August 2026 Stress rises. Mood drops. The hand reaches for the phone. Not because the screen solves anything, but because it has learned to promise an immediate change of state: pleasure, distraction, relief. With repetition, that promise becomes temptation—and temptation begins to feel like spontaneous desire. A 2026 German study followed 900 adults for 14 days across gaming, pornography, social networks and online shopping. Temptation was the strongest immediate predictor o

July 2026 What if stress makes us consume more without making us enjoy what we consume? In a triple-blind crossover experiment, 66 healthy adults with little previous opioid exposure underwent either social-evaluative stress—the pressure of being judged by others—or a neutral condition, then received oxycodone, a prescription opioid painkiller, or saline. They could subsequently work to obtain more of the sampled dose. Stress increased oxycodone self-administration by six per