had to evolve into a “marathon runner.” This transition occurred during his doctoral studies at Princeton University.</p>
<p>The <em>Gifted Child Quarterly</em> article highlights that the skills required for research are different from those required for testing. While the “sprinter” phase relied on speed and quick calculation, the “marathon” phase required deep patience, perseverance, and the ability to grapple with unsolved problems for long periods.</p>
<p>Despite his intense academic schedule, reports from his childhood suggest he remained a socially adjusted child. Clements observed him playing hide-and-seek with his brothers and noted he was a happy, well-mannered boy who understood he was different but did not let it isolate him.</p>
<p>In the 2006 interview, Terence Tao reflected that his parents worked to keep his life as normal as possible. He did not find his true social niche until graduate school, where he met peers with similar intellectual passions, but his early years were defined by a supportive family environment rather than isolation.</p>
<p>The record of Terence Tao’s early life offers a clear picture of what extreme high intelligence looks like in practice. It was not merely a matter of a high score on a test, but a combination of rapid learning speed, a preference for analytical problem solving, and an educational environment that adapted to his specific uneven development. His journey from a child who taught himself to read at two to a Fields Medalist illustrates that while raw potential is essential, the management of that talent determines the ultimate outcome.</p>
<h2><strong>Marilyn vos Savant: The Guinness Record Holder</strong></h2>
<p>While Tao’s high score is largely a matter of academic estimation, the other famous contender for the title held a widely publicized official record. For five years in the late 1980s, the Guinness Book of World Records included a category that fascinated the public: Highest IQ. The person holding that title was Marilyn vos Savant, a magazine columnist from St. Louis, Missouri.</p>
<p>Her listed Intelligence Quotient of 228 became legendary, cementing her status as a cultural icon of intellect. However, the story behind that number is a complex mix of psychology, statistics, and changing scientific standards. By examining the history of her testing and the critiques from experts like psychologist Andrew M. Colman, we can understand why Guinness eventually retired the category entirely.</p>
<p><strong>The Science of Scoring: Ratio vs. Deviation IQ</strong></p>
<p>To understand how vos Savant achieved a score of 228, one must look at how intelligence testing has evolved. According to biographical records, vos Savant took the Stanford-Binet test in 1956 when she was ten years old. At that time, psychologists utilized a scoring method known as Ratio IQ.</p>
<p>This formula calculated a person’s score by dividing their “mental age” by their biological age and multiplying the result by 100. Vos Savant performed so well that the test determined she had the mental age of a person aged 22 years and 10 months. When this mental age was divided by her actual age of ten, the resulting calculation yielded the score of 228.</p>
<p>While this number is mathematically accurate based on the old formula, modern science views it with skepticism. Writing for <em>The Skeptic</em>, Andrew M. Colman pointed out in the 1990s that the Ratio IQ method is flawed, particularly when applied to adults. A person’s mental age does not continue to increase linearly throughout their life, but their biological age does.</p>
<p>This flaw led psychologists to replace Ratio IQ with a method called Deviation IQ. This modern system, introduced by David Wechsler in 1939, scores individuals by comparing them to the general population using a statistical model called a normal distribution, or a bell curve.</p>
<p>In a normal distribution, the average score is set at 100. The way scores spread out from that average is measured in units called standard deviations. For most IQ tests, one standard deviation is 15 points. This means that a score of 115 is one unit above average, and a score of 130 is two units above average.</p>
<p>Colman noted that a score of 228 is 8.53 standard deviations above the mean. In statistical terms, this is an astronomical distance. The probability of a person achieving such a score is less than one in 100 quadrillion. Given that the Earth’s population is only in the billions, Colman argued that finding a person with a valid Deviation IQ of 228 is effectively impossible.</p>
<p>The discrepancy between these scoring methods suggests that vos Savant’s record was the result of using a childhood ratio score that does not translate to adult intelligence scales. Indeed, when vos Savant took the Mega Test as an adult in the mid-1980s, she achieved a standardized score of 186.</p>
<p>While this is still an exceptionally high score that places her in the elite tier of intellectual ability, it is far lower than the 228 figure that brought her fame. In 1990, Guinness removed the category, concluding that intelligence tests at the extreme high end of the spectrum were too unreliable to designate a single world record holder.</p>
<p><strong>Beyond the Score: The Monty Hall Problem</strong></p>
<p>Despite the debates regarding her test scores, vos Savant demonstrated her cognitive abilities through her long-running column in Parade magazine, “Ask Marilyn.” She is perhaps best known for her 1990 analysis of the Monty Hall problem, a probability puzzle based on a game show scenario.</p>
<p>The problem asks whether a contestant should switch doors after the host reveals a losing option. Vos Savant correctly argued that switching doubles the contestant’s probability of winning. At the time, she received thousands of letters, many from academics and mathematicians, insisting she was wrong. Later computer simulations and formal proofs vindicated her answer, proving her logic superior to that of her critics.</p>
<h2><strong>The value of IQ</strong></h2>
<p>Decades of data indicate that IQ scores are strong predictors of academic achievement and occupational performance. This correlation is particularly strong in complex fields such as law, medicine, engineering, and science.</p>
<p>In these professions, the ability to absorb large amounts of abstract information and apply it to new situations is essential. Because the tests measure this specific type of processing speed and abstract reasoning, they can statistically forecast how well an individual might perform in an academic or highly technical environment.</p>
<p>However, the predictive power of an IQ score has limits. While it correlates with performance, it does not guarantee success. A high score represents potential rather than achievement. Psychologists emphasize that other factors, such as motivation, discipline, and social skills, play a significant role in determining a person’s actual life outcomes. A student with a high IQ who lacks the discipline to study may still perform poorly, while a student with a slightly lower score but a strong work ethic may excel.</p>
<p>Another significant distinction exists between intelligence and rationality. Intelligence, as measured by IQ, is the ability to process information. Rationality is the ability to think clearly, avoid bias, and make sound decisions. Keith Stanovich, a prominent psychologist, argues that IQ tests do not measure rationality.</p>
<p>This explains why a highly intelligent person might still make poor financial decisions or believe in conspiracy theories. The raw processing power of the brain does not automatically result in good judgment. In fact, a high IQ can sometimes allow a person to construct sophisticated arguments to justify incorrect beliefs.</p>
<p>It is also important to recognize that IQ scores are not fixed or immune to environmental influence. Throughout the 20th century, average IQ scores rose steadily across the world, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. This rise suggests that intelligence is influenced by factors such as education, nutrition, and the increasing complexity of the modern environment.</p>
<p>As society has become more reliant on abstract symbols and technology, people have become better at the types of reasoning tasks found on IQ tests. This demonstrates that while biology plays a role, the environment helps shape the cognitive abilities that the tests measure.</p>
<p>In clinical settings, the scores serve a diagnostic purpose. They assist psychologists in identifying specific learning disabilities or developmental delays. By comparing a student’s IQ score with their actual academic performance, educators can identify discrepancies that may indicate a need for specialized support. In this context, the score acts as a tool to understand a learner’s specific needs rather than a label of their worth.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the value of an IQ score lies in its specificity. It is a reliable measure of a particular type of mental horsepower that is useful in academic and technical domains. It is not a comprehensive measure of human capability. It does not account for creativity, wisdom, emotional insight, or practical skills. When viewed objectively, an IQ score provides a snapshot of a person’s abstract reasoning ability, but it leaves the full picture of their potential incomplete.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/childhood-trauma-is-linked-to-lower-cognitive-flexibility-in-young-adults/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Childhood trauma is linked to lower cognitive flexibility in young adults</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 22nd 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251411294" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychological Reports</a></em> suggests that experiencing abuse or neglect during childhood is linked to specific changes in cognitive skills during young adulthood. The findings indicate that while young adults with a history of maltreatment tend to struggle more with switching between mental tasks, their ability to hold and process temporary information remains intact. These results highlight how a harsh upbringing shapes brain development in complex ways, involving both vulnerabilities and psychological adaptations.</p>
