Childhood environmental unpredictability, defined as the spatial-temporal variation of adverse experiences (Young et al., 2020), has been identified as an essential feature of adversity that has important developmental implications (Ellis et al., 2022). Prior work has linked environmental unpredictability to mental health problems (Koss et al., 2025) and dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (Doom et al., 2024). However, most studies have treated unpredictability as a static construct, overlooking variability in environmental experiences over time. Although the distinct effects of the two dimensions of childhood adversity (i.e., threat and deprivation) on adolescent outcomes are well-established (LoPilato et al., 2020; Milojevich et al., 2019), the unique characteristics of unpredictability within these dimensions remains poorly understood. Furthermore, resilience factors that may buffer the negative effects of unpredictability have received little attention. To address these gaps, the present study investigated how unpredictability related to threat (i.e., abuse) and deprivation (i.e., neglect) predicts adolescents' diurnal cortisol rhythms and depressive symptoms, and whether a positive school climate moderates these associations.The sample consisted of 211 adolescents (T1: M age = 10.82 years, SD = 0.85; 34.6% girls) who participated in a four-wave longitudinal survey spanning two years. Linear mixed models (LMMs) were estimated to capture trajectories of adversity exposure, and the residuals (the differences between predicted and observed values) at each time point were used to compute the root mean squared error (RMSE) as an indicator of unpredictability in abuse and neglect. Linear regression analyses were then conducted to test both main and interaction effects. For significant interaction effects, the Johnson-Neyman technique was applied to plot the simple slopes across the full range of the moderator.Results indicated that unpredictability in abuse significantly predicted flatter diurnal cortisol slopes but not depressive symptoms. A significant interaction with average abuse levels emerged, such that unpredictability in abuse was associated with fewer depressive symptoms when average abuse exposure was high. Unpredictability in neglect showed no significant associations with either diurnal cortisol rhythms or depressive symptoms. School safety and order moderated the link between abuse-related unpredictability and diurnal cortisol slopes, such that unpredictability in abuse was associated with flatter slopes only when perceived school safety and order were low. Similarly, school support and acceptance moderated the association between neglect-related unpredictability and diurnal cortisol slopes, with effects evident only when school support and acceptance were low.Findings revealed distinct effects of unpredictability within threat (i.e., abuse) and deprivation (i.e., neglect). Specifically, abuse-related (but not neglect-related) unpredictability predicted flatter diurnal cortisol rhythms, above and beyond the effects of average abuse levels. Moreover, the impact of abuse-related unpredictability varied by the average levels of abuse exposure, highlighting the importance of considering broader contextual features including environmental severity, in understanding developmental consequences. A positive school climate emerged as a potential resilience factor with important implications for education and policy. Enhancing school safety and order may be particularly effective in buffering the negative consequences of abuse-related unpredictability for adolescent health, whereas strengthening teacher-student support and acceptance may better mitigate the negative effects of neglect-related unpredictability.
In the context of China prioritizing consumption expansion,this research addresses a critical gap:understanding how psychological mechanisms,specifically temporal perspective,influence consumer behavior.We investigate whether and how linear versus cyclical temporal perspectives serve as effective"nudges"to boost consumer consumption tendency,particularly experiential consumption,and explores the underlying mediating pathways and boundary conditions governing this relationship.The goal is to provide actionable psychological insights for policymakers seeking effective demand-side interventions. To ensure robust and generalizable findings,a multi-method research design was employed.Study 1 established the relationship between temporal perspective and consumption tendencies using cross-national secondary data.Building on this,Study 2 employed a controlled laboratory experiment with high internal validity to examine the causal mechanism through which temporal perspective influences consumption patterns.Study 3 further investigates the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of this relationship through a large-scale national survey,thereby enhancing the external validity of the findings.Finally,Study 4 validates the ecological validity of the conclusions by conducting a one-month field experiment to re-examine the impact of temporal perspective on consumption tendency. The findings consistently demonstrate that exposure to a linear temporal perspective significantly enhances consumer consumption tendency compared to a cyclical time perspective.This effect operates primarily through a key psychological mechanism:the linear temporal perspective increases consumers'need for experiential consumption.Furthermore,the perceived time extension acts as a critical moderator.When individuals perceive time extension as limited,the positive impact of a linear temporal perspective on need for experiential consumption,and consequently on consumption tendency,is significantly amplified.Conversely,perceiving time extension as opened weakens these effects. This research makes significant theoretical contributions.First,we break through the paradigm of how temporal perspective influences specific types of consumption,and for the first time systematically demonstrate the implicit nudging effect of temporal perspective on general consumption tendency,offering a new perspective for understanding how temporal perspective shapes the dynamism of the consumer economy.Second,we uncover the core mechanism,revealing that linear temporal perspectives boost consumption tendency primarily by heightening the need for experiential consumption,moving beyond explanations based solely on time or risk perception.Third,we resolve prior theoretical inconsistencies by identifying perceived time extension as a pivotal boundary condition,demonstrating its role in strengthening the consumption-nudging effect of linear temporal perspective under limited extension.Collectively,these insights advance temporal perspective theory and provide a robust psychological foundation for designing effective consumption-stimulating strategies.
