Boredom, loneliness, victim blaming, brain size, and more scientific research

According to research in the Journal of Applied Psychology, trying to suppress boredom at work prolongs its effects, but alternating boring and engaging tasks prevents tedium from spilling over and reducing overall productivity. In the first of three studies, researchers surveyed 1,172 participants in the United States randomly throughout the day for a week. They found that the more bored participants were, the lower their concentration levels, and the less productive they felt, unless their task felt meaningful. In the second study, 206 online participants watched a boring or exciting video, then engaged in an either highly meaningful or meaningless writing task. Participants who watched the boring video performed less productively in the meaningless writing task; the productivity of those in the meaningful task remained steady. In the third study, 135 online participants who suppressed bored feelings reported more mind-wandering and less productivity. Task meaningfulness played the same role as in previous studies and mitigated the effects of boredom suppression on future mind-wandering.
DOI: 10.1037/apl0001161opens in new window

Middle-age Americans reported greater loneliness than middle-age Europeans, suggests a study in American Psychologist. Researchers examined data from ongoing, nationally representative longitudinal surveys from the United States and 13 European countries, with more than 53,000 participants from three generations (the Silent Generation, baby boomers, and Generation X). Data were collected from 2002 to 2020 and only included responses given when participants were between 45 and 65. Compared with their European counterparts, adults in the United States reported higher loneliness levels. This “loneliness gap” widened for younger generations (late baby boomers and Generation X), who reported more loneliness than older generations (early baby boomers and the Silent Generation). The researchers pointed to differences in cultural norms, socioeconomic influences, and social safety nets between the United States and European countries as potential explanations for the gap.
DOI: 10.1037/amp0001322opens in new window

Research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that victim blaming can be partly explained by some people’s everyday sense of sadism in deriving pleasure from others’ suffering. In the first of four studies, researchers surveyed 2,653 online participants, controlling for personality traits and dark triad characteristics—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They found that characteristics of everyday sadistic pleasure and a lack of empathy predicted victim blaming in cases such as sexual assault and bullying. In the second and third studies with 1,090 online participants, the researchers found that individuals high in everyday sadism remembered less information about scenarios in which one person abused another, suggesting that they gave less thought in the moment to victims in distress. The fourth study with 273 online participants captured the real-life prevalence and implications of everyday sadism, sadistic pleasure, and victim blaming over 10 days. This study reinforced the notion that individuals high in everyday sadism are more likely to experience sadistic pleasure and engage in victim blaming, independent of how they feel about justice.
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000464opens in new window

According to research in Scientific Reports, adolescents who wrestle with the bigger meaning of social situations experience increased brain growth, which predicts stronger identity development and life satisfaction years later. Researchers interviewed 65 high school students in the United States about stories of other teens from around the world and gauged their feelings about each story. The researchers then scanned the students’ brains with fMRI that day and again 2 years later. In two follow-up interviews over the next 3 years, the researchers found that the more the young participants contemplated the underlying meaningfulness of the stories, the greater the coordination between their brain networks in the intervening 2 years, regardless of their IQ or socioeconomic status. This brain growth predicted critical developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about 5 years later.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-56800-0opens in new window

According to a study in PLOS ONE, posting about a scientific publication on X (formerly Twitter) appears to boost engagement but does not translate into additional citations. A group of 11 ecology researchers, each with at least several thousand followers, tracked their own tweets about a combined 110 articles published between December 2018 and April 2020. In the short term, posting to Twitter bumped the papers’ downloads by about threefold and boosted their Altmetric scores (a measure of how many people have viewed and discussed a paper) by more than 80%. Three years later, the papers’ citation rates had increased by 7% and 12% as measured on Web of Science and Google Scholar, respectively, for the tweeted papers. These increases were not significantly different from those of 440 control articles published by the researchers.
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0292201opens in new window

