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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/an-analysis-of-data-from-75-countries-confirms-that-nature-connectedness-predicts-well-being/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">An analysis of data from 75 countries confirms that nature connectedness predicts well-being</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 20th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A secondary analysis of data collected in 75 countries found that nature connectedness is a robust predictor of well-being. Nature connectedness was found to be associated with multiple aspects of well-being. The paper was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102895"><em>Journal of Environmental Psychology</em></a>.</p>
<p>The relationship between humans and nature is an important factor for both human health and the health of the environment. The extent to which individuals feel emotionally and cognitively connected to the natural world is called nature connectedness. It reflects a sense of belonging to nature rather than seeing oneself as separate from it.</p>
<p>People high in nature connectedness tend to experience feelings of awe, appreciation, and care when interacting with natural environments. This sense of connection can develop through experiences such as spending time outdoors, observing wildlife, or engaging in nature-related activities.</p>
<p>Research has shown that individuals who feel strongly connected to nature tend to report lower stress and improved mood. Nature connectedness is linked to higher engagement in pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, such as conservation and sustainable lifestyle choices. For many people, contact with nature provides opportunities for reflection, restoration, and emotional balance.</p>
<p>Study author Lea Barbett and her colleagues wanted to assess the relationship between nature connectedness and well-being across the world. They hypothesized that this association would consistently emerge in different human groups and thus be generalizable across countries. They also hypothesized that nature connectedness would be associated with greater purpose in life, hope, satisfaction with life, coping, optimism, and mindfulness.</p>
<p>The study authors analyzed a dataset containing responses from 38,366 participants across 76 countries. Ultimately, the researchers used a final sample of 36,803 participants across 75 countries, as South Africa was excluded because the survey administered there did not include the nature connectedness measure. Data were collected between 2020 and 2022 via a multinational effort of the C19 Consortium.</p>
<p>The study authors used data on participants’ nature connectedness (collected using the Nature Relatedness scale, e.g., “My relationship to nature is an important part of who I am”), and various measures of well-being (purpose in life, satisfaction with life), and psychological factors and resources associated with well-being (coping, mindfulness, optimism, hope).</p>
<p>In general, results across countries showed small to large associations of nature connectedness with purpose in life, hope, life satisfaction, resilient coping, optimism, and mindfulness. Although there were countries where some of these associations were not obtained, the findings generally supported the study authors’ hypothesis that higher nature connectedness is associated with better well-being across the world.</p>
<p>“Our findings highlight the importance of nature connectedness for well-being globally, especially for communities with low access to nature and social resources,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychological importance of nature connectedness. However, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results. Additionally, the sample predominantly consisted of university students, skewing the data toward highly educated populations rather than being fully representative of the general public in each country. Also, data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this might have impacted the well-being of study participants in ways the analysis did not account for.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102895">Nature Connectedness and Well-Being: Evidence from a Multi-National Investigation Across 75 Countries,</a>” was authored by Lea Barbett, Stylianos Syropoulos, Jin Capozzoli, and The C19 Consortium.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-psychological-impact-of-ghosting-lasts-longer-than-outright-rejection/" 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 psychological impact of ghosting lasts longer than outright rejection</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 20th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Being ignored without explanation tends to cause more prolonged psychological distress than being directly rejected. A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108756" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Computers in Human Behavior</a></em> provides evidence that while both ghosting and explicit rejection hurt, the uncertainty of ghosting slows down a person’s emotional recovery. This research suggests that clear communication during a breakup, even in casual digital interactions, helps people process the event and move on more easily.</p>
<p>Ghosting is the practice of unilaterally ending a relationship by cutting off all communication without providing any explanation. It has become incredibly common in the digital age, especially on dating apps and social media platforms. The person who disappears leaves the other person to figure out what went wrong entirely on their own.</p>
<p>“Ghosting often comes up in everyday conversations about modern relationships and digital communication. While many people describe it as a particularly painful experience, others argue that disappearing might actually be kinder than explicitly rejecting someone. I wanted to test whether this intuition is actually true and better understand how people psychologically react to these two different ways of ending a relationship,” said Alessia Telari, a postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, who conducted the research while at the University of Milano-Bicocca.</p>
<p>To understand how people react to this behavior, scientists have traditionally asked participants to remember past experiences. Relying on human memory can introduce biases, as people tend to alter their recollections over time to make sense of painful events. To get a more accurate picture, Telari and her colleagues created a real-time experiment to observe how the emotional fallout of ghosting unfolds day by day.</p>
<p>They wanted to compare these daily reactions directly to the effects of outright rejection, where a person explicitly states they no longer wish to talk. By tracking emotions over multiple days, the scientists hoped to see exactly how people cope with different forms of social exclusion. This multi-day approach provides a closer look at the specific psychological wounds caused by sudden silence.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted two separate experiments using a newly developed chat format. In the first study, 46 young adults aged 19 to 34 participated in daily 15-minute text conversations using the Telegram messaging app. Each participant was paired with a study partner who was actually a confederate, meaning they were a research assistant acting as a regular participant.</p>
<p>The pairs chatted about casual topics like sports, music, and travel for three days. After each chat, participants filled out a questionnaire measuring their emotions, relationship satisfaction, and feelings of interpersonal closeness. They also rated their partner’s competence, sociability, and morality, while reporting on their own basic psychological needs for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence.</p>
<p>On the fourth day, the researchers introduced different experimental scenarios. For 18 participants in the control group, the daily chats simply continued normally for three more days. For 13 participants, the partner explicitly rejected them by sending a message stating they were no longer interested in talking.</p>
<p>For the final 15 participants in the ghosting group, the partner completely stopped responding without any explanation. The scientists then tracked the participants’ daily survey responses to see how the different groups reacted to the sudden shift in the relationship. This allowed them to measure the immediate impact of the event as well as the recovery process over a span of six days.</p>
<p>The scientists found that both rejection and ghosting immediately damaged the relationship and caused a spike in negative emotions. Participants in both exclusion groups felt ignored, experienced threatened self-esteem, and reported less interpersonal closeness. A closer look at the data over the following days revealed distinct recovery patterns.</p>
<p>People who were directly rejected began to show signs of emotional recovery quite quickly. Their feelings of exclusion and threatened needs started to decline in the days following the event. In contrast, those who were ghosted experienced a more persistent negative emotional state.</p>
