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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/problematic-tiktok-use-correlates-with-social-anxiety-and-daily-cognitive-errors/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Problematic TikTok use correlates with social anxiety and daily cognitive errors</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 1st 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abrep.2026.100675" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Addictive Behaviors Reports</a> suggests that the anxiety of missing out on social events can fuel addictive behaviors on TikTok, which in turn leads to everyday memory and attention lapses. The researchers found that excessive use of the popular short video app acts as a bridge between underlying social anxieties and a person’s tendency to forget appointments or lose focus during daily tasks. These results highlight how the specific design of modern social media platforms might influence human brain function.</p>
<p>Yao Wang, a researcher at the Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Macau, led the investigation alongside colleagues from Germany and China. The research team set out to understand how particular psychological states push people toward excessive app usage. They wanted to see if these digital habits ultimately spill over into the physical world.</p>
<p>The researchers focused heavily on a psychological concept known as the fear of missing out. This concept describes the persistent worry that others are having rewarding experiences without you. This feeling drives a strong desire to stay continually connected with what other people are doing.</p>
<p>Psychologists divide this fear into two distinct categories. The first category is the trait fear of missing out. This represents a stable personality characteristic, meaning a person generally worries about being left out across all areas of life.</p>
<p>The second category is the state fear of missing out. This refers to a temporary condition tied to specific situations. It is often experienced as the immediate, context-dependent urge to check online notifications or social feeds.</p>
<p>The researchers also examined a phenomenon called everyday cognitive failure. This term refers to routine mental errors that happen to almost everyone occasionally. Examples include misplacing keys, forgetting why you entered a room, or struggling to maintain attention during a conversation.</p>
<p>Finally, the team investigated what they term TikTok use disorder tendencies. This condition involves using the short video app so excessively that a person loses control over their own behavior. It often leads to a person prioritizing the app over real-world responsibilities, causing disruptions in their normal daily functioning.</p>
<p>Previous investigations have shown that generic social media overuse connects social anxiety to mental lapses. The broader habit of constantly checking the internet clearly drains cognitive resources. Yet, the researchers recognized that different platforms vary widely in their architecture and design.</p>
<p>The research team wanted to see if the unique nature of TikTok creates a distinct psychological pathway. The platform relies on an endless feed of short videos and a highly personalized recommendation algorithm. These features are specifically built to capture and hold user attention in ways that older social networks do not.</p>
<p>To explore these connections, the research team analyzed data from a large survey project conducted in Germany. They filtered the original participant pool to focus exclusively on adults who actively use TikTok. They also ensured that all selected participants had fully completed the necessary psychological assessments.</p>
<p>This filtering process left a final group of 720 participants. The group consisted of 249 men and 471 women. The average age of the participants was roughly 38 years old.</p>
<p>These participants completed a series of standardized online questionnaires. The surveys measured their general personality anxieties and their situational urges to check the internet. They also measured the frequency of their everyday mental lapses by asking about incidents like bumping into people or failing to notice road signs.</p>
<p>A specific questionnaire was used to gauge the severity of their TikTok habits. This tool asked individuals to rate how often they experienced addictive behaviors. For example, participants rated how frequently they felt they could not stop watching videos or how often their app usage caused problems in their work lives.</p>
<p>The research team then used statistical software to look for patterns among the questionnaire responses. They compared the scores for social anxiety, app usage, and mental lapses. While minor gender differences were recorded, they were not statistically significant enough to change the core relationship between the three main variables.</p>
<p>The researchers observed a clear pattern linking these three psychological variables. People who reported a higher fear of missing out also reported experiencing more routine mental errors. This connection held true for both the stable personality trait and the temporary, situation-based fear.</p>
<p>Importantly, the team found that excessive TikTok use connected these two factors. The urge to constantly check the app functioned as a bridge between social anxiety and mental lapses. Psychologists refer to this bridging function as a mediation effect.</p>
<p>In a statistical mediation model, the primary variable does not just affect the outcome directly. Instead, it triggers a middle variable, which then causes the final outcome. The researchers suggest that the underlying fear of missing out drives a person to frequently open the app to relieve their anxiety.</p>
<p>This near-continuous state of checking fragments the person’s attention throughout the day. Over time, this fragmented attention drains mental energy. The brain becomes less capable of maintaining prolonged focus on real-world activities, which ultimately leads to more dropped appointments and forgotten tasks.</p>
<p>The researchers also uncovered an unexpected detail regarding the two types of social anxiety. They compared their new TikTok data against older survey results that looked at general social media addiction. This comparison revealed a difference in how the underlying anxieties operate.</p>
<p>Usually, general social media overuse is more strongly linked to the temporary, online-specific fear of missing out. People check platforms like Facebook or Instagram in response to immediate notification triggers. These older platforms rely heavily on real-time social interactions and alerts.</p>
<p>In contrast, addictive behavior on TikTok showed a stronger link to the stable personality trait. The underlying, constant anxiety about missing out in life generally was a better predictor of problematic TikTok use. The immediate urge to check specific online notifications mattered slightly less for this specific app.</p>
<p>Wang and colleagues suspect this difference comes down to the distinct design of the platform. TikTok’s highly personalized algorithm may tap directly into a user’s deeper personality vulnerabilities. The endless stream of curated content might soothe a broad, persistent anxiety rather than just answering a specific social notification.</p>
<p>The researchers noted several limitations to their investigation. The most prominent constraint is the cross-sectional design of the survey. This means the data represents a single snapshot in time.</p>
<p>Because the data was collected all at once, the researchers cannot definitively prove cause and effect. It is entirely possible that the relationship works in the opposite direction. People who naturally struggle with focus and memory might simply be more prone to developing an addiction to short video platforms.</p>
<p>Another alternative is that excessive engagement with social media creates a loop of constant social comparison. This loop could intensify a person’s baseline social anxieties over time. This would mean the app usage causes the anxiety, rather than the anxiety causing the app usage.</p>
<p>Additionally, the study relied entirely on self-reported questionnaires. Participants might underestimate their own app usage to appear more disciplined. They might also misjudge how often they make routine mental errors in their daily lives.</p>
<p>Future research could address these issues by following users over an extended period. Scientists could track changes in behavior and memory over months or years. They could also use objective tracking data from smartphones to measure exact screen time rather than relying on human memory.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the current results offer a clearer picture of how specific app designs might influence attention. It highlights the need to look at individual digital platforms rather than treating all social media as identical. As digital environments evolve, understanding these targeted psychological mechanisms remains a priority for cognitive researchers.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abrep.2026.100675" target="_blank" rel="noopener">On TikTok use disorder tendencies, fear of missing out and everyday cognitive failure</a>,” was authored by Yao Wang, Sebastian Markett, Zhiying Zhao, and Christian Montag.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychology-study-shows-how-a-fixed-mindset-helps-socially-anxious-people/" 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;">Psychology study shows how a “fixed mindset” helps socially anxious people</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 1st 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251378537" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</a></em> suggests that changing how people think about first impressions can help ease the burden of social anxiety. The findings indicate that believing other people form stable and unchanging opinions tends to make social interactions feel much less demanding. This shift in perspective provides evidence that socially anxious individuals can feel more at ease by simply assuming they are not being constantly reevaluated.</p>
