Review Articles in 2018

Paranoia is not only a symptom of mental disorder, but may also function as part of normal human psychology. Raihani and Bell review the evidence for an evolutionary account of paranoia in which between-group competition favours the development of psychological mechanisms to avoid social threat.

Mental effort is traditionally a subject of psychological research. Kool and Botvinick discuss how recent attempts to study mental effort using concepts from behavioural economics have allowed researchers to better understand how costs and benefits drive when people invest mental effort.

Cullati and colleagues propose a framework to understand vulnerability in later life as a product of biological, psychological, cognitive, emotional, economical and relational ‘reserves’ built up over a lifetime, which can be called on to buffer against or recover from adversity.

Fehr and Schurtenberger show that the prevailing evidence supports the view that social norms are causal drivers of human cooperation and explain major cooperation-related regularities. Norms also guide peer punishment and people have strong preferences for institutions that support norm formation.

Hilbe et al. synthesize recent theoretical work on zero-determinant and ‘rival’ versus ‘partner’ strategies in social dilemmas. They describe the environments under which these contrasting selfish or cooperative strategies emerge in evolution.

Male antisocial behaviour peaks in adolescence and declines later in life. Moffitt reviews recent evidence in support of the hypothesis that the age–crime curve conceals two groups of individuals with different causes.

Diener et al. synthesize findings from psychology and economics on subjective well-being across cultures and identify outstanding questions, priorities for future research and pathways to policy implementation.