Richard J Mcnally

Biographic Data

ID107192
NAMERichard J Mcnally
GIVEN NAMESRichard J
FAMILY NAMEMcnally
SIGNATUREMCNALLY R J
AFFILIATIONSHarvard University
ORCID0000-0002-5228-8777
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS42
TOTAL CITATIONS27
AUTHOR COUNT42
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1981
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • Do words matter? Evidence for null effects of language on the stigma of suicide and the predictive roles of religion and gender.

    Kaitlyn S Garcia, Richard J McnallyARTICLEStigma and Health2026

  • How to design a trigger warning: An experimental study on the impact of trigger warning wording on affect, expectations, intrusions, and felt respect

    Open AccessHannah Willems, Julia Anna Glombiewski et al.ARTICLECognition & Emotion2026

    143 healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) TW with content and emotional reaction details, (2) TW without details, or (3) no TW. There were no group differences in negative affect. Between the TW conditions, participants who received the less specific TW reported lower coping expectations, more intrusions, and greater distress over three days. The wording of a TW seems to have differential effects. Providing both …

  • Trigger warning ≠ trigger warning: A comparison of differentially worded trigger warnings on negative versus positive outcomes

    Hannah Willems, Julia A Glombiewski et al.ARTICLEPsychological Trauma Theory…2025

    The findings highlight that various formulations of TWs have differential effects on negative and positive outcomes. According to our findings, the design of a TW, if used at all, should be adapted to the context and the objective pursued (e.g., strengthening the experience of autonomy vs. reducing the experience of threat). Possible effects (e.g., avoidance) should also be carefully considered with regard to the group of people addressed (e.g., …

  • Solitude can be good—If you see it as such: Reappraisal helps lonely people experience solitude more positively

    Open AccessMicaela Rodríguez, Samuel Pratt et al.ARTICLEJournal of Personality2025Cited by: 4References: 57

    OBJECTIVE: Solitude is a common experience that can elicit both positive (e.g., relaxation) and negative (e.g., loneliness) emotions. But can changing the way we think about solitude improve its emotional effects? In a previous study, our team found that positively reframing solitude buffers against a reduction in positive affect when alone. Yet, it is unknown whether people who are lonely-and thus more likely to experience solitude negatively-be…

  • Managing Fear During Pandemics: Risks and Opportunities

    Open AccessGaëtan Mertens, Iris M Engelhard et al.ARTICLEPerspectives on Psychological…2024

    Fear is an emotion triggered by the perception of danger and motivates safety behaviors. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were ample danger cues (e.g., images of patients on ventilators) and a high need for people to use appropriate safety behaviors (e.g., social distancing). Given this central role of fear within the context of a pandemic, it is important to review some of the emerging findings and lessons learned during the CO…

  • What variables predict stigmatizing attitudes toward people with mental disorders and their treatment in Filipinos and Americans

    Open AccessNoah Ramos, Richard J McnallyARTICLETranscultural Psychiatry2024

    In the United States, Asian Americans express greater stigma toward those with mental disorders and report lower rates of seeking mental health treatment than do White Americans. However, research on these topics in Filipino cultural groups, especially Filipinos living in the Philippines (i.e., Filipino nationals), is sparse. To support the design of interventions to decrease stigma and improve rates of seeking treatment, we assessed attitudes to…

  • Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and positive affect: Individual and multilevel dynamic networks

    Shaan F McGhie, Richard J McnallyARTICLEPsychological Trauma Theory…2023

    We did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that PA buffers PTSD symptom severity on the time scale assessed (2 hr). Feeling distant from others was a bridge between lower PA and PTSD symptoms and may indicate social support as an important factor in treating trauma survivors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

  • Are memories of sexual trauma fragmented? A post publication discussion among Richard J. McNally, Dorthe Berntsen, Chris R. Brewin and David C. Rubin

    Richard J Mcnally, Dorthe Berntsen et al.ARTICLEMemory2022

    Following the publication of his article on whether memories of trauma in sexual assault victims are fragmented (McNally, 2022), McNally moderated a discussion between Chris R. Brewin and David C. Rubin/Dorthe Berntsen whose perspectives on memory fragmentation were cited by McNally. The discussion clarified their contrasting viewpoints on this controversy

