Sign in

Boryana Todorova

@todorova.bsky.social
3K followers 713 following 143 posts

Postdoctoral researcher @UQ 🇦🇺 🐨 | climate change 🌍 neuroscience 🧠 & behavioral science 🤗 | MSc in psychology 👩🏼‍🎓

PostsRepliesMedia
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This work grew out of the Neuro Climate Working Group, a global consortium of more than 500 researchers, clinicians and policy experts. It was a privilege to work on this with such a great team! 6/6
000
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In the piece, we: • Propose an integrative model with three interconnected pathways (bio, psycho and social-structural) • Map concrete policy levers at the municipal, national and multilateral levels • Call for brain-health indicators in climate-health surveilance and for investment in research 5/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
• Across 160 countries, not one national adaptation policy addresses children's mental health. • Neurological outcomes, from harm to neurodevelopment to dementia, receive even less policy attention. 4/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A few findings that stood out: • Only 3% of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include mental health considerations, compared with 25% that mention injury and mortality from extreme weather. • 58% of national adaptation policies don't mention mental health at all. 3/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Climate change affects how we learn, think, remember, feel and adapt. Yet brain health is still largely missing from the policies meant to respond to it. In our piece, we argue that this gap needs closing now, and we suggest how. 2/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Excited to share our new commentary, now out in One Earth: Brain health, the blind spot in climate policy! 🧠 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.on... 1/6
doi.org
Redirecting
131
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Thank you! 😊
000
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Thrilled to share that I've started as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland with Prof. Matthew Hornsey! 🎉 I look forward to expanding my work on how people engage with climate and biodiversity challenges, while also continuing my work on climate change and brain health.🧠🌱
180
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
A lot is in motion — multiple research projects in development, alongside webinars, talks, and events that bring together scientists, medical professionals, and policymakers from around the world. Follow our LinkedIn page to stay close to the work as it unfolds: www.linkedin.com/company/neur...
linkedin.com
Neuro Climate Working Group | LinkedIn
Neuro Climate Working Group | 805 followers on LinkedIn. Brain Health In A Changing Climate | The Neuro Climate Working Group (NCWG) is the first and only global action tank dedicated to understanding...
010
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
A growing body of evidence shows that climate-related stressors can significantly impair neurological, cognitive, and emotional function. Yet research in this area remains underdeveloped, especially in the regions most vulnerable to climate impacts, and remains largely overlooked by policymakers.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
🎉 I'm excited to share that I've joined the core team of the Neuro Climate Working Group as a Research Coordinator! We are a global, interdisciplinary alliance of neuroscientists, clinicians, and policy experts working at the intersection of brain health and climate change. neuroclimate.org
neuroclimate.org
Neuro Climate Working Group | Explore Climate-Brain Health Solutions
Learn about the Neuro Climate Working Group's mission to protect brain health amid climate change through research, advocacy, and community engagement worldwide.
160
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Awesome postdoc position available (3 years + possibility for 2 years extension)! Couldn’t recommend more working with @magdalenaboch.bsky.social 👇🏼
020
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
8/ Awesome collaboration, led by @jonasnitschke.bsky.social together with @kimdoell.bsky.social @clauslamm.bsky.social and @epronizius.bsky.social 🎈
010
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
7/ A methodological takeaway: research on climate change worry/anxiety should incorporate generalized worry/anxiety measures, especially when climate worry items are inspired by clinical scales. The two are correlated, and failing to account for both risks conflating their effects.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
6/ Another interesting pattern was seen with perceived coping ability People who felt more capable of dealing with climate-related challenges reported more individual pro-environmental behaviors. People who reported lower coping ability showed stronger support for systemic climate policies.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
5/ In fact, for pro-environmental behavior, the relationship between climate worry and action was not only positive, but even accelerated at higher levels of worry.
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
4/ We also examined whether very high levels of climate worry become maladaptive or lead to disengagement, testing for a non-linear (“inverted U-shape”) relationship, but found no evidence that the highest levels of climate-specific worry were associated with reduced engagement in our sample.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
3/ Climate-change worries and generalized worries showed opposing associations with climate engagement. Climate worries → more policy support & pro-environmental behavior Generalized worries → less engagement The two are correlated, which makes distinguishing between them important.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
2/ We found that people with higher trust in science reported: • greater support for climate policies • more frequent pro-environmental behaviors Importantly, this relationship was partly explained by increased climate-change-specific worries.
230
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
1/ Excited to share our new paper in the Journal of Environmental Psychology examining how trust in science and different forms of worry relate to pro-environmental behavior and support for climate mitigation policies. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.je...
doi.org
Redirecting
2106
