Humpback whale song is a culturally transmitted behavior. Human language, which is also culturally transmitted, has statistically coherent parts whose frequency distribution follows a power law. These properties facilitate learning and may therefore arise because of their contribution to the faithful transmission of language over multiple cultural generations. If so, we would expect to find them in other culturally transmitted systems. In this study, we applied methods based on infant speech segmentation to 8 years of humpback recordings, uncovering in whale song the same statistical structure that is a hallmark of human language. This commonality, in two evolutionarily distant species, points to the role of learning and cultural transmission in the emergence of properties thought to be unique to human language.

When emotions occur in groups, they sometimes impact group behavior in undesired ways. Reducing group’s emotions with emotion regulation interventions can be helpful, but may also be a challenge, because treating every person in the group is often infeasible. One solution is to treat a fraction of a group, and then hope the effect of the treatment will spread to other group members. To test the viability of this option, we designed an experiment to examine the impact of emotion regulation applied to different proportions of groups of six Israeli participants (N = 2659) who shared real-time responses to negative emotions-inducing political stimuli. Before interacting with each other, we treated different proportions of each group with an emotion regulation intervention called cognitive reappraisal, which involved teaching participants to reinterpret events to reduce negative emotions. The results showed that as the proportion of participants who received the treatment increased, there was a reduction in emotions within the non-treated participants. Furthermore, targeting above 40% of participants resulted in reliable group emotional change. Using semantic projection analysis, we validated the contagion of reappraisal language. These findings shed light on the conditions that enable collective emotion regulation.

Competitive victimhood has significant implications for intergroup attitudes, including discrimination and hostility. The current two studies reveal the dynamic and context-dependent nature of competitive victimhood. We directly and simultaneously compared competitive victimhood among members of two groups: high-power and low-power. In Study 1, we found that under the transient threat circumstances of COVID-19, the high-power group (secular Israelis) experienced higher levels of competitive victimhood compared to the weaker group (ultra-Orthodox Israelis), indicating that intergroup threat may override group power in determining competitive victimhood. Study 2 further highlighted the dynamic nature of competitive victimhood by revealing, 18 months later, when the COVID-19 situation had changed, a contrasting image of the results obtained in Study 1, demonstrating that relative competitive victimhood levels can shift among the same groups when the transient threat and circumstances change. The findings suggest that competitive victimhood is a more agile and context-dependent construct than previously believed, especially in the context of power dynamics. The current research suggests a unique approach to conducting research: namely, a “mirror study,” in which two different groups provide a detailed reflection of the “same” reality, but through their own unique perspectives.

Objective/hypothesis Evaluate cardiometabolic risk as a potential sequel to a mass terrorist attack using October 7th, 2023 as a focus. Methods Narrative review surveying PubMed, PsycNet, UN and Council on Foreign Relations websites on. 1. PTSD following terrorism, rocket attacks and conflict related sexual violence. 2. The relationship between cardiometabolic illness and PTSD. 3. Humoral, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms relating cardiometabolic risk, inflammation and PTSD. 4. Treatments for PTSD and associated cardiometabolic risk factors and their effectiveness. Findings Cardiometabolic sequelae occur after trauma. This is most pronounced when trauma, sexual or violence related, occurs during childhood. The risk of cardiometabolic sequelae increases with PTSD diagnosis in adults. Inflammation as well as genes related to inflammatory function (e.g. FKBP5, AHRR, NR3C1) impact vulnerability to PTSD, response to treatment and cardiometabolic outcomes. Treatments for PTSD appear somewhat more effective at lowering cardiometabolic risk in civilian, rather than military populations. There is little published research on directly treating cardiometabolic sequelae of PTSD. Conclusions Israelis, particularly those with exposure to the terror events of October 7, 2023 should be screened for psychological and metabolic sequelae. This should occur in a primary care setting and be part of observational research to help understand relationships between trauma, metabolic outcomes and their treatment.

Experiencing repression creates intense emotions and raises dilemmas about handling political action to achieve social change. Past studies suggest that mainly group-based emotions are associated with support for violent collective action while the exact influence of individual emotions remains unclear. This research compares the association of individual- versus group-based emotions with violent collective action while examining conflict context as the moderating factor. We propose to distinguish two context aspects—collective versus personal threat—determining the relative impact of individual versus group emotions on support for violence. We conducted two quantitative field studies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories during different types of conflict experience, defined by either prevalent personally experienced threat versus elevated collectively experienced threat (Study 1), or both (Study 2). Results indicate that for mainly collectively experienced threat, group (but not individual) emotions predicted violent collective action, while for personally experienced threat, individual (but not group) emotions predicted violent engagement.

In this paper we address the unmet potential of counter-stereotypes (CS) by explicitly expressing feelings of surprise in media frames, to acknowledge the possible surprising effect attached to an encounter with a CS. Using a two-study survey-experiment (Nstudy 1 = 475, Nstudy 2 = 565) in the context of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, we demonstrate the moderating role of political ideology in the effect of exposure to surprise framing of CS on attitudes toward an outgroup. The results indicate that when the feeling of surprise is explicitly expressed in media articles (compared to control), right-leaning individuals expressed more liking toward Arabs, were less inclined to social distance from Arabs, and perceived Arabs as less homogeneous. Left-leaning participants, however, remained unaffected by this explicit expression. The cause of this difference between political-ideological groups is further discussed, along with implications of such findings for research on prejudice, stereotypes, and media effects, and practices of changing dynamics between groups in conflict.

