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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/employees-who-feel-attractive-are-more-likely-to-share-ideas-at-work/" 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;">Employees who feel attractive are more likely to share ideas at work</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 6th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-08537-w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Current Psychology</a></em> provides evidence that employees who believe they are physically attractive tend to be more willing to speak up and share their ideas at work. This boost in workplace confidence seems to rely on the belief that physical appearance is an important social asset that gives a person more influence. The findings suggest that an individual’s internal sense of their own physical appeal can act as a hidden psychological resource in professional settings.</p>
<p>Past studies demonstrate that people judged as attractive by others tend to receive higher salaries and better job interview ratings. This well-documented phenomenon is often called the beauty premium.Despite this existing evidence, the ways that self-perceived attractiveness operates psychologically inside the office have remained largely unexamined.</p>
<p>Modern society places a heavy emphasis on self-presentation and continuous self-monitoring. Because the workplace is a highly visible environment that requires constant interaction, the researchers wanted to understand if feeling attractive acts as a psychological resource.</p>
<p>“We started with a simple but intriguing question: Could merely feeling attractive make you more likely to speak up at work? Although we rarely acknowledge it openly, physical appearance often shapes how people are treated and what opportunities they receive,” said study author <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/23leehj/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hyun Jeong Lee</a>, a PhD candidates at Seoul National University.</p>
<p>“In South Korea, appearance carries particularly strong social meaning. As researchers working in this context, we frequently observe how visible and consequential these dynamics can be in everyday life. This led us to wonder whether self-perceived attractiveness might subtly affect employees’ willingness to voice their ideas by shaping their confidence that what they say will be taken seriously.”</p>
<p>To build their study, the scientists drew on sociological theories about how groups form status hierarchies. These theories propose that people judge competence based on socially recognized characteristics, which can include physical appearance. When an individual internalizes these social rules, they might naturally assume that others view them as highly competent just because they feel attractive.</p>
<p>The researchers also incorporated the concept of social credit into their framework. In group settings, individuals who accumulate enough goodwill or social standing gain the freedom to speak their minds without fear of punishment. The scientists suspected that employees who feel physically attractive might operate under the assumption that they possess plenty of this social credit.</p>
<p>Specifically, the scientists sought to determine if feeling physically appealing gives employees the confidence to engage in what organizational psychologists call employee voice. Employee voice refers to the voluntary expression of work-related ideas, suggestions, or concerns intended to improve the organization. Speaking up at work carries potential social risks, so employees usually weigh whether their input will be respected before deciding to share their thoughts.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the researchers collected survey data from 153 full-time employees in South Korea. The participants worked across various sectors, including manufacturing, retail, and information technology. The sample was 44 percent male, with an average age of about 39 years old, and the majority held a bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>The scientists used a two-wave survey design to reduce potential biases that can occur when participants answer all questions at the exact same time. During the first wave, the employees rated their own physical attractiveness and answered questions about their appearance instrumentality. Appearance instrumentality is a psychological term for the belief that physical attractiveness functions as a useful social currency that helps a person succeed in society.</p>
<p>One week later, the same participants completed the second part of the survey. In this phase, they rated their perceived impact, which is the belief that their actions and opinions make a meaningful difference and are taken seriously by others. They also reported how often they engaged in two specific types of communication at work.</p>
<p>The first type of communication was promotive voice, which involves proactively suggesting new projects or ideas to improve the workplace. The second was prohibitive voice, which involves speaking up about coordination problems or harmful practices that could damage the company. The researchers then used statistical models to analyze how these different psychological measures interacted over time.</p>
<p>The findings suggest that self-perceived attractiveness positively influences an employee’s willingness to speak up through a boosted sense of personal impact. People who evaluated their own appearance highly tended to feel that they had greater influence over organizational outcomes. This elevated sense of perceived impact subsequently made them more likely to share new ideas and report workplace problems.</p>
<p>However, this pattern did not apply to everyone in the sample equally. The pathway from feeling attractive to speaking up was entirely dependent on a person’s level of appearance instrumentality. The psychological boost only occurred among employees who strongly believed that physical appearance is an important tool for social influence. For employees who placed little strategic importance on appearance, feeling attractive had no significant effect on their perceived impact or their willingness to share ideas.</p>
<p>“People who evaluate their own appearance as attractive tend to make suggestions more confidently at work,” Lee told PsyPost. “However, this pattern does not apply to everyone in the same way. It is strongest among those who see appearance as a valuable social asset. For them, feeling attractive boosts their sense of impact, which makes them more willing to share their ideas. In short, it is not appearance itself that matters, but the belief that it provides influence, which increases people’s sense of impact and their likelihood of speaking up.”</p>
<p>The scientists also noted that the results were similar for both men and women. This suggests that the psychological link between self-perceived attractiveness and workplace confidence is not limited to a specific gender.</p>
<p>“Although it was not a central focus of our study, we were somewhat surprised by the lack of clear gender differences,” Lee said. “Prior psychological research often suggests that appearance carries greater social value for women, so we informally expected the effect might be stronger for women. However, we did not formally test this, as gender was not our main focus.”</p>
<p>“Interestingly, the pattern appeared similar across men and women. This led us to reflect on the broader cultural context. In South Korea, attention to appearance is highly visible and socially salient for both genders. This wider cultural emphasis may help explain why the psychological link between self-perceived attractiveness and speaking up was not limited to women.”</p>
