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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/new-study-explores-the-link-between-mystical-psychedelic-trips-and-a-reduced-fear-of-dying/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New study explores the link between mystical psychedelic trips and a reduced fear of dying</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 11th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2026.00477" target="_blank">Journal of Psychedelic Studies</a></em> has found that people who have had a meaningful psychedelic experience report a significantly reduced fear of death, alongside heightened feelings of connection to themselves, others, and the world around them. Furthermore, the degree of connection closely tracks the degree of relief from death-related fear.</p>
<p>Researchers have long argued that anxiety about dying sits at the root of a surprisingly wide range of psychological struggles, from depression to broader existential distress. Studies have observed that psychedelic experiences—first noted in terminally ill patients in the mid-20th century and later confirmed in modern controlled research—can drastically reduce this fear, though the mechanisms behind why this happens remain unclear.</p>
<p>One leading explanation is increased connectedness: a heightened sense of relationship to oneself, others, and the wider world. Because psychedelics reliably enhance these feelings, researchers sought to investigate whether greater connectedness might be one of the specific pathways through which psychedelics reduce the fear of death.</p>
<p>Led by Noah N. Barr at the University of Wollongong in Australia, the team recruited 106 adults (59 male, 44 female, 2 non-binary; average age 31 years) who had undergone a personally meaningful psychedelic experience using a classical substance. Psilocybin (the active compound in “magic mushrooms”) was the most common, though LSD, ayahuasca, DMT, and mescaline were also represented.</p>
<p>Using an anonymous online survey, participants reflected retrospectively on the three months before and the three months after their experience. They completed validated questionnaires measuring their fear of death, their tendency to avoid thinking about death, their sense of connectedness (to themselves, to others, and to the wider world/universe), and the intensity of any mystical-type experiences during their psychedelic session.</p>
<p>The results were consistent. Participants reported a significantly lower fear of death and significantly less death avoidance after their psychedelic experience compared to before. At the same time, they reported significantly greater connectedness across all three domains.</p>
<p>Crucially, the study found that these changes moved together. People who gained more in their sense of connection to themselves, to others, and to the world were more likely to have also experienced the greatest reductions in their fear of death. Stronger mystical experiences—characterized by feelings of cosmic unity and transcendence—were similarly associated with greater connectedness and a lower fear of death.</p>
<p>However, the findings became more complex when looking at death avoidance—defined as the tendency to actively keep thoughts of death out of conscious awareness. Increases in connectedness to oneself and to others were linked to lower death avoidance. But an increased connectedness to the world, as well as intense mystical experiences, did not predict lower levels of death avoidance. </p>
<p>The authors suggest this split points to two very different ways people process death after a trip. Feeling more connected to oneself and loved ones seems to promote genuine existential acceptance, where a person stops avoiding the topic of death and stops fearing it. </p>
<p>Conversely, intense mystical experiences may promote a “defensive shift.” A person who feels cosmically connected to the universe may stop fearing death, but they still actively avoid thinking about it—likely because the drug changed their metaphysical beliefs, allowing them to bypass human mortality by believing they will merge with the cosmos when they die. </p>
<p>“An important unresolved question is whether reductions in death anxiety following a psychedelic experience arise through defensive denialistic bypassing or through acceptance and integration of mortality,” Barr and colleagues concluded.</p>
<p>There are significant limitations to keep in mind. Chiefly, the study’s retrospective design—asking participants to recall and compare their mental states from months or years prior—is inherently vulnerable to recall bias, selective memory, and the tendency for a person to unconsciously exaggerate how bad they felt before a life-changing event to make the transformation seem more profound. </p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2026.00477" target="_blank">Exploring associations between connectedness and death anxiety following a psychedelic experience</a>,” was authored by Noah N. Barr, Briony Larance, Matthew J. Schweickle, and Sam G. Moreton.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/people-with-a-natural-tendency-toward-greed-face-a-higher-risk-of-gambling-problems/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">People with a natural tendency toward greed face a higher risk of gambling problems</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 11th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent psychological study suggests that people with a natural tendency toward greed are more likely to participate in gambling and experience negative consequences as a result. The findings indicate that greedy individuals tend to hold distorted beliefs about their chances of winning and their ability to stop playing. This research was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251315200" target="_blank">Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</a></em>.</p>
<p>The authors of the study sought to explore the specific psychological traits that might drive problematic gambling behavior. Joshua Weller, an associate professor in behavioral decision making at the University of Leeds, explained the rationale for the study. “Gambling is incredibly widespread and growing in scope in many countries,” Weller said. “For many people, it’s just entertainment, but for others, it can lead to the experience of real harms, from financial difficulties to impacts on relationships and mental health.”</p>
<p>Previous research has examined how broad personality traits relate to gambling problems. “A lot of research has focused on well-known personality traits like impulsivity or sensation-seeking,” Weller continued. “What struck us, though, is that one trait that feels very intuitively relevant, greed, hadn’t really been examined in real-world gambling contexts.”</p>
<p>The authors wanted to look specifically at dispositional greed, which is a personality trait defined by a constant, unquenchable desire for more. “Dispositional greed is essentially the tendency to always want more and feel dissatisfied with what you have,” Weller noted. “This can be felt not only for money and material things, but also non-material entities too like power, status, even social media ‘likes’.”</p>
<p>The researchers proposed that greedy individuals might be naturally drawn to gambling because it offers a seemingly quick way to acquire more wealth. “It seemed plausible that gambling, which promises the possibility of quick financial gain, might be especially attractive to people high in this trait,” Weller said. “So, we wanted to test the degree to which greed associates with how people gamble, and importantly, whether it’s linked to negative consequences.”</p>
<p>To investigate these ideas, the researchers conducted two separate studies using large groups of people from different countries. The first study involved a representative sample of 1,118 adults from the Netherlands. Participants completed surveys that measured their levels of dispositional greed and materialism. Materialism is a related concept, but it specifically involves placing high value on buying and owning physical goods.</p>
