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The effects of challenge and threat states on performance outcomes: An updated review and meta-analysis of recent findings
No full textThe biopsychosocial model (BPSM) of challenge and threat provides a framework for understanding stress responses in motivated performance situations, including how stress relates to performance. In this model experiences of challenge—characterized by appraisals of resources exceeding demands—elicit approach-oriented patterns of physiological responding and tend to facilitate performance, whereas threat—characterized by demands exceeding resources—elicit avoidance-oriented patterns of physiological responding and tend to impair performance. Extant systematic reviews and meta-analysis support the idea that challenge facilitates performance relative to threat (Behnke & Kaczmarek, 2018; Hase et al., 2019). The present systematic review and meta-analysis builds on this base by examining whether conclusions replicate in recent research (post 2017), which is important given seismic cultural shifts tied to a worldwide pandemic, civil unrest, and skyrocketing mental health problems tied to stress. The analysis included 47 studies published between 2017 and 2024 (total N = 5,483 participants). The meta-analytic findings indicate that individuals experiencing challenge type stress responses exhibit better performance outcomes than those in a threat state across multiple domains (e.g., education, sport). While effect sizes were small, the risk of bias was generally low. These results reaffirm the utility of the BPSM and emphasize the importance of stress responses in influencing performance outcomes. These data also have the potential to inform future research on this topic by shedding light on expectable effect sizes and highlighting potential influences of publication bias and replicability issues
The Method of Loci: How does using bizarre imagery and creating associations between to-be-remembered items influence the method's effectiveness?
No full textIn this study, we will evaluate if the nature of the created association between to-be-remember items is an essential cognitive mechanism for the effective use of the method of loci. We will focus on the role of creating associations between items and the role of their bizarreness. The main idea is that it is essential to create associations between the words one wants to remember, and the more bizarre the associations are, the better the recall
A Moral Turing Test to assess How Subjective Belief and Objective Source Affect Detection and Agreement with LLM Judgments
No full textAs large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into decision-making systems—such as autonomous vehicles and medical devices—understanding how humans perceive and evaluate AI-generated judgements is crucial. To investigate this, we conducted a series of experiments in which participants evaluated justifications for moral and non-moral choices, generated either by humans or LLMs. Participants attempted to identify the source of each justification (either human or LLM) and indicated their agreement with its content. We found that while detection accuracy was consistently above chance, it remained below 70%. In terms of agreement, there was no overall preference for human-generated responses, even though machine-generated justifications were favored in particularly challenging moral scenarios. Notably, we observed a systematic anti-AI bias: participants were less likely to agree with judgments they believed were AI-generated, regardless of the true source. Linguistic cues, such as response length, typos, first-person pronouns, and cost-benefit language markers (e.g., “lives,” “save”), influenced both detection and agreement. Participants tended to disagree with cost-benefit calculations, possibly due to an expectation that AI would favor such reasoning. These findings highlight the influence of motivated belief and ingroup/outgroup bias in shaping human evaluation of AI-generated content, particularly in morally sensitive context
A Reboot of Richard Owen’s Common Archetype Theory: An Alternative Framework for Biological Complexity
No full textDeveloped in the 19th century, Richard Owen’s “common archetype” theory proposes that vertebrate organisms share an underlying structural blueprint, with homologous features such as limbs or vertebrae representing variations of the same foundational plan. Darwin later reinterpreted such similarities as evidence of descent from a common ancestor, shifting attention from structural pattern to historical genealogy. This study revisits Owen’s blueprint concept in light of modern biology, drawing on systems biology, developmental biology, virology, and emerging work suggesting quantum-level influences on biological organization. We introduce the Universal Self-Collapsing Wave-Function model as a conceptual framework for explaining how homologous structures may arise from shared generative constraints rather than solely from inherited ancestry. In this view, processes such as modular genome organization, viral gene exchange, and biased mutation operate within physical and informational constraints that channel development toward recurring structural outcomes—patterns Owen interpreted as manifestations of a common archetype. We further suggest that similar constraints may have shaped early chemical evolution, biasing the emergence of stable informational polymers. At a larger scale, we reinterpret Owen’s idea of discontinuous or “saltational” shifts as transitions among distinct stable states in complex systems, consistent with evidence from convergent evolution and developmental modularity. Finally, we outline empirical strategies for testing whether such constraint-based dynamics generate measurable patterns of homology and structural recurrence. This work reframes Owen’s archetype not as a pre-Darwinian curiosity but as a potentially complementary perspective to an evolutionary perspective, offering a lawlike view of how biological form emerges, stabilizes, and reappears across scales
Prevalence and trend of chlamydiosis in ruminants: A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textExploring Day Preconstruction Method in Intertemporal Decision
No full textIn two previous studies, we explored a novel way to strengthen the connection to the future self through a writing exercise, the Day Preconstruction Method (DPM), and found that it affects participants' experience of connection to the future self (see: Blom, J. H., Kristensson, P., & Wästlund, E. (2023, June 12). Day Preconstruction Method. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XFV6J).
