Articles

Voelkel et al. find that two interventions designed to reduce affective polarization do not also significantly reduce anti-democratic attitudes.

Across five studies, Spadaro et al. show that perceiving representatives of institutions as corrupt is associated with lower interpersonal trust and prosocial behaviour among strangers.

In 2021, life expectancies returned to pre-pandemic levels in parts of western Europe but further worsened in eastern Europe, the United States and Chile. Life expectancy deficits were negatively correlated with vaccine uptake in later 2021.

Schunk et al. report the results of a randomized controlled field study that integrates a short self-regulation teaching unit based on the concept of mental contrasting with implementation intentions into the school curriculum of first graders. The findings suggest positive effects of the treatment on impulse control and self-regulation as well as lasting improvements in academic skills.

Seersholm et al. analysed permafrozen middens from Inuit and Viking settlements to uncover evidence of diet in prehistoric Greenland. Using ancient DNA, they identified 42 different species and found that whales were surprisingly common.

This meta-analysis examines different features of infant-directed speech across languages and infant ages. The results suggest that there are cross-linguistic tendencies and that caregivers adjust the properties of infant-directed speech to suit infants’ changing needs.

Fan et al. show that trait somatic anxiety is associated with reduced tendency for exploration, including being less likely to choose an uncertain option.

Klein-Flügge et al. examine connectivity of fine-grained amygdala nuclei and show that this can predict mental health dimensions, going beyond earlier studies that used relatively broad behavioural phenotypes and brain networks.

Drevet et al. show that when monitoring the source of noisy stimuli, humans avoid unwarranted changes-of-mind by ignoring the least reliable stimuli.

Yamamoto et al. find genetic evidence of assortative mating based on dietary habits and disease phenotypes in the Japanese population, and show that this pattern of partner choice is markedly different from its European-ancestry counterpart.

In an experiment with partisan Americans, the researchers found that social tipping was a potent but unreliable route to cultural change. Even a trivial activation of polarized identities undercut the socially beneficial tipping that otherwise occurred.

Adults and children can represent the relative difficulty of discriminating two populations and recognize that larger samples are required for populations with greater overlap. This suggests that they have foundations for ‘intuitive power analyses’.

A citywide experiment tested the effects of three high-pay-off, geo-targeted lotteries to motivate adults to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Zip-code-targeted lotteries in which residents were given 50–100× boosts in their chances of a win did not result in higher vaccine uptake.

Studying socioeconomic backgrounds and intergenerational transmission in the US academia, Morgan et al. find that faculty have a parent with a Ph.D. degree a striking 25 times more often than the general population.

Moving beyond the Gini coefficient in studying inequality, Blesch et al. identify two parameters that capture inequality concentrated at the top and bottom. The results challenge mixed associations between inequality and policy outcomes.

The authors use data-informed computational modelling and show that prioritizing vaccination efforts for the most disadvantaged communities can simultaneously improve equity and prevent the spread of disease.

This systematic review of 422 studies of vaccine hesitancy finds that the term is used inconsistently. Vaccine hesitancy should be defined as a psychological state of indecisiveness that people may experience when making a vaccination decision.

Cikara et al. propose and test the group reference dependence hypothesis, stating that violence and negative attitudes towards minoritized groups depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community. Using data on hate crimes in US counties between 1990 and 2010, they show that as groups increase in rank in terms of their size, hate crimes against them become more likely.

The team of authors led by Seon-Kyeong Jang use whole-genome sequencing data and show that rare genetic variants explain much of the ‘missing heritability’ in smoking behaviours. These results help address a long-standing mystery in behavioural genetics.

Across 21 societies, people alter their speech and song when interacting with infants. These infant-directed vocalizations are recognized by listeners. This suggests that forms of human vocalizations may be shaped by their functions.