I checked 15 psychology journals on Friday, May 01, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period April 24 to April 30, I found 26 new paper(s) in 8 journal(s).

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

Fast-Track Your Abstract Screening: Mastering ASReview for Accelerating Abstract Screening and Evaluating Decisions From Automatic-Screening Methods
Tim Fütterer, Lars König, Diego G. Campos, Ronny Scherer, Steffen Zitzmann, Martin Hecht
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Research syntheses, such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses, are crucial for synthesizing research to support evidence-based decision-making. However, the abstract-screening phase, during which researchers evaluate titles and abstracts for inclusion, is highly time-consuming and often results in cognitive biases and fatigue. To address these challenges, machine-learning-assisted tools, particularly those using active learning, have gained prominence. One such tool is Active Screening Review (ASReview), an open-source software for semiautomating title and abstract screening in systematic reviews. ASReview incorporates user feedback to prioritize relevant studies, reducing screening time and improving efficiency. Despite its potential, many researchers remain uncertain about integrating ASReview into their workflows and making evidence-based decisions regarding the tool’s configuration, training, and stopping criteria. In this tutorial, we provide a step-by-step guide to using ASReview, including practical examples from psychological research. We demonstrate the software’s application in two use cases: screening unlabeled abstracts using active learning and verifying results from automated-screening methods. In the tutorial, we also offer evidence-based recommendations for selecting stopping rules to balance sensitivity and efficiency. We also outline strategies for prescreening, data-set preparation, model setup, and progress monitoring to ensure that researchers can maximize the tool’s benefits while maintaining scientific rigor. By offering evidence-based guidance at each stage of the process for practitioners without coding skills, in this tutorial, we aim to help researchers harness artificial-intelligence-aided screening to enhance the quality and efficiency of research syntheses across disciplines.
Can Results-Blind Selection Improve Science Communication?
Alexa M. Tullett, Savannah C. Lewis, Nell Lambdin, Joshua Baker, Matthew Barnidge
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Journalists are often maligned for covering sensational or desirable research results at the expense of studies with stronger methods. In the present study, we aimed to test how journalists’ preferences shift when studies are selected based on their methods rather than results (results-blind selection). Practicing journalists and editors, journalism faculty, and journalism graduate students ( N = 413) read summaries of real social-psychology studies and rated their interest in reporting on them. Participants were randomly assigned to read either “traditional” summaries that included the results or “results-blind” summaries that excluded the results. Summaries varied on three within-subjects dimensions: replication status, preregistration status, and belief consistency. Participants expressed more interest in replicable (vs. not replicable) and preregistered (vs. nonpreregistered) studies regardless of whether they learned the results, suggesting that these studies have features that are valued by journalists. Meanwhile, results-blind selection showed potential for reducing confirmation bias, suggesting it may be worth further exploration if feasibility challenges can be addressed.
Three-Sided Testing to Establish Practical Significance: A Tutorial
Peder Mortvedt Isager, Jack Fitzgerald
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Researchers may want to know whether an observed statistical relationship is either meaningfully negative, meaningfully positive, or small enough to be considered practically equivalent to zero. Such a question cannot be addressed with standard null hypothesis significance testing or standard equivalence testing. Three-sided testing (TST) is a procedure to address such questions by simultaneously testing whether a relationship is significantly bounded below, within, or above predetermined smallest effect sizes of interest. TST is a natural extension of the standard procedure of two one-sided tests (TOST) for equivalence testing. TST offers a more comprehensive decision framework than TOST with no penalty to error rates or statistical power. In this article, we give a nontechnical introduction to TST; provide commands for conducting TST in R, Jamovi, and Stata; and provide a Shiny app for easy implementation. Whenever a meaningful smallest effect size of interest can be specified, TST should be combined with null hypothesis significance testing as a standard frequentist testing procedure.

