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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/brain-scans-reveal-how-poor-sleep-fuels-negative-emotions-in-alcohol-addiction/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Brain scans reveal how poor sleep fuels negative emotions in alcohol addiction</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 28th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2026.113084" target="_blank">Drug and Alcohol Dependence</a></em> suggests that poor sleep in people with alcohol use disorder is closely linked to heightened negative emotions and specific changes in brain activity. The findings indicate that treating sleep problems might be a practical way to help improve mood and emotional regulation for those recovering from alcohol addiction.</p>
<p>Addiction is often viewed as a three-stage cycle consisting of binge drinking, experiencing negative emotions during withdrawal, and a preoccupation or craving for the substance. Previous research indicates that sleep issues can alter mood and reward processing in the general population.</p>
<p>“Sleep problems in alcohol use disorder are extremely common. Prior work has found relationships between sleep disturbance and deficits in processes related to reward, negative emotional processing, and executive function, that are impacted in addictive disorders like alcohol use disorder,” said study author Erica Grodin, an adjunct assistant professor at UCLA and member of <a href="https://addictions.psych.ucla.edu/" target="_blank">the UCLA Addictions Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“However, these relationships had not been previously systematically examined in people with alcohol use disorder and the underlying neurobiology responsible for these processes had yet to be explored. Therefore, our study set to examine the relationship between sleep disturbance and alcohol-related reward processing, negative emotional processing, and executive function in people with an alcohol use disorder, and what the underlying neurobiology was.”</p>
<p>The researchers conducted two separate, independent studies. In the first study, the researchers recruited 115 adults who met the clinical criteria for alcohol use disorder. The participants completed a widely used questionnaire called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which evaluates sleep habits over the past month. Based on their scores, 42 participants were classified as good sleepers, while 73 were classified as poor sleepers.</p>
<p>The scientists then asked the participants to complete a series of surveys designed to measure three specific addiction categories. These categories included craving and motivation, negative emotionality, and executive function. Executive function refers to the mental skills needed to control impulses, focus attention, and make deliberate decisions.</p>
<p>During their analysis, the scientists made sure to account for other factors that might influence the results. They controlled for variables like age, biological sex, race, and the severity of the participants’ alcohol use. This helped ensure that any differences in negative emotions were actually related to sleep, rather than how much the participants drank or their demographic background.</p>
<p>A subset of 52 participants from the first study also underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. This is a type of brain scan that measures blood flow to see which areas of the brain are active in real time. While inside the scanner, participants looked at pictures of alcoholic beverages, like beer or wine, and non-alcoholic beverages, like water or coffee, to test their craving responses.</p>
<p>They were also shown a mix of neutral images, like everyday objects, and negative images, like car crashes or mutilated faces. Following each block of images, the participants used a button box to rate their current level of stress or their craving for alcohol. This allowed the researchers to see how their brains processed both rewarding and stressful situations.</p>
<p>The researchers found that poor sleepers experienced significantly more negative emotions, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, compared to good sleepers. Poor sleep did not appear to affect the participants’ levels of alcohol craving or their executive function skills. This suggests that sleep problems are specifically tied to the emotional distress aspect of addiction, rather than the impulsive or craving aspects.</p>
<p>The brain scans provided evidence that supported these psychological survey results. When viewing negative images, the poor sleepers showed much higher activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex compared to the good sleepers. These specific brain regions belong to a network in the brain that is highly active when people ruminate.</p>
<p>Rumination involves repetitively thinking about negative feelings or dwelling on personal problems. The brain scan results indicate that people with alcohol use disorder who also struggle with sleep might be biologically wired to over-engage in negative thinking when faced with stressful stimuli. No differences were found between the groups when they looked at the alcohol-related images.</p>
<p>The scientists then conducted a second, independent study to verify their initial findings using a different measure of sleep. This second group included 102 different adults with alcohol use disorder. The researchers used the Insomnia Severity Index, a survey that evaluates the severity of insomnia symptoms, such as difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, over the past two weeks.</p>
<p>Based on their responses, 47 people had no insomnia, 38 had sub-clinical or mild insomnia, and 17 had clinical insomnia. Just like in the first study, the researchers found that worse sleep was directly linked to higher levels of negative emotions. Participants with clinical and mild insomnia reported significantly more negative emotionality than those without sleep problems.</p>
<p>The researchers ensured these results were as accurate as possible by controlling for the number of alcohol use disorder symptoms each person had. Even when accounting for how severe their addiction was, the individuals with insomnia symptoms still showed a heightened negative emotional profile. Once again, sleep problems did not predict changes in the participants’ cravings or motivation to drink.</p>
<p>Finding the exact same pattern in a completely separate group of people provides strong evidence that the connection between sleep and negative emotions is a consistent feature of alcohol use disorder. It shows that the relationship holds up even when using different questionnaires. </p>
<p>“Our main finding was that negative emotional processing was uniquely impacted by sleep disturbance in people with an alcohol use disorder,” Grodin told PsyPost. “This means that people with an alcohol use disorder and problems sleeping have a harder time processing and responding to negative emotions than people with an alcohol use disorder who don’t have problems with sleep. We also found that regions of the brain involved in rumination and thinking about oneself were over-involved in negative emotional processing in people who have an alcohol use disorder and sleep problems. Overall, this suggests that sleep disturbance may be a promising treatment target to improve processing of negative emotions, a common trigger for drinking, in this group of people.”</p>
