New Research From Clinical Psychological Science

A Brief Group Social-Belonging Intervention to Improve Mental-Health and Academic Outcomes in BIPOC and First-Generation-to-College Students
Erin S. Sheets, Denise Young 

Despite greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion on college and university campuses, inequities persist. Awareness of structural and social threats to success can lead students from underrepresented identities to question whether they will fully belong at a given institution, which jeopardizes their psychological well-being and academic performance. This study tested a brief social-belonging intervention, delivered in a group format, that emphasized that first-year challenges are normative and that, over time, students develop relationships that deepen their sense of belonging. Participants ( N = 122) who reported poorer belonging at baseline experienced greater depressive symptoms, greater worry, and worse psychological well-being over the 14-month follow-up period. The intervention significantly reduced risk for major depression during the first 2 years of college and specifically reduced risk for participants experiencing more discrimination. Hypotheses that the intervention would improve psychosocial or academic outcomes specifically for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and first-generation-to-college students were not supported.   

Motivation and Pleasure Deficits Undermine the Benefits of Social Affiliation in Psychosis
Jack J. Blanchard, Jason F. Smith, Melanie E. Bennett, et al.   

In psychotic disorders, motivation and pleasure (MAP) deficits are associated with decreased affiliation and heightened functional impairment. We leveraged a transdiagnostic sample enriched for psychosis and a multimethod approach to test the hypothesis that MAP deficits undermine the stress-buffering benefits of affiliation. Participants completed the social-affiliation-enhancement task (SAET) to cultivate affiliation with an experimental partner. Although the SAET increased perceived affiliation and mood, individuals with greater negative symptoms derived smaller emotional benefits from the partners, as indexed by self-report and facial behavior. We then used the handholding functional MRI paradigm, which combines threat anticipation with affiliative physical contact, to determine whether MAP deficits undermine the social regulation of distress. Individuals with greater MAP deficits showed diminished neural “benefits”—reduced dampening of threat-elicited activation—from affiliative touch in key frontoparietal nodes of the dorsal attention network. In short, MAP symptoms disrupt the emotional and neuroregulatory benefits of affiliation.   

Understanding Ethnoracial Disparities and Advancing Mental Health Equity Through Clinical Psychological Science: Introduction to Special Issue
P. Priscilla Lui, Craig Rodriguez-Seijas   

Mental health disparities persist in countries such as the United States and across the world. Research with disparity populations is underrepresented in mainstream clinical psychological journals, and existing science has not focused on group specific lived experiences. Achieving mental health equity requires examination of determinants of psychopathology and health disparities and personal and cultural attributes that promote mental health. Clinical psychological science ideally also encourages and values research with underrepresented minority and underserved populations, novel and underused study designs, and research produced by diverse scholars. Our special issue highlights research that considers systematically culture specific processes, examines not only individual- but also community-level factors that relate to psychopathology and mental-health care, and challenges structural limitations in the current literature. We review these articles that incorporate innovative and community engaged approaches and showcase the importance of diversity in researcher and research participant demographics and perspectives in the advancement of equity in clinical psychological science.   

What Is the Role of Affective Cognition in Trauma and Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder-Related Drinking? A Systematic Review
Michelle J. Zaso, Ian R. Troidl, Jennifer P. Read 

Trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (TR/PTSD) are implicated in deleterious alcohol outcomes, yet the processes that undergird these associations remain elusive. Affective (i.e., emotionally laden) cognitions may play key roles in TR/PTSD-related drinking that could inform prevention and intervention. In the present review, we synthesized extant literature ( k = 58) on affective cognitions and their role in negative- and positive-reinforcement TR/PTSD-related drinking, including alcohol-specific (e.g., drinking motives, alcohol expectancies) and non-alcohol-specific (e.g., emotion-regulation cognitions, perception and attentional biases) cognitions. Findings generally supported the importance of alcohol-specific cognitions in negative-reinforcement drinking more so than positive-reinforcement drinking. Non-alcohol-specific affective cognitions were considerably less researched. Several gaps in the knowledge base emerged; studies were overwhelmingly cross-sectional, conducted mainly within homogeneous college samples, and often did not disaggregate effects of trauma exposure from those of PTSD. Future research is needed to address these gaps to optimally inform clinical efforts to reduce TR/PTSD-related drinking risk.   

