New take on extraversion
An initial study in the Journal of Individual Differences suggests that people vary in the degree to which extraversion is triggered by interaction with others who are friendly to them. Researchers assessed 75 undergraduate students in the United States for extraversion and then had them report on their social interactions over a 3-week period. Results show that while most participants reported engaging in more extraverted behavior when exposed to others’ friendliness, some were consistently more responsive to others’ friendliness. This variation was independent of people’s general levels of extraversion. The researchers argue that such socially contingent expressions of personality characteristics should be addressed within theories of personality. DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000339opens in new window
Faculty mindset predicts student engagement
Research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General suggests that undergraduates are more likely to enjoy class and earn better grades if they believe faculty have a growth mindset (faith in students’ abilities to change and improve) rather than a fixed mindset (a view that students’ abilities are unchangeable). In the first of four studies, 252 undergraduates in the United States viewed a video of a professor making statements expressing belief in a fixed or growth mindset. Students who watched the professor endorse a fixed mindset reported feeling less class engagement and more concern about receiving poor grades than those who saw the professor endorse a growth mindset. A second study with 224 students watching similar videos showed that those who saw a professor endorse a fixed mindset reported higher levels of impostor feelings and increased likelihood of dropping the class. In two additional studies, 1,193 students who indicated that their real-life professors had a fixed mindset also reported less engagement and sense of belonging, which in turn predicted lower grades. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000763opens in new window
Slow lies
People judge slower responses as less sincere than quicker replies, according to research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Across 14 experiments, a total of 7,565 participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France listened to, watched, or read an account of people responding to various questions. Lag time for responses ranged from immediate to 10 seconds later. In all experiments, participants rated slower responses as less sincere, regardless of the gravity of the question. Also, the longer the hesitation, the less sincere the answer appeared. The effect was reduced, but still present, when answers were considered socially unacceptable or thought to require more mental effort or when participants were instructed not to pay attention to response speed. The researchers suggest that people perceive slower responses to be the result of the responder suppressing automatic, truthful thoughts and contriving a novel answer. DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000250opens in new window
Seeking what might have been
According to research in Psychological Science, people are willing to pay to learn what would have happened if they had acted differently, even when there’s little to be gained and doing so can lead to regret. In a series of studies involving a total of 511 adults, participants played a gambling game in which they pumped up a balloon to earn points but tried to avoid bursting the balloon by going beyond its randomly assigned safe limit. Researchers found that participants would frequently pay a price in terms of money, physical effort, or time to learn how many points they could have won before the balloon burst, despite that information dampening their mood and having no utility for subsequent choices. In fact, participants who received this information and felt bad about it often made riskier choices on the next trial. As the researchers note, further work is needed to identify the conditions under which people seek or avoid unpleasant information. DOI: 10.1177/0956797620963615opens in new window
Full moon, less sleep
For several nights preceding a full moon, people fall asleep later in the evening and sleep for less time, according to research in Science Advances. Using wrist activity monitors, researchers tracked sleep patterns of 98 adults in three Indigenous communities in Argentina, which varied in having no, limited, or full access to electric lighting. Participants in each community showed similar synchronizations of their sleep patterns to the moon’s cycle. This variation was in addition to the effects of electric lighting, which led to overall later sleep onset and less sleep duration. The researchers found a similar synchronization of sleep to the lunar cycle in 464 undergraduate students living in an urban area of the United States. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe0465opens in new window
Can saunas protect against dementia?
