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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/everyday-infections-not-vaccines-are-linked-to-an-increased-risk-of-childhood-stroke/" 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;">Everyday infections, not vaccines, are linked to an increased risk of childhood stroke</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 22nd 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Childhood stroke is a rare but serious medical event, and recent evidence suggests that everyday illnesses might increase the risk of it occurring. A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214704" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neurology</a></em> indicates that children who experience an infection have a higher chance of suffering a stroke shortly afterward, while recent vaccinations show no such association. These findings highlight the importance of infection prevention to help protect the vascular health of young people.</p>
<p>Strokes happen when blood flow to the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel bursts. While strokes in adults are often tied to conditions like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, children who experience strokes usually do not have these standard risk factors. Instead, childhood strokes tend to stem from genetic diseases, heart defects, or blood clotting disorders.</p>
<p>Scientists are increasingly looking into the role of infections as a potential trigger for these events. Previous small scale studies pointed to a possible link between childhood stroke and common illnesses, like respiratory infections. However, comprehensive data tracking entire populations over several years has been lacking.</p>
<p>The researchers wanted to establish exactly how common childhood stroke is in a modern population. They also sought to determine whether recent infections or recent vaccinations play a direct role in triggering these medical emergencies. Some past reports hinted at a potential risk following certain childhood vaccines, but the scientific community needed to see if those findings held up when tested on a much larger scale.</p>
<p>“While stroke is typically considered a disease of the elderly, it can actually occur at any age, including in children. We were drawn to explore childhood stroke in this study to fill knowledge gaps in the disease epidemiology, including on stroke incidence, contemporary trends, and associated risk factors,” explained study author <a href="https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/lachlan-dalli/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lachlan Dalli</a>, a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash University.</p>
<p>To conduct the study, the scientists analyzed health records from Victoria, Australia, covering the years 2017 to 2023. They looked at data for all residents aged twenty eight days to just under eighteen years old. This geographic area includes a population of roughly 1.4 million children.</p>
<p>The researchers used a secure system that links hospital admissions, emergency department visits, death registries, and national immunization records. This linked system allowed them to track severe medical events, recent illnesses, and vaccination histories for millions of young people over a long period.</p>
<p>Over the seven year period, the scientists identified 571 children who had experienced a stroke. About sixty percent of these events were ischemic strokes, which occur when a blood clot blocks blood flow to the brain. The remaining forty percent were hemorrhagic strokes, which happen when a weak blood vessel bursts and bleeds into the surrounding brain tissue.</p>
<p>To understand what might have caused these events, the scientists set up a matched comparison. They paired each stroke patient with up to five healthy control patients of the exact same age and sex. They ultimately matched the 571 cases of childhood stroke with a total of 2,734 control patients. These control patients had been admitted to the hospital during the same year for reasons entirely unrelated to a stroke.</p>
<p>The researchers also ensured the control group shared similar neighborhood wealth levels and pre existing medical conditions. This matching process helps to isolate the specific variables of interest, filtering out background differences in health and lifestyle.</p>
<p>The scientists then examined whether the children had recorded infections in the sixty days before their hospital admission. They looked for conditions like respiratory illnesses, stomach bugs, and more severe systemic infections. They also checked the national immunization register for any vaccinations administered in the forty two days prior, a timeframe commonly used in vaccine safety research.</p>
<p>The data showed that childhood stroke occurs at a rate of roughly 5.8 events per 100,000 children each year. The researchers noted that boys and infants under one year old had the highest rates of stroke among the studied population. Additionally, the scientists found that the overall rate of childhood strokes increased by forty two percent between 2017 and 2023.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest this increase might be due to better medical imaging and improved hospital coding practices over time. When looking at specific types of events, the rate for ischemic strokes was 3.7 events per 100,000 children. Meanwhile, hemorrhagic strokes occurred at a slightly lower rate of 2.1 events per 100,000 children.</p>
<p>Two out of every five children who had a stroke also had a documented infection in the two months leading up to the event. The most common illnesses reported were lower respiratory infections, upper respiratory infections, and widespread body infections known as sepsis. Other frequent illnesses included meningitis, which is a severe inflammation of the fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.</p>
<p>Upper respiratory viruses were particularly common among the children who experienced strokes. These included the coronavirus disease, respiratory syncytial virus, the influenza virus, and pneumococcal disease. Stomach bugs and urinary tract infections were also prevalent among the stroke patients.</p>
<p>When comparing the two matched groups, the scientists found that having a recent infection more than doubled a child’s odds of having a stroke. This elevated risk was strongest in the first two weeks following the onset of the illness. The association between infection and stroke was slightly higher for ischemic strokes than for hemorrhagic strokes.</p>
<p>Specifically, a recent infection increased the odds of an ischemic stroke by more than three times. The data suggests that the risk of an ischemic stroke remains elevated for up to six months after an infection. For hemorrhagic strokes, the elevated risk tends to fade after about two months.</p>
