TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology

DATE: April 01, 2025 at 04:08PM
SOURCE: THE CENTER FOR DEPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY

Direct article link at end of text block below.

The BLUF on our EBP Conference PMI Workshop “Ethics in Digital Heath: A Guide on How to Approach the New Way We Practice” on May 6th! Only $10 with conference registration! Don't lose your seat! Register today:  https://t.co/x8FwEV8RjF
#ethics #digitalhealth #psychologyconference https://t.co/szJCiKaDil

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

https://t.co/x8FwEV8RjF
#ethics

https://t.co/szJCiKaDil

Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://deploymentpsych.org/ under "Latest News".

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot

Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com

EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org

READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org

It's primitive... but it works... mostly...

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #UniformServicesUniversity

DATE: April 01, 2025 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: People with strong political beliefs can still be intellectually humble, study finds

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-with-strong-political-beliefs-can-still-be-intellectually-humble-study-finds/

A new study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology suggests that people do not have to weaken their political beliefs in order to be open-minded. Researchers found that intellectual humility—the ability to recognize the limits of one’s own knowledge—was not meaningfully related to how strongly someone held their political beliefs. At the same time, the study revealed a small association between intellectual humility and a more liberal political orientation.

The study was motivated by growing interest in how intellectual humility can help people engage more constructively with those who hold opposing political views. Political hostility, especially in the United States, has reached alarming levels in recent years. People often express more hatred for members of the opposing political party than they feel love for members of their own. This deep emotional divide—known as affective polarization—has been linked to political violence, misinformation, and a breakdown in democratic dialogue. Researchers are increasingly looking for ways to reduce these tensions, and intellectual humility has emerged as a promising candidate.

Prior research shows that intellectually humble individuals are more likely to seek accurate political information, are less prone to dismiss others’ opinions, and tend to engage in more respectful political discussions. But there has been lingering uncertainty in the field: are people who show more intellectual humility simply less polarized to begin with? Are they just people with weaker political convictions or less ideological commitment?

“Much of our research focuses on how intellectual humility predicts resistance to political hostility, conflict, and bias,” explained study author Jonah Koetke, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. “However, we must also consider whether intellectual humility itself is more common among those who are already less ideologically polarized. If so, this would be a concerning confound. The goal of this work was to examine whether (1) intellectual humility is associated with strength of political belief, and (2) intellectual humility is associated with certain political views.”

To explore this issue, the researchers conducted a large-scale analysis using data from nine different surveys, involving a total of 3,248 participants. These surveys had been collected over the course of two years and included people with diverse political beliefs, many of whom were recruited to ensure a balance of liberals and conservatives. The researchers used two well-established measures of intellectual humility. The first, used in eight of the samples (Sample A), measured general intellectual humility through self-report items like “I accept that my beliefs and attitudes may be wrong.” The ninth sample (Sample B) used a more detailed, multidimensional scale that included items about openness to revising one’s views, respect for others’ viewpoints, and avoidance of overconfidence.

Participants also answered questions about their political beliefs. In Sample A, this included how strongly they identified with their political ideology. In Sample B, participants rated how certain they were that their political views were correct, and how much those views reflected their core moral values. Political orientation was measured in both samples by asking participants to rate themselves on economic and social issues, from very liberal to very conservative.

The main question was whether intellectual humility was linked to the strength of political belief. Across the data, the researchers found that the association was either very small or nonexistent. In the larger sample, intellectual humility had a very weak negative relationship with political belief strength, but the effect size was so small that it was likely only statistically significant because of the large number of participants. In the smaller sample that used more detailed measures, there was no significant relationship between intellectual humility and how strongly people held or moralized their political beliefs.

This finding suggests that intellectual humility is not the same as political detachment. People can feel strongly about their political positions while still being open to the possibility that they might be wrong. In other words, conviction and humility are not mutually exclusive. This supports the idea that intellectual humility is less about doubt or indecisiveness, and more about how people relate to their own beliefs—recognizing the possibility of error without automatically discarding their views.

“Across a fairly large sample, we found that intellectual humility was not reliably associated with strength of one’s political beliefs,” Koetke told PsyPost. “This is encouraging because it implies that even people who strongly identify with their political ideology can be intellectually humble. This has promising implications for reducing polarization, as it suggests that the benefits of intellectual humility for reducing political hostility might extend even to those who have more entrenched political views.”

The second key question was whether intellectual humility is connected to political orientation—that is, whether people who are more intellectually humble tend to be more liberal or more conservative. Here, the researchers found a small but consistent association: people with higher intellectual humility tended to report a more liberal political orientation. This was true in seven of the eight samples in Sample A, and while the association was smaller and not statistically significant in Sample B, it pointed in the same direction.