<p>The Dutch participants also answered questions about their gambling habits over the previous twelve months. The scientists asked them if they had participated in various types of games, such as lottery draws, scratch cards, sports betting, or casino games. They also completed a standard questionnaire designed to measure negative consequences associated with gambling.</p>
<p>The results of the first study provided evidence that dispositional greed is linked to broader gambling habits. The authors found that greedier individuals were more likely to engage in multiple different types of gambling activities. This association remained mathematically significant even when the researchers accounted for the participants’ levels of materialism. This suggests that the pure desire for more, rather than just a love of material goods, drives the behavior.</p>
<p>To get a more comprehensive understanding, the scientists conducted a second study in England, a country with a much larger and more established gambling market. This second study included a final sample of 4,783 adults. Some of these individuals were recruited from the general population, while others were specifically chosen because they had a stated interest in gambling.</p>
<p>In the second study, participants completed a short questionnaire to measure their dispositional greed. They also answered questions to measure their levels of motor impulsiveness, which is the tendency to act without thinking. The scientists wanted to make sure that greed had a unique effect on gambling, separate from simply being an impulsive person.</p>
<p>Participants then reported how often they gambled, the types of games they played, and how much money they had spent on gambling in the past fourteen days. To measure negative consequences, the respondents completed a widely used survey that asks people if they have chased their losses, borrowed money to gamble, or felt guilty about their habits. Additionally, the researchers asked the participants who gambled to answer questions about their thought patterns, aiming to measure several cognitive distortions.</p>
<p>The scientists found that higher levels of dispositional greed were strongly associated with a higher likelihood of gambling. Greedy individuals also tended to play more frequently and participate in a wider variety of gambling activities. In addition, dispositional greed was positively linked to higher scores on the measure of problem gambling severity. This means that greedy individuals were more likely to report negative financial and emotional consequences from their habits.</p>
<p>Weller noted the unique role of greed in these outcomes. “We were somewhat surprised that greed predicted gambling harm severity beyond impulsiveness,” he said. “Impulsivity is often treated as the central personality driver of risky behaviors like gambling, and greed itself has been linked to impulsiveness in the past. However, our findings suggest greed adds something distinct.”</p>
<p>The authors suspect that greed provides a distinct motivational push. “While acting quickly or without thinking may be related to gambling, especially in emotionally charged situations, the persistent drive to acquire more and one’s current dissatisfaction with their present condition, may support the drive to gamble as a way to satisfy both,” Weller said.</p>
<p>When looking at the psychological mechanisms involved, the researchers found that greed was closely tied to flawed ways of thinking. People with higher greed scores reported more positive expectations about gambling, mistakenly believing it would relieve stress or bring them happiness. They also exhibited a higher illusion of control, which is the false belief that personal skill can influence a purely random game of chance.</p>
<p>Weller summarized the broader implications of these cognitive patterns. “The key takeaway is that gambling behavior isn’t just about luck, being a risk-taker or being impulsive,” he said. “It’s also shaped by deeper motivational traits like greed. We found that people who score higher in dispositional greed are more likely to gamble, to gamble across more activities, and to experience more negative consequences from gambling.”</p>
<p>The cognitive distortions seem to fuel a harmful cycle. “What’s particularly interesting is how this seems to play out psychologically,” Weller added. “Greedier individuals were more likely to feel confident they’ll win, focus strongly on financial gains and downplay losses, and endorse distorted beliefs about gambling.”</p>
<p>This specific mindset might make it harder for individuals to walk away from a game. “So, at a broader level, the takeaway isn’t ‘greedy people gamble’,” Weller explained. “It’s that a greedy mindset can make gambling feel more appealing and potentially more difficult to disengage from. That’s important for both individuals and for how we think about prevention and intervention.”</p>
<p>Regarding the study’s scope, Weller pointed out some constraints. “Yes, there are a few that are avenues for future research,” he said. “First, these are mostly cross-sectional data, so we can’t say that greed causes gambling harms. It’s also possible that gambling experiences reinforce greedy thinking, or that both influence each other over time.”</p>
<p>The researchers also relied on self-reported survey data. “Second, we asked people to reflect on their gambling experiences and beliefs retrospectively, rather than investigating how greed was associated with actual gambling behavior as it unfolds, as in a casino or whilst making sports bets during a game,” Weller noted.</p>
<p>Another limitation relates to the types of participants involved. “Third, our samples were from the general population rather than clinical populations,” Weller added. “So, though we do see links with problem gambling indicators, we’re not directly studying diagnosed gambling disorder.”</p>
<p>Weller also warned against misusing the findings to shame individuals. “I would strongly caution the reader to avoid oversimplifying these results as ‘greed is bad and explains everything,'” he said. “As being ‘greedy’ is typically not viewed in a positive light, socially, placing the individual solely at blame for the experience of negative gambling consequences invites the potential for stigmatizing people experiencing gambling harms.”</p>
<p>Blaming the individual completely can create harmful barriers to recovery. “While personal factors may indeed account for more negative gambling consequences, it has the potential to square the onus of responsibility on the person experiencing harm,” Weller explained. “In turn, it could potentially lead to increased guilt and shame for these people and decreases in help-seeking when they need it.”</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers suggest looking at the broader context of gambling addiction. “It also might shift the focus to solely person-level intervention, rather than considering if more effective interventions could be realized at the industry and public policy level,” Weller said. “Greed is one piece of a much bigger puzzle that includes environment, access to gambling, life circumstances, and other psychological factors.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251315200" target="_blank">Hungry Ghosts Eat Casino Chips: Associations Between Dispositional Greed and Gambling</a>,” was authored by Joshua Weller, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Barbara Summers.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/lifelong-cognitive-enrichment-is-linked-to-a-38-percent-lower-risk-of-alzheimers-disease/" 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;">Lifelong cognitive enrichment is linked to a 38 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 11th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214677" target="_blank">Neurology</a></em> suggests that engaging in mentally stimulating activities and having access to educational resources throughout life can significantly reduce the risk of developing dementia. The findings indicate that building a lifelong habit of cognitive enrichment tends to delay the onset of memory loss and protects brain function. This protective effect appears to persist even when physical signs of brain disease are present in old age.</p>
