Boryana Todorova

Huge thanks to my fantastic co-authors for this collaboration! @clauslamm.bsky.social @sabinepahl.bsky.social @lei-zhang.bsky.social @lukaslengersdorff.bsky.social @jonasnitschke.bsky.social @kimdoell.bsky.social
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📂 All materials (code, data, task scripts) are fully open to support transparency and future research!

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🔹 Individuals who invested more effort/time for the environment in the task were also more likely to support costly climate policies.
🔹 Climate beliefs alone did not reliably predict willingness to incur real behavioural costs — highlighting a gap between belief and costly action.
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🔹 People are consistently less willing to incur costs for pro-environmental outcomes than for self-benefitting ones.
🔹 Computational modelling showed that effort is discounted parabolically and time hyperbolically, suggesting distinct motivational mechanisms.
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Across two incentivized behavioural tasks, we examined how people weigh time and effort when deciding whether to act for themselves or for the environment. We found that:
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Effort and time costs influence motivational asymmetries in self-benefitting vs pro-environmental decisions - Communications Psychology People are less willing to incur time and effort costs for the environment than for themselves, with computational modeling revealing nonlinear discounting of time and effort linked to support for cos...

I’m thrilled to share that our paper “Effort and time costs influence motivational asymmetries in self-benefitting vs. pro-environmental decisions” is now published in Communications Psychology! 🌿

OA link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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Huge thanks to leads @drjocutler.bsky.social, Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta, @brainapps.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social and everyone else involved @clauslamm.bsky.social @jonasnitschke.bsky.social @scanunit.bsky.social and more!

🚨 The PEET and all materials for using it and analyzing the data are publicly available!

You can download it and implement it directly in Qualtrics to test your own research questions:
👉 osf.io/zv2tu/

We're also thrilled to introduce the Pro-Environmental Effort Task (PEET) 🌱

It’s an incentivized, effort-based task that independently varies effort and reward, comparing people’s effort for a climate cause to a matched non-climate cause.

💡 The two interventions with the strongest and most consistent effects were:
1️⃣ Reducing the psychological distance of climate change
2️⃣ Framing climate action as patriotic and protecting our shared way of life

Both meaningfully boosted motivation to put effort for the climate.

Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change - Communications Psychology Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climat...

🎉 New paper alert!

In this collaboration across 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 (n = 3,055), we developed a new pro-environmental behavior task and tested which psychological interventions actually make people more willing to put in real effort for mitigating climate change.

Fully OA: tinyurl.com/2s46fppb

So happy to see this out! 🎉 We surveyed people from 68 countries about how they encounter and engage with information about science!

See the thread below for a summary of the main findings 👇

Congratulations to the whole team, especially @nielsmede.bsky.social and @colognaviktoria.bsky.social 👏

I'm excited to share the news that our climate change project won the @spspnews.bsky.social Robert Cialdini Prize for a "paper that uses field methods and demonstrates the relevance of social psychology to outside groups and communities"!

You can read it here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New paper out in NYAS!
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
We show that protecting others' from pain promotes effortful prosocial behavior 💪🧑‍🤝‍🧑🤝
w/ @clauslamm.bsky.social @silanilab.bsky.social @lei-zhang.bsky.social
(thread below)

Next Gen Speaker Series - Boryana Todorova - Planetary Health Alliance Boryana Todorova is a Visiting Researcher at the Net Zero Observatory, University of Queensland, and a member of the Neuro Climate Working Group. Her research examines the two-way relationship between...

🧠🌍 Join me next week for the Planetary Health Alliance – Next Gen Speaker Series to learn why climate action is brain health action!

When? 24th of September, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT
Where? Online - register here: planetaryhealthalliance.org/events/next-...

PsyArXiv is now down to only ~40% of the backlog we started with, thanks to our amazing moderators 🎉 To all mods: thank you so much for your hard work!

Did one of your preprints get approved recently? Help us show our thanks by liking and sharing this post :)

#PsyArXiv #PsychSciSky

Repeated heatwaves can age you as much as smoking or drinking Long-term study suggests that the more heatwaves people are exposed to, the more it accelerates body ageing.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
“The study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that moderate increases in cumulative heatwave exposure increase a person’s biological age — to an extent comparable to regular smoking or alcohol consumption.”