<p>Scientists conducted this study to better understand how adverse early environments influence mental abilities as people transition into true adulthood. Emerging adulthood, which spans from ages 18 to 29, represents a unique developmental stage. During this phase, people take on new responsibilities, explore their identities, and experience significant brain maturation.</p>
<p>“Research has long linked childhood maltreatment to mental‑health problems, but findings on its impact on cognitive functioning have been inconsistent,” said study author Wai Man Wong, a PhD student in clinical psychology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.</p>
<p>“Some studies report clear deficits, while others find little to no effect. This inconsistency highlighted a real gap: we lacked a solid, quantitative understanding of whether maltreatment reliably affects cognition, and which domains are most impacted. Our study addressed this by systematically synthesizing the evidence through meta‑analysis to clarify the strength and pattern of these associations.”</p>
<p>The researchers focused specifically on executive function, which refers to the higher-level mental skills that help us plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks. Past studies looking at the link between early maltreatment and executive function have yielded mixed and confusing results. The scientists wanted to clarify this relationship by testing two competing ideas in psychology.</p>
<p>The first idea is the deficits model, which proposes that chronic stress from childhood trauma universally damages brain development and impairs mental skills. The second idea is the adaptation model. This perspective suggests that children who grow up in dangerous or unpredictable environments might actually fine-tune certain cognitive strengths to help them survive their specific circumstances.</p>
<p>To investigate these theories, the researchers performed a meta-analysis, which is a statistical technique that combines and analyzes the results of multiple independent scientific studies. They searched five major academic databases to find research that measured childhood maltreatment and specific cognitive skills in emerging adults. Their final analysis included 17 different studies, yielding 85 statistical comparisons and providing a combined sample of 19,357 participants.</p>
<p>The meta-analysis approach allows researchers to look at the big picture rather than relying on a single experiment. By pooling data from over 19,000 people, scientists can calculate an overall effect size, which measures the strength of a relationship between two variables. This statistical technique helps smooth out the quirks of individual studies to reveal true underlying patterns.</p>
<p>In these studies, childhood maltreatment included a range of adverse experiences that occurred before the age of eighteen. These experiences involved physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. The studies also measured forms of neglect, which happens when adults fail to meet a child’s basic physical or emotional needs.</p>
<p>The scientists looked at three specific components of executive function. The first component was cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to easily switch between different rules or ways of thinking. In everyday life, this might look like quickly coming up with a creative solution when a sudden problem arises at work.</p>
<p>The second component was inhibitory control, which refers to a person’s ability to override impulsive urges and regulate their attention or emotions. For example, inhibitory control is what stops someone from snapping at a rude customer. The third component was working memory, which acts as the mental workspace we use to temporarily hold and manipulate auditory and visual information.</p>
<p>The combined data revealed that young adults who experienced childhood maltreatment tended to perform worse on tests of cognitive flexibility than those without such histories. They also showed reductions in inhibitory control. The statistical analysis demonstrated a small but distinct drop in the ability to shift mental focus and suppress impulses among the maltreated group.</p>
<p>At the same time, working memory capacities between the two groups were completely comparable. The researchers found no significant deficit in working memory among those who had endured childhood abuse or neglect. Statistical models that accounted for the age of participants and whether the original studies were peer-reviewed consistently showed that working memory was preserved.</p>
<p>These findings support a balanced view of how trauma impacts the developing brain. The deficits in cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control align with the idea that early chronic stress can harm certain areas of brain development. When a child experiences continuous trauma, their body is constantly flooded with stress hormones.</p>
<p>Normally, the human body uses a fight or flight response to survive immediate danger. Once the threat passes, the brain signals the body to stop producing stress hormones and return to a calm state. However, chronic childhood maltreatment can break this natural feedback loop, leaving the developing brain exposed to overwhelming levels of stress chemicals.</p>
<p>Over time, this biological wear and tear can negatively alter the brain regions responsible for higher-level thinking and self-regulation. The physical toll of prolonged stress might explain the slight impairments in cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. At the same time, the adaptation model provides evidence for why working memory remains strong in spite of this stress.</p>
<p>From an evolutionary perspective, maintaining a strong working memory might be prioritized in high-stakes environments. Keeping track of multiple pieces of information helps individuals quickly detect threats and survive dangerous situations. The researchers describe this as a trade-off, where certain skills are sacrificed to preserve the mental tools needed most for survival.</p>
<p>It is important to remember that these findings represent averages across large groups of people. These results do not mean that every person who experienced childhood maltreatment will inevitably struggle with cognitive flexibility or impulse control. Many individuals show immense resilience and perform exceptionally well on all cognitive tasks despite early hardships.</p>
<p>The researchers hope these findings will encourage a shift in how society views survivors of childhood trauma. Focusing solely on cognitive deficits can unintentionally stigmatize people who experienced early hardships. Recognizing the preservation of working memory highlights the incredible adaptability of the human brain.</p>
<p>The scientists also noted several limitations in the available research. Most of the analyzed studies used a cross-sectional design, meaning they looked at data from a single point in time. This prevents researchers from proving a direct cause-and-effect relationship between childhood events and adult cognitive skills.</p>
<p>Additionally, the studies relied on participants to remember and report their own childhood experiences. Relying on human memory can sometimes result in inaccurate recollections or reporting biases. The available data also lacked consistent demographic details, which made it difficult to test how factors like gender might influence these cognitive outcomes.</p>
<p>Moving forward, the researchers suggest that future studies should examine different categories of maltreatment separately. Analyzing specific forms of trauma, like physical abuse versus emotional neglect, might reveal unique impacts on brain development. Scientists also hope to collect more detailed demographic data to better understand how various backgrounds shape the relationship between early adversity and later cognitive function.</p>
<p>“Our results showed that childhood maltreatment is linked to reduced cognitive flexibility and weaker inhibitory control in emerging adulthood, but working memory remained largely intact,” Wong told PsyPost. “In lay terms: on average, young adults with histories of maltreatment, may have a slightly more difficult time switching between different tasks and inhibiting impulses, than those without such histories.”</p>
<p>“On the other hand, there are no differences between groups in working memory, the skill of holding information in mind and actively thinking about. Of note, these findings do not apply to every person with maltreatment. It is important to keep in mind that these are group-level differences. Together, the findings show that maltreatment shapes cognition in complex ways, involving both vulnerability and adaptation.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251411294" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Childhood Maltreatment Impacts Cognitive Function in Emerging Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis</a>,” was authored by Wai M. Wong, Bixi Zhang, Damaris Foley, and Valentina Nikulina.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/shingles-vaccine-linked-to-slower-biological-aging-but-brain-markers-show-no-change/" 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;">Shingles vaccine linked to slower biological aging, but brain markers show no change</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 22:00</div>