<p>Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys memory and thinking skills. As the condition advances, individuals lose the ability to carry out the simplest tasks of daily living. The disease is characterized by physical changes in the brain, including the buildup of specific proteins that disrupt communication between brain cells.</p>
<p>Scientists have increasingly focused on ways to prevent or delay the onset of these devastating symptoms. Previous studies indicate that activities like reading, doing puzzles, and having a higher income in old age are associated with better brain health. However, examining only the later years of life paints an incomplete picture.</p>
<p>Andrea Zammit, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Rush University in Chicago, noted that previous research often misses early life influences. “Much of the existing research focuses on cognitive engagement in late life, but a love of lifelong learning is often fostered early in life,” Zammit explained. </p>
<p>“Activities in older adulthood capture only a snippet of the lifelong experiences that build risk and resilience in the aging brain,” Zammit told PsyPost. “I think, when possible, it is essential to study how experiences across the entire life course shape long-term outcomes.”</p>
<p>The researchers conducted this study to see how the total sum of a person’s lifelong environment and habits impacts their brain health. They wanted to evaluate if mentally enriching experiences in childhood and middle age contribute to a protective buffer against memory loss later in life. They also wanted to see if this lifelong enrichment protects the brain from physical damage or if it simply helps the brain function better despite the damage.</p>
<p>The scientists analyzed data from 1,939 older adults living in the Chicago area who participated in the Rush Memory and Aging Project. The participants had an average age of almost 80 years at the start of the study and did not have dementia. About 75 percent of the sample was female, and the individuals were generally highly educated.</p>
<p>Participants completed detailed surveys about their access to mentally stimulating resources at different stages of life. The researchers measured early life enrichment by asking about childhood socioeconomic status, which included parental education levels and the number of siblings in the home. They also asked about access to resources like globes or encyclopedias at age twelve and the frequency of being read to at age six.</p>
<p>Midlife and late life enrichment measures included questions about income levels and access to library cards or daily newspapers. The researchers also asked how often people engaged in activities like reading books, visiting museums, or playing games at age 40 and at their current older age. The scientists combined all of these answers to create an overall lifetime cognitive enrichment score for each person.</p>
<p>The researchers tracked the participants for an average of about seven and a half years. During this period, the older adults underwent annual clinical evaluations. They took an extensive battery of 21 tests to measure various aspects of their memory, perceptual speed, and spatial orientation.</p>
<p>During the follow-up period, 551 participants developed Alzheimer’s disease dementia. The researchers found that higher lifetime cognitive enrichment scores were associated with a significantly lower risk of developing the condition. Specifically, a one-point increase in the lifetime enrichment score was linked to a 38 percent lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>The study provides evidence that an enriched life delays the visible symptoms of cognitive decline. Participants in the highest 10 percent of lifetime enrichment scores developed Alzheimer’s disease at an average age of almost 94 years. In comparison, those in the lowest 10 percent developed the condition at an average age of just over 88 years, representing a difference of more than five years.</p>
<p>The authors also examined mild cognitive impairment, a condition where people experience a slight but noticeable decline in memory and thinking skills that is not severe enough to interfere with daily life. Among the participants, 719 developed this condition. Higher lifetime enrichment was associated with a 36 percent lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, delaying its onset by about seven years.</p>
<p>To understand what was happening inside the brain, the scientists looked at a subset of 948 participants who agreed to brain autopsies after they passed away. The researchers examined the brain tissue for physical signs of disease. They looked for things like amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which are the protein buildups typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>“The study shows that people who were engaging in more cognitive enrichment had a slower rate of cognitive decline, a lower risk of dementia, and when dementia happened, it was delayed by five years,” Zammit said. “The most surprising aspect was when a subset of participants died and went to autopsy, we did not find substantial associations with pathology, but we found that people who had engaged in more cognitive enrichment had a slower rate of decline even after we accounted for pathology in the brain.”</p>
<p>This means that highly enriched individuals maintained better memory and thinking skills despite having physical brain damage. This concept is known as cognitive resilience. The enriched environment seems to equip the brain to function reasonably well even when disease processes are actively occurring. “So even if a person has some brain changes due to Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain, cognitive enrichment may provide a bit of a buffer, meaning the brain can handle more wear and tear before symptoms appear,” Zammit explained.</p>
<p>The scientists looked at the specific life stages to see when enrichment was most helpful. They found that mental stimulation and access to resources during childhood, midlife, and late life each independently contributed to better brain health. However, engaging in mentally stimulating activities during middle age and older age was most strongly linked to a slower rate of memory decline over time.</p>
<p>Zammit hopes the public recognizes the cumulative power of these habits. She suggested the main takeaway is “that cognitive health in older age is shaped by a lifetime of learning and intellectual engagement.” </p>
<p>“While our findings suggest that cognitive enrichment at multiple points in life matters, maintaining lifelong enrichment may be particularly beneficial,” Zammit said. “Our study suggests that brain health develops over decades; however, our results also show that it’s never too early or too late to get mentally active.”</p>
<p>The authors suggest that public investments in mentally stimulating environments could have a major impact on public health. Programs that expand access to libraries, books, and extracurricular activities could help build cognitive resilience across the population. Interventions targeting disadvantaged youth or older adults might foster lifelong learning and reduce the overall societal risk of dementia.</p>
<p>While these findings are promising, there are a few potential limitations to keep in mind. The study relied on participants remembering and reporting their childhood and midlife habits, which can introduce memory biases. People might not perfectly remember how many books were in their house at age twelve or how often their parents read to them.</p>
<p>“A limitation of the study was that enrichment was based using self-reported measures, so people may not accurately remember their past activities,” Zammit noted. “And while the cohort was well characterized, it may not fully represent the broader population.” </p>
