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Michael Witthöft

@michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social
279 followers 376 following 13 posts

Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Ruhr-University Bochum

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Johannes Zimmermann @jzpsych.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Many thanks to my co-authors @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social, @dcicero.bsky.social, @miriforbes.bsky.social, @chopwood.bsky.social, Roman Kotov, Robert Krueger, @msellbom.bsky.social, @lensimms.bsky.social, @aidangcw.bsky.social, and Ulrich Reininghaus!
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Prof. Feynman @proffeynman.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It's OK to say, "I don't know."
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Cognitive-behavioral therapy for post COVID-19 condition: A pilot randomized controlled trial authors.elsevier.com/c/1nQIj55zZe...
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Wimsatt: Perhaps, just perhaps, the best explanation of a phenomenon at a given level is to be found at the same level. Kendler: Noone would seek to explain hypertension at the level of quarks. A few of my favourite papers on this topic of absurd biological reductionism: 🧵
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Positive interventions cannot prevent the occurrence of symptoms triggered by negative pictures doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...
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Raphael Gutzweiler @kijuld.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
519 Patient:innen in 4 Flugzeugen - eine sehr spannende Erfahrung, die nun auch publiziert wurde. Fazit: One Session Treatment als Gruppentherapie wirkt! karger.com/pps/article-...
karger.com
A Large-Group 1-Day RCT Investigating the Effectiveness of Four Different Strategies to Promote the Outcome of Exposure Therapy in 519 Patients with Phobic Fear of Flying
Abstract. Introduction: Despite its status as the gold standard for treating fear and anxiety, exposure therapy leaves room for optimization. Clarifying and testing the clinical relevance of proposed ...
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 26/03/2026
New paper in PNAS! When the mind wanders, it often drifts to the body. We call this "body-wandering". These thoughts are often negative, but are associated with reduced ADHD & depression symptoms, driven by a distinct interoceptive-allostatic brain signature. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123
Graphical abstract showing four panels. Panel 1: a person in an MRI scanner with blue cognitive thought bubbles drifting from their head and pink body thought bubbles from their torso, with organs glowing inside. Panel 2: blue bubbles for cognitive items (Self, Words, Focus, Images, Future, Past) are larger than pink bubbles for body items (Breathing, Movement, Stomach, Heart, Skin, Bladder), with arrows showing body thoughts link to more negative and less positive emotion. Panel 3: physiological traces (EGG, ECG, respiratory) show higher arousal with body-wandering; a bar chart shows cognitive items (Past, Future, Repetitive, Vivid) correlate with more ADHD and depression symptoms while body items (Breath, Stomach, Skin, Heart) correlate with fewer.    
Panel 4: medial brain with thalamus, somatomotor cortex, and interoceptive regions highlighted, plus a chord diagram showing connectivity between these three regions.
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Florian Naudet @floriannaudet.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
SPIN GRAND CHELEM 🏆 Psilocybin JAMA Psychiatry trial 🍄 a) Positive framing despite negative primary outcome, b) Inconclusive results presented as supportive evidence, c) Safety concerns downplayed with reassuring wording. See the rest of the 🧵 for the verbatim...
jamanetwork.com
Psilocybin in Treatment-Resistant Major Depression
This randomized clinical trial investigates the efficacy and safety of psilocybin, 25 mg, with adjunct psychotherapy in treatment-resistance major depression.
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Wer hat Interesse, in einer multizentrischen Psychotherapiestudie des Deutschen Zentrums für Psychische Gesundheit (DZPG) am Standort Bochum mitzuarbeiten? Aktuell ist bei uns innerhalb des Projekts POSIDONIA eine 75%-TVL-14-Stelle zu vergeben: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/d...
jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit (m/w/d) im Drittmittelprojekt - Deutsches Zentrum für Psychische Gesundheit
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
One Or Many Environmental Intolerance(s)? A Cluster Analysis Over Two Representative Samples authors.elsevier.com/c/1meKm574Px...
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
A longitudinal bifactor approach to modelling somatic symptom development in psychosomatic treatment authors.elsevier.com/c/1mdvn55zZe...
