Mass shootings and gun law attitudes
Mass shootings increase people’s support of stricter gun laws, but only if they attribute the shootings to the availability of guns, suggests new research in Psychology of Violence. Following mass shootings in Orlando in 2016 and El Paso in 2019, researchers surveyed 1,756 and 910 participants, respectively, in those communities and assessed their political orientation, gun ownership, belief that gun ownership reduces crime, causal attributions about the shootings, and attitudes toward gun control. They found that across both shootings, being politically conservative and owning a gun positively predicted a belief that widespread gun ownership reduces crime, which subsequently predicted less blaming of gun availability for mass shootings and less support for stricter gun laws. DOI: 10.1037/vio0000431opens in new window
Prejudice and evolution doubt
Low belief in human evolution is associated with greater prejudice and racism, according to research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Across eight studies with 60,703 participants in 45 countries, researchers assessed people’s belief in evolution and their prejudices against and hostility toward out-groups. In two studies, they found that people in the United States who tend not to believe in evolution express more prejudice, racist attitudes, and militaristic attitudes toward political out-groups and support of discrimination against immigrants and LGBTQ individuals. Three additional studies with people in 19 East European countries, 25 Muslim countries, and Israel indicated that low belief in evolution was associated with higher in-group biases, prejudicial attitudes toward out-groups, and less support for conflict resolution. Three final studies conducted online showed that participants’ perceived similarity to animals partially mediated the link between belief in evolution and prejudice, even when controlling for religious beliefs, political views, and other demographic variables. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000391opens in new window
Organized minds fend off decline
People who are organized, with high levels of self-discipline, may be less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as they age, while people who are moody or emotionally unstable are more likely to experience cognitive decline late in life, according to research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers assessed personality and cognitive performance of 1,954 participants in a longitudinal study of older adults without a formal dementia diagnosis in the United States. They found that participants who scored high for conscientiousness lived 2 years longer without a decline in cognitive function than those who were less conscientious. Those who scored lower for neuroticism and higher in extraversion were more likely to regain normal cognitive function following a diagnosis of MCI, reflecting the cognitive benefits of social interactions and suggesting those personality traits may protect against neural decline. DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000418opens in new window
Neutrality not a winning strategy
According to research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, political neutrality is often interpreted as strategically concealed opposition, and it can harm trust and erode cooperation even compared with directly opposing someone else’s viewpoint. In the first of two online studies with 731 participants, researchers showed that across a variety of hypothetical scenarios, people who opted not to take sides on an issue seemed liberal in front of a conservative audience but conservative in front of a liberal audience. Two in-person studies with 487 participants indicated that staying on the fence was interpreted as tacit disagreement, while in another three studies with 1,403 participants, not taking a side engendered distrust. An additional study with 548 online participants indicated that explaining one’s reason for not picking a side can sometimes mitigate the costs of taking a neutral stance. Two final studies with 1,024 participants demonstrated that the negative effects of neutrality arise only when staying above the fray appeared strategic. DOI: 10.1037/xge0001201opens in new window
Wildfire smoke impairs development
Research in Nature Communications suggests that pregnant women’s exposure to wildfire smoke may elicit adverse behavioral and physiological consequences in their developing fetuses. Researchers examined 52 rhesus macaque monkeys aged 3 to 4 months whose mothers were exposed to wildfire smoke from California’s 2018 Camp Fire during the first third of gestation. The exposed infants had greater inflammation, blunted cortisol response to stress, more passive behavior, and memory deficits compared with 37 animals conceived just days after the smoke had dissipated. The researchers hypothesize the deficits arose from chlorinated hydrocarbons in the smoke that impaired fetal adrenal development. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29436-9opens in new window
Depression follows disasters
According to a study in PLOS Climate, people who have experienced a natural disaster in their community are at higher risk of depression, with certain individuals being particularly susceptible. Researchers analyzed data on depression onset for a nationally representative sample of 17,255 South African adults who were depression-free at the beginning of the study. They found that 2,986 participants (17%) were exposed to a natural disaster during the study, which ran from 2008 to 2017. Increased cumulative community disaster experience was linked to higher likelihood of depression onset. This link was stronger for women, Black Africans, and groups with lower education and lower income. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000024opens in new window
Childhood city entropy affects navigation
