Alister et al. (2025) reported individual differences in the extent to which people find source-dependent and source-independent claims persuasive, but an exploratory analysis showed no discernible relationship between these individual differences and demographic variables such as age, education, politics, and social-media use. Here I show through simulations that the individual-difference patterns Alister et al. identified are largely consistent with random across-trial variation in the absence of underlying differences between individuals. This casts doubt on the strength of their evidence for individual differences and provides one plausible account of why their exploratory analyses did not yield systematic relationships.
We quantified the association between rate of child development and pace of midlife aging in the Dunedin Study and the Add Health Study. Physical development was quantified in Dunedin participants ( N = 1,037; age 45) using a composite comprised of (1) birth weight for gestational age, (2) toddler weight gain, (3) timing of behavioral milestones, (4) adiposity-rebound age, (5) timing of adolescent growth spurt, and (6) tempo of adolescent growth spurt. Social development was quantified using the Vineland Social Maturity Scale. Multi-organ-system (cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, immune, dental, pulmonary) longitudinal biological aging was used as the adult outcome. Fast physical development in childhood was associated with faster midlife aging. This was replicated in Add Health ( N = 1,537; age range = 33–44 years), where girls who menstruated earlier had faster midlife aging. By contrast, faster social development in childhood was associated with slower midlife aging. Findings contribute initial empirical evidence characterizing the link between child-development rate and adult aging in humans.
When crime is caught on video, suspects can be identified by matching their faces to the perpetrator in the footage. However, errors in face-matching decisions have led to wrongful arrests. We tested face-matching in a nonprofessional student sample from a Canadian university ( N = 905) with one-to-one comparisons and lineups. On the basis of findings in the eyewitness identification literature, we hypothesized that if face-matching lineups were fair and included known-innocent fillers (i.e., nonsuspects), they would control the error rate on trials with innocent suspects and increase the accuracy of suspect “match” responses. This hypothesis was supported. However, the accuracy of suspect-nonmatch responses was greater for one-to-one comparisons than for lineups. Additionally, we found that applying wisdom-of-crowd approaches to multiple independent decisions could eliminate errors in both match and nonmatch responses. Whether to control face-matching errors with lineups, with the wisdom-of-crowds, or with both depends on practical considerations.
The numerous executive orders directed at transgender youth in the weeks following the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration were likely a signal to these youth-and their parents-that the federal government no longer supported them. Using a longitudinal design spanning 3 years prior to the inauguration (2022-2024) and 2 months surrounding the inauguration, we tested whether the mental health and well-being of U.S.-based transgender youth and their parents declined relative to that of cisgender youth and their parents in a sample that, on the whole, did not support the new administration (N = 160 youth, aged 12-17 years; N = 167 parents). Across preregistered analyses, we observed significant declines in the mental health and well-being of parents of transgender youth compared to parents of cisgender youth; we observed fewer differences over time between transgender versus cisgender youth themselves. Our findings identify an immediate potential cost of the current political environment for supportive parents of transgender youth.
Accountability is a commonly recommended intervention to reduce discrimination. However, there have been no field experiments testing whether it reduces discrimination in workplaces. Here we present preregistered analyses of a field experiment conducted at a company (n = 3,266 managers rating 17,149 employees) testing whether an accountability intervention reduces performance-evaluation gaps between White and racial-minority employees. We did not find evidence that the accountability intervention closes evaluation gaps. These null effects are likely not driven by a lack of statistical power or by inattentive managers, nor is the manipulation ineffective in all contexts-a supplemental online experiment shows that similar treatment language does change decision-making, underscoring a disconnect between findings in hypothetical settings versus real organizations. These results highlight the need for additional field experiments and theorizing to better understand when and why accountability interventions, as they may typically be implemented in organizations, improve diversity-related outcomes.
