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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/how-the-pace-of-your-breath-alters-the-way-you-see-faces-2026-03-20/" 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 neuroscience research shows how slowing your breathing alters your perception of the people around you</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 24th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Deliberately slowing down your breathing rate alters how accurately you recognize emotions on the faces of people around you, depending on whether you are inhaling or exhaling. This top-down influence of respiration on visual perception reveals that the rhythm of our lungs actively shapes brain networks involved in making snap judgments. The findings were recently published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.70369">European Journal of Neuroscience</a>.</p>
<p>The act of breathing sustains life by drawing in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. Beyond this baseline survival function, respiration also acts as an internal metronome for the nervous system. As the lungs expand and contract, rhythmic signals travel up into the brain, coordinating the electrical firing patterns of neurons. </p>
<p>Past studies suggest that humans perform slightly better on memory and spatial awareness tests during the inhalation phase of a natural breath. Slower breathing is also a common tool used in mindfulness and clinical settings to calm the nervous system. Many people voluntarily control their breathing to manage stress, yet the exact ways this conscious pacing impacts visual processing remain mostly unknown. </p>
<p>Shen-Mou Hsu, a researcher at National Taiwan University, and his colleague Chih-Hsin Tseng wanted to map the mechanics of this phenomenon. They designed an experiment to test if the pace of a voluntary breath could reach all the way into the visual system to alter how emotional information is processed. Measuring these effects during natural breathing is notoriously difficult. People tend to unconsciously change their breathing patterns when focused on a demanding laboratory task.</p>
<p>To circumvent this problem, the research team asked participants to match their breaths to visual cues on a screen. Thirty-one adult volunteers participated in the main study. They watched the screen for simple lines that instructed them exactly when to start inhaling and when to start exhaling. </p>
<p>The researchers tested two specific breathing speeds. The normal pace required participants to complete a full breath cycle in just over four seconds. The slow pace doubled the duration, pushing the participants to stretch one full breath over more than eight seconds. Because an exhale is naturally a bit longer than an inhale, the cues were timed to reflect this biological reality. </p>
<p>While maintaining these prescribed rhythms, participants were briefly shown pictures of human faces. These images flashed on the screen for just one tenth of a second at the exact midpoint of an inhale or an exhale. The participants then pressed a button to indicate whether they thought the face had a fearful expression or a neutral expression. </p>
<p>To create a genuine test of perceptual sensitivity, the researchers did not use standard photographs. They used software to digitally blend neutral faces and fearful faces together. The resulting images sat right on the boundary between the two emotions. This made the categorization task challenging, preventing the participants from getting every answer correct and allowing subtle drops or spikes in visual sensitivity to emerge. </p>
<p>While the participants viewed the faces, the researchers tracked their brain activity using magnetoencephalography. This is a neuroimaging technique that maps brain activity by recording the tiny magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the brain. The scanner allowed the team to watch how different neural networks cooperated in real time. </p>
<p>The behavioral results revealed a clear division based on the phase of the breath. Slowing down the breath hindered the participants’ ability to tell the difference between the fearful and neutral faces during an exhale. But during an inhale, a slow breath actually improved their visual sensitivity compared to the normal breathing pace.</p>
<p>The brain scans provided an explanation for this shifting performance. Brain cells communicate through rhythmic electrical pulses, commonly described as brain waves. Different speeds or frequencies handle different cognitive tasks. Slower waves help integrate information across the brain, while faster waves relate to active sensory processing and decision making. </p>
<p>During a standard breathing pace, the slow brain waves reliably lock onto the rhythm of the lungs. The physical movement of respiration synchronizes with the electrical activity in the brain. But when participants dragged out their exhales during the slow breathing condition, this link weakened. The brain waves essentially detached from the respiratory rhythm. </p>
<p>This detachment triggered a cascade of secondary effects. Because the slow brain waves were no longer tethered strictly to the breath, they altered how they communicated with the faster brain waves responsible for processing the visual image. The networks dedicated to interpreting the fearful faces responded differently under these new conditions. </p>
<p>Consequently, the brain became slightly less efficient at sorting the fearful face from the neutral face on a slow exhale. The internal neural signals became noisy, leading to a drop in perceptual accuracy. Interestingly, during a slow inhale, this specific uncoupling of brain waves did not happen in the same way, allowing perception to sharpen instead. </p>
<p>The researchers ran a separate control experiment to ensure that the physical effort of slow breathing was not blinding the participants. Thirty-one different people breathed naturally without prompts, and then breathed using the normal-paced visual cues. The brain wave differences between these two basic conditions were not statistically significant. This ruled out the possibility that simply paying attention to a screen prompt caused the observed changes in perception. </p>
<p>The team also checked to see if the volume of air or the heartbeat of the participants was driving the effect. The sheer amount of air inhaled did not fully explain the difference in visual performance. Cardiac rhythms, which can also influence brain activity, did not cluster in a way that could account for the results. </p>
<p>The study does include a few caveats that warrant further exploration. The researchers assigned fixed breathing rates to all participants. Because natural lung capacities and breathing speeds vary wildly from person to person, these prescribed rhythms might not have been a perfect fit for everyone. </p>
