Reviews & Analysis

Although we have been able to track how cultural innovations spread among farming populations in prehistoric Europe, we know relatively little about this among European hunter-gatherers. Dolbunova et al. use a range of techniques to shed light on how the making and use of pottery spread among early-to-mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers west of the Urals.

When the term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ first appeared, it was deemed ambiguous and difficult to measure. A systematic review of published articles on vaccine hesitancy suggests it should be defined as a state of indecisiveness regarding a vaccination decision, independently of behaviour, and that it needs new modes of analysis and measurement.

This Review by Neil Adger and colleagues examines the multiple dimensions of human well-being that are affected by climate change. The authors propose policy and research priorities that are oriented towards supporting well-being.

Fiona Charlson and colleagues review direct and indirect ways in which climate change impacts mental health. The authors provide an overview of the current evidence to inform the mental health field’s response to climate change and identify promising approaches for health professionals for individual-level, community-level and system-wide responses, as well as advocacy and education.

Hornsey and Lewandowsky examine psychological and structural reasons for climate change scepticism and describe strategies for reducing the destructive influence of such scepticism.

When and why are interventions to encourage pro-environmental behaviour effective? van Valkengoed and colleagues introduce a classification system that links different interventions to the determinants of environmental behaviour. On the basis of this classification system, they provide guidelines for practitioners on how to select interventions that are most likely to change the key determinants of a specific target behaviour.

For a long time, climate models did not account for human behaviour. This Review by Beckage et al. surveys existing social climate models, an emerging class of models that embed human behaviour in climate models, and makes recommendations for how to best represent and integrate human behaviour in climate models.

Danilo Bzdok and Robin I. M. Dunbar review the neurobiology of human and primate social behaviours and how the pandemic may have disrupted these systems.

Life expectancies diverged in 2021, approaching pre-pandemic levels in Western Europe and further worsening in Eastern Europe, USA and Chile. Life expectancy deficits in 2021 are almost solely explained by premature deaths due to COVID-19. Correspondingly, countries with a higher share of vaccinated individuals suffered the least life expectancy deficit.

Non-random mating affects the genetic makeup of populations and challenges the validity of popular genetics methods. A new study explores the unique patterns of non-random mating in the Japanese population and underscores the importance of large-scale genetic studies outside European-descended groups.

Rachel Hartman and colleagues review interventions designed to reduce partisan animosity in the United States and introduce a framework to categorize interventions across three levels: thoughts, relationships and institutions.

University faculty members train future researchers and produce new knowledge. We show that US faculty members have a parent with a PhD roughly 25 times more often than the general population, with nearly double that rate at prestigious universities. The overrepresentation of socioeconomic privilege is likely to shape scholarship and diversity efforts.

Elucidating potentially causal factors for depression and the direction of their impact could beneficially inform prevention strategies. Mendelian randomization revealed the protective role of increased relative carbohydrate intake in lowering depression risk. In addition, body mass index mediated this effect but to a lesser extent than the total effect size.

Artificial intelligence systems have struggled to understand common-sense laws of the physical world, even though this ‘intuitive physics’ is rapidly acquired by young humans. Piloto et al. demonstrate that a deep learning system closely modelled on infant cognition outperforms the more traditional ‘learning from scratch’ systems.

A study across 61 countries showed that, on a global scale, individuals are often inconsistent when choosing between immediate and future financial options. Although economic inequality is associated with this decision-making process, nearly everyone demonstrates these anomalies, and instability can lead to worse choices, even in wealthy individuals.

Why are some communities more vulnerable to wildfire smoke than others? Burke et al. study human behaviour during wildfire events by leveraging multiple non-traditional data sources, including internet search results, Twitter updates, and mobility and sensor data. Their results will help to inform better and more equitable policy.

A new algorithmic tool developed by Rotaru and colleagues can more accurately predict crime events in US cities. Predictive crime modelling can produce powerful statistical tools, but there are important considerations for researchers to take into account to avoid their findings being misused and doing more harm than good.

Proposals to fight online misinformation range from gently encouraging users to consider the accuracy of information (‘nudges’) to bans and removing content. Using modelling techniques, we find that these interventions are unlikely to be effective in isolation, but that a combined approach can achieve a significant reduction in the spread of misinformation.

A randomized controlled trial of approximately 4,500 households in Botswana during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of using low-tech learning interventions during school closures. A simple combination of phone tutoring and SMS messages substantially improved learning in primary school children in a cost-effective manner.

Human neonates discriminate vowel sounds played forward, as in normal speech, from their waveform reversal after five hours of exposure on the first day of their life. The neural dynamics supporting this rapid perceptual learning indicate a primitive brain mechanism similar to the language-processing network of adults.