Behavior Research Methods

Lexique 4: A major upgrade of the Lexique French lexical database
Boris New, Christophe Pallier, Gauvain Schalchli, Jessica Bourgin, Manuel Gimenes
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Citizen science in psychology: Challenges, opportunities, and recommendations
Eva Van den Bussche, Kirsten A. Verhaegen, Bert Reynvoet, Gethin Hughes
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Translation norms for English and Japanese translation pairs: Translation ambiguity, proficiency, and production errors
Diya P. Goyal, Noriko Hoshino, Natasha Tokowicz
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Neural cognitive diagnosis modeling incorporating response times
Jianhua Xiong, Mengchao Li, Fen Luo, Wenyi Wang
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Affective norms for Chinese words in ten discrete emotion categories
Dangui Song
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AI-accelerated meta-analysis in psychology: Large language models code study properties with high accuracy
Shaheed Azaad
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Theoretically driven meta-analyses often involve testing whether study characteristics moderate an effect in a pattern that supports one of multiple competing theoretical accounts. To conduct such analyses, researchers must manually extract, i.e., code, these characteristics from sometimes hundreds of studies. Ideally, studies should be coded by two researchers independently to prevent errors and biases from compromising the dataset’s integrity. The laborious nature of this task, however, means that meta-analysts usually settle for double-coding just a portion of the studies included in their study. Some researchers have proposed using large language models (LLMs) as a double-coder, showing that they can reliably extract explicitly stated information (e.g., publication year) from articles. However, meta-analyses in psychology generally require studies to be coded in terms of higher-level conceptual dimensions (e.g., the type of behavior rather than which behavior). The present study investigated whether two LLMs, OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, can code studies in this way. Both models replicated the study codes from three recently published meta-analyses in psychology with high accuracy (>92% overall), despite the limited information they received. LLM double-coding, therefore, offers a practical solution for meta-analysts seeking to ensure data integrity.
Comparing age differences in cognition, personality, and political orientation across six online recruitment platforms
Michael S. Cohen, Karolina M. Lempert, David A. Wolk, Joseph W. Kable
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Aging is typically associated with characteristic changes to cognitive function, personality, and political orientation. While online data collection for psychological research has greatly increased in frequency, there has been little systematic examination of whether online samples are appropriate for studying aging. Here, we examine whether typical age-related differences in cognitive function, personality, and political orientation are replicated in online samples. We measured cognitive performance using tests of vocabulary, processing speed, memory, and attention developed by the TestMyBrain Project; personality using the Big Five Inventory; and political orientation following the ANES survey format. At least 200 participants each were sampled from three crowdsourcing websites (Amazon MTurk, CloudResearch MTurk Toolkit, and Prolific) and three panel recruitment websites (Lucid, CloudResearch PrimePanels, and Qualtrics Panels), with age ranging from 18 to 92 years across platforms. On all six platforms, consistent with established findings, age was positively correlated with vocabulary performance and negatively correlated with processing speed. Additionally, in all six samples, consistent with prior studies, age was associated with higher Agreeableness, lower Neuroticism, and greater political conservatism. There were some differences between crowdsourced and panel samples, however. Performance on cognitive measures was broadly better for crowdsourced samples. The correlations between age and Openness and Extraversion differed between crowdsourced and panel samples, with trends in panel samples likely more comparable to the ground truth. Finally, MTurk produced some discrepant effects of age on cognition relative to other crowdsourced platforms. Beyond these differences, though, our results are broadly encouraging for the prospect of studying aging via online experiments.
FaceTrack-AOI: An AI-driven tool for automated dynamic AOI placement and eye movement analysis in face perception studies
Xiaomei Zhou, Guowei Chen, Jinbiao Ning, Yuan Cai, Siya Zhao, Shuo Zhao, Qingling Lu, Li Chen, Margaret C. Moulson
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Computers in Human Behavior

