Ethical reasoning may curb desire to share ‘fake news’ and more scientific findings

Procrastination is an everyday phenomenon—most people have deliberately put off studying for a test, completing a chore, or submitting a payment to their detriment. To understand how this tendency changes with age and time, researchers examined procrastination’s patterns, correlates, and consequences using data from a longitudinal study of German youth. The sample included 3,023 participants at the beginning of the study in 2002, 1,229 of whom remained in the study 17 years later in 2019. The results, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest that the tendency to procrastinate decreased during young adulthood and was associated with trait conscientiousness and neuroticism over time. Overall, people who were inclined toward procrastination tended to enter the workforce later and were less likely to obtain a university degree, get promoted at work, have children, or be in a stable relationship. Future studies can shed light on how cultural, economic, and structural factors interact with individual factors to shape procrastination over time.
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000591

While kindness is a common feature of most friendships, true friendship depends on a sense of mutual give-and-take. Research published in Developmental Psychology suggests that this concept of friendship as reciprocal develops throughout childhood. Across two experiments, 236 participants, 4 to 8 years old, learned about fictional children who engaged in prosocial behaviors such as sharing and helping. When asked which fictional pair would become better friends, younger participants favored the pair in which one child always received the prosocial behavior. However, this assessment seemed to shift with age, and participants 7 and older reliably favored the pair in which both children engaged in prosocial behavior. The findings suggest that our thinking about friendship and its key components may evolve from early to middle childhood, with mutuality becoming more important with age. Future studies can shed light on the underlying motivations and cultural values that shape children’s concepts of friendship over time.
DOI: 10.1037/dev0002147

Working alongside particularly resilient coworkers may lead people to feel either more anxious or more inspired, thereby affecting their attitudes toward stress and their own work performance, according to findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The research suggests that social comparisons—whether we perceive ourselves as being similar to or different from our colleagues—shape how we interpret workplace behavior. In one online study, 320 working adults recalled a time when a colleague showed high or low resilience. In general, people who recalled a highly resilient colleague reported feeling more inspired than those who recalled a colleague with low resilience. However, participants reported more anxiety when they recalled a highly resilient colleague whom they perceived as being different from them. Another online study with 301 real-life colleague pairs extended these results: Observing a resilient colleague was linked with higher inspiration, more positive stress mindset, and more adaptive work performance. However, participants who observed a dissimilar colleague’s resilience reported more anxiety, a less positive mindset about stress, and less adaptive performance.
DOI: 10.1037/apl0001369

Court systems are increasingly using video platforms like Zoom to conduct jury trials, but do these virtual jury panels function similarly to in-person jury panels? To find out, researchers conducted a mock jury study with 317 adults. Participants watched a scripted, videotaped trial about a car accident and then deliberated with their peers, either in person or online. According to post-deliberation surveys, in-person and virtual jurors had much in common—they were knowledgeable about the case and came to similar conclusions about guilt and compensation. Despite these similarities, virtual jurors reported using more cognitive effort to decide the case. Analyses of the deliberations indicated that in-person juries had more interruptions and discussed more topics. The findings, published in Law and Human Behavior, suggest that key features of jury deliberation may be similar across in-person and virtual juries; however, the researchers note that the study conditions diverged from real-life trials in several substantive ways, including the short duration and the use of a taped instead of live trial. For more on the research and legal implications of online versus in-person juries, see “Are virtual juries effective?”.
DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000643

Prospective memory, the ability to set a future intention and remember to act on that intention later, supports many facets of everyday life, from scheduling appointments to taking out the trash. Some studies suggest that prospective memory declines with age, but it is unclear whether our beliefs about aging and memory also play a role. In this study, 183 adults, 41 to 85 years old, used a smartphone app that instructed them to remember and complete certain everyday tasks at a specific time or in response to an event. The results, published in Psychology and Aging, showed that holding negative beliefs about aging in general and holding positive views about one’s own aging were both linked with better prospective memory, as measured by completion of the tasks. When asked to subjectively rate their own prospective memory, participants who had more positive views about their own aging tended to rate their prospective memory ability as stronger. Longitudinal studies can clarify how links between different types of aging-related beliefs and prospective memory interact and change with age.
DOI: 10.1037/pag0000955

