Psychological SciencePub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-03-10DOI: 10.1177/09567976261426226
Nicholas Poh-Jie Tan, Michael D Krämer, Peter Haehner, Wiebke Bleidorn, Christopher J Hopwood
{"title":"Associations Between Meat Consumption and Depression Are Small and Unlikely to Be Causal.","authors":"Nicholas Poh-Jie Tan, Michael D Krämer, Peter Haehner, Wiebke Bleidorn, Christopher J Hopwood","doi":"10.1177/09567976261426226","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976261426226","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evidence from cross-sectional studies suggests that people who eat more meat tend to report somewhat lower depression-a link that, if causal, could have important implications for mental health. However, little is known about why meat consumption is associated with depression. We examined the nature and magnitude of this association in three large, representative, longitudinal samples in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia (total <i>N</i> = 77,678, aged 14-102 years). Adjusting for income, age, education, and gender, we observed a weak association of β = -0.05 between meat consumption and depression that was not moderated by living context. Moreover, the longitudinal within-person association was very small (β = -0.01) and lagged within-person effects were not significant, casting doubt on a direct causal association. Overall, results do not support low meat consumption as an important risk factor for depression.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"166-179"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147435090","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-03-23DOI: 10.1177/09567976261425130
Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, Tobias Heide-Jørgensen, Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Peter Thisted Dinesen
{"title":"Local Economic Inequality and Depression: Evidence From Longitudinal Data on Local Residential Contexts and Antidepressant Use.","authors":"Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, Tobias Heide-Jørgensen, Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Peter Thisted Dinesen","doi":"10.1177/09567976261425130","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976261425130","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We studied the consequences of economic inequality for depression among adults using individual-level longitudinal administrative data from Denmark (<i>n</i> = 60,654,690 person time points). The data allow us to (a) measure depression without nonresponse (by proxy of redemption of prescriptions for antidepressants), (b) measure income inequality at a low level of aggregation to capture individuals' everyday experiences, (c) conduct within-individual analyses from stable individual characteristics to address confounding, and (d) test whether inequality has similar consequences for people located differently in the local income distribution. In contrast to previous work, we found a modest negative average effect of economic inequality (a 1-<i>SD</i> increase in inequality is associated with a 1%-2% relative decrease in the probability of depression). However, this average masks substantial heterogeneity: The negative effect was confined to the locally relatively well-off, whereas those with the lowest relative income tended to become more depressed as inequality rose.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":"37 3","pages":"206-223"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147499678","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-03-10DOI: 10.1177/09567976261418946
Sudeep Bhatia, Andrew Yang, Taya R Cohen
{"title":"The Structure of Social Situations: Insights From the Large-Scale Automated Coding of Text.","authors":"Sudeep Bhatia, Andrew Yang, Taya R Cohen","doi":"10.1177/09567976261418946","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976261418946","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social situations are key determinants of cognition and behavior, and although several frameworks for representing situations have been proposed, these remain partial, nonintegrated, and not systematically mapped onto the rich space of situations encountered in everyday life. We address this problem by analyzing more than 20,000 detailed textual descriptions of dyadic social interactions obtained from participant-generated stories, published fiction, blogs, and autobiographical narratives. Our main methodological contribution is to use generative artificial intelligence to code these textual descriptions along a very large set of features and derive a detailed taxonomy of situational classes or categories of social interactions. We subsequently relate these situational classes to high-level situational variables like conflict, power, and duty, which have been identified by prior theory. In this way, our article provides a comprehensive, data-driven, and integrative framework for quantifying situational structure, advancing the study of social cognition and behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"180-205"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13428856/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147435096","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 : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-03DOI: 10.1177/09567976251415354
Audrey Mazancieux, Katarzyna Hat, Renate Rutiku, Michał Wierzchoń, Kristian Sandberg
