Journal of Humanistic Psychology
August 18, 2022
Mark Molumby, Keith Gaynor, Suzanne Guérin et al.
3 citations
Psilocybin may become a legal medicinal drug due to growing evidence of its efficacy for mental health disorders. This work tested the validity of a model of extra-pharmacological factors—set, setting, and intention—in predicting attitudes toward psilocybin. Two hundred nineteen participants completed online measures of personality and the Attitudes Toward Psilocybin scale. A model including a positive set, openness to experience, and lower extraversion significantly predicted attitudes. The findings support the model and suggest that a psychological suitability test could help determine whether psilocybin prescription is appropriate.
November 23, 2021
Mark Molumby, Keith Gaynor, Suzanne Guérin
2 citations
preprint
A model of extra-pharmacological factors—set, setting, and intention—predicts attitudes toward psilocybin, supporting the idea that a psychological suitability test could help determine whether psilocybin is an appropriate treatment. In 219 adults, openness to experience, extraversion, and set significantly predicted scores on the Attitudes Towards Psilocybin scale, which showed good reliability and validity. The sample was evenly split between those with and without prior psychedelic use. The findings suggest that non-drug factors matter for medicinal psilocybin decisions.
International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP
January 1, 2026
Donagh Seaver O'Leary, Pat Mulvaney, Laura Moore et al.
A virtual reality simulation of auditory hallucinations (VR-sAH) based on real experiences of people with psychosis was tested in 68 non-clinical participants. The simulation produced a believable and emotionally salient analogue of hallucinatory experiences. Significant reductions in heart rate variability confirmed participants' embodied immersion. Semi-structured interviews with 29 participants and quantitative measures showed the VR-sAH was an acceptable research tool, though with important caveats for including people with psychosis and ensuring researcher integrity. While not replicating full clinical hallucinations, VR-sAH offers an ethically manageable and experimentally controllable analogue for studying perceptual and cognitive processes relevant to psychosis, especially in early-stage non-clinical research.