Decision making articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    A hindcast experiment of the 2021 summer flood in West Germany unveils a 17-hour lead time for preparedness and advisable action, holding promise for impact-based forecasting of inundated roads, railways and building footprint in real-time.

    • Husain Najafi
    • , Pallav Kumar Shrestha
    •  & Luis Samaniego

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Collective cooperation is found across many social and biological systems. Here, the authors find that infrequent hub updates promote the emergence of collective cooperation and develop an algorithm that optimises collective cooperation with update rates.

    • Yao Meng
    • , Sean P. Cornelius
    •  & Aming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A personalized letter from the Medical Examiner-Coroner in Los Angeles County has proven effective at reducing opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing. Here the authors show that the introduction of if/when-then planning prompts in to the letter further reduced opioid prescribing by 12.85% and benzodiazepine prescribing by 8.32%; they were most effective for clinicians with multiple patient deaths due to accidental opioid-related overdose.

    • Jason N. Doctor
    • , Marcella A. Kelley
    •  & Emily P. Stewart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Green technologies foster the use of green energy; however, large investment costs hinder adoption. In a large-scale field experiment, the authors show that message framing can promote a serious commitment to solar panels among the broader public.

    • Dominik Bär
    • , Stefan Feuerriegel
    •  & Markus Weinmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooperation is more likely when individuals can choose their interaction partner. However, here, the authors show that partner choice can increase resource inequality in a public goods game when people differ in resources and productivity needed for cooperation.

    • Mirre Stallen
    • , Luuk L. Snijder
    •  & Carsten K. W. De Dreu

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    In this Review article, the authors discuss emerging efforts to build ethical governance frameworks for data science health research in Africa and the opportunities to advance these through investments by African governments and institutions, international funding organizations and collaborations for research and capacity development.

    • Clement A. Adebamowo
    • , Shawneequa Callier
    •  & Sally N. Adebamowo

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Progress to reduce plastic pollution has been painfully slow and the consequent damage to the natural environment and to human health is likely to increase further. This has been because the views and ways of working of four distinct stakeholder communities are not sufficiently well integrated. (1) Scientists, (2) industry, (3) society at large and (4) those making policy and legislation must in future find ways to work together.

    • Richard S. Lampitt
    • , Stephen Fletcher
    •  & Adrian Whyle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper shows that desertification combating practices decline incomes of farmers and herders, and China needs to adapt its ecological programmes to address the impacts of climate change and create positive synergies to combat desertification.

    • Xunming Wang
    • , Quansheng Ge
    •  & Fahu Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social interactions change continuously from cooperation to competition. Here, using an economic game, the authors show how the social context and inferences about others’ intentions modulate cooperativeness, and examine the neural network underlying the continuous cooperation competition trade-off.

    • M. A. Pisauro
    • , E. F. Fouragnan
    •  & M. G. Philiastides

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early forecasts give people in a storm’s path time to prepare, but less is known about the cost to society when forecasts are incorrect. In this observational study, the authors examine over 700,000 births in the path of Hurricane Irene and find exposure was associated with impaired birth outcomes.

    • Jacob Hochard
    • , Yuanhao Li
    •  & Nino Abashidze

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the dynamics of human cooperation in groups with changing compositions. Using data from a large-scale and long-term online public goods game, this study shows how group changes are associated with temporarily lower cooperation.

    • Kasper Otten
    • , Ulrich J. Frey
    •  & Naomi Ellemers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People are remarkably good at learning about others’ personalities. Here, the authors develop computational models showing that this learning relies on a combination of prior beliefs and similarities between personality traits.

    • Koen M. M. Frolichs
    • , Gabriela Rosenblau
    •  & Christoph W. Korn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rewards can motivate people to cooperate, but the evolution of rewarding behavior is itself poorly understood. Here, a game-theoretic analysis shows that reputation effects facilitate the simultaneous evolution of cooperation and social rewarding policies.

    • Saptarshi Pal
    •  & Christian Hilbe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selecting economic policies to achieve sustainable development is challenging due to the many sectors involved and the trade-offs implied. Artificial intelligence combined with economy-wide computer simulations can help.

    • Mohammed Basheer
    • , Victor Nechifor
    •  & Julien J. Harou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The integration of risk analysis and spatial CGE modeling frameworks allowed for measuring the direct and indirect consequences of extreme events via novel probabilistic risk indicators which incorporate elements of uncertainty and systemic effects

    • J. A. León
    • , M. Ordaz
    •  & I. F. Araújo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flow is a desired but elusive state characterized by the subjective experience of immersion and engagement in an activity. Here, the authors develop and empirically validate a formal model that specifies variables and computations involved in the subjective experience of flow.

    • David E. Melnikoff
    • , Ryan W. Carlson
    •  & Paul E. Stillman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness or gHAT) has been targeted for elimination of transmission by 2030. Here, the authors project impacts of gHAT interventions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and derive a priority list of health zones requiring enhanced control to achieve this target.

    • Ching-I Huang
    • , Ronald E. Crump
    •  & Kat S. Rock

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In many instances of reciprocity, individuals cooperate in turns. Here, the authors analyze the equilibria and the dynamics of such alternating games, and in particular describe all strategies with one-round memory that maintain cooperation.

    • Peter S. Park
    • , Martin A. Nowak
    •  & Christian Hilbe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dynamical development process of various social network platforms shows emergence and transformation of user communities. The authors model social network formation processes considering the meritocratic perspective, where users make their decisions based on the user-generated content.

    • Nicolò Pagan
    • , Wenjun Mei
    •  & Florian Dörfler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social convention change due to diffusion is often described by agent-based models focusing on the role of social coordination. In this work the authors uncover two additional individual-level mechanisms, trend-seeking and inertia, that can critically shape the collective behavior of the population.

