‘They can turn a normal city street into a jungle'

Ella Rhodes spoke to Dr Reshanne Reeder (Lecturer in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Liverpool), who researches extremes of mental imagery, individual differences in mental imagery, and their impacts.

20 April 2026


How did you get interested in researching mental imagery?

Ever since my Master's, I've had an interest in the relationship between perception, mental imagery and hallucinations, and how people with different mental imagery and different perceptual experiences can have very different realities. During my postdoc years, my supervisor was really great and told me to explore whatever I wanted, so I decided to start looking into mental imagery.

Previously, mental imagery had been presented as a dichotomy – either people had it or didn't. But people weren't really talking about individual differences. I started coming up with psychology paradigms to try to bring out these individual differences in perception. I started with what's called pareidolia, which is the perception of meaning in random patterns, like seeing dinosaurs in the clouds (or Jesus in toast!).

I would give people pictures of randomly scrambled black and white pixels and ask them whether they saw a face. I would tell people there were faces sometimes – prompting people to see things which weren't there – and I found this very reliable correlation between mental imagery vividness and people's perception of faces. So it seemed that mental imagery was affecting what people actually perceived, and I was wondering if this had any link with hallucinations.

I started exploring different ways of probing differences in actual perception, not just mental images, in people. I got into using the Ganzflicker which is this rhythmic flickering paradigm where after just a few seconds, people start to see very subjective induced hallucinations. They usually start out very simple – different colours or patterns, but people with very vivid imagery will start to see extremely complex and semantically meaningful things like faces, animals and landscapes. Now my research is starting to look into whether there's a way we can understand why people see different things in these paradigms that elicit these very subjective visual experiences, so that we can better understand clinical hallucinations as well.

Could you tell us what we know about hyperphantasia?

Ever since aphantasia, which is a complete lack of mental imagery, started being discussed, people have wondered about the other end of the spectrum. Research on this group started with questionnaire studies – particularly the vividness of visual imagery questionnaire – and if they scored 75 out of 80, they were hyperphantasic. But that's a very simplified definition and classification, and as we know, aphantasics experience a very multi-dimensional pattern of experiences – they often have severely deficient autobiographical memory, they can't picture faces of their family members, and I think hyperphantasia is similarly multidimensional.

I started interviewing people with hyperphantasia back in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. I have a citizen science collaborator who at the time was running a YouTube channel for extreme imagery and he knew a bunch of people from his channel who wanted to be interviewed about their imagery experiences. We interviewed people from his YouTube channel, we recruited from Reddit and a few research assistants interviewed people across campus when the university opened up again.

We ended up with around 40 hyperphantasics and during those interviews, which ran across a few years, we were finding hyperphantasia was a very multidimensional construct – it wasn't just 75 out of 80 on a questionnaire. People with hyperphantasia would have these very extreme experiences, like maladaptive daydreaming, and they would report being able to project their mental images into the real world, which I call prophantasia, which is basically imagery-augmented reality. Just like augmented reality games, like Pokemon GO, where you can see the Pokemon on your phone as if it's in the real world, people with hyperphantasia can do that with their mind's eye. They can turn a normal city street into a jungle. It's a super immersive experience.

They also seem to have very immersive inner worlds. Oftentimes, they'll have a fantasy world that they created when they were kids, and they just have kept building this world over the years, and they can constantly go back to it. There will be whole stories with characters – like a TV series that lasts forever but it's in their minds.

There was a guy who was a memory champion who would remember long strings of numbers after just hearing them once. He said that his way of remembering the numbers was very visual – he would put the numbers into different rooms in his 'memory palace'. Another person said that their hyperphantasia really helped them with anatomy classes – they would remember a 3D picture of a hand with different layers of bones, muscles, nerves, and tendons, all labelled in great detail.

I know there have been some studies which have found an association between aphantasia and autism, but how about hyperphantasia?

I've been hypothesising for a while, and nothing's really been published yet about this, but I think that because autism is a spectrum of extremes (e.g., sensory hyposensitivities and hyperpsensitivities, attention difficulties and hyperfocus, just to name a couple), you're going to see both extremes of the imagery spectrum in autism. There is a higher prevalence of aphantasia among autistic samples (about 20 per cent, compared to a general population prevalence of about 1-4 per cent), and I think you're also going to see a higher prevalence of hyperphantasia, but people tend to focus on aphantasia because of some outdated ideas about autism.

