Parasocial jealousy, clinical trainee burnout, and more scientific studies

People in parasocial romantic relationships—one-sided romantic attachments to celebrities—can experience jealousy when the targeted individual begins a real-life romance, particularly with a partner who looks different from the admirer, according to research in Psychology of Popular Media. Researchers asked 309 participants in the United States who were in a parasocial romantic relationship with a celebrity who recently started a new real-life relationship to rate the strength of their attachment, their level of parasocial jealousy, and how similar they felt to the romantic “rival.” They were also asked the degree of threat they felt about the potential (1) loss of benefits from the relationship, (2) damage to self-esteem, and (3) end of the imagined relationship. The researchers found stronger parasocial romantic relationships were linked to higher levels of jealousy. Jealousy levels in those cases were higher when the participant had a higher degree of fear that the relationship might end. And participants who felt that the rival was unlike them were more afraid that the relationship was over.
DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000589

In contests between two parties (political candidates, sports teams, awards contenders), fans of the losing side are more upset when they strongly oppose the opponent than when they are more invested in supporting their candidate or team, suggests research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers examined several datasets that captured how 12,830 participants in the United States reacted to losses in political or sports domains. Some participants described their preference as opposition to the other side rather than support for the preferred choice. Their preference was no stronger than that of those who framed their preference around support of a side, but they did experience significantly more negativity than the supporters did when their side lost. That negativity manifested as disengagement, retaliation, or ­trash-talking the people whom they perceived to be responsible for the disappointing result.
DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000436

Clinical psychology trainees feel burned out and struggle to make time for self-care, according to a study in Training and Education in Professional Psychology. Researchers surveyed 984 trainees in clinical psychology doctoral programs across the United States and Canada. Trainees reported suffering from high rates of burnout, especially emotional exhaustion. Most did not feel they had adequate time for self-care and reported that faculty in their programs talked about the importance of work-life balance but did not actually prioritize it. These problems were even more acute for trainees who identified as non-White. Self-care is often framed as an individual competency that trainees are responsible for learning and achieving on their own. However, trainees indicated they believe that the demands placed on them may make self-care almost impossible.
DOI: 10.1037/tep0000496

On average, it takes a little more than 4 years for a person’s emotional attachment to an ex-partner to dissolve halfway and around 8 years for the bond to fade fully, suggests research in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Researchers interviewed 320 participants who had previously been in a long-term romantic relationship lasting at least 2 years. They found that emotional attachments to exes eventually faded, taking 4.18 years, on average, after the breakup. For some people—especially those still in contact with their exes—the attachment bond never completely faded. Attachment bonds also persisted longer (more than a decade) for people who did not initiate the breakup, compared with fading more quickly for those initiating the breakup. Finding a new partner did not impact how long it took to get over an ex. Finally, participants who were more anxious and less avoidant in their general attachment styles maintained their attachments longer than others.
DOI: 10.1177/19485506251323624opens in new window

Men and women alike underestimate how willing men are to seek help for depression, a perception that may discourage men from seeking help themselves, according to a study in Sex Roles. In the first of two studies, 2,042 participants rated their likelihood of seeking help from a doctor or a psychologist. The researchers found that men believed men were less likely to seek help than they actually were. Women were even more likely to underestimate men’s willingness to seek help. However, women accurately perceived that other women were equally willing to seek help as they themselves were. The second study, with 1,528 participants, indicated that men were less willing than women to tell friends and colleagues they sought help for depression, which could contribute to the misperceptions.
DOI: 10.1007/s11199-025-01574-6

Affectionate mothering in early childhood may play a lasting role in shaping the personality traits that influence educational, professional, and health outcomes, according to a study in American Psychologist. Researchers examined data from a survey of 1,116 18-year-old British twins followed from birth. The analysis revealed that, across all sets of twins, higher levels of maternal affection were associated with greater openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. These findings held when adjusting for genetic and environmental influences. Even among identical twins raised in the same household, the twin who received more maternal affection was more likely to be open, conscientious, and agreeable as a young adult. These associations remained after controlling for early emotional and behavioral problems. In contrast, no links were observed between maternal affection and extraversion and neuroticism in the same household comparison, suggesting those traits may be better explained by shared genes or environment than by parenting.
DOI: 10.1037/amp0001508

Babies as young as 1 year old can form memories, according to research in Science, but these memories fade by adulthood. Researchers showed a series of previously unseen images to 13 younger children (4 to 9 months old) and 13 older children (1 to 2 years old) and measured their brain activity using MRI scans. After the children saw the images again, and the researchers used the time they spent looking at each one as an indicator of memory (i.e., if they looked longer, they likely remembered the image). An analysis of the MRI scans indicated that hippocampal activity was higher when the infants viewed the images that they later appeared to remember, indicating that they likely formed memories of those images. This result was clearer in the older infants. Additionally, only older infants exhibited activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, which plays a key role in ­memory-related decision-making and recognition. Given these results, the researchers suggest that mechanisms that operate after the encoding, and not the encoding process itself, might be responsible for preventing access to infancy memories later in life.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adt7570opens in new window

