Some protestor tactics work better than others
While extreme protest tactics can bring more attention to a cause than moderate ones, they are more likely to undermine a movement’s popular support by alienating both neutral observers and supporters, suggests an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers conducted six online studies with 3,399 U.S. participants to assess how different types of protest behaviors influenced support for a variety of progressive and conservative social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti-abortion movement. The study found that more extreme behaviors—such as the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking highways and vandalizing property—were viewed as immoral. This perception weakened social identification with the movement, resulting in reduced support, even among those sympathetic to the cause. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000230opens in new window
Moral cleansing
People who publicly misbehave while being privately virtuous are seen as hypocritical, especially when their behaviors are inconsistent, suggests research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Across three studies, researchers presented 783 participants with vignettes about people publicly associated with harmful organizations who then act righteously in private. In some cases, these private acts appeared inconsistent with the individual’s public behavior—such as the owner of a factory farm making anonymous donations to improve animal welfare. In other cases, they did not—such as the same owner donating to help students attend college. In both cases, the owner is seen as hypocritical, but more so in the inconsistent scenario. In another study, 409 online participants reading similar vignettes suggested that such inconsistent behavior is likely driven by guilt. A final online study of 1,275 participants found that the more success individuals had in reducing their guilt, the more they were seen as hypocritical. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000195opens in new window
Crushing debt
Student loans diminish happiness more than mortgages or credit card debt, suggests research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Using survey data from 3,793 adults in the United States, as well as in-person and online studies of 2,015 adults, researchers determined participants’ forms of debt and their levels of life satisfaction. The research found a negative correlation between student loans and happiness, but not for mortgages or credit card debt. A separate online study with 1,008 participants revealed that people were more likely to label student loans as “debt” compared with mortgages and credit card loans. Another online study with 608 participants showed that people who were nudged to mentally label their student loan as debt had less life satisfaction than those who were encouraged to think about ways it was not a debt, but rather, say, an investment. DOI: 10.1037/xap0000276opens in new window
Does gaming hurt kids?
Most adolescents don’t experience negative long-term consequences from playing video games, according to research in Developmental Psychology. Researchers asked 385 U.S. adolescents who played video games to complete questionnaires about their emotions and behaviors once a year over a six-year period. The researchers found 72% of the participants had few pathological symptoms—such as excessive gaming and interference of gaming with other activities—across the six years. Further, 18% of participants started with moderate symptoms that did not change over time, and 10% showed increasingly pathological symptoms over time. Predictors of increasing video game pathology included being male and having low levels of prosocial behavior. Participants with increasing symptoms also showed increases in depression, anxiety, aggression, shyness and problematic cell phone use. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000939opens in new window
Mom can't hide her stress
A mother’s stress rubs off on her children, even if she tries to hide it, suggests research in the Journal of Family Psychology. U.S. researchers fitted 107 parents and their children ages 7 to 11 with electrocardiogram sensors to measure sympathetic nervous system activation. Parents were separated from their children and asked to complete a stressful task such as public speaking. The stressed parents were then assigned to either a “suppression” condition, in which they were instructed to hide their stress from their children, or a control condition. Upon the parents being reunited with their children, trained observers rated the interactions between them. The researchers found that parents and children in the suppression condition were less warm and less engaged with each other. There was also a significant link between a mother’s physiological stress and that of her children—a link that was not seen in the control group. Also, stress wasn’t transmitted from fathers to children in the suppression condition, but dads did pick up stress from their kids. DOI: 10.1037/fam0000664opens in new window
Contagious cooperation
People are motivated to do good deeds when they see someone else perform a helpful act, according to research in Psychological Bulletin. Analyzing 88 studies with 25,354 participants, researchers found that people generally tended to mirror others’ generosity, across different types of helping behaviors and different types of people in need of help. People in Asian countries were most likely to emulate others’ helping behaviors, followed by European, then North American countries. The researchers also found that people were more motivated to help after witnessing other people benefit from an act of kindness than when they themselves benefited, suggesting that adopting others’ prosocial goals outweighed other potential self-beneficial motives, such as being helpful as a way to show gratitude. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000235opens in new window
Stronger ego, fewer nightmares
People who are high on the psychoanalytic construct of ego strength are less likely to experience nightmares, according to research in Dreaming. Those with high ego strength are better able to tolerate unpleasant emotions and adapt to stressful situations. Researchers administered three surveys to 416 U.S. undergraduate students. They found that students who scored higher on a measure of ego strength tended to have fewer nightmares compared with students who scored lower. The researchers also found that ego strength was a better predictor of nightmare frequency than neuroticism or general psychological distress. DOI: 10.1037/drm0000118opens in new window
Young and lonely
Young people, men and people living in societies that prize individualism each report higher levels of loneliness, according to research in Personality and Individual Differences. Researchers analyzed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants ages 16 to 99 years, living in 237 countries, islands and territories, and representing a broad range of cultures, from more individualistic, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to more collectivist, such as China and Brazil. Younger men living in individualistic cultures were the most prone to loneliness. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110066opens in new window
Anxiety and trust
Anxiety may be associated with a reduced ability to adapt to negative and uncertain social conditions, according to research in Psychological Science. Researchers recruited 350 U.S. participants—about a quarter of whom had symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder—to play a trust game in which they exchanged money with another player, whose actions were controlled by an algorithm. Some algorithms were initially generous, then became less generous, while other algorithms started as less generous and then became more generous. The nonanxious participants’ playing behaviors shifted accordingly. But the participants who had anxiety symptoms were less likely to shift their behaviors in response to shifts in the algorithm’s behavior. To explain the results, the researchers developed a computational model that attributes to people with anxiety a lesser ability to learn from negative social events and in situations of uncertainty. DOI: 10.1177/0956797620910993opens in new window
A viral link to Alzheimer's?