<p>Their basic psychological needs remained threatened, and their confusion stayed high. This pattern suggests that the lack of closure kept the ghosted participants from moving forward. The scientists noted that a simple, direct rejection gave participants the finality they needed to start coping.</p>
<p>“One interesting aspect was how similar the initial reactions to ghosting and rejection were,” Telari told PsyPost. “In both cases, people immediately felt hurt and their basic psychological needs were threatened. However, over the following days, the trajectories began to diverge. Participants who were rejected tended to recover more quickly, while those who were ghosted remained stuck in uncertainty for longer.”</p>
<p>To see if these patterns held up over a longer period, the scientists conducted a second study with 90 participants. This time, the experiment lasted for nine days instead of six, allowing for a longer observation of the emotional recovery process. The researchers also tested whether the gender of the study partner made a difference by matching participants with both same-gender and opposite-gender partners.</p>
<p>The groups included 33 people in the control condition, 33 who experienced explicit rejection, and 27 who were ghosted. The procedure remained identical to the first study, with participants chatting daily and filling out the same psychological assessments. The longer timeline was designed to catch any delayed reactions that might not appear in the first few days.</p>
<p>The findings from the second study essentially replicated the first experiment. The gender of the chat partner did not change the way participants reacted to the sudden end of the conversation. Once again, direct rejection caused a sharp, immediate emotional sting followed by a steady recovery.</p>
<p>The ghosted participants showed a delayed and prolonged emotional toll. For example, people who were rejected felt an immediate desire to be alone, which faded over time. For those who were ghosted, the desire for solitude grew gradually as the days passed.</p>
<p>The ghosted individuals also judged their partner’s morality more harshly as time went on. This likely occurred because they were continually disappointed by the lack of an explanation day after day. The researchers argue that this ongoing uncertainty makes ghosting uniquely difficult to process, as the brain struggles to interpret a situation with no clear ending.</p>
<p>“Although both experiences are painful, ghosting tends to be more psychologically difficult than explicit rejection,” Telari explained. “When someone disappears without explanation, the uncertainty can keep people stuck wondering what happened: whether the other person is okay, whether they did something wrong, or whether the relationship might resume. This lack of closure seems to prolong distress and make it harder to move on. In contrast, although rejection hurts, the clarity of the message helps people process the situation and recover more quickly.”</p>
<p>While this research provides new insights, there are a few potential caveats to keep in mind.</p>
<p>“Our study used a controlled experimental setting in which participants interacted with a study partner for a few minutes per day over several days and then experienced either ghosting or rejection,” Telari noted. “This allowed us to study people’s reactions in real time and under controlled conditions. However, real relationships are often more complex: people sometimes have contextual information that helps them interpret periods of silence, but they may also feel much more emotionally invested, which can make the experience even more distressing.”</p>
<p>People in actual relationships might also have access to context clues, like mutual friends, to help them interpret a sudden silence. Future research could explore how these reactions play out in actual romantic contexts with longer relationship histories. Scientists should also directly test whether the feeling of uncertainty is the exact mechanism blocking emotional recovery.</p>
<p>The researchers also recommend testing these findings across different cultures and age groups. This specific sample consisted entirely of young adults from Italy, and cultural norms around communication might alter how people experience social exclusion. Exploring these variables will help build a more complete understanding of digital relationship dynamics.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108756" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The phantom pain of ghosting: Multi-Day experiments comparing the reactions to ghosting and rejection</a>,” was authored by Alessia Telari, Luca Pancani, and Paolo Riva.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/building-muscle-strength-may-help-prevent-depression-especially-in-women/" 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;">Building muscle strength may help prevent depression, especially in women</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 20th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.121437" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Affective Disorders</a></em> suggests that greater muscle strength, particularly in women, might play a direct role in reducing the risk of depression and its specific symptoms. Scientists at University College London found no evidence that aerobic fitness influences depression, but their findings indicate that building muscle strength could help prevent and treat the condition. This provides evidence that strength training could be an effective, targeted strategy for improving mental health.</p>
<p>Physical activity is known to help protect against depression, but the exact biological reasons for this connection remain unclear. Scientists wanted to understand the specific ways exercise influences mental health so they can develop better treatment plans.</p>
<p>Two possible ways exercise might improve mood are through better cardiorespiratory fitness and increased muscle strength. Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to the body during sustained physical activity. Previous studies have linked both of these fitness types to lower rates of depression.</p>
<p>Traditional observational studies, which simply watch people’s habits over time, struggle to prove cause and effect because other lifestyle choices might influence the results. It is also possible that being depressed causes people to exercise less, rather than a lack of fitness causing the depression.</p>
<p>“Although physical activity is known to help prevent and treat depression, the underlying mechanisms through which this occurs remain poorly understood. In this study, we examined the effects of two specific physiological aspects of physical activity (cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle strength) on depression,” said study authors <a href="https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/30897-snehal-pinto-pereira" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Snehal M. Pinto Pereira</a>, <a href="https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/100782-john-vincent" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Vincent</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/98038-amy-taylor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amy E. Taylor</a> — a professor, research fellow, and senior research fellow, respectively — in a joint statement to PsyPost.</p>
<p>“Depression is well documented as being a highly heterogeneous disorder, with symptoms varying widely across individuals. Therefore, we examined whether cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle strength might be causally linked to individual symptoms of depression as well as depression as a single disorder.”</p>
<p>The researchers examined data from up to 341,326 adults between the ages of 37 and 73. All participants were of European descent and were part of the UK Biobank, a large database of genetic and health information.</p>
<p>To determine cause and effect, the scientists used a technique called Mendelian randomization. This method looks at tiny genetic variations that people are born with, which are known to be linked to specific physical traits. Because these genetic markers are assigned randomly at conception, they act like a natural experiment.</p>
<p>The scientists looked at genetic variants associated with cardiorespiratory fitness and genetic variants associated with grip strength. Grip strength was adjusted for body weight and used as a practical substitute for overall muscle strength.</p>
<p>For the mental health outcomes, the researchers looked at general depression based on self-reported history and hospital records. They also evaluated nine specific symptoms of depression to get a more detailed picture of a person’s mental state.</p>
<p>These symptoms included depressed mood, appetite changes, concentration problems, and anhedonia, which is a core symptom of depression defined as the loss of pleasure or interest in previously enjoyable activities. They also looked at psychomotor changes, which involve either a noticeable slowing down of physical movements or extreme restlessness and fidgeting.</p>