<p>While these findings provide new insights, the researchers noted a few limitations to their work. The research was observational and looked at data from a single point in time. This means the scientists cannot definitively say whether poor sleep causes negative emotions, or if experiencing negative emotions leads to poor sleep. The relationship between sleep, mood, and alcohol use is likely a complex two-way street.</p>
<p>Additionally, the participants in both studies were not formally diagnosed with a sleep disorder by a medical professional. Instead, they self-reported their sleep habits using standardized surveys. The researchers suggest that future studies should include individuals with medically confirmed sleep disorders to see if the brain patterns remain the same. Eventually, the scientists hope to test whether targeted treatments for sleep can actively reduce negative emotions in people recovering from alcohol addiction.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2026.113084" target="_blank">Sleep disturbance is associated with greater subjective and neural negative emotionality in people with alcohol use disorder</a>,” was authored by Erica N. Grodin, Dylan E. Kirsch, Wave Ananda Baskerville, and Lara A. Ray.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/audio-tapes-reveal-mass-rule-breaking-in-milgram-s-obedience-experiments-2026-03-26/" 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;">Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram’s obedience experiments</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 28th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>Reassessing one of the most famous psychological experiments in history, a recent analysis of audio recordings reveals that subjects who seemingly obeyed orders to administer severe electric shocks actually broke the rules of the scientific study most of the time. The authors suggest that this routine violation of experimental procedures transformed the laboratory into a scene of unauthorized violence, altering our understanding of compliance and coercion. The research was published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70112">Political Psychology</a>.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, American social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments to understand how ordinary people could be directed to commit violent acts. Volunteers were recruited for what they were told was a study on memory and learning at Yale University. Upon arriving, they were assigned the role of a teacher and introduced to a learner, who was actually an actor working for the researchers. </p>
<p>The teacher was instructed to read a list of word pairs to the learner and test their memory. For every incorrect answer, the teacher had to administer an electric shock, increasing the voltage steadily up to a supposedly lethal level. As the shocks grew stronger, the learner would begin to grunt, shout protests, and eventually scream in simulated agony.</p>
<p>For decades, psychologists have generally accepted that the participants who went all the way to the maximum voltage did so because they believed in the scientific validity of the enterprise. The assumption has been that the presence of a lab-coated authority figure gave the violent actions a sense of legitimacy. Theoretical explanations for the high rates of obedience rely heavily on the idea that the volunteers willingly participated in a structured, orderly scientific protocol. </p>
<p>Lead author David Kaposi, a researcher at The Open University in the United Kingdom, and his colleague David Sumeghy wanted to test whether this assumption matched the reality of the sessions. Kaposi and Sumeghy questioned whether the obedient participants actually followed the specific instructions that made up the memory test cover story. If the volunteers ignored the scientific procedures, the theoretical justification for their violence would be drawn into question.</p>
<p>To investigate this, the researchers turned to the original audio tapes preserved at the Yale University Library. They secured recordings from four experimental conditions that closely resembled the standard baseline setup. After excluding sessions with missing data or technical irregularities, the sample yielded 136 full audio recordings of individual sessions. </p>
<p>The research team broke down the participants into two populations based on their ultimate actions in the lab. Obedient individuals were those who administered all the shocks up to the theoretical maximum. Disobedient individuals were those who refused to continue at some point and formally ended their participation. </p>
<p>Kaposi and Sumeghy then evaluated how well each participant adhered to the explicit rules of the memory and learning study. According to the original directions, the teacher was required to complete a strict five-step sequence for every single shock. This cycle involved reading a test question, evaluating the learner’s answer, announcing the shock voltage, pressing the shock lever, and finally reading the correct answer aloud.</p>
<p>A failure to complete any portion of this sequence was labeled as a procedural violation. The researchers categorized these deviations into two types based on how they occurred. An omission took place when a subject completely skipped a step, such as forgetting to announce the voltage level or failing to read the correct answer. </p>
<p>A commission occurred when the subject technically performed a step but did so in a way that ruined the premise of the memory study. For example, some participants read the next test question aloud while the learner was actively screaming in protest. Under those conditions, it would be impossible for the learner to hear the question, rendering the educational facade meaningless.</p>
<p>The audio analysis revealed a striking pattern of rule-breaking across the board. Out of all the participants traditionally classified as completely obedient, not a single one actually followed the full five-step procedure from start to finish. While every obedient participant reliably pressed the shock lever, they regularly neglected or ruined the other steps required to justify the shock. </p>
<p>In fact, nearly half of the shock sequences administered by obedient participants contained one or more procedural violations. On average, these individuals violated the experimental rules in 48.4 percent of their actions. The act of pressing the shock lever was consistently completed, but the scientific framework surrounding it was continuously broken. </p>
<p>The researchers noted that the sessions generally unfolded in three distinct phases. In the early stages, where the learner remained relatively quiet, procedural violations were low across both groups. As the session progressed and the learner’s recorded protests intensified, the rate of rule-breaking spiked dramatically.</p>
<p>During the final phase of the maximum-voltage sessions, the learner’s protests ceased completely. Despite this silence, the surviving subjects did not return to following the proper scientific procedures. Their violation rates remained consistently high until the very last shock was delivered.</p>
<p>The researchers compared these overall rates with the rule-breaking behavior of the disobedient subjects. To ensure a fair comparison, they only analyzed the portion of the disobedient sessions where those participants were actively complying and administering shocks. The data showed that disobedient subjects committed significantly fewer procedural violations during their compliant phases. </p>