<p>“Our research shows that the risk of childhood stroke is not just immediate – it’s highest in the two weeks after an infection and stays elevated for up to six months,” Dalli told PsyPost. “This suggests that doctors and parents might need to think beyond the recovery period and watch for warning signs for stroke beyond the acute infection period.”</p>
<p>The scientists found no significant link between recent vaccinations and childhood stroke. Only about four percent of the stroke patients had received a vaccine in the weeks before their medical emergency. This vaccination rate was statistically similar to the rate seen in the healthy control group.</p>
<p>This finding provides reassurance regarding the safety of standard childhood immunization programs. It also highlights that the infections themselves pose a much greater risk to vascular health than the vaccines designed to prevent them.</p>
<p>While the study provides strong evidence linking infections to stroke, the scientists note several limitations. The reliance on hospital and government registry data means that mild infections treated at home were likely not counted. Because the data was anonymous, the scientists could not review individual medical charts to confirm exact diagnoses or the severity of the strokes.</p>
<p>This type of administrative record keeping could lead to some minor inaccuracies in how specific illnesses were classified. The scientists also point out that an observational study like this cannot entirely prove that the infections directly caused the strokes. It is possible that an abnormal immune system response or other unmeasured genetic factors contributed to the vascular issues.</p>
<p>Future research should investigate the specific biological mechanisms that might cause blood vessels to fail after an infection. Scientists also need to evaluate whether widespread vaccination programs might lower the long term incidence of childhood stroke. Preventing the very infections that tend to trigger these emergencies could be a viable strategy for protecting young patients.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214704" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Incidence of Childhood Stroke and Association With Recent Infection: A Population-Based Study Using Linked Data</a>,” was authored by Lachlan L. Dalli, Muideen T. Olaiya, Hannah J. Morgan, Monique F. Kilkenny, Michael C. Fahey, Mark T. Mackay, Dominique A. Cadilhac, Tzu-Yung Kuo, Seana L. Gall, Hazel J. Clothier, Jacqueline A. Boyle, John Mallard, Daneeta Hennessy, and Jim Buttery.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brain-waves-predict-the-intensity-of-psilocybin-trips/" 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 waves predict the intensity of magic mushroom trips</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 22nd 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A person’s natural brain wave patterns might offer a reliable preview of how intensely they will react to a dose of psilocybin. The resting electrical activity of the brain not only shifts dramatically during a psychedelic experience, but specific patterns present before taking the drug actively predict the psychological effects that follow. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2026.111626"><i>Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry</i></a>.</p>
<p>The active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, is currently under intense investigation as a presumed therapeutic agent. Clinical trials are testing its efficacy for depression, addictive disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Australia recently approved the drug for treatment-resistant depression in specific clinical settings.</p>
<p>Despite this clinical momentum, the exact ways the compound alters human brain function remain somewhat elusive. A major challenge in modern psychiatry is figuring out why people respond so differently to psychedelics. Finding a reliable way to anticipate these diverse patient reactions could help doctors identify which individuals are most likely to benefit from the therapy.</p>
<p>To investigate this, a team of researchers led by scientist Cheng-Teng Ip at the University of Macau centered their attention on analyzing the brain’s electrical signals. They wanted to see if specific electrical changes correspond to the intense perceptual shifts people experience while under the influence. By mapping these internal signals, the team hoped to find a measurable biological marker that relates to the emotional and psychological outcomes of the drug.</p>
<p>The researchers used an electroencephalogram, or EEG, which involves placing small sensors on the scalp to detect electrical activity. Brainwaves are classified by their frequency, measured in hertz. Low-frequency waves like delta and theta occur during deep relaxation and sleep.</p>
<p>Slightly faster alpha waves are typically dominant when a person is resting quietly with their eyes closed. Fast brainwaves, including beta and gamma waves, generally dominate the brain during periods of high alertness, cognitive effort, and intense concentration. By isolating these different bands, scientists can observe distinct modes of neural operation.</p>
<p>Researchers are particularly interested in a brain system called the default mode network. This network consists of several interacting brain regions that are highly active when a person is resting and daydreaming, but relatively quiet during focused tasks. Prior imaging studies point to this exact network as a primary target for psychedelic compounds.</p>
<p>The study involved twenty-five healthy adult volunteers, consisting of eighteen men and seven women with an average age of twenty-four. The investigators used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design. This means each participant attended two separate sessions, receiving either a precisely measured capsule of psilocybin or a placebo on varying days. </p>
<p>Neither the participants nor the staff handing out the capsules knew which one was being given at any specific time. During each session, researchers recorded the participants’ resting brain activity for ten minutes before administering the capsule. They then took another ten-minute recording sixty minutes after the subjects ingested the capsule.</p>
<p>This post-administration recording was timed to capture the brain’s state right as the physiological effects peaked. The participants kept their eyes closed for five minutes of the recording and open for the other five, with the researchers focused entirely on analyzing the eyes-closed data. Once the recordings were complete, specialized software translated the surface electrical signals into a three-dimensional map of the brain’s gray matter.</p>