“We found that intellectual humility was associated with holding a more liberal political orientation,” Koetke said. “This indicates that we need to more carefully consider the moderating role of political orientation in our research.”

One possibility is that liberal ideology, which tends to emphasize openness to new experiences and tolerance for ambiguity, may attract or encourage traits like intellectual humility. Another possibility is that recent political leaders and cultural norms have shaped different expectations around intellectual openness within liberal and conservative circles. For example, political figures who model humility or self-reflection may reinforce those traits among their followers, while those who reject error or claim infallibility may discourage them.

But the researchers caution against drawing strong conclusions about ideological differences between groups. While the association between intellectual humility and liberalism was consistent, it was relatively small.

“We were surprised that intellectual humility was associated with more liberal political orientation, as this had not been found reliably in prior work,” Koetke explained. “However, it is important to remember that this association was relatively small in magnitude.

As with all research, there are also some limitations. “There are two caveats to this work that are important to consider,” Koetke said. “First, we do not yet understand the underlying reasons for the association between liberal political orientation and intellectual humility. Is it that people who are more liberal develop more intellectual humility over time, or that people who are more intellectually humble become more liberal over time? Alternatively, there could be a third variable causing the association between intellectual humility and liberal views. Second, because our samples for this study were all collected online, the generalizability of these findings may be limited.”

The study, “Is intellectual humility polarized too? A systematic examination of intellectual humility, political orientation, and strength of political belief,” was authored by Jonah Koetke and Karina Schumann.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-with-strong-political-beliefs-can-still-be-intellectually-humble-study-finds/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot

Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com

EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org

READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org

It's primitive... but it works... mostly...

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist

I read the attached article for a bit – at least until things began to fall apart.

"some researchers argue that [H. C. Andersen] used his storytelling to describe his autistic experience […]."

I accept the proposition; some people have wondered if Andersen might have been autistic. OK.

"No wonder I've been drawn to Andersen's tales long before realizing, as an adult, my own autistic characteristics."

Again, I accept the premise; the author is one of these people who have wondered if Andersen might have been autistic, so for the rest of the article, he is autistic. Again, OK. Andersen may certainly be read as such.

The evidence of Andersen's autism the author presents is a link to a 20-page article published by the College English Association (i.e. not a psychiatry, psychology, or even a pedagogical publication), which begins in a rather sophomoric manner:

"Everyone knows the story of how "The Ugly Duckling" was different, and therefore mistreated by the other little ducks"

The presentation of bullying thus takes the bullies' perspective: "You're different and deserved to be picked on as a consequence." The reason anyone is bullied has nothing to do with that person, however, but with a deficiency of the bully: people are bullied, not because they are different, but because there are bullies in the world. (This distinction is important for the mental well-being of the victim.)

But leaving that aside, let's return to the psychology article.

I continued to read the author's valid interpretations of Andersen's fairy tales, until I reached her conclusion on "The Emperor's New Clothes."

"The dysfunction Andersen depicted in "The Emperor's New Clothes" [the child speaking up, drawing attention to the emperor's nakedness] mirrors what happens in groups without honest neurodivergent perspectives."

And that's when I stopped reading, for in this one sentence, the author has implied a number of things:

1. The child in the story is neuro-divergent or at least represents neuro-divergence
2. Neuro-nondivergent people are apparently incapable of direct honesty
3. Neuro-divergent people are honest.

I meet a lot of different people in my line of work – some with diagnoses, some without. Some of these people are nearly always honest, but most are less so. Neuro-divergence has little–to–nothing to do with the level of honesty. All the circles in an illustrative Venn diagram would intersect, but none wholly.

So let me counter the conclusion of the bit of the article I read: neuro-divergence is not a moral issue, and attempting to make it such would be dishonest.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/positively-different/202503/autistic-creativity-its-so-much-more-than-fairy-tales

(The remainer of the article breaks off at an incongruous angle.)

DATE: April 01, 2025 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Neuroscientists link low self-awareness to stronger brain reactions to moralized issues

URL: https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-link-low-self-awareness-to-stronger-brain-reactions-to-moralized-issues/

A new study published in the journal Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience reveals that people who hold strong moral convictions about political issues make decisions more quickly—but that these choices are shaped by both emotional brain responses and metacognitive ability. The research shows that moral conviction activates specific brain regions involved in emotion and cognitive control, and that people with lower self-awareness about their own decision accuracy show stronger brain responses to morally charged political issues.