The answer may be yes, as long as use is not too frequent or too hot. As reported in Preventive Medicine Reports, researchers analyzed data from a 39-year longitudinal study of 13,994 Finnish adults. Participants were ages 30 to 69 years at the start of the study, and 1,805 eventually developed dementia. During the first 20 years of the study, the dementia risk of those reporting nine to 12 sauna baths per month was less than half that of those who bathed infrequently. For the full study period of 39 years, the reduction in dementia risk was less: about 20%. Sauna temperature mattered, too; dementia risk for those bathing at temperatures higher than 100°C was double compared with those who bathed at temperatures below 80°C. Further work is needed to understand the mechanisms linking sauna bathing and dementia risk. DOI: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2020.101221opens in new window
Meth overdoses surge
Methamphetamine overdose deaths in the United States rose about fivefold from 2011 to 2018, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed public health surveillance data of Americans ages 25 to 54 years gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System. They found that rates for methamphetamine-related deaths jumped from 1.8 to 10.1 per 100,000 men and from 0.8 to 4.5 per 100,000 women from 2011 to 2018. Non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people had the highest rates of methamphetamine-related deaths, increasing from 5.6 to 26.4 per 100,000 men and from 3.6 to 15.6 per 100,000 women. In 2018, non-Hispanic Whites had the second highest rates, followed by Hispanic individuals, non-Hispanic Black individuals, and non-Hispanic Asian individuals. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.4321opens in new window
Ketamine reduces PTSD symptoms
Ketamine infusions rapidly reduced symptom severity in individuals with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the effects lasting for several weeks, according to a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers randomly assigned 30 participants in the United States with chronic PTSD to receive 6 infusions of ketamine, administered intravenously 3 times per week over 2 consecutive weeks, or to receive 6 infusions of a placebo control over the same time frame. More participants in the ketamine group (67%) achieved at least 30% reduction in PTSD symptoms than those in the control group (20%). Among ketamine responders, symptom improvement occurred within 24 hours following initial infusion and was maintained for a median of 27.5 days following final infusion. In addition to greater improvement in PTSD symptoms, the ketamine group showed a greater reduction in comorbid depressive symptoms than the control group. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20050596opens in new window
Brain stimulation thwarts obsessive-compulsive behavior
Delivering noninvasive electrical stimulation to the brain can reduce obsessive-compulsive behavior for up to 3 months, according to a study in Nature Medicine. The research was motivated by an emerging view that obsessive-compulsive behavior is rooted in maladaptive learning of rewarded behaviors. Using electroencephalography, researchers recorded brain activity from the orbitofrontal cortices of 60 healthy participants in the United States to pinpoint unique frequencies of wave patterns in their brains that facilitated learning in a task that involved associating symbols with monetary rewards or losses. The researchers then stimulated the orbitofrontal cortices of the participants using these frequencies and were able to disrupt learning in the task. Next, the researchers applied this type of personalized electrical stimulation to the orbitofrontal cortices of 64 participants who exhibited obsessive-compulsive behaviors. The stimulation was applied for 30 minutes a day for 5 consecutive days. Obsessive-compulsive behaviors decreased immediately, and improvements remained for at least 3 months. The strongest improvements were observed in those who began with the most severe symptoms. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-01173-wopens in new window
Teens catch peers’ moods
Teenagers can “catch” moods from peers, and bad moods are more contagious than good ones, suggests a study in Emotion. Researchers gathered daily social interaction and mood data from 79 adolescent classical musicians in the United Kingdom, ages 15 to 19, during two performance tours, lasting 5 and 7 days, in which the adolescents spent the bulk of their time together. The researchers found that the participants became more similar in mood to others with whom they interacted the most often. This contagion effect was greater for negative than for positive moods. Also, although one adolescent might catch another’s bad mood, the original moody adolescent might feel better in the process. However, the participants did not avoid grumpy peers or seek contact with those in more chipper spirits, nor did they choose whom they hung out with simply to match their own moods. DOI: 10.1037/emo0000952opens in new window
Psychedelic expectations
The benefits people experience from microdoses of psychedelic substances may be the result of positive expectations, according to a study in Scientific Reports. Researchers recruited 253 people who planned on taking microdoses—quantities normally too small to produce perceptible effects—of a psychedelic drug such as psilocybin, LSD, or ayahuasca every few days for up to 4 weeks. In the week before they began microdosing, participants were asked how confident they were that the experience would have a positive effect and how much they expected their well-being would improve. Then, participants completed weekly measures of drug intake, well-being, anxiety, and depression. While participants who microdosed went on to experience a boost in well-being and a reduction in anxiety and depression, the level of improvement depended on how much improvement they had anticipated, suggesting that the positive effects could be the result of a placebo response. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-81446-7opens in new window