<p>After the drug effects subsided, participants completed an extensive survey known as the Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire. The survey asks individuals to rate their feelings along five primary dimensions. One dimension tracks feelings of deep unity, spiritual connection, and blissful mood. </p>
<p>Another dimension evaluates less pleasant sensations, like the frightening feeling of losing one’s identity and suffering from acute anxiety. The remaining dimensions measure visual distortions, auditory alterations, and the degree to which a person feels their overall vigilance and attention have been artificially reduced.</p>
<p>When analyzing the brainwave data, Ip and his colleagues found robust electrical differences between the active drug and placebo sessions. Under the influence of the psychedelic, participants experienced a marked decrease in the power of slow-frequency brainwaves. At the same time, the power of their fast-frequency beta and gamma waves increased broadly across the cerebral cortex.</p>
<p>This shift diverges from the typical electrical progression of the resting brain. Usually, when a person sits with their eyes closed, their brain produces rhythmic, slow alpha waves. The psychedelic compound appeared to interrupt this natural progression toward physiological relaxation. Instead, the brain produced rapid waves normally associated with processing new information, even though the participants were just resting in a quiet room. </p>
<p>The researchers suggest these fast gamma waves might be part of the active brain mechanics that generate the hallucinations and profound shifts in self-perception. When comparing the brainwave changes to the survey results, the team found broad positive correlations. The stronger the increase in fast brainwave activity across the temporal and limbic regions of the brain, the more intensely the volunteers rated their subjective experiences.</p>
<p>Feelings of cosmic unity and positive mood mapped closely to increased high-frequency activity in parts of the brain associated with memory and emotion. In contrast, anxiety and the frightening sensation of losing one’s identity were associated with increased activity in the visual processing centers at the back of the brain.</p>
<p>The team also examined how brain regions were communicating with each other. They observed increased connectivity within the default mode network during the psychedelic state. The connections between different nodes of this network grew stronger, especially in the higher-frequency ranges, indicating that the drug forces these distinct brain areas into tight synchronization.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most highly anticipated finding involved the baseline brain scans taken before anyone swallowed a pill. The researchers found that higher levels of fast brainwave activity in the frontal cortex before taking the drug predicted an intense psychological experience later on. The frontal cortex handles complex cognitive processing, abstract thinking, and future planning.</p>
<p>In addition, low baseline activity in certain memory-related regions also predicted stronger subsequent sensations of ego dissolution and vivid visual changes. The researchers propose that a person’s baseline state of cognitive and emotional readiness fundamentally shapes the depth of their psychological response to the compound.</p>
<p>A few technical limitations apply to this research. The study tracked a relatively small group of twenty-five people. Small sample sizes restrict the statistical power of an analysis and limit how broadly the results can be generalized to the wider public. Replicating the experiment with a larger group will help verify the consistency of these detected patterns.</p>
<p>Additionally, the experiment only enrolled healthy volunteers without psychiatric conditions. The brain wave dynamics of healthy individuals may operate differently than those of people experiencing severe depression or trauma. Researchers do not yet know if the brainwave predictions seen here will function the exact same way in clinical populations.</p>
<p>Future studies will need to test if these specific resting brainwave patterns can predict how well a patient responds to guided therapy. If they do, doctors could scan a patient before starting treatment to see if they possess the optimal brainwave profile for a successful psychiatric outcome. This would help medical professionals allocate resource-intensive psychedelic treatments to the patients most likely to experience a true therapeutic benefit.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2026.111626">Psilocybin-induced alterations in EEG power, connectivity and network dynamics in healthy subjects: Correlations with subjective experience and implications for therapeutic applications</a>,” was authored by Cheng-Teng Ip, Sebastian Olbrich, Mateo de Bardeci, Anna Monn, Andres Ort, John W. Smallridge, and Franz Vollenweider.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/smarter-men-possess-more-masculine-body-shapes-but-report-fewer-casual-sex-partners/" 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;">Smarter men possess more masculine body shapes but report fewer casual sex partners</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 22nd 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em>Evolutionary Psychological Science</em> suggests that intelligence in young men is positively linked to physical traits like grip strength and a masculine body shape. At the same time, the research provides evidence that higher intelligence tends to be associated with less promiscuous sexual behavior. These findings support the idea that cognitive ability and physical health may reflect an underlying general fitness factor, while also steering smarter men toward more monogamous relationship strategies.</p>
<p>The new study was motivated by the idea of a general fitness factor in humans. In evolutionary biology, there is a concept suggesting that overall genetic quality is expressed through multiple physical and mental traits at the exact same time.</p>
<p>This concurrent expression happens because certain genes can influence several seemingly unrelated physical characteristics or biological systems. This genetic phenomenon is known as pleiotropy. For example, a single gene might affect both a person’s immune system and their brain development simultaneously.</p>
<p>Some evolutionary scientists suspect that an individual’s total load of genetic mutations affects their entire body. Every person carries small genetic mutations, but having a lower total number of these mutations is generally considered advantageous. According to this perspective, people with fewer genetic mutations should naturally display better physical and mental functioning across the board.</p>