<p>The study sample consisted mostly of highly educated, white individuals from a single geographic region. This lack of diversity means the findings might not naturally apply to populations with different cultural backgrounds or socioeconomic realities. Future research needs to test these ideas in more diverse groups of people to see if the benefits of cognitive enrichment are universal.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, Zammit plans to broaden the scope of this research. “I’d like to explore other sources of enrichment that might also help in preserving later-life cognition, such as social engagement,” she said. “I would also like to investigate the biological pathways that may link these sources of enrichment to preserved brain and cognitive health in later life.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214677" target="_blank">Associations of Lifetime Cognitive Enrichment With Incident Alzheimer Disease Dementia, Cognitive Aging, and Cognitive Resilience</a>,” was authored by Andrea R. Zammit, Lei Yu, Victoria N. Poole, Alifiya Kapasi, Robert S. Wilson, and David A. Bennett.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-psychological-traits-that-build-an-extreme-personality/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">The psychological traits that build an extremist personality</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>A new psychological study suggests that an overwhelming need to earn social worth, combined with a belief in the superiority of one’s group, may lay the foundation for developing an extreme personality. The research highlights how these strong inner drives can lead individuals to sacrifice their own well-being for a specific cause or value. These findings were recently published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/frsps.2026.1714455"><i>Frontiers in Social Psychology</i></a>.</p>
<p>Extremism is traditionally viewed as a rigid adherence to an outside political or religious ideology. In recent years, psychological science has added a new perspective to the discussion, proposing an underlying motivational mechanism called the extreme personality. According to this framework, a moderate lifestyle is defined by motivational balance, where a person divides their attention relatively equally among their various daily needs and social obligations. In contrast, an extreme personality emerges when a single motivation becomes drastically over-amplified, pushing the individual to neglect other life aspects to satisfy a single obsession.</p>
<p>Lead author Pedro Altungy, a researcher at the Universidad Europea de Madrid, and a team of international colleagues wanted to understand the specific psychological drivers that tip people toward this extreme state of mind. They built their study on the foundation of a theoretical framework that traces radicalization to a deep desire for personal importance, or the “quest for significance.” This concept describes the basic human desire to matter, to be respected, and to have a recognized place in society. It is considered a universal motivation, but it can become dangerously intensified under certain conditions.</p>
<p>The research team distinguished between two aspects of this psychological need. One is a long-term, stable drive for recognition, known as the dispositional quest for significance. The other is a sudden, reactive state called significance loss. This acute feeling occurs when a person experiences a recent humiliation, failure, or episode of discrimination, leaving them hungry to reclaim their lost social status.</p>
<p>To restore their perceived importance, individuals often turn to their social identities. This can lead to collective narcissism, a belief that one’s group is exceptional but unfairly treated and unappreciated by outsiders. The researchers hypothesized that this volatile blend of personal insecurity and group superiority could make people willing to endure immense physical or emotional self-sacrifice. In turn, they predicted this combination of traits would correspond to higher scores on measures of an extreme personality.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, Altungy and his team analyzed survey responses from two distinct groups in Spain. The first group consisted of 328 adults from the general population, recruited through an online platform. The second group included 222 inmates residing in Spanish prisons who had not been convicted of terrorism-related offenses. The comparison allowed the researchers to see if the psychological pathways toward extremism were similar in everyday citizens and those who had already engaged in serious antisocial behaviors.</p>
<p>Participants completed a series of psychological assessments to measure their personal habits and beliefs. They answered questions tracking their general extreme personality tendencies, such as whether they pursue goals as if their life depended on it. The surveys also measured their long-term need for social importance and any recent feelings of humiliation or invisibility. Finally, the subjects rated their level of collective narcissism and indicated how much they would be willing to surrender for their highest personal value or their primary reference group.</p>
<p>By using statistical models to look for predictive patterns, the researchers found a distinct chain of traits in the general population. Data showed that both a stable desire for importance and a sudden loss of social worth were associated with higher levels of extreme personality traits. Individuals who felt an intense need to matter were also more likely to display collective narcissism. This exaggerated pride in their group was closely linked to a readiness to sacrifice their personal safety and comfort for their core values.</p>
<p>The statistical analysis laid out what the authors described as two unique sequences of behavior. The researchers termed the first sequence the dispositional path. This slow-burning trajectory begins with a long-term drive for social status, which gradually fuels the belief that one’s peer group is inherently superior to others. This inflated sense of collective identity then makes the individual highly willing to undergo suffering for the group’s highest ideals, heavily shaping the behaviors tied to an extreme personality.</p>
<p>A different psychological response, labeled the reactive path, emerged when subjects dealt with a sudden loss of personal status. When people felt recently humiliated, they were more likely to report an immediate willingness to suffer for a core value, bypassing the intermediate step of establishing group superiority. The authors suggest that making a dramatic sacrifice might serve as an impulsive coping mechanism. It allows the individual to swiftly restore a damaged reputation and broadcast a message of worth to social peers.</p>
<p>The survey results from the prison sample revealed a slightly different psychological landscape. While a need for personal importance and a strong sense of collective narcissism still predicted an extreme personality among the inmates, their willingness to sacrifice did not. In the statistical models, giving up well-being for a group or a value had no statistical relationship to the inmates’ extreme personality scores.</p>
<p>The study authors propose a few possible explanations for this absence among the incarcerated respondents. Inmates may feel that they have already paid a heavy toll through the actions that led to their arrest and conviction. Their current loss of freedom might have drastically reduced their interest in making any further personal sacrifices. Rehabilitation programs in the Spanish prison system could also be successfully altering how these individuals view the utility of destructive choices.</p>
<p>Several limitations accompany this psychological investigation. The study relies entirely on cross-sectional data, meaning all the information was reported by participants at a single point in time. Because of this design, the researchers cannot definitively prove that the desire for social worth strictly causes an extreme personality to develop. Establishing true cause and effect requires tracking individuals over extended periods to see which specific traits emerge first.</p>
<p>The measurement strategy itself holds several caveats. Data collection relied on self-reported questionnaires, a method that expects individuals to be entirely honest and objective about their innermost beliefs. Participants can sometimes alter their answers intentionally or unintentionally to appear more socially desirable to the analysts. This bias is known to be particularly common among prison populations, making it necessary to view the inmate responses with an understanding of secondary motives.</p>