<p>“Social anxiety is a prevalent problem that affects the lives of 5-15% of the population chronically, and affects most people occasionally (e.g., during a job interview or dating). It can make people feel very uncomfortable or lead them to avoid social situations, and may seriously limit their ability to live life to its full potential,” said study author <a href="https://psychology.biu.ac.il/en/node/631" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Liad Uziel</a>, an associate professor at Bar-Ilan University.</p>
<p>“There are different approaches to address social anxiety, which involve medications and potentially long-term therapy. Much of the recent work on the topic has focused on cognitive biases that characterize individuals high on social anxiety and which intensify the disorder (such as excessive self-criticism). The present study sought to address these cognitive mechanisms and test whether a relatively simple shift in mindset may ease the expression of social anxiety.”</p>
<p class="ng-star-inserted"><span class="ng-star-inserted">A mindset is a basic belief about human nature. A growth mindset is the belief that traits can change and develop over time. A fixed mindset is the belief that traits are relatively stable and unchangeable. The researcher wanted to know if changing a person’s mindset about the outside world, specifically how other people form impressions, could be beneficial.</span></p>
<p>To test this, Uziel conducted a series of four related studies. The preliminary study included 182 British adults who completed online surveys. Participants answered questions about their baseline levels of social anxiety.</p>
<p>They also reported their natural beliefs about whether first impressions are permanent or changeable. Finally, the participants rated how mentally exhausting they find the process of managing their public image.</p>
<p>The researcher found that social anxiety was strongly linked to feeling drained by social interactions. But for individuals who naturally held a fixed mindset about impressions, this exhausting feeling was reduced.</p>
<p>Following this initial survey, Uziel designed three experiments to actively change how people think about impression formation. In the first experiment, he recruited 200 Israeli college students. Uziel randomly assigned the students to either a fixed mindset group or a growth mindset group. To manipulate their mindsets, the researchers had participants read and agree with statements heavily biased toward one of the two beliefs.</p>
<p>“The present intervention asked participants to adopt a mindset about social interactions that states that the impressions people make are relatively stable and do not change easily (a fixed mindset about impression formation),” Uziel explained. “In doing so, the intervention sought to reduce the cognitive load that socially anxious individuals experience in social situations. If impressions do not change easily, there is less risk that something one does during the interaction affects the impression.”</p>
<p>“Because individuals high on social anxiety tend to ruminate and over-analyze others’ reactions to them, and often misinterpret these reactions as a negative sign (which intensifies their distress), they find themselves overwhelmed in social interactions and struggle to respond adaptively.”</p>
<p>Next, the students wrote a brief self-introduction paragraph, believing they would soon share it with a partner. Two independent judges evaluated these written introductions for friendliness, dominance, and signs of anxiety.</p>
<p>Uziel found that students with higher social anxiety made a worse impression when they were primed with a growth mindset. But when socially anxious students were primed with a fixed mindset, they performed just as well as people with low anxiety. Believing that impressions are stable seemed to protect them from the negative effects of their own worry.</p>
<p>The second experiment tested 155 Israeli college students in a more stressful environment. Participants underwent the same mindset manipulation as the previous group. Then, the researchers asked them to present themselves to a video camera for two straight minutes. Being recorded usually triggers a strong stress response in socially anxious individuals. Two objective raters watched the videos and scored the participants on eye contact, vocal clarity, apparent comfort, and conversational flow.</p>
<p>Once again, social anxiety predicted a poor performance only in the growth mindset group. Those who were led to believe that impressions are fixed managed to present themselves in a much more positive light. This provided evidence that the fixed mindset acts as a psychological buffer during high-stress social tasks.</p>
<p>Uziel then moved out of the laboratory to see if these effects apply to everyday life. In the third experiment, he tested 158 Israeli college students. Uziel used the same mindset manipulation but added an open-ended writing task to make the new mindset stick more deeply.</p>
<p>Participants wrote about a personal memory that proved impressions are either fixed or changeable, depending on their assigned group. Three days later, the researchers contacted the students to ask about their recent real-world social interactions. Participants rated how stressful, satisfying, and positive their conversations had been over that period.</p>
<p>The socially anxious individuals in the growth mindset group reported having worse social experiences than usual. On the other hand, socially anxious students in the fixed mindset group reported better and more satisfying social interactions. Adopting the belief that impressions are stable helped them navigate their daily lives with greater ease. They felt less pressure and found it easier to connect with the people around them.</p>
<p>“It was a surprise to find that both socially anxious individuals and objective observers noted an improvement in social behavior,” Uziel told PsyPost. “It is often the case that people feel better, but there is little change in actual observable behavior.”</p>
<p>“In addition, most research on mindsets suggests that a growth mindset is better in various contexts (e.g., thinking that intelligence is malleable). The present findings are surprising in showing that there are contexts where stability is better.”</p>
<p>While these findings offer a promising psychological tool, there are some limitations. The experiments focused on the natural variation of social anxiety within the general population. The scientists did not test individuals who have been formally diagnosed with a severe social anxiety disorder. Clinical patients might respond differently to the mindset exercises than the average college student.</p>
<p>Additionally, the laboratory tasks measured very brief snapshots of social behavior. It remains unclear how long the benefits of a simple mindset exercise might actually last in the real world.</p>
<p>“Additional work is needed to test these ideas in new samples and different cultures,” Uziel said. “In addition, it would be interesting to study it specifically with clinically diagnosed socially anxious individuals. In addition, a test of the long-term effects is also needed.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251378537" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Soothing Effect of a Stable World: Social Behavior of Individuals Varying on Social Anxiety Under Fixed and Growth Mindsets About Impression Formation</a>,” was authored by Liad Uziel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/dark-personality-traits-are-linked-to-the-consumption-of-violent-pornography/" 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;">Dark personality traits are linked to the consumption of violent pornography</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 28th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>People who exhibit certain negative personality traits tend to spend more time consuming violent pornography and engaging in problematic online sexual behaviors. This pattern suggests a reinforcing cycle where people drawn to aggressive content may further normalize their own antisocial tendencies. These results were recently published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2025.2598471" target="_blank">Sexual Health & Compulsivity</a>.</p>
<p>The internet is an essential part of modern life, but its overuse can lead to serious public health concerns. When online engagement becomes excessive, it can cause functional difficulties resembling substance addiction. This includes symptoms like withdrawal, mood changes, and a persistent loss of control over digital habits.</p>
