People hold subjective beliefs that, independent of the actual distribution of resources, one party’s gains are inevitably accrued at other parties’ expense. In this Review, Davidai and Tepper synthesize research on when and why such zero-sum beliefs emerge and their consequences for individuals, groups and society.

Sexual objectification refers to a cultural prioritization of sexual appearance and appeal over other attributes. In this Review, Ward et al. synthesize empirical evidence about the sources and consequences of seeing women as sexual objects, and of women’s objectification of themselves (self-objectification).

Gesture contributes to human communication and encodes information differently from language. In this Review, Kita and Emmorey discuss how gesture interacts with and supports spoken and signed languages.

Individuals frequently lack the ability and confidence to make sense of quantitative information in their decision making. In this Review, Reyna and Brainerd describe how numeracy training emphasizing the qualitative meaning of numbers in context — the gist — can create substantial and long-lasting improvements to numeracy abilities that transfer across contexts.