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<p><p>Getting a shingles vaccine is a standard recommendation for older adults looking to avoid a painful skin rash, yet new research suggests the benefits may extend much deeper into the body’s cells. A recent analysis indicates that receiving this immunization is associated with a slower rate of biological aging. The study suggests that the vaccine may help dampen systemic inflammation and keep cellular mechanisms looking younger. These findings were published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glag008" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Journals of Gerontology, Series A</a></em>.</p>
<p>Most people measure their age by the number of birthdays they have celebrated. Scientists refer to this as chronological age. However, two people born in the same year can have vastly different health profiles. Biological age attempts to measure the actual wear and tear on the body’s tissues and systems.</p>
<p>Jung Ki Kim and Eileen M. Crimmins, researchers at the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, led this investigation. They sought to understand if the shingles vaccine impacts the fundamental processes that drive aging. Previous research has hinted that certain adult vaccines might lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.</p>
<p>The researchers hypothesized that the vaccine acts by suppressing the varicella-zoster virus. This is the virus responsible for chickenpox, which remains dormant in the body’s nerve cells long after the initial infection clears. If the virus reactivates, it causes shingles, but it may also cause low-level stress on the immune system even without a rash. This chronic activation can lead to “inflammaging,” a persistent, low-grade inflammation that degrades tissues over time.</p>
<p>To test their hypothesis, Kim and Crimmins utilized data from the Health and Retirement Study. This is a large, ongoing survey that represents the older population of the United States. The team analyzed biological samples collected in 2016 from nearly 4,000 adults who were over the age of 70.</p>
<p>The researchers did not rely on a single test to determine biological health. Instead, they examined blood samples to measure aging across seven distinct biological domains. They looked at inflammation, cardiovascular health, and two types of immune system function. They also analyzed DNA methylation and gene expression, which are molecular markers that act as “clocks” to estimate cellular age.</p>
<p>The results showed a clear distinction between those who had received the shingles vaccine and those who had not. Individuals who were vaccinated displayed significantly lower levels of C-reactive protein and other markers of systemic inflammation. This supports the theory that the vaccine helps reduce the body’s overall inflammatory burden.</p>
<p>The study also found that vaccinated participants had younger cellular profiles. Their epigenetic and transcriptomic clocks—measures of how genes are regulated and expressed—indicated a slower pace of aging compared to unvaccinated peers. When the researchers combined all measures into a single composite score, the vaccinated group again showed a healthier biological profile.</p>
<p>While the results regarding inflammation and molecular aging were positive, the findings related to neurodegeneration were distinct and contrary to some expectations. Given the prior epidemiological evidence linking shingles vaccination to a reduced risk of dementia, the researchers specifically looked for biological proof of brain protection in the blood.</p>
<p>They measured concentrations of specific proteins such as neurofilament light chain and phosphorylated tau. These proteins are well-established biomarkers for neurodegeneration. When brain cells are damaged or die, these proteins leak into the bloodstream and can serve as early warning signs for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>Despite the healthier profiles seen in other systems, the researchers found no association between shingles vaccination and these neurodegenerative biomarkers. The levels of brain injury proteins were essentially the same in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. The results were not statistically significant, meaning the vaccine did not appear to prevent the accumulation of these specific damage markers in the blood.</p>
<p>This null finding is important because it adds nuance to the conversation about vaccines and dementia. It suggests that if the shingles vaccine does reduce dementia risk, as other studies imply, it may not do so by directly stopping the cellular damage measured by these specific proteins.</p>
<p>Alternatively, it is possible that the protective effects on the brain take longer to manifest than the timeline of this study allowed. It is also possible that blood biomarkers are not sensitive enough to capture the specific type of neuroprotection the vaccine might offer.</p>
<p>The study also revealed a complex result regarding the adaptive immune system. This part of the immune system remembers past infections. Vaccinated individuals actually had higher scores in this domain, which in this study’s context indicated a decline in function. The authors suggest this could be a sign of the immune system working hard to maintain memory of the virus, or it could reflect natural aging of immune cells.</p>
<p>Timing appeared to play a role in the benefits observed. The improvements in DNA methylation and gene expression were most visible in people who had been vaccinated within the last three years. In contrast, the benefits regarding lower inflammation were strongest in those who had received the vaccine four or more years prior. This suggests that different biological systems respond to the immunization on different schedules.</p>
<p>There are limitations to this research that require consideration. The study is observational, which means it cannot definitively prove that the vaccine caused the slower aging. It is possible that people who choose to get vaccinated are generally healthier or wealthier than those who do not. The researchers used statistical models to adjust for education, income, and health history to minimize this “healthy user bias,” but it remains a factor.</p>
<p>Additionally, the data comes from a time when the older Zostavax vaccine was the standard. A newer, more effective vaccine called Shingrix is now recommended. It is unknown if the newer vaccine would produce the same, weaker, or stronger associations with biological aging.</p>
<p>The lack of a direct link to neurodegenerative markers serves as a reminder that biological aging is a multi-faceted process. While the vaccine appears to help with inflammation and molecular regulation, its relationship with brain health markers is not straightforward. Future research will need to follow individuals over longer periods to see if these biological differences translate into fewer cases of frailty or disease.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glag008" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Association between shingles vaccination and slower biological aging: Evidence from a U.S. population-based cohort study</a>,” was authored by Jung Ki Kim and Eileen M. Crimmins.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-presence-of-eyes-affects-perception-of-mind-in-robots/" 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;">The presence of robot eyes affects perception of mind</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>When interacting with highly realistic humanoid robots, the simple presence of eyes strongly shapes how humans perceive the machine’s mental abilities. A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103963" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Consciousness and Cognition</a></em> provides evidence that people are far more likely to see a robot as capable of independent action and emotional experience if it has eyes on its face. The findings suggest that this specific facial feature plays a surprisingly powerful role in human interaction with artificial beings.</p>
<p>As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, engineers are increasingly designing humanoid robots for everyday social environments. In human interaction, eyes act as important social signals that communicate attention, intentions, and emotions. Some ethicists have warned against adding eyes to robots, arguing that it creates a deceptive illusion of consciousness and empathy in a machine that does not actually possess them.</p>
<p>“Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly common in social environments, meaning that people are now expected to engage with artificial agents in ways that resemble human interaction. Prior research shows that humans rely heavily on eyes to convey information during social exchanges, and that people may even respond to robotic eye gaze as if it carries social intent,” said study author Samuli Linnunsalo, a postdoctoral researcher in <a href="https://research.tuni.fi/hiplab/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Human Information Processing Laboratory</a> at Tampere University.</p>
