OBJECTIVE:Alcohol advertising can induce craving and increase the consumption of alcohol, though individuals vary in their susceptibility. Recent findings suggest that attentional allocation toward alcohol adverts predicts subsequent alcohol craving and consumption. However, methodological limitations leave key issues unresolved, including whether attention to alcohol adverts causally impacts craving and consumption. This study tested the hypothesis that attentional allocation to alcohol adverts increases their impact on alcohol consumption via craving using an attentional manipulation approach. METHOD:Seventy-one undergraduate students, who reported enjoying drinking beer, were exposed to beer and soft drink adverts in a dual advert viewing task designed to manipulate attentional allocation toward or away from beer adverts. Following advert viewing, relative craving for beer versus soft drinks and preferential beer consumption were assessed. A mediation model examined whether this attentional manipulation influenced consumption via craving. RESULTS:The attentional manipulation was successful, with participants in the "attend beer adverts" condition displaying a disproportionate attentional allocation toward beer adverts and those in the "avoid beer adverts" condition showing a disproportionate attentional allocation away from beer adverts. Mediation analysis, employing bootstrapped confidence intervals, confirmed that the attentional manipulation influenced beer consumption following advert viewing via its effect on beer craving. CONCLUSIONS:These findings provide evidence that attentional allocation toward alcohol adverts causally influences alcohol consumption following advert exposure, mediated by its impact on alcohol craving. We discuss the implications of these findings for targeted interventions to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of alcohol advertising. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) during pregnancy is a key risk factor for psychopathology in the perinatal period. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying prenatal RNT remain poorly understood. Recent research has suggested that a tendency to volitionally seek negative rather than positive information (i.e., biased information seeking) may contribute to the formation of more negative prenatal expectations, which in turn predict elevated prenatal RNT. The current study aimed (i) to replicate the findings of a previous study that demonstrated associations between expectations about parenthood, biased information seeking about parenthood-related information, and RNT, and (ii) examine the generality of the observed effects beyond parenthood by investigating whether biased information seeking and negative expectations show similar associations with prenatal RNT across the other two main domains of prenatal RNT, i.e., pregnancy and childbirth. A total of 126 first-time expecting mothers were recruited online and completed a task that assessed biased information seeking, along with questionnaires measuring prenatal RNT and expectations. Replicating previous findings, biased information seeking predicted stronger negative expectations, which in turn predicted higher prenatal RNT. These effects were consistent across the domains of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood, supporting the generality of the findings across these domains. These findings have important implications for expectation-focused interventions and cognitive bias modification procedures aimed at reducing prenatal RNT.

The Talking Heads Attentional Bias Assessment Task is a recently developed, freely available, methodology for assessing anxiety-linked attentional bias to ecologically relevant emotionally negative information. The task employs video-based stimuli conveying emotionally negative or benign information concerning issues that individuals commonly encounter in daily life. It utilizes a dual-probe methodology with the aim of indexing the degree to which viewers’ attention is automatically captured by the more negative videos. When introducing this task, Mazidi et al. (2025) demonstrated that the resulting attentional bias index i. has excellent internal consistency; ii. is significantly correlated with trait anxiety; and iii. mediates the association between trait anxiety and the state anxiety elevation elicited by the emotional videos. However, this prior study did not verify that the anxiety-linked attentional bias indexed by this task is automatic, in the sense that it is independent of volitional viewing preference. The present study was designed to determine the replicability of Mazidi et al.’s original findings, while overcoming this prior limitation. A sample of 170 undergraduate students completed a variant of the Talking Heads Attentional Bias Assessment Task, that now included an additional condition designed to directly measure volitional viewing preference. All of the three effects described above were replicated in full. Moreover, the association between trait anxiety and the resulting index of attentional bias was independent of volitional viewing preference. These findings attest to the capacity of this task to yield a psychometrically appropriate index of trait anxiety-linked bias in automatic attentional capture by emotionally negative information.