<p>The study samples were also overwhelmingly male, with men comprising over ninety percent of both the general public and prison groups. This heavy gender imbalance makes it difficult to project the current results onto women, who often experience uniquely distinct social pressures, gender norms, and cultural schooling. Future investigations will require more balanced demographic pools. A broader geographic scope is also needed to test if these psychological patterns hold true across different countries and linguistic backgrounds.</p>
<p>Identifying the underlying mechanics of extreme personalities can help psychologists address social radicalization before it ends in criminal behavior. If an unmet desire to matter remains a core engine of extremism, providing constructive spaces for marginalized people to earn respect might defuse that dangerous trajectory. Helping individuals restore their perceived social worth through positive community engagement could act as a strong buffer against the lure of ideological self-harm.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/frsps.2026.1714455">How personal significance, collective narcissism, and willingness to sacrifice shape extreme personalities</a>,” was authored by Pedro Altungy, Ashley Navarro-McCarthy, Rocío Lana-Blond, Sara Liébana, Luis Carlos Jaume, Ewa Szumowska, Erica Molinario, Ángel Gómez, and Arie W. Kruglanski.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-age-you-have-your-first-child-predicts-your-long-term-educational-and-financial-success/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">The age you have your first child predicts your long-term educational and financial success</a>
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<p><p>Becoming a parent at a younger age tends to be linked with poorer long-term financial, educational, and physical health outcomes that only begin to level out if a person delays having a child until their late twenties or early thirties. A recent study published in the journal <em>PLOS One</em> provides evidence that having a child early in life disrupts standard life transitions, creating persistent disadvantages that follow parents well into adulthood. These findings suggest that public support programs aimed at young parents might be more effective if they included individuals up to age thirty.</p>
<p>Scientists <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanmacd/" target="_blank">Jordan MacDonald</a> and David Speed designed this study to explore the specific age at which the negative impacts of early parenthood begin to stabilize. Previous research typically placed teenage parents into a single rigid category, which ignored the exact age a person had their first child. </p>
<p>For MacDonald, a psychology researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick, the motivation to pursue this topic was highly personal. “I became a father at 17, and across school, work, social groups, and many other areas of life, I noticed that people often held quite pessimistic views of teen parents,” MacDonald said. “At the time, I found myself wondering why societal attitudes toward teen parents were so negative.”</p>
<p>“As I found my way into academia and research, I was naturally drawn to questions about teen parenthood,” MacDonald explained. “When I began reading the existing literature, I realized that even the scientific research had important limitations.”</p>
<p>MacDonald noticed that the scientific literature favored the experiences of young mothers. “Much of it focused primarily on young mothers, often excluding teen fathers entirely, and many studies treated teen parents as a single, uniform group,” MacDonald said. “For example, someone who became a parent at 17 might be grouped together with someone who became a parent at 14, even though those experiences may be very different.”</p>
<p>“Recognizing these gaps led me to examine how the age at which someone becomes a parent, as well as gender, may be associated with different long-term outcomes,” MacDonald noted.</p>
<p>Early parenthood is often linked to various societal challenges, such as poverty, limited access to contraception, and lower quality education. Cultural and religious backgrounds can also influence a young person’s choices regarding family planning. While teenage pregnancy rates are trending downward in Canada, parents under the age of 25 still accounted for nearly ten percent of all new parents in the country in 2023.</p>
<p>To investigate these long-term patterns, the researchers analyzed data from the 2017 Statistics Canada General Social Survey. This nationwide survey collects self-reported information on family topics from people across Canada’s ten provinces. The final sample included 6,282 adults who had biological children. The scientists calculated the exact age each participant was when their first biological child was born.</p>
<p>The researchers excluded parents whose oldest children were adopted or stepchildren. This decision ensured they were accurately measuring the impact of entering parenthood at a specific biological age. Adopting a teenager at age thirty, for instance, would falsely categorize someone as a very young parent if the child’s age was simply subtracted from the parent’s current age.</p>
<p>The researchers examined several distinct life outcomes to build a broad profile of each participant. These measures included educational achievement, personal income, household income, self-rated physical health, self-rated mental health, and overall life satisfaction. Participants reported their highest level of education and their total income before taxes. They also rated their general physical and mental health on a scale ranging from poor to excellent.</p>
<p>To analyze the data, the scientists used a statistical technique called restricted cubic spline regression. This tool allows researchers to model curved relationships in data rather than assuming changes happen in a straight line. By doing this, they could pinpoint exactly when life outcomes started to improve or flatten out as the age of parenthood increased.</p>
<p>The scientists found that the age of parenthood is heavily linked to educational success. Only about 40 percent of people who became parents at age 16 achieved any education beyond high school. As the age of first-time parenthood increased, the likelihood of completing post-secondary education rose rapidly. This upward trend in educational success tended to plateau around age 31, after which the gains were much smaller.</p>
<p>A similar pattern emerged for financial stability. Individuals who had their first child at age 16 had the highest probability of falling into the lowest income bracket, earning less than 25,000 Canadian dollars a year. The probability of earning a higher personal and household income increased significantly as people delayed having children. The financial benefits of waiting to have a child leveled off between the ages of 26 and 31.</p>
<p>Household income showed highly pronounced patterns at the upper end of the earning scale. People who had a child at age 16 had the lowest probability of living in a household earning 125,000 Canadian dollars or more. The chance of reaching this top income bracket sloped upwards for those who delayed parenthood, peaking for individuals who had their first child around age 29. After age 29, the probability of reaching this highest income bracket slowly declined.</p>
<p>The researchers also discovered that having children at younger ages was associated with poorer self-rated physical health. People who became parents in their teens or early twenties reported worse physical health later in life. This negative association improved steadily for those who delayed parenthood, stabilizing around age 26. Mental health followed a straighter pattern, with older first-time parents reporting slightly better mental health overall without a specific plateau.</p>
<p>Interestingly, life satisfaction did not seem to change based on the age someone became a parent. People reported similar levels of overall happiness regardless of when they had their first child. The authors suggest this might be due to a clustering of high scores. The average response for life satisfaction was around eight on a ten-point scale across all groups, which might have masked subtle differences.</p>
