Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-03-20DOI: 10.1177/09567976251325449
Gabriele Prati
{"title":"Does Religious-Service Attendance Increase Mental Health? A Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis Across 18 Years.","authors":"Gabriele Prati","doi":"10.1177/09567976251325449","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251325449","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The study aimed to investigate the within-person relationship between religious-service attendance and mental health using data from the British Household Panel Survey (<i>N</i> = 29,298), a longitudinal survey of adult British households between 1991 and 2009. The outcome variables were mental health (as measured with the General Health Questionnaire) and life satisfaction. Using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models over 10 waves of data spanning over 18 years, the associations between religious-service attendance and mental health at the within-person level were mostly nonsignificant. The few significant findings indicated that an increase in religious-service attendance is associated subsequently with either higher or lower levels of mental health, suggesting both detrimental and beneficial effects. A series of robustness analyses (including the use of marginal structural models) mainly supported these findings. The results suggest that there is a need to question the assumption that religious-service attendance provides mental health benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"157-167"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143670374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2025-03-19DOI: 10.1177/09567976251314972
Amanda E Geiser, Ike Silver, Deborah A Small
{"title":"*Reluctance to Downplay: Asymmetric Sensitivity to Differences in the Severity of Moral Transgressions.","authors":"Amanda E Geiser, Ike Silver, Deborah A Small","doi":"10.1177/09567976251314972","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251314972","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A common-sense moral intuition is that bad acts should be condemned according to severity. Yet seven experiments (<i>N</i> = 6,075 U.S. adults) show that the extent to which people differentiate between transgressions hinges on the direction of comparison. When scaling up from a less severe transgression to a more severe one, people readily express stronger condemnation of the worse transgression. But when scaling down from a more severe transgression to a less severe one, they differentiate less, often condemning the lesser transgression just as strongly as one that is transparently worse. Indicating that one transgression is less bad than another can be construed as downplaying such transgressions, signaling bad moral character. Supporting this account, the asymmetry is larger for judgments that implicate moral character and for transgressions that seem especially important to condemn. Observers' moral-character judgments reveal a similar pattern, suggesting that the asymmetry is reinforced by social incentives.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"184-203"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-02-24DOI: 10.1177/09567976241311923
Paolo Ghisletta, Stephen Aichele, Denis Gerstorf, Angela Carollo, Ulman Lindenberger
{"title":"Verbal Fluency Selectively Predicts Survival in Old and Very Old Age.","authors":"Paolo Ghisletta, Stephen Aichele, Denis Gerstorf, Angela Carollo, Ulman Lindenberger","doi":"10.1177/09567976241311923","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241311923","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Intelligence is known to predict survival, but it remains unclear whether cognitive abilities differ in their relationship to survival in old age. We analyzed longitudinal data of 516 healthy adults (age: <i>M</i> = 84.92 years, <i>SD</i> = 8.66 years at Wave 1) from the Berlin Aging Study (Germany) on nine tasks of perceptual speed, episodic memory, verbal fluency, and verbal knowledge, and a general composite intelligence score. There were eight waves, with up to 18 years of follow-up; all participants were deceased by the time of analysis. We used a joint multivariate longitudinal survival model to estimate the unique contribution of each cognitive ability in terms of true (i.e., error-free) current value and current rate of change when predicting survival. Additional survival covariates included age at first occasion, sex, sociobiographical status, and suspected dementia. Only the two verbal-fluency measures were uniquely predictive of mortality risk. Thus, verbal fluency showed more salient associations with mortality risk than did measures of perceptual speed, episodic memory, and verbal knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"87-101"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143493449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-03-13DOI: 10.1177/09567976251315689
Mayan Navon, Yoav Bar-Anan
