Feeling the Body Politic: Interoception as a Mechanism of Political Resilience

Politics can have substantial and wide adverse effects on people’s physical and mental health, especially in politically polarized environments. As a result, political polarization is now recognized as a major non-medical cause of disease and suffering. We examine if and how citizens can protect their health from such adverse effects without undermining their civic engagement. We identify a psychological mechanism of resilience rooted in bodily awareness and show that interoception –the ability to perceive and trust one’s internal bodily signals– can act as a protective factor against the adverse health effects of politics. Across three studies on over 2,000 participants conducted during the 2022 mid-term U.S. election and the 2024 U.S. presidential election, higher interoceptive sensibility was consistently associated with lower reported costs of politics on emotional, physical, behavioral, and social health, while controlling for political identity, demographics, and emotion regulation strategies. During the emotionally charged 2024 election, individuals high in interoceptive sensibility reported fewer negative emotions, greater hope for the future and less fear, particularly if their candidate lost. These benefits extended to greater emotional resilience and a more positive outlook about the nation’s future. Importantly, interoceptive sensibility was positively associated with political engagement and efficacy, suggesting that better interoception awareness enhances, rather than inhibits, democratic participation. Our findings highlight interoceptive sensibility as a promising trait for mitigating politi-cal stress without reducing civic involvement

Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account

Affect-based impulsivity describes the tendency to behave impulsively while experiencing negative or positive affective states. In the context of psychiatric disorders, the consequences of affect-based impulsivity can be dire, including suicidal behavior and harmful substance use. Here, we articulate a decision neuroscience account, recasting affect-based impulsivity in terms of Pavlovian and goal-directed decision systems. We consider how negative affect influences whether to act, what actions to consider, which action to select, and how vigorously to engage in a selected action. Further, we describe the neural and neuroendocrine bases of these computations. Specifically, we propose that modulation of norepinephrine and glucocorticoids during negative affective states enhances the pursuit of rewards by reducing goal-directed computations and increasing appetitive Pavlovian computations

There is a potential collector in every consumer

Collecting is a unique consumption behavior. Unlike other items’ consumption, where consumers buy a good to satisfy some higher need, collectors acquire products merely to have the item in their possession. Past studies have primarily been qualitative studies employing convenience samples of “extreme” collectors. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of collectors in a representative nation-wide sample (N=5,069) across two waves 10 years apart, while leveraging dozens of other surveys administered to the panel to test a wide range of hypotheses regarding collections. We find that while a third of consumers collect, very few who do so identify strongly as collectors. Those who identify strongly as collectors are significantly different from most collectors, implying that research focusing only on those who strongly identify as collectors will lead to conclusions which do not provide insights in collecting in general. Solutions to the problems documented are discussed in the general discussion

Assessing the Impact of Coercion: Judgements of Trust, Actionability, and Believability of Confessions

Empirical evidence suggests that torturous and coercive interrogation rarely produces valid information compared with more effective and ethically sound rapport-based methods. Here, we investigated participants' judgements of Trust, Actionability, Confidence and Believability regarding a confession elicited under varying conditions of coercion. Participants (N= 55; 18 males; age range 18-65) were randomly allocated into three groups. Group 1 were informed that the confession was freely given; Group 2 were informed that the confession was ‘mildly coerced’; and Group 3 were informed that the confession was given under ‘intense coercion’. Our hypothesis was that participants ratings of the confessions would not differ significantly across these conditions – that participants were equally likely to accept confessions under all circumstances. We found that participants judged a confession similarly, despite the method of elicitation

Conflict resolution and response inhibition: A simultaneous EEG-EMG-pupillometry study