With the advent of the human-machine symbiosis era,the ethical dilemmas and algorithmic biases of large language models(LLMs)have triggered widespread societal concerns.Guiding artificial intelligence(AI)toward beneficial development has thus become an urgent and challenging imperative.This research explores the impact of personality-based alignment grounded in the HEXACO personality model on the moral judgment of LLMs.Specifically,the study aims to verify whether LLMs can effectively achieve personality-based alignment through prompting and to systematically evaluate how such alignment influences utilitarian tendencies in LLMs compared to humans across various moral dilemmas.By leveraging established psychological frameworks,this research seeks to provide a scientific basis for constructing controllable and ethical AI alignment strategies. Study 1 tested GPT-3.5,GPT-4,and ERNIE 3.5 using personality prompts targeting each HEXACO domain separately at high,low,and baseline levels,integrated with different gender roles.Manipulation checks were conducted using two distinct methods:a quantitative personality assessment using the HEXACO-60 scale and a qualitative personality story-writing task rated by independent human evaluators.Study 2 utilized a set of standardized moral dilemmas to assess utilitarian versus deontological choices in both LLMs and human participants.Human data were categorized into high and low personality groups for comparison,while the LLMs performed the same moral judgment tasks under various personality settings to identify shifts in decision-making patterns. The results of Study 1 confirmed the feasibility of personality-based alignment,demonstrating that LLMs can dynamically represent HEXACO personality traits through prompts.Among the LLMs tested,GPT-4 exhibited superior instruction-following capabilities and more distinct trait differentiation than GPT-3.5 and ERNIE 3.5.Findings from Study 2 revealed that personality-based alignment significantly alters the moral judgment of LLMs,though the impact varies across different models and personality domains.Specifically,traits such as Honesty-Humility,Agreeableness,and Conscientiousness were found to reduce utilitarian tendencies,leading to a preference for deontological responses.While some traits,particularly Honesty-Humility,showed stable and consistent effects between humans and LLMs,others displayed divergent or even opposite patterns,highlighting fundamental differences in their respective moral reasoning mechanisms. The study reached three primary conclusions.First,LLMs can effectively manifest HEXACO personality traits by following prompts.Second,the influence of Honesty-Humility on moral judgment exhibits a consistent effect across humans and different LLMs,whereas other personality domains show inconsistencies.This suggests that while LLMs'moral decision-making shares partial cognitive logic with humans,fundamental differences remain.Third,the personality metatrait of"Stability"—and particularly the Honesty-Humility domain—demonstrates a significant moral salience effect within the personality-based alignment process.Based on these insights,this research proposes a personality-based alignment framework grounded in the HEXACO model and personality metatrait theory for shaping the moral responses of AI,providing a psychological foundation for the development of safety,controllable and ethical AI systems.This framework emphasizes integrating psychological theories to mitigate ethical risks and ensure that AI behavior remains consistent with human values.