<p>“Yet, despite this, surprisingly many new humanoid robots are designed without eyes. Because successful human–robot interaction depends on humans perceiving robots as having mental abilities, we wanted to examine whether simply adding eyes influences our tendency to attribute mental capacities to robots.”</p>
<p>To explore this, the researchers conducted two separate experiments using online participants from Western, English-speaking countries. In the first experiment, they recruited 200 adult participants to complete a self-evaluation questionnaire.</p>
<p>The scientists used an artificial intelligence image generator to create 48 highly realistic pictures of humanoid robots with full bodies. They produced two versions of each robot identity: one with eyes and one where the eyes were digitally removed.</p>
<p>To ensure a variety of appearances, the robots featured different characteristics, including adult-like or child-like proportions, humanoid faces or display screens, and direct or averted body orientations. Each participant viewed 24 robot images and answered four specific questions about each machine’s capabilities.</p>
<p>These questions asked participants to rate things like whether the robot could act with self-control or experience fear. Participants answered on a scale of one to nine.</p>
<p>The scientists found that participants gave higher agency and experience ratings to the robots with eyes compared to those without eyes. The addition of eyes increased perceived agency and experience even more for child-looking robots than for adult-looking robots.</p>
<p>Additionally, robots with digital screen faces tended to receive slightly higher ratings than those with physical, humanoid faces. The researchers suspect people might associate screens with advanced computer technology, leading to higher estimations of mental capability.</p>
<p>In the second experiment, the scientists wanted to see if these explicit survey answers matched people’s automatic, unconscious reactions. They recruited 100 new adult participants to complete a timed categorization task known as an implicit association test.</p>
<p>This type of test measures underlying biases by tracking how quickly a person pairs specific images with specific words. A faster reaction time suggests a stronger, more automatic connection in the person’s brain.</p>
<p>One group of 51 participants matched robot images with words related to agency, such as autonomous, passive, planful, or mindless. The researchers selected these specific words based on an earlier pilot study of 50 adults who rated various adjectives.</p>
<p>The other group of 49 participants matched the robot images with words related to experience, such as emotional, sensitive, impassive, or unfeeling. The scientists selected five robot identities from the first experiment, showing each participant the versions both with and without eyes.</p>
<p>The implicit association test results aligned perfectly with the first experiment. The participants demonstrated a strong, automatic mental link between the presence of eyes and higher levels of both agency and experience.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that this automatic bias occurred before participants had time to consciously think about their answers. It suggests that the effect is deeply rooted in human social cognition.</p>
<p>“We were surprised by the consistency of results across self-reports and the Implicit Association Test,” Linnunsalo told PsyPost. “Even when people weren’t consciously evaluating the robots, their automatic responses still showed the same bias toward robots with eyes. This suggests that the effect is robust and deeply rooted in human social cognition.”</p>
<p>The scientists note that humans have a natural tendency to assign human characteristics to objects with human-like features. Seeing a robot with two eyes causes a human to intuitively direct their attention to the machine’s head.</p>
<p>This reaction ties into theories of attention, which propose that humans assume a mind exists wherever they see directed attention. Because eyes are powerful cues for attention, they can trick our brains into perceiving a conscious being.</p>
<p>The scientists also asked participants about their general interest in new technology and their skepticism regarding whether robots could ever attain true consciousness. For people who reported a high interest in new technology, the absence of eyes caused an even sharper drop in their automatic associations with emotional experience.</p>
<p>The scientists suggest that tech enthusiasts might already expect modern robots to have some level of feeling or advanced capability. When presented with a completely eyeless face, that expectation was strongly disrupted.</p>
<p>“The key takeaway is that the presence of eyes strongly shapes how people perceive a robot’s mental abilities,” Linnunsalo explained. “When a robot has eyes, people are more likely to see it as capable of independent action and having emotional experiences, compared to robots without eyes.”</p>
<p>While these findings are informative, the study does have a few limitations. The researchers only used static, computer-generated images of robots, meaning the results might not fully capture how people react to real machines in three-dimensional space. It remains unclear if these exact effects would hold true in physical, real-life interactions with robots.</p>
<p>“This study used static images of robots as stimuli,” Linnunsalo noted. “Therefore, we cannot yet say to what extent these effects extend to real-life interactions with robots that can move or speak.”</p>
<p>Also, the study only included participants from Western countries.Cultural differences in how people view eye contact could alter the results in other parts of the world. For instance, some cultures view direct gaze differently, which could change how people interpret a robot looking at them.</p>
<p>“Our long-term goal is to understand how people respond to eye gaze cues from humanoid robots and how robots can use their eyes to facilitate interaction with humans,” Linnunsalo said. “Our next steps include investigating how different qualities of robot’s eyes, such as their realism, shape how the robot is perceived, and examining how the appearance and behavior of robots’ eyes influence real-life human-robot interaction.”</p>
<p>“The findings highlight how design choices that may seem purely aesthetic can have profound effects on human psychology. As robots increasingly enter homes, workplaces, and care settings, understanding the impact of their appearance becomes more important than ever. Our study underscores the need for thoughtful, evidence-based design in the development of humanoid robots.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103963" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The impact of eyes on attributions of agency and experience in humanoid robots</a>,” was authored by Jari K. Hietanen, Samuli Linnunsalo, and Dennis Küster.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychological-capital-mitigates-the-impact-of-interpersonal-sensitivity-on-anxiety-in-future-nurses/" 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;">Psychological capital mitigates the impact of interpersonal sensitivity on anxiety in future nurses</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02621-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BMC Psychology</a> has found that those who are highly sensitive to others’ reactions are more likely to experience anxiety, and that their levels of inner psychological resources play a key role in this link.</p>
<p>Even before nursing students begin their careers in hospitals, many experience anxiety tied to academic workloads, clinical placements, and the emotional weight of caring for patients.</p>
<p>Researchers have long known that stress and anxiety are common in nursing programs, but this new study sheds light on why some students may be more vulnerable than others.</p>
<p>One factor the researchers examined is interpersonal sensitivity, which refers to being unusually alert to how others behave, speak, or react. People high in interpersonal sensitivity often worry about being judged, criticized, or rejected. While this trait has been studied in relation to depression, its connection to anxiety—especially among nursing students—has received far less attention.</p>
<p>To address this gap, the research team – led by Yanyan Mi (Xuzhou Medical University) and Zhen Wang (Taishan Vocational College of Nursing) – surveyed 1,815 nursing undergraduates (1,511 females) at a university in eastern China.</p>
<p>Students completed questionnaires measuring anxiety symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, perceived social support, and psychological capital. Perceived social support refers to an individual’s subjective feeling of being supported by intimate relationships with family, friends, or significant others such as teachers, classmates, and relatives. Psychological capital is a positive mental state that includes a person’s sense of hope, resilience, optimism, and confidence in their ability to handle challenges.</p>
<p>The results revealed that students who scored higher in interpersonal sensitivity were much more likely to report anxiety symptoms. Importantly, the researchers found that psychological capital played a powerful mediating role. Students who were highly sensitive to others tended to have lower levels of psychological capital, which in turn made them more prone to anxiety. In other words, when students lacked inner psychological resources, such as confidence or resilience, their sensitivity to social interactions had a stronger emotional impact.</p>