Simon Baron Cohen, one of the most prominent autism researchers, came up with the Autism Spectrum Quotient, and he claimed that one of the cornerstone symptoms of autism is a lack of imagination, and he put it on the questionnaire. That has filtered into these stereotypes that people with autism are not very imaginative, so it's not much of a leap to make the connection to aphantasia. But we need to look at the link to hyperphantasia. We know that some very famous autistic individuals have hyperphantasia, such as Temple Grandin, who wrote an autobiography, Thinking in Pictures – her hyperphantasia is obviously a big part of her identity if it's the title of her book!

Are we going to ignore potentially a whole half of the autism spectrum that probably has hyperphantasia just because of this old stereotype that they lack imagination? We're working on this, but it is very tricky. I think we just have to be open to the possibility that we're ignoring this potential connection. Let's see what the research says, but I suspect there's quite a lot of hyperphantasics who are also autistic.

Can you say what you've found about mental health treatment and symptoms in extremes of imagery?

We know from an earlier study we did on aphantasia and mental health that people with aphantasia experience mental health symptoms differently, and they experience therapy differently from someone with typical imagery, because common treatments also involve a lot of mental imagery techniques – if you have aphantasia, that's not going to work for you.

I was really interested to see whether people with hyperphantasia would find imagery-focused CBT useful. But actually, that's not what we found. We found that people with hyperphantasia have similar difficulties with CBT as people with aphantasia, and the reason for that is that their imagery is uncontrollable. If you ask someone with hyperphantasia to relax and imagine themselves on a beach, they'll start to imagine the beach, all of a sudden they're sitting there and they can feel the sand getting into their swimsuit, they're distracted by a crab walking towards them, they realise they've forgotten sunscreen! They start to experience these uncontrollable images that aren't relaxing for them.


I have typical imagery, and if I'm asked to imagine a relaxing beach, I can imagine a relaxing beach, but because hyperphantasics come up with so many extraneous details on a daily basis in their imagery, they can't stop all the very realistic and non-relaxing things from popping into their head.

I also think hyperphantasics are going to experience mental health symptoms differently from typical imagers because they're so prone to intrusive images, even positive images. If they start to experience intrusive imagery because of something like post-traumatic stress disorder, it will be even worse than someone with typical imagery, it'll be really enhanced, and so that can be really hard to extinguish or treat.

This is something we've touched on in our research, there are a lot of misconceptions about the role of mental imagery in mental health symptoms and there hasn't been a lot of research. I'm really trying to get these results out there and get it recognised that what we thought we knew about the role of mental imagery in symptoms and treatment is completely wrong. I think that's important to know, so that therapists can help their clients, and also for people seeking mental health services.

I'd be interested to hear more about mental health symptoms in aphantasia.

There's a misconception going around that aphantasics are protected against PTSD. There have been a couple of studies, but not about clinical symptoms. These studies, which have been on watching scary videos or reading scary stories, have perpetuated the idea that people with aphantasia have reduced emotional reactions to these stimuli. But when it comes to clinically relevant stimuli, things people would seek mental healthcare for, it's a very different picture.

It's true that it's rare for people with aphantasia to have visual or sensory flashbacks after trauma, but they might start to have panic attacks and emotional flashbacks that are really hard to describe and pin down because there's no image attached to it. If they go to seek mental health care because they're having panic attacks, they feel are related to trauma, the clinician might not diagnose them with PTSD because they aren't having visual flashbacks – one of the main symptoms of PTSD. Now, of course, we're learning that PTSD is also more complicated. There's also complex PTSD or CPTSD, which might not include visual flashbacks, but usually someone's first port of call will be going to their GP and it will be hard for those people to get the services they need.

How might hyperphantasia impact mental health symptoms?

I think if they experience a severe psychiatric condition like psychosis they are very likely to experience hallucinations – arguably the most severe symptom of psychosis or schizophrenia, very debilitating and disturbing. I think if we can explore these relationships, then we can predict who is going to experience what symptoms and then maybe even get them help faster. If people start to experience clinically relevant hallucinations that are disturbing and impact the quality of life, that can be hard for people to admit, because they think it's so crazy. If we can normalise it and tell people 'this is just a symptom that is related to or exacerbated by hyperphantasia' then they can get the help that they need.