<p>Individualized breathing rates calibrated to each person’s resting baseline could yield even clearer answers. The volume of the breaths was measured with a sensor belt around the chest, which offers an estimate rather than an exact clinical volume. It is highly possible that other unexamined physiological factors play a part in altering visual perception. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this research suggests that the brain networks managing visual input are highly responsive to deliberate changes in the body. Slowing the breath does not just calm the nervous system. It ripples upward to reorganize how sensory evidence translates into a concrete behavioral response. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.70369" target="_blank">Slow-Paced Breathing Modulates Perceptual Sensitivity to Facial Expression</a>,” was authored by Shen-Mou Hsu and Chih-Hsin Tseng.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/feeling-angry-makes-people-more-likely-to-share-news-from-low-credibility-sources/" 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;">Feeling angry makes people more likely to share news from low-credibility sources</a>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2026.2647351" target="_blank">Cognition and Emotion</a></em> suggests that feeling morally angry makes people more likely to rapidly share misinformation online. The research provides evidence that anger causes individuals to act impulsively and pay less attention to the credibility of the news source. These findings offer insights into how emotional reactions on social media fuel the spread of false information. </p>
<p>Social media platforms are filled with false or misleading news designed to trigger strong emotional reactions. While previous work suggests that moral outrage plays a big role in spreading these false claims, the specific emotions involved are not entirely understood. Moral outrage is often treated as a single feeling, but it actually contains distinct emotions like anger and disgust. </p>
<p>Xiaozhe Peng, an associate professor at the School of Psychology at Shenzhen University in China, wanted to look at these specific emotions. “As the [lead researcher] of the Emotion and Communication Neuroscience Lab, I have long been interested in how emotions shape communication,” Peng said. “This project was motivated in part by repeatedly seeing how emotionally provocative content on social media can accelerate the spread of misinformation and sometimes even escalate into online aggression.” </p>
<p>“We wanted to understand which specific moral emotions are most responsible for this process,” Peng added. Psychological theories propose that persuasion happens through different mental routes. Sometimes people evaluate the actual content of a message, and other times they rely on mental shortcuts like emotions or the credibility of a news source. </p>
<p>The researchers designed their experiments to see how these mental shortcuts compete when people browse social media. In the first experiment, scientists recruited 223 participants from China through an online platform. The participants read 24 different news headlines that were modified to represent false information. </p>
<p>These headlines varied in the severity of the moral wrongdoing described, ranging from completely neutral actions to severe moral violations. The researchers also randomly assigned different levels of source credibility to the headlines, ranging from zero percent to one hundred percent credible. Before deciding how willing they were to share each headline, participants were prompted to focus their attention on specific details. </p>
<p>They were asked to rate either the accuracy of the news, the morality of the events, or nothing at all. The scientists found that people were generally more willing to share news from highly credible sources. They also found that severe moral violations increased people’s willingness to share. </p>
<p>This was especially true when the participants were prompted to focus on the moral aspects of the story. When participants were prompted to focus on either accuracy or morality, they relied less on the credibility of the source to make their sharing decisions. Directing attention to the content of the message reduced their reliance on the external credibility label. </p>
<p>The second experiment involved 116 university students and focused specifically on comparing moral anger and moral disgust. Participants read 18 false news headlines that described minor or severe moral violations. This time, the headlines were presented as coming from either a highly credible source or a low credibility source. </p>
<p>The scientists wanted to see how different emotional states influenced the sharing of these headlines. They asked the students to rate their current feelings of anger, their feelings of disgust, or their neutral attention. After this emotional prompt, the students rated their willingness to share the news. </p>
<p>The researchers found that participants prompted to feel anger were significantly more willing to share headlines from low credibility sources compared to the disgust and control groups. The disgust prompt did not increase sharing willingness compared to the neutral control group. This suggests that moral anger actively reduces a person’s reliance on credibility when deciding to share information. </p>
<p>“What surprised us most was how consistently moral anger, rather than moral disgust, drove sharing across studies,” Peng said. “Although both emotions are often grouped together under ‘moral outrage,’ they did not have the same behavioral consequences.” This aligns with theories suggesting that anger motivates people to confront issues, while disgust tends to motivate people to distance themselves. </p>
<p>The third experiment investigated the deeper cognitive processes behind how anger influences sharing decisions. The scientists recruited 63 university students to evaluate 36 true and false headlines. These headlines were paired with low, ambiguous, or high source credibility labels. </p>
<p>To create a strong emotional state, participants completed a memory task before evaluating the news. They wrote about a personal memory that made them intensely angry. After recalling this angry memory, they rated their willingness to share the different headlines. </p>
<p>The researchers used mathematical models to measure how fast participants made decisions and how much mental evidence they required before choosing to share. In psychology, these models help explain whether a person is making a slow, cautious choice or a fast, impulsive one. They track the speed of decision-making and the threshold of evidence needed to take action. </p>
<p>The models showed that the anger induction lowered the participants’ decision thresholds. This means the students required less evidence and less time to make the choice to share a headline. The feeling of anger caused participants to make faster, less cautious sharing decisions across the board. </p>
<p>“We also found that anger was associated with lower decision thresholds, suggesting that it can make people decide to share more quickly and with less caution,” Peng noted. The models also showed that anger did not change a person’s ability to tell the difference between true and false information. Instead, the emotion simply lowered the mental barrier required to hit the share button. </p>
<p>While this research provides evidence regarding the mechanics of online sharing, there are a few limitations to keep in mind. “Our studies were conducted in controlled experimental settings, and we measured willingness to share rather than actual sharing behavior on live social media platforms,” Peng noted. “That allowed us to identify mechanisms more precisely, but real-world online environments are more complex.” </p>