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Ruhr-Universität Bochum @ruhr-uni-bochum.de · 16/02/2026
Ein eindringlicher Hilferuf unserer ukrainischen Partneruniversität, der Staatlichen Taras-Schewtschenko-Universität in Kyiv, hat uns erreicht. Unser Rektorat bittet um Spenden, um in dieser akuten Notsituation schnell und konkret zu helfen. Alle Infos und Kontodaten: news.rub.de/hochschulpol...
Illustration einer Hand, die eine blau-gelbe Fahne hält. Darunter steht der Text: Dringender Spendenaufruf des Rektorats.
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Johannes Zimmermann @jzpsych.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Interview and self-report measures of personality disorder criteria are not structurally equivalent. psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...
psycnet.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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Tobias Kube @tobikube.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
🧠💡Reden ist Silber, Ausprobieren ist Gold! Am 20.06. organisieren wir in Frankfurt ein Praxissymposium zum Thema Verhaltensexperimente. Programm: Vorträge & Workshops mit führenden Expert:innen, u.a. @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social. Jetzt informieren & anmelden! www.uni-frankfurt.de/110078906/Pr...
uni-frankfurt.de
Goethe-Universität — Praxissymposium
Die Goethe-Universität ist eine forschungsstarke Hochschule in der europäischen Finanzmetropole Frankfurt. Lebendig, urban und weltoffen besitzt sie als Stiftungsuniversität ein einzigartiges Maß an E...
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Johannes Zimmermann @jzpsych.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
Sometimes, doing research feels truly fulfilling. Working on this paper was one of those moments. doi.org/10.1037/ccp0...
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Prevalence of self-reported sensitivities to various environmental factors in Germany, Sweden, and Finland based on multiple classification criteria doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...
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Marc Wittmann @marcwittmann.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
The @springernature.com book "The Bodily Self, Emotion, and Subjective Time: Exploring Interoception through the Contributions of A.D. (Bud) Craig" is out: 22 authors, 16 chapters. Neurobiology, Psychology, Psychiatry, Neuroimaging, Musicology, Philosophy, ... link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
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Ruhr-Universität Bochum @ruhr-uni-bochum.de · 21/11/2025
Zwei Bochumer Sonderforschungsbereiche gehen in die jeweils dritte Förderphase: Es geht um Plasmaforschung und ums Extinktionslernen, also einmal Gelerntes wieder loszuwerden.
news.rub.de
Verlängerung für zwei Bochumer Sonderforschungsbereiche
Plasmaforschung und Extinktionslernen: Beide Sonderforschungsbereiche starten in ihre jeweils dritte Förderphase.
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Physical Activity Decreases Somatic Symptom Distress in the Affect and Symptom Paradigm journals.lww.com/bsam/fulltex...
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Support for Predictive Processing Assumptions on Health Anxiety: Imprecise Expectations on the Origin of Somatic Symptoms Increase Health Anxiety journals.lww.com/bsam/fulltex...
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Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz @unimainz.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Neue Studie zur Wirksamkeit ambulanter #Psychotherapie mit digitalem Therapiebegleiter bei chronischen Körperbeschwerden 👉 presse.uni-mainz.de/neue-behandlung…
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Symptoms associated with environmental factors are positively related to sensory-processing sensitivity
Symptoms associated with environmental factors (SAEFs) are conditions characterized by chronic somatic symptom distress and impaired everyday function…
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PsyFaKo e.V. @psyfako.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Gestern haben über 1300 Menschen für die Finanzierung der Psychotherapie-Weiterbildung demonstriert, davon 600 in Köln, 500 in Bochum und 200 in Marburg. Gemeinsam haben wir deutlich gemacht, dass es JETZT gesetzliche Regelungen zur Finanzierung der Weiterbildung benötigt.
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 17/10/2025
TIL that Dale invented the heartbeat counting task, not Schandry, and that it was known from the very first study that people underestimated their heart rate. It was orginally called a heart rate estimation task! journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2...