<p>“The findings show that the younger someone is when they become a parent, the more likely they are to experience long-term challenges, including not finishing high school, reporting poorer health, and having lower income across the lifespan,” MacDonald said. “These patterns were similar for teen and young fathers and teen and young mothers.”</p>
<p>The authors caution that these results highlight systemic barriers rather than personal failures. “However, these findings do not mean that teen or young parents cannot succeed,” MacDonald explained. “They mean that success may become much more difficult without support.”</p>
<p>“Some people may interpret these findings as confirmation of pessimistic views about teen and young parents,” MacDonald continued. “I would encourage them to think about the issue more meaningfully. Teen and young parents, regardless of how they became parents or whether others approve of their situation, are not ‘doomed to fail.’ But they may face much greater barriers if the people and institutions around them do not offer support.”</p>
<p>Providing structural and community assistance appears to be a necessary step for these young families. “Teenagers and young adults are more likely to succeed when their communities support them,” MacDonald said. “Their futures, and the futures of their children, are shaped in part by how parents, teachers, adults, schools, and communities respond to them.”</p>
<p>“Contraception and sexual education are important tools for preventing unwanted or early pregnancies,” MacDonald emphasized. “But once a young person has become a parent, the response should not be judgment and abandonment. We would not say to a child with a broken foot, ‘I told you not to do that, good luck fixing it.’ In the same way, we should not say to a teen or young adult with a child, ‘I told you not to do that, good luck in life.'”</p>
<p>The findings provide evidence for a concept known as liminality theory. A liminal period is a transitional phase in life, such as moving from high school to adulthood or shifting from living with parents to living independently. When a person takes on the demands of parenthood during one of these sensitive transitions, their personal development can stall.</p>
<p>Because of this disruption, a young person might struggle to finish their education or establish a career. The researchers suggest that young parents often become stuck in the specific phase of life they were in when they had their child. This prolonged disruption leaves lasting impacts that follow the young parent for the rest of their life, well beyond their teenage years or early twenties.</p>
<p>The scientists also addressed potential misinterpretations of the study. “I want to be clear that this research is not encouraging teen parenthood or suggesting that teenagers should be having children,” MacDonald noted. “Becoming a parent as a teenager or young adult is clearly very challenging.”</p>
<p>“The purpose of this research is to better understand the challenges that teen and young parents face after they have become parents, and to highlight the importance of support rather than stigma,” MacDonald added.</p>
<p>There are a few limitations to the study to consider. The sample included a significantly higher number of women than men in the younger parent categories. The researchers suggest that some young fathers might not have reported children they are disconnected from or unaware of. Geographic data also recorded the participants’ current location rather than where they lived when they became parents, and health metrics relied on self-reported perception rather than official medical records. </p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the large sample size and robust statistical methods provide strong evidence for the long-term impacts of early parenthood. The researchers plan to expand on this foundational data in upcoming projects. </p>
<p>“This study is the first in a series of studies I am conducting as part of my PhD dissertation,” MacDonald said. “I am currently working on the next stage of this research, which will look more closely at potential differences between teen and young fathers and teen and young mothers.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345799" target="_blank">Congratulations, it’s a risk factor! Varied social determinants of health at different ages of becoming a parent in Canada</a>,” was authored by Jordan MacDonald and David Speed.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brooding-identified-as-a-major-driver-of-bedtime-procrastination-alongside-physical-markers-of-stress/" 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;">Brooding identified as a major driver of bedtime procrastination, alongside physical markers of stress</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>People who stay up later than intended may have a weaker physiological capacity for self-control. A new study published in the <em>Journal of Health Psychology</em> links lower heart rate variability to greater bedtime procrastination.</p>
<p>Many individuals experience the temptation to prolong their use of digital devices, or complete further tasks, despite being aware that they should already be asleep—a behavior known as bedtime procrastination. Scientists have previously connected bedtime procrastination to difficulties with managing behavior and emotions. Individuals who struggle to prioritize long-term wellbeing over short-term enjoyment, or who have trouble regulating negative feelings, are thought to be more prone to pushing their bedtime later.</p>
<p>What has been less well understood is whether this tendency also has a measurable biological marker. A promising candidate is heart rate variability (HRV), defined as the natural variation in the time between heartbeats. Previous research has demonstrated that a higher level of this variability—particularly the component driven by the body’s calming “rest and digest” nervous system (the vagus nerve)—is associated with adaptability to stress and a greater capacity for self-control.</p>
<p>Hence, the researchers in the present study sought to examine whether this physiological marker, alongside self-reported difficulties with managing behavior and emotions, could predict how much someone tends to procrastinate at bedtime.</p>
<p>Lena Mareen Grabo and Silja Bellingrath of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany recruited 135 adults aged between 18 and 82 (with an average age of around 29; approximately 65% female). Participants first sat quietly for ten minutes while their heart rate was continuously measured using an accurate chest strap device. From this recording, the researchers calculated each person’s baseline level of heart rate variability.</p>
<p>Participants also filled out questionnaires reporting on how often they procrastinate at bedtime, how well they manage their own behavior and emotions, and how often they engage in specific thinking styles. These thinking styles included a tendency to “brood” (getting stuck in passive, repetitive, negative thought loops) versus “reflect” (purposefully thinking through problems to solve them). </p>
<p>The results pointed to a clear picture in which bedtime procrastination reflects challenges across multiple different aspects of self-control simultaneously. Individuals scoring higher on bedtime procrastination tended to have lower heart rate variability, greater difficulty regulating their behavior, and greater difficulty managing their emotions. Importantly, each of these three factors contributed independently to the prediction of bedtime procrastination.</p>
<p>When analyzing the specific ways people deal with emotions, a nuanced picture emerged. While using “cognitive reappraisal” (a deliberate strategy of reframing stressful situations in a more positive light) initially appeared to reduce bedtime procrastination, it lost its predictive power when other emotional habits were factored in. Ultimately, only “brooding” significantly predicted procrastinating at bedtime in the final model. Conversely, engaging in more reflective, problem-focused thinking did not show any link to delaying sleep. </p>