In this project, we aim to explore whether the DPM also affects valued living and intertemporal choices, namely deciding between a small sum now or a larger sum later, with Future Self-Contionuity as a mediator.
This will be done using two randomized controlled experiments, using a manipulation-of-mediator design,
In the first, participants pre-construct a day twenty years into the future (experimental group) or three months into the future (control group). They will receive compensation for their studies and then have the option to choose between a small immediate amount and a larger amount later. The first step is $2 immediately. Each step on the scale means both an increase in compensation and an increased distance in time.
In the second study, we add a control group that merely describes their current day, and where all participants do a delay discounting task, and also answer questions about their values in life and to what extent they have lived according to these values over the past week. The second study will include a 1-week follow-up.
We aim to understand:
1) if participants who engage in pre-constructing a day twenty years into the future are more likely to choose a larger amount of compensation at a later date over a smaller immediate sum compared to participants in the control group who pre-construct a day three months into the future or describe their current day, or if there is no difference between the groups of participants,
2) If Future Self-Continuity has a causal effect on the mediation relationship between DPM and intertemporal choice.
3) If participants who engage in pre-constructing a day twenty years into the future are more likely to live more according to their values, compared to participants in the control group, or if there is no difference between the groups of participants
O impacto transformador das mídias sociais na democracia representativa (L'impact transformateur des médias sociaux sur la démocratie représentative)
No full textEste estudo analisa o impacto das mídias sociais nas instituições fundamentais da democracia representativa e a reação dos atores políticos e das instituições públicas a elas.
Cette étude analyse l'impact des médias sociaux sur les institutions fondamentales de la démocratie représentative et la réaction des acteurs politiques et des institutions publiques à leur égard
Naturalizing Normativity in Neuroscience: A Musicological Bridge from Computational Methods
No full textComputational neuroscience has yielded powerful tools for analyzing brain structure and function, yet its foundational commitments to information theory and algorithmic modeling leave a critical philosophical gap: the question of how value, meaning, and purpose relate to neural activity. This paper approaches that gap historically and philosophically, by tracing three paradigms in the study of neurodynamics: oscillatory decomposition, nonlinear dynamical systems, and emerging vitalist-teleological perspectives. Electrophysiology serves as a recurring case study: from Hans Berger's initial recordings, through Walter Freeman's application of chaos theory to olfactory dynamics, to contemporary evidence that subcortical arousal signals shape the global geometry of brain activity. Through this history, successive generations of researchers have been drawn toward holistic and normative interpretations of brain signals, even as their analytic methods have resisted such readings. To overcome this gap, the interpretive lenses of the humanities are explored as conceptual resources for bridging the normative and dynamical dimensions that the history of neuroscience has kept apart. This prospect is specifically considered through musicology, particularly the philosophies of Langer, and Tomlinson, as a domain where form, temporality, and significance are theorized without recourse to encoding and decoding. Instead, a musical lens reframes neurodynamics as global, emotive forms sculpted by the recursive play of anticipation and fulfillment, nested within the vital metabolism of living organisms. This reframing does not abandon the mathematical tools of dynamical systems science but situates them within a richer conceptual ecology, one that may open new avenues for addressing normativity at the intersection of neuroscience and the humanities