A common virus that causes cold sores might also be responsible for Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study in Science Advances. Researchers reprogrammed human skin cells into neurons, grew them into three-dimensional structures and infected them with the herpes simplex virus HSV-1. The cells produced clumps of the protein beta-amyloid similar to plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. The cells also showed other characteristics of the disease, including increased inflammation and reduced electrical signaling. These effects were reduced when the cells were treated with an anti-viral medication. Such observations lend support to the theory that exposure to certain microbes could trigger Alzheimer’s disease. But given that HSV-1 infections are very common, it’s still unclear why the virus would trigger Alzheimer’s in some people but not others. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay8828opens in new window
Mental health and COVID-19
A study in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity points to the risk and protective factors for mental health problems linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between March 21 and March 28, 2020, 3,480 residents of Spain ages 18 to 80 completed an online survey that screened for various mental health symptoms. Overall, 19% showed a high level of symptoms for depressive disorder, 22% for generalized anxiety disorder and 16% for post-traumatic stress disorder. Women and younger people were more likely to have symptoms of these mental health conditions than men and older people. Loneliness was a strong predictor for these symptoms, while spiritual well-being was a strong protective factor. Also, those who had symptoms of COVID-19 or had relatives with the disease were more likely to have mental health symptoms. DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.05.040opens in new window
Knowledge during the pandemic
A person’s self-perceived knowledge about COVID-19—independent of their actual knowledge—can lead to greater emotional well-being, according to a study in Psychiatry Research. Researchers compared data about emotional well-being from two nationwide surveys in China, one administered in December 2019 before the pandemic and involving 11,131 adults, and the second conducted in February 2020 during the pandemic and including 3,000 adults. Participants in the second survey were also asked to evaluate their knowledge about how the coronavirus spreads, as well as their sense of control related to the outbreak. Finally, the researchers assessed participants’ actual knowledge of methods for preventing infection spread. The researchers found an overall 74% drop in emotional well-being during the pandemic compared with before. In addition, a higher level of self-perceived knowledge about infection spread predicted greater emotional well-being, but level of actual knowledge did not. The researchers found that this link of higher self-perceived knowledge with greater well-being was mediated by a higher sense of control. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113045opens in new window
Not falling for it
People believe they are less likely than others to fall for phishing scams, in which users are tricked into providing personal information, according to research in Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology. Across three online studies, researchers presented 1,013 participants with phishing scam emails. Half were asked how likely they would be to take the action the email requested—such as clicking links, updating passwords and downloading files. The other half were asked how likely “someone like them” would be to do so. The researchers also informed the participants of the percentages of people who have been taken in by similar scams. In a related study using eye-tracking technology with 160 participants, the researchers examined how often participants read such information about how often people are taken in. Overall, participants thought they were less likely than others to be duped. They also spent less time looking at the information about how often others have been scammed when considering their own behavior than when considering the behavior of others. DOI: 10.1080/23743603.2020.1756240opens in new window
More voices, more indecision
Large groups tend to respond more slowly to a crisis than small groups due to misinformation that impedes the sense of urgency, suggests research in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. In an online study, researchers divided 2,480 participants into 108 teams of various sizes, ranging from 10 to 60 individuals. Each team was asked to decide when they needed to “evacuate” during a simulated disaster. Within each team, an informant knew in advance details about the crisis and served as an “expert” on how to effectively deal with it. The researchers monitored communications among participants as the teams weighed their options. The larger groups took longer to respond to the crisis, often in ways that were not appropriate, due to the tendency of some people to discount or discredit the expert’s information. DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2019.0685opens in new window
Motivated forgetfulness
Selfish people preserve their moral self-image by misremembering their ethical lapses, according to research in Nature Communications. Researchers presented 112 participants in Switzerland with a pot of money and asked them to keep some of the money and give some to strangers. Even with a financial incentive to remember accurately, stingier participants recalled being more generous than they actually were. In another pair of in-person and online studies, 838 participants were asked what they thought was a fair distribution of money before dividing the pot. Only participants who had given less than what they deemed fair recalled giving more money than they actually did. A final pair of online studies with 1,288 participants showed that participants only misremembered their stinginess when they felt responsible for their decisions. When participants were instructed by the researchers to give less, they remembered their giving behavior accurately. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15602-4opens in new window
Pain suppression
A small portion of the amygdala blunts pain by dampening the activity of multiple pain-processing regions of the brain, suggests research with mice in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers used fluorescent markers to hunt for brain regions activated by surgical anesthetics. This search led to neurons in the central region of the amygdala. Using a technology called optogenetics to activate these neurons in healthy, awake mice, the researchers were able to suppress the rodents’ responses to painful stimuli. Silencing the neurons caused mice to react to nonpainful touch as if it were painful. Next, the researchers traced the neurons’ connections to more than 20 other brain regions involved in processing sensory and affective aspects of pain. Activating the central amygdala neurons decreased pain-related activity of neurons in many of those areas. The research findings may help identify nonopioid treatments for chronic pain. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0632-8opens in new window
Authoritarian beliefs
The belief that the future is predetermined plays a role in right-wing authoritarianism, suggests a study in the Journal of Research in Personality. Across three studies, researchers surveyed 20,929 adults, primarily from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. They found that people who believe their futures are predetermined by fate score higher on measures of right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and social conservatism. Right-wing authoritarianism is a tendency to submit to political authority, while social dominance orientation reflects a preference for inequality among social groups. The researchers also found that fatalistic beliefs were associated with having aversions to ambiguity. Finally, people who believed that one’s genetic makeup determined their future also tended to score higher on measures of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation—but not economic conservatism. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2020.103957opens in new window