Engaging with political issues is linked with large swings in emotional states, which are, in turn, linked with greater anxiety, according to two experience-sampling studies. The findings, published in Emotion, clarify the emotional dynamics of engaging with politics. In one study, 138 U.S. residents completed up to 23 online questionnaires in the 8 weeks following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. For each questionnaire, they wrote about their activities of the preceding 2 days; they then selected three specific events and rated the emotional pleasurableness and intensity of each one. They also completed measures gauging symptoms of anxiety and depression. About 42% of participants mentioned the George Floyd protests at least once; when they mentioned the protests, they tended to have larger emotional swings, measured by experience sampling throughout the days. Over time, participants’ political engagement—including attending demonstrations, donating to charities, and participating in political conversations—was linked with emotional fluctuations, which were associated with greater anxiety. Another online study conducted in 2024 indicated that people with more extreme political views also had larger day-to-day changes in emotion. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that our political lives may affect our emotional lives in ways that compromise well-being.
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001650opens in new window

The emotions we want to feel and the emotions we actually feel are shaped in different ways by cultural factors, according to a meta-analysis of data from 88 reports and 31,000 participants published in Psychological Bulletin. The meta-analysis indicated that people generally want to feel more positive and less negative than they actually feel. In addition, there’s considerably more variance among cultures in what people want to feel than what they actually feel. These findings were consistent across research teams, populations, and published and unpublished reports. Cultural differences in perceived ideal affect—such as European Americans valuing excitement and other high-arousal positive states more than East Asian Americans and East Asians do—tended to be stable over time. The researchers note that European Americans, East Asian Americans, and East Asians were the most represented groups in the available data sets; more research is needed to determine whether the same patterns hold in other cultural contexts.
DOI: 10.1037/bul0000499

People deem information they have seen before as more likely to be true, especially if they chose to see that information in the first place, according to research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The findings, from eight online studies with a total of 953 participants, expand our understanding of the credibility-boosting effects of repeated exposure and may shed light on how we perceive the content we engage with on social media. In one study, participants saw a series of 20 topic pairs. Sometimes they could select which topic to learn about; other times it was preselected. After reading a trivia statement about each topic, they learned whether it was true or false. Next, they saw 50 additional trivia statements, some of which they had already seen, and rated how true they were. Participants considered the statement they had seen before as more likely to be true, especially if they had selected the topic. Additional studies suggest selecting information seems to enhance participants’ memory for it, which contributes to perceived truthfulness. According to the researchers, these findings may shed light on how we remember the information we choose to see on social media.
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001888

When we get to choose something from a larger set of options, we are more likely to find something we like. But six online studies in Psychological Science suggest people routinely overlook the number of options, or set size, when predicting others’ preferences. In one study, 2,001 participants read a scenario about choosing a restaurant dish. Participants who chose a dish from six menu items predicted they would like it more than participants who chose from only two items would. Menu size made no difference, however, when they predicted how much someone else would like a dish. Additional studies indicated that people do take set size into account when it is made salient, such as when they are comparing two sets or considering ranked options within a set. A study involving charitable donations suggested that although people donated slightly more money when they had more charities to choose from, their predictions for what others would donate were similar regardless of the number of charity options.
DOI: 10.1177/09567976251400333opens in new window

Stimulant medications are often prescribed as part of treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—but which brain networks do these medications actually affect? To find out, researchers examined resting-state fMRI data from 5,795 children aged 8 to 11 who participated in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, 337 of whom were taking a stimulant medication. Compared with children who did not take stimulants, those who did had increased connectivity between sensorimotor regions associated with arousal and salience and parietal memory networks associated with reward-based learning. The results, published in Cell, showed the groups had no observable differences in networks typically associated with attention. Data from a drug trial with five healthy adults provided experimental support for these findings. Intriguingly, ­stimulant-related differences were similar to patterns associated with physiological arousal and getting more sleep. The researchers conclude that stimulants may help children stay engaged not by increasing attention but by shifting the brain toward a more wakeful and reward-sensitive state.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.11.039opens in new window

Analyses of genomic data from more than 1 million people indicate significant genetic overlap across 14 psychiatric disorders. The results, published in Nature, suggest that the disorders group into five genomically correlated clusters, which the researchers defined as schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, internalizing disorders, compulsive disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, and substance use disorders. Examining these associations in more granular detail, the researchers identified common and divergent genetic correlates and biological pathways across disorders. For example, the schizophrenia and bipolar disorders cluster was linked with genes expressed by excitatory neurons, while the internalizing disorders cluster was linked with genes expressed by oligodendrocytes, which help regulate excitatory neurons. The findings shed light on the shared genetic roots of many psychiatric disorders and provide context for the fact that some mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, often co-occur.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09820-3opens in new window

