Jan Antfolk

Åbo Akademi University · Department of Psychology

Because of enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared with monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ performan...

As studies indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as a threatening disease, the demand for a vaccine against the disease could be expected to be high. Vaccine safety concerns might nevertheless outweigh the perceived disease risks when an individual decides whether or not to accept the vaccine. We investigated the role of perceived risk of COVID-19...

Background We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Methods The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults...

The number of people seeking asylum based on their sexual orientation is expected to continue increasing. Assessing the credibility of such claims to determine whether asylum-seekers meet the criteria for refugee status is a complex task for asylum officials. These assessments involve several psychological aspects, affecting applicants’ disclosure...

A series of recent studies have shown that the once-assumed cognitive advantage of bilingualism finds little support in the evidence available to date. Surprisingly, however, the view that bilingualism incurs linguistic costs (the so-called lexical deficit) has not yet been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny, despite its centrality for our un...

Purpose Queer asylum‐seekers should be given an opportunity to have their claim evaluated in a fair and unbiased manner. Despite this, research shows they risk having their claims rejected based on stereotypes about sexual minorities. In the present study, we investigated how the Finnish Immigration Service evaluated credibility in asylum claims lo...

While stigma theories predict that stigma relates to negative attitudes toward seeking help, previous studies found mixed results among pedohebephilic individuals. We tested whether different stigma processes (i.e., general anticipated stigma, anticipation of negative therapist behavior upon disclosure, and internalized stigma), psychological distr...

Introduction Sex workers suffer considerable marginalization that limits their choices and exposes them to various types of harm. Hence, it is important to examine sex workers' professional agency and its association with quality of life. In the current study, we investigated professional agency, quality of life, and problematic substance use among...

Purpose: Recent legal psychological research has highlighted shortcomings in asylum interviews, however, few studies have examined how the interview participants (interviewer, interpreter, and asylum seeker) experience and perceive the interviews. The aim of the current study was to explore experiences of rapport and communication from the perspect...

Purpose: Recent legal psychological research has highlighted shortcomings in asylum interviews, however, few studies have examined how the interview participants (interviewer, interpreter, and asylum seeker) experience and perceive the interviews. The aim of the current study was to explore experiences of rapport and communication from the perspect...

We tested the hypothesis that individual differences in capacity to attract female partners is associated with anti-feminist attitudes in men. Building on evolutionary theories of female choice, we hypothesized that men with low (vs. high) mate value and low (vs. high) mate access are more motivated to limit female choice, and, therefore, also are...

Health communicators are faced with the challenge that people can hesitate vaccines for different reasons. Our aim was to identify and describe the qualities of distinct COVID-19 and influenza vaccine-hesitancy subgroups to facilitate the development of tailored vaccine-hesitancy communication. In two studies, we used agglomerative hierarchical clu...

Sexual compliance (i.e., consensually engaging in sex despite a lack of desire for it) is common in committed intimate relationships, but the consequences of compliance for the well-being of the individual and the relationship are poorly understood. We investigated the perceived consequences of sexual compliance and perceptions of factors contribut...

To be able to remove obstacles to reporting rape, such obstacles must first be better understood. In the present cross-sectional survey study, we examined whether situational and spatiotemporal factors were associated with rape victims’ police reporting in Finland. We analyzed the experiences of 185 victims who had visited a sexual assault referral...

The increase in remote hearings after the COVID‐19 pandemic presents an urgent need to examine how judges assess video‐mediated witness and party statements compared with live statements. There is currently a limited body of research on this subject. As for the assessment itself, professionals within the judicial system sometimes believe they can d...

The current study investigates attitudes toward one form of sex for resources: the so-called sugar relationships, which often involve exchanges of resources for sex and/or companionship. The present study examined associations among attitudes toward sugar relationships and relevant variables (e.g., sex, sociosexuality, gender inequality, parasitic...

Anti‐science attitudes can be resilient to scientific evidence if they are rooted in psychological motives. One such motive is trait reactance, which refers to the need to react with opposition when one's freedom of choice has been threatened. In three studies, we investigated trait reactance as a psychological motivation to reject vaccination. In...

Studies on the efficacy of language treatment for multilingual people with post-stroke aphasia and its generalization to untreated languages have produced mixed results. We conducted a systematic review and a metaanalysis to examine within- and cross-language treatment effects and the variables that affect them. We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL...

Recent research has questioned the accuracy of asylum decisions, as asylum officials only partly follow evidence-based interviewing methods and hold assumptions regarding human memory and behaviour that are not supported by psychological science. To correctly and effectively adjudicate asylum claims, asylum officials need more training in evidence-...

This is a report on the findings of the survey "Better Therapy for People with a Sexual Interest in Children", which was conducted the 2021.

Objective This study investigated the reasons why pedohebephilic clients disclose their sexual attraction to children in therapy and the experiences associated with this decision among English-speaking samples. Method: The pre-registered online survey combined (1) quantitative correlational data of self-reported improvement, alliance, therapist rea...