Inhibition in cognitive control has many implications. Behaviorally, the stop signal task is supposedly capturing inhibition of already initiated responses (response inhibition). In contrast, the flanker paradigm supposedly captures the inhibition of several competing responses (competitive inhibition). As the neural mechanisms for these behavioral phenomena are not clear, it begs the question of whether both response inhibition and competitive inhibition draw from a similar inhibitory resource pool and to what extent they might interact. In the current study, the potential interplay between inhibitory mechanisms was investigated in a combined stop-signal flanker task where (in-)congruent flankers were occasionally followed by stop signals. A multimodal task-setup was implemented allowing for examination of behavior, electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), and pupillometry to assess different inhibition-related outcome measures. Model-based estimates of response inhibition speed (stop-signal reaction times; SSRTs) indicated an interaction with competitive inhibition, where stopping was faster in incongruent compared to congruent stop conditions. However, this interaction was not evident in physiological measures: neither stop-related EMG, EEG nor pupillometry measures showed such congruency modulations. Exploratory analyses showed that a larger pupillometry congruency effect was negatively associated with the congruency effect in SSRTs, suggesting that pupil dilation as a proxy for NE-LC activity might be linked to increased allocation of cognitive control. Taken together, our results do not provide clear evidence for an interaction between response inhibition and competitive inhibition

Profiles of testosterone and pre-androgens and sexual function in premenopausal women

Background: There is inconsistent evidence as to the role of testosterone and pre-androgens in premenopausal female sexual function and reported associations between blood concentrations of these hormones and female sexual function vary in strength. Aim: To examine the patterns of testosterone and pre-androgen concentrations and variations in sexual function in premenopausal eumenorrheic women. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a sample of 588 premenopausal eumenorrheic women from the Grollo-Ruzzene Foundation Young Women’s Health Study. Socio-demographics, health information, and questionnaire data was collected using online surveys. Eligible women were invited to provide a blood sample. We ran latent profile (LPA) and subsequent analyses in R using RStudio. Outcomes: Indicator variables in the LPA included sexual arousal and desire domains of the Profile of Female Sexual Function and testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and androstenedione, measured by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Results: Analyses resulted in a pattern of three latent classes. Classes reporting relatively lower and higher sexual arousal (LPA-derived Means and 95% CIs: -0.79 [-1.24; -0.34] and 0.62 [0.51; 0.72]) did not differ significantly in sex steroid concentrations (testosterone: -0.21 [-0.38; -0.03] and -0.33 [-0.47; -0.20]; DHEA: -0.47 [-0.57; -0.37] and -0.26 [-0.39; -0.13]; androstenedione: -0.36 [-0.50; -0.22] and -0.39 [-0.49; -0.29]), while the class reporting relatively medium arousal (-0.11 [-0.31; 0.08]) showed the highest testosterone, DHEA and androstenedione concentrations (testosterone: 0.8 [0.60; 1.01]; DHEA: 0.99 [0.76; 1.23]; androstenedione: 1.08 [0.88; 1.29]). There were no significant differences in sexual desire between classes (-0.08 [-0.23; 0.06]; 0.00 [-0.13; 0.14]; 0.10 [-0.09; 0.30]) differing significantly in sex steroid concentrations (-0.69 [-0.80; -0.58], -0.04 [-0.15; 0.07], 0.94 [0.71; 1.16] for testosterone) nor associations between the sex steroid concentrations and degrees of sexual desire. Clinical Implications: These findings cast further doubt on the utility of measuring sex steroids for diagnosing female sexual dysfunction in premenopausal eumenorrheic women, even when considered in combination. Strengths & Limitations: We analyzed a large community sample and controlled for potentially biasing factors. We analyzed sex steroid concentrations determined with gold standard methodology. Excluding women with early menopause and menstrual dysfunction might have resulted in finding three, rather than more, latent classes. Conclusion: Testosterone and pre-androgen profiles do not clearly identify premenopausal eumenorrheic women with low sexual arousal and desire

Perceived Vibrato and the Singing Power Ratio Explain Overall Evaluations in Opera Singing

In opera singing competitions, judges use an overall score to evaluate the singers’ voices and determine their rankings. This score not only guides the singers’ technique and expressiveness, but also serves as a crucial indicator that can significantly influence their careers. However, the specific elements captured by this overall score remain unclear. To address this gap, the present study analyzed opera singing recordings to identify factors that explain the overall score. Ten trained female Japanese singers performed “Caro mio ben” under standardized recording conditions. Four experts evaluated the recorded performances by assigning an overall score of 100 points and rating six vocal attributes: vibrato, resonance, timbre, diction, intonation, and expressiveness. The recordings were then analyzed to calculate the acoustic features, including the singing power ratio (SPR), harmonic-to-noise ratio, and sound pressure level. We developed two linear mixed models: the first regressed the overall score on the subjective vocal attributes, whereas the second predicted the overall score from the acoustic features. Evaluator identity was included as a random effect in both models. The results showed that vibrato was a significant predictor of the overall score in the first model. In the second model, only SPR emerged as a significant predictor. These findings suggest that vibrato, which reflects emotional expressiveness and vocal control, and SPR, which indicates the relative power in the high-frequency band (2–4 kHz) and signifies a voice clearer than the accompaniment, are key factors in explaining the overall score in opera singing