<p>Social support also played a role, though the mechanics were slightly different. While the study confirmed that social support can independently buffer the relationship between interpersonal sensitivity and anxiety, it was not the primary driver in the combined chain model. Instead, social support contributed most effectively when combined with psychological capital in a chain effect. This suggests that supportive relationships from others help build internal psychological resources, which then protect against anxiety.</p>
<p>The findings highlight an important message for nursing programs: building students’ psychological capital may be one of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety, especially for those who are highly sensitive in social situations. Interventions such as resilience training, group counseling, and mentorship programs could help students develop stronger internal coping skills.</p>
<p>“If nursing students leave nursing profession positions, the shortage of nurses will continue to expand, the quality of nursing will be affected in the future, the relationship between nurses and patients will be more tense, and the safety of patients will be threatened. … As such, there is a crucial need to prioritize the mental health of undergraduate nursing students,” Mi and Wang’s team emphasized.</p>
<p>However, the authors note several limitations. For instance, the study has a cross‑sectional design, which cannot definitively prove cause and effect, and all participants were sourced from a single university.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02621-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Exploring the impact of interpersonal sensitivity on anxiety symptoms: the mediating role of psychological capital and social support among nursing students</a>,” was authored by Yanyan Mi, Zhen Wang, Lixin Peng, Chaoran Zhang, and Haibo Xu.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/men-and-women-tend-to-read-sexual-assault-victims-emotions-differently-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Men and women tend to read sexual assault victims’ emotions differently, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106835"><em>Evolution & Human Behavior</em></a> finds that men tend to underestimate how upset women would feel after sexual assault by an intimate partner, while women tend to overestimate how upset men would feel.</p>
<p>Theory of mind is often treated as a general <a href="https://www.psypost.org/people-with-this-socio-cognitive-skill-tend-to-leave-more-positive-first-impressions/">cognitive skill</a>. However, evolutionary perspectives suggest that mind-reading may be partly domain-specific, especially in areas where men and women have historically faced different adaptive challenges. One such domain is sexual violence, where women have disproportionately experienced victimization and its associated physical, reproductive, and psychological costs.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rhahnelpeeters.com">Dr. Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters</a>, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana State University, explained, “It’s hard to narrow down what drew me to this topic, but three primary influences stand out: (1) a larger lab interest in the domain-specificity of theory of mind, (2) my interest in replication efforts, and (3) the topic’s connection to my broader research program on sexual victimization and threat management.”</p>
<p>Hahnel-Peeters described how the project emerged from a collaborative effort. “This paper began as part of a larger lab discussion about whether theory of mind was domain-specific in its content. Theory of mind is our ability to infer others’ knowledge, thoughts, emotions, and desires—and importantly, to recognize that these mental states may differ from our own. Previous work has explored when perceptual errors in inferences about the opposite-sex’s mental states might be favored by selection (e.g., <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.1.81">Haselton & Buss, 2000</a>).”</p>
<p>“My colleagues, William Costello and Paola Baca, were equally interested in perceptual errors and biases in cross-sex theory of mind, particularly in judgments of sexual desire. We decided a group project was in order, each selecting a domain within mating psychology to explore. This naturally led me to consider opportunities for replication.”</p>
<p>The replication focus was central, the author shared, “Our mentor and co-author, Dr. David Buss, previously documented that men tend to underestimate how upsetting sexual aggression perpetrated by a romantic partner is to the average woman (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.5.735">Buss, 1989</a>). Women were also inaccurate in estimating men’s reactions to such aggression. Those data were collected in the late 1980s. Given how much time has passed—and considering the increased awareness surrounding sexual violence following the 2017 #MeToo movement—I was curious whether these effects would replicate today.”</p>
<p>“If the misperception replicated, there were important implications for how we prosecute sexual violence. Much prosecution of sexual violence relies on the reasonable person standard — if the acts committed by the alleged perpetrator would cause a ‘reasonable person’ fear. This assumes men and women have a shared baseline of emotional responses to sexually threatening behavior. If a ‘reasonable man’ consistently differs from a ‘reasonable woman,’ then our current legal standards may be mismatched to the reality of sexual violence.”</p>
<p>The researchers recruited participants through social media and the participant pool at The University of Texas at Austin. The final sample included 781 participants, 61% of whom were female, ranging in age from 18-67 years. The design required participants to rate their own reactions, as well as the reactions of the “average man” and “average woman,” across multiple domains.</p>
<p>To measure emotional upset, participants rated 150 behaviors originally drawn from Buss (1989), including four items reflecting sexual aggression by an intimate partner, such as being forced to have sex. They also reported their fear of rape and other crimes, along with their perceived likelihood of being victimized by crimes such as sexual assault and sexual harassment.</p>
<p>In addition, participants completed measures assessing sociosexual orientation, Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy), empathy, self-perceived mate value, and perceived formidability. These individual difference measures allowed the authors to test whether cross-sex errors reflected adaptive inferential biases or instead were explained by projection of one’s own reactions.</p>
<p>“American men and women tend to systematically misperceive eachothers’ emotional upset in the domain of sexual violence perpetrated by one’s romantic partner, and this misperception is surprisingly stable across time,” Hahnel-Peeters told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“Although it’s true that both men and women accurately reported [that] the average woman experiences more upset, men significantly underestimated the upset that women actually reported. This has important implications for interpersonal communication, empathy, and legal contexts. We hope educating about these biases may improve education, prevention efforts, and how we define a ‘reasonable person’ in sexual violence cases.”</p>
<p>In contrast, men were relatively accurate in estimating women’s fear of rape and perceived likelihood of sexual victimization, while women overestimated men’s perceived likelihood of victimization.</p>
<p>Analyses of individual differences revealed that most cross-sex errors were strongly predicted by participants’ own self-ratings. For example, men’s underestimation of women’s upset was primarily explained by how upset the men themselves reported they would feel. Dark Triad traits and sociosexual orientation did not robustly predict these errors in the upset domain, lending more support to the byproduct (egocentric bias) hypothesis than to a specialized adaptive bias account, although some personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, Machiavellianism) were linked to errors in perceived likelihood and fear.</p>
<p>When asked if there are any caveats, the author emphasized “Absolutely, as with any study.”</p>
<p>“Although we replicated key patterns found in the late 1980s, these data are confined to the contexts of undergraduate students in the United States. Our data cannot definitively determine if these misperceptions result from evolved design features or byproducts of some other cognitive system. We tested several theoretically relevant individual differences, but future research would benefit from more diverse participants and methodology to better evaluate the adaptive vs. byproduct hypotheses.”</p>
<p>Hahnel-Peeters also highlighted unanswered questions. “Future research could examine cross-sex mindreading across cultures, such as those differing in sexuality or gender norms. To further test predictions about how reproductive status may calibrate theory of mind in this domain, future research should include a greater age range — specifically sampling for post-menopausal women. Another question includes how jurors’ individual differences in the magnitude of error influences perceived victim and perpetrator culpability. We’re only just beginning to understand these misperceptions.”</p>
<p>Taken together, the findings suggest that cross-sex misunderstandings in the domain of sexual violence are systematic, stable across decades, and shaped in part by individuals’ own emotional baselines.</p>