<p>The individual symptoms were measured using a standard questionnaire given to a subset of 108,622 participants. People who reported experiencing a symptom for several days or more over the past two weeks were considered to have that symptom.</p>
<p>The researchers found no evidence that genetic markers for cardiorespiratory fitness were linked to overall depression or any of its individual symptoms. This was an unexpected outcome for the scientists, as aerobic exercise is often recommended to improve mental health.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the data showed a clear link between greater grip strength and lower rates of depression. A 0.1 kilogram increase in grip strength per kilogram of body weight was associated with a 14 percent lower likelihood of experiencing general depression.</p>
<p>Higher grip strength was also linked to a lower likelihood of several specific symptoms. For example, it was associated with a 21 percent reduction in the likelihood of experiencing anhedonia. Stronger grip strength was also tied to a 44 percent lower chance of experiencing appetite changes. The scientists also found evidence that greater strength is associated with depressed mood, physical slowness, extreme fatigue, and concentration problems.</p>
<p>“Whilst muscle strength is clearly only one of many factors that influence depression, these findings suggest that improving muscle strength could make meaningful contribution to reducing depression as well as several of its symptoms,” the researchers said. “Importantly, the results were consistent across several analyses, which increases confidence in the robustness of the findings.”</p>
<p>When the scientists analyzed the data by sex, they found that these effects were generally stronger in women than in men. The protective effects against loss of pleasure, depressed mood, and concentration problems were observed in females but not in males.</p>
<p>The link between grip strength and appetite changes was present in both men and women. There was no clear evidence that grip strength affected sleep problems or suicidal thoughts in either sex.</p>
<p>“The key takeaway from our findings is that muscle strength (particularly in females) likely plays a causal role in depression and several of its symptoms in middle to older aged adults,” the researchers explained. “Our findings suggest that increasing muscle strength could help reduce depressed mood and the loss of pleasure or interest in previously pleasurable activities (anhedonia), which represent the core symptoms of depression, as well as secondary symptoms such as appetite change, concentration problems and low self-esteem. However, it is important that future research replicates these effects in other samples and populations to improve generalizability.”</p>
<p>There are several possible reasons why muscle strength might help protect against depression. Lower muscle strength can lead to a loss of independence and greater difficulty completing daily tasks. Struggling with everyday activities is known to increase the likelihood of experiencing depressive symptoms.</p>
<p>Another possibility involves biology at the cellular level. When muscles contract during exercise, they release specific proteins into the body. Some scientists suspect these proteins might help protect the brain against depression, though more research is needed to confirm this.</p>
<p>The scientists noted a few potential misinterpretations and limitations. The people in the UK Biobank tend to be healthier and more educated than the average population, which might skew the results. The study also only included individuals of white European ancestry.</p>
<p>The scientists also used hand grip strength as a substitute for total body muscle strength. This is a common scientific practice, but there is an ongoing debate about how accurately hand strength reflects overall muscle power.</p>
<p>“We remain very interested in pursuing this line of research,” the researchers told PsyPost. “Our next steps will include examining both environmental and genetic factors related to depression and anxiety, as well as how the interplay between these factors can influence mental health.</p>
<p>“One important way in which our study moves the field forward is by examining individual depressive symptoms (in addition to depression as a single disorder). This approach may help researchers better understand the different pathways that contribute to depression and inform more targeted prevention strategies.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.121437" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cardiorespiratory fitness, grip strength and depression symptoms: A Mendelian Randomization study</a>,” was authored by John Vincent, Snehal M. Pinto Pereira, Jane Maddock, Dylan M. Williams, Mark Hamer, Jonathan P. Roiser, and Amy E. Taylor.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/machine-learning-reveals-how-gasoline-prices-drive-presidential-approval-ratings-2026-03-19/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Researchers use machine learning to reveal how gasoline prices drive presidential approval ratings</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 20th 2026, 04:00</div>
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<p><p>The cost of filling up a vehicle with gasoline plays a major role in how American voters view their commander in chief. A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X251325458">American Politics Research</a> </em>reveals that gasoline prices operate as one of the strongest predictors of presidential approval ratings, acting in an uneven pattern where initial price spikes cause the most political damage. The research indicates that voters judge presidents based primarily on the direct financial pain felt at the pump, rather than using fuel costs as a broader economic warning sign.</p>
<p>Political commentators and campaign strategists frequently debate the electoral impact of energy prices. Public opinion polls predictably fluctuate alongside changing economic conditions, often leading to intense political messaging surrounding the cost of living. Rangan Gupta, an economist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, alongside colleagues Christian Pierdzioch and Aviral Kumar Tiwari, wanted to formally test this relationship. They sought to determine exactly how the cost of fuel moves the American public’s approval of the president.</p>
<p>Two main academic theories exist to explain why voters might punish or reward a president based on the cost of driving. The first is the pocketbook mechanism, which suggests that voters react to the immediate, personal financial losses they experience when fuel becomes expensive. Under this theory, voters judge the government based on their own shrinking bank accounts.</p>
<p>The second theory is the sociotropic mechanism. This idea proposes that citizens view energy costs as an easily visible informational source about the general health of the national economy. Because people see gas prices advertised on large signs during their daily commute, they might use those numbers to guess whether the larger financial system is thriving or failing.</p>
<p>Previous investigations into this public opinion dynamic often produced conflicting results. Many early mathematical models assumed a straight line of cause and effect, where every dollar increase in fuel costs would logically produce an equal drop in presidential popularity. The research team suspected that human behavior and media coverage do not operate in such simple straight lines. They wanted to test for irregular thresholds where voter attitudes suddenly shift.</p>
<p>To analyze these shifting public attitudes, the researchers used an advanced computational technique called random forests. A random forest is a machine learning algorithm that builds hundreds of individual decision trees. These decision trees act like complex flowcharts that test different paths of data to categorize information and predict an outcome.</p>
<p>By averaging the results of hundreds of these individual decision trees, the algorithm avoids placing too much weight on any single piece of misleading information. This allows the computer to find hidden, irregular patterns in massive sets of data. The researchers chose this method because it can identify uneven behavioral shifts without requiring humans to guess the shape of those patterns beforehand.</p>
<p>The researchers gathered monthly data spanning fifty years, beginning in October 1973 and ending in December 2023. They compiled numbers on retail gasoline prices adjusted for inflation, global crude oil costs, and historical presidential approval ratings gathered closely by the Gallup polling organization. Gallup surveys provide a highly consistent measure of public opinion because they have asked the exact same question regarding presidential job performance for decades.</p>
