Rebuilding trust in psychotherapy for biologically explained depression: A two-part experimental study examining the durability of an online psychoeducational intervention.

Biological explanations of mental disorders, which are gaining prominence, can decrease trust in psychotherapy. To rebuild trust, this experimental study tests a psychoeducational intervention targeting misconceptions that (1) psychotherapy cannot change the brain; (2) people rarely have agency over biology while psychotherapy requires agency; (3) psychosocial causes, addressed in psychotherapy, are less probable given biological causes. U.

Explaining How Psychotherapy Affects the Brain Can Increase the Perceived Effectiveness of Psychotherapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Past studies repeatedly found that biological explanations of mental disorders cause laypeople and clinicians to doubt the effectiveness of psychotherapy. This could be clinically detrimental, as combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy is often optimal. The distrust of psychotherapy is theorized to stem from dualistic reasoning that psychotherapy, perceived as occurring in the mind, does not necessarily affect the brain.

The effect of neuroscientific evidence on sentencing depends on how one conceives of reasons for incarceration.

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly utilized in criminal legal proceedings, prompting discussions about how such evidence might influence legal decisions. The effect of neuroscientific testimony on legal decisions remains uncertain, with some studies finding no effect, others reporting that neuroscience has a mitigating impact, and some indicating neuroscience evidence has an aggravating effect. The present study attempts to explain these divergent findings by showing that the effect of neuroscience evidence on sentencing interacts with beliefs about the goals of the criminal legal system.

It's Time to be disgusting about COVID-19: Effect of disgust priming on COVID-19 public health compliance among liberals and conservatives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, in part due to poor adoption of public health mitigation measures in the U.S. and the continued spread of the Delta and Omicron variants.

The symptom discounting effect: what to do when negative genetic test results become risk factors for alcohol use disorder.

Most consumers of genetic testing for health conditions test negative, yet the psychological perils of this are hardly known. In three experiments (N = 2103) participants discounted repercussions of alcohol use disorder (AUD), after learning or imagining that they were not genetically predisposed to AUD. Such discounting can lead people to avoid treatment and to feel safe to continue or even increase their drinking, ironically turning the negative genetic feedback into a risk factor for AUD.

Neurodualism: People Assume that the Brain Affects the Mind more than the Mind Affects the Brain.

People commonly think of the mind and the brain as distinct entities that interact, a view known as dualism. At the same time, the public widely acknowledges that science attributes all mental phenomena to the workings of a material brain, a view at odds with dualism. How do people reconcile these conflicting perspectives? We propose that people distort claims about the brain from the wider culture to fit their dualist belief that minds and brains are distinct, interacting entities: Exposure to cultural discourse about the brain as the physical basis for the mind prompts people to posit that mind-brain interactions are asymmetric, such that the brain is able to affect the mind more than vice versa.

Effects of genetic information on memory for severity of depressive symptoms.

The general public is increasingly aware of the role of genes in causing depression. Recent studies have begun uncovering unintended negative consequences of learning about a person's genetic susceptibility to disorders. Because people tend to believe that genes determine one's identity, having genes related to a disorder can be misinterpreted as equivalent to having the disorder.

Perceptions of the competent but depressed.

Accurately recognizing and remembering the depressive symptoms of other people can be crucial in helping those suffering from depression. Yet, lay theories about depression might interfere with accurate perception or recollection of depression in others. The current study examined whether laypersons would misremember depressive symptoms in highly competent people as being less severe than they actually are.

Testing positive for a genetic predisposition to depression magnifies retrospective memory for depressive symptoms.

Objective: Depression, like other mental disorders and health conditions generally, is increasingly construed as genetically based. This research sought to determine whether merely telling people that they have a genetic predisposition to depression can cause them to retroactively remember having experienced it.

Method: U.

An experiment assessing effects of personalized feedback about genetic susceptibility to obesity on attitudes towards diet and exercise.

As increasing attention is paid to possible genetic influences on susceptibility to obesity, recent studies have examined how genetic attributions can impact laypeople's weight-related attitudes and eating behavior. Little consideration, however, has been devoted to understanding the potential effects of learning that one does not have a genetic predisposition to obesity. The present study investigated the possibility that such feedback might bring about negative consequences by making people feel invulnerable to weight gain, which is termed a genetic invincibility effect.

Blue Genes? Understanding and Mitigating Negative Consequences of Personalized Information about Genetic Risk for Depression.

Personalized genetic testing for vulnerability to mental disorders is expected to become increasingly common. It is therefore important to understand whether learning about one's genetic risk for a mental disorder has negative clinical implications, and if so, how these might be counteracted. Among participants with depressive symptoms, we administered a sham biochemical test purportedly revealing participants' level of genetic risk for major depression.