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Huge thanks to my fantastic co-authors for this collaboration! @clauslamm.bsky.social @sabinepahl.bsky.social @lei-zhang.bsky.social @lukaslengersdorff.bsky.social @jonasnitschke.bsky.social @kimdoell.bsky.social 6/6
031
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
📂 All materials (code, data, task scripts) are fully open to support transparency and future research! 5/6
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
🔹 Individuals who invested more effort/time for the environment in the task were also more likely to support costly climate policies. 🔹 Climate beliefs alone did not reliably predict willingness to incur real behavioural costs — highlighting a gap between belief and costly action. 4/6
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
🔹 People are consistently less willing to incur costs for pro-environmental outcomes than for self-benefitting ones. 🔹 Computational modelling showed that effort is discounted parabolically and time hyperbolically, suggesting distinct motivational mechanisms. 3/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Across two incentivized behavioural tasks, we examined how people weigh time and effort when deciding whether to act for themselves or for the environment. We found that: 2/6
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
I’m thrilled to share that our paper “Effort and time costs influence motivational asymmetries in self-benefitting vs. pro-environmental decisions” is now published in Communications Psychology! 🌿 OA link: www.nature.com/articles/s44... 1/6
nature.com
Effort and time costs influence motivational asymmetries in self-benefitting vs pro-environmental decisions - Communications Psychology
People are less willing to incur time and effort costs for the environment than for themselves, with computational modeling revealing nonlinear discounting of time and effort linked to support for cos...
1196
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Huge thanks to leads @drjocutler.bsky.social, Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta, @brainapps.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social and everyone else involved @clauslamm.bsky.social @jonasnitschke.bsky.social @scanunit.bsky.social and more!
030
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
🚨 The PEET and all materials for using it and analyzing the data are publicly available! You can download it and implement it directly in Qualtrics to test your own research questions: 👉 osf.io/zv2tu/
osf.io
OSF
100
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
We're also thrilled to introduce the Pro-Environmental Effort Task (PEET) 🌱 It’s an incentivized, effort-based task that independently varies effort and reward, comparing people’s effort for a climate cause to a matched non-climate cause.
110
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
💡 The two interventions with the strongest and most consistent effects were: 1️⃣ Reducing the psychological distance of climate change 2️⃣ Framing climate action as patriotic and protecting our shared way of life Both meaningfully boosted motivation to put effort for the climate.
120
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
🎉 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
doi.org
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...
1112
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
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 👏
1165
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
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/...
513327
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Claudia Massaccesi @clamassaccesi.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
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)
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
NYAS Publications
Protecting others from harm is critical for societal well-being but is often effortful. We examined how individuals choose to exert physical effort to reduce their and another person's pain. Results ....
082
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
🧠🌍 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-...
planetaryhealthalliance.org
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...
095
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) @improvingpsych.org · 30/08/2025
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
111135
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Wolfgang Blau @wblau.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
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.”
nature.com
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.
32819
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
📢 🥳 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
shorturl.at
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…
072
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
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...
nature.com
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...
000
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Aidan Campbell @aidanvcampbell.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
🎉 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...
doi.org
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...
1165
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Excited to share our new paper on individual victimhood and conspiracy beliefs across 15 countries! 🌍 Check out the 🧵 below 👇🏼
140
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
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! 👏
063
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Michael Inzlicht @handle.invalid · 08/07/2025
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...
open.substack.com
Hasty Theories
Why Social Psychology Needs to Stop Rushing to Explain
0144
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Jo Cutler @drjocutler.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
🌟 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 🔁
tinyurl.com
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...
0916
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
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 😊
081
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
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...
030
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
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...
weforum.org
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.
0102
Reposted by Boryana Todorova
Jana Köhler @janakoehler.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
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
44815
Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
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 👇🏼
020