Efficacy of a context-aware mobile app with adaptive feedback for promoting behavioral change in problematic smartphone use: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial
Sandy C. Li, Stella Cheung, Ming Lui, Andrew K.F. Lui, Jackie W.W. Chan
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Decision-making in esports: Identifying and understanding heuristics in League of Legends teamfights
Jorge RodrĂ­guez-Robaina, Loel Collins
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Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Future generations hold the lowest moral standing, even below present-day marginalized human and nonhuman outgroups
Christina Jinhee Capozzoli, Kyle Fiore Law, Stylianos Syropoulos
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Climate change, poverty, and inequality pose significant threats to the well-being of future generations, making it essential to advocate for their interests in present-day decisions. Yet little is known about how people morally evaluate future generations relative to other distant groups, such as human outgroups and nature (plants, animals). Moreover, does this perception change among those who exhibit impartial intergenerational beneficence (i.e., concern for all future generations), or when moral concern is framed as zero-sum? Across 15 studies, we find that future generations consistently receive less moral concern than present-day targets already ascribed low levels of concern. This pattern holds whether moral expansiveness is framed as unlimited or zero-sum and persists even among individuals who typically care deeply about future generations, regardless of their temporal distance. These findings suggest that future generations hold a uniquely disadvantaged position in the moral hierarchy—not because of perceived constraints on moral concern but due to factors intrinsic to their exceptional psychological distance from the self here and now.

Organizational Research Methods

Textual Similarity in Organizational Research: Review of Applications, Consistency of Methods, and Best Practice Recommendations
Siyi Liu, Louis Hickman, Linus Dahlander, Henning Piezunka
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Organizational research increasingly uses natural language processing (NLP) to measure textual similarity. Despite common usage, the meaning and consistency of similarity measures (e.g., cosine similarity and Euclidean distance) across common NLP methods (e.g., n -grams and document embeddings) is unclear. This risks misalignment between theoretical constructs and textual measures, undermining the comparability of findings across studies. To address this gap, we review studies using textual similarity in organizational and psychological research, finding a jingle-jangle fallacy: identical labels are used for similarity estimates from different NLP methods, and different labels are used for the same method. Additionally, we examine the consistency of similarity measures across and within NLP methods. Different transformer-based embeddings’ similarity results are interchangeable. However, n -grams yield distinct, inconsistent results and are less appropriate for estimating similarity with distance measures. When applied to multi-word inputs, dictionaries and word embeddings return similar results reflecting linguistic style. We provide best practice recommendations and example code for operationalizing textual similarity, including clarifying which NLP methods correspond to content similarity, linguistic style similarity, and semantic similarity at the word, sentence, and document-levels of analysis.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