<p>Adolescents and young adults are especially vulnerable to these issues during their critical periods of personality formation. Driven by a need to remain connected, young people face a heightened risk of internet addiction. This excessive online engagement can take many forms, including gaming, gambling, and sexual activities.</p>
<p>One specific area of concern is the excessive consumption of online sexual content. While many online sexual behaviors are completely harmless, they can become an issue for a subset of the population. Problematic use is marked by a lack of control, increased tolerance, and negative impacts on daily life.</p>
<p>Viewing violent pornography is a particularly concerning facet of this digital behavior. This type of media contains sexually explicit material paired with aggressive themes, such as coercion or physical violence. Repeated exposure to these degrading scenarios can negatively influence how people act in real world relationships.</p>
<p>Past research indicates that consuming violent sexual content might lower a person’s sensitivity to aggression. It can also encourage more permissive attitudes toward coercion in offline sexual encounters. However, researchers suspect that individual personality differences might also drive people toward this extreme content.</p>
<p>Manuel Galán, a researcher at the Catholic University of Murcia in Spain, wanted to better understand this dynamic. Galán and his colleagues suspected that certain negative personality traits might predispose people to seek out violent pornography. They also wondered if this consumption might reinforce those same negative traits over time.</p>
<p>To explore this, the research team focused on a specific psychological framework known as the Dark Tetrad. This concept groups together four subclinical personality traits. Subclinical means the traits are present in a person’s everyday behavior but are not severe enough to be diagnosed as a formal psychiatric disorder.</p>
<p>The four traits of the Dark Tetrad are narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Narcissism involves a strong sense of entitlement and a tendency to exploit others for personal gain. Machiavellianism is characterized by a cynical worldview and a focus on manipulating others for self-interest.</p>
<p>Psychopathy includes impulsivity, emotional shallowness, a lack of empathy, and a tendency toward antisocial behavior. Finally, sadism is defined by the active or passive enjoyment of causing pain or watching others suffer. The researchers wanted to see how these four traits relate to the problematic use of online sexual material.</p>
<p>Psychologists believe these dark traits emerge from a mix of environmental, biological, and learning factors. Adverse childhood experiences, such as inconsistent parenting or neglect, can foster these characteristics as adaptive responses to hostile environments. Social learning also plays a role, as individuals often internalize manipulative behaviors by observing authority figures.</p>
<p>Galán and his team hypothesized that people scoring high in these dark traits would be more likely to consume violent pornography. They suspected that the constant arousal from problematic internet use might disrupt healthy habits. This could create an online environment where aggressive attitudes are more easily normalized.</p>
<p>To test their ideas, Galán and his team recruited 795 participants through social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. The participants were mostly female, and their ages ranged from 18 to 80, with an average age of about 32. Each person completed an extensive online survey designed to measure their digital habits and personality traits.</p>
<p>The survey included several standardized psychological questionnaires. One set of questions assessed how much subjective distress or loss of control the participants felt regarding their use of internet sex sites. It asked participants how often they neglected home responsibilities or became engrossed in fantasies about connecting to online sex sites.</p>
<p>Another section of the survey measured the presence of the four Dark Tetrad personality traits. Participants rated their agreement with statements reflecting manipulation, callousness, and grandiosity. A separate questionnaire specifically measured everyday sadism, asking participants if tormenting others made them feel better.</p>
<p>The researchers also created a specific set of questions to measure how often participants viewed different types of violent pornography over the past year. This included content featuring verbal humiliation, physical violence, non-consensual scenarios, and simulated rape. The participants rated their viewing frequency on a scale ranging from “not at all” to “many times.”</p>
<p>After collecting the survey responses, the team used advanced statistical models to analyze the data. These models allowed them to look at the relationships between all the different variables at once. They also adjusted their calculations to account for the sex of the participants, since men and women often report different viewing habits.</p>
<p>The results revealed clear associations between the Dark Tetrad traits and online sexual behaviors. People who scored higher on the dark personality traits also reported higher levels of problematic sexual internet use. They also spent more time specifically watching violent pornography.</p>
<p>Out of the four traits, psychopathy and sadism showed the strongest links to both problematic internet use and the consumption of violent sexual content. This aligns with the core characteristics of these two traits. Psychopathy and sadism are closely tied to callousness, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others.</p>
<p>The data showed that the traits of psychopathy and sadism were highly intertwined with each other. Machiavellianism and narcissism also showed positive associations with these online behaviors, though to a lesser extent. The researchers suggest that Machiavellian individuals might use online sexual content strategically to serve personal goals.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, narcissistic individuals might be driven by a sense of sexual entitlement or a high sensitivity to rewards. The statistical models also confirmed that sex plays a role in these patterns. Being male was associated with higher scores in psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism.</p>
<p>Men in the study also reported higher rates of problematic sexual internet use and more time spent watching violent pornography. The only trait not linked to a specific sex was narcissism. Even after adjusting for these sex differences, the associations between the dark traits and the online behaviors remained clear.</p>
<p>This indicates that personality plays an independent role in shaping how people interact with sexualized digital content. It is not just a matter of demographic differences driving the behavior. The researchers view these results as evidence of a potential reinforcing cycle.</p>
<p>People with high levels of psychopathy and sadism are likely drawn to material that depicts sexual aggression and dominance. Repeatedly viewing this content might then reinforce their existing antisocial attitudes. As individuals consume more violent pornography, they may become increasingly desensitized to aggression.</p>
<p>This reduced sensitivity can blur the lines between intimacy and violence. Ultimately, this cycle could solidify callous behaviors and make aggressive scenarios seem completely normal. Despite these clear patterns, the research team noted several limitations in their work.</p>
<p>The study relied on a convenience sample recruited through social media, which means the participants might not perfectly represent the general public. People who are not active on these platforms were entirely excluded from the data. Additionally, the sample included a disproportionately high number of women.</p>
<p>Since men typically report higher rates of violent pornography consumption, this gender imbalance could affect the broader applicability of the results. Another limitation is the reliance on self-reported survey data. When answering questions about sensitive topics like pornography and negative personality traits, people might alter their responses to appear more socially acceptable.</p>
<p>This tendency can introduce bias into the data, as individuals might downplay their true habits. The biggest caveat is the cross-sectional nature of the study. A cross-sectional study looks at data from a single point in time, like taking a snapshot.</p>
<p>Because of this design, the researchers can only point out correlations between the variables. They cannot prove the direction of cause and effect. It remains unclear whether dark personality traits cause people to seek out violent pornography, or if consuming the content fosters the dark traits.</p>
<p>It is highly possible that both factors influence each other simultaneously in a continuous loop. To answer this question, future research will need to track participants over a longer period. Observing these behaviors as they develop over months or years would help clarify the exact direction of the relationship.</p>
<p>This long-term approach could reveal how online environments actively shape personality development over time. Understanding these behavioral patterns is a necessary step for public health. By identifying the psychological factors that drive problematic internet use, mental health professionals can design better interventions.</p>