I think that all hallucinations come from the same cognitive mechanisms, and clinical hallucinations are just on the extreme of that spectrum. But it could be possible to reduce it to a more normal level, even in people with psychosis. That's what I'm going to be exploring in my future research – how to normalise hallucinations and predict hallucinations and potentially even reduce hallucinatory symptoms in people with psychosis.

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/they-can-turn-normal-city-street-jungle(accessed 23.4.26)

Does what you know affect what you see?

A new paper adds fuel to a long-standing debate.

14 April 2026

By Emma Young


This long-debated question has been investigated in a number of studies, with some suggesting that prior knowledge, emotions, and desires can influence visual perceptions — however, as the authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General write, the idea is still hotly contested.

Michael A. Cohen at MIT and colleagues decided to focus on probing one particular claim: that a person's prior knowledge of the colour of an object can influence the colour that they see. Their work suggests that this can indeed happen — at least, in certain circumstances.

The researchers first identified sixteen colourful objects and images that they were sure would be very familiar to the 15 student participants that they recruited for the main experiment. These included the Facebook logo, the American flag, the Incredible Hulk and a road Stop sign.

Each participant first went into a dimly lit room, where they were shown glossy grey-scale posters of each of the 16 stimuli. Each time, they were asked if the image seemed to be in colour or black and white — and if they did see a colour, they were asked what that colour was, and how vivid it was. The participants then repeated this procedure, but in bright light.

Then, back in dim light, they were shown the posters again, but this time, the images had been mostly covered, so that only a small segment was visible. An experimenter did tell them what the full image was, however. Again, they were asked about what colours, if any, they saw.

When the team analysed the data, they found that, when the participants viewed the full grey-scale images in bright light, they did not see any colours. Neither did they report seeing any colours when they were shown only small, ambiguous portions of the images in dim light — despite being told what the images were.

However, in dim light, when viewing the full grey-scale images, the participants consistently reported seeing the corresponding colours. So, when viewing a grey-scale Facebook logo, for example, in bright light they reported seeing no colour, though in dim light, it had appeared to be blue. "Overall, we believe that these findings demonstrate a robust and subjectively appreciable memory colour effect under ambiguous viewing conditions (i.e. dim light)," the researchers write.

It was notable that even when the participants were told what the full image was, when they saw only a small part of it, they didn't see colours. "This result suggests that although top-down knowledge can induce a memory color effect, it cannot do so in the abstract alone; there must be sufficient visual input that such knowledge can act upon," the team notes.

It's worth noting that the sample size in this study, of just fifteen, is small. However, their findings do fit with the popular 'predictive processing' model of perception. According to this model, the brain uses both raw sensory data and expectations, based on prior experience, to generate sensory perceptions. However, the theory goes, if one is lacking — if the sensory data is of poor quality, or, alternatively, if the brain can't identify prior experiences to draw on — it will rely more heavily on the other source of information to generate perceptions. This is exactly what seems to have happened in this study.

Understanding when and how the brain 'fills in' colour has potential practical implications for improving safety and communication in the dark, for example, and designing signage for low-light settings, the team thinks. But, by providing clear evidence that existing knowledge can influence colour perception, this study also contributes to the ongoing debate about when, and in what circumstances, 'top-down' knowledge can have an impact on what we see.

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/does-what-you-know-affect-what-you-see(accessed 20.4.26)

Ten small ways to tend to your social health

Gillian Sandstrom, Associate Professor in the Psychology of Kindness at the University of Sussex, has some evidence-based tips.

09 April 2026



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Almost 30 years ago now, Martin Seligman argued that psychology had become too heavily focused on understanding mental illness. His provocation contributed to the emergence of positive psychology, which focuses instead on mental health, understanding the factors that help people live happy, meaningful lives. A similar rebalancing is starting to emerge for social health.

Report after report reveals just how common and widespread loneliness is. Research on loneliness has proliferated, and rightly so: rigorous meta-analyses find evidence of its negative consequences for emotional, psychological, and even physical health (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2023). But research is also revealing the factors that help people feel connected, providing a buffer against loneliness.

This work is gaining momentum. A recent theory paper argued for a broader conceptualisation of what it means to belong, outlining multiple paths to belonging (Hirsch & Clark, 2019). Public conversation is following suit, with the emergence of books like Kasley Killam's The Art and Science of Connection, David Robson's The Laws of Connection and Andy Merolla and Jeffrey Hall's The Social Biome.

