Frontiers in Psychology

Social bonds are essential for well-being, and moving together to music is a universal means of promoting prosocial behavior and positive affect. However, the functions and interpretations of movement synchrony and music can vary across cultures and may depend on personal values. We examined how interpersonal synchrony and music affect social bonding in participants from individualistic (Denmark, N = 137) and collectivistic (China, N = 226) cultures. Participants watched videos of virtual stick figures - representing themselves (virtual-self) and an unknown person (virtual-other) - moving either synchronously or asynchronously to music or a metronome. After each video, participants rated three indicators of social bonding: their momentary feeling of social connectedness with the virtual-other (Inclusion of Other in the Self, IOS), likeability of the virtual-other, and well-being as the virtual-self. Personal values were measured using the Portrait Value Questionnaire. Music and synchrony promoted all three indicators of social bonding in both cultures, whereas cultural differences emerged in asynchronous conditions. Chinese participants rated the asynchronous virtual-other more likeable than Danish participants, aligning with the collectivistic emphasis on social harmony. Moreover, Chinese participants rated their own well-being higher than Danish participants when the virtual-self moved asynchronously, suggesting greater self-forgiveness in maintaining group harmony. The personal values of benevolence, conformity, and universalism interacted with movement synchrony and cultural background, underscoring the important role of values in interpretations of social interactions. Our findings highlight the universal prosocial effects of music and movement synchrony, while also emphasizing cultural nuances in how these effects are experienced.

IntroductionExecutive functions (EF) are higher-order cognitive processes essential for academic performance in university settings. Although there is extensive research on EF training in children, studies in young adults are scarce, particularly those involving interventions tailored to specific needs. ObjectiveTo evaluate the effect of the University Executive Network-Training Program (NExT-U), based on specific needs, on the executive functioning of Cuban university students. MethodologyA quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group and pretest-posttest measurements. Participants were 27 second-year Psychology students (74% female; mean age = 19 years). The experimental group (n=7) received three training sessions focused on Conscious Regulation of Behavior, Decision-Making, Emotional Regulation, and Monitoring of Responsibilities, identified through an initial assessment using the UEF-1 Scale. The control group (n=20) continued with their usual academic activities. Non-parametric analyses and the residual gain method were employed. ResultsThe experimental group showed significant improvements in Conscious Regulation of Behavior (p = .026; r = .51), Emotional Regulation (p = .030; r = .49), and the Supervisory Attention System (p = .046; r = .44), with large effect sizes. The control group experienced no significant changes in any of the functions evaluated. ConclusionsA brief, personalized program can enhance specific executive functions in university students, demonstrating cognitive plasticity in young adults. The findings support the design of contextually relevant interventions to strengthen transversal competencies in higher education.

Brands increasingly express their positions on social issues through advertising, social media, and public campaigns. How such messages shape consumer perception is an ongoing area of investigation. Addressing a gap in brand activism research in marketing, this study uses eye- tracking technology to examine its impact on brand attitude, eye movement behavior, and memory retention. We tested these variables across three experimental tasks: an online survey, a free- viewing task, and a surprise memory recognition test. As a result, disagreement increased reading time for text statements, while agreement increased visual engagement (fixations) with the depicted product. Positive brand attitude also enhanced memory recognition for advertisements. Overall, disagreement appears to trigger effortful processing of conflicting information, while agreement facilitates visual absorption and strengthens product recognition. These findings highlight the cognitive risks and rewards of brand activism and provide a foundation for future research on its underlying perceptual and cognitive mechanisms.

Sleep supports the consolidation of newly acquired information, however its role in the formation of self-beliefs has not yet been examined. Here, we investigated whether sleep facilitates the retention, stabilization, revision and long-term maintenance of newly formed ability beliefs. Using a Sleep vs. Wake between-subjects design (N=54), participants completed the Learning Of Own Performance (LOOP) task, which allowed them to form new positive and negative ability self-beliefs based on mocked feedback at a first session, and to revise them when encountering contradictory feedback at a second session. Belief formation was followed by either a sleep or wake retention interval. Belief states were tested at four time points: immediately after belief formation, after the 12-h retention interval, following the revision phase and after three weeks. Participants successfully formed and revised self-beliefs using the LOOP task. Compared with wakefulness, sleep following belief formation did not affect belief retention across the 12-h interval, nor did it stabilize beliefs against their revision. However, after three weeks, participants who slept after belief formation showed a shift towards more positivity for the initially formed low ability self-beliefs. Contrary to our hypotheses, sleep did not enhance short-term retention or stabilization of newly formed self-beliefs. However, the more positively recalled ability self-belief associated with the initially low-performance condition suggest that sleep may facilitate a positive long-term shift.