Family relationships during our formative years may have long-term social impacts, according to data from 7,018 participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As teens, the participants answered questions that gauged the degree to which they felt connected to and cared for by their family; as adults, they answered questions that assessed the structure, support, and quality of their social relationships. The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, indicate that family connection during adolescence was linked with social connection up to 2 decades later. High social connection in adulthood was much more common among participants who had high levels of family connection as teens (39.5%) than those who had low levels of family connection as teens (16.1%). Although the findings do not provide evidence for causal links, they suggest that early family relationships may have implications for social connection and well-being in adulthood.
DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.5816opens in new window

Greater cumulative stress and higher levels of inflammation partially account for Black adults’ increased risk of death relative to White adults, according to longitudinal data from 1,554 participants in the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network Study. The findings are published in JAMA Network Open. To measure cumulative stress, researchers assessed participants’ exposure to childhood maltreatment, lifetime trauma, stressful life events, major experiences of discrimination, and aspects of socioeconomic status. The researchers also measured blood serum levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, both indicators of inflammatory response. Both lifetime stress and inflammatory response were higher for Black participants than White participants, and these two measures accounted for 49.3% of the disparity in mortality between Black and White participants. These findings provide support for the weathering hypothesis, which suggests that exposure to various types of discrimination contributes to stress and, ultimately, worse health outcomes for Black individuals.
DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54701opens in new window

Older adults in two studies reported autobiographical thoughts that were more specific, concrete, and detailed than those reported by younger adults. The findings, published in PNAS, contrast with patterns reported in previous cognitive aging research. In one study, 3,847 participants ages 18 to 89 received prompts at random times via a smartphone app. Each prompt included a brief survey assessing what they had just been paying attention to, including thoughts/memories, external perceptions, and bodily sensations. While older adults reported a lower proportion of autobiographical thoughts overall than younger adults, the thoughts they did report were more specific and vivid, less self-focused, and more emotionally positive and social in nature. However, when the researchers assessed participants’ thoughts and memories via structured, lab-based interviews, they found age discrepancies that mirrored those found in previous studies. These findings suggest that naturalistic methods that capture thinking in real-world settings may provide new insights into cognitive aging.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2513990123opens in new window

We all have brief moments when thoughts seem to vanish, but what is happening in the brain when the mind goes blank? Using high-density EEG recordings, researchers probed participants’ mental states—mind blanking, mind wandering, and task-focused states—as they completed a sustained attention task. The results, published in PNAS, indicated that participants had more misses and slower response times on the task while mind blanking, whereas they had more false alarms and faster response times while mind wandering. In addition, brain activity and connectivity observed during mind blanking were distinct from activity and connectivity during mind wandering. Mind blanking was associated with disruptions in visual processing and a relative absence of responses associated with conscious access to visual information. Importantly, researchers were able to use the EEG signatures to predict participants’ brain states. The researchers find support for the theory that mind blanking may reflect a mental state that is, however briefly, content free; further studies can illuminate whether these findings extend beyond this lab-based context.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2510262122opens in new window

Research suggests that women and people with anxiety tend to report lower confidence when rating their own performance on lab-based tasks. But are they underconfident for the same reasons? Drawing from four online studies with 1,447 participants, researchers developed a computational model to examine the dynamics of confidence in the context of forced-choice tasks. Across the four studies, participants made a series of assessments and rated their confidence in each. The researchers specifically focused on how long it took participants to make their confidence ratings. The results, published in Psychological Medicine, indicated that the link between anxiety and underconfidence became stronger with longer rating times, while the link between gender and underconfidence became weaker. Computational modeling supported the idea that anxiety may trigger biases about performance that get worse with more time for reflection, while women may start with a higher threshold for confidence that they override with more time for reflection.
DOI: 10.1017/S0033291725102808opens in new window

To understand how cooperation emerges across cultures, researchers studied behaviors related to fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, and honesty in 413 children ages 5 to 13 in five societies: urban United States, rural Uganda, rural Canada, rural Peru, and the hunter-horticulturalist Shuar of Ecuador. These societies differed in their modes of subsistence and economic development, factors that may influence behavior and decision-making in uncertain contexts. While children’s cooperative behaviors and norms varied across the societies, there were notable developmental trends. In general, younger children showed more self-interested behavior than older children. In addition, children’s behaviors and norms tended to diverge toward the norms specific to their community in middle childhood. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that children’s cooperative behaviors can be understood in relation to three distinct strategies—maximization, generic cooperation, and partner-contingent cooperation—that varied across developmental phase and culture. This integrative work sheds light on how children employ and calibrate cooperative behavior across development and cultural contexts.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw9995opens in new window