Communications Psychology最新文献

{"title":"Antagonism shapes social maps in the human brain.","authors":"Isato Chikazawa, Ryo Ishibashi, Tamami Nakano","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00491-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00491-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human relationships form a complex web of affiliative and antagonistic ties. Yet how the brain represents their affective structures remains unclear. Here, using a television drama depicting intertwined friendships and rivalries, we examined how the brain encodes the valence of interpersonal relationships. Participants underwent fMRI scanning before and after watching the drama while viewing the faces of its central characters. They then rated each character pair for relationship strength and valence, and whole-brain representational similarity analysis (RSA) identified brain regions representing these relational structures. Relationship valence effects were most prominent for antagonistic (negative) relationships in the left anterior supramarginal gyrus and right medial prefrontal cortex. Univariate analyses revealed increased activation in the precuneus after drama viewing, suggesting enhanced retrieval of narrative-related person knowledge, though this region did not show statistically significant representational similarity patterns reflecting interpersonal relationships. These findings indicate that the human brain constructs a multidimensional social map from narrative experience, with antagonistic ties playing important role in shaping social relationship representations.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13338177/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148400382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neural responses to conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback correlate with trait emotion regulation and daily support.","authors":"Shanshan Ma, Erin L Maresh, Andrea M Coppola, Katherine E Richard, Leonie Koban, Diego Guevara Beltran, David A Sbarra, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00493-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00493-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Empathy lies at the core of social interactions, particularly in intimate relationships, yet few laboratory tasks are designed to capture empathy in interpersonal contexts-especially those requiring individuals to simultaneously process social information directed toward both the self and a romantic partner. In this exploratory study, 131 adults (from 71 romantic couples) completed a neuroimaging paradigm that manipulated whether positive or negative partner-directed feedback was presented alone or alongside self-directed feedback. The partner-alone feedback contrasts (partner-directed feedback alone versus a neutral control condition) robustly engaged brain regions associated with empathic responding, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction. Notably, during the incongruent feedback contrasts-simultaneous conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback versus self-directed feedback alone-participants exhibited diminished affective and brain responses but evidenced unique brain activity in frontoparietal areas frequently associated with cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supramarginal gyrus). Furthermore, when responding to positive partner-directed feedback in the presence of negative self-directed feedback, enhanced activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with lower self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation and more partner-rated support provided in everyday life. Taken together, these findings suggest that salient self-focused information may dampen individuals' emotional and neural responses to their partners' uplifting and critical feedback, that emotion regulation tendencies may be an important between-subjects moderator of this effect, and that individual differences in spontaneous neural responses during this task were associated with meaningful real-world outcomes, although further validation and replication are warranted.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148379262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language markers of student beliefs signal college success.","authors":"Dorottya Demszky, C Lee Williams, Shannon T Brady, Shashanka Subrahmanya, Eric Gaudiello, Gregory M Walton, Johannes C Eichstaedt","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00494-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00494-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Can we detect students' hidden beliefs about fitting in at college in ways that predict academic success and inequality? Using computational language‑based measures, we analyzed 25,000 pre‑college essays from students at 23 U.S. colleges to infer two beliefs about belonging. One belief-simple optimism-reflects confidence in a smooth college transition without acknowledging potential challenges. The other-a process‑oriented perspective-acknowledges potential struggles but represents them as common and temporary. Students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds more often expressed simple optimism and less often the process‑oriented view. These patterns mattered: simple optimism predicted lower grades and rates of full‑time enrollment through the first year of college, whereas a process‑oriented view predicted higher GPA and persistence, controlling for academic preparation, among other factors. A short social‑belonging exercise shifted students' language toward the process‑oriented perspective by 25 percentage points, reducing differences by disadvantaged status. These findings suggest that latent beliefs about belonging are evident in everyday language and predict student outcomes, offering a tool for education leaders to better understand their students and support college success.