<p>On average, eventual quitters violated the experimental protocol in 30.6 percent of their active sequences. Unlike the fully compliant group, several of the disobedient individuals followed the procedure flawlessly right up until the point they refused to continue. The statistical difference highlights that the people who eventually quit were actually better at following the scientific protocol than those who went to the end.</p>
<p>The most frequent violation in obedient sessions involved reading the memory test questions over the simulated screams of the learner. Doing this effectively guaranteed that the learner would fail the test and receive another shock. By talking over the protests, the obedient subjects abandoned the goal of testing memory and simply facilitated continuous shocks. </p>
<p>Kaposi and Sumeghy interpret these patterns as a complete breakdown of the supposedly legitimate scientific environment. The subjects were not committing violence for the sake of an orderly memory study. With the scientific elements either forgotten or rushed, the laboratory changed into a setting for unauthorized and senseless violence.</p>
<p>The study authors propose that the experimenter played a major, passive role in establishing this dynamic. When the participants broke the rules and skipped steps, the authority figure rarely intervened to correct them or pause the session. By staying silent and letting the memory study fall apart, the experimenter allowed an atmosphere of illegitimate violence to flourish. </p>
<p>This silent approval of the deteriorating conditions may have functioned as a form of coercive control. Participants found themselves trapped in a situation where the stated rules no longer applied, yet the expectation to deliver shocks remained constant. The authors suggest that this environment compromised the volunteers’ freedom to choose, bringing into doubt the idea that they were acting out of willing obedience. </p>
<p>The researchers acknowledge that their findings rely entirely on observable behavioral records. The audio tapes demonstrate what the participants and the experimenter said, but they do not provide direct evidence of internal motivations. It remains unclear whether the rule-breaking was driven by anxiety, stress, forgetfulness, or an intentional coping mechanism. </p>
<p>Future investigations could look closer into the immediate interactions between the teacher, the learner, and the authority figure. Analyzing exactly how the experimenter’s silence shapes participant behavior might offer fresh insights into how destructive obedience is manufactured in real time. Ultimately, this audio analysis shifts the focus away from the electric shocks themselves and onto the collapsed rules that surrounded them.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70112" target="_blank">From legitimate to illegitimate violence: Violations of the experimenter’s instructions in Stanley Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’ studies</a>,” was authored by David Kaposi and David Sumeghy.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/people-with-social-anxiety-experience-more-meaningful-interactions-in-small-groups/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">People with social anxiety experience more meaningful interactions in small groups</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 28th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506261416010" target="_blank">Social Psychological and Personality Science</a></em> suggests that people with social anxiety experience more meaningful and playful social interactions when communicating through digital channels or in small groups. The findings provide evidence that adjusting the social environment to feel more controllable tends to help socially anxious individuals get the most out of their daily social exchanges.</p>
<p>Social interactions play a central part in human happiness and a sense of belonging. The benefits of these connections are not felt equally by everyone. People who experience trait social anxiety often feel intense fear or discomfort in social situations, whether those situations are real or just imagined.</p>
<p>Socially anxious people tend to worry about being judged, sounding foolish, or being ignored by others. Because of these fears, they can find everyday conversations incredibly draining rather than uplifting. The mental weight of constantly monitoring themselves and looking out for negative reactions takes a significant toll.</p>
<p>Past research has mostly focused on how social interactions demand energy from these individuals in a general sense. The authors of the new study wanted to understand if specific situations might change how socially anxious people react to socializing. </p>
<p>“We were interested in understanding why social interactions don’t benefit everyone equally. While social connection is generally linked to well-being, people differ widely in how they experience everyday interactions, especially those with higher social anxiety. They are normally assumed to experience their interactions with difficulties, expending more energy and achieving lower benefits,” said study author Aurelio Fernández, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra.</p>
<p>“We wanted to move beyond the idea that ‘more socializing is always better’ and instead examine when and under what conditions interactions are most beneficial, particularly for socially anxious individuals. Our idea was to identify a kind of ‘comfort zone’ in which they can socially thrive. This is particularly important because social anxiety is a psychological disposition rather than a personality trait, so positive social experiences can play a key role in shaping the future role of anxiety.”</p>
<p>The scientists recruited 157 American adults between the ages of 18 and 71. Women made up about 66 percent of the participants in the sample. At the start of the study, participants filled out a standard questionnaire to measure their baseline levels of trait social anxiety. The researchers also used a method called experience sampling, which involves asking people to report on their thoughts and feelings in real time throughout their normal daily routines.</p>
<p>This approach minimizes memory errors because participants do not have to look back and guess how they felt days ago. Over the course of two weeks, participants received up to six brief surveys a day on their smartphones. These surveys triggered at random times within set intervals based on when the participants normally woke up and went to sleep. This extensive tracking generated a massive collection of data, capturing the exact details of 10,547 unique social interactions. </p>
<p>In the daily surveys, participants answered questions about their most recent social interaction. They rated the interaction’s quality on a scale from one to five based on three specific dimensions: pleasantness, playfulness, and meaningfulness. Participants also rated their current energy levels on a similar five-point scale. This allowed the researchers to track how different interactions affected their overall vitality in the real world.</p>
<p>The surveys also asked participants to describe the exact context of each interaction. They reported the communication channel, noting whether the exchange happened face-to-face or through a mediated format like a phone call, video chat, or text message.</p>