<p>Previous studies have provided evidence that intelligence shares a common genetic background with overall physical health, body symmetry, and even body height. Yet, the relationship between intelligence and evolutionary reproductive success remains complicated. Some past research suggests that highly intelligent people actually produce fewer children, which seems to contradict the idea that intelligence is a marker of high evolutionary fitness.</p>
<p>“There is a bit of a debate in the existing literature about how intelligence relates to general health as well as behavioral outcomes. Some research suggests that intelligence is just one manifestation of overall good genetic quality, so if someone has high intelligence they should also have good physical health, markers of good genetic quality such as having strong grip strength, and success in evolutionarily relevant life outcomes like mating,” said study author Tara DeLecce, a postdoctoral Researcher and special lecturer at Oakland University. </p>
<p>“Other research suggests that high intelligence may correlate with good physical health, but it is most useful for evolutionarily new problems, like taking IQ tests. Solving problems that have been common over ancestral human history, like finding a mate, should be more difficult with high intelligence. We wanted to clarify the relationships between intelligence, physical health condition, and mating success.”</p>
<p>The study involved a sample of young adult men attending a university in the American Midwest. The final analysis included 41 men, ranging in age from 18 to 33, who completed all parts of the laboratory procedures. An initial, broader dataset of 66 men from the same study was also used for some secondary statistical calculations. They chose to focus specifically on men because male reproductive history tends to show more physical and behavioral variation in evolutionary terms.</p>
<p>To measure cognitive ability, the scientists used a short form of a well-known psychological assessment called the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test. This test measures fluid intelligence, which refers to the ability to reason, recognize patterns, and solve new problems independently of prior learned knowledge. Participants completed a computerized task consisting of twelve visual pattern problems.</p>
<p>For each cognitive problem, the men had to select the correct missing piece to complete a complex geometric design. The researchers also assessed the participants’ sexual habits using a standardized questionnaire. They focused specifically on the behavioral section of this survey to determine how frequently the men engaged in casual, uncommitted sex.</p>
<p>This section asked questions about their actual sexual history rather than just their desires or attitudes. After completing the computer tasks in a private room, the men provided several physical measurements to an experimenter. An experimenter measured the circumference of each participant’s shoulders and hips using a standard tape measure.</p>
<p>They calculated the shoulder-to-hip ratio by dividing the shoulder measurement by the hip measurement. A higher ratio typically indicates a more V-shaped, muscular torso, which evolutionary biologists often view as a marker of physical health. The men also used a digital hand dynamometer to measure their physical grip strength.</p>
<p>The participants were instructed to pull back on the device as hard as they could while seated. They performed three strength tests for both their left and right hands, and the researchers recorded the average values in kilograms. Finally, the researchers recorded each participant’s height and weight using a digital medical scale to calculate their body mass index.</p>
<p>When analyzing the data, the scientists found positive associations between fluid intelligence and the physical measurements. Specifically, higher intelligence scores were linked to greater left-hand grip strength and a higher shoulder-to-hip ratio in the main sample of 41 men. When the researchers expanded their analysis to the larger group of 66 men, they found that both right and left grip strength were positively related to intelligence.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the study revealed a negative relationship between intelligence and casual sexual behavior. Men who scored higher on the cognitive test reported engaging in fewer promiscuous sexual acts. This suggests that while intelligence may signal physical fitness, it does not necessarily translate to seeking out a high number of casual sexual partners.</p>
<p>The researchers ran additional statistical models accounting for body mass index, ensuring that simple body size was not skewing the results. Even when controlling for overall body mass, the shoulder-to-hip ratio remained a marginally significant predictor of higher intelligence. The scientists noted that these physical and mental traits tend to group together as a single package.</p>
<p>The scientists grouped all these traits together using a statistical technique to uncover hidden underlying patterns in the data. This mathematical analysis suggested the presence of two main groupings, with one reflecting sheer physical muscularity and another reflecting an overall fitness factor. This overall fitness factor connected higher intelligence, a more V-shaped torso, and a lower tendency for casual sex.</p>
<p>While these findings provide evidence for a general fitness factor, the average person should avoid drawing absolute conclusions about intelligence and dating success. One might assume that reporting less promiscuity means smarter men struggle to find willing sexual partners. </p>
<p>However, the scientists suggest this pattern actually points to highly intelligent men succeeding more in monogamous, long-term relationships rather than casual sexual encounters. Evolving toward sexual exclusivity may be a more modern human strategy that requires higher intelligence to navigate successfully. </p>
<p>“Our findings more align with the idea that, at least among men, intelligence is related to physical health and/or good genes but is inversely related to promiscuous sexual behavior,” DeLecce told PsyPost. “Some may interpret this as increased difficulty with mating success. However, this might also suggest that men of higher intelligence are more likely to succeed in monogamous mating contexts.”</p>
<p>The study has a few limitations that require consideration. The most significant limitation is the small sample size of only 41 men in the main analysis. With such a small group, the findings might not represent the general population accurately. The sample was also mostly made up of college students from a single region, which limits how broadly the results can be applied to different age groups or cultures. </p>