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Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (new name!) @bsamjournal.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
How temporally stable are somatic symptoms induced by a commonly used experimental paradigm? And do they predict somatic symptom distress over time? These questions were addressed in an Open Access study of participants who completed the Affect and Symptom Paradigm 18 months apart. #PsychSciSky
journals.lww.com
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 27/08/2025
Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇
medrxiv.org
Interoceptive Ability is Unrelated to Mental Health Symptoms: Evidence From a Large Scale Multi-Domain Psychophysical Investigation
Interoception-the sensing and perception of the internal viscera-is widely cast as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking brain-body interaction to mental illness. Prevailing models propose that altered ...
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Toshi Furukawa @toshi-frkw.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Psychotherapists have claimed for >100 years that they provide/adjust interventions in view of the client's characteristics -- but all based on their personal experiences and opinions. Here we have the first-ever system to do so based on evidence.
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Philipp Herzog @herzog.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
🔥Frisch gedruckt im PTJ🔥: @tkaiser.science , Rafaële Huntjens und ich haben in dem Artikel gängige (Fehl-)Annahmen in der klinischen Praxis im Zusammenhang mit der Dissoziativen Identitätsstörung (#DIS) aus Sicht der Wissenschaft näher beleuchtet. Ein Thread 🧵: 1/
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Philipp Herzog @herzog.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
🚨Rituelle Gewalt - Realität oder Fiktion?🚨: @tkaiser.science, Rafaële Huntjens, Renate Volbert und ich haben im neuen PTJ das Thema organisierte Kriminalität & Rituelle Gewalt unter wissenschaftlicher Lupe näher beleuchtet.🔎 Hier ist der Volltext🗞️👇🏻: www.psychotherapeutenjournal.de/2025/2/ptj20...
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Peter Kirsch @cherrydoc.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
You know you are old when your former PhD student gives a Keynote at your favorite conference. I very much enjoy the amazing talk by @danielamier.bsky.social on social cognition in schizophrenia at #PuG2025
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Aidan Wright @aidangcw.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Pro tip, folks: if you make a figure for a publication, don’t just hand the copyright over to the publisher. Post it on OSF first and then give yourself permission to use it in the first publication and then all future publications. That way, no permissions issues.
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Jon Stone @jonstoneneuro.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
"Inside FND" - a new short film about FND A film that draws on evidence from patients, clinicians and research to counter common misconceptions about Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). 🧵 www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDAv...
youtube.com
Inside FND
YouTube video by Jon Stone
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Fish see visual illusions the same way humans do. Flies too. And bees. This changes everything about the WEIRD sampling debate in cognitive psychology. New post on @dorsaamir.bsky.social and @chazfirestone.bsky.social's devastating paper.
open.substack.com
Keep Cognitive Psychology WEIRD
Back in 2010, Joe Henrich, Steve Heine, and Ara Norenzayan dropped a bomb[1] on psychology with their paper "The WEIRDest people in the world?" They argued that most psychology studies rely on Western...
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Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) @officialsarmac.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
People have a hard time accurately recalling how depressed, anxious or stressed they felt in the past @apajournals.bsky.social #JARMAC doi.org/10.1037/mac0...
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Hannah R Snyder @hannahrsnyder.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
This might be useful? Focuses on risk in the other direction (assuming subgroup/individual effects from full population effects) but the points also apply to looking at only one subgroup (e.g., clinical) and making inferences about the population. www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...
frontiersin.org
Frontiers | Simpson's paradox in psychological science: a practical guide
The direction of an association at the population-level may be reversed within the subgroups comprising that population—a striking observation called Simpson...
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Philipp Kanske @kanske.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Die Psychotherapie-Weiterbildung in Deutschland ist immer noch nicht finanziert! Wichtiges Interview mit @evalottabrakemeier.bsky.social, Präsidentin der @dgps.bsky.social in der @zeit.de www.zeit.de/2025/20/eva-...
zeit.de
Eva-Lotta Brakemeier: "Bald droht die Welle über uns zu brechen"
Psychologie studieren ist beliebt. Doch Absolventen fehlen die Psychotherapie-Weiterbildungsplätze. Eva-Lotta Brakemeier warnt vor einem gravierenden Versorgungsdefizit.