<p>Participants also recorded the size of the group, which the researchers categorized as either small, meaning fewer than four other people, or large. Finally, they indicated how often they interacted with these specific people to track familiarity.</p>
<p>The researchers found that higher-quality interactions were consistently associated with increased momentary energy across the board. When participants reported that a conversation was particularly pleasant, playful, or meaningful, they also tended to report feeling more energized right afterward. This provides evidence that positive social exchanges can actually restore a person’s energy levels in the moment.</p>
<p>At the same time, social anxiety was generally linked to lower overall energy. Individuals who scored higher in trait social anxiety tended to report having less energy during their daily lives on average.</p>
<p>But when the researchers looked closely at the quality of the interactions, they noticed something different. The specific social context played a major role in shaping the daily experience.</p>
<p>The data suggests that the negative impact of social anxiety on playfulness is notably weaker in small groups compared to large ones. In settings with fewer than four other people, socially anxious individuals reported much more playful and relaxed interactions. Smaller groups likely feel less intimidating for these individuals. There are fewer social cues to track and fewer opportunities for perceived judgment.</p>
<p>The scientists also observed that mediated communication channels helped buffer the effects of social anxiety. When interacting through text messages or phone calls instead of face-to-face, socially anxious people reported having more meaningful conversations.</p>
<p>“One interesting finding was that digitally mediated interactions were not necessarily worse than face-to-face ones,” Fernández told PsyPost. “In some cases, they were actually more beneficial for socially anxious individuals. This challenges the common assumption that in-person interaction is always the ‘gold standard.'”</p>
<p>Digital channels offer a layer of distance and control, allowing individuals to process information and respond at their own pace. This likely eases the intense pressure of immediate, in-person social cues.</p>
<p>Familiarity did not seem to change how socially anxious individuals experienced their interactions. Whether participants were talking to someone they saw daily or someone they rarely interacted with, their levels of anxiety and energy remained relatively consistent.</p>
<p>“A second finding that surprised me is that we didn’t find that socially anxious individuals experience better interactions with more familiar people,” Fernández said. “I think that a reason behind this finding is that some of the most challenging interactions may occur with people they see occasionally — those who are neither strangers nor very familiar. These relationships may lack the comfort needed to feel at ease, while still involving some degree of social pressure. This is an idea I would like to explore further in future research.”</p>
<p>“A key takeaway is that the quality and context of social interactions matter more than simply how often we socialize. What really matters is the fit between the individual and the interaction (quality/energy, context). Not everyone experiences all interactions in the same way.” </p>
<p>“Our findings suggest that people gain the most of their social interactions if they interact in the ways that fits better their psychological/social needs,” Fernández explained. “For people with higher social anxiety, interactions can be more rewarding when they occur in smaller groups or through digital channels that offer more control. In other words, it’s not about avoiding social interaction, but about finding the right fit between the person and the situation.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are a few caveats to consider. The scientists measured familiarity based purely on how often people interacted, which does not capture the actual emotional safety of a relationship. For example, a person might interact with a strict boss every day but still feel highly anxious around them.</p>
<p>Another limitation involves the specific measurement of energy. The daily surveys asked participants to rate their overall energy, but they did not distinguish between physical, mental, or emotional energy. Future research could use more specific definitions. This would help reveal exactly which type of energy is gained or lost during different kinds of social interactions.</p>
<p>“We are interested in better understanding how daily social experiences accumulate over time to shape well-being and mental health,” Fernández said. “In line with this article, we want to explore individual differences in the daily social behavior of individuals.” </p>
<p>“Next steps are exploring more situational conditions that help socially anxious individuals to socially thrive, as well as exploring how they behave when they are not interacting but spending time alone, in solitude. This can be quite important as social interactions might particularly echo within solitude moments for socially anxious individuals. Ultimately, we hope to inform interventions that help people navigate their social lives in ways that better match their individual needs.”</p>
<p>“One broader implication is that social life is highly personalized,” Fernández added. “Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all approach to socializing, our findings suggest that well-being depends on aligning social environments with individual preferences and characteristics. This perspective may be especially useful for rethinking how we approach social anxiety in everyday life.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506261416010" target="_blank">The Right Fit: When Socially Anxious Individuals Gain the Most From Social Interactions</a>,” was authored by Aurelio Fernández, Yifei Lu, William J. Chopik, Gabriella M. Harari, Lisa Rhee, and Joseph B. Bayer.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-explores-the-real-time-link-between-narcissism-and-perfectionism/" 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 study explores the real-time link between narcissism and perfectionism</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 27th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2026.113668" target="_blank">Personality and Individual Differences</a></em> has found that narcissism and perfectionism are more closely linked in everyday life than previously thought, with moment-to-moment changes in these traits shaping how people think and feel.</p>
<p>Previous research has established that narcissism and perfectionism are related as stable personality traits. Narcissism typically encompasses two distinct forms: grandiose narcissism, characterized by confidence and a sense of superiority, and vulnerable narcissism, marked by insecurity and sensitivity to criticism. Perfectionism is similarly divided into two dimensions: perfectionistic strivings, which involve setting and pursuing high standards, and perfectionistic concerns, which reflect worries about making mistakes and being negatively evaluated.</p>