Abuse during childhood is an important risk factor for violent behavior and diminished anger management as an adult. The study examined whether participants who reported severe childhood maltreatment also reported high levels of violent conduct and decreased emotional control in sober and drunk states as adults, and compared this to participants wh...

Distance, lighting, and facial masking negatively impact eyewitness identification accuracy. We investigated their combined effect on accuracy and how internal (e.g., eyes) versus external (e.g., hair) masking impacts accuracy. Using live targets witnessed by 1325 participants, we investigated the effects of distance (5m, 12.5m, 20m), lighting (opt...

Some men who have sex with men (MSM) having more casual sex and sexual partners is interpreted to be a sign of mental disorder and used to justify negative attitudes toward them by some. MSM may internalize this attitude causing internalized homophobia (IH). According to the sexual strategies theory, MSM having more casual sex is the result of diff...

Advantageous inequity aversion (i.e., the tendency to respond negatively to unfairness that benefits oneself) usually develops in 6-8-year-olds. However, little is known about the selection pressures that might have shaped this phenomenon. Using data collected from 120 4-8-year-old Finnish children, we tested two evolutionary explanations for the d...

Sexual compliance (i.e., consensually engaging in sex despite a lack of desire for it) is common in committed intimate relationships, but the consequences of compliance for the well-being of the individual and the relationship are poorly understood. We investigated the perceived consequences of sexual compliance and possible factors contributing to...

The current study sought to determine whether public perceptions of other vaccines and diseases than COVID-19 have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We longitudinally examined whether there had been a change from before the COVID-19 pandemic to during the pandemic in: (a) influenza vaccination behaviour and intentions; (b) the perceived benef...

Introduction Homophobic discrimination and stigmatization, especially from healthcare professionals, are important stressors for gay men. Homophobia may be partly rooted in seeing some gay men having casual sex and many sexual partners as a signal of mental problems. Sexual Strategies Theory (SST) suggests that such sexual behavior is a result of d...

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy intervent...

Sex differences in short-term mating behaviors are well-documented in human sexuality research. Existing studies usually explain sex differences in sexual behaviors through differences in mating preferences, which is theoretically problematic. Using an agent-based model, we investigated the circumstances under which males' and females' differential...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures...

Victims of rape must decide whether to file a police report, and many victims decide not to report the rape to the police. The literature on the associations between demographic and individual factors and reporting rape to the police is limited. Here, we investigated the associations between demographic and individual factors (education, socioecono...

Sex workers suffer considerable marginalization, which is assumed to limit their choices and make them more likely to be exposed to various types of harm. Given this, it is relevant to examine sex workers’ professional agency and how it is associated with their quality of life. In the current study, we investigated professional agency, quality of l...

Credibility assessments are an important but complex part of asylum procedures. The current study investigated psychological assumptions underlying credibility assessments in Finnish first-instance asylum procedures and how these assumptions fit with widely accepted psychological science. Following previous research, we categorized assumptions in 5...

Religious persecution is a leading cause of global displacement. In the absence of supporting evidence, presenting a credible oral asylum claim based on religion is a difficult task for asylum-seekers. Asylum officials, in turn, face considerable challenges in evaluating the credibility of asylum-seekers' claims to determine their eligibility for r...

Objective: Mothers with multiple-partner fertility have longer interbirth intervals (IBI) than mothers with single-partner fertility, suggesting that partner change makes it harder to achieve preferred birth spacing and family planning. Previous studies have, however, overlooked possible differences in preferred IBI length. Here, we investigated ho...

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in t...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy intervent...

Religious persecution is a leading cause of global displacement. In the absence of supporting evidence, presenting a credible oral asylum claim based on religion is a difficult task for asylum-seekers. Asylum officials, in turn, face considerable challenges in evaluating the credibility of asylum-seekers’ claims to determine their eligibility for r...

When interacting with infants, humans often alter their speech and song in ways thought to support communication. Theories of human child-rearing, informed by data on vocal signalling across species, predict that such alterations should appear globally. Here, we show acoustic differences between infant-directed and adult-directed vocalizations acro...

Significance Communicating in ways that motivate engagement in social distancing remains a critical global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested motivational qualities of messages about social distancing (those that promoted choice and agency vs. those that were forceful and shaming) in 25,718 people in 89 countries...

Advantageous inequity aversion (i.e., the tendency to respond negatively to unfairness that benefits oneself) usually develops in 6–8-year-olds. However, little is known about the selection pressures that might have shaped this phenomenon. Using data collected from 120 4–8-year-old Finnish children, we tested two evolutionary explanations for the d...

Previous research has indicated that asylum interviewers—contrary to recommendations—use more closed than open questions to elicit information. In the current study, we investigated how information is elicited in asylum interviews by analysing question‐answer pairs in 105 official Finnish asylum interview transcripts. We developed a new coding fram...