Background: Sports betting is one of the most popular, rapidly evolving, and attractive forms of gambling. It is associated with an increased risk of gambling-related harms, including relationship difficulties, crime, and physical and mental health problems. Understanding the subjective experiences of sports betting is essential for accurately defining problematic betting and avoiding the overpathologization of the behavior. Hence, this study explored the perceptions and experiences of young men involved in sports betting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: We employed a qualitative study design using a phenomenological approach. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirteen purposively selected participants in Addis Ababa. Participants were adults aged 18 years or older who had engaged in sports betting within the past 12 months. They were recruited from sports betting houses. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and translated into English. The data were imported into OpenCode software and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, in which themes were actively generated through an iterative and interpretative process by the research team. Findings: The data resulted in five major themes: reasons for engagement in sports betting, unique and attractive features of sports betting, experiences of problematic betting, subjective harms of sports betting, and coping and recovery. Young men engaged in sports betting for financial gain, peer influence, and as a way of spending time and coping with boredom. Participants described several features that made sports betting particularly appealing, including ease of access, the ability to bet with small amounts of money, reduced interpersonal confrontation, opportunities to gamble on football, the chance to test sporting knowledge, diverse betting options, and frequent rewards and reinforcement. Experiences suggestive of problematic betting included preoccupation and extensive planning, successive betting and increased risk-taking after losses, unsuccessful attempts to quit, concealment of betting behavior, social and occupational impairment, and negative emotional experiences. Conclusion: Sports betting emerged in participants' accounts as a growing behavioral practice among young men in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raising concerns about gambling-related harms. While often initiated as a leisure activity, participants' narratives suggested patterns that extended beyond casual engagement and shared features commonly associated with problematic gambling. Future studies should include women and employ large-scale quantitative designs to examine the population burden and distribution of sports betting-related harms and to inform appropriate prevention and intervention strategies.

Understanding other people relies on long-term memory: we use learned information about others' personalities, mental states, and personal histories to make inferences about the causes of their behavior. However, little is known about individual differences in memory for high-level social information. Here, we develop and psychometrically evaluate a behavioral measure of social memory from narrative video content. Participants (N = 103) watched the pilot episode of the TV show Friday Night Lights, and answered multiple choice questions about characters' actions, statements, inferred mental states, relationships, and personalities immediately after viewing and following a 21-day delay. The social memory task showed moderate split-half reliability, demonstrating feasibility as an individual difference measure. Memory for information about specific events in the narrative showed a decline across the delay, while memory for abstract information remained stable. Social memory performance was correlated with separate measures of face-name association and verbal episodic memory, but not with face image recognition memory. These results provide a proof of concept for a novel behavioral measure of social memory and suggest that the measure relates to episodic and relational memory but not image recognition.

The pleasurable urge to move to music - known as groove - has been linked to rhythmic and harmonic complexity via an inverted-U relationship, consistent with predictive coding theory of music. This link has been demonstrated mainly in Western listeners, leaving its cultural generality unclear. Given reports of heightened pitch and harmony sensitivity in Chinese listeners, we predicted stronger responses to harmonic complexity and weaker responses to rhythmic complexity compared with Western listeners. We conducted two online experiments measuring "pleasure" and "wanting to move" ratings for musical excerpts varying in rhythmic and harmonic complexity, comparing Chinese and Danish participants as representatives of Eastern and Western traditions. In Experiment 1, which manipulated both dimensions, both groups showed inverted-U responses to rhythmic complexity, but Danish participants exhibited a sharper curve, indicating greater affective differentiation. No inverted-U pattern emerged for harmonic complexity, and Chinese participants did not show enhanced harmonic sensitivity. Experiment 2 focused on rhythmic complexity using ecologically valid stimuli with finer gradations. Again, Danes showed greater sensitivity to rhythmic variation, reflected in a sharper curvature of their inverted U responses, though peak responses did not differ between groups. Our findings support the universality of predictive responses to rhythmic complexity, while highlighting the modulatory role of cultural exposure in shaping musical affective experiences.