According to research in Nature, growing up in rural or suburban areas may give people a leg up in navigation skills even decades later compared with people who grew up in cities, especially cities organized in a grid layout. Researchers examined data from 397,162 adults from 38 countries who played a mobile game that involved navigating a boat in an ocean. Players were shown a map of an environment displaying several numbered checkpoints. When the map disappeared, the players were to navigate to the checkpoints in the correct order. Performance was measured by the length of the route players took. The researchers found that younger and more educated players were better at the game, and men were better than women. Where the players grew up was the largest predictor of navigational skills: Those who spent their childhood in high-entropy areas performed better than those whose childhood cities were more gridlike and orderly. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04486-7opens in new window
Empathetic people donate less when stressed
The stress hormone cortisol reduces altruism by disrupting activity in brain regions linked to social decision-making—but only in empathetic people, according to research in the Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers asked 35 participants in Germany to decide how much money to donate before and after completing a stressful public speaking task while their cortisol levels were measured and their brain activity was monitored with fMRI. Before the stressful task, people with self-reported higher “mentalizing” ability, or the ability to imagine others’ mental states, donated more money than people with lower mentalizing ability. Within the high mentalizer group, increased cortisol corresponded to decreased donations. Cortisol had no effect on low mentalizers. Prior to the stressful public speaking task, high mentalizers’ donations could be predicted by activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region involved in social decision-making. However, higher levels of cortisol following the stressful task disrupted this link, suggesting stress reduced the neural representation of donations in the DLPFC. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1870-21.2022opens in new window
Person equals man
According to reporting in Science Advances, a linguistic analysis of billions of webpages found that the collective concept of “person” is not gender-neutral, but rather prioritizes men over women. Researchers deployed artificial intelligence algorithms that learn the meaning of words based on how they are used on a language repository that included more than 630 billion English-language words on 3 billion webpages. In the first of three studies, they compared similarity in meaning (inferred via linguistic context) between words for people (e.g., “individual”) and words for men (e.g., “he”) as well as women (e.g., “she”). They found that the collective concept of “people” overlapped more with the concept of “men” than with the concept of “women.” In the second and third studies, the collective concept of “women” was specifically associated with the characteristics (e.g., “quiet” or “shallow”) and actions (e.g., “dance” and “cook”) stereotypical of women, whereas the concept of “men” was associated with a broader range of person-descriptive traits and actions. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2463opens in new window
Comparable moral injury in vets and health care workers
Covid-19 health care workers experienced potential “moral injury” (witnessing behavior or acting in a way that violated their morals or values) at rates comparable to those experienced by military veterans, according to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Researchers asked 618 post-9/11 combat veterans about experiences during their military service and 2,099 health care workers in the United States about their experiences during the pandemic. They found similar response patterns across both groups: 46% of veterans and 51% of health care workers indicated being disturbed by others’ behavior that was in conflict with their own morals, such as the public’s disregard for preventing virus transmission, whereas 24% of veterans and 18% of health care workers indicated being concerned with violating their own morals and values, such as triaging patients or rationing dwindling medical supplies. Additionally, morally injured veterans and health care workers reported more depression and lower quality of life. Among health care workers, those who suffered moral injury also reported higher levels of burnout. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-022-07487-4opens in new window
Orgasm gap
A study in Sex Roles builds on research on the orgasm gap and suggests that men and women who orgasm more frequently in their relationships want and expect more orgasms. The opposite is true for partners who climax less often. Researchers surveyed 104 sexually active mixed-sex couples in the United States about their sexual satisfaction, orgasm frequency, desired orgasm frequency, expectation for how often people should orgasm, and perceptions of their partner’s orgasm frequency. They found several differences between sexes, with men climaxing more often than their female partners. They also found that men significantly underreported the size of this gap, and that men’s and women’s own orgasm frequency predicted their desire and expectation for orgasm. Additionally, women’s orgasm frequency was correlated with men’s expectation for how often people should orgasm. The relationship between orgasm frequencies and expectations may partially explain women’s lower reported orgasm importance compared with men. Relationship length had no impact on the orgasm gap. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-022-01280-7opens in new window
Do antidepressants improve health?