Would You Like Your Partner to Share Your Interests? Vocational Ideal-Partner Standards of Singles and Couples

To examine the alignment between individuals’ vocational self-concepts and their vocational ideal-partner standards, we collected data from two Croatian heterosexual samples: 271 couples and 335 single participants. Using the short form of the Personal Globe Inventory, participants rated their own vocational interests and those they desired in an ideal partner. We assessed various dimensions of similarity, including normative and distinctive partner-ideal congruence, actual partner congruence, ideals agreement, and self-ideal similarity across the full interest profile and theoretical interest dimensions. The findings indicate that participants generally preferred ideal partners with elevated vocational profiles. Trait-wise self-ideal similarity was significant but modest across all RIASEC types, along with the Ideas-Data and Prestige but not the People-Things dimension of the Personal Globe. Significant distinctive self-ideal profile agreement emerged in both samples. Among couples, actual partners’ vocational interests were more closely aligned with ideal preferences than self-reported interests reflecting gender normativity of vocational interest profiles. The similarity between an actual partner’s vocational profile and the ideal partner’s profile modestly predicted relationship satisfaction, particularly for women, emphasizing the importance of ideal standards in vocational interests. These findings support the idea that vocational interests contribute to processes of partner selection and couple functioning. We discuss our results in the context of assortative mating preferences and gendered occupational stereotypes

Compensatory hallucinogenesis across three neuropsychiatric disorders: A Bayesian account

Emerging evidence suggests that hallucinations may arise because of an over-reliance on prior knowledge during perception. While best established in psychosis-spectrum illness, data also support the presence of this abnormality in other neuropsychiatric illnesses that vary in their association with disruption of visual sensory circuits. In this piece, we ask whether an over-weighting of expectations may be conceived of as a compensatory response to incoming sensory noise. We make the case that visual hallucinogenesis across a wide array of neuropsychiatric disorders can be captured within a common Bayesian computational framework, as a compensatory response to sensory signal disruptions at different levels of the visual processing hierarchy. We focus on three specific disorders (Charles Bonnet Syndrome, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, and Schizophrenia) with prominent visual hallucinations and highlight the fact that these disorders describe a spectrum of visual impairment where the overtness and localization of the visual processing disruption is reflected in the characteristics of the emergent visual hallucinations. We examine how discrete sensory disruptions in Charles Bonnet Syndrome translate to hallucinations via known circuits, and then how different disruptions in Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Schizophrenia may lead to hallucinations with distinct phenomenology, comorbidities, and circuit involvement. Finally, we appeal to emerging computational theories to unite these observations under a common conceptual umbrella. Taken together, this work presents a means of understanding how sensory disruptions could interact with other aspects of cognitive and neural architecture to produce hallucinations across neuropsychiatric disease. It is our hope that this framework will help in efforts to identify pathophysiologically distinct patient subgroups and new pharmacological and circuit-based interventions

Tactical Breathing Enhances Police Performance in a Critical Incident Simulation

It has been suggested that stress management techniques may reduce acute stress for police officers and thus lead to more optimal performance in critical situations. In a preregistered between-subject experiment, third-year police students (N = 96) paired up to perform a field exercise of a simulated critical incident encounter. The pairs were randomized to receive “tactical breathing” instructions or to focus on standard operating procedures. Expert observers evaluated performance, and participants reported their level of stress. The preregistered analysis showed that stress was associated with lower performance. The pairs that used tactical breathing performed better than the control group. Tactical breathing was not associated with self-reported stress. These results appear to indicate that brief reminders about stress management techniques can improve police performance. The mechanism may be through changing the available cognitive resources, rather than due to subjective stress reduction