<p>The studies were also conducted entirely within a specific cultural context in China. “In addition, our samples came from a specific cultural context, so future work should examine how broadly these findings generalize across countries and platforms,” Peng explained. Emotional expression and differentiation can vary across different cultures, which might influence the results. </p>
<p>Scientists suggest that future research should test these mechanisms in more naturalistic settings. “One long-term goal is to better understand how specific emotions shape not only whether people share information, but also how they weigh cues such as accuracy, source credibility, and social signals when making that decision,” Peng stated. </p>
<p>The team also plans to explore ways to reduce the spread of false content. “We are also trying to develop interventions that target emotional and decisional processes, not just belief accuracy, for example, lightweight prompts that warn users when a post contains highly emotion-arousing or outrage-provoking content,” Peng added. “More broadly, we are interested in interventions that could reduce misinformation sharing without substantially disrupting user engagement on social media platforms.” </p>
<p>“One broader message of this study is that misinformation is not only a problem of false belief; it is also a problem of emotionally charged communication,” Peng observed. “Moral anger seems especially powerful because it is action-oriented: it pushes people toward expression, condemnation, and rapid dissemination.” “That makes it highly relevant for understanding why some misleading content spreads so quickly online,” he added. </p>
<p>“Together, our findings suggest that moral anger is a particularly potent driver of misinformation sharing,” Peng said. “People may share not only because they believe something is true, but because anger changes the emotional and decisional processes behind sharing and can even override more analytical evaluation.” </p>
<p>For people browsing social platforms, the researchers offer practical advice. “For everyday users, a practical takeaway is simple: if a post makes you instantly angry, that is exactly the moment to pause before liking, commenting, or sharing,” Peng advised. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2026.2647351" target="_blank">Moral anger accelerates misinformation sharing: evidence from experimental manipulations and hierarchical drift-diffusion modelling</a>,” was authored by Haoyang Jiang, Hongbo Yu, Shenyuan Guo, and Xiaozhe Peng.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychology-textbooks-still-misrepresent-famous-experiments-and-controversial-debates/" 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 textbooks still misrepresent famous experiments and controversial debates</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 24th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00221309.2025.2587151" target="_blank">The Journal of General Psychology</a></em> suggests that many introductory psychology textbooks continue to misrepresent scientific findings and repeat long-standing myths. While there have been modest improvements over the past few years, the research provides evidence that textbooks still struggle to accurately present controversial topics and historical events. This ongoing issue means that college students may be learning an oversimplified or biased version of psychological science.</p>
<p>In recent years, scientists have noticed a troubling trend in how psychology is taught to college freshmen. Many textbooks repeat scientific urban legends, which are famous but factually incorrect stories used to illustrate scientific concepts. Textbooks also tend to exaggerate the level of agreement among scientists on controversial issues, often leaning toward politically progressive viewpoints. </p>
<p>Researchers Jeffrey M. Brown of Texas A&M International University and Christopher J. Ferguson of Stetson University wanted to track whether these known problems were being fixed. They sought to evaluate if publishers had updated their materials to reflect the most accurate scientific evidence. </p>
<p>“I was chatting with my co-author, and he mentioned that he was reading about how the Stanford prison study appeared to be somewhat exaggerated,” Brown explained. “I then mentioned that I read something, some time ago, about the Kittie Genovese case and how the story was also exaggerated and left out some facts.”</p>
<p>Brown noted that the researchers had personal experience with topics like video game violence being covered poorly. He pointed out that textbook writers often misrepresented the strength and consistency of the evidence for one side of an ongoing debate, or simply ignored that a debate existed. </p>
<p>To avoid relying only on their own opinions, Brown and Ferguson first conducted a pilot study to identify which topics were most problematic. They reached out to psychology professors teaching at four-year colleges across the United States. The researchers randomly selected eight universities from each of the fifty states and invited one professor from each school. </p>
<p>Out of 393 solicitations sent out in the spring of 2018, 34 professors responded to the open-ended questionnaire. These professors were asked to list up to ten areas they felt were poorly covered in introductory textbooks. From these responses, the researchers identified eleven commonly mentioned topics for further review. </p>
<p>Some of these topics included historical events like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Kitty Genovese murder, and the Little Albert experiment. For instance, the Little Albert experiment is frequently cited to explain how humans learn fear, but historical reviews suggest the original study was highly flawed and largely unsuccessful. By treating these events as simple facts, textbooks might be passing down scientific myths. </p>
<p>Another historical myth evaluated in the study was the story of Phineas Gage. Gage was a railroad worker who survived a metal rod blasting through his brain, and textbooks often claim this accident permanently destroyed his personality. The textbooks tend to ignore historical evidence showing that Gage later recovered enough to work a job driving a stagecoach. </p>
<p>Other topics chosen for the study were controversial scientific debates, such as the effects of video game violence, corporal punishment, and evolutionary psychology. The researchers also included brain plasticity, which refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. Another topic was stereotype threat, which is the idea that people perform worse on tests when they feel they are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. </p>
<p>Armed with this list of eleven topics, the researchers examined 16 introductory psychology textbooks available in 2018. Two independent raters read the sections covering these topics and scored them on a four-point scale. A score of one meant the topic was not included, while a score of four meant the coverage was completely unbiased. </p>
<p>To determine bias for controversial topics, the researchers looked for one-sided coverage that presented a highly debated issue as an undisputed fact. For historical myths, bias was noted if the textbook presented a known falsehood as a factual event. For example, the Kitty Genovese story is often used to demonstrate the bystander effect, with textbooks claiming 38 people watched her murder and did nothing, even though historical records show this version is largely inaccurate. </p>