  • Are memories of sexual trauma fragmented

    Richard J McnallyARTICLEMemory2022

    Alarmingly high rates of sexual assault on campus have motivated American colleges and universities to take steps to address this serious problem. Yet university administrators have often felt ill-equipped to assess allegations of sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, they have sought the expertise of psychologists who can educate administrative staff about the complexities of traumatic memory. Dr. Rebecca Campbell is among the most influential figures…

  • Self-triggering: Does function determine pathogenesis

    Shaan F McGhie, Benjamin W Bellet et al.ARTICLEPsychological Trauma Theory…2022

    Generalizability may be limited by the sample's high symptom levels, limited demographic diversity, and high proportion of interpersonal trauma. These findings suggest that the degree to which individuals self-trigger to make meaning of trauma may affect how pathogenic the behavior is, underscoring the clinical importance of identifying the function of patients' self-triggering. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

  • Using Bayesian Networks to Investigate Psychological Constructs: The Case of Empathy

    Open AccessGiovanni Briganti, Jean Decety et al.ARTICLEPsychological Reports2022

    Network analysis is an emerging field for the study of psychopathology that considers constructs as arising from the interactions among their constituents. Pairwise effects among psychological components are often investigated by using this framework. Few studies have applied Bayesian networks, models that include directed interactions to perform causal inference on psychological constructs. Directed graphical models may be less straightforward t…

  • Network analysis of multivariate data in psychological science

    Open AccessDenny Borsboom, Marie K Deserno et al.ARTICLENature Reviews Methods Primers2021

    In recent years, network analysis has been applied to identify and analyse patterns of statistical association in multivariate psychological data. In these approaches, network nodes represent variables in a data set, and edges represent pairwise conditional associations between variables in the data, while conditioning on the remaining variables. This Primer provides an anatomy of these techniques, describes the current state of the art and discu…

  • Network Analysis of Psychopathology: Controversies and Challenges

    Richard J McnallyARTICLEAnnual Review of Clinical…2021

    Empirical publications inspired by the network approach to psychopathology have increased exponentially in the twenty-first century. The central idea that an episode of mental disorder arises from causal interactions among its symptomatic elements has especially resonated with those clinical scientists whose disenchantment with traditional categorical and dimensional approaches to mental illness has become all too apparent. As the field has matur…

  • Sampling Variability Is Not Nonreplication: A Bayesian Reanalysis of Forbes, Wright, Markon, and Krueger

    Payton J Jones, Donald R Williams et al.ARTICLEMultivariate Behavioral Research2021

    Forbes, Wright, Markon, and Krueger claim that psychopathology network characteristics have "limited" or "poor" replicability, supporting their argument primarily with data from two waves of an observational study on depression and anxiety. They developed "direct metrics" to gauge change across networks (e.g., change in edge sign), and used these results to support their conclusion. Three key flaws undermine their critique. First, nonreplication …

  • Bridge Centrality: A Network Approach to Understanding Comorbidity

    Payton J Jones, Ruofan Ma et al.ARTICLEMultivariate Behavioral Research2021

    Recently, researchers in clinical psychology have endeavored to create network models of the relationships between symptoms, both within and across mental disorders. Symptoms that connect two mental disorders are called "bridge symptoms." Unfortunately, no formal quantitative methods for identifying these bridge symptoms exist. Accordingly, we developed four network statistics to identify bridge symptoms: bridge strength, bridge betweenness, brid…

  • Does broadening one's concept of trauma undermine resilience

    Payton J Jones, Richard J McnallyARTICLEPsychological Trauma Theory…2021

    Objective: The term "trauma" seems to have expanded from a narrow usage (referring exclusively to extreme events such as rape and warfare) to a broad usage (encompassing almost any event that results in emotional distress). Today, individuals vary widely in the extent to which their personal "trauma concept" is relatively narrow or broad. In this study, we explore whether this variation is important to individuals' actual experience when facing a…

  • A network analysis of culturally relevant anxiety sensitivity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in Cambodians

    Open AccessDevon E Hinton, Richard J Mcnally et al.ARTICLETranscultural Psychiatry2021Cited by: 1References: 52

    The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) measures fears of anxiety-related symptoms based on respondent beliefs about their harmfulness. This is the first network analysis of anxiety sensitivity and PTSD, and the first to explore an addendum of culturally salient fears in such an analysis. The purpose of our study was to test whether relations among PTSD symptoms and facets of anxiety sensitivity, observed clinically, can be visualized by this approac…

  • Social media and depression symptoms: A network perspective.