<p>While these relationships have been well documented at the trait level, less is known about how they operate in real time. A research team based at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany sought to address this gap by examining whether narcissistic states and perfectionistic thoughts co-occur in individuals’ daily lives, and whether these associations differ depending on the type of narcissism and perfectionism involved.</p>
<p>Led by Charlotta S. Jacobsen, the team wanted to understand whether these different forms of narcissism and perfectionism are linked in the moment – not just as long-term personality traits, but as thoughts and feelings people experience throughout their day.</p>
<p>The researchers followed 285 university students (245 women, average age of 22) over a week. The participants completed short surveys on their smartphones up to six times a day, which asked how they were feeling at that exact moment – for example, whether they felt superior or underappreciated, and whether they were striving to be perfect or worrying about mistakes.</p>
<p>The results revealed a nuanced picture. When people experienced bursts of grandiose narcissism – feeling confident, powerful, or superior – they were more likely to also report perfectionistic strivings, such as pushing themselves to achieve high standards. At the same time, these moments were linked to fewer worries about failure or criticism.</p>
<p>In contrast, vulnerable narcissism – feeling insecure, ignored, or misunderstood – demonstrated the opposite pattern. These moments were strongly tied to perfectionistic concerns, such as the fear of making mistakes or being judged negatively.</p>
<p>The findings suggest that these traits may be driven by shared underlying processes, such as stress or how people evaluate themselves in different situations. For example, a challenging task or social interaction might trigger both perfectionistic thoughts and shifts in how someone sees themselves – either as superior or inadequate.</p>
<p>Overall, the study found that fluctuations in perfectionistic thinking were linked to fluctuations in both types of narcissism.</p>
<p>The authors noted: “[B]oth predict a wide range of meaningful outcomes. For example, the grandiose facet of narcissism is positively associated with leadership roles… whereas the vulnerable facet is linked to increased aggression… With perfectionism, the facet perfectionistic strivings is related to higher academic achievement… while perfectionistic concerns correlate with symptoms of anxiety… These associations highlight that both traits’ facets relate to achievement motivation and psychological strain.”</p>
<p>However, the researchers caution that their study has limitations. For instance, surveys were completed approximately every 2.5 hours, and the authors note it is unclear whether this timing is optimal for capturing fluctuations in narcissism, meaning some rapid changes may have been missed.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2026.113668" target="_blank">State grandiose and vulnerable narcissism in relation to perfectionistic cognitions</a>,” was authored by Charlotta S. Jacobsen, Elisabeth Prestele, and Eunike Wetzel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-beliefs-about-demons-shape-the-experience-of-mental-illness/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">How beliefs about demons shape the experience of mental illness</a>
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<p><p>For some evangelical Christians, attributing mental illness to demonic forces can offer a sense of meaning, while for others, it creates harmful barriers to medical care. A recent qualitative study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000354">Spirituality in Clinical Practice</a></em> outlines how these widespread spiritual explanations act as a double-edged sword for individuals experiencing psychological distress. The research indicates that integrating religious beliefs with standard psychiatric care may be a safer path forward for many faith communities.</p>
<p>Religion frequently shapes how people interpret their physical and mental health. Psychologists recognize that religious frameworks offer a primary system for individuals to make sense of the world around them. By relying on theological teachings, people construct meaning around their personal suffering. This process of religious meaning construction can influence health outcomes in both positive and negative directions.</p>
<p>Within evangelical Christianity, foundational teachings often emphasize the active existence of spiritual forces. This includes the belief that angels, demons, and other supernatural entities directly influence the physical world. This worldview can lead to the belief that spiritual forces cause human ailments, including severe psychological distress.</p>
<p>Psychologists refer to the study of the causes of diseases as etiology. A demonic etiology of mental illness attributes psychological distress to supernatural attacks rather than solely to biological or environmental factors. In extreme scenarios, this view entirely replaces standard psychiatric explanations for human suffering.</p>
<p>Christopher E. M. Lloyd, a psychology researcher at the University of Westminster, noticed a gap in the scientific understanding of these issues. Much historical research assumed that believing in demons only harmed mental health. Along with his colleagues Joshua Cathcart and Maxinne C. Panagopoulos, Lloyd wanted to explore the lived experiences of faith community members in greater detail. They aimed to identify situations where a demonic explanation of mental illness was perceived as helpful, and where it was experienced as harmful.</p>
<p>The research team recruited a sample of 50 evangelical Christians who maintained an active belief in supernatural agents. The sample was relatively diverse in age, with participants drawn primarily from the United Kingdom and the United States. A large majority of the group had personal histories of mental illness. Over half of the participants reported having had a personal encounter with a demonic entity in the past.</p>
<p>The researchers collected data through an online qualitative survey. The survey presented open-ended questions designed to capture personal narratives rather than sheer statistics. Participants typed detailed responses about their views on the spiritual realm, mental health, and their personal experiences with supernatural interventions. Two researchers independently coded the survey responses to identify recurring patterns before the team consolidated their findings.</p>
<p>The researchers identified four main ways participants conceptualized mental health. Some viewed psychological struggles strictly as the result of demonic influence. Within this viewpoint, mental illness was seen as a symptom of a personal failure of faith or an active spiritual attack. Others within the sample completely rejected supernatural explanations for mental health conditions. These individuals preferred a strictly medical and psychological model, arguing that brain chemistry and environment explain psychological distress.</p>
<p>Most commonly, survey participants endorsed an integrationist approach. These individuals believed that biological, psychological, and spiritual factors weave together to influence human health. In this view, a demonic attack might aggravate an existing psychiatric condition. The researchers noted that this integrated approach allowed participants to value secular medical care while maintaining their deep religious convictions.</p>