<p>The researchers found a high degree of bias across the 2018 textbooks. The books performed well on certain biological topics, sometimes by simply leaving them out entirely. In contrast, textbooks were much more likely to contain errors when discussing classic psychology experiments or sensitive social issues like stereotype threat and video game violence. </p>
<p>To see if things had changed, Brown and Ferguson repeated the exact same process five years later. In the spring of 2023, they collected and rated 18 newer introductory psychology textbooks. The scientists used the same scoring method to compare the two batches of textbooks over a five-year period. </p>
<p>The findings from the 2023 textbooks showed mixed results. For some topics, such as video game violence and the Kitty Genovese story, the accuracy of the coverage improved. However, the reporting on other topics, such as corporal punishment and brain plasticity, actually became more biased. </p>
<p>“I was surprised by the number of topics that we found where there still were problems,” Brown noted. “Things seem to have improved somewhat over the past 10 years, but poor reporting of some controversial topics remains.”</p>
<p>A major trend in the 2023 books was an increased tendency to omit problematic topics entirely. Rather than correcting the myths or exploring the nuances of a controversial debate, many textbook publishers simply removed the material. While this reduces the presence of false information, the researchers suggest that it represents a missed opportunity to teach students about the evolving nature of science. </p>
<p>While this research provides a detailed look at textbook accuracy, there are some limitations to consider. First, measuring bias can be subjective, even with a standardized scoring system. Brown pointed out that the biggest limitation is that the findings are based only on the assessment of two psychology professors.</p>
<p>“It would be great if there were some larger, and more honest, effort by groups such as the American Psychological Association to look into this issue,” Brown explained. “Unfortunately, the APA themselves have often released policy statements that were highly biased. So we hope that, in the future, the APA might change course and do better to lead by example, even if that means admitting a research field is muddled, or we don’t have a definitive answer.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, the researchers want students to be aware of these issues. “I would hope that the reader gains an understanding that some of the stories and research detailed in some Introduction to Psychology textbooks are only part of the full story or may not detail that some topics are more nuanced,” Brown stated. </p>
<p>He emphasizes to his own students that these historical controversies still led to robust bodies of research that impacted the field. “But, as they say, not everything you read in a book is true,” Brown added. “Unfortunately, that even goes for textbooks.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00221309.2025.2587151" target="_blank">Have Introductory Psychology Textbooks Gotten Better at Representing Psychological Science?</a>“, was authored by Jeff Brown and Christopher J. Ferguson.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/moderate-coffee-doses-do-not-cause-panic-attacks-but-may-alter-behavioral-choice-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;">A new study explores the boundary between everyday caffeine and panic</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 23rd 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>A standard cup of coffee will likely not trigger a panic attack in people diagnosed with panic disorder, though it may make them more likely to avoid uncomfortable situations. A new study published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/02698811251344692">Journal of Psychopharmacology</a> shows that consuming a moderate amount of caffeine does not elevate subjective anxiety levels in susceptible individuals. The research provides practical guidance for people managing their anxiety symptoms while navigating everyday dietary habits.</p>
<p>Panic disorder is a psychiatric condition recognized by sudden attacks of intense fear. These attacks bring a rush of physical symptoms, including a racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a feeling of numbness. People diagnosed with this condition also carry persistent worry about when the next panic attack might strike.</p>
<p>This worry often leads to maladaptive avoidance behavior. A person might stop going to the movie theater or the gym for fear that these environments will trigger a panic episode. By avoiding these places, the person misses out on rewarding experiences and loses the opportunity to learn that their physical symptoms are not actually dangerous.</p>
<p>Previous research into caffeine and anxiety has established clear negative effects at extremely high doses. Consuming more than four hundred milligrams of caffeine, roughly the equivalent of four or five cups of coffee, triggers panic attacks in about half of all people with panic disorder. These high doses also raise general subjective anxiety levels in healthy adults.</p>
<p>However, people rarely consume such massive amounts of caffeine in a single sitting. Clinical recommendations often advise patients with panic disorder to abstain from all caffeine entirely just to be safe. Yet, the effects of a typical serving size on this specific population have remained largely unexamined until now.</p>
<p>Psychology researcher Johanna M Hoppe at Uppsala University in Sweden led a team to investigate how a normal physiological dose of caffeine impacts people with panic disorder. Working with colleagues Johannes Björkstrand, Johan Vegelius, Lisa Klevebrant, Malin Gingnell, and Andreas Frick, she set out to measure both subjective anxiety and bodily arousal. They wanted to see if the stimulant changed how people reacted to stressful emotional tasks.</p>
<p>The team recruited twenty nine adults diagnosed with panic disorder and fifty three adults without any mental health conditions. All the participants were habitual low caffeine consumers. They normally took in less than three hundred milligrams of caffeine across an entire week, meaning they would not experience severe withdrawal symptoms during the study.</p>
<p>To participate, the volunteers abstained from all caffeine for thirty six hours. They then visited the laboratory for two separate sessions scattered a few days apart. During one visit, they received a capsule containing one hundred and fifty milligrams of caffeine, an amount broadly comparable to one and a half cups of coffee.</p>
<p>During the other visit, the participants received an identical placebo capsule containing an inert powder made of microcrystalline cellulose. The study used a double-blind trial design. This means neither the participants nor the researchers in the room knew which capsule was administered on which day.</p>
