Author: dispatchtimes news

A new study published in Aggression and Violent Behaviour has found that a taste for excitement and risk—sensation seeking—is associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour, while there is little evidence that resting heart rate itself causes such conduct. The research, led by Timon G. Udo of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, analysed data from the Netherlands Twin Register and points to sensation seeking as a potential focal point for future prevention efforts. Antisocial behaviour refers to actions that break social rules or disregard other people’s rights and feelings. It can include aggression, deceit, rule-breaking, vandalism and violence. High levels of antisocial…

A British university study suggests that people harbouring unconscious doubts about their self-worth, or a misalignment between their conscious and automatic self-evaluations, notice subtle facial cues of anger and disgust more quickly than others. The findings, published in Personality and Individual Differences, link this heightened perceptual sensitivity to concerns about social rejection and to poorer interpersonal wellbeing. Self-esteem is typically described as how much a person values themselves, but psychologists divide it into two layers: explicit self-esteem, the conscious sense of self-worth, and implicit self-esteem, automatic evaluations that operate beneath awareness. A mismatch between the two—self-esteem discrepancy—can occur when someone…

A USC-led study in rats suggests the digestive system talks to the brain during meals to help remember where food was found. The research proposes a nutrient-triggered nerve pathway that releases a memory-boosting chemical in the hippocampus, and finds that a junk-food diet in early life can disrupt this gut-brain memory signalling. The vagus nerve, described as a sprawling information highway between the body and brain, carries metabolic data from the gut to the central nervous system. This signaling is known to help maintain energy balance and regulate how much an animal eats, but the latest work extends its reach…

A sweeping meta-analysis spanning six decades of protest research concludes that people who join demonstrations are driven more by social connections and political interest than by personal grievances or distrust of government. The study, published in Science Advances, identifies key factors behind micromobilisation and pinpoints who is most likely to take to the streets. The work is led by Shelley Boulianne of Mount Royal University in Canada and Jennifer Earl of the University of Delaware, with collaborators from Lund University. The researchers focused on physical marches and demonstrations, ensuring a like-for-like comparison across actions rather than mixing in online petitions…

Andy Burnham has been asked to create an “Emergency Register” of civilians willing to sign up for war, according to a post published by the X account “Basil the Great”. The post describes the proposed register as a list of civilians prepared to volunteer for war, but does not identify who made the request, how the scheme would operate or what roles participants would undertake. The account’s author criticised the prospect of involvement in an overseas conflict, writing: “We will not die in a foreign conflict for you.” The post does not include a response from Burnham or indicate whether…

A new online study published in the EvoS Journal: Evolutionary Studies and Higher Education examined how willing people are to engage with a social media post from a creative individual who also experiences schizophrenia. The findings show that women were more inclined to interact than men, particularly when the person’s creative output was not successfully published; when publication success occurred, gender differences disappeared. Mental health stigma remains a broad social issue, characterised by negative stereotypes and prejudice toward those with mental health conditions. Such stigma can foster social rejection, hinder employment and relationships, and deter people from seeking professional help.…

A new study published in JAMA Network Open finds that autistic individuals enrolled in Medicaid have a life expectancy of 64.9 years at birth, about 5.6 years shorter than the overall Medicaid population and roughly 13.8 years shorter than the general United States population. Researchers analysed nationwide Medicaid data and linked it with the National Death Index to form a dataset covering all beneficiaries across the 50 states and the District of Columbia between 2000 and 2020. The study focused on 2,048,046 Medicaid beneficiaries diagnosed with autism, a group that was predominantly male (around 76 per cent) with females accounting…

A six-week, double-blind trial comparing psilocybin with the antidepressant escitalopram in 59 patients with long-standing moderate-to-severe depression has found both treatments reduce the brain’s tendency to interpret ambiguous social cues negatively. Conducted by researchers including Marieke A. G. Martens of the University of Oxford, the study also involved Robin Carhart-Harris and Catherine J. Harmer and was published in Translational Psychiatry. The trial used a facial expression recognition task to track changes in emotional processing. Participants were randomly allocated to two groups. One received two 25-milligram doses of psilocybin three weeks apart, alongside a daily inactive placebo for six weeks. The…

A new study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology suggests that while a person’s baseline testosterone does not simply make them more or less inclined to take risks, the hormone may shape how the body processes the outcomes of past decisions. Researchers measured sweat on the skin during a gambling game to show that testosterone can influence the body’s response to feedback and how that response colours subsequent choices. The experiment recruited 55 young adults, comprising 27 women and 28 men, who completed 100 rounds of the Iowa Gambling Task while researchers monitored electrodermal activity. At the outset, participants provided saliva samples so…

A new study published in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice has found that maladaptive daydreaming is moderately linked to problematic social media use and hypersexual behaviour, with narcissistic personality traits acting as a potential bridge between these behaviours. Researchers Alessia Renzi and Rachele Mariani of Sapienza University of Rome, alongside Filippo Maria Nimbi of eCampus Telematics University, set out to explore how these intense daydreaming episodes relate to compulsive digital and sexual behaviours. Maladaptive daydreaming is not yet an official psychiatric diagnosis, but it shares features with behavioural addictions and obsessive‑compulsive and dissociative tendencies. People who experience it…