Reviews & Analysis

Collective intelligence emerges in group decision-making, whether it requires a consensus or not. In this Review, Kameda et al. describe cognitive and behavioural algorithms that capitalize on individual heterogeneity to yield gains in decision-making accuracy beyond the wisdom of crowds.

Depressive disorders are among the leading causes of global disease burden. In this Perspective, Fried et al. argue that limited progress in understanding, predicting and treating depression despite a wealth of empirical research stems from issues in the methodological and theoretical foundations of depression measurement.

An assumption of modern institutional justice systems is that transgressors should be punished. In this Review, Marshall and McAuliffe synthesize research on whether children expect bystanders to punish others, favour those who do so, and even pursue certain forms of intervention, such as punishment, in response to wrongdoing.

The ability to recognize identity, emotion and other attributes from faces varies across individuals. In this Review, White and Burton synthesize research on individual differences in face processing and the implications of variability in face processing ability for theory and applied settings.

Economic inequality might influence subjective well-being through psychological mechanisms. However, evidence for this claim is mixed. In this Perspective, Willis et al. suggest that inconsistent findings arise because the psychological effects of economic inequality are driven by perceived — rather than objective — inequality.

Subjective time perception involves processing when an event happens relative to another event versus how long an event lasts. In this Review, Coull and Giersch describe the functional and neural differences between temporal order processing and duration estimation by exploring perturbations in individuals with schizophrenia.

Aberrant emotional processes are evident in various mental disorders. In this Review, Lincoln et al. provide an overview of theoretical models of emotion regulation, synthesize the literature on emotion regulation in psychopathology and provide an overview of interventions that target emotion regulation.

The patient–therapist alliance is the most consistent predictor of treatment outcome in psychotherapy. In this Review, Zilcha-Mano and Fisher synthesize the literature that distinguishes between state-like strengthening of alliance throughout treatment and trait-like differences between individuals in alliance strength to elucidate when and why alliance predicts treatment outcome.

Associations between stigma and health are typically treated as stagnant. In this Perspective, Earnshaw et al. argue that considering stigma in relation to historical, human development and status course timescales can advance progress in understanding and addressing stigma to improve health.

Theory of mind is the capacity to understand that other people have their own beliefs, desires, and intentions. In this Review, Rakoczy describes the developmental trajectory of theory of mind and discusses the distinction between implicit and explicit forms of this capacity.

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of controlling one’s own actions and associated external events. In this Review, Wen and Imamizu describe how the sense of agency shapes human perception and behaviour and summarize how the sense of agency is altered in human–machine interactions.

Different languages use distinct writing systems, including the alphabetic system used for English, syllabic system for Korean, and logographic system for Chinese. In this Review, Li and colleagues discuss the similarities and differences among writing systems and consider the consequences for universal cognitive mechanisms for reading.

The quality of romantic relationships influences physical and mental health. However, maintaining happy and healthy relationships is challenging. In this Review, Righetti et al. examine the key factors that have been linked to relationship satisfaction in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies.

According to instance theory, semantic knowledge emerges from episodic memories without a distinct semantic memory system. In this Perspective, Jamieson et al. propose instance theory as a general theory of cognition across memory, language and associative learning, and outline future work to extend this approach.

Studying action is key for understanding perception because perceptual processes are shaped by movements of the sensory surface. In this Perspective, Rolfs and Schweitzer propose four hallmarks of action–perception coupling and outline a research strategy for the study of action kinematics in perception.

Individuals with substance use disorders, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy are over-represented in the criminal legal system. In this Review, Baskin-Sommers et al. summarize cognitive–affective factors that give rise to these disinhibitory disorders, and discuss implications for legal intervention.

Hearing voices has long been associated with severe mental illness but also occurs in the general population. In this Review, Toh et al. describe the cognitive, neural, personal and sociocultural processes that contribute to voice-hearing in clinical, non-clinical and everyday experience, with emphasis on linking mechanism to phenomenology.

Romantic attachment insecurity undermines long-term relationship functioning and well-being. In this Review, Overall and colleagues describe processes that buffer the effects of attachment insecurity within couple interactions, associated spillover effects that shape functioning across couple and family contexts, and ways to contain spillover to improve well-being.

Mental health concerns are common, but many people have difficulty accessing appropriate mental health care. In this Review, Lattie et al. present an overview of digital mental health services and provide recommendations for increasing their accessibility.

Face-to-face social interaction depends on dynamic integration and coordination of verbal and non-verbal information. In this Review, Hadley et al. describe the ways that social interaction behaviour can be categorized, the theories available to interpret current work and the methods used to test these theories.