<p>“This project highlights that even well-meaning individuals can hold inaccurate beliefs about the opposite sex’s experiences with sexual violence. These gaps in perceptions hold real consequences. A better understanding of these perceptual errors support better policy-making, prevention efforts, and support for victims.”</p>
<p>The research “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106835">Cross-sex theory of mind in the domain of sexual violence: upset, fear, and perceived likelihood</a>” was authored by Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters, William Costello, Paola Baca, David P. Schmitt, and David M. Buss.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/researchers-discovered-a-surprising-link-between-ignored-hostility-and-crime/" 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 discovered a surprising link between ignored hostility and crime</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2585994" target="_blank">Deviant Behavior</a></em> reveals that people who endure negative treatment are more likely to express an intention to commit future crimes, even when they do not consciously recognize their mistreatment. Independent observers can identify this unseen adversity, showing that hidden emotional burdens can shape human actions. These unacknowledged experiences carry weight, altering behavior beneath the surface of conscious thought.</p>
<p>Criminologists study how hardship influences human behavior to better understand the root causes of crime. According to a prominent framework called general strain theory, experiencing aversive events causes negative emotions. These emotions, particularly anger, can prompt individuals to engage in rule-breaking or illegal activities as a way to cope with their distress.</p>
<p>In this theoretical context, a strain is simply a negative experience, such as being treated poorly by others or failing to achieve a personal goal. Historically, researchers measure this hardship by asking individuals to report the negative events in their own lives. This self-reported measurement captures what academics call perceived strain, representing the individual’s own understanding of their reality.</p>
<p>Relying entirely on self-reporting presents a specific challenge in behavioral research. Individuals do not always recognize or admit to the negative treatment they endure in their daily lives. A person might actively downplay a traumatic event because it is too painful to confront directly, altering their perception to protect their own self-image.</p>
<p>This intentional minimization is known as a controlled process. A victim might convince themselves that a hostile interaction was simply a misunderstanding, reducing the importance of the event to preserve their peace of mind. By altering how they evaluate the outcome, the individual avoids the immediate pain of the experience.</p>
<p>In other cases, individuals might process the negative social information automatically, completely outside of their conscious awareness. Because the human brain receives a vast amount of sensory information at any given moment, people selectively attend to certain details while ignoring others. This means that a person might be the victim of hostility but fail to consciously register the attack as it happens.</p>
<p>Psychological research indicates that human memory and perception often involve implicit processes that operate below the threshold of awareness. A person can have a subliminally triggered emotional reaction that drives their judgment without any accompanying feelings. The hostile stimuli still enter the brain, but the mind does not translate that input into a recognized emotional state.</p>
<p>Because of these cognitive blind spots, self-reported surveys might miss a vast amount of hardship. Shelley Keith, a criminologist at the University of Memphis, wanted to capture these hidden experiences to see how they impact behavior. Keith and her colleague Heather L. Scheuerman sought to understand if an independent observer could identify negative treatment that a victim overlooks.</p>
<p>To investigate this dynamic, the researchers analyzed data from a specialized judicial initiative known as the restorative justice program in Australia. This program brought together offenders, victims, and community members to discuss the harm caused by specific crimes. The meetings were designed to repair relationships and help the offender make amends through open dialogue.</p>
<p>Despite the positive goals of the program, the discussions could also expose the offender to high levels of public stigma. The emotional weight of facing a victim and the broader community can result in negative treatment and social rejection. This intense environment provided a unique setting to evaluate different perceptions of hardship and social friction.</p>
<p>The study included 385 offenders who had committed offenses such as shoplifting, property crimes, or driving under the influence of alcohol. Trained staff members attended these meetings and silently evaluated how the offenders were treated by the group. These observers attempted to blend in and watch the proceedings from unobtrusive vantage points to avoid disrupting the process.</p>
<p>The independent observers rated the level of respect, forgiveness, and hostility directed at the offender. They noted whether the group treated the individual like an irredeemable criminal or made it clear that the offender could move past their mistakes. Because these observers were completely impartial, their ratings formed a reliable measure of observed strain.</p>
<p>Following the meetings, the offenders completed their own structured interviews regarding the same social interactions. They rated the exact same aspects of their treatment to establish a measure of perceived strain. This dual approach allowed the researchers to directly compare what the offender felt with what the neutral third party witnessed in the room.</p>
<p>The offenders also answered questions about their current emotional state, specifically focusing on how angry or bitter they felt after the meeting. Finally, they reported their projected offending, which serves as a metric for future intentions. Projected offending is a self-assessed measure of how likely the individual is to obey or break the law in the coming weeks and months.</p>
<p>When analyzing the data, Keith and her team discovered a split between the two types of measurement. As expected, when offenders personally perceived their treatment as negative, they reported higher levels of anger. This anger then acted as a psychological bridge, increasing the likelihood that the offender would project a return to criminal behavior.</p>
<p>The independent observations told a completely different story. The hardship recorded by the third-party observers did not predict whether the offender would report feeling angry. Offenders did not consciously register the anger associated with the negative treatment seen by the impartial staff members.</p>
<p>Despite this lack of conscious anger, the observed negative treatment still increased the offender’s projected likelihood of breaking the law. The external observations predicted future rule-breaking behavior independently of the offender’s own self-reported feelings. This suggests that individuals can be influenced by negative social interactions even when they do not consciously process the hostility.</p>
<p>The emotional toll of the event might operate beneath the surface, driving behavioral changes without triggering recognizable feelings of anger. People might suppress their emotions or simply lack the emotional awareness to accurately identify their own frustration. This unacknowledged psychological burden can impair decision-making and lead to deviant actions, such as substance abuse or physical aggression.</p>
<p>When individuals fail to attend to their emotions, they often experience increased cognitive load. This mental strain limits their ability to process information and make rational decisions, making aggressive responses more likely. In essence, the unacknowledged trauma demands an outlet, manifesting as antisocial behavior even when the person claims to feel fine.</p>
<p>While the study provides a new way to look at behavioral triggers, it does have certain limitations. The researchers relied on the participants’ stated intentions to commit future crimes rather than tracking their actual legal infractions over time. Intentions often correlate with real actions, but observing actual behavior would provide a stronger test of the underlying theory.</p>
<p>The study also evaluated individuals at a single point in time, which makes it difficult to definitively prove a cause and effect relationship. Additionally, the questions regarding the offenders’ emotions focused primarily on anger. Future investigations should measure other negative feelings, such as depression or anxiety, which might also influence criminal behavior.</p>
<p>The measurement tool used to assess strain was also somewhat limited in scope. Hardship encompasses a wide variety of experiences beyond social rejection or a lack of forgiveness from peers. Future studies should expand these measurement tools to include other types of adversity, such as losing something of value or failing to achieve specific positive goals.</p>
<p>Future investigations should follow participants over a longer period to see how hidden hardships influence actual criminal records. Researchers could also incorporate physiological measurements, such as tracking heart rate or stress hormones. These biological markers could help scientists identify unconscious emotional reactions to negative events as they happen in real time.</p>