The number of people seeking asylum based on their sexual orientation is expected to continue increasing. Assessing the credibility of such claims to determine whether asylum-seekers meet the criteria for refugee status is a complex task for asylum officials. These assessments involve several psychological aspects, affecting applicants’ disclosure...

The aim of the current study was to explore whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s perceptions of other vaccines and diseases than COVID-19. In two samples of Finnish adults (N = 205 in Study 1 and N = 197 in Study 2), we longitudinally investigated whether there has been a change from before the COVID-19 pandemic to during the pandemi...

Victims of rape must decide whether to file a police report, and many victims decide not to report the rape to the police. The literature on the associations between demographic and individual factors and reporting rape to the police is limited. Here, we investigated the associations between demographic and individual factors (education, socioecono...

The pursuit of justice increasingly relies on productive interactions between witnesses and investigators from diverse cultural backgrounds during investigative interviews. To date, the role of cultural context has largely been ignored by researchers in the field of investigative interviewing, despite repeated requests from practitioners and policy...

An interim report, published by Prime Minister’s Office (Publications of the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities 2021:69) titled "The Background of the Clients in Seri Support Centers, Their use of Support Services and the Progress of the Criminal Procedure". Available only in Finnish (abstract is also available in English an...

Previous research has indicated that asylum interviewers—contrary to recommendations—use more closed than open questions to elicit information. In the current study, we investigated how information is elicited in asylum interviews by analysing question-answer pairs in 105 official Finnish asylum interview transcripts. We developed a new coding fram...

To test the hypothesis that infant night waking is an adaptation to increase interbirth intervals (IBIs) (i.e., the time between a mother's consecutive births) by exhausting the mother, we made an initial attempt at investigating whether maternal sleep disturbance is associated with longer IBIs. We also explored whether postpartum depression sympto...

Emotions influence attitudes and appraisals toward out-groups, including prejudice. We hypothesized that individuals who successfully regulate emotions will express more positive attitudes toward out-groups. We conducted an online study of associations between emotion regulation and attitudes toward out-groups in a Finnish population-based sample (...

The behavioral immune system is considered to be a psychological adaptation that decreases the risk of infection. Research suggests that, in the current environment, this system can produce attitudes with negative health consequences, such as increased vaccine hesitancy. In three studies, we investigated whether two facets of the behavioral immune...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

To test the hypothesis that infant night waking is an adaptation to increase interbirth intervals (i.e., the time between a mother’s consecutive births) by exhausting the mother, we investigated whether maternal sleep disturbance is associated with longer interbirth intervals. We also explored whether postpartum depression symptoms mediated the ass...

Descriptions of perpetrators given by eyewitnesses are important in criminal cases, but the accuracy of eyewitnesses is often low. Research suggests that increased distance lowers accuracy of some descriptions and children and older adults tend to be the least accurate. To investigate the effects of distance and age on descriptive accuracy simultan...

The behavioral immune system is considered to be a psychological adaptation that decreases the risk of infection. Research suggests that, in the current environment, this system can produce attitudes with negative health consequences, such as increased vaccine hesitancy. In three studies, we investigated whether two facets of the behavioral immune...

Information on the degree to which individuals can make accurate estimations of someone’s age can be of importance in legal contexts, such as child sexual abuse cases in which the victim is an adolescent. There is, however, a scarcity of studies concerning age estimations conducted with young target persons. Using facial photos of target persons ag...

Information on the degree to which individuals can make accurate estimations of someone’s age can be of importance in legal contexts, such as child sexual abuse cases in which the victim is an adolescent. There is, however, a scarcity of studies concerning age estimations conducted with young target persons. Using facial photos of target persons ag...

Credibility assessments are an important but complex part of asylum procedures. The current study investigated psychological assumptions underlying credibility assessments in Finnish first-instance asylum procedures and how these assumptions fit with widely accepted psychological science. Following previous research, we categorized assumptions in 5...

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...

Background and objectives As the mother-offspring relationship is central to human reproduction, postpartum depression symptoms are difficult to explain in evolutionary terms. We proposed that postpartum depression might arise as a result of evolutionary mother-offspring conflict over maternal investment, and investigated the association between po...

Unfounded child sexual abuse (CSA) allegations take investigative resources from real cases and have detrimental consequences for the people involved. The Finnish Investigative Instrument of Child Sexual Abuse (FICSA) supports investigators by estimating the probability of a CSA allegation being true based on the child’s background information. In...

Background: We investigated if people’s unwillingness to comply with the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is driven by conspiracy beliefs, state reactance, a distrust in information sources, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Methods: The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an...

Objective: As COVID-19 continues to spread, researchers are working to develop a safe and effective vaccine. The success of an approved vaccine in stopping or slowing the pandemic will ultimately depend on the public’s acceptance of it. As studies indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as a threatening disease, the demand for a vaccine could be exp...