Breaking boundaries: The effects of counter-stereotypical sources on ingroup persuasion and outgroup dissuasion.

People tend to align their policy attitudes with the stereotypical attitudes of their political group (e.g., conservatives supporting gun rights, liberals supporting abortion rights).

Efficacy of biomaterials in burn treatment: Comparative study of collagen-derived membranes, hydrogel, and sponge in an animal model.

Purpose: Thermal burns are complex injuries that significantly impact morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of biomaterials, including collagen gel (CG), collagen sponge (CS), non-decellularized amniotic membrane (NAM), and decellularized amniotic membrane (DAM), in promoting wound healing in a rat burn model.

Methods: Sixty Wistar rats were divided into five groups: control, CG, CS, NAM, and DAM.

Short- and long-term effects of incentives on prosocial behavior: The case of ride vouchers to a blood collection agency.

This study addresses the challenge of low blood donation rates in developing countries by examining the effectiveness of a barrier-removal incentive-a one-day transportation voucher-to promote blood donation. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset of 23,750 donors from a Brazilian blood collection agency (BCA) collected between March 2018 and May 2020, we examine the short and long-term effects of this campaign on donation rates. Our results show that the incentive had a large positive influence on both donation attempts and successful donations on the day of the campaign.

Longitudinal attenuation in political polarization: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination adherence in Brazil.

Background: While political polarization in policy opinions, preferences, and observance is well established, little is known about whether and how such divisions evolve, and possibly attenuate, over time. Using the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil as the backdrop, we examine the longitudinal evolution of a highly relevant and polarizing policy: adherence to the COVID-19 vaccination.

Methods: Studies 1 (N = 3346) and 2 (N = 10,214) use nationwide surveys to document initial differences and subsequent changes in vaccination adherence between conservatives ("Bolsonaristas") and non-conservatives ("non-Bolsonaristas").

Stigmatizing deferrals disproportionally reduce donor return rates: Evidence from Brazil.

Background And Objectives: Prior research has shown that temporary deferrals negatively influence donor return rates, but it remains unknown the extent to which these effects vary across reasons for deferral. We investigate whether deferrals differ in their degree of perceived stigmatization and, if so, how being deferred for stigmatizing (vs. non-stigmatizing) reasons affects subsequent donation behaviour.

The effect of temporary deferrals on donor return: A 26-year assessment in a setting without retention activities.

Background: Previous studies that describe the negative association between temporary deferrals and donor return rates commonly come from settings where mechanisms are in place to win back lapsing donors. There is little evidence on the size and prevalence of this negative association in settings with no such retention activities.

Study Design And Methods: We use data from more than 2 million donation attempts made at a blood collection agency in Brazil over a 26-year period.

Food choice in transition: adolescent autonomy, agency, and the food environment.

Dietary intake during adolescence sets the foundation for a healthy life, but adolescents are diverse in their dietary patterns and in factors that influence food choice. More evidence to understand the key diet-related issues and the meaning and context of food choices for adolescents is needed to increase the potential for impactful actions. The aim of this second Series paper is to elevate the importance given to adolescent dietary intake and food choice, bringing a developmental perspective to inform policy and programmatic actions to improve diets.

Protective Behaviors Against COVID-19 by Individual Vaccination Status in 12 Countries During the Pandemic.

This cross-sectional study examines associations of protective behaviors against COVID-19 among individuals in 12 countries who had received 0, 1, or 2 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

A worldwide assessment of changes in adherence to COVID-19 protective behaviours and hypothesized pandemic fatigue.

As the COVID-19 pandemic lingers, the possibility of 'pandemic fatigue' has raised worldwide concerns. Here, we examine whether there was a gradual reduction in adherence to protective behaviours against COVID-19 from March through December 2020, as hypothesized in expectations of fatigue. We considered self-report behaviours from representative samples of the populations of 14 countries (N = 238,797), as well as mobility and policy data for 124 countries.

Can self-protective behaviors increase unrealistic optimism? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

People tend to believe they are more (less) likely to experience positive (negative) outcomes than similar others. While research has consistently shown that feeling unrealistically optimistic about future events influences the adoption of self-protective behaviors, much less is known about the opposite relationship. We address this gap by examining whether and how self-protective behaviors influence unrealistic optimism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How changes in menu quality associate with subsequent expenditure on (un)healthy foods and beverages in school cafeterias: A three-year longitudinal study.