<p>After taking the capsule, participants rested for thirty minutes to let the substance absorb into their bloodstream. The researchers asked them to rate their subjective anxiety levels on a scale from zero to one hundred. They then engaged in a series of computerized emotional testing activities.</p>
<p>The first activity tested emotional reactivity. Participants looked at virtual photographs of faces displaying happy, fearful, or entirely neutral expressions. Simultaneously, they listened to matching audio clips over a pair of headphones, hearing noises like laughter, screams, or simple humming.</p>
<p>While the visual and audio stimuli played, the researchers measured the participants’ skin conductance response. Skin conductance tracks the slight variations in sweat gland activity on the hand, providing a biological marker for sympathetic nervous system arousal. This metric reveals how highly an individual’s fight-or-flight response is activated by what they are looking at.</p>
<p>Next, the volunteers completed an approach-avoidance conflict game. Participants were shown a series of virtual doors on screen and had to choose which one to open. Selecting a safe, neutral door yielded zero points but showed a calming image and sound.</p>
<p>Selecting a more threatening door offered a varying point reward, but it exposed the participant to unpleasant medical images or panic-inducing sounds like heavy panting. This forced a decision between earning a reward and avoiding a negative experience. The game measures costly avoidance, determining how often a person willingly gives up points just to stay comfortable.</p>
<p>Following the tasks, participants reported on their interoceptive processing. Interoception is the psychological ability to notice internal bodily signals like a beating heart or a sudden skipped breath. The researchers asked if these internal signals caused anxiety or impaired their ability to focus on the computer screen.</p>
<p>The results from the experiment contradicted the team’s initial expectations about anxiety generation. The moderate dose of caffeine did not elevate subjective anxiety levels during the resting period for either group. Out of the eighty two total participants completing both sessions, only one panic attack occurred, happening in a single patient during the face viewing task. </p>
<p>The skin conductance data showed that caffeine increased physical arousal across the board. Both the healthy adults and the adults with panic disorder sweat slightly more in response to the emotional faces when under the influence of the stimulant. However, the caffeine effects did not differ in magnitude between the two groups. </p>
<p>The approach-avoidance game revealed a distinct behavioral shift. When participants had taken the caffeine capsule, they were more likely to forfeit the game points to avoid the unpleasant images and sounds. This caffeine-induced increase in costly avoidance behavior happened equally for both the panic disorder patients and the healthy adults. </p>
<p>The researchers noted that patients with panic disorder already display more costly avoidance behavior at a baseline level compared to healthy peers. While caffeine increased everyone’s desire to avoid aversive stimuli, it did not uniquely target the vulnerable patient group. The stimulant simply amplified a basic human tendency to step away from stressful situations. </p>
<p>Participants also reported that caffeine impaired their external attention. They found themselves distracted by their own internal bodily sensations during the computer tasks. However, noticing these physical signals did not translate into a feeling of increased panic or overwhelming subjective fear.</p>
<p>The scientists concluded that normal serving sizes of caffeine are generally safe from an anxiety perspective for people with panic disorder. The stimulant does not seem to trigger the intense cognitive feedback loop that leads to full panic attacks at this dosage. A tailored medical approach regarding dietary habits might be more appropriate than universal recommendations to strictly abstain from all coffee. </p>
<p>Increased avoidance behavior could present unique challenges in a therapeutic setting. Exposure therapy requires patients to actively engage with the exact situations and external stimuli they fear most. If a morning cup of coffee makes a person more prone to avoid discomfort, they might struggle to complete their assigned therapy exercises. </p>
<p>The authors outlined a few caveats regarding their investigative work. Recruiting eligible participants proved difficult, resulting in a slightly small sample size. Many potential volunteers drank too much daily coffee or had overlapping mental health conditions that excluded them from the initial screening process. </p>
<p>The group of participants diagnosed with panic disorder was overwhelmingly female in this study. Future experiments with an evenly mixed group might clarify if biological sex alters how typical caffeine doses affect baseline anxiety levels. The reliance on purely subjective self-reports for interoceptive awareness offers another limitation that future biological tracking tools could resolve. </p>
<p>Future research should investigate a wider range of moderate caffeine doses. Testing daily consumption amounts between one hundred and fifty milligrams and four hundred milligrams would help identify the exact threshold where anxiety symptoms begin to spike. Until then, the choice to enjoy a mild cup of coffee seems to pose little acute risk for panic induction.</p>
<p>The study, “Acute effects of 150 mg caffeine on subjective, physiological, and behavioral components of anxiety in panic disorder and healthy controls – A randomized placebo-controlled crossover trial,” was authored by Johanna M Hoppe, Johannes Björkstrand, Johan Vegelius, Lisa Klevebrant, Malin Gingnell, and Andreas Frick.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/making-podcasts-instead-of-just-listening-to-them-might-help-medical-students-learn/" 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;">Making podcasts instead of just listening to them might help medical students learn</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 23rd 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A small experimental study in Germany compared medical students’ knowledge of a topic they learned by producing a podcast with their knowledge of a topic they learned by listening to a podcast. However, while one group showed better knowledge about the topic on which they produced a podcast, there were no differences between the two learning methods in the other group, making the overall results inconclusive. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70029"><em>The Clinical Teacher</em></a>.</p>
<p>Podcasts are digital audio programs that people can listen to on a phone, computer, or other device. They are usually released as episodes, often in a series focused on a particular topic. Podcasts can be about news, science, history, business, health, sports, storytelling, or simple entertainment.</p>
<p>People listen to podcasts to learn new things, keep up with current issues, or hear expert opinions and personal experiences. They can listen to podcasts while driving, walking, exercising, or doing chores. Some podcasts are educational and are used to explain complex ideas in a simple and accessible way. Others are mainly for relaxation, humor, or passing time in an enjoyable way. Podcasts can also help people feel connected to communities that share their interests or concerns.</p>
