Volume 2 Issue 7, July 2023

Psychology research typically focuses on biases at the individual level rather than across broader societal systems. In this Review, Skinner-Dorkenoo and colleagues consider how systemic factors contribute to individual-level racial biases in the USA and vice versa.

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.

People address societal problems by engaging in collective action to attempt to change underlying structural systems (cause-focused solutions) or prosocial behaviours to help those affected (consequence-focused solutions). In this Perspective, Brown and Craig draw on construal level theory and regulatory scope theory to understand why people engage in different forms of social action.