Brain size has steadily increased for people born after the 1930s, suggests a study in JAMA Neurology. Researchers conducted MRI scans of 3,226 Framingham Heart Study participants between 1999 and 2019. Participants born in the 1970s had an average surface area of 2,222 square centimeters, which was 15% larger than participants born in the 1930s, who had an average surface area of 1,933 square centimeters. Brain volume increased as well: For participants born in the 1930s, average brain volume was 1,234 milliliters, which increased 6.6% to 1,321 milliliters for those born in the 1970s. White matter, gray matter, and the hippocampus were also bigger in participants born in the 1970s. The researchers suggest the increase in brain size could translate to a greater “brain reserve” that could account for the decrease in age-adjusted dementia rates in people born in the 1970s and after.
DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2024.0469opens in new window

A study in Community, Work & Family indicates that a robust working memory can reduce the impact of employees’ family problems on their work performance. Researchers asked 2,591 participants in the United States to assess demands and resources of their job and disclose problems with their spouses, children, and parents in the past 12 months. To assess their working memory, the researchers asked the participants to repeat an increasingly larger set of digits backward. They found that as participants reported experiencing more family problems during the previous year, the more they felt their job was demanding, indicating that family problems seeped into work assessments. Individuals with lower working memory reported increasing job demands with more family problems. This relationship did not hold for participants with high working memory, possibly, the researchers suggest, because the participants had an increased ability to prevent family stress from distracting them at work.
DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2024.2333872opens in new window

A Nature study examining 500 million comments across eight social media platforms suggests that toxicity of online discourse has remained consistent across 3 decades. Researchers used a machine learning tool to analyze toxic interactions—defined as “rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comments likely to make someone leave a discussion”—on eight social media platforms, including the more contemporary Facebook, Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube and the older USENET, a global discussion platform established in 1980 used by computer enthusiasts. They found similar toxicity levels irrespective of the platform, topic, or year. In addition, the researchers found that long conversations consistently exhibited higher toxicity and polarization, especially when they involved conflicting viewpoints, though toxicity did not necessarily escalate as discussions evolved. Furthermore, toxic language did not discourage people from participating in conversations.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07229-yopens in new window

Women have higher expectations for having an orgasm when they are with female, rather than male, partners, suggests research in Social Psychological and Personality Science. In the first of two studies, researchers used an online platform to ask 476 heterosexual and lesbian women about their sexual interactions with their most recent partner. The lesbian participants reported experiencing a higher frequency of clitoral stimulation in their sexual encounters, higher orgasm expectations, greater orgasm pursuit, and a greater orgasm frequency than heterosexual women. There was no difference in orgasm importance by sexual orientation. In the second study, the researchers asked 481 bisexual women about hypothetical sexual encounters with either a man or a woman. The participants in the female partner condition reported higher expectations for clitoral stimulation and orgasm than those in the male partner condition. There was no difference in the pursuit of an orgasm by partner gender.
DOI: 10.1177/19485506241235235opens in new window

A study in Cell indicates that the bacterial content in children’s microbiomes has been linked to the development of neurodevelopmental disorders. Researchers analyzed data collected at several points up to age 5 of 16,440 Swedish children, 1,197 of whom developed a neurodevelopmental disorder. The data included microbiome information, biological and environmental factors, and parent assessments of cognitive function, social behavior, and childhood environment. The researchers found that many gut health-promoting bacteria were deficient in infants with future diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition, the microbiomes of those who developed neurodevelopmental disorders contained higher levels of Citrobacter (associated with inflammation) and lower levels of Coprococcus (associated with positive mental health). Furthermore, children administered penicillin three or more times for ear infections between birth and age 5 were 2 to 4 times more likely than those in the control group to develop a speech disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or an intellectual disability. The researchers suspect that penicillin increases Citrobacter and reduces Coprococcus.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.02.035opens in new window

Research in The Lancet Regional Health–Europe suggests that nearly 90% of depression experienced after a stroke happens within the first 5 years. Researchers analyzed data about 3,864 stroke survivors (with a median age of 68) who had any assessment for depression from 1995 to 2019. They found the cumulative incidence of poststroke depression to be 59.4%, with 33.4% of cases occurring within 3 months, 54.6% occurring within 1 year, and 87.9% occurring within 5 years after stroke. Among depression cases, there was a similar frequency of mild and severe depression, but severe depression occurred earlier after stroke, had a longer duration, and was quicker to recur than mild depression. The researchers recommend routine depression screening for survivors within 5 years after stroke.
DOI: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2024.100882opens in new window