In the spirit of this work, I propose ten small ways to tend to your social health. I'm an introvert, so these are introvert-friendly ideas that work for extraverts too. They're small because change is hard, and because my research finds value in small actions: the minimal social interactions we have with strangers and acquaintances, and the everyday acts of kindness that we do for each other.
Shift how you think about your social lifeGive yourself a bit more credit

Although we tend to think we're above average in most ways (e.g., better drivers, more honest), this isn't true for our social skills. Researchers asked people to rate how good they are at almost 50 activities. Besides playing a new sport, the only activity on which people thought they were worse than average was having a casual conversation at a social event (Welker et al., 2023).

Research on the 'liking gap' provides another example of how we discredit our abilities. After two people meet for the first time, each person tends to think that they liked their conversation partner more than their partner liked them (Boothby et al., 2018). The negative voice in our heads contributes to this illusion. The more we think our conversation partner noticed the less-than-perfect parts of our chat, the more we underestimate how much they liked us.

I've named the negative voice in my head. I call him Sid, because of his insidious whispers. Maybe one day I'll silence Sid altogether, but for now I try to ignore him and take small steps (e.g., start a conversation, send a message) even when I feel a bit anxious.Notice and manage your social comparisons

One common way that we evaluate our own abilities – social and otherwise – is by comparing ourselves to others. Most of us think that we spend more time alone than the average person does, have far fewer friends and acquaintances, have a much narrower social network, and belong to many fewer social circles (Deri et al., 2017; Whillans et al, 2017). Although this is true for a small number of us, most of us fall near the average (that's the definition of the average, after all).

Next time you find yourself coming up short compared to others, try asking yourself:Who are you comparing yourself to? We tend to compare ourselves to people who have especially rich social lives. That's about as sensible as feeling bad about your tennis game because you can't play as well as Carlos Alcaraz.
Does your perception match reality? People often talk (and post on social media) about their fun, social activities, but rarely about the mundane, solitary ones. (I did, however, post once on social media about how pleased I was to be sitting on my couch with a cup of tea, a book, and a cat, recovering from a social event earlier in the day.)

Take into account your personal preferences for sociality

Loneliness results from a discrepancy between the level of social connection we want and the level we have. Introverts prefer fewer (and different kinds of) interactions than extraverts (Zelenski et al., 2013), so it doesn't make sense for us introverts to compare our social lives to those of our extraverted friends – we don't want their busy social lives and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no need to feel 'less than', because introverts measure up to extraverts in important ways: We enjoy social interactions just as much and are just as socially skilled (Lieberman & Rosenthal, 2001).
Engage in minimal social interactionsStay in touch

When life gets busy, it's easy to lose touch with people who are important to us. I'm sure I'm not alone in having been happy to receive a message from a friend but then not responding, because I felt like I didn't have enough time to craft a thoughtful response. Time flies, and then I worry that I've waited too long. In research that I've done with Lara Aknin, we find that people we've lost touch with start to feel more like strangers, and the more they feel like strangers, the less willing we are to reach out to them (Aknin & Sandstrom, 2024).

It's helpful to know that we underestimate how much people appreciate it when we reach out to them (Liu et al., 2023). Now, when someone comes to mind and I wonder how they're doing, I'll just write a sentence or two and send off a message right away. Regardless of whether I hear back (which I often do), it makes me feel good. (I still have unanswered messages in my inbox waiting for more time to reply to, but at least there's some progress.)Nurture a weak tie

Close relationships play a central role in our feelings of connection, but there is also value in other types of relationships. In fact, recent research finds that people who are more satisfied with their lives tend to interact with a wider diversity of conversation partners: close friends and family, but also neighbours and colleagues and even strangers (Collins et al., 2022).

A lady who worked at a hot dog stand opened my eyes to the importance of minimal social interactions. We never spoke (and I never bought a hot dog), but she smiled and waved whenever I passed. Her acknowledgement put a bounce in my step and helped me feel a sense of belonging at a challenging time of my life. And I realised I had other minimal relationships that felt meaningful… with Barry at the pet store (who remembered my cat's name), the friendly receptionist at the gym, and even my globe-trotting dentist.