<p>Targeted therapies could eventually help vulnerable individuals break the cycle of consuming aggressive digital media. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2025.2598471" target="_blank">The Dark Side of Desire: Violent Pornography, Problematic Sexual Internet Use and Their Associations with the Dark Tetrad</a>,” was authored by Manuel Galán, Pilar Rico-Bordera, David Pineda, Embla Bøckmann and José Antonio Piqueras.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/why-most-people-fail-to-spot-ai-generated-faces-while-super-recognizers-have-a-subtle-advantage/" 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;">Why most people fail to spot AI-generated faces, while super-recognizers have a subtle advantage</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 28th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70063" target="_blank">British Journal of Psychology</a></em> suggests that people with exceptional face recognition skills are slightly better at telling artificial intelligence-generated faces from real ones. The research provides evidence that computer-generated faces tend to look mathematically hyper-average, a subtle clue that these top-tier face recognizers subconsciously detect. Overall, the findings indicate that visual intuition alone is no longer enough to spot modern synthetic faces, highlighting a growing vulnerability to digital deception.</p>
<p>Historically, the human face processing system evolved to extract emotion and social meaning from real people. Now, artificial intelligence programs can generate synthetic faces that are nearly indistinguishable from real humans.</p>
<p>These synthetic faces pose a significant threat in the real world. Bad actors routinely use artificial faces for illegal activities, such as creating fake profiles for corporate cyberespionage, running online dating scams, and spreading propaganda through automated accounts. Because earlier artificial intelligence programs made obvious visual errors, such as distorted teeth or strange backgrounds, people could easily spot the fakes.</p>
<p>As technology has advanced, those obvious glitches have largely disappeared. Scientists wanted to find out if certain people possess higher-level perceptual abilities that allow them to spot more subtle, structural differences between real and generated faces. </p>
<p>“AI-generated faces are now so realistic that most people can’t reliably tell them apart from real faces,” said study author <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/james-dunn" target="_blank">James Dunn</a>, a lecturer at UNSW Sydney and principal investigator in <a href="https://forensic.psy.unsw.edu.au/" target="_blank">the Face & Forensic Psychology Research Lab</a>. “That creates real-world risks—from scams and fake job applicants to misinformation campaigns using synthetic identities. At the same time, we know that some people are exceptionally good at recognising faces (‘super-recognizers’), but no one had tested whether that expertise helps with AI detection. We wanted to understand not just who is better at spotting AI faces, but also why.</p>
<p>For their study, the scientists recruited a total of 125 participants. The sample included 36 super-recognizers, who had previously scored in the top tier of standardized face recognition tests, and 89 highly motivated control participants with above-average but not exceptional skills. The participants completed an online task where they viewed a series of 200 face images. (<a href="https://facetest.psy.unsw.edu.au/aifaces.html" target="_blank">You can take the test here</a>.)</p>
<p>Half of these images were photographs of real white men and women. The other half were artificial intelligence-generated faces designed to match the real faces in gender, posture, and expression. For each image, participants had to decide whether the face was real or computer-generated, and then they rated their confidence in their decision on a scale from zero to 100.</p>
<p>To understand the hidden structure of the artificial faces, the researchers also analyzed the images using artificial neural networks. These are advanced computer programs designed to mimic the way the human brain processes information, specifically trained here to recognize face identities. The scientists used these computer models to map out a mathematical landscape called face-space.</p>
<p>A face located at the center of this mathematical space is considered highly average, meaning it lacks distinct or unusual physical proportions. The computer analysis provided evidence that artificial intelligence-generated faces are overwhelmingly located closer to this center than real faces. In other words, the artificial faces were exceptionally typical and symmetrical, lacking the natural quirks of real human faces.</p>
<p>When looking at the human participants, the researchers found that typical individuals performed no better than a coin flip. The control group correctly identified the faces only 50.7 percent of the time. The super-recognizers performed slightly better, achieving an average accuracy of 57.3 percent.</p>
<p>While the super-recognizers only had a modest advantage, they demonstrated a deeper awareness of their own performance. When super-recognizers felt highly confident about a guess, they were more likely to be correct. The control participants showed no such relationship between their confidence and their actual accuracy.</p>
<p>The researchers also found that super-recognizers and regular participants relied on entirely different visual clues. Super-recognizers subconsciously used face-space centrality as a warning sign. When a face looked too perfectly average and symmetrical, the super-recognizers tended to classify it as artificial.</p>
<p>“One striking finding was that AI faces occupy the very centre of ‘face-space,’ a kind of mental map of face, more than real human faces do, and that clue is what gives super-recognizers their advantage,” Dunn told PsyPost. “Traditional theories might assume the most human-looking faces should sit at the center, but we found the opposite, and this comes back to the ‘hyper-averageness’ of AI faces.”</p>
<p>Regular participants completely missed this structural clue. Instead, the control group relied heavily on perceived youthfulness. Regular participants frequently made the mistake of assuming that older-looking faces were real human beings, which led to incorrect guesses.</p>
<p>To see if group collaboration could boost accuracy, the scientists ran a statistical simulation called the wisdom of crowds. They combined the answers of multiple participants to see if a consensus choice was more accurate. Aggregating the responses of eight super-recognizers boosted the group’s detection accuracy significantly, but applying the same mathematical technique to the control group produced no improvement at all.</p>
<p>One potential misinterpretation of this study is the assumption that human experts can consistently protect us from artificial intelligence deception. Even the highly skilled super-recognizers only achieved an accuracy rate of 57 percent, which is far lower than their typical performance on standard face identification tasks. </p>
<p>“The performance advantage we observed was meaningful but not dramatic,” Dunn explained. “Super-recognizers performed about 7% better than motivated controls, and their accuracy improved further when we combined responses across small groups. However, even they were far from perfect. So while face expertise helps, it’s not a complete solution to real-world AI deception—at least not yet. We hope to use the insights from this paper to develop training that can deliver greater benefits to everyone in detecting AI-faces.”</p>
<p>In addition, “some of the people who were best at spotting AI-faces were not super-recognizers,” Dunn said. “This gives us hope, it means that everyone, even people with prosopagnosia or face blindness, could be good at spotting AI-faces from real ones.”</p>
<p>The researchers note that visual judgment is simply no longer reliable for high-stakes security situations. The subtle structural differences that super-recognizers detect are too slight to depend on for fraud prevention or verifying identities online. Because artificial faces are designed to mimic real statistical properties, their features often overlap with those of exceptionally attractive or symmetrical real people.</p>
<p>Future research will need to explore new ways to improve detection accuracy. Scientists hope to investigate whether hybrid systems that combine human judgment with algorithmic tools can offer better protection against synthetic media. They also plan to look for individuals who might possess a specific, natural talent for detecting artificial faces, distinct from traditional face recognition skills.</p>
<p>“We’re interested in whether people can be trained to better detect the statistical cues that distinguish AI faces from real ones,” Dunn explained. “We’re also exploring hybrid approaches—combining human judgments with algorithmic tools. More broadly, we want to understand how increasing exposure to AI-generated faces might reshape human face perception over time.”</p>