Self-controlled kids age slowly
People who had higher levels of self-control as children tend to be physically healthier than their peers at age 45, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers followed a representative cohort of 1,037 children in New Zealand from birth to age 45. They assessed the participants’ self-control at ages 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. Then, from ages 26 to 45, the researchers measured participants’ physiological signs of aging in several organ systems, including the brain. Adults with higher childhood self-control showed fewer signs of brain aging, had younger-looking faces, walked faster, and were more equipped to manage later-life health, financial, and social demands. These effects were independent of socioeconomic origins and intelligence. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010211118opens in new window
Cognition, personality, and ideology
Research in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B indicates that people who hold certain ideological views tend to have distinct cognitive and personality characteristics. Researchers analyzed data from 334 participants in the United States ages 22 to 63 who performed 37 neuropsychological tasks and took 22 personality surveys online over the course of 2 weeks. They found that conservative and nationalistic attitudes were associated with greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism was related to slower evidence accumulation in perceptual decision-making and impulsive tendencies. Religiosity was linked with heightened agreeableness and risk perception. Extreme pro-group attitudes, including the endorsement of violence against outgroups, were associated with weaker working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies toward impulsivity and sensation-seeking. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0424opens in new window
Communicating while dreaming
Some people who are in REM sleep and having lucid dreams—aware they are dreaming—can understand externally presented questions or simple math problems and respond accurately using eye movements or facial muscle contractions, suggests research in Current Biology. Researchers in separate labs in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands recruited a total of 36 participants who were trained to signal that they were having a lucid dream through a pattern of eye movements. The participants included people who had previously experienced lucid dreaming and those who had not. Standard physiological measures confirmed that participants were asleep. In response to yes/no questions and simple math problems communicated via voice, coded flashing lights, or tactile signals, six of the participants responded correctly using prearranged eye or facial movements. According to the investigators, it may be possible to develop methods for communicating with people while they are dreaming that are useful for training and therapeutic purposes as well as for research on dreaming itself. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026opens in new window
Street trees boost mood
Living in a neighborhood densely lined with trees may lower the depression risk of inhabitants, suggests research in Scientific Reports. Researchers analyzed the association of antidepressant prescriptions for 9,751 adults in Germany with the density of trees lining the streets in their neighborhoods. They found a lower rate of antidepressant prescriptions among people living within 100 meters of a high density of street trees. The impact of trees was especially pronounced for people of lower socioeconomic status. Density of street trees at further distances up to 1,000 meters was not associated with rate of antidepressant prescriptions. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-79924-5opens in new window
Rappers get the blues
Over the past 20 years, references and metaphors related to mental health conditions have increased in rap lyrics, according to research in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers coded lyrics from the 25 most popular rap songs in the United States in 1998, 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2018 for references to anxiety, depression, suicide, and stressors associated with mental health risk and for metaphors suggestive of mental health struggles. They found increases from 1998 to 2018 in the proportion of songs referencing suicide (0% to 12%) and depression (16% to 32%) and containing mental health metaphors (8% to 44%). References to stressors related to environmental conditions and intimate relationships frequently co-occurred with references to mental health. DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.5155opens in new window
Social media posts predict breakups
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the language people use in conversations online can predict a romantic breakup months before it happens. Researchers analyzed 1,027,541 posts from 6,803 Reddit users 1 year before and 1 year after they posted news of their breakup on the r/BreakUps subreddit forum. They found systematic changes in language used in posts as early as 3 months before the breakup, peaking during the week of the event and returning to baseline levels about 6 months later. The changes included an increase in “I” words, “we” words, and cognitive-processing words such as “realize” and “because,” and a shift toward more personal and informal language, indicative of a drop-off in analytic thinking. The patterns held even for discussions not related to breakups or relationships. Separate analyses of users going through divorce and, to a lesser extent, other disruptive life events showed similar language patterns. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2017154118opens in new window
