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BACKGROUND: Given the sensitive nature of COVID-19 beliefs, evaluating them explicitly and implicitly may provide a fuller picture of how these beliefs vary based on identities and how they relate to mental health. OBJECTIVE: Three novel brief implicit association tests (BIATs) were created and evaluated: two that measured COVID-19-as-dangerous (vs. safe) and one that measured COVID-19 precautions-as-necessary (vs. unnecessary). Implicit and explicit COVID-19 associations were examined based on individuals demographic characteristics. Implicit associations were hypothesized to uniquely contribute to individuals self-reports of mental health. METHODS: Participants (N = 13,413 US residents; April-November 2020) were volunteers for a COVID-19 study. Participants completed one BIAT and self-report measures. This was a preregistered study with a planned internal replication. RESULTS: Results revealed older age was weakly associated with stronger implicit and explicit associations of COVID-as-dangerous and precautions-as-necessary. Black and Asian individuals reported greater necessity of taking precautions than White individuals (with small-to-medium effects); greater education was associated with greater explicit reports of COVID-19-as-dangerous and precautions-as-necessary with small effects. Replicated relationships between COVID-as-dangerous explicit associations and mental health had very small effects. CONCLUSIONS: Implicit associations did not predict mental health but there was evidence that stronger COVID-19-as-dangerous explicit associations are weakly associated with worse mental health.

ObjectiveA movement of parents refusing vaccines for their children has contributed to increasingly large outbreaks of diseases that are preventable by vaccines. Research has identified multiple factors that relate to parents' vaccination behaviors (i.e., whether not they vaccinate their children), including their beliefs about vaccines' safety and utility and their trust in those who recommend vaccines. Here we examine the role of more fundamental psychological processes that may contribute to multiple vaccine-related beliefs and behaviors: cognitive associations.MethodsUsing a large sample of U.S. parents (pre-COVID-19), we investigated parents' associations between vaccines and helpfulness/harmfulness, as well as between the self and vaccines (vaccine identity), and their relation to parents' beliefs about vaccine safety and utility, trust in authorities' vaccine recommendations, and prior vaccination refusal for their children. To capture a more complete understanding of people's associations, we examined both explicit associations (measured via self-report) and implicit associations (measured by the Implicit Association Test).ResultsBoth implicit and explicit associations correlated with beliefs, trust, and vaccination refusal. Results from structural equation models indicated that explicit vaccine-identity and vaccine-helpfulness associations and implicit vaccine helpfulness associations were indirectly related to vaccination refusal via their relation with vaccine beliefs.ConclusionsCollectively, study findings suggest that vaccine associations-especially those related to helpfulness/harmfulness-may serve as psychological building blocks for parental vaccine beliefs and behaviors.

Background: Drinking identity (the extent to which one links the self with drinking alcohol) is a unique risk factor for college students' hazardous drinking that is not directly targeted by existing interventions. We conducted a study that aimed to decrease drinking identity among college students with hazardous drinking. We adapted a writing task about the future self and tested whether three writing sessions could decrease drinking identity and change drinking. We also investigated whether two additional factors (writing perspective and inclusion of participants' social networks) would enhance task impact. The present study evaluated whether posited proximal cognitive and motivational outcomes (drinking identity, self‐efficacy, readiness to change, and drinking intentions) changed immediately after each writing session. Method: The study is a randomized clinical trial in which hypotheses and analyses were pre‐registered. Participants were 328 college students who met hazardous drinking criteria. The study had a 2 (narrative writing topic: low‐risk drinker vs. reduced smartphone use) × 2 (writing perspective: first‐person vs. non‐first‐person) × 2 (social network instruction: instructed to include vs. not) factorial design. Proximal outcomes were drinking identity, self‐efficacy, readiness to change, and drinking intentions. The clinical outcome was alcohol consumption. Participants completed three laboratory sessions at weekly intervals that included the writing task and pre‐ and post‐task assessments. Results: Results were largely null, except that readiness to reduce drinking was higher in the low‐risk drinker condition and increased over the lab sessions. Time effects indicated that reductions in drinking identity, drinking intentions, and alcohol consumption, and increases in self‐efficacy were observed but did not change above and beyond control conditions. Conclusions: Findings indicate the need to strengthen the writing task and select a more appropriate control task to target proposed proximal outcomes. Future studies might try personalizing the task, evaluating its efficacy with individuals motivated to change their drinking, and using a control task that does not involve imagining a future self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A computerized three-dimensional (3D) neuroanatomy teaching tool was developed for training medical students to identify subcortical structures on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) series of the human brain. This program allows the user to transition rapidly between two-dimensional (2D) MRI slices, 3D object composites, and a combined model in which 3D objects are overlaid onto the 2D MRI slices, all while rotating the brain in any direction and advancing through coronal, sagittal, or axial planes. The efficacy of this tool was assessed by comparing scores from an MRI identification quiz and survey in two groups of first-year medical students. The first group was taught using this new 3D teaching tool, and the second group was taught the same content for the same amount of time but with traditional methods, including 2D images of brain MRI slices and 3D models from widely used textbooks and online sources. Students from the experimental group performed marginally better than the control group on overall test score (P?=?0.07) and significantly better on test scores extracted from questions involving C-shaped internal brain structures (P?