Intimate partner violence (IPV) significantly harms women globally, yet, research on perpetrator treatment efficacy is inconclusive. Understanding how perpetrators perceive their own perpetrations is crucial for effective prevention and treatment. This study examines how male IPV perpetrators describe their emotions and cognitions surrounding their violent acts, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of interviews with seven convicted men, and six men who had sought treatment voluntarily. Two superordinate themes emerged: Aggression as a means to meet with unfulfilled psychological needs which encompasses how aggression is used to satisfy the need to gain control and protect the self, and Aggression as an automatic response which entails automatically reacting with aggression, for example due to perceiving the world through a hostile lens. These findings can increase our understanding of factors and dynamics related to precipitation and continuation of IPV perpetration, which, in turn, can be identified, assessed, and potential targets for intervention and prevention.

Insider threat actions are often linked to individual psychological characteristics, yet the predictive utility of assessing such characteristics within operational personnel security frameworks remains unclear. The present study examined whether demographic and psychological assessment variables from the Swedish military selection process were associated with subsequent personnel security investigations resulting in adjudicative decisions within the Swedish Armed Forces. Data linked selection assessments conducted between 2010 and 2017 to 650 adjudicated investigation cases recorded between 2010 and 2023. Psychological measures included cognitive ability scores and interview-based ratings of psychological functioning and suitability for command. Separate logistic regression analyses compared two control samples with cases involving pre-existing antecedents, which were present at the time of assessment, and emergent antecedents, which arose later during service. Age at assessment and sex showed the strongest association with adjudicated investigations, whereas the psychological assessments showed weaker and less stable associations. Multivariate models demonstrated modest explanatory power, with pseudo-R² values ranging from approximately 0.06 to 0.16. Broad psychological assessments thus demonstrated limited utility for distinguishing adjudicated investigations from controls, and their potential value as supplementary tools in highly sensitive contexts requires prospective evaluation and validation against clearly defined outcomes.

Purpose: This study examined how the language of eyewitnesses (native vs. non-native) and their perceived credibility influence the interrogation questions posed to them.

Method: In a previous study (Raver et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2023, 14, 1240822), participants, assuming the role of interrogators, watched either a native or non-native speaking eyewitness testify and were then asked to formulate interrogation questions to gather more information, as well as rate the witness’s credibility. In the present study, a new set of participants (N = 207) evaluated a subset of these interrogation questions in terms of (1) how leading they were, (2) whether the interrogator cast doubt on something the witness had said and (3) how open-ended they were. The moderating role of witnesses’ perceived credibility on question framing was also examined.

Results: Results showed no main effect of language (native vs. non-native) on any question type. For native speakers, lower (vs. higher) credibility led to more expressions of doubt. For non-native speakers, credibility levels (high vs. low) had no effect on question framing.

Conclusion: These findings highlight complex patterns in interrogation questioning that vary by witness language and perceived credibility, revealing a critical area for further exploration to mitigate potential cross-linguistic biases. We discuss the study’s limitations and advocate for future research in diverse legal contexts to ensure fairness and uphold the integrity of witness testimonies across languages.

Love is commonly hypothesized to function as an evolved commitment device, disincentivizing the pursuit of romantic alternatives and signaling this motivational shift to a partner. Here, we test this possibility against a novel signaling-to-alternatives account, in which love instead operates by dissuading alternatives from pursuing oneself. Overall, we find stronger support for the latter account. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that partner quality relative to alternatives positively predicts feelings of love, and love fails to mitigate the negative effects of desirable alternatives on relationship satisfaction—contradicting the classic commitment device account. In Study 3, using a longitudinal design, we replicate these effects and find that changes in partner quality relative to alternatives predict changes in love over time. In Study 4, we replicate the relationship between love and relative partner quality across 44 countries. In Study 5, we find a nearly one-to-one correspondence between the extent to which partner-directed actions are diagnostic of love and reductions in romantic alternatives' attraction to the actor. These results suggest that love may not act as a commitment device in the classic sense by disincentivizing the pursuit of alternatives but by disincentivizing alternatives from pursuing oneself.

Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can be shaped by both environmental and ecological factors, we hypothesized that parasite stress can also affect creativity and thus, its potential effects should be controlled for. The results of multilevel analyses showed that, as expected, conservatism was a significant predictor of lower creativity, adjusting for economic status, age, sex, education level, subjective susceptibility to disease, and country-level parasite stress. In addition, most of the variability in creativity was due to individual rather than country-level variance. Our study provides evidence for a weak but significant negative link between conservatism and creativity at the individual level (β = −0.08, p < .001) and no such effect when country-level conservatism was considered. We present our hypotheses considering previous findings on the behavioral immune system in humans.

We examined whether an eyewitness memory accuracy and susceptibility to suggestions were affected by whether the testimony was given in a native or non-native language. Results showed no effects of language on memory accuracy or suggestibility. Witnesses testifying in a non-native vs. native language were less confident in their memory.

Touch is the primary way people communicate intimacy in romantic relationships, and affectionate touch behaviors such as stroking, hugging and kissing are universally observed in partnerships all over the world. Here, we explored the association of love and affectionate touch behaviors in romantic partnerships in two studies comprising 7880 participants. In the first study, we used a cross-cultural survey conducted in 37 countries to test whether love was universally associated with affectionate touch behaviors. In the second study, using a more fine-tuned touch behavior scale, we tested whether the frequency of affectionate touch behaviors was related to love in romantic partnerships. As hypothesized, love was significantly and positively associated with affectionate touch behaviors in both studies and this result was replicated regardless of the inclusion of potentially relevant factors as controls. Altogether, our data strongly suggest that affectionate touch is a relatively stable characteristic of human romantic relationships that is robustly and reliably related to the degree of reported love between partners.

Legal practitioners sometimes obtain eyewitness testimonies from non-native language speakers, yet few studies examine the effects of language in investigative interviews. Here, we investigate how testifying in a non-native vs. native language affects memory accuracy, susceptibility to suggestions, and witnesses perceived credibility. After viewing a mock-crime film, participants in Study 1 (N = 121) testified through (1) free recall, (2) cued recall and (3) the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales adapted to the crime scenario used in the present study either in their native (Swedish) or a non-native (English) language. They also rated their confidence in their memories, self-perceived credibility and cognitive effort. Native and non-native witnesses did not differ in memory accuracy, susceptibility to suggestions, self-rated credibility or cognitive effort. Non-native (vs. native) speakers did however report lower confidence in their memories. In Study 2, another group of participants (N = 202) were presented with the testimonies from Study 1, and judged witnesses' credibility. Non-native witnesses were judged as less credible than native speakers. Thus, while the lower confidence exhibited by non-native eyewitnesses did not correspond to their actual memory accuracy, it influenced observers' judgments of their performance. The results provide important knowledge for legal practices when evaluating the reliability of testimonies from non-native vs. native speaking eyewitnesses.

Recent cross-cultural and neuro-hormonal investigations have suggested that love is a near universal phenomenon that has a biological background. Therefore, the remaining important question is not whether love exists worldwide but which cultural, social, or environmental factors influence experiences and expressions of love. In the present study, we explored whether countries’ modernization indexes are related to love experiences measured by three subscales (passion, intimacy, commitment) of the Triangular Love Scale. Analyzing data from 9474 individuals from 45 countries, we tested for relationships with country-level predictors, namely, modernization proxies (i.e., Human Development Index, World Modernization Index, Gender Inequality Index), collectivism, and average annual temperatures. We found that mean levels of love (especially intimacy) were higher in countries with higher modernization proxies, collectivism, and average annual temperatures. In conclusion, our results grant some support to the hypothesis that modernization processes might influence love experiences.

Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.