Identifying novel associations between seemingly unrelated things is the core characteristic of creative discovery behavior,while monitoring and resolving cognitive conflicts are essential cognitive processes that facilitate this form of creativity.However,the human brain tends to operate according to the principle of least effort,which can result in cognitive conflicts that are induced by novel ideas not being fully resolved.Consequently,several opportunities for identifying creative and useful ideas may be overlooked. To increase the likelihood of accurately identifying novel ideas,it is necessary to strengthen executive control in resolving cognitive conflicts.Given the situational adaptability in psychological and behavioral activities,participants may experience pressure to generate or discover novel ideas in situations where ordinary ideas are insufficient to solve problems,compared with situations where ordinary ideas are suitable for problem solving.This type of situational pressure may enhance executive control during conflict resolution and subsequently increase the probability of successfully identifying novel ideas. To test the feasibility of enhancing executive control during conflict resolution and improving the efficiency of identifying novel ideas,this study manipulated situational pressure in creative discovery.Following daily life problem scenario,participants were presented with two or three products consecutively so that they could discover and identify useful ideas.A commonly used product was introduced first,followed by a novel product.When a commonly used product is useful for solving a problem,participants are likely to experience no pressure to discover novel products.Conversely,when a commonly used product is not useful for solving a problem,participants experience pressure to discover novel products.If two consecutive commonly used products are not sufficient to solve the problem,participants experience high pressure to discover novel products.In addition to a no-pressure condition,experiment 1 included a pressure condition,while experiment 2 included a high-pressure condition. Experiment 1 revealed that novel but less useful products elicited smaller N400 and larger LSP amplitudes under pressure conditions than under no-pressure conditions.In contrast,there were no differences in N400 or LSP amplitudes elicited by novel and highly useful products between the two conditions.Experiment 2 revealed that compared with no-pressure conditions,both novel and highly useful products,as well as novel but less useful products,elicited smaller N400 and larger LSP amplitudes under high-pressure conditions.Furthermore,for correctly identified novel products,the positive correlation between N400 and LSP amplitudes was significantly greater under high-pressure conditions than under no-pressure conditions. These findings indicate that situational pressure enhances executive control during creative discovery behavior,particularly by improving the resolution of the cognitive conflicts induced by novel products and increasing the efficiency of distinguishing novel and useful products from novel but less useful products.This study demonstrates the impact of situational pressure on creative discovery,enriches the understanding of monitoring and resolving cognitive conflicts in creative discovery behavior,and reveals a cognitive pathway for creative behavior training.
The left inferior parietal lobe(IPL)is a critical brain region for categorical perception of speech,and some studies have shown that it is involved in the categorical perception of Chinese tones.However,its specific role in tone perception remains unclear. The current study manipulated both tonal categories(intercategory vs.intracategory)and acoustic features(large vs.small acoustic intervals)in successively presented stimulus pairs to examine whether the IPL is sensitive to acoustic features or to the abstract representation of tonal categories during Chinese tone perception.Experiment 1 used functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS)to localize functional activation in the IPL during tone perception.Experiment 2 used transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS)to virtually impair the IPL and establish a causal neural link between the IPL and tonal categorical perception. Experiment 1 showed that the dorsal IPL channel was sensitive to tonal categories,exhibiting more robust IPL activation induced by intercategory stimulation than intracategory stimulation.This region was also sensitive to acoustic intervals,with stronger activation induced by small acoustic intervals than by large ones.In Experiment 2,the dorsal and ventral IPL channels were virtually disrupted separately using TMS.When the dorsal IPL channel was inhibited,its sensitivity to tonal categories disappeared.In contrast,the ventral IPL channel and the left premotor cortex(PMC)channel were sensitive to acoustic intervals,with stronger activation induced by large acoustic intervals than by small ones.However,when TMS inhibited the ventral IPL channel,only functional compensation in the left inferior frontal gyrus channels showed sensitivity to tonal categories and induced greater intracategory activation than intercategory stimulation did. In summary,these findings demonstrate a critical role of the left dorsal IPL in the categorical perception of Chinese tone.In contrast,the ventral IPL plays an essential gating role in the dorsal stream of speech perception.The results enrich the neurophysiological model of speech perception from a tonal language perspective,elucidating the collaborative mechanism between dorsal and ventral speech streams in categorical perception.
