BACKGROUND The cognitive behavioural (CB) model of health anxiety proposes parental illness leads to elevated health anxiety in offspring by promoting the acquisition of specific health beliefs (e.g. overestimation of the likelihood of illness). AIMS Our study tested this central tenet of the CB model. METHOD Participants were 444 emerging adults (18-25-years-old) who completed online measu...

BACKGROUND Several genetic variants are associated with obesity risk. Promoting the notion of genes as a cause for obesity may increase genetically deterministic beliefs and decrease motivation to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors. Little is known about whether causal beliefs about obesity are associated with lifestyle behaviors. Study objectives were as follows: 1) to document the prevalen...

BACKGROUND Cognitive impairments contribute significantly to disease burden in young individuals presenting with major psychiatric disorders. The capacity to encode the consequences of one's actions may be of particular importance for real-world functioning due to its fundamental role in goal-directed behavior. METHODS Here, we investigated a dimensional measure of causal awareness during a p...

It is widely believed that race divides the world into biologically distinct kinds of people-an essentialist belief inconsistent with reality. Essentialist views of race have been described as early emerging, but this study found that young children (n = 203, Mage  = 5.45) hold only the more limited belief that the physical feature of skin color is inherited and stable. Overall, children reject...