<p>“These results should be interpreted with caution until they are replicated more widely,” DeLecce said.</p>
<p>Moving forward, scientists hope to explore how intelligence relates to specific dating contexts rather than just casual sex. Future research will likely test these physical and mental connections in larger, more diverse groups of people. Investigating how different mating environments interact with physical markers of genetic quality will help clarify the evolutionary role of human intelligence.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-026-00472-8" target="_blank">Associations Between Intelligence and Anthropometric Traits: Evidence from a U.S. Sample of Young Men</a>,” was authored by Tara DeLecce, Gavin S. Vance, Bernhard Fink, and <a href="https://toddkshackelford.com/" target="_blank">Todd K. Shackelford</a>.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/precommitment-can-lead-to-healthier-food-choices-under-stress-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Precommitment can lead to healthier food choices under stress, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 21st 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>An experiment involving psychology students showed that stress made them more likely to choose less healthy but tastier food. Precommitment to choose healthy foods counteracted that effect. However, in all cases, study participants chose tastier, but less healthy foods much more often than healthy, but less tasty foods. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2026.107754"><em>Psychoneuroendocrinology</em></a>.</p>
<p>Precommitment is a strategy in which a person makes a decision in advance to limit their future choices. It is used when someone expects that, in the moment, they may act against their long-term interests. By creating barriers or rules ahead of time, precommitment helps protect a person from temptation, impulsiveness, or weakness of will.</p>
<p>A common example is setting up automatic savings so money is moved before it can be spent. Another example is removing distractions before working, such as blocking social media or putting a phone in another room. In all these cases, precommitment helps align immediate behavior with longer-term goals. Precommitment can be personal, such as making promises to oneself, or external, such as signing contracts or using commitment devices.</p>
<p>One area where people often make choices that go against their long-term interests is when choosing what to eat and how much to eat. In such cases, people often choose tastier foods that are less healthy, rather than foods that are healthier but not as tasty. This happens particularly often when people are under stress, tired, or generally in a bad mood.</p>
<p>Lead study author Paul A.G. Forbes and his colleagues investigated whether precommitment can help people abide by their desire to eat healthily. They developed a procedure where participants viewed food items in advance and chose whether to remove the option of having less healthy food items later.</p>
<p>The final analysis included 29 psychology students (out of 35 initially recruited). Their average age was 22 years, and 25 were women. They completed two experimental sessions that were, on average, 16 days apart.</p>
<p>At the start of the study, participants completed an online questionnaire in which they rated 285 food items on how healthy, tasty, and tempting they found them to be. They also reported how often they ate different types of food and completed assessments of self-regulation of eating behaviors, impulsiveness, and metacognitive prospective memory.</p>
<p>Based on the results of the food questionnaire, the study authors created 96 pairs of food items consisting of one item that participants rated as healthier but less tasty and one item that they rated as tastier but less healthy. If participants never ate meat or fish, food items involving those ingredients were removed from the set before creating the pairs. In the end, the study authors created 96 pairs of food items for each participant individually.</p>
<p>Study participants completed the experiment twice, under two different conditions. One was the stress condition, during which participants alternated between keeping their hand in very cold water and having to complete a mental arithmetic task under pressure, while being made to believe that they were being recorded and while an experimenter was giving them negative feedback. This was designed to induce stress. In the non-stress condition, they immersed their hands in pleasantly warm water and did a simple counting task without anyone evaluating them. Each experimental condition included two runs of this treatment.</p>
<p>After the first stress induction or control procedure, participants completed the precommitment stage of the experiment. In this stage, they viewed food pairs created earlier. In some cases (called viewing trials), they were just shown a pair of foods. In other cases (the restriction trials), they were given the option to remove the less healthy foods from later choices. After this, they completed another run of the stress induction task (or of the warm water task, depending on the condition they were completing) and proceeded to the choice stage.</p>
<p>In the choice stage, participants again viewed the pairs of foods from the precommitment stage, but now needed to choose which food from the pair they would like to eat. In food pairs that were included in the viewing trials, both food options were available as potential choices. The same was the case with pairs from restriction trials in which participants did not choose to remove the less healthy item. However, in pairs where they did choose to remove the less healthy item, participants could only choose the healthy item.</p>
<p>Results showed that participants selected tastier, but less healthy foods much more often than healthier, but less tasty choices. In viewing trials, healthier choices were selected in 21% of trials, while this rose to 30% in restriction trials. However, it should be noted that, in the choice stage, in trials in which participants decided earlier to remove the less healthy food, they did not really have a choice—the only option was to select the healthy food item.</p>
<p>The results showed that participants’ propensity to choose less healthy but tastier foods increased when they were under stress. However, this effect was present in viewing trials (where participants initially just viewed the food pairs), but absent in restriction trial choices (where students had an option to remove the less healthy food in the earlier stage).</p>