    • Mengbin Ye
    • , Lorenzo Zino
    •  & Ming Cao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show that an integrative thinking process linked philosophically to wisdom may reduce group polarization. Specifically, wise reasoning improves intergroup attitudes and behavior even at time of heightened societal conflicts.

    • Justin P. Brienza
    • , Franki Y. H. Kung
    •  & Melody M. Chao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ride-sharing, combining similar concurrent trips into one, may support sustainable urban mobility yet lacks broad adoption. Storch et al. reveal how collective interactions in shared rides explain essential characteristics of ride-sharing adoption patterns e.g. observed in New York City and Chicago.

    • David-Maximilian Storch
    • , Marc Timme
    •  & Malte Schröder

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Singleton and colleagues publish in Nature Communications an intervention study to reduce antimicrobial usage in companion animal practice. They identify significant reductions in antimicrobial usage with their more active intervention group over approximately a 6-month period. The study offers an exciting way forward to explore further the trial interventions and assess alternative methods to improve antimicrobial stewardship in veterinary practice.

    • David Brodbelt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Effective use of antimicrobials in both humans and animals is essential to help slow the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Here, Singleton et al. present a randomised controlled trial demonstrating the efficacy of social norm messaging to reduce antibiotic prescription frequency in veterinary surgeries.

    • David A. Singleton
    • , Angela Rayner
    •  & Gina L. Pinchbeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous research on the importance of prosociality is based on observations from WEIRD societies, questioning the generalizability of these findings. Here the authors present a global investigation of the relation between prosociality and labor market success and generalize the positive relation to a wide geographical context.

    • Fabian Kosse
    •  & Michela M. Tincani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooperation among humans is threatened by the free-rider problem. Here the authors identify another challenge to human cooperation: self-reliance, the ability to solve shared problems individually. The experiment reveals that self-reliance crowds out cooperation and increases wealth inequality.

    • Jörg Gross
    • , Sonja Veistola
    •  & Eric Van Dijk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans are able to exploit patterns or schemas when performing new tasks, but the mechanism for this ability is still unknown. Using graph-learning tasks, we show that humans are able to transfer abstract structural knowledge and suggest a computational mechanism by which such transfer can occur.

    • Shirley Mark
    • , Rani Moran
    •  & Timothy E. J. Behrens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the synchronization of human networks is important in many aspects, but current research is suffering from limited control and noisy environments. Shahal et al. show a quantitative study with full control over the network connectivity, coupling strength and delay among interacting violin players.

    • Shir Shahal
    • , Ateret Wurzberg
    •  & Moti Fridman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most evolutionary game theory focuses on isolated games. Here, Donahue et al. present a general framework for ‘multichannel games’ in which individuals engage in a set of parallel games with a partner, and show that such parallel interactions favor the evolution of reciprocity across games.

    • Kate Donahue
    • , Oliver P. Hauser
    •  & Christian Hilbe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forcing people to choose quickly often changes pro-social behavior, but it is unclear why. Here, the authors show that under time pressure, people engage in incomplete information searches biased by concern (or lack thereof) for others, explaining effects often attributed to automatic processing.

    • Yi Yang Teoh
    • , Ziqing Yao
    •  & Cendri A. Hutcherson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People regularly punish norm violations using gossip and direct confrontation. Here, the authors show that the use of gossip versus direct confrontation is context sensitive, with confrontation used more when punishers have more to gain, and gossip used more when the costs of retaliation loom large.

    • Catherine Molho
    • , Joshua M. Tybur
    •  & Daniel Balliet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People are disproportionately more patient when evaluating larger rewards. Here, the authors show how this magnitude effect may reflect an adaptive response to uncertainty in mental representations of future value.

    • Samuel J. Gershman
    •  & Rahul Bhui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scholars have long argued for the central role of agency—the size of one’s opportunity set—in the human experience, but there has been little work on how a sense of agency affects behavior. We demonstrate that increasing agency leads to greater patience and risk tolerance, even if these new opportunities are not exercised.

    • Ayelet Gneezy
    • , Alex Imas
    •  & Ania Jaroszewicz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about decentralized institutions that could facilitate cooperation for the sake of future generations. Here, the authors show that allowing for peer punishment within a generation is only partially successful in facilitating cooperation for the sake of later generations.

    • Johannes Lohse
    •  & Israel Waichman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Natural hazards can have huge impacts on individuals and societies, however, monitoring the economic recovery in the aftermath of extreme events remains a challenge. Here, the authors find that Facebook posting activity of small businesses can be used to monitor post-disaster economic recovery, and can allow local governments to better target distribution of resources.

    • Robert Eyre
    • , Flavia De Luca
    •  & Filippo Simini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors here show that readiness to cooperate between individuals from different groups corresponds to the degree of cultural similarity between those groups. This is consistent with the theory of Cultural Group Selection as an explanation for the rise of human large-scale cooperation.

    • Carla Handley
    •  & Sarah Mathew

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Based on a strategic network formation model, the authors develop game-theoretical and statistical methods to infer individuals’ incentives in complex social networks, and validate their findings in real-world, historical data sets.

    • Nicolò Pagan
    •  & Florian Dörfler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Because our immediate observations are often ambiguous, we must use the context (prior beliefs) to guide inference, but the context may also be uncertain. Here, the authors show that humans can accurately estimate the reliability of the context and combine it with sensory uncertainty to form their decisions and estimate confidence.

    • Philipp Schustek
    • , Alexandre Hyafil
    •  & Rubén Moreno-Bote

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