<p>The researchers emphasize that these findings should not be misinterpreted as advice for employees to spend more time or money on grooming to get ahead. Instead, the study highlights how workplaces can unintentionally tie a person’s confidence and influence to their physical appearance.</p>
<p>“Our study is not suggesting that people should invest more in their appearance to succeed,” Lee explained. “The takeaway is not about grooming. It is about psychology. Our findings show that subtle self-perceptions can shape people’s confidence and sense of influence, which in turn shape their behavior. The deeper question is not how individuals can look better, but how workplaces can ensure that confidence and influence are not unintentionally tied to appearance.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are some limitations. All the data were collected in South Korea, a society where the beauty and entertainment industries are highly developed. In this cultural context, visual presentation tends to receive considerable public attention and is closely linked to perceptions of authority.</p>
<p>It is entirely possible that these psychological dynamics operate differently in other cultural settings. For example, South Korea is often described as a collectivistic culture, where individuals are highly attuned to social norms and the evaluations of others. Testing these ideas in more individualistic cultures could provide evidence about how universal these psychological mechanisms truly are.</p>
<p>“We see two main directions for this research,” Lee said. “First, we want to examine these effects on a daily basis. How attractive we feel is not fixed. It can shift depending on what we wear, how we style our hair, or even how well we slept. We are interested in whether these daily shifts in self-perceived attractiveness also lead to day-to-day changes in workplace behavior, such as speaking up more or less in meetings.”</p>
<p>“Second, we want to better understand when this effect becomes stronger or weaker. For example, the impact may be more pronounced in industries where appearance is closely tied to professional identity, such as beauty or entertainment. It may also be amplified in situations where appearance is especially visible, such as video conferences. By identifying these conditions, we hope to clarify when and how subtle self-perceptions influence workplace dynamics.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-08537-w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I’m attractive, so i speak up: a moderated-mediation model of self-perceived attractiveness, perceived impact, and voice</a>,” was authored by Hyun Jeong Lee, Min Ju Oh, and Jeeyoon Park.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-psychology-research-reveals-that-wisdom-acts-as-a-moral-compass-for-creative-thinking/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New psychology research reveals that wisdom acts as a moral compass for creative thinking</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 6th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2025.101971" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Intelligence</a></em> has found that wisdom plays a key role in ensuring people use their creativity for the benefit of others. The findings suggest that while creativity can be a powerful tool, it requires the moral guidance of wisdom to be directed toward socially constructive goals rather than selfish ones.</p>
<p>“A recurring concern in psychology is that intelligence and creativity are ‘morally neutral’: they can be used to help others, but they can also be used manipulatively or destructively. Many theories propose that wisdom functions as a moral regulator that helps channel cognitive strengths toward prosocial ends, but empirical evidence for this moderating role has been limited,” said study author <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-3l9QhAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Yuling Wang</a>, a PhD candidate at <a href="http://scholar.pku.edu.cn/ling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Peking University</a> and member of the <a href="https://www.semelab.com.cn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Self Exploration and Meaningful Existence Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“We also noticed a methodological issue: intelligence/creativity are often assessed with natural science–oriented measures, while wisdom is assessed with more humanistic, value-laden measures, creating a domain mismatch that may obscure how these constructs work together in real life.”</p>
<p>“Beyond this theoretical and methodological gap, we were also motivated by a broader real-world concern that feels increasingly salient in the AI era: human thinking can become more ‘computationalized’ — more procedural, efficiency-driven, and emotionally blunted — while people simultaneously crave genuine human understanding and care. From this perspective, wisdom may be a key capacity that keeps people psychologically ‘alive’ and helps ensure our abilities are ultimately used in service of the common good.”</p>
<p>To explore this dynamic, the researchers conducted two separate studies. In the first study, they recruited 132 participants to complete a series of performance-based tasks online to measure state-level wise thinking. The researchers achieved this by having participants read about difficult interpersonal dilemmas, such as a conflict between a graduating student and their parents over travel plans.</p>
<p>Participants wrote detailed accounts of how they would handle the situations. They then answered questions about their typical responses to such conflicts. This allowed the scientists to group the participants into high and low wise thinking categories.</p>
<p>Next, the scientists assessed social intelligence by asking participants how they would respond to everyday problems. These problems included consumer rights issues and family disagreements. The researchers also measured real-life creativity by asking participants to recall and write about a personal experience where they had to think outside the box. Independent evaluators scored these personal stories for creativity based on factors like unique perspectives and practical applicability.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers measured prosocial behavior, which is the intent to help others. They did this by asking participants how willing they would be to share a limited oxygen supply with a stranger in a hypothetical submarine emergency.</p>
<p>The data provided evidence that wisdom acts as a protective buffer. Among participants who scored low in wise thinking, higher creativity actually predicted a lower willingness to help the stranger in the submarine scenario. For these individuals, a lack of wisdom seemed to allow their creative thinking to become self-serving or disconnected from moral action.</p>
<p>This negative trend disappeared among participants who demonstrated high levels of wise thinking. Their creativity did not lead to a decrease in helping behavior. This suggests wisdom prevents creative potential from being used in ethically problematic ways.</p>
<p>To build on these findings, the scientists conducted a second study with a much larger sample of 801 online participants. This time, they used self-report questionnaires to measure stable personality traits rather than responses to specific scenarios. The participants completed assessments of their integrative wisdom, which involves a balance of sharp thinking skills and moral virtues like fairness and benevolence.</p>