Evidence of the association between the school food environment and children's and adolescents' diet is mostly cross-sectional, usually based on self-reported behavior, and often conducted in high-income countries. Also, relatively little is known about how variations in menu quality associate with the subsequent expenditure on food and beverages of the same- (vs. cross-) nutritional value.

The short- and long-term impact of an incentive intervention on healthier eating: a quasi-experiment in primary- and secondary-school cafeterias in Brazil.

Objective: To assess the short- and long-term effectiveness of a lottery incentive intervention to promote the purchase of healthy products in school cafeterias.

Design: A quasi-experiment in which students' purchases in intervention schools were analysed in a pre-post analysis and also compared with a control school in a difference-in-differences model. A hierarchical linear model assessed the mean number of promoted healthy products purchased daily per participant before (twenty-six weekdays), during (nine weekdays) and after (twenty-eight weekdays) the intervention period.

Appetitive drives for ultra-processed food products and the ability of text warnings to counteract consumption predispositions.

Objective: The present study aimed to (i) assess the appetitive drives evoked by the visual cues of ultra-processed food and drink products and (ii) investigate whether text warnings reduce appetitive drives and consumers' reported intentions to eat or drink ultra-processed products.

Design: In Study I, a well-established psychometric tool was applied to estimate the appetitive drives associated with ultra-processed products using sixty-four image representations. Sixteen product types with four exemplars of a given product were included.

What a Smile Means: Contextual Beliefs and Facial Emotion Expressions in a Non-verbal Zero-Sum Game.

Research into the authenticity of facial emotion expressions often focuses on the physical properties of the face while paying little attention to the role of beliefs in emotion perception. Further, the literature most often investigates how people express a pre-determined emotion rather than what facial emotion expressions people strategically choose to express. To fill these gaps, this paper proposes a non-verbal zero-sum game - the Face X Game - to assess the role of contextual beliefs and strategic displays of facial emotion expression in interpersonal interactions.

Moral Violations Reduce Oral Consumption.

Consumers frequently encounter moral violations in everyday life. They watch movies and television shows about crime and deception, hear news reports of corporate fraud and tax evasion, and hear gossip about cheaters and thieves. How does exposure to moral violations influence consumption? Because moral violations arouse disgust and because disgust is an evolutionarily important signal of contamination that should provoke a multi-modal response, we hypothesize that moral violations affect a key behavioral response to disgust: reduced oral consumption.

Fear, excitement, and financial risk-taking.

Can fear trigger risk-taking? In this paper, we assess whether fear can be reinterpreted as a state of excitement as a result of contextual cues and promote, rather than discourage, risk-taking. In a laboratory experiment, the participants' emotional states were induced (fear vs. control), followed by a purportedly unrelated financial task.

Misestimating betting behavior: the role of negative asymmetries in emotional self prediction.

This paper addresses the role of negative asymmetries in emotional self-prediction by looking at the extent to which individuals misestimate their own betting behavior in sequential gambles. In a series of three experimental studies, we demonstrate that losses lead to higher than planned bets whereas bets are on average carried over after gains. Such asymmetric deviations from the plan emerge (1) when monetary and non-monetary incentives are used, and (2) when participants face fair and unfair gambles.

Combine or separate future pain? The impact of current pain on decisions about future dental treatments.

Patients are often given the option of undergoing future painful treatments in one or multiple sessions (e.g., extracting two wisdom teeth on one or two different days).

Social Anxiety Modulates Risk Sensitivity through Activity in the Anterior Insula.

Decision neuroscience offers the potential for decomposing differences in behavior across individuals into components of valuation intimately tied to brain function. One application of this approach lies in novel conceptualizations of behavioral attributes that are aberrant in psychiatric disorders. We investigated the relationship between social anxiety and behavior in a novel socially determined risk task.

Feelings not forgone: underestimating affective reactions to what does not happen.

In two experiments, we observed that when given the choice of gambling or not gambling, people who chose not to gamble underestimated the intensity of their affective reactions to the forgone gamble's outcome. Those who would have been winners felt more displeasure than anticipated, and those who would have been losers felt more pleasure than anticipated. We suggest that this underestimation stems partly from people's belief that affective experience is relatively uninfluenced by events they chose not to experience.

How is the boss's mood today? I want a raise.

Other people's incidental feelings can influence one's decision in a strategic manner. In a sequential game in which proposers moved first by dividing a given pot of cash (keeping 50% or 75% of the pot) and receivers responded by choosing the size of the pot (from 0 dollars to 1 dollar), proposers were more likely to make an unfair offer (i.e.