{"title":"The Effects of Group Affiliation Versus Individuating Information on Direct and Indirect Measures of the Evaluation of Novel Individual Group Members.","authors":"Mayan Navon, Yoav Bar-Anan","doi":"10.1177/09567976251315689","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251315689","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Automatic evaluation has emerged as a central concept in contemporary thinking about prejudice. The current research tested a quintessential aspect of prejudice: whether group affiliation dominates the automatic evaluation of individual group members even when diagnostic evaluative information about the individuals is available. Participants read a list of descriptions about the behaviors of two individuals: one from a typically liked group and one from a typically disliked group. The list portrayed one individual more positively than the other, and we manipulated the extremity and direction of that difference. We conducted six studies (<i>N</i> = 11,572) with samples consisting of U.S. adults across different regions and group types (age, gender, and race) and two indirect measures that purportedly measure automatic evaluation: the implicit association test (IAT) and the evaluative priming task (EPT). Group affiliation (relative to personal characteristics) influenced the IAT and the EPT more than it influenced the self-reported evaluation. These results may suggest that the automatic evaluation of individuals is more prejudiced than nonautomatic evaluation.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"130-142"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143625682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-02-27DOI: 10.1177/09567976251315679
Yuyang Zhang, Qianyu Jiang, Yushen Luo, Jinting Liu
{"title":"Can One Donation a Day Keep Depression Away? Three Randomized Controlled Trials of an Online Micro-Charitable Giving Intervention.","authors":"Yuyang Zhang, Qianyu Jiang, Yushen Luo, Jinting Liu","doi":"10.1177/09567976251315679","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251315679","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Prosocial interventions grounded in social interactions have shown limited effectiveness in alleviating depressive symptoms, possibly because of the discomfort and unease that depressed individuals experience during such interactions. We developed and examined an innovative prosocial intervention-an online micro-charitable giving intervention, in which individuals voluntarily donated at least one Chinese cent (¥0.01, or about $0.0014) daily. We conducted three preregistered, 2-month randomized controlled trials with depressed individuals (Sample 1: <i>N</i> = 125, Sample 2: <i>N</i> = 296, Sample 3: <i>N</i> = 462). Results showed that, compared with the waitlist group, the intervention group exhibited significantly greater improvements in both depressive symptoms (Cohen's <i>d</i>s = -0.19 to -0.46) and emotional positivity (Cohen's <i>d</i>s = 0.22 to 0.49), and that emotional positivity mediated the intervention's effect on the reduction of depressive symptoms. Exploratory analysis found a slightly larger intervention effect for generous donors than for minimal donors. This low-cost, easily accessible prosocial intervention holds potential for the prevention of depression.[Box: see text].</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"102-115"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143524185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-03-11DOI: 10.1177/09567976251319038
Ashley J Coventry, Selina Mixner, Benjamin Gelbart, Kathryn V Walter, Daniel Conroy-Beam, Tamsin C German
{"title":"*Deconfounding Sex and Sex of Partner in Mate-Preference Research.","authors":"Ashley J Coventry, Selina Mixner, Benjamin Gelbart, Kathryn V Walter, Daniel Conroy-Beam, Tamsin C German","doi":"10.1177/09567976251319038","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251319038","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Much of the previous research examining sex differences in human mate preferences has relied exclusively on heterosexual participants. Consequently, prior work overlooks a critical limitation: In heterosexual populations, participant sex and partner sex are perfectly confounded. Here, we tease apart this fundamental problem by separately examining ideal preferences for male and female partners across two studies-one using a large bisexual sample (<i>n</i> = 442) and another using a sample of both bisexual and heterosexual participants (<i>n =</i> 380). The results revealed that sex differences in mate preferences were largely driven by the participants' own sex. However, both males and females set higher standards overall for the traits of male partners. These findings suggest that a person's mate-preference psychology is shaped by both one's own sex and the sex of the target being evaluated. More broadly, these results expand our understanding of the proximate psychology underlying human mate preferences.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"116-129"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143606092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-02-01Epub Date: 2025-02-18DOI: 10.1177/09567976241309615
Sami R Yousif, Elizabeth M Brannon
{"title":"Perceiving Topological Relations.","authors":"Sami R Yousif, Elizabeth M Brannon","doi":"10.1177/09567976241309615","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241309615","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>There are many ways to describe and represent the visuospatial world. A space can be described by its euclidean properties-the size of objects, the angles of boundaries, the distances between them. A space can also be described in nonspatial terms: One could explain the layout of a city by the order of its streets. Somewhere in between, <i>topological representations</i>-such as those commonly depicted in public-transit maps-capture coarse relational structure without precise euclidean detail, offering a relatively efficient, low-dimensional way of capturing spatial content. Here, we ask whether human adults quickly and automatically perceive such relations. In six experiments, we show that differences in simple topological features influence a range of visual tasks from object matching to number estimation to visual search. We discuss the possibility that topological relations are a kind of visual primitive that supports visuospatial representation.