Articles in 2021

Syndemic theory considers how social inequalities drive disease interaction. A new study uses a mixed-methods approach to examine how stress interacts with multiple diseases to affect quality of life in Soweto, South Africa.

Scientific progress depends on researchers updating their beliefs when new evidence arises. McDiarmid and colleagues show that psychologists adjust their beliefs after seeing new results from a replication project. While updating is less than a Bayesian model would justify, it is not undermined by personal investment.

Greater exposure to media coverage of traumatic events is associated with greater symptoms of post-traumatic stress. A new study by Dick et al. indicates that this relationship is stronger in youth with a specific pattern of brain activation that may make them more vulnerable to the effects of trauma.

A key question in human evolutionary genetics is whether and how natural selection has shaped the human genome. A new study by Song and colleagues uses GWAS data to examine evidence for the effects of polygenic adaptation in complex traits at different time scales.

Monumental architecture is fundamental for understanding ancient complex societies as it is the result of coordinated projects that frame political and ceremonial activity¹. A new study documents hundreds of architectural centres in Mexico, revealing monumental architecture at a scale unimaginable even a decade ago².

Predicted values and feedback from errors in those predictions are fundamental to adaptive decision-making. Heffner et al. directly compare the contributions of reward predictions and emotional predictions to social decisions and find, unexpectedly, that emotional predictions are often the more important determinant of choice.

What is the mind? Scientists may not agree on an answer, but new research shows that people across diverse cultures do. This shared conception of the human mind appears to be a cognitive structure that organizes numerous mental capacities along a small number of dimensions: bodily sensation, cognition and, in some cultural settings, emotion.

Biobanks facilitate large-scale tests of hypotheses that may advance health, but whether biobanking participants adequately comprehend the potential uses of their data should concern researchers and the public. Consent matters because it provides a singular safeguard and a participatory mechanism to influence science’s production of new forms of power.

The ethics of research into the genetics of sexuality is not straightforward. A new study by Zietsch et al. investigates a hypothesis for the evolutionary basis of same-sex sexual behaviour. This increases our understanding of the genetics of complex behaviour, raising questions about whether and how such knowledge should be used.

Figuring out the referent of a new word is a hard problem, yet children solve it early and often. A new model by Bohn et al. proposes that young children rationally combine different sources of information when learning language. This account precisely predicts and explains novel developmental findings, above and beyond competing proposals.

Can a publication format shape qualities of published research? Higgs and Gelman discuss a new study comparing peer-reviewers’ perceptions of Registered Reports to those of standard research articles. The authors conclude the registered publications were at least as good on the qualities measured, and they discuss challenges of doing research on research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a natural experiment capable of answering a vital question: have stay-at-home orders impacted global crime trends? A new study by Nivette and colleagues demonstrates that crime largely decreased around the globe during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders—a finding which likely carries international implications for crime policy.

How do humans choose which information to pursue when solving a task? New research shows that choosing the most informative signals is cognitively demanding. The efficiency of this process is enhanced by time pressure but, remarkably, not by monetary incentives.

Ansel Adams said, “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” Is it possible to predict our fickle and subjective appraisal of ‘aesthetically pleasing’ visual art? Iigaya et al. used an artificial intelligence approach to show how human aesthetic preference can be partially explained as an integration of hierarchical constituent image features.

The Dunning–Kruger effect describes a tendency for incompetent individuals to overestimate their ability. The effect has both seeped into popular imagination and been the subject of scientific critique. Jansen et al. combine computational modelling with a large-scale replication of the original findings to shed new light on the drivers of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Timely information for understanding the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 in low-income countries is very limited. A recent paper by Josephson, Kilic, and Michler reveals large and disproportionate socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic and provides useful insights to inform an appropriate policy response.

Increasing the uptake of green energy use by households and businesses is a key step toward reducing environmental harm and combating climate change. In a new paper, Liebe et al.¹ show that a non-monetary intervention can have massive effects on green energy consumption, leading to substantial reductions in carbon emissions.

Obtaining accurate dates for rock art is important to both archaeologists and Aboriginal Traditional Owners, but a lack of organic material associated with rock art can make this challenging. Using radiocarbon dating of mud wasp nests, Finch et al. show that naturalistic depictions of animals in the Kimberley region of northern Australia date to between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago.

Psychologists have long known that people with depression often have unhelpful, negative patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions. Bathina et al. now show that these thought patterns can be detected in the everyday language of social media and that individuals who report a diagnosis of depression express more cognitive distortions.

To date, studies of gambling harms have been limited by reliance on small samples and self-reports of behaviour. Analysis of banking transactions provides unique insights into the scope and sequencing of gambling harms at the individual and population levels, with implications for gambling policy, regulation, and harm minimization.