Simone Cheli

Evolutionary systems therapy for personality pathology: a proof-of-concept single-arm trial - Current Psychology The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and rationale of a six-month Evolutionary Systems Therapy for personality pathology. In doing so, we employed a conceptualization that is su...

(2/2) The proof-of-concept design included pre-post, monthly, and EMA measures. The results are more than encouraging and confirm the usefulness of treatments focused on macro-dimensions or spectra.

doi.org/10.1007/s121...

(1/2)I am very pleased to share our study. Although the sample wad small, we tested our evolutionarily informed model for conceptualizing and treating personality pathology in adolescents in the "broad" sense (16-25 years), the age group in which over 40% of diagnoses are made.

This paper follows my lecture given at the conference organized by the University of Montgomery. The starting question was and is: Are none, some or all disorders interpersonal?

And the answer is always based on an evolutionary perspective.

socialsciences.pagepress.net/rp/article/v...

Are all disorders interpersonal? - Simone Cheli My presentation at the Montgomery workshop on Personality and Its Disturbances in Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence

My presentation at the Auburn University Workshop on “Personality and Its Disturbances in Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence". Thanks to organizers: Peter Zachar, Anna Sterna, Marcin Moskalewitz.

INTEGRATE: international guidelines for the algorithmic treatment of schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental illness involving multiple symptom domains and is often associated with substantial physical health comorbidities. Guidelines exist, but these tend to be country-specific and...

A complex and refined algorithm that doesn't even consider the possibility of psychosocial treatments... even just as a supplement to pharmacological ones.

Bumblebees often faint in flowers after overindulging in pollen, and now it turns out that among drinking buddies, they encourage each other 😂

The contagious buzz of bumble bee positivity, and when snow crabs vanish On this week’s show: Predicting the fate of snow crabs under climate change, and observing the spread of bumble bee “emotions”

Love it! @science.org confirms that we are not as special as we tell ourselves!

Primate neuroethology: a new synthesis Neuroscience has probed only a sliver of the rich cognitive, emotional, and social behaviors that enable primates to thrive in the real world. Technological breakthroughs allow us to quantify these be...

Primate neuroethology: a new synthesis
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
#neuroscience

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

Openness to Experience

Extraversion

If you're teaching about lifespan personality development, and you want to include Bleidorn + colleagues (2022) meta-analysis, I made some prettier plots than the ones in our paper. (Y axis is cohen's d)

(Alternately, if you've never read our paper, check out these plots!)

I am very excited about the upcoming seventh edition of the Institute of Applied Psychology Interdisciplinary Series (IAPIS, ips.uj.edu.pl/nauka/iapis/... & @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social)

To register for the first talk use: forms.gle/GcnHuj3rhamH...

Trade-offs and human adaptation at the extremes Genomic analyses of Turkana pastoralists identify variants that increase water retention

Past trade-offs as humans adapt ed to extremes, future mismatch as stability will arise.

A very cool evolutionary tale on pastoralism, kidney and water stress.

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Personality Disorders and Human Evolution: An Integrative Meta-synthesis

Our preprint is freely available on OSF.

osf.io/preprints/os...

(iii) evolutionary models are compatible with interpersonal (social brain) and trait (LHT) models; are we certain that there isn't a transitive property? If all PDs are interpersonal, then are all disorders interpersonal?

(1/2) Three points always surprise me: (i) large portion of evolved psychological mechanisms are nonoptimal designs, consistently boundaries are fuzzy or better arbitrary; (ii) reference to Sullivan would imply to include all disorders & not just PDs in interpersonal disorders.

Forced Hospitalization Increases Suicide and Violent Crime Proponents claim involuntary treatment is necessary to reduce suicide and crime, but new research shows it doubles the risk of these outcomes.

Forced Hospitalization Increases Suicide and Violent Crime
by Peter Simons

Proponents claim involuntary treatment is necessary to reduce suicide and crime, but new research shows that it actually doubles the risk of these outcomes.
buff.ly/LRB5tUt

‘Things keep evolving into anteaters.’ Odd animals arose at least 12 separate times Findings speak to the dramatic impact ants and termites can have on mammalian evolution

Think yourself anteater!

www.science.org/content/arti...