    George Aalbers, Richard J Mcnally et al.ARTICLEJournal of Experimental…2019

    Passive social media use (PSMU)-for example, scrolling through social media news feeds-has been associated with depression symptoms. It is unclear, however, if PSMU causes depression symptoms or vice versa. In this study, 125 students reported PSMU, depression symptoms, and stress 7 times daily for 14 days. We used multilevel vector autoregressive time-series models to estimate (a) contemporaneous, (b) temporal, and (c) between-subjects associati…

  • Exercise and emotion dynamics: An experience sampling study

    Emily E Bernstein, Joshua Curtiss et al.ARTICLEEmotion2018

    Though it has been widely demonstrated that regular exercise is associated with better emotional wellbeing, the nature of this association remains unclear. The present study explored the relationship between voluntary exercise and the temporal dynamics of daily emotions, and thus how voluntary exercise could be impacting emotional reactivity and recovery in naturalistic contexts. Seventy-six young adults participated simultaneously in this ecolog…

  • Steven Reiss (1947–2016)

    Richard J McnallyARTICLEAmerican Psychologist2017

    This article memorializes Steven Reiss (1947-2016), an eminent clinical psychologist. He was professor emeritus of psychology and psychiatry at the Ohio State University. Reiss has made major contributions to three areas of psychology. He formulated the concept of anxiety sensitivity, an individual difference variable signifying a person's proneness to respond fearfully to bodily sensations that accompany anxiety. He was the key developer of the …

  • Identifying highly influential nodes in the complicated grief network.

    Donald J Robinaugh, Alexander J Millner et al.ARTICLEJournal of Abnormal Psychology2016

    The network approach to psychopathology conceptualizes mental disorders as networks of mutually reinforcing nodes (i.e., symptoms). Researchers adopting this approach have suggested that network topology can be used to identify influential nodes, with nodes central to the network having the greatest influence on the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, because commonly used centrality indices do not distinguish between positive a…

  • Can network analysis transform psychopathology?

    Open AccessRichard J McnallyARTICLEBehaviour Research and Therapy2016

  • Mental Disorders as Causal Systems: A Network Approach to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

    Open AccessRichard J Mcnally, Donald J Robinaugh et al.ARTICLEClinical Psychological Science2015

    Debates about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often turn on whether it is a timeless, cross-culturally valid natural phenomenon or a socially constructed idiom of distress. Most clinicians seem to favor the first view, differing only in whether they conceptualize PTSD as a discrete category or the upper end of a dimension of stress responsiveness. Yet both categorical and dimensional construals presuppose that PTSD symptoms are fallible indi…

  • The trauma model of dissociation: Inconvenient truths and stubborn fictions. Comment on Dalenberg et al. (2012)

    Steven Jay Lynn, Scott O Lilienfeld et al.ARTICLEPsychological Bulletin2014

    Dalenberg et al. (2012) argued that convincing evidence (a) supports the longstanding trauma model (TM), which posits that early trauma plays a key role in the genesis of dissociation; and (b) refutes the fantasy model (FM), which posits that fantasy proneness, suggestibility, cognitive failures, and other variables foster dissociation. We review evidence bearing on Dalenberg et al.'s 8 predictions and find them largely wanting in empirical suppo…

  • Can we facilitate posttraumatic growth in combat veterans

    Richard G Tedeschi, Richard J McnallyARTICLEAmerican Psychologist2011Cited by: 13References: 4

    The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, currently under development for the U.S. Army, will include a component designed to increase the possibilities for posttraumatic growth in the aftermath of combat. In this article, we briefly review studies that provide evidence for this phenomenon in combat veterans, and we suggest elements that such a program might include to facilitate posttraumatic growth. We urge the Army to conduct randomized contr…