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jamesyoungevans.bsky.social @jamesyoungevans.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Why do scientists disagree? With the amazing @justinsulik.bsky.social, NakWon Rim, Elizabeth Pontikes, and @glupyan.bsky.social , we show in @naturehumbehav.bsky.social how cognitive traits and dispositions align with persistent scientific divides (www.nature.com/articles/s41...).
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Prof. Feynman @proffeynman.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
“The first person you should be careful not to fool is yourself. Because you are the easiest person to fool".”
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
New interview on the value of exploratory research. "My brief explanation of this crisis is that researchers didn't say ‘I found something interesting’, but ‘I found exactly what my fantastic theory had predicted, heureka’. And then they gave a TED talk." #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky 🧪
eiko-fried.com
The crucial value of exploratory research » Eiko Fried
Exploratory research is vital for discovery, but often undervalued. Here I argue it is key to scientific progress & needs defending.
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Peter Kirsch @cherrydoc.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Tobias Teismann desillusioniert uns hinsichtlich der Validität unserer Risikoeinschätzung für suizidales Verhalten. Hervorragender State of the Art Vortrag zur Psychotherapie suizidales Verhaltens beim @dpk-kongress.bsky.social . #DPK2025.
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Florian Aigner @florianaigner.at · 20/03/2025
Französischer Wissenschaftler wird an Einreise in die USA gehindert, weil auf seinem Handy Trump-feindliche Botschaften waren. Die USA sind nicht mehr Teil der freien Welt. Keine wissenschaftlichen Konferenzen mehr in den USA! Kooperiert mit euren US-KollegInnen, um Konferenzen in die EU zu holen!
theguardian.com
French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
France’s research minister said the scientist was traveling to Houston for a conference when his phone was searched
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Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie @dgps.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Wir gratulieren sehr herzlich: Deutscher Psychologie Preis 2025 für Silvia Schneider & @gerhardreese.bsky.social! Forschung zur Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen junger Menschen - Psychische Gesundheit & Umweltschutz als Schlüssel für die Zukunft. 🌍 Mehr Infos hier 👉 deutscher-psychologie-preis.de
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Thorsten Padberg @padbergthorsten.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
„Wir glauben, wir würden über Psychologie reden. Das stimmt nicht. Wir reden unglaublich gern über Symptome und deren biologische Grundlage. In Wahrheit sprechen wir fast nie über Psychologie.” Bei die "Die gute Gesellschaft" sprechen wir über mentale Gesundheit. open.spotify.com/episode/7lFx...
open.spotify.com
#40: Thorsten Padberg über Depressionen und Psychopharmaka
Die gute Gesellschaft · Episode
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Daryl O’Connor @daryloconnor.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
The leader of the free world & his deputy bullying, shouting & finger pointing at President Zelenskyy. “You haven’t said thanks”. Truly abhorrent (& embarrassing). Time for Europe to raise their game! www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/... #standwithukraine
bbc.co.uk
Watch angry exchange between Trump and Zelensky at White House
The US president accused the Ukrainian leader of being disrespectful in a tense meeting in the Oval Office.
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Igor Levit @igorpianist.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
🇺🇦🇪🇺 Always on your side. Whatever it takes.
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Amrei Bahr @amreibahr.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Seit Monaten frage ich: Was muss noch passieren, damit deutsche Politik aufhört, bei X zu posten? Ausgerechnet dort kritisch zu den Ereignissen in den USA Stellung zu nehmen & der Ukraine Solidarität zuzusichern ist an Absurdität kaum zu überbieten. X nützt Musk & damit auch Trump & Co., remember?
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Maike Luhmann 🇪🇺 @maikeluhmann.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Support Ukraine
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Michael Witthöft @michaelwitthoeft.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Explicitly unbiased large language models still form biased associations www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
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DGVT | DGVT-BV @dgvt-dgvtbv.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Der DGVT-Kongress rückt näher – haben Sie Ihre Veranstaltungsfavoriten schon vorgemerkt? Schauen Sie gern noch einmal in unser hochkarätiges Veranstaltungsprogramm – es lohnt sich: www.dgvt-kongress.de/programm DGVT-Kongress 2025 vom 19.03.–22.03.2025 in Berlin #dgvtkongress
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