Background Cross-sectional studies have reported neurocognitive performance deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), particularly on tasks assessing response inhibition and proactive control over stimulus-driven behaviors (task control). However, it is not clear whether these deficits represent trait-like markers of OCD or are state-dependent. Methods This study examined performance on two neurocognitive tasks in OCD patients (N = 26) before and after cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and matched healthy controls (HCs, N = 19). Tasks included the stop-signal task (assessing response inhibition) and the Object Interference (OI) task (assessing a specific form of task control). OCD patients completed these tasks and clinical ratings before and after 17 sessions of CBT delivered by expert therapists over two months. HCs completed tasks before and after 2-months. This design used CBT as a tool to reduce OCD symptoms to determine whether neurocognitive performance similarly improves. Results Results showed that OCD patients and HCs did not significantly differ in their stop-signal performance at either time point. In contrast, OCD patients exhibited impaired performance on the OI task at baseline and their OI performance improved after treatment, resolving the deficit relative to HC. Limitations The sample size was small, particularly for the healthy control group. We also tested only two neurocognitive tasks. Future study with larger sample sizes and more tasks is warranted. Conclusions These results suggest that task control deficits in OCD may be sensitive to symptom state. The possibility that improving task control represents a neurocognitive mechanism of successful CBT represents an important direction for future research.

Older adults were found to struggle with tasks that require cognitive control. One task that measures the ability to exert cognitive control is the color-word Stroop task. Almost all studies that tested cognitive control in older adults using the Stroop task have focused on one type of control – Information control. In the present work, we ask whether older adults also show a deficit in another type of cognitive control – Task control. To that end, we tested older and younger adults by isolating and measuring two types of conflict – information conflict and task conflict. Information conflict was measured by the difference between color identification of incongruent color words and color identification of neutral words, while task conflict was measured by the difference between color identification of neutral words and color identification of neutral symbols and by the reverse facilitation effect. We tested how the behavioral markers of these two types of conflicts are affected under low task control conditions, which is essential for measuring task conflict behaviorally. Older adults demonstrated a deficit in information control by showing a larger information conflict marker, but not in task control markers, as no differences in task conflict were found between younger and older adults. These findings supported previous studies that work against theories that link the larger Stroop interference in older adults to a generic slowdown or a generic inhibitory failure. We discussed the relevancy of the results and future research directions in line with other Stroop studies that tested age-related differences in different control mechanisms.

The therapeutic alliance is a consistent predictor of treatment outcome. In the present study, we examined whether the therapeutic alliance is associated with symptoms of social anxiety along the course of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). We examined data from a large treatment trial (n = 182) in which individuals with SAD reported on their social anxiety and alliance with the therapist each week during the treatment (for 11 weeks). We examined the total variance in alliance as well as within- and between-individual variances separately. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the total variance in alliance predicted the total variance in social anxiety in the following week. In addition, we found that within-individual variance in alliance was negatively associated with within-individual variance in social anxiety (in the following week). Thus, weekly increases in alliances were associated with weekly reductions in social anxiety in the following week. Finally, we found that between-individual variance in alliance was positively associated with between-individual variance in social anxiety such that individuals who were more socially anxious created stronger alliances with their therapists over the course of treatment. Our findings suggest that the therapeutic alliance is important in ICBT for SAD, that separating variance into within and between components may help identify different psychological processes, and that improving within-individual alliance may lead to reductions in symptoms of social anxiety.

Objective

This study investigated the role of nontypical development in the relative dominance in twins' relationships throughout childhood.

Background

Dominance dynamics, affecting siblings' well-being, are different in twins than in singletons for whom age and development often dictate sibling hierarchy. These dynamics in twins, who share similar ages and developmental contexts, remain underexplored and demand further understanding.

Method

A longitudinal study surveyed 1,547 mothers and 536 fathers of 322 monozygotic (sharing nearly 100% genes) and 1,199 dizygotic (sharing 50% genetic variance) twin pairs, aged 3 to 8–9. Both parents reported on the twins' relationships. Mothers reported whether either twin had a developmental condition.

Results

No dominance difference was found in similar developmental conditions dyads, whether both twins had typical or nontypical development. However, in dyads where twins differed in the developmental condition, nontypically developing twins were less dominant than their typically developing cotwins. This dominance imbalance persisted throughout childhood, even if initial developmental issues were resolved.

Conclusion

From parents' perspectives, nontypical development does not, in itself, prevent children from demonstrating dominance behaviors in twinship, but it is more likely that the asymmetry in developmental conditions is associated with the relationship between the twins.

Implications and Recommendations

According to parents' perceptions, twins with nontypical development might experience imbalances in their relationship throughout childhood when their co-twin is a typically developing child. However, demonstrating dominance might be possible for them in other contexts. Understanding these dominance dynamics is vital for caregivers, informing tailored parenting strategies and interventions to support the well-being of children.