<p>The participants also completed surveys measuring their social intelligence, such as their ability to read body language and adapt to social situations. They answered questions about their general creativity, including traits like curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to take risks.</p>
<p>To measure prosocial tendencies, the researchers assessed social mindfulness. Social mindfulness refers to a person’s ability to be considerate of others in everyday moments. This includes respecting different opinions or letting someone else choose first in a shared situation.</p>
<p>The findings from the second study showed that among people categorized with high levels of trait wisdom, creativity positively predicted social mindfulness. For these wise individuals, being more creative meant they were also more considerate and socially inclusive. In groups with medium or low wisdom, this positive link between creativity and social mindfulness did not exist.</p>
<p>“The effects are not ‘huge,’ but they are meaningful in context because they speak to when creativity becomes socially constructive versus potentially ethically problematic,” Wang told PsyPost. “For example, in Study 1 (a constrained moral crisis vignette), creativity predicted lower willingness to help only among people lower in wise thinking; in Study 2 (everyday interpersonal consideration), creativity predicted higher prosocial orientation only among people high in trait wisdom.”</p>
<p>“Practically, this suggests that developing creativity alone may not reliably promote prosocial outcomes—wisdom-related capacities (e.g., balancing interests, recognizing uncertainty, benevolence) may be key to ensuring creative strengths translate into social good.”</p>
<p>The scientists also used network analysis to visualize how these traits connect. They found that highly wise individuals possessed a cohesive psychological structure where virtues like temperance were tightly linked to positive open-mindedness. People with low wisdom displayed a highly fragmented network, meaning their cognitive skills and moral virtues operated independently of one another.</p>
<p>“Our main takeaway is that wisdom seems to matter most for how people use their creativity,” Wang said. “Across two studies, wisdom consistently shaped the link between creativity and prosocial outcomes: higher wisdom was associated with a more socially constructive expression of creativity, while lower wisdom was associated with a higher risk that creativity could be misdirected in morally challenging situations.”</p>
<p>Across both studies, the researchers did not find evidence that wisdom similarly guided the use of intelligence. Intelligence tends to be a structured capacity focused on efficiency and accuracy. The scientists suggest that creativity is a more open-ended and value-sensitive process, making it much more responsive to the moral guidance that wisdom provides.</p>
<p>“We expected intelligence—especially social intelligence—to show a similar ‘wisdom-guided’ pattern, but that did not emerge robustly, which pushed us to think harder about which abilities are most morally malleable and when moral orientation becomes central,” Wang said.</p>
<p>As with all research, there are some limitations. The assessments of helping behavior relied on hypothetical scenarios and self-reported surveys rather than real-world observations. It is possible that people might act differently when facing an actual physical emergency or a direct interpersonal conflict.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that their studies focused exclusively on the humanistic domain, which involves social and ethical reasoning. Future research could explore whether wisdom plays a similar role in the natural sciences. For instance, scientists could investigate if wisdom guides the ethical development of new technologies or artificial intelligence systems.</p>
<p>Additionally, the studies relied on data from a single cultural context. Researchers could investigate how these traits interact across different cultures. This would help determine if the regulatory function of wisdom holds true globally.</p>
<p>Beyond these methodological limits, the researchers emphasized that their results should not be taken to mean that intelligence plays no role in moral situations.</p>
<p>“‘No consistent evidence for intelligence’ does not mean intelligence is irrelevant for prosociality; rather, it suggests that wisdom’s guiding role may be easier to observe for capacities like creativity that inherently involve meaning-making and value-laden interpretation, whereas some forms of intelligence may operate more instrumentally unless moral salience is explicitly engaged,” Wang explained.</p>
<p>“In the near term, our next steps will depend on available time and funding. Looking ahead, once we have the resources to extend this line of work, we would like to (a) test these ideas with behavioral outcomes and longitudinal/experimental designs (e.g., wisdom-building interventions), (b) examine whether different forms of intelligence (e.g., moral reasoning, ethical decision-making competence) are more “wisdom-regulatable” than the measures we used here, and (c) directly compare domain alignment (humanistic vs. natural-scientific assessments) to see when the coordination among wisdom, intelligence, and creativity becomes strongest and most predictive of real-world prosocial action.”</p>
<p>“One broader message is measurement-related: we think it’s important to align constructs within the same evaluative domain,” Wang added. “When wisdom is treated as a humanistic, value-sensitive capacity, it may be most informative to pair it with similarly humanistic assessments of intelligence/creativity—especially when the outcome concerns ethical or prosocial behavior.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2025.101971" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Can wisdom guide intelligence and creativity toward prosocial ends? Evidence from humanistic, domain-aligned assessments</a>,” was authored by Jingmin Zhang, Yuling Wang, and Liuqing Tian.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/long-term-adhd-medication-use-does-not-appear-to-permanently-alter-the-developing-brain/" 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;">Long-term ADHD medication use does not appear to permanently alter the developing brain</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 5th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>Long-term use of stimulant medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) does not appear to cause lasting changes in brain development, according to a study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2025.111545" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry</a></em>.</p>
<p>Medications such as methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, are widely prescribed to treat ADHD. This condition is marked by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Stimulant medications work by increasing levels of brain chemicals, particularly dopamine and noradrenaline, which help regulate attention and behavior.</p>
<p>Although these medications are considered highly effective in the short term, scientists have long debated whether taking them during childhood while the brain is still developing might lead to lasting biological changes. Animal studies have suggested that exposure during sensitive developmental periods could alter how the brain’s dopamine system matures, raising questions about possible long-term effects.</p>