<p>“The propensity to choose unhealthier but tastier food to eat increased with subjective stress, but this effect was counteracted by stress-related increases in precommitment. Thus, our findings show the effectiveness of precommitment under stress. This has important implications for interventions aimed at promoting healthier food choices, especially in stressful environments, that could particularly benefit individuals with lower dietary restraint,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychology of food choices. However, it should be noted that after deciding to exclude a food item in the precommitment stage, participants no longer had a choice in the choice stage in that particular trial. While this perfectly mirrors how precommitment works in real life—by forcing a healthier choice later on—it underscores that the success of this strategy relies entirely on the initial willingness to restrict one’s own options. Additionally, the study was conducted on a very small group of psychology students. Results of studies on a larger and demographically more diverse group might not be identical.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2026.107754">Precommitment promotes healthier food choices under stress,</a>” was authored by Paul A.G. Forbes, Candace M. Raio, and Tobias Kalenscher.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-long-shadow-childhood-adversity-predicts-combined-physical-and-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;">Childhood adversity predicts combined physical and mental illness in later life</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 21st 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Traumatic events during early life can cast a long shadow, substantially raising the risk that people will develop a combination of depression and chronic physical disease in their later years. By tracking thousands of older adults over time, researchers found that cumulative childhood adversity predicts a heavily increased burden of combined illnesses. The findings were recently published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.121169"><em>Journal of Affective Disorders</em></a>.</p>
<p>Health professionals define childhood adversity through a broad spectrum of negative experiences occurring before adulthood. These events include direct harms, such as physical abuse, emotional neglect, or severe bullying. The definition also encompasses household dysfunction, meaning a child might grow up witnessing domestic violence, living with a severely depressed parent, or experiencing extreme poverty. Public health estimates suggest that massive numbers of people globally carry the weight of these early difficulties into adulthood.</p>
<p>Medical researchers are increasingly focused on a specific health outcome defined by the co-occurrence of multiple ailments. This term refers to a patient suffering from at least one mental health condition, usually depression, alongside at least one chronic physical ailment, such as diabetes or heart disease. Facing just one of these conditions is difficult, but battling both simultaneously creates an extremely heavy burden.</p>
<p>Patients managing simultaneous physical and psychological illnesses typically face worse medical outcomes and reduced quality of life compared to people fighting a single disease. They often encounter higher healthcare costs and a steeper risk of physical disability. Mental health struggles can make it incredibly difficult for a patient to take daily medications, exercise, or attend medical appointments, which allows physical diseases to rapidly worsen. At the same time, the physical pain and exhaustion of a chronic disease can easily deepen a patient’s depression.</p>
<p>Xing He, a population researcher at Peking University in Beijing, led the investigation alongside corresponding author Chao Guo. The research team noted that prior investigations largely focused on populations in high-income Western countries. These earlier assessments also tended to look at mental health and physical health in isolation rather than tracking how they develop together.</p>
<p>The researchers identified a need to observe these patterns within China, a country with a rapidly aging population. Adults in China who are currently in their later years experienced unique societal and economic circumstances during the middle of the twentieth century. These historical environments may have exposed this specific generation to exceptionally high levels of early adversity.</p>
<p>To investigate the relationship between early trauma and late-life illness, the researchers designed a prospective cohort study. In this type of research, scientists recruit a large group of people and observe them over a long period to see how their lives and health change. The study relied on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative survey project. The final analysis included just over four thousand participants aged forty-five and older.</p>
<p>The scientists tracked the health status of these participants through multiple survey waves conducted between 2011 and 2018. During a special interview in 2014, the participants answered detailed questions about their early years. They reported on twenty different indicators of trauma spanning abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. The research team assigned each participant a score based on how many different categories of trauma they had experienced.</p>
<p>The researchers divided the participants into three distinct exposure groups. One group reported absolute zero childhood adversity. A second group experienced low levels of adversity, meaning they endured between one and three types of traumatic events. The third group reported high exposure, meaning they had faced four or more different types of childhood trauma.</p>
<p>The scientists also tracked the participants’ health diagnoses. The participants reported whether a doctor had formally diagnosed them with major chronic physical conditions, including hypertension, stroke, cancer, liver disease, or arthritis. Researchers also evaluated the participants for depressive symptoms using a standardized mental health questionnaire. The defining outcome for the study was the simultaneous presence of both a chronic physical disease and clinical depression during any follow-up survey. The researchers excluded anyone who already displayed this combination of conditions at the beginning of the study.</p>
<p>Over the course of the tracking period, slightly more than forty percent of the participants developed combined physical and psychological conditions. A distinct mathematical pattern emerged from the data. The likelihood of developing these co-occurring illnesses rose sharply alongside the number of childhood traumas a person had experienced.</p>
