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Video Games, Prejudice, and Intercultural Competence: A Systematic Review
No full textBackground: Digital games are promising tools to support intercultural learning and prejudice reduction. Yet insights into their effects remain fragmented due to variations in theoretical frameworks, outcome measures, and game designs.
Objectives: This systematic review synthesizes experimental and intervention studies examining the effects of video games on prejudice and intercultural competence, aiming to identify patterns across game types and outcomes.
Methods: Studies were identified through database searches using predefined inclusion criteria. Eligible studies employed an experimental design with a control group and outcome measures targeting prejudice (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes, intergroup bias) or intercultural competence (e.g., empathy, knowledge, culturally appropriate behaviour). Twenty-four studies met these criteria and were organized into four analytical groups: (1) collaborative gameplay, (2) player–character interaction and embodiment, (3) comparisons of different games with bias-related content, and (4) comparisons of game- versus text-based formats.
Results and Conclusions: Across studies, video games showed potential to improve intercultural competence and prejudice-related outcomes. Effects were most consistent for collaborative and player–character interaction and embodiment game designs; by contrast, the impact of games with bias-related content depended on their moral framing, and comparisons of games with text suggested that interactive formats can have positive effects but demand careful experimental control. We identify strengths and limitations of the current body of research and discuss future research directions and practical implications
When actions speak louder than words: The Final Position Judgement Task involves action imagery rather than verbal rehearsal
No full textIn the Final Position Judgement Task, participants imagine performing auditorily instructed movements and compare their imagined final position with a visual stimulus. Although participants are instructed to imagine the visual and kinesthetic sensations associated with the movements, they may verbally rehearse the instructions rather than generating an imagery, manipulating it according to the instructions, maintaining it, and subsequently inspecting it. To examine the involvement of action imagery and verbal rehearsal, participants completed the Final Position Judgement Task once in a baseline condition and once under articulatory suppression in a within-subjects design. The involvement of action imagery and verbal rehearsal was evaluated based on self-reported strategy use, associations with working memory components and behavioral measures of action imagery ability, as well as task performance. Accuracy in final position judgements was related to visuospatial sketchpad capacity but unrelated to phonological loop capacity. Most participants relied on visual rehearsal, whereas verbal rehearsal served a supporting role but did not benefit performance in final position judgements. Articulatory suppression appeared to impair action imagery rather than enhancing its use. Together, these findings support the use of the Final Position Judgement Task as an objective measure of action imagery ability, provided open-source alongside the manuscript
Money Illusion for Others: Consumers Are More Affected by Money Illusion than They Think Others Are
No full textDuring inflationary periods, consumers tend to focus on nominal price changes when making consumption decisions, often overlooking the changes in their real purchasing power, a phenomenon known as money illusion. What do consumers think when comparing how they and other consumers make decisions under inflation? Consumers might believe they make economically better decisions than others. However, consumers fail to realize that their choices are more distorted by money illusion than they expect others’ decisions to be. This research uncovers a consequential disconnect: the imprint of money illusion on consumers’ decisions persists despite consumers asserting to prioritize real over nominal value, more so than they believe others do. In nine studies (N = 3075), the self-other difference in the money illusion effect is examined across different decision contexts (buying, selling, salary evaluation). Results show that these self-other differences are more nuanced, varying based on (i) the type of economic decision (pronounced in buying decisions and attenuated in selling decisions) and (ii) the temporal reference point (evident when considering the inflation effect retrospectively and attenuated when considering it prospectively). This research extends the social comparison literature into the domain of inflation, with findings that inform price-setting decisions and perceptions of job appeal
