Monthly Research/Survey Thread Psychological Research/Surveys Thread

9 Upvotes

Welcome to the r/Psychology Research Thread!

Need participants? Looking for constructive criticism? In addition to the weekly discussion thread, the mods have instituted this thread for a surveys.

General submission rules are suspended in this thread, but all top-level comments must link to a survey and follow the formatting rules outlined below. Removal of content is still at the discretion of the moderators. Reddiquette applies. Personal attacks, racism, sexism, etc. will be removed. Repeated violations may result in a ban. This thread will occasionally be refreshed.

In addition to posting here, we recommend you post your surveys to r/samplesize and join the discussion at r/surveyresearch.

TOP-LEVEL COMMENTS

Top-level comments in this thread should be formatted like the following example (similar to r/samplesize):

[Tag] Description (Demographic) Link
ex. [Academic] GPA and Reddit use (US, College Students, 18+) Link
Any further information-a description of the survey, request for critiques, etc.-should be placed in the next paragraph of the same top-level comment.

RESULTS

Results should be posted as a direct reply to the corresponding top-level comment, with the same formatting as the original survey.

[Results] Description (Demographic) Link
ex. [Results] GPA and Reddit use (US, College Students, 18+) Link

[Tags] include:

Academic, Industrial, Causal, Results, etc.

(Demographics) include:

Location, Education, Age, etc.

50 comments

r/psychology • u/dingenium • 2d ago

Weekly Discussion Thread Weekly Discussion Thread

5 Upvotes

Welcome to the r/psychology discussion thread!

Discussion threads will be "refreshed" each week (i.e., a new discussion thread will be posted for each week). Feel free to ask the community questions, comment on the state of the subreddit, or post content that would otherwise be disallowed.

Do you need help with homework? Have a question about a study you just read? Heard a psychology joke?

Need participants for a survey? Want to discuss or get critique for your research? Check out our research thread! While submission rules are suspended in this thread, removal of content is still at the discretion of the moderators. Reddiquette applies. Personal attacks, racism, sexism, etc will be removed. Repeated violations may result in a ban.

Recent discussions

Click here for recent discussions from previous weeks.

3 comments

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 7h ago

Household chaos does not directly cause poor grades, twin study suggests. Researchers found that while household chaos and educational achievement negatively influence each other over time, the relationship is mostly non-causal.

psypost.org

108 Upvotes

1 comment

r/psychology • u/mvea • 19h ago

How dismissed symptoms can push patients to breaking point: Patients with autoimmune diseases have been left feeling suicidal after feeling like their doctor was saying their symptoms were ‘all in their head’. Only 7% agreed with being told that their symptoms were “psychosomatic”.

uea.ac.uk

803 Upvotes

129 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 9h ago

Autistic children’s brains respond less to the emotional meaning of sentences, fMRI study finds. This may contribute to autistic children’s social communication challenges.

psypost.org

118 Upvotes

5 comments

r/psychology • u/shinybrighthings • 12h ago

ADHD Presentations and Severity in Adults: Psychometric Profiles, Psychiatric Comorbidities, and Emotional Dysregulation in Relation to Psychiatric Hospitalization

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

121 Upvotes

5 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 1d ago

Autistic brains react less to being told "you're wrong," new study finds. People with autism showed weaker brain responses to negative feedback, and unlike others, their reactions didn't change with task difficulty, which may help explain why adapting to change feels harder.

eurekalert.org

1.1k Upvotes

213 comments

r/psychology • u/scientificamerican • 5h ago

What is trypophobia? Why some people's skin crawls when they see tiny holes

scientificamerican.com

5 Upvotes

5 comments

r/psychology • u/Tricky-Breakfast-604 • 1d ago

Scientists discover a surprising clue to why some brains resist Alzheimer’s Why do some people stay mentally sharp even when their brains show signs of Alzheimer’s disease? Scientists in the Netherlands may have uncovered an important clue hidden in a rare group of immature brain cells.

sciencedaily.com

135 Upvotes

3 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 1d ago

Women reach orgasm more often alone, but partnered orgasms are more closely tied to sexual satisfaction. The study also found that a wider variety of partnered activities was linked to greater satisfaction, while variety in solo sex showed no such benefit.

psypost.org

360 Upvotes

10 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 1d ago

The menstrual cycle appears to modulate the severity of ADHD traits in women taking common stimulant medications. These traits peak in severity during menstruation and ease soon after, pointing toward a need for hormone-aware treatment plans.