<p>“One broader implication is that AI-generated faces may not be neutral stand-ins for real people. Because they are systematically more “average,” they may influence memory, trust judgments, and even how children develop their mental representation of faces. As synthetic identities become more common online, understanding these subtle perceptual shifts will be increasingly important.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70063" target="_blank">Too good to be true: Synthetic AI faces are more average than real faces and super-recognizers know it</a>,” was authored by James D. Dunn, David White, Clare A. M. Sutherland, Elizabeth J. Miller, Ben A. Steward, and Amy Dawel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/people-prefer-generous-partners-over-wealthy-ones-unless-wealth-is-highly-unequal/" 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;">People prefer generous partners over wealthy ones, unless wealth is highly unequal</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 28th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Two studies using a hypothetical money distribution task found that people are generally more interested in the generosity than in the wealth of a potential partner. However, when potential partners differed more in their generosity, the preference for generosity was strengthened; conversely, when they varied more in wealth, the preference for generosity was weakened. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106727"><em>Evolution and Human Behavior</em></a>.</p>
<p>Choosing the right partner—whether in friendship, business, or romance—has played a major role in the evolution of human cooperation. When people can decide whom to interact with, they tend to prefer those who are helpful and reliable, which encourages cooperative behavior overall. In this kind of “social marketplace,” individuals generally try to show that they are generous or trustworthy in order to attract good partners.</p>
<p>A good partner is someone who brings benefits while causing few problems or costs. In everyday terms, people usually judge this based on how kind someone is (their warmth), how capable or successful they are (their competence), and whether they are actually available to help. Both kindness and ability matter, but which one matters more depends on the situation and the environment.</p>
<p>Crucially, people pay more attention to traits that differ noticeably between individuals, because there is little point in evaluating qualities that everyone has in equal measure. Research using computer simulations has shown that when kindness varies a lot in a group, people evolve stronger preferences for kindness, and the same pattern holds for ability.</p>
<p>Study authors Yuta Kawamura and Pat Barclay wanted to explore whether people place more value on a partner’s generosity when partners vary in their willingness to give, and place more value on a partner’s wealth when partners vary in their ability to give. They conducted two online studies in which participants were presented with a pool of hypothetical partners for a money-sharing task.</p>
<p>The first study included 350 U.S. residents recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk via CloudResearch. Their average age was 40 years, and 163 of the participants were women.</p>
<p>Participants were randomly divided into two groups. To establish the “norm” of the environment, both groups were shown information about how 20 potential partners had shared money on a previous occasion.</p>
<p>In the “Unequal Generosity” group, all 20 potential partners had roughly the same amount of total money (149–149–151), but they differed in the percentage of that sum they gave away (ranging from 3% to 56%). In the “Unequal Wealth” group, potential partners all gave away roughly the same percentage of their money (29%–31%), but the total amount of money they had varied (from $16 to $280). Importantly, the actual absolute dollar amounts distributed were identical across both conditions; only the variance in wealth or generosity changed.</p>
<p>Participants were then asked to choose a new partner for themselves. But before making their choice, they had to decide which single piece of information they wanted to see about their prospective partner: their wealth (total monetary endowment) or their generosity (percentage shared).</p>
<p>The second study included 600 U.S. individuals, also recruited via CloudResearch. The procedure was identical to the first study, with one significant addition: the authors introduced a third, “Control” group. In this group, participants were not shown how potential partners had behaved in the past, meaning they had no information about how much wealth or generosity varied in the population.</p>
<p>Results of the first study showed that participants were generally more interested in the generosity of potential partners than in their wealth. However, the environment mattered heavily. In the group where potential partners varied in generosity, participants were highly likely to seek information about generosity (82%). But in the group where potential partners varied in wealth, the desire to know about generosity dropped significantly (down to 55%), as a large portion of participants shifted their focus to finding out the partner’s wealth.</p>
<p>The second study confirmed these findings and revealed a human “default.” The percentage of people interested in generosity did not differ significantly between the Unequal Generosity group (90%) and the Control group (87%). However, when participants knew that partners differed wildly in wealth, a much smaller percentage (61%) chose to see information about generosity.</p>
<p>“Participants had a default preference to know about others’ generosity rather than their wealth; this preference was strengthened when others varied more in generosity and weakened when others varied more in wealth,” the study authors concluded. “Thus, our study shows that people are sensitive to the amount of population variance on a trait, and flexibly adjust their partner preferences to focus on traits which vary more among others.”</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the psychological factors affecting partner choice. However, the authors noted a few limitations: the study asked hypothetical questions rather than having participants distribute real money, and the research was conducted within a single culture (the U.S.).</p>
<p>Additionally, it should be noted that “wealth” in this experimental context was operationalized as the size of a momentary monetary endowment in an economic game (up to $280), rather than real-world accumulated wealth, status, or net worth. Future studies may be needed to see how these flexible partner preferences play out when differences in wealth are on a real-world, macroeconomic scale.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106727">Wealth or generosity? People choose partners based on whichever is more variable,</a>” was authored by Yuta Kawamura and Pat Barclay.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-psychology-of-ashley-madison-and-the-science-of-online-infidelity/" 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 of Ashley Madison and the science of online infidelity</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 28th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>Ashley Madison is a Canadian online dating and social networking service that launched in 2002. It was founded by Darren J. Morgenstern and gained its name from two popular female names in North America. The website is explicitly marketed to people who are married or in committed relationships.</p>
<p>The primary target audience consists of individuals looking to have extramarital affairs. The official slogan of the company famously states that life is short and encourages people to have an affair. The platform provides a digital space for people to pursue romantic or sexual activity outside of their primary relationships.</p>
<p>Unlike many traditional dating platforms, the website operates on a credit system instead of monthly subscriptions. Men are required to pay a certain number of credits to initiate a conversation with another member. Any subsequent messages between the two users are then complimentary.</p>
<p>The company also offered a privacy feature that promised to completely delete a user’s profile and data for a nineteen-dollar fee. The business has faced substantial criticism over the years for its controversial premise. Some consultants in the dating industry accused the company of building a business on the backs of broken hearts and ruined marriages.</p>
<p>Company executives often defended the platform by suggesting that a simple website cannot convince a happy person to commit adultery. They occasionally argued that having an affair could actually help preserve some marriages. The company also utilized provocative advertising strategies, using billboards and television commercials to generate shock value and media attention.</p>
<p>In its earlier years, the website was criticized for artificially inflating its user base. Analysts discovered that the company used tens of thousands of automated bot accounts to send fake messages from fictitious women to male users. Company executives eventually phased out these automated bots by late 2015.</p>
<h2><strong>The 2015 Data Breach</strong></h2>
<p>This phase out occurred around the same time the company faced its most significant crisis. In July 2015, a group of hackers known as The Impact Team breached the company’s databases. The hackers demanded that the parent company, Avid Life Media, shut down the website immediately.</p>