<p>The study also found that bedtime procrastination was moderately associated with both shorter sleep duration and worse sleep quality, reinforcing just how consequential this habit can be for nightly rest.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the study found no significant connection between a person’s biological heart rate variability and their self-reported measures of behavioral and emotional regulation. This suggests the different components of the self-control system operate somewhat independently, even though they all contribute to the same behavioral outcome. </p>
<p>“Taken together, the findings highlight bedtime procrastination as a problem of diminished self-regulatory capacity reflected in both physiological (lower heart rate variability) and psychological (poorer behavioral and emotion regulation) domains, yet they also suggest that self-regulation is not a unitary construct,” Grabo and Bellingrath concluded.</p>
<p>Some limitations should be noted. For example, the study was conducted at one point in time, and the researchers caution that it cannot reveal strict causality. It is possible that low self-control causes bedtime procrastination, which causes poor sleep, which in turn further depletes self-control the next day in a bidirectional loop. </p>
<p>The study, “Bedtime procrastination as a typical problem of self-regulation? Insights from the examination of heart rate variability, behavioral regulation and emotion regulation,” was authored by Lena Mareen Grabo and Silja Bellingrath.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/a-half-hour-of-aerobic-exercise-reduces-test-anxiety-and-boosts-cognitive-focus/" 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 half hour of aerobic exercise reduces test anxiety and boosts cognitive focus in students</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A brief session of moderate aerobic exercise can ease the psychological burden of test anxiety while sharpening the specific mental skills needed to ignore distractions. Researchers found that a quick run on a treadmill rebalances brain activity, helping students process conflicting information with greater speed and focus. The findings were recently published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2026.115250"><em>Physiology & Behavior</em></a>.</p>
<p>Test-related distress is a common experience that goes beyond simple nervousness. It involves intense worry, physical tension, a racing heartbeat, and scattered thoughts that arise before or during an evaluative situation. People facing this condition often struggle with a cognitive skill known as inhibitory control.</p>
<p>Inhibitory control is the brain’s ability to tune out irrelevant information and suppress impulsive responses. It acts as a mental filter that allows a person to focus on a test question rather than the ticking of a clock or their own internal worries. This mental barricade prevents distracting signals from derailing a person’s train of thought.</p>
<p>When psychological distress disrupts this mental filter, students become easily distracted by their own fears. Their brains dedicate precious processing power to managing the worry itself, leaving less energy available for actual problem-solving. This scattered focus degrades their academic performance and fuels even more worry. </p>
<p>The experience can create a loop of poor performance and escalating anxiety. To break this cycle, psychologists Lingfeng Wu and Renlai Zhou from Nanjing University designed an experiment to see if physical activity could serve as an immediate remedy. They wanted to evaluate whether an acute session of aerobic exercise could temporarily repair the mental filters of affected students.</p>
<p>The research team recruited forty university students who scored very high on an established anxiety questionnaire. These participants were randomly divided into two groups of twenty. One group was assigned to an aerobic exercise intervention, while the other served as a resting control group.</p>
<p>During the main phase of the experiment, the exercise group spent thirty minutes walking and jogging on a treadmill. The researchers continuously monitored the participants’ heart rates to ensure the activity remained at a moderate intensity. The control group spent the same thirty minutes sitting in a quiet room reading neutral, sports-related magazines.</p>
<p>Both before and after these thirty-minute sessions, the students underwent a specialized cognitive assessment known as the Flanker task. This computer-based challenge is specifically designed to measure a person’s inhibitory control abilities. </p>
<p>In the Flanker task, participants stare at a computer screen and wait for a row of five arrows to appear. They must quickly identify the direction the middle arrow is pointing, choosing either left or right. The challenge comes from the surrounding arrows, which act as deliberate visual distractions.</p>
<p>In some trials, all the arrows point in the exact same direction, making the response relatively easy. In other trials, the outer arrows point in the opposite direction of the center target. This creates a visual conflict that the participant must mentally override in order to choose the correct answer.</p>
<p>Throughout this task, the researchers recorded the students’ brain activity using an electroencephalogram. This device consists of a fitted cap with small sensors placed across the scalp to detect electrical signals in the brain. The scientists paid close attention to two specific brain wave patterns, known as the N2 and P3 waves.</p>
<p>To replicate the pressure of a real testing environment, the researchers manipulated the stakes of the computer task using a standard psychological tactic. They told the students that they were taking a highly reliable aptitude test that would successfully predict their future university performance. They also offered a cash reward for the top performers and informed the students that they were being recorded on video for expert analysis.</p>
<p>The results showed that the thirty-minute exercise session had an immediate, measurable impact. Students in the treadmill group reported lower levels of subjective anxiety on their questionnaires after working out. The control group saw no statistical difference in their self-reported anxiety levels.</p>
<p>The behavioral data from the computer task mirrored these emotional improvements. After exercising, the treadmill group became much faster at identifying the correct arrow direction across all trials. </p>
<p>More importantly, the exercise group showed a marked improvement in the difficult, conflicting trials. The reaction time gap between the easy trials and the hard trials shrank considerably. This reduction suggests a direct upgrade in their ability to filter out distracting, conflicting information.</p>
<p>Accuracy remained very high for almost all participants across both groups. The researchers note that anxiety usually damages processing speed rather than raw accuracy. The fact that the exercise group got faster without making more mistakes confirms that their overall processing efficiency genuinely improved.</p>
<p>The brain wave recordings provided an internal view of how the exercise changed the participants’ cognitive processing. The researchers looked first at the N2 wave, an electrical pulse that peaks just after a person encounters conflicting information. </p>
<p>In the exercise group, the electrical amplitude of the N2 wave became noticeably smaller after the treadmill session. A smaller N2 wave typically means the brain is exerting less effort to detect and manage conflicting stimuli. The physical activity seemed to make the brain’s early conflict-monitoring system run more smoothly.</p>
<p>The team also measured the P3 wave, which appears slightly later than the N2 wave. The P3 wave is tied to how effectively the brain allocates its attention to a given task. </p>
<p>After the treadmill session, the exercise group generated a much larger P3 wave. This expansion indicates a heightened capacity to direct mental resources exactly where they need to go. </p>
<p>The control group essentially spun their wheels. The brain wave readings for the seated control group were not statistically significant when comparing their before and after states. Their brains processed the conflicting arrows with the exact same level of effort and attention as they had during the baseline test.</p>