<p>The researchers did not pull these broad economic indicators out of thin air. They utilized a massive economic database comprising hundreds of financial and macroeconomic time series. This extensive collection included hard data on national employment hours, manufacturing output, real estate building permits, and international trade volumes. By condensing this massive array of information into eight core factors, the researchers ensured the algorithm had a complete picture of the American economy.</p>
<p>Beyond standard economic performance, the algorithm also accounted for broader societal anxieties. The researchers incorporated formal metrics of macroeconomic uncertainty and financial market volatility. These uncertainty indexes capture the unpredictable shocks to the economy, reflecting the general unease consumers and businesses feel about future financial conditions. Including these measures was incredibly important for testing whether gasoline prices simply act as a proxy for general economic dread.</p>
<p>To seal any remaining gaps in predicting public opinion, the team also included databases tracking geopolitical acts or threats pulled from historical newspaper archives. These metrics tally the number of news articles focused on international conflict, nuclear threats, and terror acts. Before running the models, the researchers specifically separated the cost of unrefined global crude oil from the retail price of gasoline.</p>
<p>While international crude oil serves as the primary ingredient for motor fuel, retail prices also reflect domestic shocks. Local refining capacity, regional taxes, and seasonal driving demands all alter the final price consumers pay at the local station. Isolating the retail cost allowed the researchers to zero in on the precise numbers that voters see and pay.</p>
<p>The machine learning algorithm revealed that the link between retail gasoline prices and public approval is highly nonlinear. When gasoline prices sit at a low level and first begin to rise, the negative impact on the president’s popularity is exceptionally strong. The researchers attribute this sharp drop to an initial surge in news media coverage, which suddenly alerts previously inattentive voters to their shrinking purchasing power.</p>
<p>As energy prices continue to climb past a certain threshold, the penalty to the president becomes less severe. The public’s approval rating bottoms out and remains at a relatively low, flat level despite additional cost increases. At this advanced stage, dissatisfied citizens likely become accustomed to the high costs, and the ongoing negative press coverage offers no fresh shocks to their political opinions.</p>
<p>Putting past presidential approval to the side, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices emerged as an incredibly powerful predictor of future approval ratings. The algorithm successfully used historical fuel prices to forecast out-of-sample shifts in presidential popularity. This indicates that fuel prices carry actual forecasting value, passing a rigorous test of predictive accuracy that goes beyond simply matching past trends.</p>
<p>Because fuel costs proved to be a leading predictor independently of other broad economic health metrics, the researchers argue their results heavily favor the pocketbook mechanism. If voters were simply using gas prices as a sociotropic substitute to guess the overall state of the economy, the algorithm would have relied more heavily on the broader financial data provided to it. Instead, the direct price of filling a tank retained its unique forecasting power. This implies that voters hold political leaders accountable for direct personal financial strain.</p>
<p>While the statistical link between the gas pump and the Oval Office is incredibly strong, American presidents usually possess very little authority over global energy markets. The worldwide supply and demand balance dictates the cost of energy, leaving political leaders with limited options to alter prices quickly.</p>
<p>A president might temporarily suspend domestic taxes or adjust import tariffs, but making vast systemic changes is generally beyond executive power alone. Because of this dynamic, presidents will likely continue to face political backlash for global energy fluctuations that exist outside of their direct control.</p>
<p>The research team suggests that these political realities make a strong case for shifting toward renewable energy sources. Reducing a nation’s reliance on fossil fuels could eventually insulate domestic consumers from sudden global supply shocks. In turn, achieving this sort of green energy transition might shield future political leaders from the unpredictable voter backlash caused by international energy markets.</p>
<p>Future investigations will need to explore how energy costs predict political outcomes across longer timeframes. The current analysis focused on forecasting changes just one month ahead. Exploring alternative forecasting models and extending the prediction window will help political scientists better understand exactly how long it takes for a price shock at the pump to register in a national election booth.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X251325458" target="_blank">Gasoline Prices and Presidential Approval Ratings of the United States</a>,” was authored by Rangan Gupta, Christian Pierdzioch, and Aviral Kumar Tiwari.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-faulty-brain-waste-disposal-system-may-lead-to-psychosis/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">A faulty brain waste disposal system may lead to psychosis</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>A specialized network responsible for washing away cellular waste in the brain might play a role in the development of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. In a recent brain imaging study, researchers found that young people at a high genetic risk for psychosis showed early signs of a malfunctioning brain clearance system, which was linked to a toxic buildup of stimulating chemicals. The research was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2026.100713" target="_blank">Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science</a></em>.</p>
<p>Alessandro Pascucci, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Geneva and a resident doctor in child psychiatry at the Fondation Pôle Autisme, led the research team. Stephan Eliez, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Geneva, directed the broader clinical project.</p>
<p>Every day, the brain generates metabolic waste as it processes information. To keep the biological environment stable, a network called the glymphatic system flushes out this debris. This system pushes cerebrospinal fluid into the brain tissue, where it mixes with the fluid surrounding the cells. The fluid then washes away extra neurotransmitters, inflammatory proteins, and misfolded proteins.</p>
<p>This fluid movement is driven by star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes. Astrocytes have specialized water channels, called aquaporin-4 channels, that act like tiny valves. When these channels fail to work properly, or when the blood vessels leak, the entire clearance process slows down. Waste products then accumulate in the brain tissue, potentially causing damage.</p>
<p>To understand how this plumbing system might relate to psychiatric illness, the researchers looked at a genetic condition called 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. People with this condition are missing a tiny piece of chromosome 22. This missing genetic material leads to a roughly 30 to 40 percent chance of developing psychotic symptoms later in life.</p>
<p>Psychosis involves a disconnection from reality, often taking the form of hallucinations or delusions. Scientists suspect that the genetic deletion in this syndrome might damage the blood-brain barrier and alter how astrocytes mature. Because it dramatically increases the risk of schizophrenia, this genetic syndrome provides an excellent biological model for studying how psychosis develops over time.</p>
<p>People with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome also often have a weakened immune system. This makes them more susceptible to infections early in life. Recurrent infections can cause widespread inflammation, which puts extra stress on the brain’s waste clearance system. Over time, this chronic stress might overload the perivascular spaces, which are the fluid-filled channels surrounding blood vessels in the brain.</p>
<p>The research team was also interested in the balance of chemical messengers in the brain. Healthy brain function requires an exact equilibrium between glutamate, a chemical that excites neurons, and GABA, a chemical that inhibits them. If glutamate builds up and causes too much excitation, the overstimulation can become toxic and damage brain cells.</p>
<p>This toxic overstimulation is known to happen in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory and emotion. The scientists suspected that a faulty brain drainage system might fail to clear away excess glutamate. By tracking these biological changes over time, they hoped to pinpoint exactly when the brain becomes vulnerable to psychosis.</p>
