Author: dispatchtimes news

A UK- and global-focused study published in Political Psychology concludes that exposure to conspiracy theories directly undermines belief in distributive justice—the idea that rewards and resources should be allocated fairly according to merit, equality and need. Led by Qi Zhao of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the research combines big‑data analysis with controlled experiments across the United States, China and a corporate workplace setting to test how conspiratorial thinking shapes views of social fairness. In the initial phase, the team examined data from the World Value Survey, drawing on 90,837 participants across 68 societies. They compared responses to election‑related conspiracy beliefs—such as…

A collaborative study involving researchers from McGill University, Utrecht University and INSEAD has tested how well indirect measures of hidden racial biases predict behavioural decisions when direct self-reports remain the strongest predictor. The project, designed as an adversarial collaboration, recruited more than two thousand White American adults to compare lab-based behavioural tasks with both indirect tests and direct attitude surveys. In psychology, direct and indirect measures of racial attitudes sit at opposite ends of a spectrum. Direct measures rely on conscious self-report surveys where respondents control their answers, while indirect measures aim to capture automatic associations that people may not…

A new study suggests that public health messages which reveal how many people from an opposing political group have been vaccinated can influence individuals’ plans to get a COVID-19 jab. The work, led by Brandyn F. Churchill of American University with Xiaoxue Sherry Gao and Rong Rong from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studied how information shocks tied to partisan identity affect health decisions. The researchers note the findings emerge from a real experiment and are documented in the study titled “Partisan differences in healthcare decision-making: Evidence from a vaccine experiment.” Researchers began with a baseline survey in May 2024,…

A new analysis of public health and crime data has found that mass shootings and deaths by suicide in the United States follow a strikingly similar seasonal rhythm, both cresting in mid-summer and retreating in mid-winter. The findings, published in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, draw on national data and datasets from leading health and law enforcement sources. In this context, mass shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured by a firearm. Public health experts have long been searching for patterns that might explain when these tragedies occur, with…

New research indicates that the risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, among United States veterans varies by military branch and rank, with higher rates observed in the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, and among officers compared with Army veterans and enlisted personnel. The study, published in Neurology, used a vast medical records dataset to explore these differences. Researchers analysed electronic health records from the Veterans Health Administration, focusing on care received between January 2000 and October 2024. To identify new ALS cases, they included only veterans with at least two years of medical history in the system…

A new international study reveals that puberty and pregnancy trigger similar widespread reductions in cortical gray matter, while the menopausal transition appears to pause rather than accelerate age-related brain changes. The research, conducted by Sophie R. van ’t Hof and colleagues at Amsterdam University Medical Center, analysed brain scans from three distinct female life stages to map shared and unique patterns of brain plasticity. The work draws on cohorts from the UK Biobank and involved more than a thousand participants overall, with each group representing puberty, pregnancy and menopause. Gray matter, the brain tissue rich in nerve cell bodies and…

A Mayo Clinic team has repurposed the antidepressant paroxetine to boost a measles virus–based immunovirotherapy for glioblastoma in mice, producing stronger immune responses and longer survival in the study published in Molecular Therapy: Oncology. The researchers, led by Evanthia Galanis and including Georgios Stergiopoulos, Susanna Concilio, Kim Viker, Susan Clark, and Steven Robinson, aimed to overcome the brain tumour’s suppression of the body’s immune defences. Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive primary brain cancer in adults, notorious for creating an environment that traps white blood cells within the bone marrow, preventing them from reaching the tumour in the brain.…

A landmark study drawing on the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study suggests that a child’s neighbourhood and socioeconomic background shape the brain’s developing function and structure more powerfully than any other behavioural or environmental factor. The research, led by Scott Marek of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found that patterns of brain activity once thought to signal innate intelligence may actually reflect socioeconomic status, likely driven by environmental stressors such as sleep deprivation. For years, neuroscientists have attempted to map single human traits to brain imaging data. This team sought to evaluate how a vast array of…

Romantic couples tend to share far more similar musical tastes than their personality traits or personal values, a three-study project suggests, with this musical alignment linked to modestly higher relationship tenderness. The research, drawing on 309 pairs from Germany and Austria, indicates that music preferences may outshine personality in predicting how connected partners feel. Musical preferences go beyond entertainment; they reflect a person’s psychological makeup, emotional regulation and personal identity, the researchers say. Music is routinely used as a social signal to communicate who someone is, and the studies position taste in artists and genres as a meaningful social attribute…

A new international analysis using the World Values Survey data from 2005 to 2022 suggests that higher education drives a global cultural alignment with WEIRD countries—the Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic states. The researchers, Cindel J. M. White and Michael Muthukrishna, report that those with more schooling are more similar to the United States and other WEIRD nations, a pattern observed across 95 countries and nearly 269,000 participants. The work comes amid longstanding concerns that psychological research over-relies on Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic populations, often sourced from university settings. The WEIRD label has become shorthand for groups…