Research Lab
Artificial Intelligence and the Psychology of Human Connection
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in social life, understanding its interpersonal and psychological implications is urgent yet undertheorized. This article introduces the machine-integrated relational adaptation (MIRA) model, a transdisciplinary, middle-range theoretical framework that provides a foundational account of when, how, and why AI functions as a relational entity in human ecosystems. MIRA distinguishes two crucial roles of AI: relational partner (direct-interaction companion) and relational mediator (shaping human-to-human communication). Synthesizing psychosocial theories of human relationships, interpersonal communication theory, psycholinguistics, and human–computer interaction, MIRA structures AI’s relational impact within antecedents, processes, moderators, and outcomes. Central to MIRA are four principles describing how AI fosters social adaptation: linguistic reciprocity, psychological proximity, interpersonal trust, and relational substitution versus enhancement. These principles illuminate how adaptive AI language and behavior can elicit emotional investment, simulate mutual understanding, or even supplant human interaction. MIRA integrates established theories—attachment theory, social exchange theory, and epistemic trust frameworks—and proposes a research agenda that bridges foundational psychology with emerging sociotechnical contexts. Rather than offering a deterministic view, MIRA provides a generative, testable structure for investigating the evolving role of AI in relational life and guiding future human–AI-connection research.
Consequences of Showing Confidence: Comparing Perceptions of Self-Confidence Displayed by Women and Men
Confidence is often celebrated, yet it can also make people uncomfortable. This paper explores the psychology behind why genuinely confident individuals are sometimes perceived as intimidating, arrogant, or unlikeable. Drawing on research in social psychology, it examines topics such as self-esteem, social comparison, gender expectations, and the ways confidence can challenge our perceptions of ourselves and others.
Urgent and long overdue: legal reform and drug decriminalization in Canada
The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy recommend that states commit to adopting a balanced, integrated, and human rights-based approach to drug policy through a set of foundational human rights principles, obligations arising from human rights standards, and obligations arising from the human rights of particular groups. In respect of the Guidelines and standing obligations under UN Treaties, Canada must adopt stronger and more specific commitments for a human rights-based, people-centered, and public health approach. This approach must commit to the decriminalization of people who use drugs and include the decriminalization of possession, purchase, and cultivation for personal consumption. In this report, authors will first turn to the legal background of Canada's drug laws. Next, they will provide an overview of ongoing law reform proposals from civil society groups, various levels of government, the House of Commons, and the Senate. Then, end with a three-staged approach to reform and a series of targeted recommendations.
The Cruel Optimism of Suicide Prevention: Thinking beyond the Mental Health Model
Suicide has long been constructed as an individual, pathological problem of the mind, requiring a combination of clinical care and interpersonal support to prevent it. This article contributes to redressing this balance, via analysis of creative, qualitative workshops, which formed part of a broader study exploring the politics of suicide. Informed by 33 participants’ contributions from six creative-response workshop groups, in dialogue with Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’, we propose a creative sociological (re)turn in suicide studies. This analysis explores how the politics of UK suicide prevention constitutes a form of ‘cruel optimism’, obfuscating structural and sociological approaches to preventing suicide, and giving primacy to individual mental health-led interventions. Authors argue this provides a vital opportunity and urgent call for sociology to contribute more robustly to suicide research.
Sex Differences in Bipolar Disorders: Impact on Psychopathological Features and Treatment Response
Bipolar disorder is often misunderstood beyond the stereotypes portrayed in media. This paper explores the science behind the condition, including mood episodes, diagnosis, treatment, stigma, and the lived experiences of those navigating life with bipolar disorder. Through research and evidence, it examines the importance of understanding mental illness with empathy rather than judgment.
Invisible ghosts of care and penality: Exploring Canadian correctional workers’ perceptions of prisoner well-being, accountability and power
Much correctional work is generally misunderstood by the mainstream media and many public circles as solely punitive and authoritative, which has fueled many politicized outcomes for correctional policy, practice and intervention. Reasonably, critical criminological discourse is steered primarily by the perspectives and voices of prisoners and victims. Yet this privileging leaves many questions remaining about how correctional workers in the contemporary era negotiate their complex duties of both prisoner care and accountability. Drawing on data garnered from open-ended survey responses of provincial and territorial correctional employees (n = 876) in Canada, we explore how Canadian correctional workers balance their emotional and occupational framework and perspectives with integrity. Informed through a lens of emotional labour, we find that many Canadian correctional workers recognize the need for, and gap in, prisoner care, mental health and rehabilitation, while also problematizing the shift and decline in prisoner accountability, which they believe jeopardizes both correctional worker and prisoner safety. We discuss the implications our findings present in relation to questions of power and control in prison spaces.