<p>Study author Matthias Carl Laupichler and his colleagues wanted to compare the effects of actively producing podcast recordings on medical students’ learning outcomes with **the** effects of passive listening to podcasts. They note that actively producing a podcast recording represents an example of active learning, an approach that is, theoretically, expected to be more effective than passive learning represented by listening to a podcast. The study authors also hypothesized that students’ level of knowledge of the topic they learned about **would** be better if the test was closer to the time of learning.</p>
<p>Study participants were 86 fifth-year students **at** a German medical school taking a pediatrics course. The study was conducted during their block internship weeks. The block internship is a mandatory course all medical students **at** that school must complete. They are usually assigned 1 week during a 13-week period to participate in it.</p>
<p>Students completed their study participation in small groups in different weeks of the academic year. Participation in this study was done on two days. During one day, students produced a podcast on their assigned topic, and on the other day they listened to a podcast on the second topic. There were two wider groups—students from one group produced podcasts on the topic of atrial septal defect and listened to podcasts on ventricular septal defect, while the assignment of topics was reversed in the other group. Atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect are two types of congenital heart defects. In the end, students took a mandatory paper-and-pencil exam that tested their knowledge about the two topics they produced podcasts or listened **to** in the scope of the experiment.</p>
<p>Results showed that the group that produced podcasts about atrial septal defect, but listened **to a podcast about ventricular** septal defect had better knowledge about the topic on which they produced podcasts. On the other hand, the second group showed similar levels of knowledge on the two topics. Students’ knowledge of the two topics tended to be better if the time when they produced podcasts or listened to them was closer to the time of the exam.</p>
<p>“The study’s findings provide initial evidence that student-led podcast production could add value to medical education. Clinical teachers might consider integrating active podcast production into courses characterized by high levels of student engagement**,” the** study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about active learning. However, the study authors note that the tests about the two topics students learned about in this experiment were very close to their summative final exam. Intensive learning for the final exam could have **leveled out their knowledge of the two experimental topics, potentially masking the differences between the two learning methods.** Additionally, although students passively listened to one of the topics, they actively answered questions about it **afterward, which** might have attenuated the differences between active and passive learning methods (producing vs listening to podcasts) used in the study.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70029">Influence of Active Production Versus Passive Consumption of Podcasts on Medical Students’ Learning Outcomes</a>”, was authored by Matthias Carl Laupichler, Alexandra Aster, Lara Soyubey, Gilda Masala, Greta Winkelhorst, Rike Remmert, Tobias Raupach, and Anthea Peters.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-suggests-dreams-function-as-a-multimotive-simulation-space/" 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 suggests dreams function as a “multimotive simulation space”</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 23rd 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://www.psycnet.org/record/2027-43104-001" target="_blank">Dreaming</a></em> suggests that our dreams function as a complex simulation space where we practice dealing with social challenges. These findings provide evidence that the deep-seated social drives that guide our waking lives, such as protecting our reputation or caring for family, also organize our nightly visions. The research indicates that dreams are not just random images but are instead structured around the same fundamental needs that have helped humans survive for generations.</p>
<p>Most previous research on sleep has focused on narrow functions. Some scientists suggested that dreams only help us practice for physical danger or help our brains process intense emotions. Other researchers looked at how dreams help us store memories from the day. This new study aimed to see if dreams reflect a broader range of human needs.</p>
<p>The scientists used a framework called fundamental social motives. This perspective suggests that human behavior revolves around specific challenges related to survival and reproduction. These challenges include things like finding a partner, keeping a job, or staying healthy. If dreams help us adapt to life, they should reflect these core social goals.</p>
<p>“I’ve always been fascinated by dreaming and what it might reveal about human behavior. The social motives framework offered a compelling lens because it provides strong explanatory power for understanding how fundamental human needs and goals may be reflected in dreams,” said study author <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-thomas-a87823128/" target="_blank">Frederick Thomas</a>, an assistant professor of psychology at Coker University.</p>
<p>The researchers collected 397 dream reports from a group of 315 people. These participants ranged in age from 18 to 64 years old. The group included college students as well as local community members. Most participants identified as European American, while others identified as African American, Latinx, or other backgrounds. </p>
<p>The researchers asked people to describe their most recent dream. This is a common method in sleep science because it helps ensure the details are as fresh and accurate as possible. It also provides a realistic look at what people are actually dreaming about in their everyday lives.</p>
<p>To analyze these stories, the researchers used a specialized tool called the Dream Motives Rating Scale. This tool allowed them to look for seven specific social motives within the dream narratives. They looked for self-protection, which involves escaping danger or physical aggression. They also looked for status, which involves things like competition, success, or the fear of failing in front of others. </p>
<p>Affiliation was defined as the need for friendship and belonging. Kin care involved nurturing or protecting family members, especially children. They also looked for disease avoidance, which includes feelings of disgust or worries about germs and illness. </p>
<p>Finally, the researchers tracked two types of romantic motives. Mate acquisition involves looking for a new partner or experiencing attraction. Mate retention involves jealousy, betrayal, or trying to maintain a current relationship.</p>
<p>Two different experts read every dream report. They rated the strength of each motive on a scale from zero to three. A score of zero meant the motive was absent, while a score of three meant it was the central theme. If a motive was the most important part of the dream, it was labeled the primary motive. </p>