{"title":"Metacognition in Decision-Making Across Domains and Modalities: Evidence From Three Studies.","authors":"Audrey Mazancieux, Katarzyna Hat, Renate Rutiku, Michał Wierzchoń, Kristian Sandberg","doi":"10.1177/09567976251415354","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251415354","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Metacognition involves second-order judgments about first-order judgments. It remains unclear whether an individual's confidence in being correct is generated by the same system across tasks (<i>domain generality</i>) or whether it is computed independently in the context of each task (<i>domain specificity</i>). Previous studies have focused on correlations across several tasks, yet the evidence is mixed, and more complex models of domain generality were not taken into account. Analyzing data from 10 tasks collected across three studies in Denmark and Poland (<i>N</i> = 253-547 adult participants), we found a fixed pattern of cross-task correlations for both metacognitive bias and metacognitive efficiency. In accordance with previous studies, we found that hierarchical estimation of metacognitive efficiency led to higher correlations. We used confirmatory factor analyses to investigate the existence of general processes. We found evidence for a weak domain generality with a metacognitive module for perceptual tasks and another for cognitive tasks.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"106-124"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13428946/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146113720","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 : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-09DOI: 10.1177/09567976251412721
Elizabeth R Tenney, Kylie Rochford, Amelia Stillwell, Coco Xinyue Liu, David Tannenbaum, Marie Hennecke, Jeanine K Stefanucci, B Ariel Blair, Jesse Graham, Bryan L Bonner
{"title":"Registered Report: A Replication Examining Occupational Experience and Performance on the Water-Level Task.","authors":"Elizabeth R Tenney, Kylie Rochford, Amelia Stillwell, Coco Xinyue Liu, David Tannenbaum, Marie Hennecke, Jeanine K Stefanucci, B Ariel Blair, Jesse Graham, Bryan L Bonner","doi":"10.1177/09567976251412721","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251412721","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This is a registered report to directly replicate the primary finding in Hecht and Proffitt (1995). Hecht and Proffitt found that those with occupational experience handling liquid in containers performed worse at solving a water-level problem than those in occupations that did not require handling liquids. Shortly after, Vasta et al. (1997) found the opposite: Experience was associated with superior performance on the task. The conflicting findings and the small sample sizes in each study leave the relationship between experience and water-level-task performance uncertain. We addressed these concerns with a high-powered direct replication of Hecht and Proffitt with adults in Germany (<i>N</i> = 407). We failed to replicate Hecht and Proffitt's results, finding that their study had less than 33% power to detect the small, nonsignificant difference that we observed between groups.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":"37 2","pages":"125-135"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146150494","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 : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-03DOI: 10.1177/09567976251409747
Matan Mazor, Chaz Firestone, Ian Phillips
{"title":"Pretending Not to Know Reveals a Capacity for Model-Based Self-Simulation.","authors":"Matan Mazor, Chaz Firestone, Ian Phillips","doi":"10.1177/09567976251409747","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251409747","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Pretending not to know requires appreciating how one would behave without a given piece of knowledge and acting accordingly. Here, two game-based experiments reveal a capacity to simulate decision-making under such counterfactual ignorance. English-speaking adults (<i>N</i> = 1,001) saw the solution to a game (ship locations in Battleship, the hidden word in Hangman) but attempted to play as though they never had this information. Pretenders accurately mimicked broad aspects of genuine play, including the number of guesses required to reach a solution, as well as subtle patterns, such as the effects of decision uncertainty on decision time. Although peers were unable to detect pretense, statistical analysis and computational modeling uncovered traces of overacting in pretenders' decisions, suggesting a schematic simulation of their minds. Opening up a new approach to studying self-simulation, our results reveal intricate metacognitive knowledge about decision-making, drawn from a rich-but simplified-internal model of cognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"136-149"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13428886/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146113769","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 : 2026-02-01Epub Date: 2026-02-03DOI: 10.1177/09567976251415352
Sarah K Crockford, Eleonora Satta, Ines Severino, Donatella Fiacchino, Andrea Vitale, Natasha Bertelsen, Elena Maria Busuoli, Veronica Mandelli, Michael V Lombardo
{"title":"Detection of Idiosyncratic Gaze-Fingerprint Signatures in Humans.","authors":"Sarah K Crockford, Eleonora Satta, Ines Severino, Donatella Fiacchino, Andrea Vitale, Natasha Bertelsen, Elena Maria Busuoli, Veronica Mandelli, Michael V Lombardo","doi":"10.1177/09567976251415352","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251415352","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Do individuals possess a \"gaze fingerprint\" that reveals how they uniquely look at the world? We tested this question by examining intra- and intersubject gaze similarity across 700 static pictures of complex natural scenes. Independent discovery (<i>n</i> = 105) and replication data sets (<i>n</i> = 46) of adults aged 18 to 50 years (sampled from Italy and Germany) revealed that gaze fingerprinting is possible at relatively high rates (e.g., 52%-63%) compared with chance (e.g., 1%-2%). We also identify <i>gaze-fingerprint barcodes</i>, which reveal a unique individualized code describing which stimuli an individual can be gaze-fingerprinted on. Preregistered longitudinal follow-up experiments have shown that gaze-fingerprint barcodes are nonrandom within an individual over short and long time fraframmes. Finally, we find that increased gaze fingerprintability for social stimuli is associated with decreased levels of autistic traits. To summarize, this work showcases the potential of gaze fingerprinting for isolating traitlike factors that may be of high neurodevelopmental and biological significance.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"83-105"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13044473/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146113734","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}