<p>Participants with low exposure to early trauma faced a twenty percent higher risk of developing simultaneous conditions compared to those with completely trauma-free childhoods. For participants in the high exposure group, the health risks ballooned. These individuals faced a fifty-six percent higher likelihood of navigating both depression and chronic physical illness in their later years.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed the developmental timeline of these illnesses to understand how they unfold. They found that childhood adversity frequently predicts the early onset of either depression or a single physical disease. Once an individual developed one of these initial health problems, they were deeply susceptible to crossing the threshold into combined illnesses. For people with high levels of early adversity, early-onset depression played a massive role in paving the way for later physical decline.</p>
<p>Traumatic experiences during formative years can fundamentally alter how the brain and body handle stress. Persistent exposure to hardship can keep the human nervous system in a constant state of high alert. This unrelenting stress response can elevate immune proteins tied to inflammation throughout the body. Over many decades, high levels of inflammation can quietly damage the cardiovascular system, disrupt metabolic functions, and wear down cellular defenses.</p>
<p>At the same time, childhood trauma can disrupt normal emotional development. This leaves people with fewer psychological resources to cope with the everyday challenges of adulthood. People dealing with the lingering effects of trauma might also turn to harmful coping mechanisms, such as smoking or heavy alcohol consumption, which are known to degrade physical health over time. By the time these individuals reach middle age, their bodily systems have endured decades of accelerated wear and tear.</p>
<p>The data also revealed differing impacts between the sexes. Women exposed to comparable levels of childhood trauma experienced a heightened risk for combined health conditions compared to men. The researchers suggested this disparity might originate from differences in biological sensitivity to stress, differing social coping mechanisms, and the heavy burden of gendered expectations. Both interpersonal traumas, like physical abuse, and non-interpersonal traumas, such as severe poverty, contributed substantially to the outcomes.</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledged limitations in their approach. The study design required participants to think back decades to recall childhood events. Human memory is often imperfect, and retrospective surveys always carry the risk of underreporting of painful memories. The researchers also narrowed their definition of mental health strictly to depressive symptoms. They did not incorporate measurements of anxiety or severe psychiatric disorders due to an absence of consistent data across all the different survey waves.</p>
<p>The team also relied on basic counts of physical diseases without applying statistical weights. This means they did not adjust their mathematical models to account for the varying severity of different physical ailments. A mild case of joint inflammation and a severely disabling stroke were counted the same way in the analysis. Finally, by excluding anyone who already suffered from combined conditions at the very beginning of the study, the research team might have inadvertently underestimated the true lifelong risk to the broader population.</p>
<p>The study highlights an intense need to integrate trauma screening into routine medical care for older adults. By identifying aging patients who survived difficult childhoods, medical providers might be able to offer tailored psychological support before an avalanche of physical illnesses takes root. Additional research will be needed to determine whether intensive therapy or community support programs can successfully break the chain between early trauma and late-life disease. Future investigations should also aim to include a wider spectrum of mental health disorders and incorporate disease weighting to better capture the realities of patient suffering.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2026.121169">The long-term impact of adverse childhood experiences on later-life physical and psychological multimorbidity: A prospective cohort study of middle-aged and older adults in China</a>,” was authored by Xing He, Mingxing Wang, Yushan Du, Ziyi Ye, Ying Yang, and Chao Guo.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/even-highly-antagonistic-people-find-immoral-peers-physically-unattractive/" 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;">Even highly antagonistic people find immoral peers physically unattractive</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 21st 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>People who possess antagonistic personality traits, such as manipulativeness and callousness, tend to judge immoral individuals more leniently than the average person does. However, new research published in the journal <em>Personality and Individual Differences</em> suggests this leniency has definitive boundaries, as antagonistic people still find immoral individuals less physically attractive. This provides evidence that antagonistic individuals are fully capable of recognizing moral shortcomings but may evaluate bad behavior less harshly to protect their own self-image.</p>
<p>Antagonistic personality traits, sometimes called dark personality traits, describe a broad category of self-centered behaviors, including aggression, entitlement, greed, and manipulativeness. Individuals who score high in these traits tend to lack basic empathy and often act callously toward others to get what they want.</p>
<p>Most people naturally distance themselves from individuals who lie, exploit others, or ignore established social norms. This avoidance behavior serves a practical evolutionary purpose, as avoiding harmful individuals protects personal safety and preserves cooperative relationships. Yet, past psychological work has revealed a pattern known as darkness tolerance, which is the tendency for people with highly antagonistic personalities to judge immoral behavior less harshly.</p>
<p>“One question concerns whether this reflects a genuine moral deficit (i.e., difficulty distinguishing right from wrong) or something more strategic, like self-defensive reactions (e.g., not condemning someone that is similar to the self). In this study, we wanted to see whether this tolerance extends to physical attractiveness judgments, which are known to be affected by the morality of the target but are less self-implicating,” explained <a href="https://sites.ua.edu/wphart/" target="_blank">William Hart</a>, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers conducted a detailed online experiment with 710 undergraduate students. The participants were told they were evaluating a local politician based on a short, random sample of non-policy interview responses. These responses were specifically designed and pilot-tested to make the fictitious male politician appear either highly moral or highly immoral.</p>
