r/psychology • u/dingenium • 25d ago

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.

r/psychology • u/dingenium • 1d ago

Weekly Discussion Thread Weekly Discussion Thread

4 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.

r/psychology • u/mvea • 2h 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.

371 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 13h 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.

888 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Mathemodel • 15h ago

ChatGPT Is Building Detailed Psychological Profiles of Its Users

730 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 10h 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

231 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 27m 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.

• Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 11h 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

134 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/haloarh • 1d 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

1.0k Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 1d 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.

760 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/haloarh • 1d ago

Romantic breakups correspond with changes in sexual identity during adulthood

383 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Doug24 • 2d ago

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

239 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Michaelarobards • 1d 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)

88 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)

r/psychology • u/Emillahr • 2d ago

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

gilmorehealth.com

1.3k Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 3d ago

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

610 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 3d 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.

561 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Express_Classic_1569 • 3d ago

New Study Identifies Brain Patterns Linked to Genetic Risk for ADHD

180 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Phylogenix • 3d 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.

497 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 4d 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.

2.9k Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 3d ago

Haunted houses may bring people closer, but psychological research suggests the bonding really happens on the ride home

138 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 4d ago

New biological marker could end trial and error in depression care. Researchers have identified a circular RNA molecule in the blood that predicts whether a patient will respond to a common class of antidepressants.

534 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 4d ago

Kids’ aggression appears to shape parents’ discipline more than the reverse. Study also found that shared genes explained part of the link between inconsistent discipline and aggression, and all of the link between positive parenting and lower aggression.

244 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/FreeHugs23 • 5d ago

Neuroscientists Identify Brain Mechanisms That May Explain Why Some Childhood Trauma Survivors Struggle to Anticipate and Look Forward to Positive Experiences.

1.7k Upvotes

r/psychology • u/Doug24 • 5d ago

Children who later develop psychosis tend to have slightly smaller heads, study finds

169 Upvotes

r/psychology • u/mvea • 5d ago

Teenage boys who follow prominent online personalities associated with the “manosphere”, like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, are more likely to support traditional beliefs about manhood, such as the idea that men should hide their emotions, remain dominant, and reject anything considered feminine.

602 Upvotes

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