This study explored how facial emotional expressions influence the willingness to forgive, focusing on the role of sadness and attentional orientation under neutral and stress-induced conditions. An online survey was administered through Qualtrics to a U.S. sample (N = 246), employing scales to measure trait forgiveness, compassion, and willingness to forgive. Visual stimuli from the OASIS database were used to induce stress and present facial expressions, with a prior validation study (N = 215) selecting appropriate images displaying happy, neutral, and sad faces. The findings show that sad expressions significantly increased the willingness to forgive compared to neutral or happy expressions, supporting the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Trait forgiveness and compassion enhanced the willingness to forgive, highlighting the interplay between dispositional traits and situational factors. Attentional orientation towards emotional expressions varied with trait forgiveness under stress: those higher in trait forgiveness preferred happy faces. In contrast, those lower in trait forgiveness were more attentive to sad faces. These results suggest that recognizing emotional expressions has the potential to facilitate forgiveness, offering practical implications for conflict resolution strategies. Future research should address limitations such as cultural representation and the complexity of real-life emotional interactions using diverse samples and advanced techniques like eye-tracking.

The objective of this study was to gain insight into the experiences of qualified therapists in counseling early-stage bereaved clients and to identify implications for clinical practice. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with psychotherapists experienced in bereavement counseling, using a phenomenological, thematic analysis approach. The primary objectives of early bereavement counseling are to normalize the client's experience, provide psychoeducation, assess emotional and functional risks, offer support through active listening, and create a safe space for emotional release. Empathy and attentive listening were found to be essential qualities for therapists. There were no risks associated with early bereavement counseling, which is in contrast to most current practice recommendations. The counseling session might be brief, and clients who need more help are urged to seek it out elsewhere. Comprehensive clinical work is not recommended at this early stage.

Misophonia is a disorder characterized by adverse reactions to specific repetitive sounds, such as oral and nasal noises made by humans (e.g., chewing, sniffing) and environmental sounds (e.g., animal licking, tapping). These reactions can manifest early in life and involve the nervous, autonomic, and perceptual systems. Cognitive functions appear to play a key role in how these stimuli are processed in individuals with misophonia. Although it is associated with various psychiatric disorders, it also presents distinct clinical features that suggest alterations in cognitive processing, particularly selective attention and inhibitory control. However, research on cognitive processes in situations without exposure to trigger sounds in individuals with misophonia, especially children, remains limited. Given that misophonia typically begins in childhood or adolescence, understanding its early cognitive profile is crucial. This study investigated cold cognitive processes, including inhibitory control, selective and divided attention, and verbal and abstract reasoning using performance-based tests in children with misophonia (n = 32) and controls without sound-related issues (n = 30), aged 7–17. Children with misophonia outperformed controls in divided attention (p < .001) and inhibitory control (p < .001), with no differences in other cognitive domains. Logistic regression showed that better inhibitory control increased the likelihood of misophonia, while linear regression indicated that misophonia status and selective attention predicted better inhibitory control. These results suggest that misophonia in children is related to enhanced inhibitory control rather than deficits in cognitive functioning. A better understanding of these cognitive processes could be an important step toward understanding the nature of misophonia, especially in pediatric populations.

The neural oscillation of frontal midline theta (FMθ) has been proposed as an electrophysiological biomarker of cognition control modulated by the frontal executive control system. Recent research has demonstrated that stereotype control elicited by implicit stereotype violation can induce FMθ synchronization. However, given the distinct representation and processing mechanisms underlying explicit and implicit stereotypes, no study yet has investigated whether explicit stereotype violation can elicit FMθ synchronization, or whether FMθ synchronization can function as an indicator of stereotype control. To address these gaps, the current study utilized electrophysiological methods to investigate the stereotype control process elicited by explicit gender stereotype violation within an explicit lexical decision task. For the event-related potentials results, it was found that the N400 (but not the P600) component, was sensitive to stereotype consistency and gender factors. Specifically, trials involving stereotype-inconsistent (SI) stimuli elicited larger N400 amplitudes compared to stereotype-consistent (SC) trials. Time-frequency analysis revealed that SI trials induced an FMθ synchronization effect relative to SC trials, spanning the time window from the N400 to the P600 components. These findings extend previous research by demonstrating that FMθ neural oscillations can serve as a stable neural indicator reflecting stereotype control, applicable not only to implicit measures but also to explicit measures. Based on the temporal-sequence of the N400 and FMθ synchronization effects, it is proposed that the N400 effect may reflect the initial semantic conflict/anomaly monitoring of stereotype violations, while the FMθ synchronization may reflect a subsequent stereotype control mechanism in response to stereotype violations.