The Behavioral Impact of Moral Appeals: An Integrated Framework and Meta-Analysis
Sylvia Y. Xu, Laetitia B. Mulder, Floor A. Rink, Tammo H. A. Bijmolt, Marijke C. Leliveld
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Moral appeals—persuasive messages aimed at invoking moral obligations—are widely used across various contexts. However, evidence about their effectiveness in changing behaviors remains mixed, and little is known about the conditions that influence it. To address this, we conducted a meta-analysis with 67 papers ( k = 399) to assess the overall impact of moral appeals on behavioral intentions and behaviors, and to test various moderators of this effect. Drawing on various theories, we proposed that both morality enhancers and hindrances can influence their effectiveness and investigated three groups of moderators ( Moral Content, Social Aspects , Autonomy Restraints ). Results showed that, overall, moral appeals had a small, positive effect ( d = 0.22). Furthermore, Moral Content (negative framing) and Social Aspects (the presence of social norms) enhanced appeal effectiveness, while Autonomy Restraints (the use of assertive language) undermined it. Our findings provide important theoretical and practical insights into moral appeals.
Gender Differences in Parents’ Well-Being Reverse During Unemployment
Sara Hendrick, Melissa J. Williams, Emily C. Bianchi
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Past research suggests that parenthood tends to predict well-being for men more than women. We propose that during involuntary unemployment, this pattern will reverse, such that parenthood will predict well-being for women more than men. Because breadwinning remains central to societal expectations of fatherhood, employment allows fathers to simultaneously fulfill parental and professional obligations. Typically, this reduces fathers’ role strain. However, we argue that unemployment may threaten both work and parent identities for fathers and therefore undermine well-being for fathers more than mothers. We find support for this hypothesis using a large, longitudinal study of unemployed individuals (Study 1) and a nationally representative sample (Study 2). Finally, a follow-up experiment (Study 3) supports our prediction that fathers are more likely than mothers to view paid employment as necessary for good parenting, which predicts their lower well-being during unemployment. This work contributes to research on parenthood, gender roles, and unemployment.
Who Is to Blame When Spreading Behavior Cascades Into Harm? Blame Attribution Traces the Causal Chain of Actions
Peter Kardos, Brian Lickel
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We live in an increasingly interconnected world where people’s influence spreads through social networks and media with unprecedented speed. Yet, our knowledge about how people attribute blame in causal chains of spreading human actions is limited. We propose that people trace the causal origin in a sequence of interconnected human actions and blame the initiator of the causal chain for the negative consequences at its end. Four experiments ( N = 1,777) show that people trace causal origin in action sequences to the second degree of separation and regard this causal inference as the basis of blame attribution. People also take into account the multiplying effect of junctions in action sequences and attribute more blame to initiators of causal chains when the cascading effects lead to more severe consequences. The findings support the social functionalist approach to naïve blame attribution in human causal chains.
Knowing versus Doing: How Much Can Training Help People Soften the Blow of Social Rejection?
Sydney Okland, Gili Freedman, Jennifer S. Beer
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People complain that they do not know what to say to soften the blow of social rejection. The adoption of language principles (i.e., avoiding apologies while using positive regard, sincere alternatives, and more words) may mitigate the negative consequences of social rejection. Does training help people independently exhibit greater communication skill or do people fail to perform despite “knowing better?” In Study 1, drift diffusion modeling suggested that training helped people “know it when they see it” (i.e., recognize precrafted wording options which better conveyed the language principles). Study 2 found that training aided people’s success in independently crafting wording to convey the language principles. The current research highlights that existing social rejector frameworks and previous research on skill acquisition do not capture the experience of nonpunitive rejectors and presents a way that psychological science can address people’s concerns about how to soften the blow of social rejection.
Happily Ever After? Singles’ Expectations of Romantic Relationships Are Associated With Singlehood Satisfaction and Future Romantic Outcomes
Tayler Wells, Elaine Hoan, Geoff MacDonald
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Although research has examined partnered individuals’ expectations about romantic relationships, little is known about singles’ expectations for relationships. Using six waves of longitudinal panel data ( N = 5,113), we explored how singles’ expectations relate to experiences in singlehood and future partnerships. Women expected more intimate and more negative outcomes from relationships than men, whereas men were more likely to expect relationships to enhance their status. At both within- and between-person levels, higher intimacy expectations were associated with lower singlehood satisfaction and higher partner desire; within-person increases in negative expectations were associated with lower satisfaction and partner desire. Individuals with higher intimacy expectations were less likely to remain single and felt more satisfied in future relationships; negative expectations were associated with a greater likelihood of remaining single and lower future relationship satisfaction. Together, our data suggest that singles’ image of partnership is related to satisfaction in singlehood and future romantic relationships.
The Moral Standing of Created Agents: Bad Is More Owned Than Good
Emily E. Stonehouse, Ori Friedman
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Created agents are a staple of fiction but technological advances are making them increasingly viable as a reality. These creations introduce thorny questions about their moral standing, including questions about whether they can be owned. In seven preregistered experiments ( N = 2,499), we investigated whether created agents are more likely to be seen as owned if they cause harm. This prediction was suggested by the hypothesis that ownership is sometimes used to express moral responsibility, though it runs against the tendency for harm to introduce restrictions on ownership. In all experiments, participants more often judged that created agents belonged to their inventors when they caused harm than when they did good. The final experiment then showed that these judgments do not strongly align with assessments of rights over created agents. Overall, the findings suggest that harmfulness changes the moral standing of created agents in a novel way, increasing perceptions of them as property.
Self-Esteem and Supportive Dyadic Coping in Intimate Relationships
Elisa Weber, Guy Bodenmann
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Prior research established positive ties between intimate partners’ self-esteem (SE) and support interactions, but evidence on whether intraindividual changes in SE and supportive dyadic coping are associated over time remains scarce. The present study tested prominent theories suggesting a reciprocal prospective relationship between SE, one’s own and partner’s supportive dyadic coping using 14 waves of nationally representative data totaling 13,683 young adults from Germany. We used random intercept cross-lagged panel models for data analysis. Our findings revealed significant reciprocal within-person transactions between SE, one’s own and partner’s dyadic coping over time. We conclude that high SE may boost positive support interactions in intimate relationships. At the same time, giving and receiving positive support in times of stress may strengthen intimate partners’ SE on the long run. Overall, our findings provide robust evidence that people’s support interactions and SE development go hand in hand within the context of intimate partner relationships.