<p>When the company refused, the hackers released the personal information of millions of users onto the internet. This massive data leak exposed the private details of thirty-seven million people worldwide. The released information included names, home addresses, search histories, and credit card numbers.</p>
<p>The data breach revealed that the paid deletion feature did not actually erase user information permanently, and supposedly deleted data was easily recoverable. Following the massive leak, the company’s chief executive officer stepped down from his position. The parent company eventually rebranded itself to Ruby Corp and agreed to pay more than eleven million dollars to settle a massive class action lawsuit.</p>
<p>Despite the negative publicity, the platform continued to operate and reported tens of millions of members in subsequent years. The immense scale of the data breach created an unusual opportunity for scientists to study infidelity. Before the leak, most psychological research relied on self-reported surveys where people might hide their cheating habits.</p>
<p>The exposed data allowed researchers to analyze the actual behaviors of millions of paying users. This information provides evidence regarding the geographic, demographic, and psychological factors that drive people to seek affairs online. Scientists quickly began parsing the data to understand the minds of the people using the platform.</p>
<h2><strong>The Geography of Cheating</strong></h2>
<p>In 2018, scientists Michael L. Chohaney and Kimberly A. Panozzo analyzed the geographical distribution of users in the United States. Their study was published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gere.12225">Geographical Review</a></em>. The researchers mapped the billing addresses of over seven hundred thousand paying subscribers.</p>
<p>They compared these locations with various demographic factors to understand the market determinants of online infidelity. The analysis revealed that income is the leading determinant for using the service. This finding suggests that internet-facilitated infidelity behaves much like a luxury good.</p>
<p>Wealthier individuals might use the site because they have the disposable income necessary to afford messaging credits and the costs associated with conducting a secret affair. The researchers also found that areas with high population density tended to have higher spending rates on the website. High population density provides a greater sense of anonymity, which helps people feel secure when seeking an illicit connection.</p>
<p>A person in a large city is less likely to accidentally encounter someone from their existing social network. The researchers also noted that religiosity negatively correlated with subscription rates. Areas with a higher concentration of religious congregations saw fewer users paying for the service.</p>
<h2><strong>Motivations for Seeking an Affair</strong></h2>
<p>Understanding the geographic spread of users naturally leads to questions about their personal motivations. A 2023 study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gere.12225">Archives of Sexual Behavior</a></em> explored the relationship quality of people using the platform. Scientist Dylan Selterman and his colleagues surveyed hundreds of users at two different time points.</p>
<p>They wanted to know if people only seek affairs when their primary marriages are falling apart. “I have been studying infidelity for over ten years,” <a href="https://www.psypost.org/ashley-madison-users-have-little-moral-regret-about-sexual-infidelity-while-expressing-high-levels-of-love-for-their-spouses/">explained Selterman</a>. “One of the things I learned is that infidelity is not monolithic.”</p>
<p>“There are many factors that contribute to people’s decisions to cheat, sometimes not having anything to do with their primary or spousal relationships,” Selterman noted. The results challenged some common assumptions about infidelity. The researchers found that a low quality of relationship with a primary partner was not always the main driver for cheating.</p>
<p>“The fact that we did not observe significant correlations between relationship quality and whether or not participants had an affair was very surprising,” Selterman explained. Many users reported experiencing high levels of love for their spouses. They generally indicated that their marriages suffered from very low levels of sexual satisfaction rather than a lack of emotional attachment.</p>
<p>About half of the participants reported that they were not sexually active with their primary partners. “In our sample of Ashley Madison users, we found that overall, sexual dissatisfaction was high and a large number of participants reported not having sex at all with their partners or spouses,” Selterman stated. “So they looked for affairs, and some of them had affairs, and among those folks who did have an affair, they experienced high satisfaction with their affairs and low levels of regret.”</p>
<p>“They seemed to still maintain love and intimacy with their spouses,” Selterman continued. “It seems like they genuinely feel like they didn’t do anything wrong, which is remarkable given how highly stigmatized infidelity is.” Having an affair did not reliably predict that the user would eventually divorce their primary spouse.</p>
<p>Another perspective on motivation comes from a 2020 study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2020.1746954">The Journal of Sex Research</a></em>. Scientists Jana Hackathorn and Brien K. Ashdown surveyed over five hundred members of the website. They asked participants directly about the reasons behind their search for a secondary partner.</p>
<p>“We have always been interested in the motivations to engage in infidelity,” Hackathorn and Ashdown previously <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-psychology-research-sheds-light-on-motivations-to-engage-in-infidelity/">told PsyPost</a>. “However, until now we hadn’t had access to a population that was specifically using an online website for that behavior.” The responses provided evidence that dissatisfaction with the primary partner is indeed a consistent predictor for some users.</p>
<p>“One of the things that we found to be most prevalent in the data was that the secondary partner was not as big of an influence or motivation to cheat as the real world might lead us to believe,” the researchers told reporters. “The biggest influence or motivation to cheat was dissatisfaction in the primary relationship, especially for males.”</p>
<p>The researchers found distinct differences based on gender and personal traits. Women on the platform tended to report seeking an affair because they felt neglected in their primary relationship. Men were more likely to report seeking a secondary partner simply because they wanted more frequent sexual encounters.</p>
<p>This desire for more sex was strongly linked to an unrestricted sociosexual orientation. Sociosexual orientation refers to a person’s willingness to engage in sexual activity outside of a committed relationship. Individuals with an unrestricted orientation feel highly comfortable with casual encounters.</p>
<h2><strong>Categorizing Online Infidelity and Mate Poaching</strong></h2>
<p>Beyond basic motivations, scientists have also categorized the specific types of affairs users pursue. In 2021, a separate study in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1908509">The Journal of Sex Research</a></em> examined the exact behaviors taking place on the platform. Scientists Ashley E. Thompson, Delaney Wilder, and Danica Kulibert surveyed over one thousand users.</p>
<p>“The inspiration for the study dates back to my doctoral work on infidelity that was designed to assess what behaviors people are engaging in and the proportion of adults that demonstrate a double standard,” said study author Ashley Thompson <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-indicates-the-behaviors-of-ashley-madison-users-cluster-together-into-three-main-categories/">in an interview with PsyPost</a>. “In one of the studies comprising this project, I discovered that anywhere from ten percent to forty-five percent of adults reported having participated in a behavior that they also judged as unfaithful.”</p>
<p>“After this study, it became clear to me that monogamy may not be an ideal option for many and that alternatives might be a more fitting relationship structure,” Thompson explained. The researchers identified three distinct categories of behavior taking place online. These categories included sexual behaviors, technology-based actions, and emotional connections.</p>
<p>“Although Ashley Madison is traditionally viewed and marketed as a tool to facilitate infidelity and to engage in extramarital affairs, I was interested in determining what exact behaviors people participate in and how many do so with their romantic partner’s approval or permission,” Thompson stated. Participants reported engaging in technology-based behaviors, such as sending explicit text messages, most frequently.</p>
<p>This aligns with psychological theories that suggest the internet facilitates sexual behaviors through anonymity, affordability, and accessibility. The digital environment lowers the barriers that normally prevent people from pursuing an affair in the physical world. The study revealed some unexpected demographic trends regarding who participates most often.</p>