Background: Psychological health is an important aspect of health and well-being among adults with irritable bowel syndrome, yet the interrelationships among individual vulnerabilities, social experiences, perceived stress, and psychological health outcomes remain poorly understood. Objective: To characterize psychological health and examine direct and indirect associations of childhood adversity and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-related symptoms within an adapted Stress Process Model. Design: Cross-sectional secondary analysis. Setting: The United States All of Us Research Program. Participants: 2,417 adults with electronic health record-documented irritable bowel syndrome and complete data on the primary analysis variables and covariates. Methods: Separate structural equation models examined childhood adversity and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-related symptoms in relation to perceived stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and positive psychological well-being, with loneliness and perceived social support as psychosocial pathways. Models adjusted for sociodemographic and social-context factors. Results: The median age was 54.39 years; 80.7% were female and 84.4% were White. Moderate-to-high perceived stress was reported by 56.2%, at least moderate anxiety symptoms by 21.0%, and at least moderate depressive symptoms by 24.3%. Higher ACE-8 scores were associated with greater perceived stress, anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms and lower psychological well-being ({beta} = 0.063, 0.089, 0.116, and -0.100, respectively); corresponding associations for higher ASRS-6 scores were {beta} = 0.299, 0.355, 0.390, and -0.260. Loneliness-specific indirect associations were positive for perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (ACE-8: {beta} = 0.023-0.034; ASRS-6: {beta} = 0.043-0.075) and negative for psychological well-being (ACE-8: {beta} = -0.039; ASRS-6: {beta} = -0.089; all p < .001). Social support-specific indirect associations were not significant in the ACE-8 model and were small and significant only for anxiety and depression in the ASRS-6 model ({beta} = 0.003-0.004). Conclusions: Psychological health among adults with irritable bowel syndrome was associated with interconnected individual and social factors within an adapted Stress Process Model. Childhood adversity and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-related symptoms showed direct and indirect associations with psychological health, with loneliness emerging as the most consistent social factor. These findings support prospective investigation of individual vulnerabilities and social experiences in psychological health. The cross-sectional design does not establish temporal ordering or causal mediation.

The current study aims to identify materials that most people experience as being unpleasant to touch and to uncover the perceptual attributes that link to unpleasantness. We sampled 79 everyday materials covering a wide range of sensory properties such as fluidity, granularity, roughness, and softness, e.g., cooking oil, sand, coconut, and silk. We asked participants to freely explore these materials with their dominant hand and subsequently rate their unpleasantness and 23 sensory attributes (e.g., elasticity, stickiness) in the absence of visual and auditory feedback. We collected data on material unpleasantness from two populations: Germany and the UK. Our wide array of materials showed different unpleasantness levels that correlated with specific perceptual material attributes. In general, viscous and deformable materials (e.g., hair gel, play-doh) felt more unpleasant to touch than surface-soft and smooth materials. Results were comparable for the German and UK samples. Overall, our results revealed a relationship between specific sensory attributes of materials and their unpleasantness, which seems to be consistent across German and UK samples. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how various sensory attributes are related to haptic unpleasantness. These insights advance our understanding of haptic perception with various implications, such as product design and affective computing systems, as both seek to integrate touch for detecting and modulating human affective states.

Healthy lifestyle habits are a key pillar of physical, psychological, and social well-being, yet university years are often marked by declines in sleep quality, physical activity, and other health behaviors that may affect academic performance. This cross-sectional study examined these associations in 390 Spanish university students, assessed via an online and in-person questionnaire covering academic trajectory (grade point average, credits passed, curricular progression), sleep quality (PSQI), physical activity (IPAQ), tobacco use, Body Mass Index (BMI), and sociodemographic data. Bivariate associations were tested with chi-square, Pearson correlation, t-tests, and ANOVA, followed by generalized linear models for significant variables. Sports participation, but not IPAQ-measured physical activity, was significantly associated with academic progression, defined as advancing one grade level per year. Sleep indicators showed mixed, partly counterintuitive associations: poorer nocturnal sleep was linked to better progression, whereas better sleep quality predicted a higher percentage of credits completed. BMI was a modest positive predictor of credit completion, and underweight students performed significantly worse than overweight or obese peers. Tobacco use showed no significant associations. These findings suggest that sleep-related behaviors, sports participation, and, to a lesser extent, BMI, are relevant correlates of academic progress, supporting university health policies addressing sleep, physical activity, and nutrition.