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148379229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A systematic review and meta-analysis of the mental health correlates of swiping-based dating app use.","authors":"Herald Cela, Guilherme Wood","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00488-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00488-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Swiping-based dating apps have become a pervasive feature of contemporary social life, reshaping how individuals seek intimacy, curate self-presentation, and encounter psychological feedback. This systematic review and meta-analysis compared dating app users vs non-users across 27 studies (N = 21,263) to assess associations with mental health outcomes. Across six theoretically derived domains, meta-analytic results indicate small-to-moderate associations between dating app use and emotional distress, appearance concerns, body image disturbance, behavioral dysregulation, and interpersonal sensitivity, with the strongest effects observed for behavioral dysregulations (g = 0.44) and body-related outcomes (g = 0.32). Effects for general wellbeing were small and non-significant. Women and men who belong to a sexual minority exhibited elevated appearance- and body-related vulnerability. Although mechanisms cannot be inferred from available evidence, converging patterns across studies suggest that visually driven, evaluative interaction features may compound appearance-based concerns, and that high-volume partner choice may correlate with compulsive or dysregulated patterns of use. Considerable heterogeneity across studies underscores the influence of individual susceptibility and social context. Overall, findings indicate significant associations between dating app use and adverse psychological outcomes, while highlighting substantial gaps in longitudinal and mechanistic evidence. Future research should employ prospective and intersectional designs to clarify temporal pathways and inform digital mental health interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148379307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Emergence of collective mental time travel pathways upon remembering consequential elections.","authors":"Elif Ece Sözer, Meymune N Topçu, Ayşecan Boduroğlu","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00489-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00489-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Collective past and future representations can be thematically linked and vary across sociopolitical identity. Here, we introduce the notion of collective mental time travel pathways: distinct connections that emerge between past and future representational networks upon reflection on a critical public event. We demonstrate that these pathways capture nuanced sociopolitical profiles shaping collective mental time travel. In Study 1 (N = 403), a representative sample remembered the 2023 Turkish Presidential Elections, and equally important past and future events. Participants rated each event's characteristics (Valence, Vividness, Agency, Importance). Using these ratings, we identified four unique representational pathways in which the elections bridged collective past and future. Each collective mental time travel pathway had distinct sociopolitical profiles: Despite losing, vividly remembering the election as very important, characterized by high national agency, and continuing post-election conversations were related to high future individual agency; remembering a positive and agentic past was related to high future political group agency. When participants remembered collective past and future events without reflecting on the election (Study 2, N = 201), event characteristics were separated by importance and agency. These two studies illustrate how collective mental time travel pathways can be activated by reviewing critical and consequential elections.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148371602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Teams perform worse when newcomers hold critical information than when original group members do.","authors":"Sydney E Phlegar, Kareena S Del Rosario, Oana D Dumitru, Tessa V West","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00490-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00490-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this study, two new acquaintances joined an online chatroom, spent five minutes discussing the qualities of a job candidate, then a newcomer joined the chat. The three group members (N_triads = 370; N_participants = 1110) engaged in the Hidden Profile Task during which they chose the best job candidate among four to hire. Before they began, all group members received common information and one group member-either one of the initial members or the newcomer-received critical, unshared information about one candidate that the team needed to make the correct decision. Teams in which the newcomer held critical information were less likely to make the correct decision than teams in which one of the initial members held it. Newcomers with critical information showed weaker linguistic coordination to group members-a measure of social alignment that captures the degree to which group members mimic each other's language style-and reported greater perceived task conflict than newcomers who did not have critical information. Lastly, we tested whether a manipulation of prestige-based status-giving false feedback on a test for skills ostensibly relevant to decision making-could overpower newcomer status; however, we did not find credible evidence that it did so. These findings illustrate the power of brief interactions for shaping biases against newcomers.