Revising Gender Minority Stress Theory: A Network Psychometrics Perspective
No full textGender minority stress theory is the premier theoretical framework for understanding the health and well-being of transgender and non-binary people. However, a theoretical disconnect exists within this field: the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Measure (GMSRM), widely used to assess gender minority stress, is rooted in latent variable theory, assuming that different stressors (represented as items on the GMSRM) are statistically unrelated, once their given latent variable is accounted for. However, gender minority stress theory proposes that these stressors cause one another, specifically, that distal stressors cause proximal stressors. To address this inconsistency between theory and measurement, we interrogated the assumptions of latent variable models and considered a relatively new measurement framework psychometric network analysis. Our analysis of GMSRM data from 1006 trans* individuals revealed that the GMSRM is better represented by a psychometric network, rather than multiple latent variables, uncovering complex, direct associations among items across its subscales. These findings highlight the need to align measurement approaches with theoretical assumptions to better understand how social stressors impact transgender and non-binary populations
Why the Mix Matters - Exploring the Dynamics of Polysubstance Use
No full textA widespread form of recreational drug use is known as polysubstance use, which involves consuming two or more psychoactive substances within a short period of time. In addition to the desired effects, such as intensifying or prolonging the high, or counteracting unpleasant effects, polysubstance use also entails risks. To provide polysubstance users with user-centered measures to support health promotion and safer-use, a differentiated understanding of the diverse forms of this consumption practice is required. In an online cross-sectional study, recreational drug users (N= 649) were asked about sociodemographic data and their consumption behavior, with a particular focus on polysubstance use. A hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to identify different types of polysubstance users. The clusters obtained were then tested for diversity using chi-square tests. The cluster analysis revealed three polysubstance use groups that differed in the frequency of mixed use, underlying motivations, and the presence of risk-minimizing strategies. The study showed that consumers who use multiple substances do not constitute a homogeneous group and differ in various characteristics. Taking these individualities and diversities into account must serve as the basis for health promotion to address consumers in a targeted manner
Genome-wide association study of infant fussiness and crying in European and multi-ancestry cohorts
No full textImportance: Infant fussiness impacts infants, their families and their healthcare providers but the underlying causes and mechanisms are not understood.
Objective: To identify the common genetic architecture of infant fussiness and its shared genetic pathways with concurrent conditions as well as later outcomes.
Design: Genome-wide association study meta-analysis of infant fussiness in the first postnatal year.
Setting: Five European-ancestry population-based cohorts based in Norway, England and the Netherlands (total N=78128) and two multi-ancestry (Black African/mixed and East Asian) cohorts (total multi-ancestry meta-analysis including European cohorts N=156599). The association between polygenic scores for fussiness and brain phenotype was studied in an independent cohort, the developing Human Connectome Project (N=264).
Main outcome and measures: Parent-reported infant fussiness in the first postnatal year
Results: Infant fussiness showed a significant SNP-based heritability (h2SNP; 8.18%; SE, 0.78%). Infant fussiness shared common genetic architecture (genetic correlation, rg) with toddler emotionality (rg, 0.40; SE, 0.08, P=1x10-6), toddler shyness (rg, 0.25; SE, 0.07, P=2x10-4), adult neuroticism (rg=0.14, SE, 0.04, P=5x10-4), adult BMI (rg, -0.12; SE, 0.03; P=2x10-4), and infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis (rg, 0.21; SE, 0.08; P=1x10-2). The polygenic score for infant fussiness was positively associated with both the volume of frontal white matter and volume of the medial temporal lobe in newborn infant brains (FWE P<0.02). The European-ancestry GWAS identified a genome-wide significant variant on chromosome 13, rs1504440 that was mapped via chromatin interaction to SLITRK5, which is expressed in the central nervous system and involved in neuronal development. Multi-ancestry analyses identified three further genome-wide significant loci.