<p>Led by Zarah van der Pal from the University of Amsterdam, researchers in the Netherlands conducted a four-year follow-up of participants who had previously taken part in a randomized controlled trial over 16 weeks.</p>
<p>The original trial included boys and adult men with ADHD who were given either methylphenidate or a placebo for four months. In the earlier study, children but not adults demonstrated changes in how their brains responded to the medication even after treatment stopped.</p>
<p>The new study followed 56 males with ADHD: 32 adolescents aged on average 11 years old at the start of the original study, and 24 adults aged on average 30 years. Over the next four years, some participants continued taking stimulant medication in routine clinical care, while others did not.</p>
<p>At both the beginning of the study and four years later, participants underwent brain scans (pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging) before and after taking a single dose of methylphenidate. The researchers measured blood flow in specific brain regions involved in attention and decision-making, including the anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, striatum, and thalamus. Changes in blood flow serve as an indirect marker of how active certain brain systems are.</p>
<p>The main finding was reassuring: the researchers found no evidence that long-term stimulant use caused lasting, age-specific changes in brain development. The short-term differences seen in children during the original trial did not remain detectable four years later.</p>
<p>“The previously identified short-term effects may be transient due to neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to internal and external stimuli,” the team hypothesized.</p>
<p>However, the researchers did identify some age-related patterns. In adults, those who had taken more stimulant medication over the four years tended to show lower resting blood flow in a deep brain region called the thalamus. In adolescents, higher medication exposure was linked to a smaller brain response in the medial prefrontal cortex when given a dose of methylphenidate.</p>
<p>Importantly, these patterns were already present at the beginning of the study—before any treatment began—suggesting they may reflect pre-existing brain differences rather than medication effects. The researchers also found that, in adolescents only, brain response patterns aligned with the distribution of a specific type of dopamine receptor known as the D1 receptor.</p>
<p>Crucially, none of the brain measures were directly linked to how severe a person’s ADHD symptoms were. This further suggests that the observed brain differences do not directly explain symptom levels.</p>
<p>The study does have limitations. The sample size was modest, some participants dropped out over time, and medication use during the follow-up period was not tightly controlled. In addition, only males were included, so the findings may not apply to females.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2025.111545" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Association between long-term stimulant treatment and the functional brain response to methylphenidate in adolescents and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder</a>,” was authored by Zarah van der Pal, Liesbeth Reneman, Henk J.M.M. Mutsaerts, Antonia Kaiser, Marco A. Bottelier, Hilde M. Geurts, and Anouk Schrantee.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/using-cannabis-to-cut-back-on-alcohol-your-working-memory-might-dictate-if-it-works/" 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;">Using cannabis to cut back on alcohol? Your working memory might dictate if it works</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 5th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A study of individuals reporting heavy alcohol and cannabis use found that individuals with average and higher working memory tend to have a significantly lower urge to drink alcohol after smoking cannabis with 7.2% THC compared to a placebo. This effect was absent when the THC concentration in the cannabis was 3.1%. Lower working memory capacity was associated with a higher urge to drink alcohol overall. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2025.108565"><em>Addictive Behaviors</em></a>.</p>
<p>Alcohol use disorder is a medical condition characterized by a problematic pattern of alcohol use that leads to significant impairment or distress. It involves symptoms such as difficulty controlling drinking, strong cravings for alcohol, continued use despite negative consequences, and tolerance or withdrawal.</p>
<p>Studies indicate that 47.5% of individuals over the age of 12 in the U.S. report alcohol use in the past month, and 10.2% of those reporting past-year alcohol use meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder. Many individuals who use alcohol heavily also tend to use cannabis.</p>
<p>Studies have found that the coadministration of alcohol and delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive cannabinoid in cannabis, enhances the pleasurable effects of both substances. This learned or pharmacological response can cause cannabis use to trigger the urge to drink.</p>
<p>Study author Rachel L. Gunn and her colleagues wanted to explore how cannabis consumption is associated with alcohol urge and whether working memory capacity moderates this association. They analyzed data from the clinical trial NCT02983773 (Principal Investigator: J. Metrik).</p>
<p>Study participants were 125 individuals between 21 and 44 years of age reporting heavy alcohol use and using cannabis at least twice per week. Thirty-two percent of them were women.</p>
<p>These individuals first completed a baseline session following overnight cannabis abstinence. During this session, they reported their demographic data and recent substance use history, and completed an assessment of their working memory capacity (using N-back tasks, and complex span tasks—specifically, operation span and symmetry span). Working memory capacity is the amount of information a person can actively hold and manipulate in their mind at one time while performing cognitive tasks such as reasoning, learning, or problem-solving.</p>
<p>Next, they completed three experimental sessions. In these sessions, they smoked a placebo (a cannabis cigarette with no THC), cannabis with 3.1% THC, and cannabis with 7.2% THC. The order of these sessions was counterbalanced so that each of these treatments was equally likely to be the first, second, or third session (to control for any order effects).</p>
<p>Before and after smoking, participants reported their alcohol urge. The cannabis cigarettes were rolled at both ends and administered via a paced puffing procedure (i.e., participants were instructed to inhale the cannabis smoke in a controlled pattern).</p>
<p>Results showed that participants with average and higher working memory capacity, as measured by the symmetry span task, tended to have a significantly lower alcohol urge after smoking 7.2% THC compared to the placebo, but not after smoking 3.1% THC cannabis. Performance on the operation span task was not associated with alcohol urge. Lower working memory capacity, as determined by the N-back tasks, was associated with a higher alcohol urge overall, but N-back scores did not moderate the impact of cannabis on alcohol urge.</p>
<p>The N-back task is a memory test where people see or hear a series of items and must say when the current one matches something shown a few steps earlier. The operation span task asks people to solve simple math problems while trying to remember a list of letters, testing how well they can multitask mentally. The symmetry span task involves judging whether visual patterns are symmetrical while remembering the locations of shapes on a grid, measuring visual working memory.</p>
