2024 in Review: 10 Most Popular Articles from APS Journals

How do the five love languages hold up to empirical research? How do psychological researchers feel about self-censorship? How does gender equality vary by country globally? Tune in to hear highlights from last year’s most popular research.  

In this episode, APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum and Hannah Brown take turns describing the most downloaded articles in 2024 from APS’s five major journals. Together, they discussed the topics researchers focused on, the findings they uncovered, and the unique approaches to psychological research they employed.  

Send us your thoughts and questions at [email protected].

Unedited Transcript

[00:00:00.270] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

How do five love languages hold up to empirical research? How do psychological researchers feel about self-censorship? How does gender equality vary by country globally? Some of the most popular articles in APS journals in 2024, explore these questions, along with many more. This is Under the Cortex. I am Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with the Association for Psychological Science. Today, we will be talking through the most popular journal articles published in APS this year. I am here with Hannah Brown the Managing Editor of APS’s Observer magazine. Hannah, welcome to Under the Cortex. 

[00:00:51.530] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Thank you, Ozge. So happy to be here. 

[00:00:54.830] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

To start, we want to share our criteria for how we pick these 10 articles to share with you today. We selected articles that were the most downloaded from five of APS’s major journals. We picked two articles from each journal, and the majority of those were the top two downloaded articles. We will go in reverse order, working from the 10th most popular article to the first. So let’s get started. 

[00:01:21.970] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

All right. Well, our first article today is titled 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. This study is led by Cele Richardson from the University of Western Australia. It was featured in Clinical Psychological Science and has been downloaded just over 1,500 times. The study assessed 528 young people spanning ages 11 to 16 to examine the relationship of their sleep, instances of repetitive negative thinking, and symptoms from a suite of conditions known as social emotional disorders. These include generalized anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. The researchers looked at all of these disorders because they all tend to emerge during adolescence. They have some features in common, like mood dysregulation, and they share risk factors. They do a good job setting up what has been found in previous literature and showing the strengths of what the findings from the study provide. 

[00:02:37.640] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

That is always so helpful. So what did they find that was new and different? 

[00:02:43.540] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Well, the research team found that disturbance in sleep is a risk factor for symptoms of social emotional disorders, which there has been some evidence of in previous literature, but the way they measured sleep in particular was more robust than previous studies. They also found that increases in repetitive negative thinking, both generally and right before you fall asleep, is likely to increase sleep disturbance, thus exacerbating those symptoms of the conditions they studied. So when young people are lying in bed spiraling, for example, that could affect their sleep and could cause an increase in symptoms of social emotional disorders. To help address this issue, the researchers recommended that sleep strategies be included in mental health prevention and intervention programs. That’s the first article we have for today. 

[00:03:36.930] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah, thank you, Hannah. Our second article is about effect sizes in psychological research, raising the possibility that the matrix researchers use is potentially too optimistic. This article is from Current Directions in Psychological Science and is titled Effect Size Magnification: No Variable is as Important as the One You’re Thinking About—While You’re Thinking About it. The corresponding order is Linnea Gandhi from the University of Pennsylvania, and the article has been downloaded over 3,750 times. The article reminds us of Cohen’s Benchmarks of Effect Size Measurement, 0.1 for small, 0.3 for medium, and 0.5 for large. Yet, most findings come with 0.1 and 0.2 in psychological literature, showing that the The relationships we are studying are subtle. 

[00:04:33.740] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

That’s interesting. Why do you think this disconnect exists? 

[00:04:38.890] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Well, one big reason is that psychological research involves human behavior, and people are incredibly complex, like you know. Think about effect size as a ratio. The numerator captures how much two things are connected. Let’s use grit and success as an example. While the connection between grit and success is the numerator, the denominator reflects all the other noise, the variability in people’s lives. Even if there is a real connection, it often gets buried under layers of complexity. Continuing with our example, when we hear that gritier people are more successful, we don’t think about how small statistically that relationship actually is. Being able to find a relationship requires huge samples. That’s why so many studies are underpowered. The authors conclude by saying that making the math behind these studies more accessible could really help everyone set better expectations about what science can and cannot show. 

[00:05:43.860] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Absolutely. That sounds like a very important insight for our field. Thank you for sharing that, Ozge. What’s the next article about? 

