Browse Articles

Filter By:

  • The basal ganglia are a core structure of the human brain with strong and reciprocal connections to most areas of the cerebral cortex. Analyses of human functional MRI data, collected during rest and analysed using a novel approach, support the notion that these connectivity patterns underlie differences in decision-making behaviour.

    • Bernd Weber
    News & Views
  • How robust is the perceived association between immorality and atheism? Studies across 13 countries demonstrate that immoral behaviour is intuitively associated with atheism: people routinely assume that an immoral person is likely to be an atheist, and this effect is consistent across a wide range of societies, though with notable variation.

    • Adam B. Cohen
    • Jordan W. Moon
    News & Views
  • Combining numerical information on-the-fly is crucial for making advantageous decisions, but precisely how humans are able to track and compare magnitudes is unclear. Experiments now suggest that when it comes to performing such tasks, not all numbers are created equal.

    • Rogier A. Kievit
    News & Views
  • Small interventions in everyday public environments hold great potential to positively impact health behaviours. TIPPME is a framework that will provide consensus and definitional precision across intervention research into the purchase and consumption of tobacco, alcohol and food.

    • Vera Araújo-Soares
    • Falko F. Sniehotta
    News & Views
  • Recent theories propose that perceptions, decisions, and behaviour rely on many rational neural observers that work to predict the value of stimuli and actions. This Bayesian framework has now advanced into new territory through a study of dopamine's influence on the integration of sensory (new) and prior (old) information in Parkinson's disease.

    • Christopher D. Fiorillo
    News & Views
  • Experiments show that people dislike inequality, but are they willing to overturn established hierarchies to achieve income equality? A cross-cultural experiment shows that from a young age humans exhibit rank reversal aversion when redistributing resources between the rich and the poor, suggesting that hierarchy preservation is a social norm.

    • Gary Charness
    • Marie Claire Villeval
    News & Views
  • Many countries around the world have serious corruption problems at the expense of public welfare. An experimental economic study now identifies conditions that encourage leaders to accept bribes instead of sanctioning free-riders. Possible anti-corruption strategies can have positive effects, fail or even backfire.

    • Manfred Milinski
    News & Views
  • Effort is costly. People devalue personal rewards that require some measure of physical or even mental effort. Laboratory studies now suggest that physical effort is especially costly when engaged to benefit others. Even when people are willing, however, their efforts are often superficial, with people doing what is necessary but no more.

    • Michael Inzlicht
    • Cendri A. Hutcherson
    News & Views
  • Sleep consolidates newly acquired motor skills, leading to improvements in performance after sleep. A study now finds that similar performance improvements following sleep can rely on different neural mechanisms depending on the properties of the learning task.

    • Susanne Diekelmann
    News & Views
  • A key question in human evolution is the role of language in Early Stone Age toolmaking. A neuroimaging study now shows that Acheulian and Oldowan toolmaking recruit brain areas associated with different functions. The brain's language network is most strongly engaged when toolmaking is learned through verbal training.

    • Natalie Uomini
    News & Views
  • Social learning is a crucial building block of human culture, but how and why do people vary in their propensity to learn from others? Experiments in Ethiopia suggest that pastoralists rely more on others' knowledge than do horticulturalists.

    • Alex Mesoudi
    News & Views
  • Extraordinary altruists risk their own health and life to help anonymous strangers. A study now shows that extraordinary altruists are motivated to do good to distant others not because they feel socially closer to them, but because they genuinely care more for the welfare of strangers.

    • Tobias Kalenscher
    News & Views
  • Research now shows that human social networks surrounding a person who unexpectedly dies recover from the loss through strengthening of the relationships between friends and acquaintances of the deceased individual. The study demonstrates how individuals change their interaction patterns to support one another during a time of grief.

    • Robert Bond
    News & Views
  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging and social network analysis show that on viewing familiar individuals in a small social network, the brain activates regions critical for inferring mental states and intentions, as well as regions associated with spatial navigation and psychological distance.

    • James P. Curley
    • Kevin N. Ochsner
    News & Views
  • People who purchase liberal books have distinct tastes for science compared with those who purchase conservative books. This raises questions about the existence of ‘echo chambers’ on matters where science can inform political debates.

    • Toby Bolsen
    News & Views
  • The assumption of rationality is at the heart of action explanations. A Bayesian model of theory of mind, which explicitly relies on this assumption, can predict with high accuracy the inferences that people make about the mental states underlying others’ actions.

    • Gergely Csibra
    News & Views
  • Whether ritual behaviour reliably predicts cooperation is hotly debated. A study evaluating religion and social links among all adult residents of two South Indian villages finds that religious practice clearly predicts reciprocal cooperative ties. Rigorous quantitative field studies like this are a powerful way to resolve long-standing debates.

    • Joseph Bulbulia
    News & Views
  • Immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases not only protects the individual but also has a social benefit. A study now shows that communicating this effect, known as herd immunity, can have a substantial impact on a person's inclination to vaccinate, an insight that could be leveraged in vaccine advocacy.

    • Dirk Brockmann
    News & Views
  • A study now finds that visual perceptual learning of complex features occurs due to enhancement of later, decision-related stages of visual processing, rather than earlier, visual encoding stages. It is suggested that strengthening of the readout of sensory information between stages may be reinforced by an implicit reward learning mechanism.

    • Yuka Sasaki
    • Takeo Watanabe
    News & Views
  • A study now shows that 20% of the population accounts for 60–80% of several adult social ills. Outcomes for this group can be accurately predicted from as early as age 3 years, using a small set of indicators of disadvantage. This finding supports policies that target children from disadvantaged families.

    • James J. Heckman
    • Jorge Luís García
    News & Views