In the long run, maybe not. People with depression who take antidepressants do not have a higher health-related quality of life than people with depression who do not take such medications, according to a study in PLOS ONE. Researchers examined data from a longitudinal study with millions of adults in the United States diagnosed with depression. During the study, which spanned 2005 to 2016, there were, on average, 17.5 million patients diagnosed with depression each year with 2 years of follow-up. Nearly 60% of these patients received antidepressant medications. Across the lifetime of the study, those taking antidepressants did report small improvements in health-related quality of life measures. However, none of the improvements, whether related to physical or mental health, were significantly larger than the improvements in health reported by patients who did not take antidepressants. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265928opens in new window
Research gender gap closing, but not optimally
According to a study in Nature Communications, more neuroscience and psychiatry studies are including participants of both sexes than two decades ago, but few are designed well enough to distinguish possible sex differences. Researchers analyzed 3,193 papers published in three top-tier neuroscience and three top-tier psychiatry journals in 2009 and in 2019. They found a 30% increase in the percentage of papers reporting studies that included both sexes in 2019 (68% of papers) compared with 2009 (38% of papers). However, in 2019 only 19% of the papers used an “optimal design” (i.e., a balanced ratio of male to female subjects) to discover possible sex differences, and only 5% used an “optimal analysis” to report such differences. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29903-3opens in new window
AI predicts first impressions
Though often inaccurate, first impressions and snap judgments can themselves be accurately predicted by an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers asked 4,157 online participants to glance at 1,004 computer-generated photos of faces for just a few seconds each and rank them using 10 criteria, such as how intelligent, electable, or religious they were. The researchers then used the participants’ responses to train a neural network to make similar snap judgments about people based on photographs of their faces. They found the neural network’s assessments closely aligned with common intuitions or cultural assumptions, such as people who smile tending to appear more trustworthy. The researchers see algorithms like theirs being useful for people wanting to positively curate their online profiles, but also worry that such algorithms can be used to manipulate photos to imbue subjects with undesirable characteristics, such as making political candidates appear menacing or unintelligent. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115228119opens in new window
Less opioid use for psilocybin users
A study in Scientific Reports replicated earlier findings indicating that people who have used psilocybin—a psychedelic substance found in some types of mushrooms—at least once are less likely to have opioid use disorder. Researchers examined the incidence of opioid use disorder and the prevalence of psychedelic use among 214,505 adults in the United States using survey data collected between 2015 and 2019. They found that opioid use disorder was 30% less likely among those who had used psilocybin compared with those who had never used it. For those who had used peyote, mescaline, or LSD at least once, there was either no significant relationship or even an increase in opioid dependence. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-08085-4opens in new window
Lack of imagination
Research in eLife suggests that when people imagine light or dark objects, their pupils constrict and dilate accordingly, unless they have aphantasia, an inability to experience visual imagination. Researchers outfitted 42 participants in Australia who self-reported as having vivid visual imaginations with glasses to track their pupils while they viewed, or just imagined, objects of different brightness. They found that even in response to imagined bright and dark shapes, the participants’ pupils constricted and dilated accordingly, with a pupillary response that was larger in those reporting greater imagery vividness. In comparison, 18 participants who self-reported as lacking in visual imagination had normal pupillary responses to actual, but not imagined, objects of varying brightness. The researchers say their finding is the first physiological validation of aphantasia and evidence that the pupillary light response can quantify the strength of visual imagery. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.72484opens in new window
Tuning out mom
A study in the Journal of Neuroscience indicates that at around age 13, children begin tuning out their mothers’ voices and instead begin homing in on nonfamilial voices. Researchers used fMRI to record brain activity of teens ages 13 to 16 in the United States in response to household sounds and nonsense words spoken by the teens’ mothers or one of two unfamiliar women. They found that all voices elicited greater activation than other household sounds in several brain regions compared with younger children (ages 7 to 12), whose brain activity was measured in a previous study. Additionally, in teenagers, the unfamiliar voices elicited greater activity than their mothers’ voices in the nucleus accumbens of the reward-processing system and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in assigning value to social information. The switch toward unfamiliar voices occurred in these brain regions between 13 and 14 years of age. No difference was observed between boys and girls. The researchers did not look at teenagers’ reactions to their fathers’ voices. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2018-21.2022opens in new window
Cognitive decline accelerated in schizophrenia
People diagnosed with schizophrenia may show early signs of cognitive decline at a young age as well as rapid declines later in life, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed longitudinal data for 428 individuals admitted to inpatient psychiatric hospitals in the United States (212 with schizophrenia and 216 with other psychotic disorders). Patients were tracked starting when they were first admitted for psychotic symptoms, through follow-up assessments at 6 months, 2 years, 20 years, and 25 years post-admittance. Researchers also had access to patients’ previous cognitive scores extracted from medical and school records. They found that in the 14 years leading up to psychosis onset (mean age: 27 years) and for 22 years afterward, patients with schizophrenia experienced declines in IQ averaging more than 1 point every 3 years, while those with other psychotic disorders saw declines of roughly 1 point every 7 years. Beyond 22 years post-psychosis onset, cognitive decline dipped at a faster rate for both groups—over 1 IQ point every 2 years. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.1142opens in new window