Psychological Bulletin

Wipe it off: A meta-analytic review of the psychological consequences and antecedents of physical cleansing.
Physical cleansing is a human universal. It serves health and survival functions. It also carries rich psychological meanings that interest scholars across disciplines. What psychological effects result from cleansing? What psychological states trigger cleansing? The present meta-analysis takes stock of all experimental studies examining the psychological consequences and antecedents of cleansing-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (e.g., feeling less guilty after cleansing; spontaneously cleansing oneself after thinking of unwelcomed sexual encounter). It includes 129 records, 230 experiments, and 551 effects from 42,793 participants. Effect sizes were synthesized in random-effects models using robust variance estimates with small-sample corrections, supplemented by other techniques. Outliers were excluded using leave-one-out diagnostics and sensitivity analysis. Publication bias was assessed and corrected for using eight methods. Theoretical, methodological, sample, and report moderators were coded. After excluding outliers, without bias correction, the synthesized effect size estimate was g = 0.315, 95% CI [0.277, 0.354]. Using various bias correction methods, the estimate ranged from g = 0.103 to 0.331 and always exhibited considerable heterogeneity. Effect sizes were especially large for behavioral measures and varied significantly between sample types, sample regions, and report types. Meanwhile, effects were domain-general (observed in the moral domain and beyond), bidirectional (physical cleansing ↔ psychological variables), and robust across theoretical types, manipulation operationalizations, and study designs. Limitations included mixed replicability, suboptimal methodological rigor, and restricted sample diversity. We recommend future studies to (a) incorporate power analysis, preregistration, and replication; (b) investigate generalizability across samples; (c) strengthen discriminant validity; and (d) test competing theoretical accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The stability of cognitive abilities: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.
Cognitive abilities, including general intelligence and domain-specific abilities such as fluid reasoning, comprehension knowledge, working memory capacity, and processing speed, are regarded as some of the most stable psychological traits, yet there exist no large-scale systematic efforts to document the specific patterns by which their rank-order stability changes over age and time interval, or how their stability differs across abilities, tests, and populations. Determining the conditions under which cognitive abilities exhibit high or low degrees of stability is critical not just to theory development but to applied contexts in which cognitive assessments guide decisions regarding treatment and intervention decisions with lasting consequences for individuals. In order to supplement this important area of research, we present a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies investigating the stability of cognitive abilities. The meta-analysis relied on data from 205 longitudinal studies that involved a total of 87,408 participants, resulting in 1,288 test–retest correlation coefficients among manifest variables. For an age of 20 years and a test–retest interval of 5 years, we found a mean rank-order stability of ρ = .76. The effect of mean sample age on stability was best described by a negative exponential function, with low stability in preschool children, rapid increases in stability in childhood, and consistently high stability from late adolescence to late adulthood. This same functional form continued to best describe age trends in stability after adjusting for test reliability. Stability declined with increasing test–retest interval. This decrease flattened out from an interval of approximately 5 years onward. According to the age and interval moderation models, minimum stability sufficient for individual-level diagnostic decisions (rtt = .80) can only be expected over the age of 7 and for short time intervals in children. In adults, stability levels meeting this criterion are obtained for over 5 years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Sleep loss and emotion: A systematic review and meta-analysis of over 50 years of experimental research.
In a largely sleep-deprived society, quantifying the effects of sleep loss on emotion is critical for promoting psychological health. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis quantified the effects of various forms of sleep loss on multiple aspects of emotional experiences. Eligible studies used experimental reductions of sleep via total sleep deprivation, partial sleep restriction, or sleep fragmentation in healthy populations to examine effects on positive affect, negative affect, general mood disturbances, emotional reactivity, anxiety symptoms, and/or depressive symptoms. In total, 1,338 effect sizes across 154 studies were included (N = 5,717; participant age range = 7–79 years). Random effects models were conducted, and all forms of sleep loss resulted in reduced positive affect (standardized mean difference [SMD] = −0.27 to −1.14), increased anxiety symptoms (SMD = 0.57–0.63), and blunted arousal in response to emotional stimuli (SMD = −0.20 to −0.53). Findings for negative affect, reports of emotional valence in response to emotional stimuli, and depressive symptoms were mixed and depended on the type of sleep loss. Nonlinear effects for the amount of sleep loss as well as differences based on the stage of sleep restricted (i.e., rapid eye movement sleep or slow-wave sleep) were also detected. This study represents the most comprehensive quantitative synthesis of experimental sleep and emotion research to date and provides strong evidence that periods of extended wakefulness, shortened sleep duration, and/or nighttime awakenings adversely influence human emotional functioning. Findings provide an integrative foundation for future research on sleep and emotion and elucidate the precise ways that inadequate sleep may impact our daytime emotional lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
A meta-analytic review of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills.
Spatial skills are key predictors of achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, despite being acquired through everyday life and not formally taught in schools. Spatial skills include a diverse group of abilities broadly related to reasoning about properties of space such as distance and direction. Recently, more research has investigated the link between spatial skills and spatial anxiety, defined as a fear or apprehension felt when engaged in spatial thinking. There has yet to be a meta-analytic review summarizing these findings. Thus, the goal of this preregistered meta-analytic review is to provide an estimate of the size of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills while considering several moderators (grade/age group, sex, spatial skills measure/subtype, spatial anxiety measure/subtype, geographical region of sample, publication type/year, and risk of bias). Analyzing 283 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1994 and 2020, we found a small, negative, and statistically significant (r = −.14) correlation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills. Results showed that effect sizes including mental manipulation anxiety, scalar comparison anxiety, and navigation skill were often significantly stronger than effect sizes including measures of other subtypes. The magnitude of the relation was not significantly different in children and adults, though effect sizes tended to be weaker for younger samples (r = −.08). Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between spatial anxiety and skills, and this work bridges a gap in the existing research, lending support to future research efforts investigating spatial cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychological Bulletin - Vol 150, Iss 4