<p>“Findings suggest individuals with higher but not lower working memory experience lower alcohol urge under acute effects of cannabis. Although cannabis is increasingly perceived as a substitute for alcohol, individuals with lower working memory may be less likely to experience such benefits when attempting to reduce their drinking**,” the** study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the psychological effects of cannabis in heavy co-users of alcohol and cannabis. However, it should be noted that working memory capacity was measured using three different types of tasks, and the results depended on the type of task used. Working memory capacity can also fluctuate over time depending on a person’s state. Finally, the study authors explored the effects of cannabis on alcohol urge immediately after smoking cannabis. It remains unknown how long the detected effects last.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2025.108565">Working memory capacity predicts cannabis-induced effects on alcohol urge,</a>” was authored by Rachel L. Gunn, Lindy K. Howe, Holly K. Boyle, and Jane Metrik.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/conservatives-underestimate-the-environmental-impact-of-sustainable-behaviors-compared-to-liberals/" 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;">Conservatives underestimate the environmental impact of sustainable behaviors compared to liberals</a>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.70020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Consumer Psychology</a></em> suggests that a person’s political leaning shapes how they view the environmental benefits of their own sustainable choices. The research provides evidence that conservatives tend to view actions like recycling or eating a plant based diet as having less of a positive impact than liberals do, which predicts lower engagement in these behaviors. These differences appear to stem from how common these behaviors are perceived to be within an individual’s own social circle.</p>
<p>The authors behind the new study wanted to understand why conservatives generally engage in fewer eco-friendly behaviors compared to liberals. Past explanations often pointed to differences in personal values or an outright skepticism about climate change. The scientists proposed that people also rely heavily on external social cues to figure out if their actions actually make a difference.</p>
<p>Estimating the exact carbon reduction of a specific action is difficult for the average person. Because consumers often lack the exact knowledge needed to calculate environmental impact, they look around to see what others are doing. This concept is known as perceived prevalence, which refers to how common or widespread a behavior appears to be within a specific group.</p>
<p>If an individual sees very few people in their social group doing something, they tend to assume the action is not very effective. Since conservatives interact with other conservatives who generally perform fewer sustainable actions, they might easily conclude that these behaviors are rare. The scientists predicted this perceived rarity leads conservatives to assume these behaviors lack meaningful environmental impact.</p>
<p>“Recent research suggests that consumers often misjudge the environmental impact of sustainable behaviors. For example, many people overestimate the impact of recycling while underestimating the environmental benefits of adopting a vegetarian diet. Building on this work, we wanted to understand whether these perceptions are colored by political ideology,” explained study author <a href="https://www.hhs.se/sv/persons/c/cakanlar-aylin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aylin Cakanlar</a>, an assistant professor of marketing at the Stockholm School of Economics.</p>
<p>To test this idea, the researchers conducted seven detailed studies. In the first study, they recruited 402 online participants from the United States to imagine switching to a vegetarian diet. The researchers found that conservative participants perceived the dietary change as having less of a positive impact on the environment and were less likely to choose vegetarian recipes compared to liberals, even when controlling for personal climate change beliefs.</p>
<p>The second study moved to a real world setting with 107 shoppers at a North American shopping mall. Participants were offered a choice between a standard performance pen and an environmentally friendly pen made from reclaimed wood and recycled materials. Similar to the first study, conservative shoppers were less likely to choose the eco-friendly pen and rated its environmental impact lower than liberal shoppers did.</p>
<p>In another study, the researchers wanted to see how these perceptions matched up with objective reality. They asked 401 online participants to estimate the carbon reduction of seven different behaviors, such as avoiding a transatlantic flight, driving an electric vehicle, or reducing shower times. They asked participants to estimate these impacts using the number of trees required to absorb the saved carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>The findings indicate that conservatives tended to underestimate the actual environmental impact of these behaviors. Liberals provided estimates that were much closer to the real environmental impact, especially for highly effective actions like flying less. Both groups struggled slightly with accuracy, but the ideological gap in perceived impact remained significant across nearly all tested behaviors.</p>
<p>The scientists then explored the underlying reasons for this gap. They gave 396 online participants a small monetary bonus and asked how much they wanted to donate to a specific carbon offset organization. The scientists also measured how common participants thought sustainable behaviors were among their own political peers.</p>
<p>The results suggest that conservatives perceived sustainable actions as less common in their group. This perception led them to view the donations as less impactful and ultimately resulted in lower donation amounts. The researchers tested alternative explanations, like a desire to justify existing social systems, but found that perceived impact was the strongest predictor of behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers then tested ways to close this behavioral gap. In one study, 797 online participants imagined commuting to work by bike. Half the participants read about the health benefits of biking, while the other half read about the environmental benefits.</p>
<p>When biking was framed as an environmental choice, conservatives reported lower perceived impact and a lower willingness to ride a bike. When biking was framed as a health choice, an area where conservatives and liberals show similar levels of engagement, the ideological differences in perceived impact and willingness to bike completely disappeared.</p>
<p>In a subsequent study, the scientists manipulated the perceived prevalence of sustainable actions. They recruited 1003 participants and had them read a specific article over two phases separated by a week to avoid demand effects. Half read an article highlighting that members of their own political party were actively reducing food waste, while the other half read a neutral restaurant review.</p>