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13677713/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148341794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Auditory perceptual maps in humans and mice share common structures and predict perceptual decisions in discrimination learning.","authors":"Johannes P-H Seiler, Giuseppe Cazzetta, Aida Ghobadi, Simon Rumpel","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00485-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00485-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To efficiently perceive sensory information and guide behavior, the brain organizes incoming sensory stimuli into internal maps that capture perceptual relatedness between stimuli. Whether these maps, typically assessed in scaling paradigms without feedback, also shape perceptual decisions during reinforcement-based conditions remains unclear. Here, we assess task-naïve perceptual maps from similarity judgments of pulsed sound stimuli, and compare them to perceptual maps obtained from multiple discrimination tasks in humans (n = 152) and mice (n = 11). We find that task-naïve maps predict how well humans discriminate sounds, how quickly they learn, and which stimulus features guide their choices. Moreover, naïve and task-based maps share key structures, suggesting a stable perceptual map architecture throughout learning. Remarkably, human task-based and task-naïve perceptual maps share key features and structures with the task-based perceptual maps of mice, indicating congruent structures of auditory perception across species. Together, our results indicate that perception relies on robust internal maps that provide a common framework to flexibly guide behavior in changing environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13282483/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148285074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cross-cultural evidence for positive control and mind-mindedness as buffers for parental distress.","authors":"Claire Hughes, Elian Fink, Ayalguu Agtchin, Laure Lu Chen, Caoimhe Dempsey, Rory T Devine, Hana D'Souza, Miryam Edwards, Louise Gray, Jean Anne Heng, Mikeda Jess, Mishika Mehrotra, Siu Ching Wong, Catherine Wu, Jiayin Zheng, Zhen Wu, Zhenlin Wang, Chengyi Xu","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00484-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00484-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Parental distress impacts children's emotional adjustment, highlighting the need to identify protective factors. Promising candidates include positive control (i.e., autonomy support, indexed by parental encouragement, praise, and open-ended questions) and representational mind-mindedness (the propensity for parents to view children as independent agents). To counterbalance the focus on European and North American samples, we included 849 parent-child dyads from England, Hong Kong and Mainland China (M_{child age} = 5.17 years, SD = 0.51). Parents rated their own distress and child internalizing problems; their interactions with their children were assessed for positive control, and their speech samples were coded for representational mind-mindedness. In a single-paper meta-analysis, parental distress was associated with elevated child internalizing problems and low positive control consistently across sites, but only associated with low mind-mindedness in England. Within-site analyses showed that intergenerational associations in distress-internalizing problems were attenuated by positive control in Mainland China and by mind-mindedness in England; multi-group modeling demonstrated that this latter effect was site-specific. These findings highlight the importance of widening the cultural scope of this research field.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13634921/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148274454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why sycophantic LLMs may imperil interactive norms between humans.","authors":"Ruolei Gu, Zhiyi Chen, Ming Peng, Chao Liu, Zhicheng Lin","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00486-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00486-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Interactions with conversational AI are effortless by design-instant, compliant, and largely consequence-free. Human communication norms, by contrast, evolved under conditions of reciprocity and social accountability. We propose that repeated engagement with conversational AI systems may produce norm leakage: the cross-context carryover of instrumental communicative habits acquired in human-AI exchanges into subsequent human-human interaction. Emerging experimental evidence suggests short-term spillover effects on social judgment and behavior, including harsher evaluations, reduced cooperation, and diminished perceived humanness. Preliminary longitudinal findings are consistent with the possibility that such exposure may shape communicative habits over time, although the durability and real-world magnitude of these effects remain unclear. We further propose that sycophantic alignment may amplify norm leakage by reinforcing instrumental interaction styles. At stake, then, is the possibility that repeated engagement with highly compliant artificial agents could subtly influence users' communicative expectations and interpersonal judgments.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13272657/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148267774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early detection of distinct language development in infants of mothers with severe mental illness using fNIRS.","authors":"Alessandra Piatti, Holly Hope, Matthias Pierce, Kathryn Abel","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00475-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00475-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Infants of mothers with severe mental illness are at elevated risk of neurodevelopmental difficulties. This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to compare 8-10-month-old infants exposed to severe maternal mental illness (n = 30) and unexposed controls (n = 30) during two experiments assessing brain activation to voice versus non-voice sounds and to sentences with angry, happy, or neutral prosody. Exposed infants showed atypical right-temporal activation, with stronger activation to non-voice than voice stimuli, unlike controls. Socioeconomic status was positively correlated with activation to non-voice and to sentences, independently of emotional prosody. Further analysis indicated that brain response to non-voice stimuli mediated the relation between socioeconomic status and activation to sentences. These findings reveal distinct neural trajectories in infants exposed to severe maternal mental illness, detectable within the first year of life, and highlight socioeconomic background as a key factor in early brain development.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13630572/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148261235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}