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is effective for most mental health problems, with smaller effects for issues like bipolar disorder and larger effects for disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers performed meta-analyses of 375 trials comparing CBT against control treatments. They found that CBT was associated with significant reductions in mental health problems, with small effect sizes for bipolar and psychotic disorders; large effect sizes for major depression, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; and very large effect sizes for PTSD and specific phobias.
DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.0482opens in new window

Lithium and valproate may have significant anti-suicidal effects in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. Researchers conducted a retrospective study that included 102,540 patients with schizophrenia and 96,336 patients with bipolar disorder who were diagnosed between 2007 and 2010. The researchers assessed the association between suicide mortality and recent prescriptions of clozapine, lithium, and valproate. They found that suicide rates per 100,000 person-years were 308.0 for schizophrenia and 285.1 for bipolar disorder. Lithium and valproate prescriptions were associated with about 40% lower suicide rates for both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Clozapine was associated with a lower likelihood of suicide in patients with schizophrenia but was statistically nonsignificant.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.03.045opens in new window

The more frequently people monitor the progress of a process, the slower it seems to go, suggests research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In one experiment, researchers asked 132 undergraduate students in Spain to assume the role of a manager who checked the progress of employees rarely or frequently. Although employees had the same level of productivity, “managers” deemed those frequently assessed as less productive. Similar results were observed across several other experiments in various domains (e.g., disease spread, investments, physical growth). This monitoring frequency effect persisted when financial incentives encouraged accurate progress measurements. However, effect size diminished when information about the size of an attribute (e.g., a person’s height) was presented as a running total rather than as incremental changes since the previous measurement. The researchers explored two mechanisms to explain the effect—difficulty in keeping tracked information in memory and a failure to synthesize tracked information—and found experimental evidence only for the latter.
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001733opens in new window

Just as people can imagine images, they can also imagine odors, according to research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Researchers conducted two odor pair similarity experiments: one with 37 participants in Sweden who rated real-life pairs of 16 odors, including leather, rose, apple, licorice, and pineapple, and another with 2,023 online participants who rated odor pairs based solely on their labels. Participants in the odor-based group smelled pairs of real odors and made similarity judgments about each pair. The label-based group was presented with a target odor word (e.g., licorice) and four of the other odor words (e.g., leather, rose, apple, and pineapple) and rated how similar the target word’s odor would be to each of the four other odors. The researchers observed that the ratings of the odor-based pairings were strongly correlated with ratings of the label-based pairings, indicating that imagining the odors was similar to smelling them. This result suggests people can create mental “images” of odors, similar to how they imagine visual content.
DOI: 10.1037/xhp0001292opens in new window

People’s sadness may “leak” through in subsequent social interactions—even if they try to hide it—and in ways that are different for men and women, suggests a study in Emotion. Researchers split 230 participants in the United States into same-gender dyads and had each participant recall a personal event. In the “sad” condition, one member of the dyad recalled an experience of deep sadness, while their future partner recalled a neutral experience. In the control condition, both people recalled neutral experiences. After the recall, the dyads participated in cooperative activities while electrocardiogram sensors captured participants’ physiologic linkage—the degree to which one partner’s sympathetic arousal predicted their partner’s arousal in subsequent moments. Men recalling the sad experience were more engaged (smiling and gesturing more) than men in the control condition, and their partners showed stronger physiologic linkage to them. Conversely, women recalling the sad experience were less expressive (smiled less) than women in the control condition, and their partners showed weaker physiologic linkage.
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001490

Research in Nature Human Behaviour suggests that children who grow up without siblings exhibit recurring patterns in their brain structure, neuronal activity, memory, and mental health, as well as common behavioral characteristics such as cognitive, personality-related, and behavioral tendencies. Researchers used MRI to measure the brains of 2,397 pairs of Chinese adult participants with and without siblings who were well-matched across other variables. They also administered behavioral assessments and surveys about socioeconomic status and childhood experiences. The researchers found associations linking being an only child to higher language fiber integrity (or the degree to which the fiber tracts are undamaged), lower motor fiber integrity, larger cerebellar volume, smaller cerebral volume, and lower frontotemporal spontaneous brain activity. They also found that only children were more creative, reported higher life satisfaction, and were less impulsive and reward-dependent. However, these brain and behavioral outcomes are subject to modifiable factors, such as socioeconomic status, maternal care, and family support.
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02142-4opens in new window

Donating less than one penny a day may lessen depressive symptoms and increase emotional well-being, suggests research in Psychological Science. Researchers recruited 883 participants in China with depressive symptoms indicative of risk for clinical depression. Half of the participants received daily reminders to make daily donations of about $0.0014 for 2 months, while the other half did not. All participants completed weekly or monthly surveys measuring depression and emotional positivity. Donators showed significantly greater improvements in both depressive symptoms and emotional positivity compared with the other group. These improvements—in many cases showing at least a 50% reduction in depressive symptoms—emerged early in the study and were generally sustained over the 2 months. Increases in emotional positivity accounted for much of the improvement in depressive symptoms.
DOI: 10.1177/09567976251315679opens in new window