[00:05:52.930] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

This time, we have an article from Clinical Psychological Science titled Reconstructing Psychopathology: A Data-Driven Reorganization of the Symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The lead author is Miriam Forbes from Macquarie University, and the article reached over 4,280 1,600 downloads. The article emphasizes the importance of quantitative approaches to psychopathology. As you know, Hannah, there has been increased interest in our field about the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology or high TAP as a way to improve upon traditional diagnostic symptoms like DSM. The idea is to organize symptoms into hierarchies based on how they tend to co-occur, creating broader categories at the top and more specific constructs at the bottom. 

[00:06:47.040] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

But this study took this reorganization idea a step further, didn’t it? 

[00:06:52.690] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

That’s right. In this study, they reorganized DSM-5 symptoms into a hierarchy based on in terms of how people report their experiences without relying on the DSM’s traditional disorder boundaries. For example, the DSM often groups externalizing behaviors like ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, and conduct disorder into one bucket, but the authors find these symptoms split across several categories. Similarly, harmful substance use formed its own listening spectrum rather than being part of an externalizing behaviors, as Hito suggests. This approach revealed new domains like neurodevelopmental and cognitive difficulties, and reshuffled others, which could help clarify the mechanisms behind these symptoms and improve treatments. 

[00:07:48.530] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

It’s fascinating how reorganizing symptoms can change our perspective on mental health. 

[00:07:54.300] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Exactly. For example, take externalizing behaviors in children, things like hyperactivity accuracy or aggression. This article suggests that these symptoms don’t all belong in one category. Instead, they reflect different underlying processes like callousness, impulsivity, or even cognitive difficulties. This nuanced view could lead to better targeted interventions. Rather than applying one-size-fits-all approaches, clinicians could tailor strategies to the specific symptom patterns in each individual. It’s a promising step forward for more personalized mental health care. The next article is yours. What do you have for us, Ena? 

[00:08:36.440] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Yeah, thank you, Ozge. We are at number 7 now. This next article is from the journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. It’s titled Diagnosing the Misuse of the Use of the Bayes Factor in Applied Research. It was written by a team of researchers that was led by Jorge Tendeiro from Hiroshima University. It was downloaded nearly 5,700 times this this year. This article looks at how researchers are applying the Bayes Factor in psychological research. For those who are unfamiliar, the Bayes factor provides a way of measuring predictability of two models that represent two competing explanations for a real-world phenomenon being studied. The best of the two models is the one that better predicts the data being observed. So although this method has been around for about 100 years, the authors explain that researchers really only started applying it in the 1990s. And because of that newness, they argue that it’s reasonable that some researchers may be applying or interpreting it incorrectly in their research. 

[00:09:40.100] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Interesting. So how did they test that theory? 

[00:09:44.770] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Well, they conducted a literature review of 167 articles, and based on that, they looked at the frequency of questionable reporting or interpreting practices. They outlined a list of 10 or so such practices and then walked through each one and why practitioners may be making those mistakes. So overall, they concluded that researchers may be making these mistakes because of a lack of understanding and unfamiliarity with key concepts, and a tendency to use writing trials that overemphasize impact and deemphasize uncertainty. For example, they found that some authors use the Bayes factor to test model fit, which it doesn’t actually do well with. To help address these issues, the authors provide a checklist in the appendix that practitioners can use to guide them as they become familiar with using Bayesian hypothesis testing. 

[00:10:40.130] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Very practical. Love it. What’s up next? 

[00:10:44.210] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Yes, For number 6, our next article is very relatable, especially this time of year when families are often getting together and end up inevitably talking politics around the dinner table. This article is titled Disagreement Gets Mistaken for Bad Listening, written by Zhiying Bella Ren and Rebecca Schaumberg from the University of Pennsylvania. It was published in Psychological Science and downloaded nearly 6,500 times this year. The authors conducted 11 studies with a total of 3,396 adult participants to investigate the relationship between perceptions of listening and agreement. In each study, a participant shared their views on a topic with a listener. They did this across a variety of mediums such as video calls and text, and they used a variety of listener conditions. For example, sometimes the listener agreed with them, and other times they disagreed. The researchers found that across all topics and conditions, participants consistently perceived people to be better listeners when they agreed with them. They did find that when listeners exhibited certain behaviors, like acknowledging what the speaker was saying, they were perceived as good listeners, even if they were technically disagreeing. But interestingly, when listeners use those behaviors, the speakers were more likely to think the listener was actually agreeing with them, even if they were not. 

[00:12:14.040] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

So in a nutshell, what they found suggests that it may be impossible to differentiate between perceived listening and perceived agreement. 

[00:12:23.660] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

It sounds like people like agreement. Did the authors talk at all about what impact this research might have on society overall? 