Writing in a foreign language is a cognitively complex task, which requires the engagement of significant working memory resources. Nonetheless, the development of writing skills in correlation with working memory abilities among adult L2 learners has never been examined in a longitudinal study. The current study aimed to bridge this gap by investigating the relationship between phonological short-term memory (PSTM), working memory capacity (WMC), and the development of L2 writing skills over a period of two years. Participants were 32 Polish university students, majoring in English. The variable measurements involved two WMC tests, a test of PSTM, and four measures of writing competence operationalized as content, organization, vocabulary and language use, and mechanics taken over two years, six months apart. The results indicate that both PSTM and WMC correlate with writing competence. However, general linear repeated measures model analyses including PSTM and WMC as predictors of writing performance at three subsequent phases revealed that higher levels of either working memory component do not contribute to improvements in writing competence over time.

Rogers believed that being empathetic, nonjudgemental, and honest were attitudes essential to therapeutic change. However, he saw the potential for these “core conditions” beyond therapeutic settings. Given the marked (yet unexplored) similarities between an ideal therapist and a partner, and implications of these relationships on individual wellbeing, we assessed the importance of core conditions in long-term romantic relationships, relative to social traits – specifically, kindness, intelligence, and social status. Participants (n = 364) rated their partners on the core conditions and traits widely used in the mate preference literature, and also completed measures of their relationship satisfaction and mental health (depression and anxiety). We found that perceived level of empathy in one’s partner predicted relationship satisfaction, but not mental health, above and beyond the comparison traits. The results highlight the importance of empathy, and potentially the core conditions, in the context of long-term relationships – and beyond.

Although previous studies have robustly established the existence of the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect in the processing of numbers, the question of whether this effect is elicited by numerical quantity or numerical ordinality remains unanswered. In the current study, age numbers were employed as numerical stimuli to distinguish between the contributions of numerical quantity and numerical ordinality to the SNARC effect on the basis of a series of experiments. Experiment 1 required participants to categorize the magnitudes of two Arabic numerals, thus replicating the classic SNARC effect. Experiments 2 and 3 required participants to imagine that the Arabic numerals previously used in Experiment 1 represented the age of a person and to categorize these numbers on the basis of either birth order (Experiment 2) or age magnitude (Experiment 3). The results revealed that the birth order categorization task (Experiment 2) did not elicit the SNARC effect in the context of processing age-related numbers. However, in the age magnitude categorization task (Experiment 3), the processing of age numbers induced the classic SNARC effect. These findings suggest that (a) the processing of numerical ordinality is not subject to the SNARC effect and that (b) the robust activation of numerical quantity can counteract the contrasting effect of numerical ordinality on the SNARC effect in the context of processing age numbers. In summary, both magnitude and ordinality seem to play roles in the SNARC-like effect for age numbers.

Empathy for pain is related to the empathic response to pain stimuli, which is often measured by event-related potential (ERP) components. This response is susceptible to various characteristics associated with the person being observed. In this context, the physical attractiveness of the face is one of the important factors influencing empathy for pain. Previous ERP research showed that the empathic reaction occurs only for less attractive models. Because of this, we used an adaptation procedure to influence empathic reactions towards attractive models. During the adaptation procedure, neurons become less responsive to the stimulus after repeated exposure to the adaptor stimulus. At the same time, stimuli with features that differ from those seen during the exposition process become more unfamiliar. In our study, 30 participants (14 females, Mage = 21.79, SDage = 2.01, age range: 19–25) observed adaptor stimuli (attractive faces) and then faces in painful and nonpainful situations to elicit empathic responses. The results showed a difference between painful and nonpainful stimuli in the P3 component regardless of the facial attractiveness of the model. Based on the results, it can be assumed that adaptation aftereffects can eliminate the effect of differences in the empathetic response to physically attractive models.