Some studies suggest a rise in anxiety prevalence and severity over the past decade, particularly among emerging adults, while others report stable rates. This preregistered study examines trends in anxiety symptom severity and explicit (self-reported) and implicit (using the Brief Implicit Association Test) associations about the self as anxious vs. calm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNew methods that capture the public's perception of controversial topics may be valuable. This study investigates public sentiments toward psychedelics and other substances through analyzes of Reddit discussions, using Google's cloud-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) infrastructure. Our findings indicate that illicit substances such as heroin and methamphetamine are associated with highly negative general sentiments, whereas psychedelics like Psilocybin, LSD, and Ayahuasca generally evoke neutral to slightly positive sentiments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Pers Soc Psychol
March 2025
Moral values guide consequential attitudes and actions. Here, we report evidence of seasonal variation in Americans' endorsement of some-but not all-moral values. Studies 1 and 2 examined a decade of data from the United States (total N = 232,975) and produced consistent evidence of a biannual seasonal cycle in values pertaining to loyalty, authority, and purity ("binding" moral values)-with strongest endorsement in spring and autumn and weakest endorsement in summer and winter-but not in values pertaining to care and fairness ("individualizing" moral values).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEducational and training programs designed to reduce racial bias often focus on increasing people's awareness of psychological sources of their biases. However, when people learn about their biases, they often respond defensively, which can undermine the effectiveness of antibias interventions and the success of prejudice regulation. Using process (Quad) modeling, we provide one of the first investigations of the relationships between (a) controlled and automatic cognitive processes that underpin performance on the Implicit Association Test and (b) defensive reactions to unflattering implicit racial bias feedback.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Given the sensitive nature of COVID-19 beliefs, evaluating them explicitly and implicitly may provide a fuller picture of how these beliefs vary based on identities and how they relate to mental health.
Objective: Three novel brief implicit association tests (BIATs) were created and evaluated: two that measured COVID-19-as-dangerous (vs. safe) and one that measured COVID-19 precautions-as-necessary (vs.
Uncertainty about the future often leads to worries about what the future will bring, which can have negative consequences for health and well-being. However, if worry can act as a motivator to promote efforts to prevent undesirable future outcomes, those negative consequences of worry may be mitigated. In this article, we apply a novel model of uncertainty, worry, and perceived control to predict psychological and physical well-being among four samples collected in China (Study 1; during the early COVID-19 outbreak in China) and the United States (Studies 2-4, during 4 weeks in May 2020, 4 weeks in November 2020, and cross-sectionally between April and November 2020).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFailing to adhere to COVID-19 experts' advice could have devastating consequences for individuals and communities. Here we determine which demographic factors can impact trust in COVID-19 experts. Participants consisted of more than 1875 online volunteers, primarily from the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective prevalence of and subjective vulnerability to infectious diseases are associated with greater ingroup preference, conformity, and traditionalism. However, evidence directly testing the link between infectious diseases and political ideology and partisanship is lacking. Across four studies, including a large sample representative of the U.
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