<p>The research team analyzed brain scans from 85 individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and 83 healthy individuals. They followed these participants from childhood into early adulthood, taking multiple magnetic resonance imaging scans over several years. This long-term approach allowed the scientists to map how the brain’s internal environment changes as people grow.</p>
<p>To estimate the efficiency of the brain’s waste clearance, the scientists used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging. This method tracks how water molecules diffuse along the microscopic spaces surrounding blood vessels in the brain. The team calculated a specific metric, known as the ALPS index, to act as an indirect measure of how well the drainage system was working.</p>
<p>The researchers noticed that the brain’s clearance system was already altered in children with the genetic deletion. Compared to healthy individuals, the group with the genetic condition had lower clearance efficiency. This difference was especially apparent in the right side of the brain.</p>
<p>The most revealing results emerged when the scientists split the genetic group based on who eventually developed clinically diagnosed psychotic symptoms. In healthy individuals and those who never developed psychosis, the brain’s drainage system became more efficient as they grew up. This matches the normal maturation process expected in a healthy brain.</p>
<p>However, the group that developed positive psychotic symptoms followed an entirely different path. Their brain clearance efficiency failed to increase with age. Instead, their developmental trajectory remained flat or even declined slightly over the years.</p>
<p>“This atypical trajectory suggests that a vulnerability resulting from an interaction between biological and environmental factors is present well before the onset of symptoms,” Pascucci said in a press release. The researchers think the early failure of this system might leave the brain unprotected during sensitive periods of development.</p>
<p>The team also conducted a secondary test on a smaller group of 39 individuals with the genetic deletion. They used a specialized magnetic resonance technique that acts like a chemical analysis tool. This allowed them to measure the exact levels of excitatory and inhibitory chemicals in the right hippocampus without needing an invasive procedure.</p>
<p>The scientists discovered a clear link between poor waste clearance and an unhealthy chemical environment. Individuals with a lower ALPS index had a higher ratio of excitatory glutamate compared to calming GABA. This means that as the brain’s plumbing system failed, the chemical environment became increasingly overstimulating.</p>
<p>“Excessive excitation can become toxic to neurons and contribute to alterations in certain brain regions that are particularly vulnerable and involved in psychosis, such as the hippocampus,” Pascucci noted. “Our results suggest a link between glymphatic system dysfunction, mechanisms of neurotoxicity, and psychosis.”</p>
<p>The right hippocampus requires a lot of energy to function and has a dense network of blood vessels. This makes it particularly sensitive to oxidative stress and inflammation. When waste products build up, this specific brain region may be one of the first to suffer from toxic overstimulation.</p>
<p>The researchers noted a few limitations to their work. The chemical analysis was only performed at a single point in time, meaning the scientists cannot definitively prove that poor clearance causes the chemical imbalance. The chemical measurements were also restricted to the right hippocampus, leaving it unclear if the same imbalance happens throughout the rest of the brain.</p>
<p>Additionally, the method used to estimate brain clearance relies on the movement of water molecules near brain cavities. This means it is an indirect measure, and other structural changes in the brain’s white matter could potentially influence the results. The study also only tracked participants into early adulthood, so the long-term effects in older age remain unknown.</p>
<p>Future research will need to track chemical changes over a longer period and across the entire brain. Scientists also hope to investigate how sleep quality and body-wide inflammation affect the brain’s plumbing system. Identifying early warning signs could eventually help doctors intervene before a first psychotic episode occurs.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2026.100713" target="_blank">Developmental Alterations in the DTI-ALPS Index Suggest Possible Glymphatic-Related Mechanisms Underlying Excitation/Inhibition Imbalance and Psychosis Vulnerability in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome</a>,” was authored by Alessandro Pascucci, Silas Forrer, Corrado Sandini, Valentina Mancini, Yasser Alemán-Gómez, Stephan Eliez, and Farnaz Delavari.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/emotionally-intelligent-ai-chatbots-improve-mental-health-but-destroy-real-world-social-ties/" 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;">Emotionally intelligent AI chatbots improve mental health but destroy real-world social ties</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study reveals that interacting with emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence chatbots can boost a person’s mental health while simultaneously isolating them from real human relationships. The research highlights a hidden trade-off in using these digital companions, where the comfort provided by algorithms comes at the cost of real-world social ties. The findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.70093" target="_blank">Psychology & Marketing</a></em>.</p>
<p>Millions of people turn to artificial intelligence chatbots to alleviate loneliness and find emotional support. Unlike older digital assistants that simply set alarms or book flights, modern social chatbots use advanced algorithms to mimic human empathy. They try to replicate emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions.</p>
<p>By mimicking this trait, applications like Replika or Wysa act as digital friends that adapt to user moods. The global market for these advanced digital companions is growing rapidly, attracting millions of users seeking a safe space to express their feelings.</p>
<p>Shaphali Gupta, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, led an investigation into how these emotionally intelligent bots affect human users. Along with colleagues Sumit Saxena and Sonia Kataria, Gupta wanted to understand the full spectrum of these digital interactions. Previous research largely focused on the positive psychological benefits of artificial intelligence companions.</p>
<p>The team suspected there might be a negative side to this technological comfort, specifically regarding how users connect with other humans in the physical world. They framed their research around the technology-wellbeing paradox, an idea suggesting that digital tools can act as a double-edged sword for human health.</p>
<p>The researchers focused on two distinct types of wellness to capture this paradox. Psychological wellbeing refers to a person’s internal mental state, including their sense of happiness, life purpose, and emotional resilience. Social wellbeing represents how connected and integrated a person feels within their real-world community of friends, family, and neighbors. By measuring both of these outcomes, the team hoped to uncover the true cost of seeking solace in a conversational machine.</p>
<p>To begin their investigation, the researchers analyzed how actual users talk about their chatbot experiences online. They collected publicly available comments from YouTube, review sites like Trustpilot, and a large Reddit community dedicated to the Replika application. By reading through hundreds of user posts, the team identified several recurring patterns about how these bots behave and make people feel.</p>
<p>The researchers used an observational technique called netnography to analyze the online posts. This involves studying the digital behaviors of online cultures without directly interfering with their conversations. Users frequently described their chatbots as empathetic and highly adaptable to different social moods. They reported that the bots helped regulate their emotions, often lifting their spirits and helping them find personal meaning during difficult times.</p>
<p>A few users mentioned that the digital friend helped them master their environment by giving advice on how to handle real-life stress. The software seemed to provide an ideal social space where humans felt completely free from judgment. However, a darker pattern also emerged from the online forums. Some users admitted they were spending so much time talking to their digital companions that they felt disconnected from their real-life friends.</p>
<p>Several people expressed that they were ignoring their physical relationships because they preferred the easy attention of the bot over the unpredictable complexities of human interaction. The digital companion was fulfilling their social needs so completely that they no longer felt motivated to maintain their offline friendships.</p>
