Nature or nurture in ideas of reference? Interplay between intrinsic cognition and extrinsic environment in times of crisis.

Nature or nurture? This is an old debate which re-surfaces in current neuroscience and especially in psychiatry as we gain more and more understanding of the interplay between biological-psychological and social factors. This leaves open the exact nature of their interaction, though. Howdo intrinsic psychological and extrinsic social factors interact? The study by Wong et al. (2021) sheds a novel light on this issue; this is especially pressing in psychiatry as we are confronted with complex scenarios of social, psychological, neuronal, and genetic factors. Wong et al. (2021) explore the interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic psychological factors in ideas of reference (IOR). They investigate the occurrence of IOR in relation to intrinsic factors like thought as operationalized by rumination as well as in the context of extrinsic life events like COVID pandemic and social unrest. Corresponding to their aim of investigating the interplay between intrinsic cognition and extrinsic environment, they distinguish two forms of IOR: attenuated IOR are those that occur within several members of a group (IOR-A) while IOR experienced solely by a single subject are designated as IOR-E. Obtaining subjective ratings on visual analogue scales in a large sample (> 9000 subjects) showed that rumination as related to the events,