Group and personal rejection are similarly linked to extreme intergroup attitudes Perceived marginalization of social groups has been identified as one of the main drivers of violent extremism across countries. However, most psychol…

📢 🥳 New paper alert!

We developed a new task (RateME) for studying the effects of personal and group rejection and showed that both types of rejection can be linked to radicalization via increased hostility.

🔗 Link to the paper: shorturl.at/uJiDa

Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures - Nature Reviews Neuroscience As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research app...

What an excellent and truly important commentary on the clashes between bottom-up and top-down neuroscience and how we can move forward

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Effortful leisure is a source of meaning in everyday life - Communications Psychology Five studies, including experiments and experience-sampling, show effortful leisure feels more meaningful than less effortful leisure while maintaining enjoyment. Results suggest effortful leisure can...

🎉 Our paper is now out in Communications Psychology!
We explore how effortful leisure (like puzzling) can be a source of meaning in daily life.

Across 5 studies (N = 2,569), we find:
- Effort makes leisure feel more meaningful
- But not necessarily less enjoyable

🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Excited to share our new paper on individual victimhood and conspiracy beliefs across 15 countries! 🌍

Check out the 🧵 below 👇🏼

Very excited to see this paper out! Grateful I had the chance to contribute to data collection in Bulgaria 🇧🇬 and Austria 🇦🇹. My home country Bulgaria is rarely included in such surveys, so I’m especially happy we got data there.

Stellar effort by the team, especially @colognaviktoria.bsky.social! 👏

Hasty Theories Why Social Psychology Needs to Stop Rushing to Explain

I just became president of a scientific society and my first act was to disagree with one of my heroes...Arie Kruglanski gave a keynote arguing social psychology needs MORE Big Beautiful Theories. I think that's exactly backwards. Here's why...

Research Associate - School of Psychology - 104433 - Grade 6 The role is to provide Research Assistant services to Dr Jo Cutler for her projects on social decision-making and information seeking. Tasks include helping with participant recruitment and testing, c...

🌟 Research Assistant opportunity 🌟

I'm looking for an RA to support research @thechbh.bsky.social on social information seeking and decision making, including fMRI and MEG 🧠

Details: tinyurl.com/chbh-ra-uob
Deadline: 20th July ⏳
Start: From September 🗓️
Please share 🔁

Enjoying stunning Brisbane and its amazing wildlife while waiting for #OHBM2025 to start 😍@ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Looking forward to a week of inspiring talks and fruitful discussions! DM me if you are attending and want to chat 😊

Awesome talk by @lukasmayrhofer.bsky.social on how the emergence of radical climate activists (Last Generation) impacted portayals of moderate activists (Fridays for Future) 🤩👏

See also our preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Environmental disruption is impacting people's mental health Communities around the world are using innovative programmes like youth-led support schemes to address the mental health impacts of environmental change.

Excited to see that our International Neuro Climate Working Group is featured by the World Economic Forum as one of the top global initiatives addressing climate change & mental health 🌍🧠

Grateful to be part of this inspiring, growing movement!

📰 Read more: www.weforum.org/stories/2025...

1/7 🧵 We live in a biased social reality! 🤯

🚨 NEW PAPER: Climate activist stereotypes among the German public and German climate activists.

My 1st PhD paper 🤩 in collaboration with @umweltbundesamt.bsky.social

Do radical climate protests influence portrayals of moderate activists and reader attitudes? 🤔

We analyzed 2,376 news articles and 193k user comments to answer this question!

Check out our new preprint 👇🏼

Contact person: For further inquiries please contact Katalin Szigeti, PhD, the Training Unit Coordinator of the CoE (margit.katalin.szigeti@univie.ac.at).

Are you passionate about neuroimaging methods and would like to work with us? 🚨

4-year PhD position on methods development in the new Cluster of Neuronal Circuits in Health and Disease (coe.univie.ac.at) and the role of GABA in the amygdala and other brain areas 🧠

Details: shorturl.at/EcI2W

Pls 🔁