Browse Our Latest Psychology and Behavioral Science Journals
Psychological journals are peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journals that publish original work in some areas of psychology. The most common publications include cognitive, health and clinical psychology, applied, developmental, biological, social, experimental, and educational psychology, and psychoanalysis.
Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Incels, also known as “involuntary celibates,” are an online subculture comprised of mostly heterosexual men who describe themselves as unable to obtain a sexual partner despite their desire and effort to do so. The group often externalizes the reasons for this failure, blaming societal structures and ideals as well as feminist movements. In recent years, some within this subculture have become radicalized. The violent ideologies of Incels have been linked to several mass shootings, including those committed by Elliot Rodger and Jake Davison. Although some Incels have attempted to use evolutionary psychology to justify their anger and ideology, this paper aims to turn the evolutionary lens back on Incels to explore Incels' core features of misogyny, group identity, suicidality and violence. Incels attempt to establish and maintain a social “in-group,” strive to eliminate sexual competition, and attempt to bypass female mate choice. The paper explores how Incels use of evolutionary psychology principles and highlights the benefits that studying Incels, both in general and through an evolutionary lens, can yield.
Abstract
In humans, the allocation of resources, such as parental care and attention, is vital to offspring survival. Life history strategies are influenced by cues in the environment, particularly those that signal the availability of resources. What has yet to be determined is how individuals allocate resources to infants as a function of perceived ecological harshness and life history strategy. In the current research we hypothesized that perceived ecology would influence infant ratings (Study 1), and that visual attention to infant phenotypes would be associated with life history strategies (Study 2). Study 1 investigated the effect of ecological conditions (control vs. harsh) on preferences to infant phenotypes (i.e., underweight, average weight, overweight). Participants (N = 246) were less likely to rate infants favorably under a harsh ecological condition. Study 2 investigated visual perception in processing infant images. Using an eye-tracking task, participants (N = 239) viewed images of infants while their eye movements were recorded. Participants displayed an early attentional bias (i.e., first fixation duration) to the head of the infant and focused most of their visual attention to the torso of infants (i.e., total visit duration). The results of the both studies indicate that ecological factors play an important role in rating infants, and data from eye-tracking demonstrates that phenotypes influence the amount of attention given to infants.
Abstract
Individual danger and collective danger have very different effects according to the predictions of a theory called regality theory, based on evolutionary psychology. This study explores the effects of different kinds of danger on 37 different indicators of psychological and cultural responses to danger based on data from two waves of the World Values Survey, including 173,000 respondents in 79 countries.
The results show that individual danger and collective danger have very different – and often opposite – psychological and cultural effects. Collective dangers are positively correlated with many indicators related to authoritarianism, nationalism, discipline, intolerance, morality, religiosity, etc. Individual dangers have neutral or opposite correlations with many of these indicators. Infectious diseases have little or no effects on these indicators. Many previous studies that confound different kinds of danger may be misleading.
Several psychological and cultural theories are discussed in relation to these results. The observed effects of collective danger are in agreement with many of these theories while individual danger has unexpected effects. The findings are not in agreement with terror management theory and pathogen stress theory.
Abstract
Low fertility is a growing concern in modern societies. While economic and structural explanations of reproductive hindrances have been informative to some extent, they do not address the fundamental motives that underlie reproductive decisions and are inadequate to explain why East Asian countries, in particular, have such low fertility rates. The current paper advances a novel account of low fertility in modern contexts by describing how modern environments produce a mismatch between our evolved mechanisms and the inputs they were designed to process, leading to preoccupations with social status that get in the way of mating and reproductive outcomes. We also utilize developed East Asian countries as a case study to further highlight how culture may interact with modern features to produce ultralow fertility, sometimes to the extent that people may give up on parenthood or even mating altogether. Through our analysis, we integrate several lines of separate research, elucidate the fundamental dynamics that drive trade-offs between social status and reproductive effort, add to the growing literature on evolutionary mismatch, and provide an improved account of low fertility in modern contexts.
Abstract
Background and aims
The lockdown of sports and gambling venues during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused a fear of increased gambling on other online gambling types, with a risk for transfer to more addictive gambling than otherwise. This study aimed to estimate changes in gambling activity during COVID-19-affected periods among all gamblers at a Swedish state-owned gambling operator and to analyse observable sex differences.