<p>Keith and her team suggest conducting in-depth interviews with individuals who experience unacknowledged hardship. This qualitative approach could help clarify exactly why people minimize their trauma and how different coping mechanisms alter their path forward. Understanding these hidden processes could eventually help criminal justice professionals provide better support for individuals navigating the legal system.</p>
<p>If impartial observers can identify hidden distress, policymakers could deploy trained personnel to monitor high-stakes judicial settings. These independent observers could intervene to reduce the stigmatization of offenders during court proceedings or correctional meetings. By identifying unnoticed mistreatment early, these professionals could connect individuals with the support services they need to process their experiences constructively.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2585994" target="_blank">Is Ignorance Bliss: Examining the Association Between Observed and Perceived Strain, Anger, and Projected Offending</a>,” was authored by Shelley Keith and Heather L. Scheuerman.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-popular-weight-loss-drug-shows-promise-for-treating-alcohol-addiction/" 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 popular weight loss drug shows promise for treating alcohol addiction</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A medication currently used to treat diabetes and obesity may offer a new way to help people struggling with alcohol addiction. A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.106119" target="_blank">eBioMedicine</a></em> found that the drug tirzepatide reduces alcohol consumption and prevents relapse behaviors in rodents. These results suggest that medications targeting the body’s metabolic hormones could eventually become an option for treating alcohol use conditions.</p>
<p>Alcohol addiction is a pervasive condition with limited medical treatments. Existing medications only work for some people and are not widely prescribed. This gap in care has prompted researchers to look for alternative approaches that target different systems in the body.</p>
<p>Recently, researchers have turned their attention to medications that mimic hormones produced in the gastrointestinal tract. These hormones naturally regulate blood sugar levels and the feeling of fullness after eating a meal. Medications like semaglutide mimic one of these hormones, called glucagon-like peptide-1.</p>
<p>These metabolic drugs have shown early promise in reducing alcohol intake in both animal studies and human trials. Tirzepatide is a newer medication that mimics two different gut hormones at the same time. It targets the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor alongside another receptor for a hormone called glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide.</p>
<p>The medication is already approved and widely used for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. Because it activates two biological pathways at once, it often produces stronger metabolic effects than single-hormone drugs. The research team wanted to know if this dual-action drug could also influence the brain circuits that drive alcohol consumption.</p>
<p>Christian E. Edvardsson, a researcher in pharmacology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, led the investigation. He collaborated with colleagues at his home institution and the Medical University of South Carolina. The team sought to systematically test how tirzepatide affects different patterns of alcohol drinking in animals.</p>
<p>The researchers first tested how tirzepatide affects the brain’s reward system using male mice. Alcohol normally triggers a release of dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that creates feelings of pleasure and reinforces habits. The team measured dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, a key brain region involved in motivation and reward processing.</p>
<p>When the mice received alcohol, their dopamine levels spiked. However, when the researchers gave the mice tirzepatide before the alcohol, this dopamine surge was mostly blocked. The drug prevented the chemical reward usually associated with alcohol consumption.</p>
<p>To see if this effect was direct, the researchers delivered alcohol directly into the nucleus accumbens of some mice, rather than injecting it into their bodies. Tirzepatide still blocked the dopamine release. This suggests the medication interacts directly with the brain’s reward circuitry.</p>
<p>The team also observed the animals’ physical behavior to see if the drug altered their preference for alcohol. They used a testing enclosure where one specific room was repeatedly paired with alcohol injections. Over time, mice usually learn to prefer spending time in the alcohol-associated room because they connect it with a rewarding feeling.</p>
<p>Mice treated with tirzepatide did not show a preference for the room paired with alcohol. The researchers also tested the animals after a two-week period with no alcohol or behavioral testing, reintroducing neutral smells that had previously been paired with alcohol. Tirzepatide continued to block their preference for the alcohol-associated environment and its specific smells.</p>
<p>Next, the researchers examined voluntary drinking habits in both male and female rats. They used an intermittent access model, which provides the animals with alcohol every other day to encourage heavier drinking. A single dose of tirzepatide cut the animals’ alcohol consumption by more than half, and it also decreased their overall preference for alcohol compared to plain water.</p>
<p>The team then set up a different experiment to simulate binge drinking in mice. They gave the mice short, concentrated periods of access to alcohol during their most active hours in the dark. Tirzepatide effectively reduced this intensive drinking behavior in both male and female mice.</p>
<p>To study relapse, the researchers temporarily took alcohol away from rats that had grown accustomed to drinking it. Normally, this forced abstinence causes animals to drink much more than usual once the alcohol is returned. This temporary spike in consumption models the urge to relapse in humans.</p>
<p>When the researchers administered tirzepatide before returning the alcohol, the rats did not show this spike in drinking. Instead of drinking more, their alcohol intake dropped below their original baseline levels. The drug successfully prevented the relapse-like behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers also wanted to know if the drug would keep working over a longer period. They gave the rats tirzepatide repeatedly over two weeks. The rats maintained their lowered alcohol intake throughout the entire period without building a tolerance to the medication.</p>
<p>Chronic alcohol use often causes liver damage and widespread inflammation in the body. The research team analyzed the tissues of the rats after the two-week drinking period. They found that tirzepatide reduced liver weight and lowered fat deposits in the liver.</p>
<p>The medication also decreased the levels of inflammatory proteins in the blood. This dual effect on both drinking behavior and metabolic health could be highly relevant for patients. Many people dealing with alcohol addiction also suffer from liver disease and metabolic issues.</p>
<p>Finally, the team looked closer at brain activity to understand where the drug might be exerting its effects. They measured electrical signals in various reward-related brain regions of mice. They noticed lasting changes in electrical activity within the lateral septum, an area of the brain that helps regulate emotional responses and motivation.</p>
<p>By analyzing the proteins in the lateral septum of alcohol-consuming rats, the researchers found changes in specific proteins called histones. Histones act like tiny spools that DNA winds around inside a cell. They help control which genes are turned on or off.</p>
<p>Alcohol consumption often alters these proteins, a process that changes how genes are expressed in the brain. The study suggests tirzepatide might interact with this process to alter drinking behavior. The exact mechanism connecting these protein changes to reduced alcohol intake requires more investigation.</p>
<p>While these results offer a promising new direction, the study has a few limitations that warrant attention. The researchers only used male animals for the experiments involving brain chemistry, electrical activity, and protein analysis. Because male and female brains can respond differently to addiction and to certain medications, future studies need to include female animals in these specific tests.</p>
<p>The drug also caused the animals to eat less and lose weight. While this might benefit people dealing with both alcohol addiction and obesity, it could cause unwanted weight loss in other patients. Doctors would need to monitor this side effect in clinical settings.</p>
