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The genetic placebo effect comprises the gene-related psychological, physiological and behavioral changes resulting from merely receiving genetic information. Our research investigated the genetic placebo effect on psychological resilience when taking the impact of genes into consideration and investigating the moderating effect of self-compassion on the genetic placebo effect. In experiment 1, participants' psychological resilience was measured before (or after) receiving genetic feedback about psychological resilience. We observed a weak genetic placebo effect independent of the impact of genes, as indexed by higher correlation between the genetic score and psychological resilience score in the after-feedback group. Self-compassion moderated the genetic placebo effect, and participants with higher self-compassion were more sensitive to genetic feedback. These findings were replicated in experiment 2, in which we randomly gave genetic feedback to participants, reporting genetic predispositions of high or low psychological resilience. Our research offers insight into the use of genetic testing and feedback., Author(s): Huixin Tan [sup.1] , Tianwu Li [sup.1] , Liqin Huang [sup.1] , Qin Duan [sup.1] , Leyi Fan [sup.1] , Meihua Yu [sup.1] , Jiahui Wang [sup.1] , Gese [...]

Loneliness is a common problem in adulthood, with deleterious effects on mental health. In the present study, we examined whether the effects of maternal rearing styles on loneliness are moderated by the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism and whether loneliness can further affect mental health as a mediator in 1034 genotyped participants. The results showed that the COMT genotype significantly moderated the relationship between maternal rejection and loneliness; more specifically, Val carriers who perceived higher levels of rejection from their mothers demonstrated higher levels of loneliness. The moderated mediation model revealed that loneliness meditated the indirect effects of maternal rejection on life satisfaction. Specifically, for individuals with the Val/Val genotype, higher rejection from their mothers had a greater influence on their life satisfaction through loneliness. In addition, we found that the effect of COMT Val158Met maternal rejection on loneliness and the effect of maternal rejection on Val/Val adults' life satisfaction via loneliness existed across different age groups. These findings provide a new understanding of the gene-parenting interaction effect on loneliness and its influence on mental health., Author(s): Wen Wei [sup.1] , Yudong Lin [sup.1] , Tiantian Hong [sup.1] , GeseDNA Research Team [sup.2] , Siyang Luo [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12981.33, 0000 0001 2360 039X, Department [...]

An astonishing cultural phenomenon is where, far away from or close to a city center, people in different societies localize cemeteries that function as both sites of memory of lost ones and symbols of mortality. Yet a psychological account of such differences in behavioral responses to symbols of mortality is lacking. Across five studies (N = 1,590), we tested a psychological model that religious afterlife beliefs decrease behavioral avoidance of symbols of mortality (BASM) by developing and validating a word-position task for quantifying BASM. We showed evidence that religious believers, including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, exhibited decreased BASM relative to nonbelievers. We also provide evidence for a causal relationship between religious afterlife beliefs and reduced BASM. Our findings provide new insight into the functional role of religious afterlife beliefs in modulating human avoidance behavior in response to symbols of mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a unique perspective for understanding cultural differences: representation similarity—a computational technique that uses pairwise comparisons of units to reveal their representation in higher‐order space. By combining individual‐level measures of trust across domains and well‐being from 13,823 participants across 15 nations with a measure of society‐level tightness–looseness, we found that any two countries with more similar tightness–looseness tendencies exhibit higher degrees of representation similarity in national interpersonal trust profiles. Although each individual's trust profile is generally similar to their nation's trust profile, the greater similarity between an individual's and their society's trust profile predicted a higher level of individual life satisfaction only in loose cultures but not in tight cultures. Using the framework of representation similarity to explore cross‐cultural differences from a multidimensional, multi‐national perspective provide a comprehensive picture of how culture is related to the human activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]