<p>The researchers attribute these mental shifts to the neurochemical changes sparked by physical exertion. Moderate aerobic activity prompts the brain to release chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These neurotransmitters help regulate mood and boost the function of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region heavily involved in higher-level reasoning and maintaining focus.</p>
<p>Lowering the students’ subjective anxiety likely freed up mental energy as well. When people aren’t dedicating active brainpower to worrying, they have more cognitive resources available to tackle the task in front of them without feeling overwhelmed.</p>
<p>While the results are promising, the research team noted several boundaries to their experiment. The study only monitored university students, entirely omitting middle and high school students who often experience the highest rates of academic distress. Future studies will need to test younger age groups.</p>
<p>The experiment also relied on an artificial testing scenario. While the researchers used cash prizes and video recordings to simulate stress, this setup does not perfectly mirror the emotional stakes of a real university exam. Tracking students during an actual testing week would provide more realistic data.</p>
<p>In addition, the study did not include a control group composed of students with low anxiety levels. Without this baseline, it is difficult to determine if the exercise brought the anxious students’ mental skills back to an average level or just elevated them slightly from a severe deficit.</p>
<p>Finally, a thirty-minute run is a temporary intervention. Even after the treadmill session, the students’ distress scores still registered moderately high. Researchers hope to investigate whether a consistent exercise routine, perhaps combined with psychological therapies, might offer a more lasting solution to academic anxiety.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2026.115250">Acute aerobic exercise improves inhibitory control in individuals with test anxiety: evidence from event-related potentials</a>,” was authored by Lingfeng Wu and Renlai Zhou.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-sheds-light-on-the-factors-that-make-people-talk-about-their-sexual-desires-and-histories/" 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;">Study sheds light on the factors that make people talk about their sexual desires and histories</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A meta-analysis of studies investigating sexual self-disclosure (i.e., how much people are willing to share about their sexual preferences, attitudes, and history) found that people generally seek to share important facets of their sexuality with their partners. Individuals who are more sexually assertive, more satisfied with sexual communication, and generally prone to self-disclosure were more likely to engage in sexual self-disclosure. The paper was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2025.2455543"><em>Journal of Sex Research</em></a>.</p>
<p>People often share information about their own sexual preferences, desires, boundaries, concerns, or difficulties with others. This is called sexual self-disclosure. Sexual self-disclosure occurs in romantic relationships, friendships, therapy, medical consultations, and research settings.</p>
<p>In romantic relationships, sexual self-disclosure is important because it helps partners understand each other’s needs, limits, and expectations. It can improve intimacy and sexual satisfaction when it happens voluntarily, respectfully, and in a context of trust. However, it can also feel risky because sexual topics are private and may expose a person to embarrassment, rejection, judgment, or the misuse of information. Many consider sexual self-disclosure to one’s romantic partner to be core to the development of the relationship, as it involves sharing crucial and sensitive facets of one’s identity.</p>
<p>Study authors Katie O. Knowles and Matthew D. Hammond conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the general level of people’s sexual self-disclosure to their romantic partners and test the extent to which self-disclosure might differ across different domains of sexuality. They also sought to identify the factors that act as facilitators or barriers to sexual self-disclosure. </p>
<p>To frame their research, the authors used Communication Privacy Management Theory. This theory suggests that people constantly manage the boundaries of their private information by weighing the potential benefits of sharing (such as increased intimacy) against the potential costs (such as a partner’s negative reaction or a blow to their own reputation). </p>
<p>To gather their data, the study authors searched published scientific databases—including PsycInfo, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database—for records using search terms like romantic relationship, self-disclosure, sex, and their various variants. They also included a set of terms related to the contents of sexual self-disclosure, such as preferences, problems, kinks, pornography, and attitudes.</p>
<p>Additionally, the authors searched the reference lists of the studies they found, emailed authors asking for unpublished data, and searched for studies using three commonly applied sexual self-disclosure scales. They also searched the Open Science Framework (a platform where scientists post data about their studies and study plans) for preregistered study plans and publicly available datasets. The search resulted in a total of 28 research reports presenting the results of 30 studies, encompassing data from 9,239 participants. </p>
<p>From the research reports, the study authors concluded that people, on average, tend to disclose a moderate-to-high amount of sexual information to their romantic partners. This included information about sexual attitudes and values, sexual history, sexual difficulties, sexual preferences, and solo-sexual behavior. Notably, there was no evidence that people disclosed sexual information of one type more than information of other types; people were just as likely to share their attitudes as they were to share their solo behaviors. </p>
<p>Individuals who reported greater sexual communication satisfaction, higher sexual assertiveness, and who were generally more prone to self-disclosure tended to engage in more sexual self-disclosure behaviors. Aside from these three, the study authors identified 14 additional psychological factors associated with greater or lower sexual self-disclosure. </p>
<p>Perceived higher threat to a partner or relationship, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety were associated with lower levels of sexual self-disclosure. Conversely, factors associated with higher levels of sexual self-disclosure included sexual satisfaction and frequency, relationship satisfaction, the (perceived) importance of sex and disclosure, and attitude similarity between partners. Interestingly, the researchers found that relationship length had no significant impact on how much a person disclosed. </p>
<p>“Our findings offer novel support for the theoretical claim that people seek to share important facets of their sexuality while retaining some privacy over their sexual information and suggest that people weigh the benefits against the costs of disclosing facets of their sexuality to their partners,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the ways people communicate their sexual attitudes, preferences, and needs. However, the study authors note that the studies they analyzed mostly included only a single member of a romantic pair and did not account for the dynamics of the couple or their broader social context. This limited the ability of the analyzed studies to fully capture the shared environment of participants’ relationships or the extent to which sexual self-disclosure was reciprocal.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2025.2455543">Meta-Analyzing People’s Self-Disclosure of Sexual Information to Romantic Partners,</a>” was authored by Katie O. Knowles and Matthew D. Hammond.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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