Positive and Negative Emotion-Regulation Ability Profiles: Links With Strategies, Goals, and Internalizing Symptoms
Juhyun Park, Kristin Naragon-Gainey 

Emotion regulation (ER) encompasses multiple, interdependent aspects (e.g., abilities, strategies, goals) whose collective contribution to mental-health outcomes is not well understood. To provide a more holistic picture of ER and better identify individuals who may be more susceptible to maladaptive ER and internalizing psychopathology, we examined latent profiles of positive and negative ER abilities and their associations with other aspects of ER (e.g., strategies, goals, success) and internalizing symptoms among adults cross-sectionally (Study 1) and daily (Study 2). In both studies, profiles characterized by pronounced deficits in positive ER abilities and below-average negative ER abilities were associated with maladaptive ER strategies and internalizing symptoms. Individuals with these profiles were also more likely to want to down-regulate positive emotions and use strategies reflecting disengagement from positive emotions in daily life. These findings provide insight into characteristics of vulnerable individuals, which can help refine current theory of ER and intervention efforts.   

Rural Suicide: A Systematic Review and Recommendations
Tyler R. Pritchard, Jennifer L. Buckle, Kristel Thomassin, Stephen P. Lewis   

Suicide is a public-health concern that has been linked to multiple biological, psychological, and social risk factors. Rural living is purported to be a unique risk for suicide for myriad reasons. Yet there are some concerns with rural suicidology, notably regarding defining and operationalizing “rural.” Furthermore, the last comprehensive review of rural suicide is approximately 10 years old. With this in mind, in the current review, we offer (a) a comprehensive and updated overview of the operationalization and variability of rural in rural suicidology and (b) a summary of differences in direct and indirect suicide factors between rural and nonrural regions and whether potential differences depend on how rural is operationalized. Results indicate a high degree of heterogeneity in defining rural, rendering conclusions about both direct and indirect rural suicide risks unclear. We therefore present a set of recommendations for rural suicidologists to apply to enhance the understanding of suicide and, ultimately, prevent death by suicide in rural regions.   

Testing Criterion Validity in Hierarchical Models of Psychopathology: Comparison of Latent-Variable and Factor-Score Approaches
Alexander L. Williams, Christopher C. Conway, Thomas M. Olino, William Revelle, Richard E. Zinbarg, Richard E. Zinbarg   

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology is a quantitative diagnostic system that is gaining traction as a framework for studying the correlates of mental-health problems. However, it remains unknown how best to operationalize hierarchically related psychopathology dimensions during criterion validity tests. In a series of simulations, we evaluated the performance of latent-variable (i.e., structural equation modeling [SEM]) and factor-score representations of hierarchical psychopathology constructs in criterion validity analyses. In models based on continuously distributed psychopathology indicators (e.g., symptom composites), SEM and factor-score methods both tended to yield unbiased estimates of criterion validity coefficients. In contrast, for models based on dichotomous indicators (e.g., categorical diagnoses), SEM led to more accurate estimates than factor scores in most cases. We offer recommendations for psychopathology researchers based on these results and provide an R function ( https://osf.io/u3j5d/ ) that investigators can use to apply the approaches studied here in real-world data sets.   

What Is the Role of Affective Cognition in Trauma and Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder-Related Drinking? A Systematic Review
Michelle J. Zaso, Ian R. Troidl, Jennifer P. Read 

Trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (TR/PTSD) are implicated in deleterious alcohol outcomes, yet the processes that undergird these associations remain elusive. Affective (i.e., emotionally laden) cognitions may play key roles in TR/PTSD-related drinking that could inform prevention and intervention. In the present review, we synthesized extant literature ( k = 58) on affective cognitions and their role in negative- and positive-reinforcement TR/PTSD-related drinking, including alcohol-specific (e.g., drinking motives, alcohol expectancies) and non-alcohol-specific (e.g., emotion-regulation cognitions, perception and attentional biases) cognitions. Findings generally supported the importance of alcohol-specific cognitions in negative-reinforcement drinking more so than positive-reinforcement drinking. Non-alcohol-specific affective cognitions were considerably less researched. Several gaps in the knowledge base emerged; studies were overwhelmingly cross-sectional, conducted mainly within homogeneous college samples, and often did not disaggregate effects of trauma exposure from those of PTSD. Future research is needed to address these gaps to optimally inform clinical efforts to reduce TR/PTSD-related drinking risk.   

Repetitive Negative Thinking Mediates the Relationship Between Sleep Disturbance and Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Depression, and Eating Disorders in Adolescence: Findings From a 5-Year Longitudinal Study
Cele Richardson, Natasha R. Magson, Ella Oar, et al. 

Sleep problems commonly co-occur alongside generalized and social anxiety, depression, and eating disorders in young people. Yet it is unclear if sleep disturbance conveys risk for these social-emotional disorders across early to middle adolescence and whether repetitive negative thinking (RNT) mediates this association. In this study, we examined longitudinal relationships between sleep (morning/eveningness, school-night sleep duration, and sleepiness), general and presleep RNT, and symptoms of generalized and social anxiety, depression, and eating disorders across 5 years. As part of the wider Risks to Adolescent Wellbeing Project, these constructs were assessed in a cohort of 528 youths over six annual waves of data collection, spanning ages 11 to 16. Cross-lagged panel models that examined direct, indirect, and bidirectional associations showed that worse adolescent sleep predicted increases in symptoms of generalized anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and eating disorders across each wave directly and indirectly through general and presleep RNT. Symptoms of social-emotional disorders did not predict worsening in sleep. Results suggest that sleep disturbance and RNT should be targeted simultaneously in the prevention and treatment of social-emotional disorders in adolescence, although limitations around the use of self-report and nondiagnostic symptom measures are noted.   

Psychological Mediators of Reduced Distress: Preregistered Analyses From a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Smartphone-Based Well-Being Training
Matthew J. Hirshberg, Cortland J. Dahl, Daniel Bolt, Richard J. Davidson, Simon B. Goldberg 

Understanding why interventions work is essential to optimizing them. Although mechanistic theories of meditation-based interventions (MBIs) exist, empirical evidence is limited. We randomly assigned 662 adults (79.9% reported clinical levels of anxiety or depressive symptoms) to a 4-week smartphone-based MBI or wait-list control condition early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological distress and four theory-driven preregistered psychological mediators of well-being (mindful action, loneliness, cognitive defusion, and purpose) were assessed five times during the intervention period and at 3-month follow-up. In preregistered analyses, assignment to the intervention predicted significant gains on all mediators, which, in turn, significantly mediated follow-up distress (21.9%–62.5% of intervention effect on distress). No significant mediation pathway was observed in an exploratory multiple mediator analysis, but reduced loneliness accounted for 61.7% of the combined indirect effect. Multiple psychological pathways may mediate reduced distress in a digital MBI.   

Theory for How Parental Monitoring Changes Youth Behavior
William E. Pelham, Herry Patel, Jennifer A. Somers, Sarah J. Racz 

Low parental monitoring is a well-established risk factor for and presumed cause of teen problem behavior. However, an integrated theory for how monitoring changes teen behavior has not been articulated. We propose a model in which parental monitoring can reduce teen misbehavior via nine mechanisms organized into behavior-management (B), context-control (C), and relationship/support-mediated (R) domains (BCR model). Parental monitoring increases the expectation and actual occurrence of punishment for misbehavior (B), enables the parent to steer the teens’ socialization contexts (peers, nonparent adults, siblings, media) away from those that encourage misbehavior (C), and strengthens the teen’s bond to parent, disclosure of information, and receipt of social support (R)—all of which in turn reduce misbehavior.   

Comorbidity Between Internalizing Symptoms and Disordered Eating Is Primarily Driven by Genetic Influences on Emotion Regulation in Adult Female Twins
Megan E. Mikhail, S. Alexandra Burt, Michael C. Neale, Pamela K. Keel, Debra K. Katzman, Kelly L. Klump 

Internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depression) and disordered eating (DE; e.g., binge eating, dietary restraint) are highly comorbid, but the mechanisms underlying their comorbidity remain unknown. This was the first twin study to examine whether their co-occurrence may be driven by genetic and/or environmental influences on emotion regulation (ER; ability to modulate duration/intensity of emotions). Analyses included 688 adult female twins from the Michigan State University Twin Registry. Cholesky decomposition twin models showed that comorbidity between dimensionally modeled internalizing and DE was due to overlapping genetic ( r = .55; 69.3% of shared variance) and nonshared environmental influences ( r = .26; 30.7% of shared variance). When ER was added into the model, all genetic influences shared between internalizing and DE were attributable to ER, suggesting genetic influences on ER are the primary driver of comorbidity between internalizing and DE. Shared genes may shape affective processing, interoceptive sensitivity, or other brain-based processes (e.g., cognitive control) implicated in ER.   

A Formal Model of Affiliative Interpersonality
Stefan Westermann, Sven Banisch 

Capturing the complexity of interpersonal dynamics—emerging from approach and avoidance motives of two individuals in dyadic interplay—remains challenging. In line with calls for embracing complexity in psychological research using formal modeling, we employed evolutionary game theory to investigate the underlying mechanisms of affiliative interpersonality. We constructed a relational state space that represents the ways of relating available in the momentary state of an interpersonal relationship. Next, we modeled relationships as trajectories in that relational space. Qualitatively different interpersonal dynamics emerged: (a) global stability with only one relational attractor (e.g., pure reciprocal friendliness), (b) bistability with two mutually exclusive attractors (e.g., either pure friendliness or pure distance), and (c) cycles between friendliness and distance in the relational space. The bistable dynamics appear to resemble the phenomenon of interpersonal complementarity (e.g., friendliness invites friendliness). Furthermore, the model generates psychopathologically relevant dynamics (e.g., oscillating, unstable interpersonal relationships in borderline personality disorder).   

How Idiographic Methodologies Can Move the Clinical-Science Field Forward to Integrate Personalized Treatment Into Everyday Clinical Care and Improve Treatment Outcomes
Cheri A. Levinson, Caroline Christian, Carolyn B. Becker 

The research–practice gap refers to the fact that most evidence-based treatments created by researchers are not used in routine clinical care, which affects real-world treatment outcomes negatively. One key reason that evidence-based care is not used more frequently is its nonpersonalized format. For example, most evidence-based treatments are based on averages and are limited in addressing comorbidity, heterogeneity, and the needs of clients with minoritized identities. These limitations reduce therapist uptake of evidence-based treatment at large. As a result, most patients seeking treatment in community settings do not receive evidence-based care, which could more quickly and effectively reduce mental-health suffering. Furthermore, even clinicians who want to engage in evidence-based practice must still rely on their clinical judgment in decision-making when treatments fail to address client-specific needs. This reliance on decision-making can influence outcomes negatively. We propose that idiographic (i.e., one-person; N = 1) methodologies (data analysis of one person’s data) combined with digital mental-health technology could help reduce the research–practice gap and improve treatment outcomes. In this article, we outline the many issues contributing to these problems and how idiographic methods of personalization can address these issues. We provide an overview of idiographic methodologies and examples of how to use these methods to personalize existing evidence-based treatments with patients. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for future research and movement within the field that is needed to propel this type of personalization into routine clinical care to reduce the research–practice gap and improve treatment outcomes broadly.   

Systematic Review of Cocaine-Treatment Interventions for Black Americans
Jardin Dogan-Dixon, Paris B. Wheeler, Krystal Cunningham, Danelle Stevens-Watkins, William W. Stoops 

Evidence-based drug-treatment studies that have shaped best practice in the United States demonstrate racial differences in effectiveness, with Black participants reporting worse outcomes compared with White participants. There are disproportionate cocaine-related overdose deaths affecting Black Americans, with limited information about interventions that serve them best. Culturally tailored treatment approaches, which incorporate participants’ salient identities and experiences, have shown effectiveness in meta-analyses. Thus, in this qualitative systematic review, we used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to identify both culturally universal and culturally tailored treatment-intervention studies that addressed cocaine outcomes among Black Americans. Four hundred two articles met initial criteria, 330 were reviewed by independent coders, and k = 30 treatment approaches are described in the article. Results indicate 72% of culturally tailored interventions were effective at reducing cocaine use compared with 47% of culturally universal interventions. Implications for provision and funding of effective cocaine-treatment interventions for Black Americans are critical to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike.   

Meta-Analysis Shows Trauma Memories in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Lack Coherence: A Response to Taylor et al. (2022)
Chris R. Brewin, Andy P. Field

Taylor et al. reported that in healthy participants, memories of traumatic and comparison films did not differ in coherence. The lack of a group diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and limitations of the trauma-film paradigm mean that their design is unable to directly test predictions made by clinical theories of PTSD. Contrary to what Taylor et al. claimed, there is convincing evidence for trauma memories in PTSD being incoherent or disorganized. Meta-analysis demonstrated a strong positive association between PTSD and memory incoherence/disorganization, moderated by the effect of the methods chosen to assess disorganization.   

Trait Social Anxiety Moderates the Relationship Between Emotion-Regulation Strategy Switching and State Anxiety in Daily Life
Katharine E. Daniel, Robert G. Moulder, Steven M. Boker, Bethany A. Teachman 

Difficulty knowing when to switch emotion-regulation (ER) strategies is theorized to be a key pathway to emotion dysregulation, but relatively few studies have empirically examined this. We applied a new order-based metric to quantify how 109 socially anxious people switched between 19 different ER strategies (or chose not to regulate at all) throughout a 5-week ecological-momentary-assessment (EMA) study that yielded 12,616 observations. We tested whether state- and trait-anxiety reports and their interaction predicted differences in ER strategy switching. Results indicated that people with relatively higher social-anxiety symptoms switch more often between ER strategies during periods of high average state anxiety but less often during periods of high variability in state anxiety than less socially anxious people. Interventions focused on helping socially anxious people learn how ER strategies are connected to variations in state anxiety might hold promise to increase adaptive ER-switching decisions. More broadly, expanding ER-switching interventions to consider the role of changing situations is an important next step.   

“General Addiction Liability” Revisited
Ashley L. Watts, Kenneth J. Sher, Andrew C. Heath, Douglas Steinley, Michael Brusco

Although substance use disorders are widely known to be influenced by myriad etiologic factors, recent research promotes the notion that liability toward addiction broadly construed can be described by a single, unitary dimension that we term “general addiction liability.” Here, we revisit the concept of general addiction liability by placing it at greater theoretical and empirical risk. To do so, we used data from two epidemiologic samples (N range = 262–8,552) and employed varied quantitative methods to examine the associations between alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and opioid use disorders. We did not find strong evidence for general addiction liability. Nevertheless, consequence-based features (e.g., social/interpersonal harm, hazardous use) tended to form cross-substance connections. We contextualize our findings in the broader literature on addiction liability and offer several explanations for why we and others arrive at competing conclusions with respect to the robustness and nature of general addiction liability.    

Learn about Ashley Watts and the other recipients of the 2025 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award.

Contributions of Coping Flexibility and Associated Functional Brain Connectivity to Resilient Trajectories of Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Xiaoqin Wang, Yafei Tan, Lei Jia, et al.   

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an unprecedented challenge for individual mental health. In this study, we examined the lasting impact of the pandemic on mental health among Chinese college students and tested whether different coping dimensions contributed to resilience. Using a 2-year longitudinal design with four waves, we identified four common trajectories for individuals’ levels of depression and anxiety: resilient, recovered, delayed, and chronic. With prepandemic coping and resting-state neuroimaging data as predictors, we found that coping flexibility and corresponding connectivity patterns significantly predicted increased odds ratios of resilient trajectories for depression and anxiety. However, use of specific emotion-regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) did not predict resilient trajectories. Overall, findings help to identify heterogeneity in emotional trajectories during the pandemic and indicate that coping flexibility plays a critical role in resilience. This work has implications for clinical-risk identification and developing mental-health interventions for the current pandemic and future crises.

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