Interest in mentoring remains widespread within the scientific community, as mentorship is considered crucial to developing the scientific workforce. A longstanding focus on the positive aspects of mentorship obscures the reality that some mentoring relationships may be ineffective, counterproductive, or harmful. Progress has been limited by the absence of a scale capable of measuring both the positive and negative mentoring experiences of doctoral students. We addressed this need by developing a new scale: the Mentoring Experiences in Research and Graduate Education (MERGE). Results of three sequential multi-method studies (total N = 1,308) provide evidence for: (a) the content and response process validity of the MERGE; (b) a six-factor structure capturing the range of mentoring experiences; (c) negative mentoring experiences as empirically distinct from the absence of positive mentoring; (d) convergent, discriminant and criterion-related validity of the MERGE, with each factor demonstrating unique patterns of association with outcomes; and (e) the incremental validity of the MERGE in predicting outcomes beyond an existing measure of mentoring competence. We conclude by discussing implications for the use of the scale in doctoral education, including both theory advancement and applied practice.

Background: Childhood trauma is a well-established risk factor for adverse mental health outcomes, yet large-scale cross-national evidence from the Arab region remains limited. This study examined the prevalence of childhood trauma and its associations with multiple transdiagnostic outcomes across 17 Arab countries. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted between September and October 2025 among 6,181 adults from 17 Arab countries. Childhood trauma was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF). Transdiagnostic mental health outcomes included depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), maladaptive behavior, and social/functional impairment. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and multiple linear regression analyses were performed via IBM SPSS Statistics. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted via R (Lavaan) to evaluate a second-order latent construct representing global childhood trauma. Results: Childhood trauma was widely reported across the sample, with physical neglect and emotional neglect emerging as the most frequently endorsed domains. All trauma domains were significantly associated with poorer mental health outcomes (p < .001). In regression analyses adjusted for demographic factors, emotional abuse emerged as the strongest predictor of depression ({beta} = .472, p < .001) and PTSS ({beta} =.439, p < .001). Structural equation modeling supported a second-order global trauma construct, which showed strong associations with depression ({beta} = .70), anxiety ({beta} = .64), PTSS ({beta} = .68), maladaptive behavior ({beta} = .68), and social impairment ({beta} = .67). This latent factor showed strong associations with all mental health outcomes, explaining substantial variance in depression (R2 = .52), anxiety (R2 = .43), and PTSS (R2 = .48). The structural model demonstrated borderline-to-acceptable fit (CFI = .899, TLI = .890, RMSEA = .058, SRMR = .085), supporting the hypothesized latent structure while indicating scope for further model refinement. Conclusions: Childhood trauma is highly prevalent across the Arab region and is strongly associated with multiple dimensions of psychological distress, highlighting the urgent need for trauma-informed prevention, screening, and early intervention programs in the Arab region.

Research on impression evaluation from whole-body movements has traditionally focused on the relationships between emotional perception or aesthetic evaluation and movement patterns characterized by local kinematic features and inter-limb coordination. However, because observers perceive the entire body simultaneously when evaluating emotions or aesthetics in real-world viewing situations, impressions derived from whole-body movements should also be investigated. This requires a low-dimensional representation that summarizes whole-body information in an interpretable manner. In the present study, we evaluated whether the state space generated by multidimensional scaling (MDS) provides a valid representation for summarizing whole-body movement. Specifically, using exercises from Radio Calisthenics No. 1, we examined whether distances between points in the MDS state space primarily reflected exercise category rather than individual differences. The results showed that distances in the state space reflected exercise category more strongly than performer identity, suggesting that MDS captures similarities among postures of the same exercise. However, the patterns of distances between conditions varied across exercise categories. These findings suggest that MDS-based state-space representations provide a valid and interpretable approach for summarizing whole-body movements. Nevertheless, further validation using a wider variety of whole-body movements and a more diverse participant population is required.

Theft, including shoplifting, extorts a pervasive societal and economic burden. However, the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying recurrent theft remain sparsely understood. In this study, we investigated social cognition deficits in theft recidivists with kleptomania (TR+K) and instrumental theft recidivists without kleptomania (TR-K) compared to control subjects without criminal records (CT), for which the Social Norms Questionnaire (SNQ-22) to assess explicit moral knowledge, alongside the Dictator Game (DG) and Hawk-Dove Game (HDG) to evaluate discretionary and competitive resource allocation with others, respectively, were administered. Bayesian statistical analyses revealed that all groups demonstrated comparable social norm recognition in SNQ-22 and prosociality in the DG. However, distinct behavioral profiles emerged in specific contexts, such that TR+K exhibited more unfairness than CT and TR-K at discretionary resource allocations in the DG, whereas in the HDG, TR-K demonstrated more aggressive, resource-monopolizing responses, particularly when against an aggressive opponent, than CT and TR+K. These results suggest that theft recidivism may stem from contextual failures rather than general deficits in moral knowledge, which are distinct between TR+K rooted in the internal factor, such as heightened loss aversion, and TR-K characterized by impulsivity over the external factor, such as social conflicts with others.

