Volume 3 Issue 5, May 2019

Against those who believe democracy is unable to address climate change effectively, we argue that a more deeply deliberative democracy can better equip the world to meet the challenge.

The physical and social environment that surrounds us has a profound impact on our brains and behaviour. This impact is so fundamental that a complete understanding of neural mechanisms cannot be developed without taking into account the extensive interactions between neurobiology, psychology, behaviour and the environment.

Undoubtedly our technology surpasses anything seen in nonhumans, but is this the result of individual genius or collective learning?

Can the eye movements we make when there is nothing to look at shed light on our cognitive processes? A new study shows that tiny gaze shifts reveal people’s attended locations in memorized—rather than visual—space. The discovery indicates that the oculomotor system is engaged in the focusing of attention within the internal space of memory.

How do people seek to reduce uncertainty in social interactions? FeldmanHall & Shenhav propose a three-part model: first through more automatic impression formation, then more effortful perspective-taking, and finally by seeking and learning about additional information that can update their predictions

Neurofeedback training is considered a promising tool in psychiatric intervention. To enable neurofeedback to fulfil its promise, Lubianiker et al introduce a process-based neurofeedback framework to guide future research and interventions.

An experiment shows that complex technologies need not result from our superior causal reasoning abilities but, instead, can emerge from the accumulation of improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work.

Joffe et al. report the Fix-it hazard preparedness intervention, which increased earthquake and fire preparedness in two cultures. Household preparedness showed long-term change and was predicted by higher outcome expectancy and home ownership.

van Ede et al. show that focusing on a visual representation held in memory biases gaze towards its memorized location. This suggests that gaze control and attentional focusing within memorized space rely on the same system.

Matoba et al. examine genetic components of smoking behaviours in the Japanese population, identifying seven novel loci and 11 diseases that share genetic bases with smoking behaviours.

Research into emotion dynamics and well-being has, over the years, used an increasing number of dynamic measures to capture emotional change. Dejonckheere et al. show that these measures add little to the information conveyed by mean affect and its variance.

Holbein et al. report an observational study, a natural experiment and a randomized experiment showing that insufficient sleep reduces prosocial behaviours such as voter turnout, donating to charity and signing petitions.

While performing a visuospatial task, humans show the tendency to inhale at task onset. Neural processing of the task differs depending on whether participants inhaled or exhaled at task onset, a difference that correlates with performance.

Grotzinger et al. develop a multivariate method for analysing the joint genetic architectures of complex traits: genomic structural equation modelling. They provide several applications of the method, including a joint analysis of five psychiatric traits.

Behaviour-change theories need to be more precisely specified. Five of the major theories can be formally represented using a system involving construct labels, construct definitions and defined binary relationships between constructs.