<p>Participants reported that attributing mental illness to demons was perceived as helpful in specific circumstances. When secular medical treatments failed to deliver relief, a spiritual framework offered an alternative explanation. This perspective gave some individuals a profound sense of hope and empowerment. By viewing the illness as an external spiritual enemy, they felt they could fight back using familiar religious tools.</p>
<p>Protective spiritual practices acted as positive coping mechanisms for many in the study. Participants described using prayer, faith healing services, and the support of their church community to manage their psychological symptoms. Some participants reported that trusting in angelic protection reduced their daily anxiety. The researchers highlighted that these spiritual therapies were most beneficial when they were consensual and paired with professional mental health services.</p>
<p>The researchers also noted severe negative outcomes when religious groups relied too heavily on demonic explanations. A heavy focus on spiritual causes erected intense barriers to basic medical care. Many participants reported that well-meaning peers pressured them to stop taking prescribed psychiatric medications. Others were warned that entering psychological therapy demonstrated a lack of faith in divine healing.</p>
<p>This anti-medical environment generated heavy feelings of shame among church members. When mental illness is viewed as a punishment for sin or a sign of weak faith, the suffering individual is assigned the blame for their own condition. Study participants described deep experiences of stigma within their local congregations. This blame culture left many feeling abandoned by their primary social support networks precisely when they needed help the most.</p>
<p>In extreme cases, the strict reliance on demonic explanations facilitated spiritual abuse. Participants recounted terrifying experiences of forced exorcisms and restrictive deliverance therapies. The researchers observed that viewing the world as a constant battleground between good and evil often exacerbated conditions like extreme paranoia and obsessive thoughts. Nonconsensual or invasive spiritual therapies consistently resulted in deep emotional and psychological trauma for the individuals involved.</p>
<p>The authors stated several limitations to their work. The study relied on a relatively small convenience sample of English-speaking participants. Because religious cultures vary widely, the results cannot be generalized to all global Christian populations. Because the study utilized a qualitative survey design, the researchers could only observe associations and personal perceptions across the group. The methodology prevented the researchers from determining exact cause and effect relationships regarding spiritual practices and mental health outcomes.</p>
<p>Future research will need to explore these dynamics in broader cultural contexts. The researchers suggested investigating exactly how specific spiritual therapies might be safely integrated into standard psychiatric recovery processes without causing harm. They also noted a need to study how the belief in positive spiritual entities uniquely aids individuals coping with mental distress.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000354">Accounting for the Demonic: Helpful and Unhelpful Factors Associated With Belief in Demonic Etiologies of Mental Illness Among Evangelical Christians</a>,” was authored by Christopher E. M. Lloyd, Joshua Cathcart, and Maxinne C. Panagopoulos.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/first-direct-comparison-of-mdma-and-mda-reveals-distinct-psychedelic-differences/" 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;">First direct comparison of MDMA and MDA reveals distinct psychedelic differences</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 27th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Researchers have directly compared the physical and psychological effects of the psychoactive drug MDMA with its chemical cousin MDA in human volunteers for the first time. The results show that MDA produces a longer lasting therapeutic experience with more visual distortions and adverse reactions. These outcomes suggest MDA may be less suited than standard MDMA for therapeutic uses. The study was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02248-3">Neuropsychopharmacology</a></em>.</p>
<p>MDMA is a widely known synthetic compound that promotes strong feelings of empathy, trust, and interpersonal connection. Because it reliably induces these emotional states, medical professionals are investigating the substance as a medication for psychotherapy in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. When a person consumes MDMA, their body breaks the molecule down into several secondary chemicals.</p>
<p>One of these breakdown products is a molecule called MDA. MDA is psychoactive in its own right and has a history of limited psychiatric exploration. Both substances fall into a broad category of drugs known as entactogens, which roughly translates to touching within.</p>
<p>Pharmacologically, both drugs work by releasing signaling chemicals in the brain, including serotonin and dopamine. Laboratory models show that MDA targets dopamine slightly more aggressively than MDMA does. It also exhibits a ten-fold higher activation of a specific serotonin receptor known to drive the subjective effects of classic psychedelics.</p>
<p>Despite these known molecular differences, researchers had never evaluated the two drugs side by side in a controlled human setting. Clinical pharmacologist Isabelle Straumann at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and her colleagues sought to map these distinctions. Clarifying how these chemicals operate in the body could guide future clinical decisions.</p>
<p>The research team also wanted to test a new method for delivering these drugs. Fast-acting stimulants carry a high risk of abuse because they cause a rapid rush of euphoria. To slow the absorption of the drugs, the researchers created specialized versions by chemically attaching an amino acid called lysine to the standard MDMA and MDA molecules.</p>
<p>These combined molecules act as inactive carriers, known as prodrugs, which the body must metabolize before the active drug can enter the bloodstream. This slow-release strategy is already used in prescription medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to lower their abuse potential.</p>
<p>To carry out the investigation, Straumann and her colleagues recruited 23 healthy adult volunteers. The group consisted of 12 women and 11 men. Each participant attended five different 13-hour testing sessions separated by at least two weeks.</p>
<p>During these sessions, the participants received one of five identical-looking capsules. The options included a placebo, a standard recreational dose of MDMA, a chemically equivalent dose of MDA, the lysine-attached version of MDMA, or the lysine-attached version of MDA. The trial used a double-blind design, meaning neither the participants nor the observing researchers knew which capsule was administered on any given day.</p>
<p>After taking the pill, each volunteer stayed in a quiet hospital room. Throughout the day, the research team repeatedly measured the participants’ blood pressure, pupil size, heart rate, and body temperature. The researchers also asked the volunteers to rate their subjective emotional and physical experiences on numbered visual scales.</p>