<p>In the moral condition, the politician’s hypothetical answers conveyed deep humility, fairness, and a genuine respect for others. In the immoral condition, the politician’s statements strongly reflected arrogance, extreme selfishness, and a highly manipulative nature. Participants were randomly assigned to read just one of these two distinct sets of interview responses.</p>
<p>After reading the assigned interview, the students rated the politician on three specific evaluative dimensions to measure their overall impression. These evaluative dimensions included how much the participant liked the politician, how similar they felt to the politician, and their perception of the politician’s overall morality. Participants responded to multiple survey items for each category using numbered agreement scales.</p>
<p>Following these initial character ratings, the participants viewed a photograph of the fictitious politician. The scientists utilized pre-tested images of men who were generally considered by the public to be moderately attractive. The students then rated the politician’s physical attractiveness on a scale from one to ten based on how handsome and good-looking they personally found him.</p>
<p>Finally, the participants completed comprehensive, standardized personality questionnaires to measure their own individual traits. These surveys measured traits across a wide spectrum from agreeableness to antagonism, as well as tracking their basic levels of honesty and humility. By statistically combining these survey scores, the scientists could accurately determine each participant’s overall level of interpersonal antagonism.</p>
<p>The findings revealed that almost all participants rated the moral politician much more favorably than the immoral politician across every single category. However, the researchers observed a different pattern specifically among the participants who scored higher in interpersonal antagonism. Antagonistic participants evaluated the immoral politician less negatively in terms of likability, similarity, and morality compared to highly agreeable participants.</p>
<p>This specific result conceptually replicated previous scientific findings regarding the presence of darkness tolerance in general character evaluations. Highly antagonistic people reliably showed a reduced preference for the moral politician over the immoral one when making broad judgments about personality. Yet, this established pattern of leniency shifted entirely when the participants were asked to rate the politician’s physical appearance.</p>
<p>The researchers found that all participants, regardless of their own personality type, rated the immoral politician as far less physically attractive than the moral politician. The leniency that antagonistic people showed in their character evaluations completely failed to carry over to their physical attractiveness judgments. The highly antagonistic participants were just as repelled by the immoral politician’s physical appearance as the highly agreeable participants were.</p>
<p>“More antagonistic individuals are not broadly more tolerant of others’ immoral behavior,” Hart told PsyPost. “Instead, this tolerance appears selective to evaluations of immoral others (e.g., liking and morality), but they still show the same basic reactions as everyone else when it comes to evaluating more immoral targets as less physically attractive than immoral targets.”</p>
<p>These findings provide evidence that darkness tolerance is unlikely to stem from an inability to distinguish right from wrong. If antagonistic people truly lacked a functioning moral compass, they would have displayed the exact same leniency in their physical attractiveness ratings. Instead, the experimental data supports the idea that darkness tolerance acts as a self-protective psychological shield for individuals with dark personality traits.</p>
<p>Antagonistic perceivers can readily recognize immorality, but they may subconsciously soften their character judgments to avoid feeling bad about their own similar flaws. At the same time, basic physical attractiveness judgments might serve as an automatic, gut-level warning system for the human brain. This automatic visual response helps push both antagonistic and non-antagonistic people away from potentially harmful individuals before defensive rationalizations can take over.</p>
<p>While antagonistic people display leniency in certain situations, the researchers emphasize that this does not mean they actually prefer bad behavior.</p>
<p>“The data do not suggest that antagonistic individuals lack moral understanding or like people that behave immorally. They clearly showed a preference for moral vs. immoral targets on both evaluative and physical attractiveness judgments; they are just a bit more lenient toward the immoral targets on the evaluative judgments but do not like these targets more than moral targets.”</p>
<p>One potential limitation of the study is its exclusive reliance on a small set of photographs depicting male politicians. The scientists note that future studies should include a wider variety of images, situational contexts, and target genders to see if the findings hold true in different demographic situations. Another limitation is that the sample consisted entirely of young undergraduate students, which might not perfectly represent the general adult population.</p>
<p>The scientists suggest that future investigations should attempt to replicate these exact procedures in a highly controlled laboratory setting to ensure superior data quality. They also recommend using timed response tasks to explore exactly how quickly these specific attractiveness judgments are formed in the brain. Exploring these fast-paced cognitive reactions could reveal even more about how antagonistic people navigate their daily social interactions.</p>
<p>Beyond studying these rapid visual responses, the researchers hope to directly test the ego-defense theory. “We need to nail down mechanisms, such as the role of self-defensive processes in producing darkness tolerance,” Hart said. “For example, would darkness tolerance be reduced or absent if antagonistic individuals felt more secure in their worth?”</p>
<p>The study, “Not too unlikable but still less attractive: Antagonistic people’s tolerance for immoral others ends at evaluating their physical attractiveness,” was authored by William Hart, Braden T. Hall, Joshua T. Lambert, Danielle E. Wahlers, and Bella C. Roberts.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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