I wanted to know whether others benefitted in the same way, so I ran a study that asked people to use a pair of mechanical tally counters to count every social interaction that they had with strong ties (i.e., close others) and weak ties (i.e., acquaintances). I found that people who have more daily interactions with weak ties tend to be happier and feel more connected than people who have fewer. Also, on days when people have more interactions with weak ties than they usually do, they tend to be happier and feel more connected.Talk to a stranger

Like my dad before me, I have become an irrepressible stranger-talker. Most afternoons, I put my laptop to sleep, get up from my desk, and go for a walk in my local green space. I do it for my physical health (because humans weren't designed to sit at a desk all day), but also for my mental and social health. I carry dog treats in my pocket so that I can make furry friends and so that I can start conversations with strangers (dogs are an easy conversation starter).

We tend to feel more connected after talking to a stranger – whether we are the one who starts the conversation or the one responding to a stranger's overture (Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014). This is true even if you're an introvert like me. Many of us are bit nervous about talking to people we don't know, or don't know well (see #1), but we worry more than we need to (Sandstrom & Boothby, 2014) and it gets easier with practice (Sandstrom et al., 2022).
Tweak how you show up during your social interactionsOpen up a bit more

We build and strengthen social relationships by not only spending time with people, but spending time with them in conversations that make both of us feel understood, validated, and cared for (Hall, 2019). This responsiveness often emerges when we share our thoughts and feelings with someone, and they respond by really listening to us.

We often worry about opening up to others, even people we're close to. We think that our vulnerability will make us seem weak (Bruk et al., 2018). Turn the tables, though, and the story is different: When we imagine someone else being vulnerable, we see it as admirable and courageous.

We don't have to share our deepest, darkest secrets (though, when we do share secrets, people are more considerate and less disapproving than we expect: Kardas et al., 2024). When I talk to one friend on a weekly basis, I predictably start with 'How are you?' She always pauses, reflects on her feelings, and answers with specifics – something that makes me feel a lot closer than if she simply said 'Fine. How are you?'Listen a bit more

Relationships are built on conversations, and conversations are a balance of talking and listening. We show that we are listening through nonverbal behaviours (e.g. maintaining eye contact, nodding in agreement or encouragement) and verbal behaviours (e.g. asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, making callbacks to what was said earlier).

It comes as no surprise that feeling like we're being listened to helps us feel more connected to the listener. More surprisingly, research finds that when we engage in deeper listening, we feel more connected to the person doing the talking. In a recent study, when people engaged in small talk or deep talk with a stranger, the more they asked follow-up questions, the more connected both conversation partners felt (West et al., 2025).Do something kind

People who took part in The Kindness Test – the largest-ever public science project on kindness – reported the most recent time they had done something kind for another person. When we asked how they had felt after carrying out the act, people said they had felt happy and proud, but most of all they had felt connected.

In an experimental test of this, researchers asked a group of people to carry out acts of kindness every day for two weeks. Over the course of the study, people who had carried out acts of kindness ended up having more social interactions (vs. a control group), and the people who were lonelier at the start of the study had become less lonely by the end (Archer Lee et al., 2024).Look for kindness in others

In the Kindness Test, we found that people who carry out more acts of kindness report being less lonely, but so do people who simply notice others carrying out more acts of kindness.

People are kinder than we think. In one research study, people underestimated how willing others were to do them a favour (take a photo of them) (Zhao & Epley, 2022). This was true when they asked a stranger to take the photo, but also when they asked a friend!

In a recent study, students demonstrated an 'empathy gap': they underestimated how kind their fellow students were (Pei et al., 2025). And the gap was larger for students who were lonelier, suggesting that when we're feeling lonely, we might fail to notice the kindness that is all around us.
Small tweaks add up

Many of us spend time thinking about how to optimise our physical health: diet, sleep, exercise. We could stand to put a bit more thought into how to optimise our social health. Making small changes to the way we think about our social lives, engaging in more minimal social interactions, and making small tweaks to the way we interact with others can add up to help us feel more connected.

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For tips on what to do if you feel lonely, please see these resources from the Campaign to End Loneliness.

Gillian Sandstrom (@drgilliansandstrom) is an associate professor in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, and author of Once Upon a Stranger: The Science of How "Small" Talk Can Add Up To a Big Life (Yellow Kite: Hardback, ebook & Audio).
References

Aknin, L. B. & Sandstrom, G. M. (2024). People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 34.