<p>Additionally, the team drew blood to track drug concentrations and hormone levels. They specifically looked for oxytocin, a hormone heavily associated with social bonding and trust. MDMA is known to trigger a massive release of oxytocin, which scientists suspect plays a role in its therapeutic benefit. Because oxytocin can be volatile to measure, the researchers also tracked a stable carrier protein called neurophysin I.</p>
<p>The gathered data showed that MDA produced a longer and subjectively more intense experience than MDMA. While the psychological effects of MDMA lasted about four hours for the average participant, the MDA effects lingered for more than six hours. MDA reached its peak effect in the body at the same two-hour mark as MDMA.</p>
<p>Participants reported that MDA caused stronger stimulant effects and provoked more visual distortions than its famous counterpart. The volunteers also experienced more fear and bad drug experiences while under the influence of MDA. Subacute adverse effects in the days following the session, such as headaches, exhaustion, and a lack of appetite, were slightly more prevalent after MDA use.</p>
<p>Both chemicals produced comparable increases in body temperature, heart rate, pupil size, and blood pressure. As expected, MDMA triggered a heavy release of oxytocin. The researchers found that MDA also increased circulating levels of oxytocin and its carrier protein, doing so slightly more intensely than MDMA.</p>
<p>When testing the slow-release prodrug versions, the researchers encountered a partial success. The lysine-attached MDA pill functioned exactly as intended. It delayed the onset of the drug’s effects by roughly an hour and pushed the peak subjective experience further out in time while keeping physiological responses similar to standard MDA.</p>
<p>The lysine-attached MDMA pill produced absolutely no physical or psychological effects. Blood tests confirmed that the participants’ bodies were completely unable to separate the active MDMA from the lysine molecule. The researchers suspect the highly specific chemical shape of the MDMA compound prevented digestive enzymes from completing the process.</p>
<p>Because the researchers expected the lysine-attached MDMA to work, this biological failure accidentally created a second placebo session for the participants. The volunteers reported greater subjective drug experiences during this second unexpected placebo day than they did during their scheduled placebo session. They reported feeling elevated and stimulated simply because they anticipated taking a mind-altering substance.</p>
<p>This observation highlights the enormous power of expectation in psychiatric research. The physical and emotional shifts caused by expectant belief can easily cross over into the interpretation of clinical results. The researchers noted that knowing a placebo might be administered may limit the scientific utility of a control group in psychedelic trials.</p>
<p>The researchers also observed minor differences in how certain groups processed the drugs. Female participants reported slightly more extreme visual and time alterations than male participants. Women also reported more subacute adverse effects in the days following the MDA sessions.</p>
<p>Participant genetics also played a role in drug clearance rates. Individuals with a specific variation of the CYP2D6 liver enzyme cleared the active chemicals from their systems at a slower rate. These poor metabolizers experienced a longer elimination half-life for the drugs and reported more exhaustion in the days following the study than participants with typical liver enzymes.</p>
<p>The specific trial features a few limitations that warrant attention in future studies. The researchers only tested a single dose of each substance. It remains entirely unclear how higher or lower amounts might shift the balance of prosocial and adverse effects.</p>
<p>The study also took place in a sterile clinical environment using healthy volunteers. People experiencing active psychiatric conditions might respond to the visual and emotional shifts of these substances in very different ways. Additionally, the trial used chemical mixtures rather than isolated drug variants, which can sometimes produce slightly distinct outcomes based on how they bind to brain receptors.</p>
<p>Future research will likely focus on tweaking the chemical structure of these molecules to maximize therapeutic benefits while minimizing adverse physical reactions. For now, the clinical data point to standard MDMA holding a more favorable psychological profile than its longer-acting chemical cousin.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02248-3">Acute effects of MDMA, MDA, lysine-MDMA, and lysine-MDA in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial in healthy participants</a>,” was authored by Isabelle Straumann, Patrick Vizeli, Isidora Avedisian, Livio Erne, Diana Noorshams, Ina Vukalovic, Anne Eckert, Dino Luethi, Deborah Rudin, and Matthias E. Liechti.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychology-researchers-identify-a-key-emotional-pattern-among-procrastinators/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Psychology researchers identify a key emotional pattern among procrastinators</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 27th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251415315" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychological Reports</a></em> has found that people who frequently procrastinate set meaningful personal goals and can vividly imagine achieving them, just like those who do not procrastinate. However, frequent procrastinators tend to experience higher anxiety about failing, particularly when it comes to short-term objectives. These findings suggest that procrastination is less about an inability to envision the future and more about managing the negative emotions associated with pursuing goals.</p>
<p>Procrastination is commonly viewed as a failure of self-regulation. It occurs when individuals delay important tasks even when they know the delay will bring negative consequences. Past studies link this behavioral trait to impulsivity and a preference for immediate rewards over distant payoffs.</p>
<p>This behavior relates to a concept known as temporal discounting, where the value of a reward decreases the further away it is in time. Because of this, people who procrastinate often choose a quick, easy activity over a difficult task with a delayed benefit.</p>
<p>Some researchers have proposed that people who procrastinate might struggle with episodic future thinking. This psychological concept refers to the mental process of creating detailed simulations of possible future events. Previous research indicated that heavy procrastinators might have trouble picturing generic future scenarios with clear sensory details.</p>
<p>The researchers conducting the current study wanted to see if this mental block applies to highly personal events, specifically the achievement of one’s own goals. They designed the study to explore how the tendency to procrastinate relates to the ways people mentally simulate their personal objectives. They specifically compared short-term and long-term goals to see if the timeline changes the emotional or cognitive experience.</p>