Methods
This study included gambling tracking data from the Swedish state-owned gambling operator Svenska Spel Sports & Casino (sports betting, online bingo, casino and poker). All individuals (n = 616,245) who gambled at least once from February 10 to July 19, 2020, were included. The study period was divided into four periods according to their expected level of COVID-19 impact on gambling opportunities: one pre-COVID period and three COVID-affected periods (sports cancellation, emerging return of sports, substantial return of sports).
Results
Sports betting experienced an apparent decrease, followed by a gradual normalization and an end level substantially below prepandemic levels. For online bingo, gambling levels increased upon sports interruption and then decreased with the return to normality in sports events but remained higher than baseline levels. We observed a similar trend for online poker during the interruption of sports, but with a lower level than baseline levels when sports events normalized. We noticed a trend favouring online casinos during the sports interruption period regarding gambling intensity but not wagering levels.
Discussion and conclusions
Dramatic changes in the content of the gambling market may divert some gamblers to other gambling types, but maintained effects could not be demonstrated.
Neuromítoszok az oktatásban – tények és törekvések
Neuromyths in education – Facts and aspirations
Háttér és célkitűzések
A neuromítoszok olyan tévhitek, amelyek az agyműködéssel kapcsolatos információk, jelenségek, idegtudományi eredmények félreértésén alapulnak. E tévhitek az oktatási rendszerben is elterjedtek, és sokszor kapcsolódnak össze különböző, úgynevezett neuropedagógiai elképzelésekkel, amelyek közvetlenül befolyásolhatják a gyakorlati pedagógiai munkát. Az elmúlt húsz évben egyre nagyobb figyelmet kapott az a kérdés, hogy mennyire elterjedtek a neuromítoszok, milyen tényezők befolyásolják jelenlétüket és elfogadottságukat az oktatás területén, és milyen hatást gyakorolnak a tanítási módszerekre. A kutatások egyöntetűen arra jutottak, hogy ezen mítoszok igen elterjedtek mind a pedagógusok, mind a pedagógusjelöltek körében. Ezen mítoszokra olyan fejlesztési javaslatok és terápiás eljárások épülnek, melyek hatástalanságuk miatt felesleges idő- és energiaráfordítást is jelenthetnek. Jelen tanulmány célja, hogy egyrészt három elterjedt oktatási neuromítosz tudományos alapjainak rövid áttekintésével bemutassa a jelenség súlyát, másrészt átfogóan ismertesse az oktatási neuromítoszokkal összefüggő tudományos eredményeket, a téma kutatásának jövőbeli irányait.
Módszer
Tanulmányunk a neuromítoszokkal, ezen belül a három legelterjedtebb neuromítosszal kapcsolatos magyar és angol nyelvű szakcikkek feldolgozása alapján készült, műfajában narratív jellegű kritikai összefoglaló elemzés.
Eredmények
Hazánkban alig jelent meg tanulmány a témában. A nemzetközi szakirodalom azonban egyre szélesebb körben foglalkozik az oktatási neuromítoszokkal, amelyek közül a legelterjedtebbek (1) a tanulási stílusokkal, (2) az agyféltekei dominanciával és (3) az agyféltekei integrációval kapcsolatos mítoszok. A neuromítoszok elfogadását, illetve elutasítását elősegítő (prediktív, illetve protektív) tényezők egyaránt a vizsgálatok homlokterében állnak.
Következtetések
A pedagógusok, pedagógusjelöltek és pedagógusképzésben dolgozó munkatársak evidenciaalapú idegtudományi ismereteinek bővítése kulcsfontosságúnak látszik a neuromítoszokkal szembeni küzdelemben. Lényeges szerepet töltenek be az aggyal kapcsolatos korszerű ismeretek, és a neuromítoszok felismeréséhez szükséges kritikai gondolkodás.