Archer Lee, Y., Guo, Y., Li, G., & Chen, F. S. (2024). Prosocial behavior as an antidote to social disconnection: The effects of an acts of kindness intervention on daily social contact and loneliness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25(4), 39.

Boothby, E. J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G. M., & Clark, M. S. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1742-1756.

Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G., & Bless, H. (2018). Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 192.

Collins, H. K., Hagerty, S. F., Quoidbach, J., Norton, M. I., & Brooks, A. W. (2022). Relational diversity in social portfolios predicts well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(43), e2120668119.

Deri, S., Davidai, S., & Gilovich, T. (2017). Home alone: Why people believe others' social lives are richer than their own. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(6), 858-877.

Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278-1296.

Hirsch, J. L., & Clark, M. S. (2019). Multiple paths to belonging that we should study together. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(2), 238-255.

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227-237.

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Lieberman, M. D., & Rosenthal, R. (2001). Why introverts can't always tell who likes them: multitasking and nonverbal decoding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 294-310.

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Sandstrom, G. M., Boothby, E. J., & Cooney, G. (2022). Talking to strangers: A week-long intervention reduces psychological barriers to social connection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 102, 104356.

Sandstrom, G. M., & Dunn, E. W. (2014). Is efficiency overrated? Minimal social interactions lead to belonging and positive affect. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 437-442.

Wang, F., Gao, Y., Han, Z., Yu, Y., Long, Z., Jiang, X., ... & Zhao, Y. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(8), 1307-1319.

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West, T. N., Huston, S., Chandler, K. R., Zhou, J., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2025). High-quality listening behaviors linked to social connection between strangers. Communications Psychology, 3(1), 165.

Whillans, A. V., Christie, C. D., Cheung, S., Jordan, A. H., & Chen, F. S. (2017). From misperception to social connection: Correlates and consequences of overestimating others' social connectedness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(12), 1696-1711.

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SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/ten-small-ways-tend-your-social-health(accessed 14.4.26)

Chatbot Vs. Random Human: Which is better at tackling loneliness?

Insights from a new experiment suggest humans may still have the edge.

23 March 2026

By Emma Barratt



As it stands, the world leaves many of us lacking in real human connection. Some work long hours and don't have time to socalise, others are unable to do so due to physical limitations or just difficulty finding people like them. The lack of affordable third places also often thwarts the kind of random-chance connections enjoyed by previous generations. Short of an overhaul, loneliness seems likely to continue be a major problem for the UK population.

With chatbots "becoming increasingly embedded in social life," as Ruo-Ning Li of the University of British Columbia and team put it in their latest paper, there's potential for them to offer some kind of companionship. Whether or not that idea appeals to you personally, it feels somewhat undeniable that the accessibility and cost of an AI loneliness intervention would be a useful tool — that is, if it works.

To investigate the extent to which a chatbot can alleviate loneliness, Li and team put their own psychologically-informed AI chatbot, 'Sam', head to head with a random human to see which entity made participants feel less lonely in their first few weeks of university. Over the course of two weeks, 296 undergraduates participated in one of three randomly assigned conditions: chat daily with 'Sam', chat daily with a random unknown peer or, in the case of the control group, journal about their feelings.

By comparing surveys on loneliness conducted both before and after that 14-day window, the researchers found that only those who had spoken with an actual human felt significantly less lonely once the intervention was complete. Those that chatted with 'Sam' felt no less lonely than those in the control condition. A look at daily reports provided by participants also revealed that only those who chatted with a human felt less isolated and reported more positive emotions than controls once those two weeks were up.

The chatbot condition did, however, see a few wins; compared with the control group, both the AI and human chat partners helped to reduce negative emotions, and people felt equally close to both the chatbot and human partners. When participants were told they could keep chatting beyond the two weeks, though, only 13% of those having an exchange with 'Sam' chose to continue. When you compare this with the 33% that chose to continue chatting with their new human conversation partner, it seems that at least in this situation, humans continue to be more appealing to talk to.

The team suggests that this difference might in part be due to limitations in expressions of empathy from 'Sam'. "While we designed our chatbot to express high levels of empathy, it is possible that in practice, it often failed to do so." The team asked GPT to rate the empathetic qualities of the conversations participants had, but due to this AI model being a 'black box', it's unclear whether these assessments included in the paper are valid, or subject to hallucinations.