Emotional resilience is an individual difference dimension, reflecting variation in the degree to which people show better or worse emotional well-being relative to what is predicted based on stressor exposure. Given that young adults commencing university studies commonly encounter a broad range of potential stressors, understanding the mechanisms that underpin emotional resilience could inform strategies for optimising student emotional well-being. While emotional reactivity is proximally associated with resilient outcomes, the factors that temporally precede and predict such reactivity are incompletely understood. In a serial mediation model, we sought to test the capacity of positive appraisal style and positive expectations to predict subsequent resilient outcomes. The present study assessed a sample of 95 young adults commencing a new year at university in a longitudinal design across the first semester. Using Partial Least Squares Structure Equation Modelling, the observed pattern supported the hypothesis under test. Specially, relatively positive appraisal style early in semester predicted relatively positive expectations mid-semester, which in turn predicted the late semester measure of emotional reactivity that was proximally associated with emotionally resilient outcomes. We discuss how the advances to understanding enabled by this study could potentially be exploited to enhance emotional well-being in young adults.

Cognitive theories contend that attentional bias to negative information contributes to elevated trait anxiety. However, research in this area has been hindered by the lack of a standardized assessment task that demonstrates the required qualities, including strong internal consistency and ecological validity. The present study aimed to develop and validate the Talking Heads Attentional Bias Assessment Task, an easy-to-implement measure that overcomes the limitations of previous attentional bias assessment tasks. The task employs video-based stimuli conveying emotionally negative or benign information about issues individuals commonly encounter in their daily lives and uses a dual-probe methodology to assess attentional bias. A sample of 168 undergraduate students completed the task along with measures of trait and state anxiety. The results demonstrated that the attentional bias index derived from the task showed excellent internal consistency across multiple reliability assessment methods. Greater attentional bias to negative information was also significantly associated with greater trait anxiety, confirming the task’s sensitivity to anxiety-linked individual differences in such attentional bias. Furthermore, mediation analyses revealed that attentional bias mediated the association between trait anxiety and state anxiety elevation in response to emotional information. We discuss the study’s important theoretical and methodological implications, and convey the task’s capacity to enhance assessment of attentional bias across a wide range of psychological domains.

BACKGROUND:Despite potentially harmful consequences, people routinely encounter alcohol adverts designed to increase consumption of alcohol in preference to safer alternatives. However, individuals differ in the degree to which such adverts elicit preferential alcohol consumption. This study builds upon and extends prior research by testing hypotheses concerning the impact of biased processing during advert viewing on subsequent alcohol craving and consumption. METHOD:Sixty-eight undergraduate students viewed beer and soft drink adverts. In some viewing blocks, beer and soft drink adverts played simultaneously to assess participants' attentional bias to beer adverts. In others, participants were asked to choose which type of advert to view, which assessed bias in volitional viewing choice. Participants subsequently rated their craving for beer before completing a taste test designed to yield a behavioral measure of preferential beer consumption. RESULTS:Attentional bias to alcohol adverts predicted beer craving and preferential beer consumption. The association between attentional bias and preferential beer consumption was mediated by beer craving. An equivalent pattern of prediction was observed when using the viewing choice bias measure as the predictor. Importantly, when variation in either bias measure was statistically controlled for, the other continued to predict preferential beer consumption in a manner that was mediated by beer craving. CONCLUSIONS:Two types of processing bias during advert viewing-viewing preference and attentional bias-were independently associated with subsequent preferential alcohol consumption. In both cases, these associations were accounted for by alcohol craving. The theoretical and applied implications of this are discussed.

This meta-analytic study examined the associations between childhood emotional abuse (CEA) history in adults and eleven emotion regulation abilities (i.e., distress tolerance, emotional awareness, acceptance, clarity, impulse control) and strategies (i.e., behavioural avoidance, distraction, experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, reappraisal, rumination, savouring). Inclusion criteria were the use of validated and reliable multi-item measures, cross-sectional Pearson's correlation coefficient(s), and retrievable in English. We considered the sample as the unit of analysis and used the random-effects model. The final analysis included 124 independent samples, and 308 independent effect sizes on 1654 to 20,556 participants across all emotion regulation constructs (savouring was excluded due to no valid data). Very small to medium mean effect sizes with substantial heterogeneity was observed. A synthesis suggested that CEA history is associated with a broader tendency for avoidant strategy use in a small-to-large range (k = 39, r = 0.32, 95% prediction interval = [0.11, 0.51]) and for aversive emotional representation in a small-to-medium range (k = 69, r = 0.24, 95% prediction interval = [0.08, 0.40]). The mean effects were generally higher for suppressive tendencies and slightly lower for emotional non-acceptance, where sample-level neglect-deprivation and sexual abuse increased, respectively. Notable moderators included symptom presence and percent female. Results were robust to sensitivity analysis and publication bias. The findings suggested focused research on the aversive-avoidant emotion regulation tendencies of CEA history, which may not diminish with age. Specialised treatment plans may particularly target cognitive over-engagement coupled with aversive emotional representations in affected people.