Abstract
Whether occasioned through careful, consistent meditative practice or through quicker means like the ritual ingestion of psilocybin or ayahuasca, global contemplative practices have established effective systems of implementing, directing, and integrating the very kinds of non-ordinary experiences central to psychedelic use. However, contemplative traditions are largely absent from the present discourse on psychedelic therapy. This paper addresses this gap and offers a novel analysis of psychedelic-assisted therapy through the lens of the Tibetan Buddhist contemplative tradition. It first establishes a baseline for comparing the non-ordinary experience occasioned by Tibetan Buddhist meditation and the psychedelic experience by referencing the phenomenological literature of both. It then articulates the Tibetan contemplative framework of view, meditation, action (Tib. lta sgom spyod gsum) as the way Tibetan Buddhism directs its non-ordinary meditative experience towards its desired ends and suggests how this framework may be applied to psychedelic-assisted therapy. Finally, this paper uses this Tibetan Buddhist lens of analysis to compare and assess two protocols for psychedelic-assisted therapy and to make recommendations for future clinical protocols. Given the phenomenological similarity of Tibetan Buddhist meditative experience and the psychedelic experience, this article suggests that a more intensive preparatory session where maladaptive conceptual narratives are worked through and beneficial ones are introduced, repeated dosing sessions, and a more directed psychedelic experience may increase the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy. It thus argues that the insights of the Tibetan framework of view, meditation, action can improve future protocols and allow for psychedelic-assisted therapy to be of even greater benefit.
Abstract
The present paper provides an overview of the possible risks, harms, and challenges that might arise with the development of the esports field and pose a threat to professional esports players, spectators, bettors and videogame players, including underage players. These include physical and mental health issues, gambling and gambling-like elements associated with videogames and esports, the challenges arising from pursuing a career in esports, the unique difficulties women face, and a need for supporting professional esports players. It briefly discusses possible responses and suggestions regarding how to address and mitigate these negative consequences. It emphasizes the need for cooperation and collaboration between various stakeholders: researchers, policymakers, regulators, the gaming industry, esports organizations, healthcare and treatment providers, educational institutes and the need for further evidence-based information.
Abstract
Background and aims
Negative/positive urgency (NU/PU) refers to the proneness to act rashly under negative/positive emotions. These traits are proxies to generalized emotion dysregulation, and are well-established predictors of gambling-related problems. We aimed to replicate a previous work (Quintero et al., 2020) showing NU to be related to faulty extinction of conditioned stimuli in an emotional conditioning task, to extend these findings to PU, and to clarify the role of urgency in the development of gambling-related craving and problems.
Methods
81 gamblers performed an acquisition-extinction task in which neutral, disgusting, erotic and gambling-related images were used as unconditioned stimuli (US), and color patches as conditioned stimuli (CS). Trial-by-trial predictive responses were analyzed using generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLME).
Results
PU was more strongly related than NU to craving and severity of gambling problems. PU did not influence acquisition in the associative task, whereas NU slightly slowed it. Extinction was hampered in individuals with high PU, and a follow-up analysis showed this effect to depend on relative preference for skill-based and casino games.
Discussion and conclusions
Results suggest that resistance to extinction of emotionally conditioned cues is a sign of malfunctioning emotion regulation in problematic gambling. In our work, the key effect was driven by PU (instead of NU), and gambling craving and symptoms were also more closely predicted by it. Future research should compare the involvement of PU and NU in emotion regulation and gambling problems, for gamblers with preference for different gambling modalities (e.g., pure chance vs skill games).
Abstract
Background and aims
It has been argued that it is important to consider underlying mechanisms of mental health problems. Previous studies have shown that executive deficits, delay aversion, and emotion dysregulation are related to Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and Social Media Disorder (SMD). However, the present study is the first to investigate whether these neuropsychological deficits show additive effects or if they interact. The present study also investigated whether these deficits mediate the association between IGD/SMD and psychosocial outcomes.
Methods
The study involved 995 university students who completed a survey measuring IGD/SMD symptom severity, neuropsychological functions, and psychosocial outcomes. Both dimensional and categorical analyses were used to assess the associations between neuropsychological functions and IGD/SMD. Simple and multiple mediation analyses were conducted to examine if neuropsychological functioning mediates the association between IGD/SMD and psychosocial outcomes.
Results
All neuropsychological functions were significantly associated with both IGD and SMD symptom severity. However, only inhibition and emotion regulation, as well as delay aversion for SMD, remained significant when controlling for the overlap between different functions. Associations were significantly stronger for men compared to women for IGD. In the categorical analyses, individuals with IGD/SMD were more likely to have neuropsychological deficits (odds ratios between 3.33 and 8.81). Finally, all neuropsychological functions, except inhibition, were significant mediators in the link between IGD/SMD and psychosocial outcomes.
Discussion and conclusions
These results shed light on the neuropsychological underpinnings of IGD/SMD, which can be used to identify more homogenous subgroups and provide more individualized treatment options.