Introduction: Daytime sleepiness (DS) can compromise athletic performance; however, its influence on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) athletes remains poorly understood. Daytime naps have been suggested as a strategy to alleviate the effects of DS; however, their impact on physical and specific performance remains inconsistent. Thus, this study investigated the influence of different levels of daytime sleepiness on the physical and specific performance of BJJ athletes and verified the effects of daytime napping on these outcomes. Methods: This investigation employed a randomized, controlled, crossover clinical trial design involving 19 amateur Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) athletes who exhibited excessive daytime sleepiness. Participants performed two experimental conditions, with a 30-minute nap (N30) and without a nap (NN), in a randomized order. Vertical jump (CMJ and SJ), anaerobic power (Wingate ), kimono grip strength (KGST), and specific performance were evaluated using the Jiu-Jitsu Anaerobic Performance Test (JJAPT). Data were analyzed using mixed linear models. Results: Daytime sleepiness significantly influenced all parameters of specific performance (JJAPT), with worse performance observed in athletes classified as having abnormal sleepiness. The opportunity to nap increased the total number of repetitions in the JJAPT of four sets ({approx}20 repetitions; p < 0.001), without consistent changes in physical performance tests. An interaction between napping and sleepiness was observed in relation to isometric endurance strength, indicating that napping may provide greater benefits to athletes experiencing abnormal sleepiness. Conclusion: High levels of daytime sleepiness are associated with reduced specific performance in BJJ athletes. Daytime naps are a simple and potentially effective strategy to mitigate these effects and improve specific performance, reinforcing the importance of monitoring sleepiness and individualizing recovery strategies.

Free recall of naturalistic stimuli, such as films and stories, reveals what people remember and how they organize it. Scoring such recall requires matching each recalled utterance to the encoded stimulus, and doing this manually often makes large studies impractical. Existing automated methods mostly return similarity or aggregate scores rather than explicit matches between recalled and stimulus content. Here we introduce an open-source, model-agnostic pipeline that uses a large language model (LLM) to divide the stimulus and the recall into information units and to match units between the two texts. The output is a table of unit-to-unit matches with accuracy labels, from which standard analysis scripts compute recall measures. We validated the pipeline with four LLMs (Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT 5.4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Gemini 2.5 Flash) on three datasets. On typed recall of four short stories, agreement between each model and two trained raters ({phi} = .73-.79) was close to the agreement between the raters themselves ({phi} = .77). A second run reproduced each model's matches ({phi} = .91-.97) more closely than the raters agreed with each other. On spoken recall of 10 films, every model attributed recall to the correct film with high agreement. On uncorrected speech-to-text recall of a television episode, agreement varied more across models. The median cost was under $1 per participant for every model. These results suggest that the pipeline can serve as a reliable, low-cost alternative to manual scoring of free recall.

Handgrip strength (HGS) is a practical measure of muscular strength, but the factors associated with relative HGS among young adults remain insufficiently understood. This exploratory cross-sectional study examined demographic and anthropometric characteristics, total physical activity (PA), and depressive symptoms in relation to relative HGS among medical students in Serbia. A total of 424 students from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, completed HGS testing and study questionnaires. HGS was measured using a VALD DynaMo Lite dynamometer and expressed relative to body weight (N/kg). Participants were categorized according to sample-specific relative HGS percentiles: <25th, 25th to 75th, and >75th percentile. PA was assessed using the IPAQ-SF and depressive symptoms using the PHQ-9. Three pairwise multivariable logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with relative HGS categories. Sex and BMI were the most consistent correlates of relative HGS. Female students had lower odds of belonging to higher relative HGS categories, while higher BMI was consistently associated with lower odds of belonging to higher categories. Age was associated only with the 25th to 75th percentile group compared with the <25th percentile group. Total PA volume and PHQ-9 score were not independently associated with relative HGS categories. These findings suggest that relative HGS in this population was more strongly associated with demographic and anthropometric characteristics than with total self-reported PA or depressive symptom severity. Keywords: handgrip strength; relative handgrip strength; muscular strength; medical students; physical activity; depressive symptoms; body mass index