Even so, this study suggests that humans still have the edge in providing a sense of connection, even when they're just a random stranger. Previous research has suggested that perhaps the artificial nature of the AI chatbot could have left participants feeling 'empty' while chatting with them — something that isn't easily remedied by tweaking algorithms. Whether further shifts in cultural attitudes towards chatbots, evolution of the technology, or similar factors will change that in future remains to be seen.

Read the paper in full:
Li, R.-N., Folk, D., Singh, A., Ungar, L., & Dunn, E. (2026). Is a random human peer better than a highly supportive chatbot in reducing loneliness over time? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 125, 104911. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2026.104911

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/chatbot-vs-random-human-which-better-tackling-loneliness(accessed 14.4.26)

How to thrive in space

Caroline Clark reviews the BBC series 'Once Upon a Time in Space'.

10 December 2025

24 February 2022. Just another routine day on the International Space Station, orbiting Earth from 400km above the atmosphere. Yet looking down, US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts noticed flashes of light, followed by huge clouds of smoke rising up. Russia had just begun a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In that moment, the political fractures on the planet beneath them collided with the fragile cooperation holding them aloft.

Space is the stage upon which the best and worst of humanity plays out and astronauts must hold these competing tensions in mind in order to do their job. Once Upon A Time in Space, a BBC Two documentary charting 70 years of spaceflight, speaks to members of both the US and Russian programmes to explore what it takes to thrive in space – the so-called 'Right Stuff' that astronauts are rigorously selected for. What makes some people better suited to living and working off-planet? And how has that definition shifted over time?

Here's how the series, across four episodes, which were a masterclass in storytelling, considered such questions.
America first: From military heroics to representing all of humankind

The first humans chosen to venture beyond Earth's atmosphere came from the military. Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space in 1961, was in the Soviet Air Force. Alan Shepard, the second person in space and the first American, was a test pilot with the US Navy.

Military training produced exactly the traits early spaceflight demanded: the ability to tolerate extreme risk, remain calm under pressure, follow orders without question, and operate complex machines in life-threatening conditions. During the early space race, when the United States was scrambling to catch up with the Soviet Union, these qualities defined the original 'Right Stuff'.

Once Upon A Time in Space picks up the story in the mid-1970s, when the appetite for space exploration had declined, and NASA needed a new approach. In 1976, the agency launched an open call for astronauts, inviting members of the public to apply for the first time. No military background was required, and applicants did not need to know how to fly. This shift opened the door for women and minorities, redefining who was seen as fit to represent humanity in space.

This first episode shows the impact of this shift. Carl, brother of Ron McNair, who was one of the new Shuttle astronauts, reflects that black Americans went from 'slavery to space, in four generations'. Prior to this open call, the subtle, lingering effects of segregation in society were still present: whilst white men got to go to space, black men got sent to war in Vietnam. Carl recalls the pride his father, an 8th-grade dropout, felt as the father of an American astronaut.

Also among this first civilian cohort was Anna Fisher, an emergency doctor. She was selected while her husband, Bill, was not, and consequently she felt she had to temper her excitement so he would not feel overshadowed: a clear example of 'emotional labour'.

Anna also felt pressure to prove her commitment in ways male astronauts did not, returning to work just three days after giving birth. Years later, her daughter Kristin was asked whether Anna had been selfish to go to space when she was only one year old. As Kristin points out, male astronauts are never asked this. Progress in representation had not erased the gendered expectations placed on women, even as astronauts.
The Russian Thing: Resilience, adaptability, and the psychology of cooperation

When the Soviet Union began to collapse in 1989, it deeply affected its space programme and sense of national pride. Cosmonauts who had once been national heroes with statues erected in their honour went unpaid, and many took second jobs simply to survive.

Yet despite the turmoil, Russia remained the global leader in long-duration spaceflight. The United States had a genuine fear that the USSR's collapse could lead to nuclear technology landing in the hands of rogue states. Keeping the Russian space industry alive became a strategic priority, and NASA found a way to channel money to them through cooperation on the Mir programme.

In 1995, American astronauts and their families were uprooted to Russia to train alongside cosmonauts. It was an unpopular decision, and many were uneasy about collaborating so closely with former enemies, but the cooperation was politically non-negotiable.