<p>Building on these online observations, Gupta and her team designed a controlled experiment to test these effects directly. They recruited 167 college students belonging to Generation Z, a demographic known for its high usage of digital tools. The participants were asked to imagine they were feeling lonely and needed to chat with a digital friend.</p>
<p>Half of the group read a scenario where the chatbot showed high emotional intelligence, offering deep empathy and using emotive language. The other half read a scenario featuring a bot with low emotional intelligence, providing more generic and less empathetic responses. The researchers then asked the participants to rate their expected levels of psychological and social health after the interaction.</p>
<p>Participants who interacted with the highly emotionally intelligent bot reported an expected boost in their psychological state. At the same time, this exact same group reported a drop in their expected social connectedness. The team discovered that this dual effect was driven by a psychological mechanism called perceived closeness.</p>
<p>Perceived closeness happens when a human feels a strong emotional bond and a sense of warmth toward another entity. When a bot acts like it truly understands a user, the human forms an intense connection with the software. This intense digital connection improves their immediate internal mood but reduces their desire to seek out human interaction. The digital friendship essentially crowds out the space normally reserved for human-to-human relationships.</p>
<p>Next, the researchers wanted to see how the format of the conversation might alter this psychological trade-off. They conducted a second experiment with 350 different college students. This time, they introduced augmented reality into the testing scenarios. Augmented reality is a technology that overlays digital images onto the physical world, often through a smartphone camera.</p>
<p>Some applications allow users to project a three-dimensional avatar of their digital friend into their bedroom or living room. In this experiment, some participants imagined texting the bot on a standard screen, while others imagined the bot sitting right next to them in their physical room through augmented reality. The researchers wanted to know if the visual immersion of seeing a digital entity in a physical space would change the way users felt about their real-world friends.</p>
<p>The students answered a series of questions to gauge their perceived closeness to the bot and their expected well-being. The results mirrored the first experiment, but the addition of augmented reality magnified everything. When participants visualized an emotionally intelligent bot in their own physical space, their feelings of closeness to the machine skyrocketed.</p>
<p>This created an even larger boost to their psychological wellness compared to those who just used text. The augmented reality feature made the emotional support feel incredibly vivid and personal. Conversely, the immersive nature of augmented reality caused an even sharper decline in their social wellness.</p>
<p>The visual presence of the digital friend made real-world human connections seem even less necessary to the users. The researchers noted that augmented reality amplifies the emotional intelligence of the bot. This makes the digital illusion so comforting that users withdraw even further from their actual physical communities.</p>
<p>While the research offers a detailed look at human and machine relationships, it does have a few limitations. The experiments relied on hypothetical scenarios and self-reported expectations rather than tracking long-term behavioral changes. Because the scenarios were simulated, real-world emotional reactions might differ slightly over months or years of actual use.</p>
<p>The study also focused exclusively on young adults, meaning the results might differ for older generations who interact with emerging technology differently. People with specific personality traits, such as high social anxiety, might also experience these platforms in completely different ways. Moving forward, the research team suggests looking at the long-term habits formed by extensive chatbot use.</p>
<p>They hope future studies will investigate whether people develop deep emotional co-dependency with these applications. The researchers recommend that software designers build specific boundaries into their applications to protect users from social isolation. For example, a chatbot could be programmed to encourage users to call a real friend after a long digital conversation. By implementing these safety measures, developers could harness the mental health benefits of artificial intelligence without isolating people from the physical world.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.70093" target="_blank">The Dual Impact of AI Emotional Intelligence on Users: Are Social Chatbots Promoting Psychological Wellbeing or Deteriorating Social Wellbeing?</a>” was authored by Shaphali Gupta, Sumit Saxena, and Sonia Kataria.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-neuroimaging-study-maps-the-brain-networks-behind-scientific-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 neuroimaging study maps the brain networks behind scientific 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 19th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Scientists have identified the brain networks that work together when people generate creative scientific ideas, according to a new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000603" target="_blank">Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts</a>.</em></p>
<p>Creativity is often associated with the arts, but scientists rely on it just as much, especially when forming new hypotheses or explanations for puzzling phenomena. Despite this, scientific creativity has received far less attention than artistic creativity, or general creative thinking that does not require expert knowledge in a particular field.</p>
<p>Previous studies have demonstrated that creative thinking in general tends to involve three major brain networks. The first is the default mode network, which helps people draw on memory and imagination. The second is the executive control network, which helps evaluate ideas, inhibit obvious responses, and maintain goals. The third is the salience network, which helps the brain switch between different modes of thinking (i.e., the default mode network and executive control network).</p>
<p>These networks are known to interact during tasks like brainstorming unusual uses for everyday objects, but researchers were unclear if scientific creativity uses the same or different systems.</p>
<p>To address this gap in the literature, a research team led by Roger E. Beaty from Pennsylvania State University scanned the brains of 47 undergraduate STEM majors (28 females, 16 males, 3 unreported; average age 19 years old).</p>
<p>These participants completed two tasks. In the main task, students were shown a scientific scenario—such as an island where all flowers are the same color—and asked to think of a novel, scientifically plausible hypothesis to explain it. In a comparison task, they were shown a scientific sentence and asked to come up with a synonym for a highlighted verb. Both tasks required generating a response, but only the hypothesis task required creative thinking.</p>
<p>The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity, and then applied a data-driven method called multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to identify clusters of brain tissue that behaved differently between the two tasks. This revealed key hubs in three networks: the default mode network (specifically the posterior cingulate cortex), the salience network (the right anterior insula), and a semantic control region in the left inferior frontal gyrus.</p>
<p>Next, the researchers examined how these hubs connected with the rest of the brain during hypothesis generation. They found that the networks communicated more with each other during creative thinking. For example, the left inferior frontal gyrus showed stronger connections with memory-related regions in the default network. The right anterior insula also showed increased communication with default-network regions. At the same time, communication within each individual network decreased, suggesting the networks were coordinating across boundaries rather than working in isolation.</p>
<p>“The findings suggest that scientific creative thinking recruits similar brain systems as [general] creative thinking, potentially reflecting a coordination between generative and evaluative cognitive processes to construct original explanations for scientific phenomena,” Beaty and colleagues concluded. In other words, forming a scientific hypothesis requires both imagination and control—drawing on memories and mental simulations while also steering thinking toward original, plausible explanations.</p>
