Craig A. Anderson

On January 20th, 2025, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to dismantle and halt all federal funding producing research and programmatic applications along any intersection of “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA), as well as programs and research on “environmental justice.” Policies such as the January 20th executive order, as well as the directives to halt all grant funding and research at large governmental agencies such as the National Institute for Health (NIH), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), have direct implication for social psychology research on climate change, namely for those who use data from these governmental‐ and NGO‐ level agencies. These directives, even if not fully realized, carry unprecedented potential to directly undermine the ability of social scientists to engage in the critical scholarship necessary to understand the complexity and severity of negative social outcomes induced by anthropogenic climate change. For example, much of our research on the casual relationship between climate change and human violence comes from research produced by governmental‐level data on crime, war conflict, resource accessibility, immigration, and weather disasters. Without the systematic intention and efforts across disciplines and federal‐level agencies to produce, report, and share this data, we would not be able to raise awareness of the existential social and psychological threat posed by the climate crisis. This article outlines the severity of the impact of such policies on understanding the holistic nature of the social and ecological threat of climate change, and the ability for scientists to help aid policymakers in being proactive and prepared to address these issues. Additionally, we discuss the historical role of suppressing social psychological research to create sociological consent for the oppression and neglect of materially and socially marginalized people, such as racial outgroups, immigrants, and refugees.

While numerous meta‐analyses, reviews, and task forces from various scientific bodies have linked violent media use to aggression, some studies report null effects and claim that such a relationship is non‐existent. Several scholars have noted that potential methodological and statistical errors could explain failures to replicate these effects. One recent failure to replicate established violent video game effects (Przybylski and Weinstein 2019) has made its data set publicly available, thereby offering a unique opportunity to examine the hypothesis that methodological and statistical problems underlie some replication failures. The present study re‐examined the original results from Przybylski and Weinstein (2019) using more appropriate analyses and replicated those results with recalculated, corrected, and more theoretically appropriate variables. The first part examines issues within the original study, including problems with the measure used to assess aggression, statistical control, and the measurement of exposure to video game violence (VGV). The second part created a more standard measure of VGV exposure to test whether the null result stemmed from this measurement issue. Overall, results demonstrate that conceptual misunderstandings of aggression, poor measures regarding both aggression and video game violence exposure, and inappropriate statistical procedures contributed to the initially reported null results. Furthermore, by using improved materials (including a more sophisticated coding scheme to assess exposure to violent video games) and sound statistical analysis (correcting for overcontrol), the data replicate the long‐established relationship between playing violent video games and aggressive behavior.

Introduction: Previous research reveals that screen media exposure is positively associated with attention problems and impulsivity.Methods: Three cross-sectional correlational studies examined the extent to which fast-paced versus violent media exposure are associated with attention-related problems in college students. Multiverse data analyses tested the robustness of results. Fast-paced and violent media effects were examined separately and uniquely using SEM.Results: A Pilot study (N = 233) found weak but significant zero-order correlations of both fast-paced and violent media exposure on self-control. However, the main SEM results were not significant, although in the expected direction, perhaps because of single-item assessments of media pacing and violence. Main Studies 1 (N = 438) and 2 (N = 456) found that exposure to fast-paced media was positively associated with ADHD-symptoms; this effect was reduced when media violence was added to the model. Both studies also found that greater exposure to violent content was uniquely and positively associated with impulsivity.Discussion: Overall, findings suggest that fast-paced and violent media yield small but reliable effects that may play an important role in attention-related problems in young adults. Future research should continue to investigate the relationships between media use on attention-related problems, especially longitudinal studies to test direction of causality.

Preventing aggression is a global social issue that warrants additional research with up‐to‐date measures. Aggressive behaviors manifest in several ways, and the proper assessment should capture its multidimensional nature. We developed the Forms and Functions of Aggressive Behavior Scale (FFABS) to capture the field's current multidimensional understanding of aggression, including its forms (physical, verbal, and relational) and functions (proactive and reactive). Across three studies (N = 1388), we validated the factor structure of the FFABS, obtained partial scalar measurement invariance for males and females, and demonstrated consistent patterns with theoretically related stable constructs and with behavioral measures of inhibitory control and aggressive behaviors, establishing convergent and discriminant validity. We discuss the findings, limitations, practical implications, and future research directions.

As the climate crisis has progressed, scientists have begun to ask, "How does a rapidly warming ecosystem impact human behavior?" As aggression scholars and non-professional environmentalists, it has become increasingly clear that the impact of the climate crisis, without intervention, will dramatically increase humans' exposure to risk factors known to cause aggressive and violent behavior. This article describes a model that explains the indirect and direct effects of the climate crisis on aggression and violence, both on an individual level and broadly on group dynamics. We propose that systemic and global intervention strategies must be adopted to mitigate the severity of the climate crisis. This manuscript outlines the research demonstrating how climate change will increase human aggression and violence and then discusses potential interventions, such as holistic policies addressing immigration and income inequality. In discussing this topic, we provide insight into the intersectional nature of the consequences of rapid global warming.

Callousness has been identified as a key driver of aggressive and violent behavior from childhood into early adulthood. Although previous research has underscored the importance of the parenting en...

The Tangram Help/Hurt Task (THHT) allows participants to help another participant win a prize (by assigning them easy tangrams), to hurt another participant by preventing them from winning the prize (by assigning them difficult tangrams), or to do neither (by assigning them medium tangrams) in offline or online studies. Consistent with calls for continued evidence supporting psychological measurement, we conducted a meta-analytic review of the THHT that included 52 independent studies involving 11,060 participants. THHT scores were associated with helping and hurting outcomes in theoretically predicted ways. Results showed that THHT scores were not only associated with short-term (experimental manipulations, state measures) and long-term (trait measures) helping and hurting outcomes, but also with helping and harming intentions. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the THHT relative to other laboratory measures of prosocial behavior and aggression, discuss unanswered questions about the task, and offer suggestions for the best use of the task.