Boryana Todorova
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todorova.bsky.social
Boryana Todorova
@todorova.bsky.social
Visiting researcher @UQ 🇦🇺 🐨 | PhD candidate @ScanUnit @univienna | climate change 🌍 neuroscience 🧠 & behavioral science 🤗 | MSc in psychology 👩🏼‍🎓
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🌍 So excited to share our new paper “Machine learning identified key individual and nation-level factors predicting climate-relevant beliefs and behaviors”, just out in npj Climate Action!

🔗 Fully Open Access: rdcu.be/ele9s 1/
🎉 New paper alert!

In this collaboration across 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 (n = 3,055), we developed a new pro-environmental behavior task and tested which psychological interventions actually make people more willing to put in real effort for mitigating climate change.

Fully OA: tinyurl.com/2s46fppb
Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change - Communications Psychology
Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climat...
doi.org
November 5, 2025 at 11:31 AM
So happy to see this out! 🎉 We surveyed people from 68 countries about how they encounter and engage with information about science!

See the thread below for a summary of the main findings 👇

Congratulations to the whole team, especially @nielsmede.bsky.social and @colognaviktoria.bsky.social 👏
Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess
October 22, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
I'm excited to share the news that our climate change project won the @spspnews.bsky.social Robert Cialdini Prize for a "paper that uses field methods and demonstrates the relevance of social psychology to outside groups and communities"!

You can read it here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
October 7, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
New paper out in NYAS!
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
We show that protecting others' from pain promotes effortful prosocial behavior 💪🧑‍🤝‍🧑🤝
w/ @clauslamm.bsky.social @silanilab.bsky.social @lei-zhang.bsky.social
(thread below)
October 2, 2025 at 8:10 AM
🧠🌍 Join me next week for the Planetary Health Alliance – Next Gen Speaker Series to learn why climate action is brain health action!

When? 24th of September, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT
Where? Online - register here: planetaryhealthalliance.org/events/next-...
Next Gen Speaker Series - Boryana Todorova - Planetary Health Alliance
Boryana Todorova is a Visiting Researcher at the Net Zero Observatory, University of Queensland, and a member of the Neuro Climate Working Group. Her research examines the two-way relationship between...
planetaryhealthalliance.org
September 15, 2025 at 5:19 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
PsyArXiv is now down to only ~40% of the backlog we started with, thanks to our amazing moderators 🎉 To all mods: thank you so much for your hard work!

Did one of your preprints get approved recently? Help us show our thanks by liking and sharing this post :)

#PsyArXiv #PsychSciSky
August 30, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
“The study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that moderate increases in cumulative heatwave exposure increase a person’s biological age — to an extent comparable to regular smoking or alcohol consumption.”
Repeated heatwaves can age you as much as smoking or drinking
Long-term study suggests that the more heatwaves people are exposed to, the more it accelerates body ageing.
www.nature.com
August 26, 2025 at 8:17 PM
📢 🥳 New paper alert!

We developed a new task (RateME) for studying the effects of personal and group rejection and showed that both types of rejection can be linked to radicalization via increased hostility.

🔗 Link to the paper: shorturl.at/uJiDa
Group and personal rejection are similarly linked to extreme intergroup attitudes
Perceived marginalization of social groups has been identified as one of the main drivers of violent extremism across countries. However, most psychol…
shorturl.at
July 29, 2025 at 11:36 AM
What an excellent and truly important commentary on the clashes between bottom-up and top-down neuroscience and how we can move forward

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research app...
www.nature.com
July 25, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
🎉 Our paper is now out in Communications Psychology!
We explore how effortful leisure (like puzzling) can be a source of meaning in daily life.

Across 5 studies (N = 2,569), we find:
- Effort makes leisure feel more meaningful
- But not necessarily less enjoyable

🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s442...
Effortful leisure is a source of meaning in everyday life - Communications Psychology
Five studies, including experiments and experience-sampling, show effortful leisure feels more meaningful than less effortful leisure while maintaining enjoyment. Results suggest effortful leisure can...
doi.org
July 24, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Excited to share our new paper on individual victimhood and conspiracy beliefs across 15 countries! 🌍

Check out the 🧵 below 👇🏼
July 20, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Very excited to see this paper out! Grateful I had the chance to contribute to data collection in Bulgaria 🇧🇬 and Austria 🇦🇹. My home country Bulgaria is rarely included in such surveys, so I’m especially happy we got data there.