Conclusions and relevance: Infant fussiness is common and can be a source of concern for parents and clinicians. Our results, which show that infant fussiness is associated with genomic variation, may help both parents and healthcare providers understand this behaviour. The common genetic variation associated with fussiness is also associated with later toddler temperament, adult personality and some aspects of physical health, and with infant brain structures involved in emotional regulation
The Sonic Loop: How Cognitive Neuroscience and Audio Engineering Can Co-Evolve
No full textCognitive science has historically evolved by incorporating new disciplines in response to advances in science and technology. We argue that the growing emphasis on naturalistic perception and cognition marks another such interdisciplinary moment, particularly in the auditory domain. Cognitive neuroscience and audio engineering share a common object of inquiry—sound—and a common receiver—the human auditory system—yet they have largely evolved in isolation. This separation now constrains progress in both fields. Auditory neuroscience often relies on simplified stimuli that weaken spatial and scene-level cues central to real-world hearing, while audio engineering frequently depends on industry conventions that lack grounding in neural and cognitive evidence. Building on classic work in auditory scene analysis, contemporary models of spatial hearing, and the broader rise of naturalistic paradigms in neuroscience, we propose that bridging these disciplines is not merely a technical improvement but a methodological and epistemological imperative. We introduce the sonic loop: a bidirectional framework in which spatial audio approaches, as implemented in contemporary immersive audio formats, enable technically rigorous yet ecologically valid neuroscience, while neural and behavioral data provide principled constraints for perceptually optimized audio engineering
Consistency: A Critical but Often Overlooked Requirement for Causal Inference in Psychological Research
No full textPsychologists are often asked to inform concrete actions ("Should we ban social media?") but tend to focus on vague questions ("Does ‘time spent on social media’ predict well-being?"). There is a mismatch between the causal effects researchers care about and the associations and correlations they compute. In this article, we highlight the consistency assumption as a foundational requirement for causal inference that can bridge this mismatch and make statistical estimations causally interpretable. Consistency shows how causal effects are interpretable only when (a) the causal effect of interest—the causal estimand—is described precisely enough that it does not bundle different versions of the treatment that have different effects, and (b) the way that the treatment variable changes in the data matches this effect of interest. We clarify these requirements and illustrate how to state and assess them in settings common in psychological research, with a focus on indirect experimental manipulations and multidimensional constructs. Making this step explicit helps researchers articulate their estimands more transparently and is a prerequisite for other concerns such as confounding and model specification
All BANG, little buck: Need-related experiences are weakly linked with behavior in the video game domain
No full textPsychological theories of media use often assume that subjective motivation affects observable behavior. Using video games as a test case, we examine this assumption by pairing repeated self-reports of motivation with objective digital trace data at scale. Across two datasets comprising tens of thousands of hours of gaming behavior, we test predictions derived from self-determination theory and the Basic Needs in Games (BANG) model, which posit that autonomy, competence, and relatedness experiences drive engagement. Study 1 (preregistered) analyzes 11k daily observations from 555 U.S. players with 30 days of multi-platform digital trace data. Study 2 (exploratory) examines 102k sessions from 9k PowerWash Simulator players, linking in-game experience prompts to behavioral logs. In both studies, need satisfaction was robustly associated with subjective states but showed weak or null associations with short-term gaming behavior, including subsequent play, session length, and return latency, across extensive preregistered and robustness analyses. These findings reveal a substantial motivation–behavior gap and suggest that SDT-based accounts may overestimate the role of need satisfaction in explaining when or how much people play. Data and code are available under a CC0 license at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18352505
AI-based Decision-Making: Not the Decision-Maker but the Outcome’s Favourability Determines the Perception of University Topic Allocations
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used for decision-making, but its perception compared to human decision-makers remains underexplored, especially in educational contexts. In this study, we investigated the influence of the decision-maker (AI vs. human) on fairness perception, trust, and emotional responses in participants (N = 329) who are allocated university course topics. While the allocation process was identical, participants were either told that a human lecturer or an AI made the decision based on the same pieces of information. Furthermore, we manipulated whether the corresponding decision-making process was explicitly communicated as fair or whether no comment was made regarding the process’ fairness. Finally, we assessed how favourable students rated the outcome of the allocation process. Against our hypotheses, Bayesian evidence indicated that neither the decision-maker nor whether the decision-making process was communicated as fair had an impact on students' fairness perception, trust, or emotional responses. Students’ evaluations of the university course topic allocation process were strongly associated with the favourability of the outcome. Given that an AI can better optimize allocations according to students’ preferences than human decision-makers, these findings support a broader implementation of AI-based decision-making in the context of allocation decisions at university
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