<p>Reading that their political peers were actively reducing food waste shifted opinions. This information increased conservatives’ perceptions of the behavior’s impact. It also increased their overall willingness to engage in the same food waste reduction habits.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers tested what happens when the exact environmental impact is clearly stated. They showed 599 online participants a video about purchasing a bracelet made from reclaimed ocean plastic. Half the participants received explicit information stating that buying the bracelet removes exactly five pounds of trash from the ocean.</p>
<p>When the impact was left vague, conservatives expressed a lower willingness to pay for the bracelet. When the impact was clearly defined, conservative participants expressed a similar willingness to pay for the bracelet as liberal participants did. This suggests that clear impact information can override social cues.</p>
<p>While this research provides clear insights, the scientists note a few potential limitations. The studies focus heavily on behaviors where the environmental impact is inherently difficult to estimate. In situations where an action’s result is highly visible, social cues might play a smaller role in guiding choices.</p>
<p>The scientists suggest that future research could explore how prevalence messaging works in other highly polarized areas, such as public health or political expression. They note that messages emphasizing how common a behavior is could potentially backfire if the behavior directly conflicts with a person’s deeply held internal values. Exploring these boundaries will help clarify when social cues are most effective.</p>
<p>Future studies might also investigate the best ways to combine value based appeals with clear information about positive impacts. The findings indicate that highlighting non environmental benefits or clearly stating the exact positive outcome can effectively encourage sustainable choices across the entire political spectrum.</p>
<p>“Our findings show that the same sustainable behavior can be perceived differently depending on an individual’s political orientation,” Cakanlar told PsyPost. “Importantly, these ideological differences persist even after controlling for belief in climate change, environmental concern, and related constructs. So the effect was robust, conservatives tend to perceive their sustainable actions as having less positive environmental impact than liberals do. This difference in perceived impact, in turn, predicts lower engagement in sustainable behaviors among conservatives.”</p>
<p>“Perceived environmental impact is particularly important because even individuals who believe in climate change may refrain from engaging in sustainable actions if they feel their efforts will not meaningfully affect the environment. This underscores the importance for marketers and policymakers of clearly communicating the concrete impact of sustainable behaviors.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.70020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The politics of impact: How political ideology shapes perceptions of the environmental impact of individual actions</a>,” was authored by Aylin Cakanlar, Katherine White, and Remi Trudel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/american-issue-polarization-surged-after-2008-as-the-left-moved-further-left/" 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;">American issue polarization surged after 2008 as the left moved further left</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 5th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>The American public has grown increasingly divided on political issues over the past few decades, but this trend does not appear to be happening on a global scale. A recent paper published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251428" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Royal Society Open Science</a></em> introduces a new way to measure these divisions using machine learning. The results reveal that polarization in the United States spiked heavily between 2008 and 2020, offering a fresh perspective on how political disagreements take shape globally.</p>
<p>Political polarization generally describes a society splitting into two distinct and opposing groups. Researchers often try to measure this by looking at the differences in opinion between people who identify with major political parties. Some scientists look at emotional divisions, which involves measuring how much opposing groups dislike each other.</p>
<p>Other researchers focus entirely on policy disagreements, which is known as issue polarization. The traditional approach to measuring issue polarization has some notable limits. In the United States, for instance, people might simply be getting better at matching their existing beliefs to the correct political party.</p>
<p>This alignment process is called “sorting.” If sorting increases, it can look like the country is becoming more divided, even if people’s actual opinions on the issues have not changed. Measuring polarization by comparing major political parties is also hard to do globally.</p>
<p>Many countries have more than two major parties, and some have only one. To navigate these hurdles, researchers at the University of Cambridge developed a new measurement tool. David Jack Young, a researcher in the Department of Psychology, led the work.</p>
<p>He was joined by Lee de-Wit, who leads the Political Psychology Lab at the university. They wanted to track polarization based on actual policy beliefs rather than the political labels people choose for themselves. The team turned to a machine learning technique called a k-means clustering algorithm.</p>
<p>This algorithm looks at a large group of people and automatically sorts them into clusters based purely on their shared opinions. Imagine plotting everyone’s political opinions on a giant graph, where similar views are close together and opposing views are far apart. The algorithm finds the center of these opinion clusters and assigns each person to the group they sit closest to.</p>
<p>It does not look at whether a person calls themselves a liberal or a conservative. After the algorithm forms two groups, the researchers look at three distinct features. The first is separation, which measures how far apart the average opinions of the two groups are.</p>
<p>The second feature is dispersion, which looks at how spread out or cohesive the opinions are within each group. The third feature is size equality, which checks whether the two groups contain a similar number of people. The researchers argue that a society is highly polarized when it splits into two groups that are far apart, internally cohesive, and roughly equal in size.</p>
<p>In their first study, the researchers applied this method to the United States. They analyzed over 35,000 survey responses collected between 1988 and 2024. This data came from the American National Election Studies, a long-running public opinion project.</p>
<p>The surveys asked Americans about their views on 14 specific social and economic topics. These items included the acceptability of abortion, the importance of traditional family ties, and whether the government should fund health insurance. The questions also covered economic inequality and government efforts to address racial discrimination.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the separation between the two opinion groups grew by 64 percent over this period. Notably, the distance between the clusters widened on every single issue measured.</p>
<p>Certain social issues showed especially dramatic changes. In 1988, people with generally conservative views did not necessarily hold restrictive views on abortion. By 2024, conservative opinions on various topics had become tightly packaged with restrictive views on abortion and a strong emphasis on traditional family ties.</p>