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"71-86"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143449959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Extended Mind in Young Children: Cost-Dependent Trade-Off Between External and Internal Memory.","authors":"Yibiao Liang, Erik Blaser, Jia Ying Yi, Liyang Sai, Zsuzsa Kaldy","doi":"10.1177/09567976241306424","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241306424","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Most work on working memory development has children remember a set of items as well as they can. However, this approach sidesteps the <i>extended mind</i>, the integration of external information with memory. Indeed, adults prefer to use external resources (e.g., lists, models) but will remember more as the cost to access them increases. Here, in our shopping game, we investigated this trade-off in 5- to 8-year-olds. Using a touchscreen, children shopped in a virtual store. Their shopping list and the store were not visible simultaneously but could be toggled. We manipulated access cost by varying a delay (0-4 s) before the list's reappearance. Across three preregistered experiments at two sites (the United States and China, <i>N</i> = 141), a pattern emerged: When it was costlier to do so, children revisited the list less often, studied it longer, and selected more correct items. Also, children recognized the costs, identifying the no-delay condition as easier. Young children showed a cost-dependent trade-off of external-resource use versus working memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"19-34"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11969038/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143053407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2024-12-04DOI: 10.1177/09567976241266481
Clifford E Hauenstein, Rick P Thomas, David A Illingworth, Michael R Dougherty
{"title":"Rethinking the Role of Teams and Training in Geopolitical Forecasting: The Effect of Uncontrolled Method Variance on Statistical Conclusions.","authors":"Clifford E Hauenstein, Rick P Thomas, David A Illingworth, Michael R Dougherty","doi":"10.1177/09567976241266481","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241266481","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Using data from a geopolitical forecasting tournament, Mellers et al. (2014) [Psychological strategies for winning a geopolitical forecasting tournament. <i>Psychological Science, 25</i>, 1106-1115] concluded that forecasting ability was improved by allowing participants to work in teams and providing them with probability training. Here, we reevaluated Mellers et al.'s conclusions using an item response theory framework that models latent ability from forecasting choices. We found that the relationship between latent ability estimates and forecast accuracy differed from the interpretation of the original findings once key extraneous variables were statistically controlled. The best fit models across the first 2 years of the tournament included one or more extraneous variables that substantially eliminated, reduced, and, in some cases, even reversed the effects of the experimental manipulations of teaming and training on latent forecasting ability. We also show that latent traits associated with strategic responding can discriminate between superforecasters and non-superforecasters, making it difficult to identify the latent factors that underlie the superforecasters' superior performance.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"3-18"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142780464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-02-04DOI: 10.1177/09567976241306099
Kelton Minor, Esteban Moro, Nick Obradovich
{"title":"Worse Weather Amplifies Social Media Activity.","authors":"Kelton Minor, Esteban Moro, Nick Obradovich","doi":"10.1177/09567976241306099","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241306099","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humanity spends an increasing proportion of its time interacting online, yet-given the importance of social media to human welfare-the external factors that regularly shape online behavior remain markedly understudied. Do environmental factors alter rates of online social activity? We conducted two large natural experiments to investigate how worse weather conditions affect social-media use in the United States, analyzing over 3.5 billion posts from Facebook and Twitter (now X) between 2009 and 2016. We found that extreme temperatures and added precipitation each independently amplified social-media activity, effects that persisted within individuals. Compounded weather extremes produced markedly larger increases in social-media activity. Days colder than -5 °C with 1.5 to 2 cm of precipitation elevated social-media activity by 35%, nearly triple the surge seen on New Year's Eve in New York City. Our study highlights that environmental conditions play a critical-but overlooked-role in shaping digital social interaction.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"35-54"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143190222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}