9/22

In Chapter 9 Simone Cheli & Martin Brüne suggest that both temperamental and developmental components of personality progressively shape autopoietic processes in accordance with the theory of evolution and, especially, Life History Theory.

Link: www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

Il 20 luglio del 1925 nasceva Frantz Fanon, una figura che sfugge a definizioni semplici e lineari.

Fu uno psichiatra profondamente critico con la psichiatria del suo tempo. Ispirò rivoluzionari e indipendentisti di varie generazioni, dall'Irlanda all'Algeria alla Palestina.

Personality disorders and evolutionary psychopathology Cambridge just published a book on conceptualizing personality disorders, where I coauthored a chapter on evolutionary psychopathology.

www.simonecheli.com/2025/06/28/p...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929 Can't sign in? Forgot your password?

Part of the Phil Trans special issue "Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds", edited with @ellileadbeater.bsky.social.

Thanks to co-authors Andoni Sergiou, @josharbon.bsky.social, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social & @shoalgroup.bsky.social and all the special issue contributors.

tinyurl.com/35mn84ty

Dr. Strangelove - Peter Sellers - "An astonishingly good idea" YouTube video by David RF

Is it me or are these presidents talking about war in a way that is more and more like Peter Sellers?

youtu.be/zZct-itCwPE?...

1/ Can AI be conscious? My Behavioral & Brain Sciences target article on ‘Conscious AI and Biological Naturalism’ is now open for commentary proposals. Deadline is June 12. Take-home: real artificial consciousness is very unlikely along current trajectories. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Evolution and Personality - Simone Cheli My presentation at the 64th edition of the Mind and Brain congress in Pula. I reviewed the research of our Personality and Evolution Lab.

My invited lecture at the symposium on personality pathology from an evolutionary perspective. 64th Mind & Brain Congress in Pula.

Martin Brüne, Darko Marčinko and I discussed how to evolutionarily inform psychotherapy and psychiatry for personality disorders.

www.simonecheli.com/2025/06/01/e...

WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, sounds the alarm on Israel’s ongoing genocide operation in Gaza. Netanyahu has turned the strip into an open air concentration camp and is deliberately starving civilians.

A historic Black church took the Proud Boys to court. Now it controls their trademark Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., has hosted funerals for Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass and welcomed American presidents.

In Dante, this would be a form of contrapasso

apnews.com/article/blac...

Treatments for ClusterA personality disorders are feasible, safe and possibly effective.

In a new meta-analyis we disprove a common and pernicious hypothesis about these patients not being eligible for treatments.

doi.org/10.1037/per0...

The universe is so upset that it goes back to the big bang. That makes sense!

Evolutionary Systems Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder: A Five-Case Series | Journal of Personality Disorders Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is the most common personality disorder, with a prevalence of approximately 6.5% in the general population. However, little is known about the effective psychotherapy for this disorder. In this case series, we employed evolutionary systems therapy to support five adults diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Evolutionary systems therapy is a novel form of psychotherapy that integrates evolutionary psychopathology, compassion-focused therapy, and metacognitively oriented treatments. Primary outcome (personality pathology) was assessed monthly from baseline to follow-up. Secondary outcomes (anxiety, depression, perfectionism, self-criticism, overcontrol) were assessed at initial and final sessions. Moreover, we evaluated the feasibility of intervention (completion, attendance, adverse events). At the end of 6 months of treatment, all the participants reported reliable changes and remitted from diagnosis. These outcomes were maintained at 1-month and 3-month follow-ups. Further research is needed to provide evidence about the acceptability of evolutionary systems therapy in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

At the end of 6 months of treatment all patients remitted from diagnosis and showed reliable changes in measures related to the shared conceptualization with the patient. The picture presents the evolutionarily informed conceptualization of one of the patients.