PsyCh journal最新文献

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.

Schizophrenia exhibits impairments in remembering the past (autobiographical memory, AM) and imagining the future (episodic future thinking, EFT). Childhood trauma is also associated with deficits in AM and EFT. However, it is not clear whether childhood trauma is associated with severer deficits in AM and EFT in schizophrenia. The present study aimed to examine the effect of childhood trauma on AM and EFT in schizophrenia. We recruited 41 schizophrenia patients with childhood trauma (SCZ + CT), 19 schizophrenia patients without childhood trauma (SCZ - CT), and 40 healthy controls (HC) to participate in this study. Participants underwent the autobiographical interview task, in which they were required to remember or imagine the most important events that occurred or would occur at different times and describe them. Results showed that SCZ + CT exhibited fewer internal details, and lower specificity, time/place richness, and thought/emotion richness in both AM and EFT compared with HC. Meanwhile, SCZ - CT showed lower time/place richness and thought/emotion richness in AM and EFT than HC. However, no significant difference was found between the two patient groups. In addition, AM showed more internal details and stronger phenomenological characteristics (e.g., specificity, time/place richness, etc.) than EFT, while EFT was more positive and important than AM in all participants. Both SCZ + CT and SCZ - CT groups exhibited AM and EFT impairments, and the SCZ + CT group had wider impairments than the SCZ - CT group compared with HC, although the direct comparison between SCZ + CT and SCZ - CT did not show significant differences. These results suggest that childhood trauma had a subtle effect on AM and EFT impairments in schizophrenia patients.

This study examines the comparative effects of immediate and delayed feedback on the engagement and willingness to participate in collaborative learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Ninety EFL students at Guangxi University participated in a quasi-experimental study across three conditions: no feedback, immediate feedback, and delayed feedback. Using one-way ANOVA, the results revealed that both feedback types significantly influenced learners' engagement across affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions, with immediate feedback yielding significant effects in the affective and cognitive domains. Delayed feedback, however, was more effective in fostering willingness to collaborate, likely due to the reflective space it provided. These findings suggest that the timing of feedback plays a crucial role in shaping learner outcomes and should be strategically aligned with instructional goals. The study highlights the importance of context-sensitive feedback practices, particularly in digital learning environments where timing constraints and student autonomy vary.

Children's externalizing problem behavior is one of the most explored topics among parents, educators, and research scholars. The purpose of this study is to examine the developmental changes of externalizing problem behavior in the early years of poor children and adolescents and the influence of family factors such as family functioning and parental marital quality on the developmental changes. Seven hundred and seventy-eight early adolescents (M_age = 13.7, SD = 2.53) from poor families were studied longitudinally for 14 months. The results showed that three potential characteristics of externalizing problem behavior patterns were identified through Latent Profile Analysis (LPA): well-adjusted group, attention disorder group, and conduct problem group. Latent Transition Analysis (LTA) revealed a tendency for the conduct problem group to transition to the well-adjusted group over two traces (OR = 0.40). There were gender differences in the results: boys in the conduct problem group were more likely to transition to the well-adjusted group (OR = 0.55), while girls in the attention disorder group were more likely to transition to the well-adjusted group (OR = 2.63). Research has found that a supportive family environment is a positive factor in mitigating externalizing problem behaviors of the early adolescents in their transition to adolescence.