The findings help explain why deeply moralized political beliefs can feel so non-negotiable. When people see political positions as morally right or wrong, they not only respond more quickly but also engage brain systems associated with salience, conflict monitoring, and goal-driven thinking. But this fast, confident decision-making comes with a caveat: people who are less able to distinguish between correct and incorrect judgments—a trait known as low metacognitive sensitivity—appear to rely more heavily on these moral signals in the brain. This could help explain why some individuals become more rigid or dogmatic in their political beliefs.

The researchers behind the study, led by Jean Decety, an Irving B. Harris Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago and the director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, sought to better understand how moralized beliefs contribute to political polarization and intolerance. Moral convictions are beliefs that people view as tied to fundamental principles of right and wrong. Unlike regular opinions, they tend to be perceived as universal, unchangeable, and non-negotiable.

Prior studies have shown that people with strong moral convictions are more likely to engage in collective action—but also more likely to justify prejudice or violence against ideological opponents. While the emotional and behavioral consequences of moral conviction have been studied extensively, the brain mechanisms behind these effects remain poorly understood. The new study aimed to explore how moral conviction is processed during real-time political decisions and how it interacts with people’s ability to evaluate their own judgments.

To investigate these questions, the researchers recruited participants from the Chicago area for a two-part study. First, 80 adults completed an online survey about their attitudes toward a range of sociopolitical issues, such as gun control or climate change. They rated how strongly they supported or opposed each issue and how morally important those views felt. The researchers then selected 49 participants to complete a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session, during which 44 participants provided usable brain data.

During the scan, participants viewed pairs of photographs showing protest groups advocating for or against various political causes. For each pair, they had to quickly decide which group they supported more. All issues had been previously rated in the online survey, allowing the researchers to match brain activity during the scan to each person’s level of moral conviction and support for those causes.

Before the scan, participants also completed a perceptual task to measure their metacognitive sensitivity. In this task, they had to judge which of two images contained more dots and then rate their confidence in their decision. By comparing accuracy with confidence, researchers could determine how well participants could tell when they were right or wrong—essentially measuring their insight into their own judgments.

The researchers found that participants made faster decisions when choosing between protest groups involving issues they felt strongly about morally. This was true even when controlling for how much they supported the issues or how familiar they were with them. In other words, moral conviction sped up decision-making above and beyond basic preference. Brain activity mirrored these effects. When making decisions about more morally convicted issues, participants showed increased activation in the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and lateral prefrontal cortex. These brain regions are known to be involved in emotional salience, conflict monitoring, and cognitive control.

The lateral prefrontal cortex was especially active in these high-conviction trials. This area of the brain is often involved in setting and pursuing goals, as well as enforcing social norms. Its increased activity suggests that moral conviction might engage higher-level thinking that treats political positions not just as opinions, but as imperatives that must be acted upon. The anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex, by contrast, likely reflect the emotional intensity and personal significance of the issues.

When the researchers looked at overall support for the two protest groups shown in each trial, rather than moral conviction, they saw stronger activation in brain regions involved in value assessment—especially the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. These areas are commonly involved in subjective valuation and emotional reactions, suggesting that agreement with an issue feels rewarding, even if the belief is not morally framed.

To explore how these systems work together, the researchers conducted a functional connectivity analysis. They found that the lateral prefrontal cortex showed stronger connectivity with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during decisions involving higher moral conviction. This suggests that the brain integrates moral information into the valuation process—essentially, moral beliefs are being factored into how much a person values a given choice.

But one of the most striking findings came from comparing brain responses with metacognitive sensitivity. Participants with lower ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect judgments—those with poor metacognitive insight—showed stronger brain activity in response to moral conviction. This was particularly evident in the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. These individuals also showed more activity in valuation regions like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum when moral conviction was high.

In contrast, support-related brain activity in these regions did not correlate with metacognitive ability. This means that people with low metacognitive sensitivity are not necessarily more supportive of political issues—but they do show a stronger neural response when their beliefs feel morally justified.

These findings support the idea that low metacognitive sensitivity might amplify the influence of moral conviction on both decision-making and brain function. In practical terms, people who lack insight into the accuracy of their own beliefs may be more likely to treat political issues as moral imperatives and less willing to consider alternative viewpoints. This could help explain why low metacognitive ability has been linked to greater dogmatism and political extremism in previous research.