<p>Other topics saw the two groups move in entirely opposite directions. Opinions on government funded health insurance and the ongoing impacts of racial inequality divided the clusters sharply. On these issues, the groups actively drifted away from one another over the decades.</p>
<p>Most of this growth happened during a specific window of time. Between 1988 and 2008, the distance between the two clusters remained relatively flat. However, from 2008 to 2020, the two groups moved much further apart.</p>
<p>“Our study shows that 2008 was a major turning point for the divisions between left and right on many of the issues that define contemporary US politics,” said De-Wit. He noted that the public has generally moved left on many issues during this century. The data showed that the left-leaning cluster became substantially more progressive over the decades.</p>
<p>By contrast, the right-leaning cluster shifted only slightly more conservative. At the same time, the two groups remained internally cohesive and roughly equal in size. The researchers also noticed that Americans are aligning their self-identified political labels with their issue groups more closely than before.</p>
<p>Young explained that ideological consistency has become more common. “In the past, someone with left-wing views on one issue might have held right-wing views on another. That’s rarer now.”</p>
<p>This specific timeline challenges the idea that polarization is just an unavoidable feature of human psychology. If human nature were the sole cause, the divisions would likely increase at a steady pace. Instead, the rapid spike suggests that environmental factors like the financial crisis, changes in communication technology, or shifts in political leadership might play a role.</p>
<p>In their second study, the researchers expanded their scope to look at global patterns. They analyzed survey responses from more than 173,000 people across 57 countries. The data came from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, collected between 1999 and 2018.</p>
<p>This allowed the team to see if the trends observed in the United States were happening elsewhere. They found no clear evidence that issue polarization is increasing on a global scale. While separation between groups did rise slightly worldwide, the groups also became less internally cohesive.</p>
<p>When looking at what drives divisions globally, cultural issues proved to be the strongest factor. Topics such as the acceptability of abortion, divorce, and homosexuality created the largest splits between opinion clusters. Disagreements over economic policies or democratic systems did not separate the groups as sharply.</p>
<p>The researchers also discovered that a country’s level of economic and social development changes how its population divides. They measured this using the Human Development Index, a metric that considers life expectancy, education, and national income. In countries with lower development scores, the algorithm typically found a large culturally conservative majority and a small culturally liberal minority.</p>
<p>In countries with higher development scores, the two groups tended to be more equal in size and more liberal overall. The United States stood out globally because its two opinion groups have been roughly equal in size for a long time. Young noted that this even split might help explain why American political divisions feel so intense.</p>
<p>The team also looked for societal factors that predict how a country divides. They found that countries with higher ethnic diversity tended to have groups that were further apart on the issues. This diversity was measured by the probability of two random citizens belonging to different ethnic groups.</p>
<p>Additionally, countries with higher wealth inequality had opinion groups that were less cohesive internally. This suggests that economic disparities might create more disagreements within political factions. People who agree on cultural issues might still argue about the economy if wealth is distributed unevenly.</p>
<p>While the new measurement tool offers fresh insights, the researchers acknowledge some limits to their work. One limitation is that the clustering algorithm forces every person into one of two groups. In reality, many people might not fit neatly into either category.</p>
<p>Future research could explore alternative algorithms that allow individuals to remain unassigned if their views do not align with any major cluster. Scientists could also test algorithms that sort populations into three or more groups. This could capture different dynamics in countries with multiple political factions.</p>
<p>The study is also observational, meaning it can show patterns but cannot prove what causes them. It is impossible to say for certain if factors like wealth inequality directly cause changes in public opinion. The associations might be driven by outside factors that were not measured.</p>
<p>Finally, the findings are limited to the specific survey questions available in the datasets. Exploring how populations divide over a wider variety of contemporary issues could provide an even clearer picture of political polarization.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251428" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A new measure of issue polarization using k-means clustering: US trends 1988–2024 and predictors of polarization across the world</a>,” was authored by David Jack Young, James Ackland, Andreas Kapounek, Jens Koed Madsen, Lara Jane Greening and Lee de-Wit.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychological-network-analysis-reveals-how-inner-self-compassion-connects-to-outward-social-attitudes/" 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 network analysis reveals how inner self-compassion connects to outward social attitudes</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 5th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-025-02651-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mindfulness</a></em> suggests that the way people treat themselves during difficult times is linked to their views on social equality. The research provides evidence that empathy serves as a bridge connecting self-compassion to a reduced preference for dominance over other social groups. These findings open up the possibility that fostering a kinder relationship with oneself might eventually promote broader social harmony.</p>
<p>Self-compassion involves treating oneself with kindness and understanding rather than harsh judgment. While previous studies show that self-compassion benefits individual mental health, its impact on wider societal attitudes has remained somewhat of a mystery. Scientists wanted to explore how an individual’s internal relationship with themselves might extend outward to shape their feelings about different social groups.</p>
<p>Specifically, the researchers examined a concept known as social dominance orientation. This psychological term refers to a person’s preference for inequality among social groups, where some demographics naturally dominate others. The scientists proposed that high self-compassion might relate to higher empathy, which in turn might connect to lower levels of this dominance orientation.</p>
<p>“The rise of authoritarianism has challenged researchers to understand the root causes of these social tensions. While psychologists routinely study personality variables, current efforts seek to bridge personality factors with larger social movements. This study attempts to connect those variables using a highly sophisticated network analysis that bridges the intrapersonal to the interpersonal, and finally broader social orientation,” explained study author <a href="https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/michael-juberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Juberg</a>, a doctoral student at the University of Auckland.</p>