There are notable individual differences in how people manage the lead up to, and aftermath of, stressful events. Trait anxiety has consistently been identified as a key factor contributing to these differences. There is growing consensus that trait anxiety is multidimensional, comprising two distinct dimensions, anxiety reactivity and anxiety perseveration. Yet the cognitive mechanisms driving individual differences in these dimensions remain unclear. The present study investigated the potential role of attentional bias towards information differing in content (situational vs. implicational) and valence (negative vs. positive) in driving these individual differences. Undergraduate university students (N = 93) completed a dual-probe assessment task which presented video clips varying in content and valence. State anxiety was assessed at crucial junctures throughout the experimental session to index anxiety reactivity and perseveration. Results revealed attentional bias for negative implicational information played a significant role in predicting anxiety perseveration. Conversely, attention bias for negative situational information was not a significant predictor of anxiety reactivity. Findings are discussed with reference to limitations and future extensions that could build on these findings to address causality and develop interventions capable of modifying cognitive biases.

Alexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, as well as a lack of focus on feelings. Alexithymia is a transdiagnostic risk factor for developing a wide array of psychopathologies, such as anxiety and depression, with a key hypothesised mechanism being the impairing impact of alexithymia on emotion regulation competency. However, no study has tested whether difficulties with emotion regulation mediate the link between alexithymia and psychopathological symptoms using longitudinal designs. The present study aimed to address this limitation by collecting data from 164 Iranian high school students (73

Background: Cognitive theories of health anxiety emphasize the critical importance of general Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU-general) in the development and maintenance of health anxiety. There is, however, a dearth of research on the mechanisms through which IU-general leads to health anxiety. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to test the hypothesis that intolerance of uncertainty specific to health (IU-health) and worry may sequentially mediate the association between IU-general and health anxiety. Methods: Three hundred and fifty-eight students completed a battery of questionnaire including measures of health anxiety, IU-general, IU-health, and worry. Results: Consistent with predictions generated by the hypothesis under test, a serial mediation model confirmed that the association between IU-general and health anxiety was mediated by IU-health (first mediator) and worry (second mediator). Conclusions: The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions were offered concerning how future research could serve to discriminate alternative causal accounts of the presently observed associations. Limitations: Due to the cross-sectional design of the study, causal inferences cannot be made. Additionally, as the sample was non-clinical, the generalizability of the results to clinical populations may be limited.

OBJECTIVES:Maladaptive beliefs about emotions (e.g., believing emotions are uncontrollable or useless) are theorized to contribute to emotion regulation difficulties and psychological distress. Limited research has examined maladaptive emotion beliefs in clinical populations. This study investigated the psychometric properties and latent profiles of the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) in a clinical sample. METHODS:A total of 385 adults currently receiving psychotherapy participated in the study. The sample included inpatients (n = 110) from a psychiatric hospital and outpatients (n = 275) recruited through clinics and online in Iran. They completed the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire alongside measures of emotion regulation difficulties (Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory) and psychological distress (Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale-21). RESULTS:Confirmatory factor analyses supported a three-factor model distinguishing beliefs about emotional controllability and the usefulness of positive and negative emotions. The EBQ demonstrated strong internal consistency and convergent and incremental validity. Latent Profile Analysis identified six distinct profiles of emotion beliefs, which were differentially associated with emotion regulation difficulties and psychological distress. Notably, the two profiles characterized by the highest levels of maladaptive emotion beliefs had the highest levels of emotion regulation difficulties and psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS:These findings underscore the heterogeneity of emotion belief patterns in clinical populations and highlight the importance of assessing belief combinations rather than isolated dimensions, which can help with more personalized therapeutic interventions. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of emotion beliefs in psychopathology and supports the use of the EBQ as a psychometrically sound tool with clinical samples.

