PsyCh journal最新文献

The moral slippery slope effect refers to the phenomenon where, within groups or organizations, the incidence of individual unethical behaviors increases and escalates over time. To systematically identify factors that drive the disappearance of this effect, three studies were conducted using a 20-round spontaneous deception task. Study 1 compared the trend of the moral slippery slope effect under accumulative versus non-accumulative pay conditions. Results indicated that the moral slippery slope effect disappeared under accumulative pay but persisted under non-accumulative pay. Studies 2 and 3 further examined the moderating role of pay satisfaction in the moral slippery slope effect, specifically under accumulative pay. Results revealed that pay satisfaction significantly moderated the relationship between experimental rounds and the moral slippery slope effect: the effect persisted when participants reported low pay satisfaction but disappeared when pay satisfaction was high. Collectively, these findings confirm two key conclusions: (1) accumulative pay is a necessary prerequisite for the disappearance of the moral slippery slope effect; (2) pay satisfaction moderates the disappearance of this effect under accumulative pay. This study provides empirical support for moral balance theory and offers practical implications for organizations: designing accumulative pay systems and aligning pay with employee expectations can effectively prevent moral decline by enhancing pay satisfaction.

Adolescents academic success is shaped by resilience, emotion regulation, and social support, yet cross-cultural differences in these processes remain underexplored. This study investigated the latent mediating effect among psychological resilience, emotion regulation, academic self-efficacy, and perceived social support in Chinese and Ghanaian adolescents. Using multigroup structural equation modeling (MSEM) with a sample of 2000 participants, the study tested hypotheses on measurement invariance, structural associations, mediation, and moderated mediation. Results from measurement invariance tests confirmed that the constructs were comparable across groups, with good fit indices (CFI ≥ 0.90, RMSEA ≤ 0.07) supporting configural, metric, and scalar invariance. Structural path analyses revealed significant positive associations among all constructs, with effects generally stronger among Chinese adolescents. It was found that the relationship between resilience and emotion regulation was higher in China than in Ghana. Mediation analyses further indicated that emotion regulation and social support transmitted the influence of resilience on academic self-efficacy, with single mediators explaining 20%-28% of the variance and the total indirect effect accounting for 48%. Emotion regulation emerged as the strongest mediator. Moderated mediation analyses showed that these pathways were more pronounced in China (total indirect effect: B = 0.37 vs. 0.20; index = 0.17, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.29], p < 0.01), reflecting cultural emphases on emotional control, academic diligence, and structured social networks. Findings highlight the importance of considering cultural context in adolescent development research. Contextually relevant psychological and educational interventions are recommended to strengthen resilience, emotion regulation, and support systems in both China and Ghana.

Younger and older L1 Chinese speakers differ in where they place their focus-young adults look more to the future, while older adults value the past-yet neither group faces toward the past. Instead, all L1 Chinese participants consistently adopt a future-facing perspective. When interpreting ambiguous temporal expressions, they rely on S-Time: "" ("qian", front) refers to earlier (past) moments and "" ("hou", back) to later (future) moments. This reflects a reference frame of S-Time rather than a backward orientation toward the past. In contrast, L1 English speakers prefer D-Time, mapping "front" onto the future and "back" onto the past. Together, these findings show that although age shifts temporal focus among L1 Chinese speakers, cultural and values background determines the dominant reference frames of temporal representations and cognition-S-Time for L1 Chinese speakers and D-Time for L1 English speakers.

Two studies were conducted to investigate: (1) the effects of dispositional mindfulness and short-term mindfulness induction on prosocial willingness, (2) the mediating roles of moral identity and moral disengagement, and (3) age-related differences between young adolescents (12-15 years) and young adults (18-24 years). In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 271 college students (young adults) and 229 middle school students (young adolescents), assessing dispositional mindfulness, moral identity, moral disengagement, and prosocial willingness. In Study 2, an experimental design was employed to explore the short-term effects of two types of mindfulness inductions (with ethical elements or without) on these variables, involving 105 young adults and 142 young adolescents. Study 1 revealed that, in adolescents, moral identity significantly mediated the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and prosocial willingness, while moral disengagement served as the primary mediator among adults. Study 2 showed that different short-term mindfulness inductions significantly affected moral identity, moral disengagement, and prosocial willingness in adolescents, with significant mediation effects of moral identity and moral disengagement. However, these effects were not significant in adults. Both types of mindfulness induction showed differential mediating effects, suggesting age-specific psychological mechanisms. Findings highlighted age-related differences in how mindfulness influences prosocial behavior, mediated by moral constructs. Both studies consistently showed that, for adolescents, the moral psychology (such as moral identity and moral disengagement) significantly influences the association between mindfulness (interventions) and prosocial behavior. This provides important insights into ethical mindfulness education, emphasizing the need to account for psychological development characteristics when designing mindfulness programs for adolescents.