{"title":"Fidelity Versus Validity Using Anendophasia as an Example: Commentary on Nedergaard and Lupyan (2024) and Lind (2025).","authors":"Russell T Hurlburt","doi":"10.1177/09567976251413525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976251413525","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nedergaard and Lupyan (2024) presented four studies aimed at validating anendophasia (i.e., experiencing no inner speech).<sup>1</sup> However, Lind (2025) held that no one, including Nedergaard and Lupyan, has demonstrated that anendophasia exists. In both articles, the authors support their positions using the findings of descriptive experience sampling. Here, I show that descriptive experience sampling is a fidelity-aspiring method; I highlight the distinction between fidelity and validity (an important distinction for psychological science in general and for anendophasia in particular). Anendophasia is an experiential phenomenon, not a construct, and therefore requires incorporating fidelity-based investigations. Nedergaard and Lupyan treated anendophasia as a construct (providing validity-based investigations), but drew phenomenon-based conclusions. I distinguish between completely and mostly anendophasic individuals, noting that, in practice, that distinction might be impossible to make. I suggest that anendophasic (or at least mostly anendophasic) individuals do in fact exist (probably frequently) and are worthy of fidelity-based (as well as validational) investigations.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"9567976251413525"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2026-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146086811","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 : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-19DOI: 10.1177/09567976251400338
Stephen Antonoplis, Juan Eduardo Garcia-Cardenas, Eileen K Graham, Daniel K Mroczek
{"title":"The 2008 Great Recession Lowered Americans' Class Identity.","authors":"Stephen Antonoplis, Juan Eduardo Garcia-Cardenas, Eileen K Graham, Daniel K Mroczek","doi":"10.1177/09567976251400338","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251400338","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Americans readily identify with class labels, such as <i>working class</i> and <i>middle class</i>. In turn, these identities affect their social affiliations, cultural values, and physical health. Despite theoretical predictions that class identity can change, little work has empirically examined the long-term malleability of class identity. Here we ask, can class identity change in the long term? And if so, when? We tested this question by examining whether the 2008 Great Recession changed how Americans viewed their social and economic standing in society-that is, their class identity. In three of four data sets (total <i>N</i> = 164,296), we found that the 2008 Great Recession shifted Americans toward identifying as a lower class. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of the formation of class identity and for the political and social development of the United States following 2008.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"18-29"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13428917/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145794526","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 : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-01-07DOI: 10.1177/09567976251404040
Tyler J Hubeny, Lea S Nahon, Bertram Gawronski
{"title":"Understanding Partisan Bias in Judgments of Misinformation: Identity Protection Versus Differential Knowledge.","authors":"Tyler J Hubeny, Lea S Nahon, Bertram Gawronski","doi":"10.1177/09567976251404040","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976251404040","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People overaccept information that supports their identity and underaccept information that opposes their identity-a phenomenon known as <i>partisan bias</i>. Although partisan-bias effects in judgments of misinformation are robust and pervasive, there is ongoing debate about whether partisan-bias effects arise from identity-protective motivated reasoning or differential knowledge of identity-congenial versus identity-uncongenial information. Prior empirical work has been unable to differentiate the two accounts because of a reliance on groups with pre-existing differences in knowledge (e.g., Democrats and Republicans). The current research addresses this issue by using randomly assigned rather than pre-existing identities. Across two experiments (<i>N<sub>total</sub></i> = 1,411), adult U.S. Prolific workers showed lower thresholds for accepting information that is congenial versus uncongenial to a randomly assigned identity, despite having no differences in prior knowledge. These results support theories that emphasize identity protection as a factor underlying partisan bias in the acceptance of misinformation, with important practical implications for misinformation interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"43-54"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13044433/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145917982","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}