[00:12:34.070] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

They did. They briefly touched on that in the discussion section, and they said that identifying that the issue here is more about the difference in views rather than people not listening to one another could help improve communication dynamics. It definitely feels like there’s a lot of room to build on these findings infused to your research. That’s it for that one. What’s your next article about? 

[00:12:59.410] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Well, We are at number 5 with around 7,000 downloads. The article is titled, Intervening After Trauma: Child-Parent Psychotherapy Treatment is Associated with Lower Pediatric Epigenetic Age Acceleration. Alexandra Sullivan is the lead author. The study addresses how early life stress affects children’s health at a biological level. Research has shown that stress can accelerate biological aging measured through something called epigenetic age acceleration or EAA. A recent study tested whether a therapy called child-parent psychotherapy or CPP could actually reduce this acceleration in children who have experienced trauma. 

[00:13:45.510] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

What did they find? 

[00:13:47.280] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Well, the findings are quite compelling. The study looked at children aged 2 to 6 from low-income families, many of whom had experienced significant adversity. At the start, both the treatment group who participated in the child-parent psychotherapy and the match community group had similar levels of epigenetic age acceleration. But after the intervention, the kids who received the treatment showed lower levels of the same major epigenetic age acceleration compared to the community group. This suggests that child-parent psychotherapy, which focuses on building safe, responsive caregiving relationships, may actually help mitigate the biological effects of early trauma. 

[00:14:33.900] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

That’s quite a finding. It sounds like saying a supportive parent-child relationship can slow down the biological clot triggered by stress. 

[00:14:43.040] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

That’s exactly right. What makes this study particularly strong is that it mirrors real-world conditions. Some families didn’t complete the full treatment, and yet the results still helped. Plus, the study focused on low-income, predominantly Latino families, a population often underrepresented in research. This has important implications for making these therapies more accessible, especially given the potential long-term health benefits of reducing epigenetic age acceleration in young trauma-exposed kids. 

[00:15:17.390] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

What a powerful reminder of how early interventions can shape not just emotional well-being, but also biological health. What do you have for us next, Ozge? 

[00:15:28.020] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Next, we will shift our focus to methodology. This article was downloaded over 10,000 times. It is from Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, and it is a multi-labs study with 94 authors. 

[00:15:44.880] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Whoa, what a number. That’s incredible example of Team Science in Action. 

[00:15:51.400] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

I agree. It highlights the importance of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary efforts in advancing psychology. Collaborations like these bring together diverse perspectives and strengthen our science. Do you want to hear about what they did? 

[00:16:05.930] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Absolutely. 

[00:16:08.520] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

This is a replication study that involves 39 labs across 19 countries. Their collective goal is to set a good example in the field to address the replication crisis. To do so, they work together to replicate one of the well-known paradigms, the Induced Compliance Paradigm. The study aimed to test whether giving participants more freedom of choice when performing counter-attitudinal behavior would lead to greater attitude change as cognitive dissonance theory predicts. Surprisingly, they found no evidence that choice played their role. Instead, the act of writing of counter-attitudinal essay itself seemed to shift attitudes, regardless of the level of choice. These findings challenge decades of research and highlight the importance of revisiting classic theories through rigorous large-scale collaboration. In a nutshell, it’s a ground-breaking example of the power of large-scale replication. 

[00:17:10.270] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Yes, quite impressive. It looks like you have the next one for us, too. 

[00:17:16.030] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. Now we are at top three articles. The third most downloaded article of the year with over 14,000 downloads is on gender equality paradox. A phenomenon highlighting I think the country intuitive finding that psychological sex differences in traits like personality and cognitive performance are often larger in countries with greater gender equality and higher living conditions. The lead author is Agneta Herlitz from Karolinska Institutet, and the title of the article which is published in Perspectives on Psychological Science is A Systematic Review and New Analyses of the Gender Equality paradox. In a nutshell, the authors find that in better-of countries and gender-equal countries, sex differences in personality, verbal abilities, and episodic memory are larger. Conversely, differences in mad, sexual behavior, and partner differences tend to diminish in these settings. For example, in areas where women tend to perform better, like episodic memory and verbal abilities, the differences get bigger in countries with higher living standards. On the flip side, for skills where men often have an edge, like math and semantic memory, those differences shrink as living conditions improve. Basically, societal improvements like better education and economic prosperity seem to boost women’s cognitive performance more. Another interesting finding is that higher living conditions are associated with higher adverse effects of emotions and mental health in females males than in males. 