<p>Researchers still need to conduct human clinical trials to confirm if tirzepatide is safe and effective for treating alcohol addiction in people. “This is not yet a new treatment for alcohol use disorder. But the findings reinforce the view that drugs targeting these neural systems may be relevant to investigate further as potential treatment options,” says Elisabet Jerlhag Holm, Professor of Pharmacology at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.106119" target="_blank">Tirzepatide reduces alcohol drinking and relapse-like behaviours in rodents</a>,” was authored by Christian E. Edvardsson, Louise Adermark, Sam Gottlieb, Safana Alfreji, Thaynnam A. Emous, Yomna Gouda, et al.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-unemployment-changes-the-way-people-dream/" 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 unemployment changes the way people dream</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 21st 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent analysis of thousands of social media posts reveals that losing a job alters the narrative landscape of a person’s dreams, stripping away elements of surprise and visual perception while increasing work-related themes. These changes suggest that the mental disengagement people experience during unemployment seeps directly into their sleeping minds, offering employers and researchers a new way to understand workforce well-being. The study was published in the journal <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-11441-001" target="_blank">Dreaming</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers often rely on the continuity hypothesis to understand nighttime narratives. This concept suggests that a person’s dreams act as a direct extension of their waking life. Sleepers do not simply replay every waking event like a video recording.</p>
<p>Instead, they dream about the thoughts, emotional states, and central concerns that hold the most personal meaning to them. Because careers shape a person’s daily routine and sense of identity, work-related themes appear frequently in sleep. Prior research shows that job-related stress directly correlates with distressing dream content.</p>
<p>High-stress environments often lead to work-related nightmares, which can then increase daytime stress in a looping cycle. Job loss represents a profound disruption to a person’s economic stability and psychological well-being. Meaningful work provides financial resources, a sense of purpose, and societal recognition.</p>
<p>Losing a position can trigger an identity crisis, leading to diminished self-worth, social withdrawal, and feelings of alienation. People struggling with job loss often hesitate to share their experiences due to the stigma attached to being out of work. This reluctance makes it difficult for psychologists to fully measure the emotional toll using traditional self-reported surveys.</p>
<p>Dream narratives offer an indirect window into these unvoiced psychological challenges. Emily Cook, a researcher at the Center for Organizational Dreaming, led an investigation to explore this hidden emotional landscape. She and her co-author, Kyle Napierkowski, wanted to see if specific thematic differences emerge in the dreams of people without jobs compared to those with steady employment.</p>
<p>They suspected that analyzing large collections of online dream diaries could reveal nuanced cognitive patterns that traditional questionnaires miss. To gather a massive sample of narratives, the research team turned to Reddit. This social networking forum allows anonymous users to form communities based on specific interests or shared experiences.</p>
<p>The researchers collected data from a community dedicated entirely to sharing and discussing dreams. To identify participants who were likely out of work, the team looked for users who also participated in communities focused on job loss, recruiting struggles, and career guidance. They gathered dream posts written by these users in the six months before they joined the unemployment-focused groups.</p>
<p>This specific timeline helped capture the mindset of individuals just before or during their transition out of the workforce. The researchers then built a control group of users who posted in the dream community but never interacted with the career-focused forums. They matched the dates of the control posts to the target group to eliminate any seasonal or time-related biases.</p>
<p>After manually filtering out posts that did not contain actual dream descriptions, the team had a dataset of 6,478 reports split evenly between the two groups. To analyze this massive amount of text, the team used a large language model. This type of artificial intelligence processes human language by converting words and sentences into mathematical representations.</p>
<p>This conversion allows computers to identify semantic patterns across thousands of documents in a fraction of the time it would take a human reader. The researchers also used a statistical technique called principal component analysis. High-dimensional data can slow down computer models and obscure important patterns.</p>
<p>This specific analysis method reduces the complexity of massive datasets, highlighting the most important variations without losing the underlying meaning of the text. The team tested multiple machine learning algorithms to classify the reports as belonging to either the target group or the control group. A logistic regression model, which calculates the probability of a specific outcome based on various input factors, performed the best.</p>
<p>The researchers then isolated the highest and lowest scoring dreams to identify the exact words and themes driving the mathematical differences. The computer models revealed distinctions between the two sets of narratives. The most prominent difference was an overrepresentation of professional and work-related words in the dreams of the target group.</p>
<p>People facing job loss dreamed heavily about workplaces, college, and professional stakes. This finding aligns directly with the idea that dreams reflect waking concerns. Because unemployed individuals experience high stress levels linked to joblessness, work becomes a more intense concern in their daily lives.</p>
<p>The distress associated with active job seeking fuels this heightened prevalence of work-related dreams. The models also detected a noticeable lack of specific elements in the target group. Words indicating surprise, such as feeling shocked or noticing sudden changes, appeared less often in their reports.</p>
<p>The researchers note that to experience surprise, a person must actively process new information and compare it to their expectations. The absence of surprise suggests a more passive cognitive style during sleep. Similarly, the target group used fewer words related to visual observations.</p>
<p>They were less likely to describe the act of seeing, looking at, or observing their dream environment. The researchers interpret this lack of visual and emotional engagement as a sleeping reflection of workforce disengagement. In the business world, human resources professionals measure employee engagement to understand a worker’s enthusiasm and involvement.</p>
<p>An engaged employee works with passion, while an unengaged employee participates without energy or commitment. Engagement often drops right before a person leaves a job, whether through resignation or involuntary termination. The study suggests that this waking disengagement extends deeply into the structure of a person’s dreams.</p>
<p>The result is a less active and less observant nighttime experience. By identifying these systematic differences, the researchers suggest a possible extension of existing psychological theories. Major life circumstances shape not just what people dream about, but how they experience their dream environment.</p>
<p>Disengagement from waking life translates into disengagement from the dream world. While the digital approach allowed for a massive sample size, the researchers noted a few limitations. Anonymous social media users do not share every dream they have.</p>
<p>People tend to post about their most emotionally intense nighttime experiences, which could skew the data toward dramatic narratives. Additionally, employment status was inferred entirely from forum participation. A person posting in an unemployment group might have already found a new job.</p>
<p>Alternatively, a person in the control group might be unemployed but simply chose not to use those specific forums. This potential misclassification introduces some error into the analysis. Future investigations could pair online data collection with targeted surveys to confirm a user’s actual work history.</p>
<p>Gathering direct information from users would help validate the anonymous data. Tracking individuals over time would also help researchers understand how sleep narratives evolve through the distinct phases of losing a job. The psychological experiences of the initial awareness of job loss, the actual search for work, and eventual reemployment likely influence dream content in different ways.</p>
<p>A longitudinal approach could reveal the hidden timeline of these stressors. The team also hopes to explore whether shifting dream themes can predict upcoming job loss before the worker consciously realizes their position is in danger. Subjective well-being often declines months before an actual termination.</p>
<p>Tracking these subtle narrative shifts could detect changes in emotional states before they manifest as behavioral issues at work. This predictive capability could eventually provide large organizations with an anonymous, non-intrusive metric to monitor overall workforce engagement. Gathering aggregated dream trends might offer human resources departments an early warning system for widespread burnout, allowing companies to address engagement challenges before mass resignations occur.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/drm0000310" target="_blank">The Impact of Unemployment on Dream Content</a>,” was authored by Emily Cook and Kyle Napierkowski.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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