<p>“Research on procrastination has often been primarily psychometric – devising and testing personality scales to tell us how much of a procrastinator an individual is (the ‘who’ question). Where it has looked at underlying mental processes (the ‘why’ question), this has often been done for a narrowly defined category of tasks (very often academic ones),” said study author <a href="https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/our-staff/staff-profiles/helgi-clayton-mcclure.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Helgi Clayton McClure</a>, a lecturer in psychology at York St John University.</p>
<p>“We wanted to look at procrastination through the lens of personal goals – selected and defined by each person in the study as tasks which are important to them. This would allow us to identify characteristics of specific tasks that coincide with higher self-reported procrastination (e.g., level of anxiety about the prospect of failure) – beyond cognitive or motivational biases at the person level.”</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the scientists recruited 111 university students from the United Kingdom. The participants completed an online survey where they were asked to write down six personal goals. Three of these were short-term goals expected to be completed within one month, and the other three were long-term goals taking at least six months to achieve.</p>
<p>For each goal, participants rated several characteristics on a sliding scale from zero to 100. These included how much effort they intended to apply and how likely they were to deliberately avoid working on the goal. They also rated how important the goal was to them personally, their perceived likelihood of actual success, how much control they felt they had, and the overall difficulty of the objective.</p>
<p>Next, the participants engaged in a specific mental exercise. They imagined a future scenario in which they successfully completed each goal. They wrote brief descriptions of these achievement events.</p>
<p>Afterward, participants rated these mental simulations based on their sensory details, such as sights and sounds. They also rated their sense of autonoetic consciousness. This term describes the feeling of mentally traveling through time to directly experience an event in the mind’s eye.</p>
<p>The participants then rated their expected emotional responses to these goals. They estimated how happy they would feel upon success and how disappointed they would feel upon failure. Importantly, they also rated how anxious they currently felt when thinking about failing to achieve the goal.</p>
<p>To measure their general tendency to delay tasks, the participants completed a 12-item questionnaire called the Pure Procrastination Scale. This survey asks individuals to rate their agreement with statements about voluntary delay, such as running out of time or delaying decisions until it is too late.</p>
<p>The data revealed several distinct patterns regarding how procrastinators view their ambitions. As expected, the scientists found that individuals with high procrastination scores reported a greater likelihood of avoiding their goals. This avoidance tendency applied equally to both short-term and long-term goals.</p>
<p>High procrastinators also reported lower intended effort and a lower perceived likelihood of success compared to those who procrastinate less. They also viewed their goals as generally more difficult to accomplish.</p>
<p>Despite these negative outlooks, highly procrastinating individuals rated their goals as just as important as other participants did. They also expected to feel the exact same level of happiness upon completing their objectives.</p>
<p>When evaluating the mental simulations, the scientists found no differences based on procrastination levels. High procrastinators were fully capable of imagining their success with rich sensory details. They also experienced the same level of mental time travel during the exercise.</p>
<p>“We expected differences in sensory-perceptual detail (how vividly goal achievement could be imagined) between high and low procrastinators. Yet there was no evidence of these, unlike in another study based on imagining generic future events. This suggests that, when people can choose their own personally meaningful goals to focus on, being a ‘procrastinator’ does not necessarily mean having lower awareness of a positive future state (having completed the goal).”</p>
<p>The most prominent difference emerged in the emotional realm, specifically regarding anticipatory anxiety. People who scored high on the procrastination scale felt more anxious when contemplating goal failure. This aligns with the idea that procrastination is largely driven by a desire to avoid the negative feelings associated with a task. When thinking about a goal brings up intense worry, a person is much more likely to put off starting it.</p>
<p>This anxiety was especially pronounced for short-term goals. The scientists note that this might seem counterintuitive at first glance, as long-term goals are often perceived as more important and carry a heavier penalty for failure. However, for a high procrastinator, imminent deadlines tend to evoke a much stronger and more immediate emotional response. Short-term goals loom larger emotionally, prompting greater anxiety right now.</p>
<p>“The findings shine a light on the relevance of emotional anticipation, a fairly new concept emerging from the clinical literature, in the experience of procrastination. They suggest that a person’s tendency to procrastinate is not just about devaluing far-off rewards (‘I don’t need to work on that yet because the deadline is miles away’) or struggling to control competing impulses (‘I should be working on that but games/drinking/socialising are much more fun’).”</p>
<p>“Anxiety around goal failure may also be a hallmark feature of procrastination. This suggests that strategies for managing anxiety might be just as important as attempts to change people’s perception of distant rewards or help them manage impulses.”</p>
<p>While this research provides evidence for the emotional hurdles of procrastination, it does possess certain limitations. The study relied entirely on self-reported estimates of goal avoidance rather than tracking participants’ actual behaviors over time. A participant’s belief about how much they might avoid a task might not perfectly match their real-world actions.</p>
<p>The scientists suggest that future research should use longitudinal designs. These types of studies observe the same individuals over a longer period. This approach could track the exact steps taken toward goal completion to see how anxiety directly impacts daily action.</p>
<p>“I am currently conducting pilot work with my students looking longitudinally at what happens next: Do high procrastinators show decreased goal progress in real time, and how does that relate to some of the characteristics measured in this study? In the longer term, I plan to integrate this with my broader work on future-oriented emotions in clinical and non-clinical settings; and move towards potential intervention work in the context of motivation and goal pursuit in students’ higher education trajectories.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251415315" target="_blank" rel="noopener">High Trait Procrastination Predicts Increased Goal Anxiety Despite Invariance in Simulation of Goal Achievement</a>,” was authored by J. Helgi Clayton McClure, Stephanie Sayan, and Rachel J. Anderson.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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