[00:19:02.800] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Interesting. How did they explain these patterns? 

[00:19:07.940] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Well, they use the resource hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that in societies where basic needs are met, individuals can freely express their preferences and pursue values that matter most to them. These findings provide plenty to consider and also highlight the need for careful nuanced discussions around such a complex and sensitive You will have the honor of summarizing the top two articles of the year, Hannah. What do you have for us? 

[00:19:36.420] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Yes, I feel very honored to get to cover the first two, and now we are at number two. This article looks at scientific conflict and how psychology professors view research topics that have been deemed taboo by their peers. This paper is called Taboos and Self-Censorship among US Psychology Professors. It was written by a group of authors from the US and Australian universities. The team was led by Cory Clark from the University of Pennsylvania. The paper was downloaded over 25,000 times from perspectives on psychological science. The researchers surveyed 470 psychology professors about their beliefs and values in relation to a series of 10 taboo conclusions, which were statements that had been previously nominated by their peers. Here are a few examples of those statements. One was biological sex is a binary for the majority of people. Another was the social sciences discriminate against Conservatives. And a third was men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution. So Researchers were asked to rate how true or false they believed each statement was, how reluctant they would be in discussing it in a professional setting, whether scholars should be discouraged from testing the statement, as well as a suite of other questions. 

[00:21:01.930] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Interesting. So what did they find? 

[00:21:05.670] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Some of their major conclusions were that professors who rate the statements as true were more likely to engage in self-censorship. They found that overall, younger, more left-leaning and female faculty were more opposed to engaging in controversial scholarship. They also found that almost all professors worried about the social consequences that came with expressing their own empirical beliefs. Though, interestingly, there wasn’t a clear difference between tenured and untenured professors in their fear of consequences. The authors did some more specific analysis by demographic factors and analyzing each individual taboo, and they found some notable differences. I’m not going to go into those now, but it’s definitely worth a read to learn more. 

[00:21:53.530] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yes, definitely worth taking a look. Now we made it to our most popular article of the year. Tell us about it. Yes. 

[00:22:04.400] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

What’s your love language? Do you prefer quality time or maybe you’d rather receive gifts? Well, it turns out that that very popular concept of love languages that was laid out by Gary Chapman in his 1992 book, Does not Hold Up Well When Tested Empirically. In our final paper, the most popular of the year, authors Emily Impett, Haeyoung Gideon Park, and Amy Muisediscuss the possible reasons why the love languages have been so widely accepted and used, and they then dissect the three primary assumptions that Chapman asserts in his book. The title of this paper is Popular Psychology Through a Scientific Lens: Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective. It was published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, and it was downloaded over 42,000 times. Wow. In Chapman’s In his original book, he claims that every person has a primary love language that they prefer. The five love languages he outlines are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Most people have heard of these before. He tests this with a forced question quiz where respondents must choose between two options which they find more meaningful. So researchers have tried to test this idea more reliably by creating a Likert scale. 

[00:23:32.540] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

And what they found is the responses revealed by the forced question test do not coincide with the one in the Likert scale. So people rarely select gifts as their primary love language in the forced test, for example. But with the light Kurt scale, gifts were seen as the highest score for more than 50% of the sample. 

[00:23:53.510] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Interesting. Did the author suggest an alternative way to think about relationships? 

[00:24:00.220] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Yes, the authors suggest that the concept has become so popular because it’s an easy to understand metaphor that’s free of jargon. So they offer an alternative metaphor that they feel more accurately represents relationship health. They say maintaining a healthy relationship is like keeping a healthy balanced diet. Even though you can survive on one food group like carbohydrates, it takes all of the food groups to maintain optimum health. The same goes for relationships. You may need some types of affection more at some points than others, but overall, the picture of your relationship should include a diverse array of love expressions. 

[00:24:41.430] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

What a fascinating article to end on. Thanks, Ena. That was such a diverse list of research topics. We thank all of the researchers who put tremendous effort into these articles this year, as well as all of the researchers featured in APS journals. Thank you all for joining us today, and thank you, Hannah, one more time. 

[00:25:02.930] – APS’s Hannah Brown 

Thank you for having me. 

[00:25:04.990] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

This is Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with APS, and I have been speaking to Hannah Brown, the Managing Editor of APS’s Observer magazine, about the most popular journal articles published in APS in 2024. If you want to know more about this research, visit psychologicalscience.org. Would you like to reach us? Send us your thoughts and questions at [email protected].