The Russians, for their part, welcomed the Americans warmly, even clearing parks to build new housing. Mir forced astronauts and cosmonauts to collaborate. The space station was old, cramped and frequently malfunctioned. To operate it safely required crews to set aside differences, to understand and trust one another. A mission in 1997 made this starkly clear, as it was fraught with life-threatening emergencies. In every crisis, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts had to respond together, relying on each other to keep themselves alive.

This period redefined the 'Right Stuff' once again. Success in space now hinged on teamwork: the ability to set aside political histories, build trust quickly and work as a unified crew under extraordinary pressure.
Politics always wins: How politics and professionalism reshaped the meaning of the 'Right Stuff'

This episode highlights how the 'Right Stuff' is not the same as having passion for space. Two friends, Dan and Carlos, went to university together. Carlos is a larger-than-life character who was obsessed with the cosmos from a young age. Meanwhile, Dan is a keen engineer but completely disinterested in space. Both apply to NASA, but only Dan gets selected, much to Carlos' chagrin.

In the mid-1990s, NASA selected astronauts based on mission requirements and favoured traits such as diplomacy and emotional steadiness more than the passion and heroism seen in the past. Later, we see Dan's resilience put to the test – in 2007, his mother died in an accident whilst he was onboard the International Space Station. The first astronaut to lose a loved one whilst on mission, he had to grieve alone by himself for two more months until his return, a reality that no amount of Earth-based training can prepare you for.

As space exploration continued into the 2000s, the emphasis deepened on astronauts' ability to not just cooperate, but remain diplomatic in multicultural crews in spite of geopolitical differences back on Earth. The ISS marked a pinnacle in cross-nation ambition and collaboration, and was purposefully engineered so that the crew had to work together.

Whilst the US portion of the ISS housed the power module, the Russian section had propulsion, and both were necessary for the station to function. The role of space explorers professionalised, and teamwork became essential to success.

However, just as the governments of two former enemy nations were finding ways to set aside their differences and learn to trust each other to work together, the private space sector was taking off. MirCorp was founded by US telecommunications entrepreneur Walt Anderson, with the purpose of keeping the Mir space station going.

The private space company sent the first civilian, Dennis Tito, into space in 2001. This annoyed NASA, which thought it inappropriate for a tourist with a minimal amount of training to ride into space; by doing so, it was undermining the agency's careful selection of personnel with the 'Right Stuff' in favour of those who could simply buy their way in.
Friends forever: The emotional intelligence to live together off-planet

As life continued onboard the ISS, 400km above Earth, the 'Right Stuff' meant becoming long-term residents in a multicultural household. Missions went from lasting weeks to months, and astronauts were no longer simply representatives of their nations. Yet trust did not emerge automatically; it had to be built.

Astronauts learned each other's communication styles, shared food, celebrated holidays together and created small rituals to make life in isolation and confinement feel bearable. The 'Right Stuff' now included emotional intelligence, curiosity about others and the ability to create harmony within a politically uneasy partnership.

This period also required a new form of resilience and adaptability. When the Shuttle programme ended in 2011, the US lost its ability to launch astronauts independently and became reliant on Russia for access to space. For nearly a decade, American astronauts trained and operated in a climate of national vulnerability, as geopolitical tensions grew.

China and India entered the race, making rapid progress in developing their own space programmes to rival those of the West. Private companies, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, began reshaping expectations of what space exploration would look like. Astronauts increasingly found themselves in the middle of navigating a landscape where national ambition, commercial innovation and international cooperation intertwined in complex ways.

Yet despite these competing forces, the ISS offers a final, enduring lesson that we can take forward in our future space ventures. Through the cupola window, astronauts saw a fragile, borderless Earth: a view that made our mutual interdependence impossible to ignore. In space, no person, no nation, can thrive alone. The 'Right Stuff', in its most modern form, is the capacity to move beyond rivalry, to set aside our differences, and work together for the common good of all humanity.

Caroline Clark is a leadership and performance coach for women in tech and space. An analogue astronaut and public speaker, she focuses on helping leaders thrive under pressure and build the resilience needed for high-stakes environments.

In 'Space to lead: Psychological adaptation and resilience in analogue space missions', she reports back from her adventures…

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/how-thrive-space(accessed 7.4.26)