psypost.org

1.3k Upvotes

100 comments

r/psychology • u/Mathemodel • 1d ago

ChatGPT Is Building Detailed Psychological Profiles of Its Users

futurism.com

1.1k Upvotes

168 comments

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

People With Psychopathic Traits May Enjoy Fear Because They Experience Thrill and Excitement Rather Than Distress When Facing Frightening Situations, Offering Insights Into How Personality Traits Shape Emotional Responses to Fear

psypost.org

407 Upvotes

20 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 1d ago

When the UK made teens stay in school one extra year (until age 16) in 1972, people who got that extra year had fewer dementia diagnoses nearly 50 years later. The benefit even held for people with high genetic risk, suggesting schooling itself protects the brain and your genes aren't your destiny.

schaeffer.usc.edu

188 Upvotes

3 comments

r/psychology • u/haloarh • 2d ago

Your body makes its own cannabis-like chemicals as you run, and neuroscience research finds they keep rising all the way to the marathon finish line, a possible clue to the runner’s high

psypost.org

1.1k Upvotes

123 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 2d ago

Magic mushroom compound psilocybin grows new brain connections within 24 hours and repairs circuits damaged by chronic stress in mice. Scientists found the brain rewiring runs on a different pathway than the trip itself, opening the door to fast-acting depression drugs without the hallucinations.

news.ucsc.edu

822 Upvotes

72 comments

r/psychology • u/haloarh • 2d ago

Romantic breakups correspond with changes in sexual identity during adulthood

psypost.org

436 Upvotes

75 comments

r/psychology • u/Doug24 • 3d ago

Expecting to lose economic standing hurts well-being more than expecting to gain helps it

psypost.org

246 Upvotes

9 comments

r/psychology • u/Michaelarobards • 3d ago

Users mourned AI companions like lost relationships after company updates changed them; some rated their AI as closer than a friend (Nature Human Behaviour)

nature.com

93 Upvotes

Timely, with Character.AI in bankruptcy this month and its platform possibly winding down if no buyer appears.

The researchers used two natural experiments: Replika removing erotic roleplay, and ChatGPT's GPT-5 rollout replacing the model many users were attached to. After each change, posts turned sharply negative and framed it as a loss, with users begging for the old version back. The Replika reaction was much stronger, with very large effects on sadness. In surveys, Replika users rated their companion as closer than a typical friend.

What strikes me is that this attachment doesn't depend on believing the AI is human. People can know exactly what it is and still grieve it the way attachment theory predicts for any attachment figure.

The difference from human relationships is structural: the other side can be rewritten or deleted overnight by a company, with no warning and no say.

It's worth reading alongside the lead author's earlier paper finding that AI companions reduce loneliness. Both can be true: the comfort is real, and so is the dependence that makes losing it hurt.

So the question I keep coming back to is this. If an AI relationship makes someone feel less alone day to day but slowly becomes their main way of regulating emotion, is it treating their loneliness or maintaining it? How would we tell the difference?

(The article is paywalled. The authors posted their data and code on GitHub: https://github.com/Ethical-Intelligence-Lab/ai_loss)

1 comment

r/psychology • u/Emillahr • 3d ago

31.4% of Young Women vs. 11.4% of Young Men Identify as LGBTQ+: What It Could Mean for Heterosexual Dating

gilmorehealth.com

1.4k Upvotes

1.9k comments

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 4d ago

Sugar restriction in early life is linked to lower dementia risk and slightly slower brain aging decades later

psypost.org

620 Upvotes

12 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 4d ago

LSD makes the brain's main rhythms faster and weaker while making its activity more complex and fractal, mostly in areas for vision, hearing, language and emotions, but not movement. Surprisingly, listening to music seemed to calm these effects instead of boosting them, a new brain scan study finds.

psypost.org

594 Upvotes

30 comments

r/psychology • u/Express_Classic_1569 • 4d ago

New Study Identifies Brain Patterns Linked to Genetic Risk for ADHD

hive.blog

185 Upvotes

13 comments

r/psychology • u/Phylogenix • 5d ago

A randomized study of 7,338 US adults found that describing biodiversity loss as the "extinction of plants and animals" generated more public concern and support for conservation policies than terms like "biodiversity crisis" or "extinction crisis", highlighting the importance of familiar language.

nature.com

515 Upvotes

21 comments

r/psychology • u/mvea • 5d ago

Magic mushrooms don't just scramble the brain. Scans of 63 first-timers on psilocybin found hidden order under the chaos: brain activity lined up with what each person was doing, most strongly in those who felt a deep sense of oneness. Over half called it one of their life's most meaningful moments.

psypost.org

3.0k Upvotes

193 comments

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