Creative cognitive reappraisal is an emerging emotion regulation strategy, but existing experimental studies often lack ecological validity due to two key limitations: the challenge of spontaneously generating creative cognitive reappraisal and the passive presentation of materials, which resembles comprehension rather than active application. This study addresses these gaps by investigating the teachability and effectiveness of creative cognitive reappraisal in real-world contexts. Using a 3 × 2 mixed-factorial design, 82 teachers provided two personal negative events at baseline and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (creative cognitive reappraisal, ordinary cognitive reappraisal, and positive emotional picture). Participants were trained in their assigned emotion regulation strategy based on a learning-test paradigm, using materials from the International Affective Picture System and Teachers' Negative Emotional Scenarios System. Pleasure was measured at two time points: immediately after the learning phase and 3 days later, using 20 common and two personal negative teacher-related scenarios. Qualitative data on insights gained from the learning phase were also collected. For common negative events, creative cognitive reappraisal demonstrated a meaningful, delayed, and significant effect after 3 days. The creative cognitive reappraisal group also generated the most creative reappraisal interpretations, highlighting its unique efficacy. These findings suggest that creative cognitive reappraisal is a teachable and enduring skill with delayed benefit for regulating negative emotions in real-world contexts. It highlighted the importance of allowing time for emotional processing-rather than attempting immediate regulation-which could create a pathway for more effective regulation later.

Minority opinions can be of crucial importance to the diversity, productivity, and harmony of a group, but are often left unattended and unheard. Previous methods that tried to enhance minority influence are usually overly forceful and low on ecological validity. To overcome these pitfalls, we proposed a new intervention method called minority clustering and examined its effects with a social network experiment (N = 456). Minority clustering was implemented by increasing the network connections among participants with initial opinions that deviated from the mainstream opinion and forming an opinion cluster among these minority members. Our results show that minority clustering significantly slowed down the rate at which minority members shifted toward majority opinions, thereby sustaining minority cohesion, and moved majority members closer to minority opinions, thus enhancing minority influence. An additional filter bubble intervention, through which all members of a network were exposed to neighbors with similar opinions to their own, further strengthened minority cohesion but weakened minority influence. Minority clustering is an unobtrusive intervention that does not need overt cooperations of network members and can be implemented easily in social media platforms. The working mechanisms of minority clustering and its effects on group opinion formation are further discussed.

In the context of a global public health crisis, such as COVID-19, developing interventions to improve population health behaviors has emerged as a pivotal element of health management strategies. The efficacy of various interventions implemented during this period has varied, and the impact of different variables on these intervention outcomes remains to be fully elucidated. This study screened 57 papers (n = 47,264) by searching electronic databases and revealed the optimal intervention through pairwise meta-analysis and network meta-analysis, as well as the changes in intervention effectiveness under different conditions. Our research findings indicate that interventions for preventive health behaviors and health-promoting behaviors have significant effects. For preventive health behaviors, the intervention method of health education and low-risk information framework under information intervention was the optimal intervention. For health-promoting behaviors, the exercise intervention and the prosocial information framework with information intervention were the optimal interventions. Accordingly, future research should focus on the in-depth exploration of specific interventions to establish and improve the effectiveness of interventions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping creativity by challenging its long-held status as a uniquely human faculty. This study uses bibliometric analysis to reveal AI's evolution from a passive instrument to an active co-creator that amplifies human intuition and expands creative possibilities. We highlight how AI-driven evaluative frameworks offer more objective, scalable, and inclusive assessments of creativity, disrupting bias-prone traditional methods. Also, this transformation raises pressing ethical and legal concerns, particularly regarding authorship, intellectual property, and recognition of machine-generated outputs. By mapping these tensions and opportunities, the study provides a critical foundation for rethinking creativity in the age of human-machine collaboration. Our findings point toward an urgent need for new conceptual models that align innovation with ethical and societal responsibility.

Individuals with higher working memory capacities excel in mathematics performance. However, limited research has explored the impact of working memory on adolescents' algebraic ability and the transferability of training effects. Therefore, we conducted the current investigation with Chinese adolescents. In a correlational study (n = 218), we identified a positive association between n-back working memory and the ability to solve algebraic word and equation problems. In a subsequent training study, the experimental group (n = 28) underwent adaptive n-back working memory training for 20 days, resulting in enhanced working memory performance. However, no improvements in algebraic performance were observed in the experimental group compared to either the passive control (n = 22) or the active control group (n = 28). Together, while n-back working memory performance is associated with better algebraic performance, leveraging training gains of working memory to enhance algebra learning presents challenges. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are presented.

People may remember events inaccurately after being exposed to misleading information. This can lead to false memories being reported in multiple interviews. The higher the attentional salience of the original event information (i.e., the extent to which it strongly captures attention during encoding), the less likely young adults are to form false memories. However, it was unknown whether this would also apply to older adults across multiple memory assessments. This study used the misinformation paradigm to examine age differences in memory accuracy and consistency in two recognition tests. It also investigated how attentional salience of the original information influenced memory performances. Thirty young adults (aged 23 ± 2 years) and 30 older adults (aged 70 ± 3 years) saw images of original events, then read misleading narratives, and finally completed a verbal recognition test and a pictorial recognition test based on what they had seen in the original events. Results showed that older adults reported more false memories than young adults in both tests. Older adults were less consistent in reporting true memories across two tests, but there was no age difference in the consistency of false memories. Greater attentional salience helped young and older adults report more original information and less misinformation, though the effect was weaker in older adults. It also helped young and older adults report original information more consistently across tests. Overall, this study showed that how well the original information was encoded significantly influenced eyewitness reports across interviews in young and older adults.