While long considered a unitary dimension, research has moved towards a multidimensional understanding of trait anxiety, and has identified two dissociable dimensions of trait anxiety: anxiety reactivity and anxiety perseveration. Despite the consolidation of this understanding over the past decade, the mechanisms underlying these two dimensions are not well established. The present study examined the novel role of information processing in the experience of anxiety reactivity and perseveration, specifically, how enhanced processing of situational information influences reactivity, and how enhanced processing of implicational information influences perseveration. Undergraduate university students (N = 142) were exposed to an interview-based stressor. As participants approached this stressor, they were provided with information reflecting one of the two content categories, intended to encourage a situational or implicational processing mode. Anxiety reactivity and anxiety perseveration were measured by assessing changes in state anxiety (measured using a single item visual analogue state anxiety measure) in the lead up and wake of this stressor. Mixed-design ANOVAs did not reveal a significant relationship between enhanced processing of situational information and anxiety reactivity, nor between enhanced processing of implicational information and anxiety perseveration. An experimental manipulation involving valence revealed that receiving positive information reduced the intensity of state anxiety elevations in the aftermath of the information processing task. Findings are discussed with reference to limitations and future extensions that could investigate the potential role of cognitive biases in this proposed relationship between enhanced information processing and anxiety reactivity and perseveration.

IntroductionEmpathy, a complex and multidimensional construct essential for social functioning and mental health, has been extensively studied in both research and clinical settings. The Perth Empathy Scale (PES), a recently developed self-report measure, assesses cognitive and affective empathy across both positive and negative emotions and is based on the self-other model of empathy. This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the PES in large Iranian sample.MethodsA total of 868 Iranian adults participated in this study. Factorial validity was examined through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).Internal consistency and concurrent validity were assessed by examining correlations with established empathy measures, including the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE), as well as the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) and the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). Measurement invariance was also tested between Iranian and Australian samples.ResultsThe findings supported a three-factor model comprising cognitive empathy, negative affective empathy, and positive affective empathy. The Persian PES demonstrated structural validity, internal consistency, and concurrent validity, suggesting it is a reliable measure for empathy assessment across cultural contexts.DiscussionThis study provides empirical support for the validity of the Persian PES and contributes to the expanding body of research on empathy assessment. The results suggest that the PES can be effectively used in Persian- speaking populations.

Women are at heightened risk of emotional dysfunction during the perinatal period, and elevated Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) during pregnancy represents a risk factor for clinical anxiety and depression. Recent research suggests that the degree to which first-time expecting mothers selectively access negative rather than positive information, when interrogating a source of perinatal-specific information, predicts the degree to which they experience elevated RNT concerning perinatal-specific issues. However, an important question remains: Is the association between negative interrogation bias and elevated RNT specific to perinatal content, or does it reflect a broader, general cognitive vulnerability? Using an online sample of 133 first-time expecting mothers, the present study sought to replicate and extend this prior research. We increased ecological validity by expanding the scope of the information database that participants were able to interrogate, such that it now contained perinatal-specific and general options. Using this enhanced task variant, we confirmed that interrogation bias favouring negative perinatal-specific information significantly predicted perinatal-specific RNT. Additionally, we now also assessed general RNT, together with perinatal-specific RNT, to determine whether this association between negative interrogation bias and RNT was specific to perinatal content. Both measure of RNT were predicted by negative interrogation bias, regardless of whether this bias was indexed by assessing interrogation of perinatal-specific or general information. Our findings suggest that the link between negative interrogation bias and elevated RNT is not perinatal-specific, but rather reflects a broader, general cognitive vulnerability. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of these new findings.