Music is a central component of psychedelic settings, yet little experimental work has examined how psilocybin and musical composition influence music-evoked emotional responses in healthy volunteers. This exploratory, double-blind, placebo-controlled study assessed these effects during the plateau phase of psilocybin and the corresponding time window in placebo sessions following oral administration of psilocybin (0.26 mg/kg) or placebo. The study consisted of two parts. In Part 1 (n = 19), a pilot stage, the first half of participants rated music-induced affective valence for eight compositions representing different genres/subgenres (Rock/Punk, Metal/Industrial Metal, Metal/Industrial Metal, Classical/Baroque, Electronic/Dub, Folk/Nordic Folk, Electronic/Techno, Electronic/Trance, Electronic/Psytrance) using a visual analogue scale (VAS). Based on Part 1, the classical composition with the highest overall affective valence and the psytrance composition with the largest psilocybin-placebo contrast (i.e., the composition most responsive to psilocybin) were selected for Part 2 (n = 17), in which the second half of participants assessed emotional responses to music using the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS-9). Psilocybin increased wonder, transcendence, and joyful activation across both contrasting compositions. Relative to each other, the classical composition elicited greater peacefulness, tenderness, and nostalgia, whereas the psytrance composition elicited greater tension across both psilocybin and placebo conditions. A composition x condition interaction was observed for sadness: under psilocybin, sadness increased during the classical composition and decreased during the psytrance composition. These findings suggest that psilocybin and contrasting musical compositions independently influence different aspects of music-evoked emotional responses, with limited interaction effects, and point to potential implications for protocol design and music selection in psychedelic settings.

Neuromarketing mainly seeks to enhance the prediction of marketing stimuli success, such as commercials and movie trailers, by integrating neurophysiological measures with traditional behavioral measures. In the current study, the authors tested whether neural activity could predict consumer valuation and how preferences change after watching commercials, both immediately and over time. Participants (n=161) watched images of products followed by commercials advertising those products while their neural activity was recorded using electroencephalograph (EEG). They watched the product images again a week later without EEG recordings. Immediately after each stimulus exposure, participants stated their willingness to pay (WTP) for the product and how much they liked the commercial. Standard EEG measures showed weak and inconsistent relationships with behavior and yielded near-chance predictions. In contrast, deep learning models applied to the raw neural data achieved substantially higher predictive accuracy, successfully predicting both immediate and delayed WTP and ad liking. Importantly, the authors were able to successfully predict preferences for new participants and/or new products the models were not trained on. However, accuracy declined as generalization demands increased. Moreover, prediction performance declined as value differences narrow. Together, these findings show that neural responses carry reliable and temporally persistent information about consumer valuation and its evolution over time.

While extensive research has been conducted on emotion recognition from facial stimuli, it remains unclear how embodied emotional cues conveyed through body postures, gestures and actions (e.g., stick figures) compare with facial (human faces) and face-like symbolic representations (emoji faces) in shaping behavioral and neural responses. We employed a multimodal approach, combining behavioral measures (accuracy and reaction time) with electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the electrophysiological correlates of emotion recognition. Overall, sixty-six (equal number of males and females; 18-30 year old) participants identified positive, negative, and neutral emotions depicted in the three formats. Behavioral results showed significant effects of both emotion and format on accuracy and reaction time. Emoji faces were recognized with the highest accuracy and fastest reaction times, followed by stick figures and then human faces (p < .001, some comparisons p < .05). Thirty-four participants (17 males and 17 females) underwent EEG, which revealed distinct patterns of event-related potentials (ERPs). The Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) amplitude showed a significant overall effect of format. Post-hoc comparisons indicated that stick figures elicited greater (more negative) EPN amplitudes than human faces during positive emotion recognition (p = .003), and greater amplitudes than both emoji faces (p = .027) and human faces (p = .007) during negative emotion recognition. No significant differences were observed between emoji and human faces. N170 and Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes did not reveal significant differences (all p > .05). Correlation analyses revealed no significant associations between ERP and behavioral measures. Thus, abstract, minimalistic representations like stick figures elicit enhanced early emotion-related processing despite similar early and later processing across formats. HighlightsO_LIEmotion recognition across realistic (human faces), symbolic (emoji faces) and embodied (stick figures) modalities were compared. C_LIO_LIEmotions were recognized fastest and most accurately in emoji faces format. C_LIO_LIStick figures format elicited significantly higher EPN compared to other two formats across positive and negative emotions. C_LIO_LINo significant differences were observed in terms of N170 and LPP. C_LIO_LIEmbodied, abstract emotional cues modulate automatic emotional appraisal, rather than initial sensory encoding and sustained cognitive evaluation. C_LI