<p>The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique environment to test these connections. The global crisis caused major disruptions to daily life, increased stress, and intensified intergroup tensions and biases. By collecting data before and during this pandemic, the researchers could observe whether the psychological links between self-compassion, empathy, and social attitudes remained stable under heightened social threat.</p>
<p>To investigate these dynamics, the scientists recruited undergraduate students from a large public university in the United States. Participation was voluntary, and the students completed online questionnaires in exchange for course credit. The total initial sample included 1034 students, with data collected in two distinct waves to capture different social climates.</p>
<p>The first wave gathered responses from 578 students during the spring and fall semesters of 2019, well before the pandemic began. The second wave collected responses from 456 students during the fall semester of 2020. After removing incomplete or unusual responses, the researchers analyzed a final sample of 979 participants, consisting of 543 pre-pandemic and 436 pandemic-era students.</p>
<p>The researchers used three main surveys to measure the psychological traits of the participants. They used a 26-item scale to assess self-compassion, which looks at how often people balance positive and negative internal reactions. This scale measures tendencies like self-kindness versus self-judgment, as well as a sense of shared humanity versus feelings of isolation.</p>
<p>The self-compassion survey also measures the balance between mindfulness and over-identification. Mindfulness involves observing negative thoughts without getting swept away by them. In contrast, over-identification occurs when a person becomes completely absorbed in their own distress and emotional pain.</p>
<p>To measure empathy, the participants completed a survey that gauges two distinct empathetic traits. The first trait is perspective-taking, which involves the mental ability to imagine another person’s situation and understand their thoughts. The second trait is empathic concern, which refers to the emotional capacity to actually feel sympathy and care for others who are struggling.</p>
<p>Finally, the scientists used a 16-item questionnaire to measure social dominance orientation. This survey asked participants to rate their agreement with statements regarding group equality and superiority. High scores on this measure indicate a greater preference for social inequality, while low scores indicate a preference for egalitarian worldviews.</p>
<p>Instead of looking for simple cause-and-effect relationships, the researchers used a statistical technique called psychometric network analysis. This method maps out a web of connections among all the psychological variables at the same time. It helps researchers visualize which traits are directly linked and which traits act as bridges between other mental characteristics.</p>
<p>The analysis revealed that a preference for social inequality had the strongest negative connection to empathy. As a person’s preference for group dominance increased, their levels of empathy tended to decrease. Empathy was then directly connected to the various positive components of self-compassion, linking the inner self to outward social views.</p>
<p>Within the different types of empathy, the researchers noticed a distinct pattern. Empathic concern showed a much stronger relationship to social dominance orientation than perspective-taking did. This suggests that emotionally feeling care for another person is more strongly linked to egalitarian views than simply thinking about their point of view.</p>
<p>“Of the two components of empathy, emotional concern was more strongly related to one’s sense of equality,” Juberg told PsyPost. “In a sense, thinking about another person’s situation alone was not as powerful as attempting to feel their concern as their own.”</p>
<p>When comparing the pre-pandemic and pandemic-era groups, the researchers found that the overall web of connections remained highly similar. Despite the massive social disruptions and heightened fears brought on by the virus, the structure linking self-compassion, empathy, and social attitudes did not meaningfully change. This stability provides evidence that these psychological traits are fundamentally connected regardless of external social stress.</p>
<p>“This statistical model compellingly shows that these correlations persisted even during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when social threat was heightened, suggesting the stability of the relationship between these patterns,” Juberg explained. “These results open up the possibility that self-compassion might in fact effect change on a broad social level. Follow up studies could demonstrate that self-compassion helps people become more empathetic, which then influences how we support equality between different social groups.”</p>
<p>While these findings offer helpful insights, there are limitations to keep in mind. The study relied on a specific sample of college students from a single university in the Pacific region. This focus limits the ability to apply the findings to older adults or individuals from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.</p>
<p>Future studies should also consider how specific demographic variables influence these psychological networks. For instance, individuals from marginalized backgrounds might develop higher empathic concern through firsthand exposure to inequality. In contrast, individuals from dominant social groups might show weaker connections between these traits if their environments reinforce hierarchical worldviews.</p>
<p>The research design only captured a snapshot in time, meaning it cannot prove that self-compassion directly causes a reduction in dominance attitudes. It is possible that the relationship works in the opposite direction, or that other unmeasured factors influence both traits simultaneously. The statistical models show that the traits are linked, but they do not confirm a strict sequence of developmental events.</p>
<p>“A follow up study where self-compassion is tested would give us more conclusive information of the direction of these influences,” Juberg said. “We hope to test whether developing self-compassion through a course would increase self-compassion, which thereby incidentally develops more capacity for empathy and egalitarian beliefs. This would help to establish this purported link more definitively. ”</p>
<p>“While this study was exploratory, it gives us hope that by teaching ourselves to be compassionate, there might be a way to promote more compassion for others in our communities. It might help us to address some of the social ills that our world currently faces. If this relationship if found, this would have profound implications for the socio-emotional development of individuals and could be a core component of educational curricula.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-025-02651-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Empathy as the Critical Link Between Self-Compassion and Social Dominance Orientation</a>,” was authored by Michael Juberg and Polina Beloborodova.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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