The study is not without limitations. The decisions made during the scan involved simplified visual comparisons between protest groups, which may not fully capture the complexity of real-world moral reasoning. Additionally, while the study shows that moral conviction affects brain activity and decision speed, it cannot prove that these brain responses cause moral conviction or rigidity. The researchers also note that moral conviction overlaps with related concepts like attitude strength, familiarity, and emotional arousal, making it difficult to isolate its specific effects.

Future research could investigate how moral conviction influences decision-making in more complex social contexts, such as conversations or negotiations. It could also explore whether training or interventions to improve metacognitive sensitivity might reduce dogmatic thinking and promote more flexible political reasoning.

The study, “Moral conviction interacts with metacognitive ability in modulating neural activity during sociopolitical decision‑making,” was authored by Qiongwen Cao, Michael S. Cohen, Akram Bakkour, Yuan Chang Leong, and Jean Decety.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-link-low-self-awareness-to-stronger-brain-reactions-to-moralized-issues/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot

Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com

EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org

READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org

It's primitive... but it works... mostly...

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist

DATE: April 01, 2025 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Extraverts with autotelic personality traits are more likely to experience flow

URL: https://www.psypost.org/extraverts-with-autotelic-personality-traits-are-more-likely-to-experience-flow/

A study of undergraduate students in California found that extraverted individuals with pronounced autotelic personality traits—those who engage in activities purely for the experience—were more likely to experience flow while playing the game Perfection alone. The research was published in the Journal of Personality.

Flow is a psychological state in which a person becomes fully immersed in an activity, experiencing a deep sense of engagement and fulfillment. During flow, individuals often lose awareness of time and their surroundings due to intense concentration on the task at hand. This state is typically achieved when the challenge of the activity is perfectly matched to the individual’s skill level—neither too easy to be boring nor too difficult to cause anxiety.

While in flow, a person tends to feel a strong sense of personal control over the situation and its outcome, which enhances both performance and enjoyment. Flow is also associated with a deep sense of joy and creative satisfaction, even if the activity doesn’t result in an immediate reward. It is commonly experienced during activities that require both skill and challenge, such as playing a musical instrument, participating in sports, or engaging in a favorite hobby.

Study author Dwight C. K. Tse and his colleagues set out to examine how personality traits influence the experience of flow in different social contexts. They hypothesized that individuals with pronounced autotelic personality traits would be more likely to experience flow. The researchers also expected that participants who experienced positive emotions and those with higher motivation to engage in the task would be more likely to enter a flow state. Additionally, they anticipated that the relationship between extraversion and flow would vary depending on the social context.

The study involved 396 undergraduate students from the Psychology Participant Pool at the University of California, Riverside. All participants had been in a romantic relationship for at least six months.

Participants were asked to play the board game Perfection under three different conditions. In the first, solitary condition, participants completed the game tasks individually in separate rooms. In the “mere-presence” condition, romantic partners completed the tasks individually but in the same room. In the interactive condition, couples worked together on the same task, and instructions explicitly encouraged them to communicate during the activity. Perfection is a timed puzzle game in which players must fit uniquely shaped pieces into corresponding holes on the board before time runs out and the pieces pop out.

After each game condition, participants completed the Short Flow State Scale to assess their experience of flow. They also completed assessments of extraversion (from the Big Five Inventory), autotelic personality (using the Autotelic Personality Questionnaire), and current emotional state (via a 24-item scale measuring various emotions).

An autotelic personality is characterized by an intrinsic motivation to engage in tasks for their own sake. Extraversion is a personality trait associated with sociability, energy, and a tendency to seek out stimulation and the company of others.

The results showed that individuals with strong autotelic personality traits experienced flow more frequently across all testing conditions. Extraversion was linked to stronger flow experiences in the two conditions where a romantic partner was present, but not in the solitary condition. However, in the solitary condition, extraversion predicted stronger flow only among individuals with high autotelic personality traits—not among those low in these traits.

Further analysis revealed that flow was more likely to occur in participants who experienced low-arousal positive emotions (e.g., calm, contentment) and less likely in those who experienced high-arousal negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, frustration). In other words, flow was more common in individuals who felt mild positive emotions and less common in those feeling strong negative emotions during the game.

The study sheds light on how personality influences the likelihood of experiencing flow. However, it’s important to note that all participants were undergraduate students, so the findings may not generalize to other demographic groups.

The paper, “Alone but flowing: The effects of autotelic personality and extraversion on solitary flow,” was authored by Dwight C. K. Tse, Ayodele Joseph, and Kate Sweeny.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/extraverts-with-autotelic-personality-traits-are-more-likely-to-experience-flow/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot

Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com

EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org

READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org

It's primitive... but it works... mostly...

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist