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Background: It is known that there is an association between debt and poor mental health. However, much of the literature is observational and focuses on how debt may lead to poor mental health. Here, we are interested in how poor mental health may be associated with debt advice adherence. Aims: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between mental health and debt advice adherence in individuals applying for a formal debt resolution mechanism (an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, IVA). Method: Eighty-six participants completed a survey measuring mental health (MHI-5), memory for information discussed during the appointment, attitudes towards IVAs, and trust in the advisor shortly after having a debt advice appointment. Adherence to the advice (whether participants completed the IVA application) was measured 10 weeks later. Results: The study found that the sample demonstrated poor levels of mental health overall but that non-adherent participants had significantly poorer mental health than those who adhered to the advice. Conclusion: These results suggest that (a) mental health needs to be considered when advising people with problem debt and (b) future research might examine if mental health support should coincide with important decision points in the debtor's journey out of debt.

AbstractThe relations between prosocial risk taking (taking a risk to benefit another person; PSRT) and interpersonal regret (regret that one's choices have caused a poor outcome for another person) were examined in 192 children aged 7–9. PSRT was measured by children's choices within a gambling task in which one choice guaranteed participants a good prize whereas the other involved risking this prize to help a peer also win a good prize. Interpersonal regret was assessed within the same task by examining children's change in emotion when they learned they would have won a better prize for a peer had they chosen differently. Performance on this task was also examined in relation to sympathy and resource sharing. Findings indicated that the operationalizations of PSRT and interpersonal regret were meaningful. Children who took a prosocial risk were more generous in a resource sharing task. In some circumstances, children who took a prosocial risk were also more likely to experience interpersonal regret than those who did not take a prosocial risk, indicating that experiencing interpersonal regret may be related to individual differences in prosociality. However, experiencing interpersonal regret did not have a direct effect on subsequent prosocial behavior, when measured by resource sharing. We consider findings in relation to a possible distinction between outcome and process regret and the generalizability of the behavioral consequences of regret.

Social essentialism, the belief that members of certain social categories share unobservable properties, licenses expectations that those categories are natural and a good basis for inference. A challenge for cognitive developmental theory is to give an account of how children come to develop essentialist beliefs about socially important categories. Previous evidence from Israel suggests that kindergarteners selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (ethnicity) categories, and that this is attenuated among children in integrated schools. In five studies (N=718) we used forced-choice (Study 1) and unconstrained (Studies 2-4) category-based inference tasks, and a questionnaire (Study 5) to study the development of essentialist reasoning about religion categories in Northern Ireland (Studies 1-3 & 5) and the US (Study 4). Results show that, as in Israel, Northern Irish children selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (religion) categories, and that such reasoning is attenuated among children in integrated schools. However, the development trajectory of essentialist thinking and the patterns of attenuation among children attending integrated schools in Northern Ireland differ from the Israeli case. Meta-analysis confirmed this claim and ruled out an alternative explanation of the results based on community diversity. Although the Northern Irish and Israeli case studies illustrate that children develop selective essentialist beliefs about socially important categories, and that these beliefs are impacted by educational context, the differences between them emphasize the importance of historical, cultural, and political context in understanding conceptual development, and suggest that there may be more than one developmental route to social essentialism.

Recent claims contrast relief experienced because a period of unpleasant uncertainty has ended and an outcome has materialized (temporal relief) – regardless of whether it is one's preferred outcome – with relief experienced because a particular outcome has occurred, when the alternative was unpalatable (counterfactual relief). Two studies (N = 993), one run the day after the UK left the European Union, and one the day after Joe Biden's inauguration, confirmed these claims. 'Leavers' and Biden voters experienced high levels of relief, and less regret and disappointment than 'Remainers' and Trump voters. 'Remainers' and Trump voters showed an effect of precursor, experiencing little relief about the outcome that had occurred, but stronger relief that a decision had been implemented. Only Trump voters who believed the election over showed this precursor effect. Results suggest at least two different triggering conditions for relief and indicate a role for anticipated relief in voting behaviour.

Categories are one of the primary ways by which people make sense of complex environments. For political environments, parties are especially useful categories. By simplifying political life, party categories enable people to make sense of politics. A fundamental characteristic of party categories is that they minimize perceived differences of members within a party (e.g., two Democrats) and maximize perceived differences between members of different parties (e.g., a Republican and a Democrat). In two‐party systems, politicians in leftist parties will often be perceived as highly differentiated from politicians in right‐wing parties. Yet, in multiparty systems there is greater complexity and potential for confusion since there are often multiple parties on the left and/or right. Spatial models of political competition predict that ideologically close neighboring parties will be perceived as similar, yet a categorical perspective holds that the public will perceive parties on the same side of the ideological divide to be dissimilar. In the present article, we review a research program investigating how political parties are treated as categories and present new data from seven democracies showing that people perceive parties to be highly differentiated regardless of where parties are located in ideological space.