Stellar effort by the team, especially @colognaviktoria.bsky.social! 👏
July 10, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
I just became president of a scientific society and my first act was to disagree with one of my heroes...Arie Kruglanski gave a keynote arguing social psychology needs MORE Big Beautiful Theories. I think that's exactly backwards. Here's why...
Hasty Theories
Why Social Psychology Needs to Stop Rushing to Explain
open.substack.com
July 8, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
🌟 Research Assistant opportunity 🌟

I'm looking for an RA to support research @thechbh.bsky.social on social information seeking and decision making, including fMRI and MEG 🧠

Details: tinyurl.com/chbh-ra-uob
Deadline: 20th July ⏳
Start: From September 🗓️
Please share 🔁
Research Associate - School of Psychology - 104433 - Grade 6
The role is to provide Research Assistant services to Dr Jo Cutler for her projects on social decision-making and information seeking. Tasks include helping with participant recruitment and testing, c...
tinyurl.com
June 26, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Enjoying stunning Brisbane and its amazing wildlife while waiting for #OHBM2025 to start 😍@ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Looking forward to a week of inspiring talks and fruitful discussions! DM me if you are attending and want to chat 😊
June 23, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Awesome talk by @lukasmayrhofer.bsky.social on how the emergence of radical climate activists (Last Generation) impacted portayals of moderate activists (Fridays for Future) 🤩👏

See also our preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
June 17, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Excited to see that our International Neuro Climate Working Group is featured by the World Economic Forum as one of the top global initiatives addressing climate change & mental health 🌍🧠

Grateful to be part of this inspiring, growing movement!

📰 Read more: www.weforum.org/stories/2025...
Environmental disruption is impacting people's mental health
Communities around the world are using innovative programmes like youth-led support schemes to address the mental health impacts of environmental change.
www.weforum.org
June 13, 2025 at 6:07 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
1/7 🧵 We live in a biased social reality! 🤯

🚨 NEW PAPER: Climate activist stereotypes among the German public and German climate activists.

My 1st PhD paper 🤩 in collaboration with @umweltbundesamt.bsky.social
June 5, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Do radical climate protests influence portrayals of moderate activists and reader attitudes? 🤔

We analyzed 2,376 news articles and 193k user comments to answer this question!

Check out our new preprint 👇🏼
One month into my phd and my first preprint is out - at this pace I'll be done by the end of the year, right? 🥳

"Radical climate protests shaped portrayals of moderate activists and reader attitudes in German news media"

Read here or the🧵: osf.io/preprints/ps...

1/7
OSF
osf.io
June 4, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Are you passionate about neuroimaging methods and would like to work with us? 🚨

4-year PhD position on methods development in the new Cluster of Neuronal Circuits in Health and Disease (coe.univie.ac.at) and the role of GABA in the amygdala and other brain areas 🧠

Details: shorturl.at/EcI2W

Pls 🔁
Contact person: For further inquiries please contact Katalin Szigeti, PhD, the Training Unit Coordinator of the CoE (margit.katalin.szigeti@univie.ac.at).
coe.univie.ac.at
June 3, 2025 at 7:47 AM
New preprint 📄

We tested how good are experts in predicting the effectiveness of behavioral science interventions aimed at increasing climate-relevant beliefs and behavior 🌱🌍

Spoiler alert: they’re better than the public! But…
(check out the 🧵 below for more ⬇️)
May 16, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Why do people fight for or against climate action?

Led by Prof. Matthew J. Hornsey, our new review article published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences delves into the moral arguments of collective climate action—on both sides of the debate: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
May 11, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Our new paper analyzes 19 predictors of climate change beliefs & action across 55 countries (N=4635)

4 predictors had consistent effects across all outcomes:
1) environmentalist identity,
2) trust in climate science,
3) internal environmental motivation,
4) the Human Development Index
May 14, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Gut wrenching footage from the new David Attenborough movie showing the devastating impact of industrial trawling on ocean life. Entire ecosystems ripped out from the seafloor and destroyed in minutes, absolutely devastating…
I will forever be haunted by this footage.

Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity.

What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives.
🌎🦑🧪
May 12, 2025 at 7:50 AM
🌍 So excited to share our new paper “Machine learning identified key individual and nation-level factors predicting climate-relevant beliefs and behaviors”, just out in npj Climate Action!

🔗 Fully Open Access: rdcu.be/ele9s 1/
May 8, 2025 at 6:22 PM