<p>When the two experts disagreed on a rating, a third expert helped make the final decision. This process helped ensure the ratings were consistent across all 397 narratives. The researchers also used statistical tests to see how often these themes appeared.</p>
<p>The study found that dreams often involve more than one motive at a time. Self-protection and status appeared most frequently in the reports. These two themes often served as the main focus of the dream narratives. </p>
<p>Status motives showed up in dreams about being judged by a coach or failing a test. Self-protection motives were common in dreams about being chased or facing a threat from an ex-partner. These findings suggest that our brains prioritize survival and social standing even while we sleep.</p>
<p>Kin care and affiliation appeared at moderate rates in the study. The data showed that motives related to keeping a current partner were more common than motives related to finding a new one. This aligns with the idea that maintaining existing bonds is a constant concern for most adults.</p>
<p>Disease avoidance was the least common theme but was still present in many dreams. These stories usually involved feelings of contamination or worries about getting sick. These dreams often appeared alongside concerns about protecting family members.</p>
<p>The scientists compared the dreams of men and women to see if their concerns differed. They found that the motivational patterns were very similar across both groups. Men and women both dreamed about status and self-protection more than any other category. </p>
<p>This similarity suggests that these social concerns are a universal part of the human experience. These motives likely shape how everyone thinks, regardless of their gender. The researchers believe this points toward a shared evolutionary history.</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at how different motives appeared together. “We were surprised to find that dreams do not focus on just one type of motive, such as fear or stress. Instead, different motives tend to cluster together. For example, survival and caregiving themes often appeared together, while social and relationship-focused motives formed a separate grouping. This suggests that dreams may organize different kinds of social challenges in meaningful ways.”</p>
<p>This study helps move dream science toward a more complete model of how the mind works. By looking at dreams through the lens of social motives, scientists can see which life problems the brain finds most important. Dreams appear to be a way for us to rehearse challenges involving survival, reputation, and bonding.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that dreams are a “multimotive simulation space.” This means the brain uses sleep to practice many different social roles at once. By doing this, we might be better prepared to handle complex social interactions when we are awake.</p>
<p>“Dreams are not just strange or random experiences—they may serve an important function,” Thomas told PsyPost. “Our findings suggest that dreams connect our underlying desires and motivations to how we navigate the social world. I hope readers begin to see that dreams may be doing more than we typically assume.”</p>
<p>There are some limitations to this research that should be considered. The study relied on people’s ability to remember and describe their dreams, which can be difficult for some. Participants might forget certain details or change their stories when writing them down.</p>
<p>The experts also had to use their own judgment when coding the dreams. While they tried to be objective, human interpretation can sometimes vary. This is why the researchers used multiple coders and a third person to settle disagreements.</p>
<p>“While motives were coded systematically, interpreting dream narratives inevitably involves some degree of subjectivity,” Thomas noted. “Additionally, we did not assess life-history variables such as age, relationship status, or parenthood, which may influence certain motives like mate seeking, mate retention, or kin care.”</p>
<p>“Moving forward, we aim to incorporate more detailed life-history measures and use longitudinal designs to better understand how motivational priorities shift over time and across different social contexts.”</p>
<p>“Applying a well-established social motives framework to the study of dreaming is relatively rare,” Thomas added. “This approach allows us to move beyond narrow explanations and better understand how dreams may connect to real-world social behavior.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.psycnet.org/doi/10.1037/drm0000340" target="_blank">Dreams and Fundamental Social Motives: Evidence From 397 Narratives</a>,” was authored by Frederick Thomas, Katelynn Andrews, and Christien Leavitt.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/county-level-wealth-and-wages-are-strongly-linked-to-community-mental-health/" 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;">Is bad mental health an economic problem at its core?</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 23rd 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A broad analysis of community data from across the United States reveals that local economic conditions are strongly linked to the psychological well-being of residents. Findings published in the journal <i><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300939">PLoS One</a></i> show that variables like median household income and educational attainment account for the vast majority of differences in mental health rates between individual counties. The research highlights how geographic wealth disparities align with the psychological state of local populations.</p>
<p>Mental health conditions affect millions of adults in the United States every year. Beyond diagnosed psychiatric illnesses, general psychological distress acts as a risk factor for chronic physical ailments ranging from diabetes to cardiovascular disease. Widespread emotional struggles also extract a tremendous toll on the national economy through lost productivity and high clinical treatment costs.</p>
<p>Public health professionals increasingly view population well-being through a socio-ecological lens. This framework views human health as the product of overlapping environments, starting from individual biology and expanding outward to community resources and national policies. Within this model, financial stability and employment conditions represent major environmental forces that shape daily life.</p>
<p>To understand these forces systematically, researchers look at upstream drivers of health. Downstream interventions usually involve treating a single patient in a clinical setting after an illness has already developed. Upstream interventions aim to change the broader economic and social policies that distribute wealth, housing, and education across a society.</p>
<p>Michele L.F. Bolduc, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and her colleagues designed a study to map these upstream economic factors. They collaborated with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. The team specifically wanted to identify which financial metrics had the strongest association with poor mental health at the county level.</p>