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an artificial intelligence analysis of Facebook posts predicted depression severity for White individuals but not Black individuals. Researchers tracked the Facebook posts of 868 Black and White adults in the United States who self-reported depression severity using a standard clinical tool. The use of first-person singular pronouns in Facebook posts—“I,” “me,” and “my”—increased with depression scores for the entire cohort, whereas “we,” “our,” and “us” were linked with lower depression scores. And as depression severity went up, so too did words reflecting negative feelings, including emptiness and disgust. However, when broken down by race, the text analysis program was sufficient at predicting depression in White but not Black participants even when it was trained on just Black participants’ social media posts. The researchers suggest the reason for the gap is that signs of depression in Black people may show up more in nonwritten communication, such as body language or speaking tone.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2319837121opens in new window

Sports gamblers are more likely to binge drink compared with nonsports gamblers, indicates a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers analyzed data collected in 2022 from 4,363 adults across the United States who shared information about their drinking and gambling habits. Participant enrollment oversampled sports gamblers so that about a third of respondents were nongamblers (30.4%), a third were nonsports gamblers (28.1%), and a third were sports gamblers (41.5%). The researchers found that sports wagerers who bet on games once or twice in the previous year were at least twice as likely to binge drink (five or more drinks on a single occasion) compared with nongamblers. The odds of binge drinking increased with gambling frequency; monthly sports gambling was tied to a three- to fourfold increase in binge drinking, and near-daily sports betting was linked with 9 to 14 times more binge drinking episodes.
DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.5473opens in new window

Research in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests that people who catch up on sleep over the weekend (up to a certain point) are less depressed than those who don’t sleep in on Saturday and Sunday. Researchers analyzed data about depressive symptoms and daily sleep and wake times of 7,719 participants in the United States. They found that 46% of participants engaged in weekend catch-up sleep. Overall, participants who slept 1 or 2 hours longer on weekends were approximately 38% to 46% less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms. This reduction in depressive symptoms did not occur for individuals who slept in 3 or more hours on the weekends. The beneficial effects of catch-up sleep on depressive symptoms were mainly observed among men, adults 65 and under, and those who slept 6 hours or less per night during the week.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.03.008opens in new window

In response to fear, women tend to prioritize smaller, short-term rewards than do men, according to a study in PLOS ONE. Researchers showed 308 online participants a brief movie clip—either a scary movie (fear), a documentary about waterfalls (joy), or a documentary about urban environments (neutral)—intended to induce an emotional state. The researchers then asked the participants hypothetical reward questions such as: “Would you rather have $20,000 today or $50,000 after 3 years?” Women in the fear group were more likely to select the immediate, smaller amount compared with men in the fear group or women in the joy or neutral groups. There were no gender differences for decisions made across the joy or neutral groups, and men’s decision-making on monetary rewards appeared unaffected by their emotional state. The findings suggest that fear might provoke different types of time-sensitive decision-making for women versus men, possibly reflecting the adoption of different evolutionary strategies.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299591opens in new window

A study in Molecular Psychiatry suggests that the drug semaglutide—sold under the brand names Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes and obesity—may be able to reduce people’s risk of developing and relapsing into cannabis use disorder (CUD), for which there is no currently approved medication. In a retrospective study, researchers searched for links between semaglutide and CUD in a database with 105 million patients. They focused on patients newly prescribed semaglutide or other non-glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist medications for obesity or diabetes from June 2021 to December 2022. They found that for patients with no prior CUD diagnosis, the incidence of CUD was 0.28% in the semaglutide group compared with 0.48% in the group treated with other antiobesity medications—a 44% reduction in risk. Similarly, among patients who had previously been diagnosed with CUD, the recurrence rate was 13% in the semaglutide cohort compared with 20.4% in the comparator group, translating to a 38% lower risk.
DOI: 10.1038/s41380-024-02498-5opens in new window