Microdosing psychedelics: personality, mental health, and creativity differences in microdosers

Microdosing psychedelics refers to the regular ingestion of very low doses of substances such as LSD or psilocybin and has become increasingly visible in popular culture despite a paucity of scientific evidence. Anderson and colleagues note that anecdotal reports and media coverage claim benefits including improved mood, focus, creativity and reduced depression and anxiety. The authors situate microdosing against a backdrop of research on full-dose psychedelic therapies, which show therapeutic promise but also produce intense perceptual experiences and require clinical oversight; microdosing is proposed as a potentially lower-risk, more easily administered alternative, but minimal empirical data exist on typical practices, safety, or psychological correlates. This pre-registered observational study set out to describe current microdosing practices in online communities and to test whether self-reported microdosing experience is associated with differences in measured personality traits, mental health vulnerability, and creativity. Specifically, the investigators compared self-identified microdosers (current and former) to non-microdosing controls on dysfunctional attitudes, wisdom, negative emotionality, open-mindedness, mood, and performance on a creativity task, with several hypotheses specified in advance about the direction of group differences and about dose/usage relationships.

Participants were recruited via social media and posts to multiple Reddit communities related to microdosing and related topics. The online survey was internationally available in English and used snowball recruitment. Of 1,390 respondents who began the survey, 909 provided sufficient data for analysis: 594 (65%) reported experience microdosing (with 29% current microdosers and 37% former microdosers) and 315 (35%) reported no microdosing experience. The median age was 26; the sample was 82% male and 70% white, and respondents represented 29 countries. The investigators note that different analyses used different sample sizes because of survey attrition. The design was cross-sectional and observational; measures were self-report and the study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework. Questionnaires were delivered online using a continuous 0–100 slider for scale responses. Core instruments included a 17-item short form of the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS-A-17), the Brief Wisdom Screening Scale (BWSS, 20 items), and selected subscales of the Big Five Inventory 2 (negative emotionality and open-mindedness). A binary Mental Health Index was created from self-reported lifetime professional diagnoses. Mood was summarised via valence and arousal scores from a mood board. Creativity was assessed behaviourally using the Unusual Uses Task (UUT): participants had one minute per object (brick and knife) to generate alternative uses. Three independent raters scored responses on uncommonness, cleverness and remoteness; inter-rater agreement was reported as moderate. Microdosing-specific variables collected from participants with microdosing experience included substance used (LSD, psilocybin, or other), total lifetime microdoses, and dose scheduling (days between doses). The investigators also computed a novel Polydrug User Experience Index summarising recreational experience across 13 substance classes with recency-weighted scoring (range 0–52). Pre-registered hypotheses addressed group differences on the psychological measures and predicted dose–response or frequency–response relationships for participants' self-rated importance of microdosing benefits. The authors report a survey flow error that led to unintended collection of dose-frequency and importance data from participants without microdosing experience; those erroneous data were discarded. Statistical analysis details are reported in results (regression models with covariates such as history of mental illness, gender or education were used), but the extraction does not provide a complete specification of all model-building steps.