<p>Women and older adults actually reported engaging in these behaviors more frequently than men and younger adults did. This finding contrasts with traditional theories suggesting that men are always more likely to pursue infidelity. The researchers noted that women might experience a higher volume of messages on the site, giving them more opportunities to engage.</p>
<p>The scientists also examined the role of partner consent among the users. They found that roughly seventeen percent of the participants actually had a primary partner who consented to their use of the website. These individuals were engaging in consensual non-monogamy rather than deceptive cheating.</p>
<p>Users with consenting partners reported greater perceived improvement in their primary relationships compared to those hiding their activities. This indicates that open communication about external partners can sometimes yield positive results for a primary relationship. Not all users are married people looking for other married people.</p>
<p>A 2021 study in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0563"><em>Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking</em></a> explored the concept of mate poaching on the platform. Scientists Liesel L. Sharabi and her colleagues defined mate poaching as attempting to attract someone despite knowing they are in an exclusive relationship. The researchers surveyed users to understand their goals and their likelihood of meeting someone in person.</p>
<p>Participants provided open-ended descriptions of the relationships they were seeking. These goals ranged from short-term sexual encounters to long-term emotional affairs and entirely new exclusive relationships. The scientists used structural equation modeling to analyze how attitudes influenced behavior.</p>
<p>This mathematical approach helps researchers understand complex relationships between multiple psychological variables. The analysis showed that a user’s general attitude toward online infidelity predicted their actions. Users with highly permissive attitudes were much more likely to express intentions to poach another person’s partner.</p>
<p>These strong poaching intentions then served as a bridge to real-world actions. High poaching intentions significantly increased the likelihood that a user would try to meet an online match face to face.</p>
<h2><strong>Rationalizing Betrayal</strong></h2>
<p>Transitioning an affair to the real world requires a degree of mental gymnastics for many people. A 2022 study in the<em> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02654075211037740">Journal of Social and Personal Relationships</a></em> investigated how men who cheat rationalize their behavior. Scientist Cassandra Alexopoulos surveyed over one thousand male users of the website.</p>
<p>She wanted to understand the thought processes that provide comfort to people violating the boundaries of their primary relationships. “In the past, when I would write these research papers about infidelity, it’s par for the course to discuss the feelings of guilt and shame that cheaters often report,” <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-sheds-light-on-how-unfaithful-men-reduce-cognitive-dissonance-after-committing-infidelity/">explained</a> researcher Cassandra Alexopoulos. “I became very interested in the process of rationalizing a behavior to the extent that one would be willing to perform that behavior over and over again.”</p>
<p>The research focused on the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person experiences mental discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs or violating their own moral standards. To relieve this discomfort, people often use justification strategies to make their actions feel acceptable.</p>
<p>These strategies might include trivializing the bad behavior or denying personal responsibility for the actions taken. The study found that frequent offline infidelity was actually linked to positive changes in self-concept. Instead of feeling guilty, many frequent cheaters altered their view of themselves to justify the affair.</p>
<p>“The data suggest that, as a means of justifying your own behavior, self-concept change is the only strategy that people find useful to get to the point of engaging in offline infidelity,” Alexopoulos noted. “In other words, telling yourself for example, ‘This new relationship makes me more exciting or fun,’ seems to allow cheaters to reduce their feelings of discomfort.” The researcher noted that strategies like denying responsibility become unreasonable in a person’s mind once they cheat multiple times.</p>
<h2><strong>Public Reaction and Victim Blaming</strong></h2>
<p>While users often rationalize their behavior, the general public tends to react with severe judgment. The 2015 data breach offered scientists a chance to study how society views people exposed in a scandal. A 2017 study in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2018.1461603">The Journal of Social Psychology</a></em> examined the public demonization of the website’s participants.</p>
<p>Scientists Brien K. Ashdown, Jana M. Hackathorn, and Jordan Daniels analyzed the psychological traits that lead people to harshly judge victims of a hack. The researchers suspected that religiosity would predict negative attitudes toward the exposed users. The analysis showed that religious identification alone did not directly predict demonization.</p>
<p>Instead, a psychological trait called sex guilt acted as a necessary mediator. Sex guilt is a negative emotional response and an expectation of punishment for violating standards of proper sexual conduct. Individuals with high levels of sex guilt were highly likely to demonize the exposed users.</p>
<p>This judgment was not limited to just the people seeking affairs. Participants with high sex guilt also harshly judged the website owners and the hackers who stole the data. The scientists noted that these individuals tend to react negatively to any situation involving inappropriate sexual behavior.</p>
<p>The same research team expanded on these findings in another 2017 study. Published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2017.1316767"><em>Psychology & Sexuality</em></a>, this research by Hackathorn, Daniels, Ashdown, and Sean Rife looked at additional predictors of victim derogation. Victim derogation occurs when people blame individuals for their own misfortune, often to make sense of a chaotic world.</p>
<p>The scientists measured various traits, including jealousy and the belief in a just world. The results indicated that high levels of personal jealousy positively predicted the demonization of the website’s users. People who are naturally prone to romantic jealousy felt a stronger urge to judge the exposed individuals.</p>
<p>The researchers also found a connection with age. Younger participants were more likely to demonize the users than older participants were. The scientists originally hypothesized that a strong belief in a just world would predict harsh judgment.</p>
<p>The belief in a just world is the psychological assumption that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. The data showed that this belief did not significantly predict demonization in this specific case. The researchers speculated that the public might have viewed the data breach as a mild injustice rather than a severe trauma.</p>
<p>The intense public judgment of the users was clearly reflected in news coverage. A 2018 study in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0269758017752410">International Review of Victimology</a></em> examined how print media portrayed the data breach. Scientists Cassandra Cross, Megan Parker, and Daniel Sansom analyzed over six hundred distinct newspaper articles from Australia and Canada.</p>
<p>They used sociological theories to understand how journalists and readers discussed the exposed individuals. The researchers framed their analysis around the concept of the ideal victim. An ideal victim is someone who is perceived as entirely innocent, weak, and engaged in a respectable project at the time of a crime.</p>
<p>Society usually grants these individuals total sympathy and blamelessness. The scientists observed that the media heavily framed the dating site users as non-ideal victims. The news coverage contained a dominant narrative of victim blaming.</p>
<p>Many articles and reader comments suggested that the users deserved to have their privacy violated because they were seeking affairs. The researchers noted a secondary narrative where some journalists tried to refocus attention on the criminality of the hackers. Even in these attempts to defend the users, the writing still exhibited subtle elements of victim blaming due to the adulterous nature of the website.</p>
<p>The existence of this online platform and the subsequent exposure of its database provide a unique window into human behavior. Scientists have gained unprecedented insight into the geographic and psychological factors that drive extradyadic relationships. The research shows that motivations for infidelity are complex and do not always stem from a failing marriage.</p>