Psychology of Music

Psychometric validation and factorial structure of the Chinese version of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI)
Weiyu Zhao, Kwanyie Wong
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This study represents the validation of the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI) for Mandarin-speaking musicians in Mainland China, examining its factor structure in two distinct populations: pre-college students ( n = 287) and professional musicians ( n = 453). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed consistent three-factor solutions in both groups, aligning closely with Kenny’s theoretical framework of music performance anxiety (MPA). Specifically, pre-college musicians demonstrated factors labeled “MPA symptoms,” “psychological vulnerability,” and “negative affect/depression,” while professional musicians revealed factors named “MPA symptoms,” “psychological vulnerability/negative affect,” and “control-trust.” Measurement invariance analysis confirmed strong psychometric comparability between the two samples, validating cross-group comparisons. Notably, while core anxiety and vulnerability constructs aligned closely with international validations, culturally specific divergences emerged, such as the distinct splitting of psychological vulnerability in pre-college musicians and the unexpected emergence of a “control-trust” factor among professionals. These unique aspects highlight potential cultural nuances in how anxiety and vulnerability are conceptualized among Chinese musicians. This study affirms the K-MPAI’s suitability as a robust measure of MPA in China, contributing foundational insights for culturally sensitive assessment and intervention.
Tune in, recall more: Exploring the effects of a musical mnemonic device on children’s working memory
Katy Ieong Cheng Ho Weatherly, In Son Zeng, Ivy Ho I Chao, Yuqi Lin
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This study explored the impact of using a musical mnemonic device on enhancing memory retention in second-grade students ( N = 132) while learning a Chinese poem. The quasi-experimental design involved two groups of students: one receiving music-based instruction ( n = 65) and the other receiving traditional verbal instruction ( n = 67). Students’ recitation accuracy was assessed immediately after learning and 1 week later with repeated procedures. While initial findings revealed no significant difference in immediate performance between the groups ( p > .05), notable improvements were observed in the experimental, music-based group after a one-week interval with a repeated procedure ( p < .05), particularly for male students ( p < .005). In addition, students with instrumental training outperformed their peers without such training, supporting the notion that music training could enhance working memory ( p < .01). We also revealed that students’ retention of Chinese poems, especially for those in the lowest 10th percentile of accuracy, was significantly boosted by incorporating music after 1 week’s interval ( p < .001). These results suggest that while music as a mnemonic device may not yield immediate benefits, it can potentially enhance memory retention over time.
Flow in instrumental improvisation: Task constraints and their connection to students’ personality, musical skills, and self-regulation
Jo Stijnen, Filip Verneert, Luc Nijs, Peter Van Petegem
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This study investigated the effect of task constraints on the flow experience of novice improvisers and the mediating effects of personality, musical skills, and self-regulation. In addition, we aimed to identify the environmental factors that are most indicative of flow in improvisational learning. Intermediate-level instrument students ( N = 111) participated in a quasi-experiment with repeated measures during regular class hours. The students assessed their flow experience after each of the four improvisation tasks, which differed only in two types of constraints: the degree of improvisational freedom and the amount of preparation time given. Student characteristics were measured using self-administered questionnaires and teacher assessments. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed significantly higher flow states under conditions with low constraints (free improvisation and preparation time). For highly self-regulated students, the negative influence of a task with high constraints on the flow experience was limited. The type of improvisation task and experience with improvisation were the best predictors of flow, followed by openness to experience, self-regulation, and class group. These results support a more process-oriented approach to teaching improvisation, in which students gain experience in improvisation through selected tasks integrated with developing self-regulation skills.

Technology, Mind, and Behavior

Toward an inclusive future: A user study on gender-sensitive design in online course advertising.
Lorena Göritz, Elif Yurtseven, Nina Kolchmeyer, Maja-Gwendoline Reibold, Nele Kälberloh, Glenn Schröer, Oliver Thomas
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