Background Beliefs about emotions are an important yet understudied beliefs proposed to influence emotion regulation and psychological distress. Here, we replicated research on the relationship between beliefs about emotions in general, emotion regulation, and psychological distress, and extended it by examining the relative importance of beliefs about one’s own emotions and others’ emotions. Methods A sample of 244 adults completed self-report measures of beliefs about emotions, as well as emotion regulation and psychological distress. Results Our results demonstrated that maladaptive beliefs about emotions are associated with a more maladaptive pattern of emotion regulation strategy use and heightened psychological distress. This pattern was observed for beliefs about emotions in general, as well as beliefs about one’s own and others’ emotions. Moreover, beliefs about one’s own emotions explained a significantly greater proportion of variance in emotion regulation and psychological distress than beliefs about others’ emotions. Mediation analyses indicated that, across all three types of emotion beliefs, stronger maladaptive beliefs were associated with heightened psychological distress through lower use of reappraisal and greater use of suppression. Conclusions These findings support the specifications of the affective science frameworks like the process model of emotion regulation, highlighting the important role of emotion beliefs in emotion regulation and affective outcomes.

The current study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form (DERS-SF) in Iran, including testing its measurement invariance across sexes, as well as community and student populations. Two samples were recruited: a community sample of 583 participants (58.7% female; Mage = 33.55) and a university student sample of 409 participants (67.2% female; Mage = 24.48). Besides the DERS-SF, participants completed a battery of instruments online, measuring mentalizing capacity and borderline personality features. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the tenability of the five-factor model, excluding the awareness subscale. Except for the awareness subscale, acceptable to excellent internal consistencies were found for the DERS-SF and its subscales. The awareness-excluded DERS-SF was significantly and strongly associated with relevant constructs (|rs| = .49 to .59). This study also found evidence for configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the DERS-SF across sexes and community and student populations. Our findings extended the evidence for the validity and reliability of the DERS-SF and its awareness-excluded version by administering it in Iranian samples and supporting its cross-cultural applicability.

Numerous tools assess death anxiety, but many have questionable psychometric properties. The Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviors Scale (DABBS) addresses these shortcomings, assessing death-related maladaptive affect, beliefs, and behaviors that could be foundational to fears associated with death. We translated the DABBS into Persian and examined its psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents (n = 598, Mage = 14.80, range = 12-18 years old). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended three-factor structure that comprises death-related affect, beliefs, and behaviors. Furthermore, the DABBS demonstrated good internal consistency, as well as expected associations with other measures of death anxiety and psychopathology measures, except that the Behaviors subscale unexpectedly did not relate to theoretically relevant constructs. Our findings indicate that the DABBS affect and belief subscales have strong psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents. However, further research is needed to elucidate whether the overall DABBS score demonstrates improved validity when used with other populations.

The current study explored the association between elevated prenatal worry and negative expectancies about parenthood and the potential cognitive mechanisms driving such expectancies. Two main hypotheses were examined: First, that negative expectancies about parenthood contribute to elevated prenatal worry, and second, negative selective interrogation of information about parenthood contributes to the formation of more negative expectancies about parenthood. The study recruited 92 first-time pregnant women and evaluated their prenatal worry, parenthood expectancies, and tendency to volitionally choose negative rather than positive information about parenthood (i.e., demonstrate a negative interrogation bias). Our findings revealed a significant association between negative expectancies about parenthood and elevated prenatal worry. Additionally, those with a negative interrogation bias were more likely to hold negative expectancies concerning parenthood. The relationship between this bias and prenatal worry was mediated by negative expectancies. Findings are discussed with regards to limitations and potential implications for expectancy-focused interventions for prenatal worry.

People’s beliefs about emotions contribute to their psychological wellbeing, and two important beliefs about emotions concern their controllability and usefulness. Recently, the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) was developed to assess beliefs about the controllability and usefulness of positive and negative emotions. To date, most psychometric studies of the EBQ have been conducted with Western populations, and no studies have examined the EBQ’s psychometric properties among adolescents. We examined the psychometric properties of the EBQ among Iranian adolescents (n = 557), Iranian adults (n = 347), and American adults (n = 242). Participants also completed Implicit Theories of Emotions Scale (ITES), Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI), and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) for measuring the concurrent validity of the EBQ. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended four-factor model that distinguishes between controllability and usefulness facets of beliefs about emotions across positive and negative emotions within all three samples. Importantly, this four-factor model was found invariant in terms of gender, age, and culture groups. Furthermore, the EBQ demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. Our findings indicate that the EBQ has strong psychometric properties among both Asian and Western samples and can be utilised with adolescents too.