<p>It must be noted that the study does have limitations. For example, the researchers grouped all STEM students together and did not compare participants from different subfields (e.g., chemistry vs. biology). Furthermore, the authors noted that the study featured an unbalanced gender ratio, which is relevant given known minor differences in how male and female brains network.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the researchers hope these findings will pave the way for “educational neuroscience.” By understanding the brain mechanisms behind scientific creativity, future researchers can track whether specific teaching methods and STEM curricula successfully strengthen these creative brain networks in students over time.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000603" target="_blank">Brain Networks Supporting Scientific Creative Thinking</a>,” was authored by Roger E. Beaty, Robert A. Cortes, Hannah M. Merseal, Mariale M. Hardiman, and Adam E. Green.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/genetic-risk-for-major-depression-linked-to-lower-self-esteem-years-before-severe-diagnosis/" 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;">Genetic risk for major depression linked to lower self-esteem years before severe diagnosis</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03243-2" target="_blank">Molecular Psychiatry</a></em> provides evidence that an individual’s genetic risk for major depression tends to be higher in those who develop more severe forms of the condition. By combining genetic data, self-reported symptom questionnaires, and long-term health records, researchers found that people with a higher genetic likelihood of depression often reported lower self-esteem years before needing hospital treatment.</p>
<p>“Depressive disorders are common in the population, but the symptom expression and course of the disorders vary quite a bit between individuals. The current treatment guidelines are not differentiated enough to address this heterogeneity, and depression is still a major cause of disability worldwide,” said lead researcher Marit Haram, a specialist in psychiatry at Oslo University Hospital and an associate professor at the University of Oslo.</p>
<p>“A potential future method to predict illness outcome and guide personalized treatment is to assess the individual genetic risk for depression (in terms of [a] polygenic risk score). The genetic discovery is not yet good enough for clinical use, but we had a unique dataset that made it possible to make new discoveries of the clinical potential that lies in the knowledge of genetic risk.”</p>
<p>A polygenic risk score is a number that summarizes a person’s estimated genetic risk for a specific disease. This score is calculated by combining information from thousands of tiny genetic variants found across a person’s entire DNA code.</p>
<p>The scientists analyzed data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. This large project included 105,623 participants, with an average age of about 34 years, and 58.5 percent of the group was female. The researchers tracked the participants’ mental health over a 16-year follow-up period.</p>
<p>To understand each person’s genetic risk, the team calculated polygenic risk scores for major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. They also calculated a genetic risk score for height to serve as a physical trait comparison. This allowed the team to verify that the mental health findings were specific to psychiatric genetic markers.</p>
<p>Early in the study, participants completed self-report questionnaires about their mental well-being. These included the Symptom Checklist-5 to measure recent emotional distress, and the Satisfaction With Life Scale to gauge general pessimism. Participants also completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale to assess internal feelings of unworthiness.</p>
<p>The researchers then linked these survey answers to official medical records from Norwegian health registries between 2006 and 2022. They categorized the clinical data based on how severe the depression was and what kind of medical care the person received. The categories included general primary care visits, outpatient specialist visits, and inpatient hospital stays.</p>
<p>The analysis revealed that 31.1 percent of the individuals received a diagnosis on the depression spectrum during the 16 years of tracking. This high percentage partly reflects the inclusion of mild cases, such as general practitioner visits for feeling a bit down. Across this wide spectrum, the scientists found a clear gradient connecting genetic risk and the severity of depression.</p>
<p>Individuals with higher polygenic risk scores for major depression were more likely to be diagnosed with depression in a clinical setting. This genetic link grew stronger as the severity of the clinical diagnosis increased. The highest genetic risk was seen in patients who eventually required inpatient hospital care for their depression.</p>
<p>When looking at the self-reported questionnaires, higher genetic risk for major depression was linked to higher levels of distress, lower satisfaction with life, and lower self-esteem. The link to low self-esteem was particularly strong in individuals who later required inpatient hospitalization. These survey responses were often recorded long before the official clinical diagnoses appeared in the registries.</p>
<p>“The finding illustrates that individuals who developed more severe depression carry a greater genetic burden, which influences their answers on self-report measures in a different timeframe than the registered depression,” Haram told PsyPost. “The data from the questionnaires were mostly collected before the diagnostic data from the registries, so this association is quite interesting.”</p>
<p>“The stronger associations between genetic risk for depression and lower self-esteem in depression cases with a history of inpatient care were not found in a sub-sample that excluded individuals with severe mental disorders,” she added. “This could indicate that the genetic risk for depression shows the strongest predictive potential in populations of individuals who will develop severe mental disorders.”</p>
<p>“I find it interesting to see that genetic risk could be associated with measures from questionnaires, but in a different way depending on the severity of depression that cases developed. Depression is a very complex and heterogeneous illness, so I am surprised by the ‘knowledge’ that lies in the genetic code.”</p>
<p>This pattern was specific to the genetic risk for major depression. The genetic risk scores for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia did not show the same strong relationships with these self-reported depression measures. The genetic score for height showed a slight negative relationship with depression, meaning taller genetic tendencies were linked to slightly fewer depression diagnoses.</p>
<p>While the study provides new insights, there are a few limitations and potential misinterpretations to keep in mind. Readers should not assume that a genetic risk score can currently be used by a doctor to perfectly predict a person’s mental health future. The researchers note that polygenic risk scores are still in an experimental phase and are not yet powerful enough for standalone clinical use.</p>
<p>Additionally, the study relies on medical registry data that was only fully available starting in 2008. Some participants might have had unrecorded depressive episodes before this period, which could subtly bias how cases were categorized. The participants in the cohort study also tend to have a slightly higher socioeconomic status than the general population.</p>
<p>Because genetic markers for height are often linked to higher socioeconomic status, this demographic skew might have influenced the physical trait comparison data. Future research will need to refine how genetic risk scores are calculated to see if they can eventually be integrated into practical clinical models.</p>
<p>“We cannot say that the genetic risk is ready for use in the clinical context yet,” Haram said. “But our proof-of-principle results show that further development of polygenic scores for major depression for the current clinical use case is worth pursuing.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03243-2" target="_blank">Associations of polygenic risk scores for major depression and depression severity: an investigation of 105 623 individuals with 16 years follow-up</a>,” was authored by Marit Haram, Andreas Jangmo, Piotr Jaholkowski, Joëlle Pasman, Joeri Meijsen, John R. Shorter, Elizabeth C. Corfield, Oleksandr Frei, Ted Reichborn-Kjennerud, Alfonso Buil, Yi Lu, Thomas Werge, Patrick Sullivan, Ole A. Andreassen, and Martin Tesli.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/too-much-self-reflection-is-linked-to-anxiety-and-depression-not-happiness/" 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;">Too much self-reflection is linked to anxiety and depression, not happiness</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>Spending too much time looking inward might be linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety, rather than boosting happiness. A new review of past research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-07415-9" target="_blank">Current Psychology</a></em> reveals that analyzing our own thoughts is associated with negative mental health outcomes, while offering no observable boost to positive feelings like self-esteem or life satisfaction. These results suggest that cultural backgrounds and the specific ways we measure introspection heavily influence how looking inward affects our minds.</p>