Primary comparisons indicated that self-identified microdosers differed from non-microdosers on several pre-registered outcomes. Dysfunctional attitudes were lower among microdosers: regression coefficient b = -8.69, 95% CI [-12.48, -4.89], z(364) = -4.49, p < 0.001, effect-size r = -0.92; this effect remained when controlling for a history of mental illness, which itself predicted higher DAS scores (b = 5.74, 95% CI [2.45, 9.03], p < 0.001). Dysfunctional attitudes did not differ by current versus former microdoser status, by substance type (LSD vs psilocybin), nor by total number of lifetime microdoses. Negative emotionality was lower in microdosers: b = -5.78, 95% CI [-10.13, -1.43], z(396) = -2.60, p = 0.009, r = -0.85. The effect persisted after adjusting for gender, with females showing higher negative emotionality (b = 10.49, 95% CI [5.33, 15.65], p < 0.001). No significant differences in negative emotionality were observed between current and former microdosers, between substances used, or as a function of lifetime number of microdoses. Open-mindedness was higher among microdosers: b = 3.24, 95% CI [0.38, 6.10], z(392) = 2.22, p = 0.027, r = 0.67; education did not account for this effect. Wisdom scores were also higher in microdosers (reported reliability α = 0.86), although the extracted text does not present the full regression coefficients for wisdom within the methods/results segments beyond the summary statements that microdosers scored higher on wisdom. Creativity, measured by the UUT, was greater in microdosers; the abstract reports p < 0.001 and r = 0.15. Rater agreement for UUT dimensions was described as moderate (dimension ICCs reported as approximately 0.57–0.68; object-level ICCs ~0.61–0.64). Exploratory analyses of mood found that microdosers reported more positive valence (microdosers M = 2.33, SD = 4.40) than non-microdosers (M = -0.16, SD = 4.14); difference = 2.49, 95% CI [1.91, 3.07], t(675) = 8.44, p < 0.001, r = 0.31. Current microdosers reported higher valence than former microdosers (current M = 2.93, SD = 4.57; former M = 1.86, SD = 4.21; difference = 1.07, 95% CI [0.35, 1.79], t(533) = 2.92, p = 0.004, r = 0.13). No group differences were found for mood intensity/arousal. Hypotheses about dose–response and frequency effects on the self-rated importance of microdosing benefits were not supported. Reported importance did not relate significantly to total lifetime microdoses (b = 1.01, 95% CI [-0.81, 2.82], p = 0.277) nor to frequency using linear, quadratic or logarithmic models (raw b = -0.07, p = 0.83; squared b = -0.0004, p = 0.94; logarithmic b = 1.21, p = 0.54). Prior full-dose psychedelic experience did not predict higher importance ratings (b = -4.09, p = 0.30), nor did the Polydrug User Experience Index (b = -0.006, 95% CI [-0.26, 0.25], p = 0.96). The most commonly reported microdosing substances were LSD (65%) and psilocybin (28%).

Anderson and colleagues interpret their findings as providing initial, correlational evidence that community-based microdosing experience is associated with lower dysfunctional attitudes and negative emotionality and with higher wisdom, open-mindedness and creativity. The authors frame these associations as consistent with prior work on full-dose psychedelics and with anecdotal reports that motivated this research, and they note that current microdosers in particular reported more positive mood valence than non-microdosers. At the same time, the investigators emphasise the cross-sectional and observational nature of the data and explicitly caution that causation cannot be inferred. They acknowledge several important limitations: the sample was recruited from online communities and skewed towards Anglo cultural clusters, middle-class, white, male participants so generalisability is limited; a survey flow error required discarding some data; many microdosers had prior full-dose psychedelic experience (69% reported at least one full-dose use), and some had recent full-dose exposure that could confound results; and the reliance on self-report measures increases the risk of bias. The authors also note that some null findings (for the importance-of-benefits measure and for dose/schedule relationships) may reflect measurement insensitivity rather than true absence of effects. Given these caveats, the authors recommend controlled experimental follow-up: pre-registered randomized, placebo-controlled trials to test causal effects of microdosing, ideally including psychedelic-naïve and psychedelic-experienced participants, multiple validated outcome measures (including several creativity tasks), and mechanistic studies to probe physiological and neurobiological processes. The investigators suggest microdosing may be more amenable than full-dose protocols to placebo-controlled designs because of the absence of pronounced perceptual effects, and they propose that microdosing could be explored both as a stand-alone intervention and as an adjunct to longer-term psychotherapeutic approaches. Overall, the paper presents descriptive baseline data intended to inform the design of future clinical research.

This pre-registered, cross-sectional study offers initial descriptive evidence that people who report microdosing psychedelics differ from non-microdosers on several measures related to mental health and psychological flourishing, including lower dysfunctional attitudes and negative emotionality and higher wisdom, open-mindedness, creativity and positive affect-valence. The authors emphasise that these are correlational findings that justify but do not substitute for randomized placebo-controlled trials to assess safety and causal efficacy. They note forthcoming epidemiological and qualitative reports derived from the same project and encourage pre-registration and rigorous design in future microdosing research.