<p>The investigators used data from 2019 to establish a baseline picture of the national economy. This specific timeframe was selected to capture structural economic conditions just before the global pandemic caused massive disruptions to both the labor market and public mental health. They gathered county-level statistics from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau.</p>
<p>The selected variables covered a wide range of community financial characteristics. These included unemployment rates, the percentage of remote workers, average commute times, and median home values. The researchers also looked at local measures of income inequality, the prevalence of public health insurance, and the proportion of residents receiving federal food assistance.</p>
<p>For their psychological metric, the team relied on population estimates drawn from a nationwide behavioral survey. Survey participants had been asked to estimate how many days out of the past month their mental health was not good, encompassing stress, depression, and emotional problems. The researchers tracked the percentage of adults in each county who reported experiencing more than 14 days of poor mental health in a single month.</p>
<p>Across the country, the average prevalence of poor mental health at the county level was about 16 percent. Regional mapping showed higher rates of psychological distress concentrated in Appalachia, the Deep South, and parts of the Southwest. Milder rates of psychological distress were generally observed in the Upper Midwest.</p>
<p>To make sense of the vast dataset, the research team employed a statistical technique known as dominance analysis. This method evaluates dozens of different variables and ranks them based on how strongly they explain the variations seen between different regions. The economic variables ultimately accounted for roughly 70 percent of the variation in poor mental health rates between counties.</p>
<p>The analysis identified four financial factors that stood out above the rest across the national landscape. These top variables were median household income, the percentage of residents relying on federal disability payments, the proportion of the population holding a college degree, and the percentage of households utilizing federal food assistance.</p>
<p>Median household income ranked as the most influential factor. Higher median incomes consistently correlated with lower rates of poor mental health. Greater financial resources allow households to secure safe environments, purchase nutritious food, and avoid the chronic psychological stress caused by material hardship.</p>
<p>Educational attainment also showed a substantial protective association. Counties with higher percentages of college graduates reported much better mental health outcomes. Advanced education generally provides pathways to jobs with better wages and health benefits, while also expanding social networks that might help buffer against emotional distress.</p>
<p>The data revealed a positive association between community distress and government assistance programs. As the proportion of residents using federal food benefits or disability income increased, the local prevalence of poor mental health also rose. This pattern likely exists because these assistance programs serve as indirect markers for dense poverty and pre-existing disabilities.</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that the financial aid provided by these government programs may not fully offset the psychological toll of living in persistent poverty. People qualifying for these benefits often face compounding hardships that money alone cannot instantly fix. The assistance is helpful, but the underlying economic struggle still registers as widespread communal stress.</p>
<p>The nature of local work environments also played a notable role in the findings. Counties where larger segments of the population worked from home saw lower rates of psychological distress. The researchers suggest that remote work limits daily distractions, provides a comfortable environment, and frees up time for family or personal meals.</p>
<p>Conversely, longer average commute times were linked to higher rates of poor mental health. The researchers theorize that spending extensive time navigating traffic limits personal leisure and actively increases daily tension. Extended commutes essentially drain the time and energy that people might otherwise use to relax or socialize.</p>
<p>The research team separated their data to look at urban and rural counties independently. While the core economic drivers remained mostly similar, a few distinct geographic differences emerged. The protective benefits of community wealth manifested differently depending on population density.</p>
<p>In urban centers, higher median home values correlated with better community mental well-being. Expensive city neighborhoods often feature abundant public parks, well-maintained recreational facilities, and superior medical care. High property values in a city generally translate into a built environment that actively promotes well-being and limits exposure to crime.</p>
<p>The two geographic settings showed opposing trends regarding public health insurance. In urban counties, widespread enrollment in public health insurance was linked to reduced psychological distress among the population. In rural counties, higher rates of public insurance enrollment were associated with higher levels of community distress.</p>
<p>The researchers interpret this rural anomaly as a sign of isolated poverty. In agricultural or remote regions, relying on public healthcare might simply mark extreme financial deprivation without the offsetting benefit of accessible medical facilities. Without enough local doctors to accept the insurance, the coverage cannot improve community health.</p>
<p>The authors note that relying strictly on individual therapy to solve the national mental health crisis is insufficient. The study results imply that systemic economic changes might be highly effective at improving psychological well-being. Expanding access to education or raising minimum wages could yield broad dividends for population health.</p>
<p>The researchers emphasized several limitations to their analytical approach. Because the study looks at a single snapshot in time, the models cannot prove that specific economic conditions directly alter community mental health. To establish a firm chain of cause and effect, future studies will need to track these same measurements over several years.</p>
<p>Additionally, the primary metric for psychological distress relied on a single self-reported survey question. This broad question captured everything from temporary work stress to severe, diagnosable psychiatric disorders. The researchers recommend that future investigations analyze how specific financial factors correlate with distinct clinical diagnoses like major depression or anxiety disorders.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300939">Economic factors associated with county-level mental health – United States, 2019</a>,” was authored by Michele L.F. Bolduc, Parya Saberi, Torsten B. Neilands, Carla I. Mercado, Shanice Battle Johnson, Zoe R. F. Freggens, Desmond Banks, Rashid Njai, and Kai McKeever Bullard.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
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