<p>The studies also reveal how society responds to moral transgressions with intense judgment and victim blaming. People exposed in the data breach faced harsh public scrutiny, demonstrating how quickly society assigns blame to those deemed morally compromised. This intersection of technology, secrecy, and human nature continues to offer rich material for psychological exploration.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/altered-protein-shapes-in-the-blood-can-reveal-early-stages-of-alzheimers-disease/" 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;">Altered protein shapes in the blood can reveal early stages of Alzheimer’s disease</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Feb 28th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Researchers have developed a new blood test that detects Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing the physical shapes of proteins rather than just counting their quantities. This structural approach accurately identifies the disease stages and offers fresh insights into how genetic risks and behavioral symptoms differ between men and women. The findings were recently published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-026-01078-2" target="_blank">Nature Aging</a></em>.</p>
<p>Proper cellular function relies on a strict quality control system that folds proteins into precise three-dimensional shapes. When this system fails as people age, misfolded proteins can build up and disrupt normal biological processes. In conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, defective proteins accumulate in the brain years before memory loss or other cognitive issues become visible.</p>
<p>Historically, most diagnostic blood tests have focused on measuring the total concentration of specific disease-linked proteins. The research team suspected that examining the physical structures of these proteins might reveal far more about the disease mechanism than expression levels alone. They reasoned that tracking how protein shapes change in the bloodstream could provide early warning signs of cognitive decline.</p>
<p>The research was led by Ahrum Son and supervised by John R. Yates III at The Scripps Research Institute in California. They collaborated with colleagues from the University of Ulsan, Chungnam National University, the University of Kansas Medical Center, and the University of California, San Diego. The team set out to map the structural modifications of proteins across different stages of memory impairment.</p>
<p>The investigators analyzed blood plasma samples from 520 volunteers. These participants included healthy individuals, people with mild cognitive impairment, and patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. According to the research announcement, “The individuals were volunteer research participants at the NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers in Kansas and California, where they were seen for annual visits.”</p>
<p>To examine the protein shapes, the team utilized a chemical tagging technique combined with mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry is an analytical tool that identifies molecules based on their mass and charge, allowing scientists to see the exact composition of a sample. This combined approach allowed the researchers to profile the proteins circulating in the blood of the participants.</p>
<p>This chemical tagging method measures which parts of a protein are exposed to the surrounding fluid and which parts are buried inside the folded structure. As proteins misfold, their normally hidden sections can become exposed, or their usually exposed parts can become trapped inside. By quantifying these structural shifts across the entire blood sample, the researchers created a broad profile of shape changes associated with cognitive decline.</p>
<p>The team first looked at a protein called Apolipoprotein E, which acts as a carrier for cholesterol in the blood. Humans typically inherit one of three genetic variations for this protein. One specific variant is known to heavily increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>The researchers mapped how these genetic differences physically altered the shapes of other interacting proteins in the blood. They found that the high-risk genetic variant led to distinct structural configurations in the surrounding protein network. This suggests that the genetic risk might manifest through the physical warping of other essential molecules.</p>
<p>Next, the investigators examined the relationship between protein shapes and neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety, apathy, and hallucinations. They noted that nearly all patients with Alzheimer’s experience these behavioral changes, but men and women often display different symptom patterns. The researchers explored whether physical protein changes could help explain these observed behavioral differences.</p>
<p>The structural protein profiles revealed distinct differences between the sexes in how physical protein changes correlated with the severity of mood and behavior symptoms. Women in the advanced disease group showed higher scores for cognitive impairment and mood disorders than men. The protein shape changes accurately mirrored these sex-based differences in symptom severity.</p>
<p>To translate these broad biological observations into a practical screening tool, the team tested eighteen different machine learning algorithms. Machine learning involves training a computer program to recognize patterns within large datasets. They sought an automated way to predict a patient’s cognitive status based purely on their blood protein structures.</p>
<p>A deep learning model performed the best among all the computational methods tested. Deep learning uses layered artificial neural networks to process data in ways that mimic the human brain. This algorithm ultimately identified a specific pattern of structural changes in three particular proteins known as C1QA, CLUS, and ApoB.</p>
<p>These three proteins are involved in immune responses, waste clearance, and lipid transport. This three-marker panel successfully distinguished between healthy aging, mild cognitive impairment, and full Alzheimer’s disease with an accuracy of 83.44 percent. The model achieved this without needing any prior information about the patients’ clinical diagnoses.</p>
<p>When looking at just two groups at a time, the model separated healthy individuals from those with mild cognitive impairment with high precision. It was equally accurate at distinguishing mild cognitive impairment from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. The structural changes also correlated with physical changes in the brain, such as the enlargement of brain fluid cavities.</p>
<p>The researchers compared their structural model against a traditional model that only measured protein quantities. The structural model dramatically outperformed the quantity-based approach in categorizing the patients. This suggests that structural data holds more diagnostic power than mere protein abundance.</p>
<p>The researchers also tested the model on 50 participants who were tracked over several months. The tool correctly identified their advancing disease status 86 percent of the time. This confirmed that the protein shape signatures change dynamically as the disease worsens.</p>
<p>While the diagnostic panel shows immense promise, the study does have some limitations. During the blood preparation process, the researchers had to remove highly abundant proteins to detect the rarer ones. This necessary filtering step might have accidentally removed some disease-linked proteins that were physically attached to the abundant ones.</p>
<p>This removal means some helpful biological markers might have been lost before the analysis even began. Additionally, the longitudinal portion of the study tracked a relatively small number of patients for less than a year. The changes observed over this short follow-up period were not statistically significant regarding the prediction of long-term disease trajectories.</p>
<p>The research team noted that tracking larger groups of patients over several years will be required to fully test the clinical utility of this tool. Despite these constraints, the study provides a robust foundation for a new class of diagnostic tests. By focusing on the physical shapes of molecules, clinicians might soon have a more detailed window into the early stages of brain deterioration.</p>
<p>The findings open up entirely new avenues for monitoring how the disease responds to experimental treatments. As researchers work to refine the test, it could become a standard part of routine medical checkups. This would allow doctors to intervene much earlier in the disease process.</p>
<p>The research team shared their excitement about the implications of the new diagnostic test. “With this work, we established a potential new biomarker panel that reveals structural disruptions in proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease that are invisible to traditional approaches,” said Yates, a professor of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at The Scripps Research Institute. “This approach accurately distinguishes stages of the disease, meaning that it could help enable earlier diagnosis.”</p>
<p>This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-026-01078-2" target="_blank">Structural signature of plasma proteins classifies the status of Alzheimer’s disease</a>,” was authored by Ahrum Son, Hyunsoo Kim, Jolene K. Diedrich, Casimir Bamberger, Heather M. Wilkins, Jeffrey M. Burns, Jill K. Morris, Robert A. Rissman, Russell H. Swerdlow & John R. Yates III.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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