The effect of abstract versus concrete framing on judgments of biological and psychological bases of behavior.

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.

Using Personification and Agency Reorientation to Reduce Mental-Health Clinicians' Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward Patients.

People with mental disorders are strongly stigmatized. Among mental-health professionals, stigmatizing attitudes often manifest as desire for social distance from people with mental disorders. Currently ascendant biomedical conceptualizations of psychopathology could exacerbate this problem by engendering dehumanization, which is linked to prejudice.

The influence of framing on clinicians' judgments of the biological basis of behaviors.

Practicing clinicians frequently think about behaviors both abstractly (i.e., in terms of symptoms, as in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.

Emphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism.

Biological attributions for depression, which are currently ascendant, can lead to prognostic pessimism-the perception that symptoms are relatively immutable and unlikely to abate (Kvaale, Haslam, & Gottdiener, 2013; Lebowitz, Ahn, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2013). Among symptomatic individuals, this may have important clinical ramifications, as reduced confidence in one's own ability to overcome depression carries the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Previous research (Lebowitz, Ahn, et al.

Sometimes more competent, but always less warm: Perceptions of biologically oriented mental-health clinicians.

Background And Aims: Biological conceptualizations of psychopathology are ascendant, including among mental-health clinicians. However, it is unknown how this might affect people's perceptions of clinicians, which in turn could have considerable public-health implications. The present studies sought to address this issue.

Causal Networks or Causal Islands? The Representation of Mechanisms and the Transitivity of Causal Judgment.

Knowledge of mechanisms is critical for causal reasoning. We contrasted two possible organizations of causal knowledge—an interconnected causal network, where events are causally connected without any boundaries delineating discrete mechanisms; or a set of disparate mechanisms—causal islands—such that events in different mechanisms are not thought to be related even when they belong to the same causal chain. To distinguish these possibilities, we tested whether people make transitive judgments about causal chains by inferring, given A causes B and B causes C, that A causes C.

Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians' empathy.

Mental disorders are increasingly understood in terms of biological mechanisms. We examined how such biological explanations of patients' symptoms would affect mental health clinicians' empathy--a crucial component of the relationship between treatment-providers and patients--as well as their clinical judgments and recommendations. In a series of studies, US clinicians read descriptions of potential patients whose symptoms were explained using either biological or psychosocial information.

Biological explanations of generalized anxiety disorder: effects on beliefs about prognosis and responsibility.

Objective: Biological explanations of psychopathology can reduce the extent to which people with mental disorders are blamed for their symptoms but can also yield prognostic pessimism--the belief that psychiatric conditions are relatively immutable. However, few studies have examined whether these effects occur among persons who actually have psychiatric symptoms. This study sought to address this question.

Fixable or fate? Perceptions of the biology of depression.

Objective: Previous research has shown that biological (e.g., genetic, biochemical) accounts of depression--currently in ascendancy--are linked to the general public's pessimism about the syndrome's prognosis.

Effects of Biological Versus Psychosocial Explanations on Stigmatization of Children With ADHD.

Objective: Previous studies have found biological conceptualizations of psychopathology to be associated with stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic pessimism. This research investigated how biological and psychosocial explanations for a child's ADHD symptoms differ in affecting laypeople's stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic beliefs.

Method: Three experiments were conducted online with U.

Memory for Patient Information as a Function of Experience in Mental Health.

Mental health clinicians are tasked to diagnose and treat the millions of people worldwide seeking help for mental health issues. This paper investigates the memory clinicians have for patient information. We hypothesize that clinicians encapsulate mental health knowledge through experience into more abstract concepts, as in other domains changing what clinicians remember about patients compared with non-professionals.

Causal essentialism in kinds.

The current study examines causal essentialism, derived from psychological essentialism of concepts. We examine whether people believe that members of a category share some underlying essence that is both necessary and sufficient for category membership and that also causes surface features. The main claim is that causal essentialism is restricted to categories that correspond to our intuitive notions of existing kinds and hence is more attenuated for categories that are based on arbitrary criteria.

Causal imprinting in causal structure learning.

Suppose one observes a correlation between two events, B and C, and infers that B causes C. Later one discovers that event A explains away the correlation between B and C. Normatively, one should now dismiss or weaken the belief that B causes C.

Combining biomedical accounts of mental disorders with treatability information to reduce mental illness stigma.

Objective: Biomedical accounts of mental disorders are increasingly prevalent but can yield pessimism about prognosis and fail to reduce stigma. The authors tested whether information emphasizing the treatability of mental disorders could reduce stigma by contradicting the prognostic pessimism associated with biological attributions.

Methods: A total of 249 participants recruited online read vignettes about two individuals--one with schizophrenia and one with borderline personality disorder.