<p>Self-reflection is the internal process of examining our own thoughts, memories, feelings, and actions. Mental health experts view this kind of deep self-awareness as a standard part of human thinking. However, previous studies on how this inward focus affects the mind have yielded confusing and contradictory results.</p>
<p>Some past projects linked high self-reflection to worse anxiety. Other research tied the exact same mental habit to higher life satisfaction. To resolve this confusion, researchers wanted to look at the big picture using a specific psychological framework.</p>
<p>They used a concept called the dual-factor model of mental health. This model separates mental well-being into two distinct categories. The positive dimension includes subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. The negative dimension includes conditions like depression and anxiety.</p>
<p>Historically, psychology focused almost entirely on treating illness. The dual-factor model provides a wider lens, allowing experts to see that lacking a mental illness does not automatically mean a person is thriving. The research team wanted to see exactly how introspection interacts with both sides of this psychological coin.</p>
<p>The project was led by Wang He, a researcher at Hunan Agricultural University in China. Working with colleague Jun Gan, He sought to clarify the true role of inward thinking in daily mental health. The researchers also wanted to know if different cultural backgrounds or different testing questionnaires might explain the contradictory results of past work.</p>
<p>To find answers, the investigators conducted a meta-analysis. This is a research method that pools mathematical data from many individual studies. By combining small groups of data into one massive pool, scientists can spot broader trends that a single experiment might miss.</p>
<p>The team searched through scientific databases for papers published up to March 2023. They looked for projects that measured self-reflection and at least one mental health indicator. They narrowed their initial list of over five thousand articles down to exactly 39 relevant studies.</p>
<p>These selected papers included information from nearly 12,500 healthy adults. The team did not include data from patients with diagnosed clinical disorders. Instead, they focused exclusively on ordinary participants from various global regions.</p>
<p>The researchers then used statistical models to calculate the relationship between looking inward and mental health outcomes. They separated the data into positive and negative mental health categories. They also checked whether the specific questionnaire used in a study changed the final numbers.</p>
<p>When looking at positive mental health, the results were not statistically significant. The research team found no clear mathematical link between high levels of introspection and overall positive mental health. Focusing heavily on one’s own thoughts did not correlate with better subjective well-being. It also had no clear association with higher life satisfaction or better self-esteem.</p>
<p>On the negative side of the mental health model, the patterns were entirely different. The researchers found a positive mathematical association between high self-reflection and total negative mental health indicators. This means that people who reported higher levels of inward thinking also tended to report higher levels of depression and anxiety.</p>
<p>The authors suggest that this connection might relate to how awareness develops. When individuals start paying closer attention to their inner lives, they often notice previously hidden feelings of sadness or distress. Becoming hyper-aware of these emotions can initially cause a drop in mood.</p>
<p>The specific tools used to measure introspection also heavily influenced the data. Psychologists use several different questionnaires to test how much a person thinks about themselves. Some tests focus on a person’s ability to objectively evaluate their own experiences. Other tests measure a person’s need to constantly monitor their own behaviors.</p>
<p>One common testing tool contains a section that leans heavily toward measuring rumination. Rumination is a negative form of thinking where a person repeatedly dwells on their own problems or bad feelings. When studies used this specific questionnaire, the link to bad mental health was much stronger.</p>
<p>Tests that focused strictly on gaining new insights from one’s own thoughts yielded different patterns. Some of these insight-focused tests even showed a slight connection to better mental health. This suggests that how a psychologist asks a person about their thought habits can completely change the apparent outcome.</p>
<p>Cultural background also changed how introspection connected to negative emotions. The researchers grouped the study data into broad geographic regions like Asia, Europe, and North America. They found that the link between inward thinking and anxiety was much stronger in European and American populations.</p>
<p>The link between internal reflection and anxiety was noticeably weaker in Asian populations. The researchers suspect this variation relates to the difference between individualistic and collectivistic cultures. In European and American societies, culture often emphasizes personal independence and individual achievement.</p>
<p>When people in Western individualistic cultures reflect on their failures, they might take on intense personal blame. This heavy burden of personal responsibility can easily fuel anxiety. In contrast, Asian cultures often emphasize community networks and social harmony over individual success.</p>
<p>People in collectivistic societies might be more likely to seek help from their social group rather than taking on the entire burden of a failure alone. Collectivistic cultures also tend to emphasize self-control and emotional suppression from an early age. This cultural habit could soften the anxiety caused by excessive self-reflection.</p>
<p>The geographic region did not seem to change the relationship between looking inward and depression, however. The link between introspection and depressive feelings remained relatively steady across the globe. The internal cognitive mechanics of looking inward appear to trigger depression in a universally human way, regardless of social upbringing.</p>
<p>The researchers noted a few limitations to their massive data review. They found far more published papers looking at negative mental health than positive mental health. This imbalance in the available data makes it harder to draw final conclusions about happiness and life satisfaction. Null results are also less likely to be published by scientific journals, which could skew the available literature.</p>
<p>The way scientists measure internal thoughts remains an ongoing challenge. Many existing questionnaires blur the line between healthy self-awareness and unhealthy dwelling on problems. The researchers recommend that future scientists develop more precise testing tools. These new tests should clearly separate helpful introspection from harmful rumination.</p>
<p>The team also pointed out that the relationship between looking inward and mental health might not be a simple straight line. It is entirely possible that a moderate amount of introspection is healthy, while too much of it becomes destructive. The statistical limits of the currently available data prevented the team from testing this exact idea.</p>
<p>Future projects should track participants over long periods. Watching how a person’s mental habits change over several years could reveal if introspection directly causes anxiety, or if anxious people just happen to look inward more often. These types of studies would help clarify exactly how our minds react to looking in the mirror.</p>
<p>Expanding research into more diverse cultural regions will also help clarify these global patterns. The current pool of data is heavily tilted toward English-speaking Western nations. Gathering data from a wider variety of societies would provide a much clearer picture of human psychology as a whole.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the research team hopes their work will guide new psychological therapies. By understanding how inward thinking triggers anxiety, therapists can help patients develop better coping strategies. The goal is to teach people how to reflect on their own lives without drowning in their own negative emotions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-07415-9" target="_blank">The relationship between self-reflection and mental health: a meta-analysis review</a>,” was authored by Wang He and Jun Gan.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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