Religious beliefs can shape how people process fear. Yet the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain poorly understood. We investigated fear learning and extinction processes in a group of individuals who professed a belief in God, compared to non-believers. Using a virtual reality Pavlovian fear conditioning/extinction task, we measured neurovegetative activity associated with these forms of associative learning. Our finding shows reduced fear extinction among God believers, compared to non-believers. This suggests that the general mechanism of fear extinction learning is suppressed in these individuals. Importantly, this effect was not explained by state or trait anxiety scores. These findings align with previous evidence linking religiosity and spirituality with the neural circuit of fear and suggest that religiosity may be associated with weaker inhibitory learning processes related to fear.

Background: Within the framework of social cognition, conservatism can be conceptualized as a strategy for addressing fundamental psychological needs. Therefore, it is hypothesized that individuals with conservative orientations exhibit stronger reactions to perceived threats compared to their less conservative counterparts. Aim: To perform an exploratory scoping systematic review of existing literature examining behavioral, physiological, neurophysiological, and emotional responses associated with the relationship between conservatism and threat perception. Method: Following PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search was conducted using PubMed and Google Scholar primary databases, resulting in the inclusion of 19 relevant articles. Results: Approximately three-fifths (11 of 19 studies; 57.9%) provided empirical support for the hypothesis that conservatism is positively associated with threat sensitivity. These findings reveal a complex and nuanced relationship between conservatism and threat perception, with recent evidence—including large-scale longitudinal data and experimental manipulations of COVID-19–related threats—indicating weak or context-dependent associations. The overall pattern highlights substantial heterogeneity across methodological approaches, with mixed results particularly among physiological and priming studies. Conclusions: While the majority of evidence supports a relationship between political conservatism and threat sensitivity, the magnitude of this association appears modest, emphasizing the importance of considering moderating variables such as cultural context, the type of threat, and methodological variations in measurement in future research.

Prejudices, particularly those related to social biases, are shaped by various cognitive and sensory mechanisms. This study investigates the interaction between olfactory perception and propensity and implicit or explicit prejudices through three experimental protocols in a metaverse condition. Experiment 1 examines the impact of five different odors on proxemic behavior when interacting with individuals from stigmatized social groups. Experiment 2 integrates electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze the neural correlates of prejudice-related responses to olfactory stimuli. Experiment 3 explores implicit biases through the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in relation to different fragrances, without employing virtual reality. The proposed protocol is expected to demonstrate a significant relationship between olfactory cues, linked to social relationships, and implicit or explicit prejudices, with variations based on individual differences. These insights will contribute to psychological, neuroscientific, and social interventions, offering new perspectives on the unconscious mechanisms of bias formation. Additionally, this study highlights the potential of virtual reality and olfactory stimuli as innovative tools for studying and addressing social biases in controlled environments.

Promoting positive student attitudes toward STEM is essential for fostering innovation; however, many existing measures do not adequately distinguish attitudes across specific disciplines, particularly within hard sciences such as physics and chemistry. This study presents the development and validation of the STEM Disciplines Attitude Scale (SDAS). Across three studies involving 2577 high school students, Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses supported a 25-item, five-factor structure assessing attitudes toward Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, and Science and Technology. The SDAS showed good internal consistency and strong convergent and discriminant validity. Measurement invariance analyses demonstrated full invariance across grade levels and metric invariance across genders. Gender comparisons indicated more positive attitudes among males in mathematics, physics, engineering, and science and technology, whereas no gender differences emerged in chemistry. Correlational and regression analyses identified Mastery Orientation and Problem-Solving Confidence as positively related to attitudes across several STEM domains. Learned Helplessness and Emotional Control showed more discipline-specific associations, particularly for Mathematics and Engineering. The SDAS fills an important measurement gap by providing a reliable tool for assessing discipline-specific STEM attitudes and their psychological correlates, thereby supporting both research and educational interventions.

Background/Objectives: Per-capita food availability may represent a large-scale indicator of nutritional environments potentially associated with dementia risk. However, whether national dietary environments are associated with dementia burden across different exposure periods remains unclear. Methods: We linked model-derived estimates of per-capita food availability based on Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food supply data for 2005, 2010, and 2015 with 2018 age-standardized dementia incidence, prevalence, and mortality across 109 countries. Multivariable ordinary least-squares models were estimated with adjustment for socioeconomic, demographic, environmental, and metabolic covariates. Results: Higher per-capita food availability was positively associated with dementia outcomes in minimally adjusted models, particularly for the 2005 exposure window, although these associations were substantially attenuated after full covariate adjustment. In contrast, the 2010 exposure window showed positive associations with dementia incidence and prevalence after full adjustment using the conventional significance threshold (α = 0.05), whereas no significant associations were observed for mortality or for the 2015 exposure window. Sensitivity analyses indicated that associations varied according to exposure timing and model specification. Conclusions: Overall, these findings suggest that large-scale nutritional environments are associated with variations in dementia burden across countries, although the substantial temporal overlap among exposure measures precludes inference regarding temporally specific effects; these associations should therefore be interpreted within the broader socio-demographic and metabolic context in which national food environments are embedded.

The development and validation of interpersonal violence in terms of hot weather scale is the goal of the current study. The initial pool of items was deve