Psychology articles from across Nature Portfolio

The shift towards low-carbon heating technologies and associated infrastructure often disrupts citizens’ lives. Research now demonstrates how the socio-psychological context may influence the circumstances under which citizens are willing to accept heating transitions and related construction work, and those where reactance and rejection is to be expected.

A classic question in cognitive science is whether learning requires innate, domain-specific inductive biases to solve visual tasks. A recent study trained machine-learning systems on the first-person visual experiences of children to show that visual knowledge can be learned in the absence of innate inductive biases about objects or space.

An ambitious investigation has analysed discourse on eight social-media platforms, covering a vast array of topics and spanning several decades. It reveals that online conversations increase in toxicity as they get longer — and that this behaviour persists despite shifts in platforms’ business models, technological advances and societal norms.

Humans have a unique capacity for objective and general causal understanding. In this Review, Goddu and Gopnik describe the development of causal learning and reasoning abilities during evolution and across childhood.

The authors introduce Ouvrai, an open-source solution that facilitates the design and execution of remote virtual reality studies, capitalizing on the surge in virtual reality headset ownership.

The shift towards low-carbon heating technologies and associated infrastructure often disrupts citizens’ lives. Research now demonstrates how the socio-psychological context may influence the circumstances under which citizens are willing to accept heating transitions and related construction work, and those where reactance and rejection is to be expected.

A classic question in cognitive science is whether learning requires innate, domain-specific inductive biases to solve visual tasks. A recent study trained machine-learning systems on the first-person visual experiences of children to show that visual knowledge can be learned in the absence of innate inductive biases about objects or space.

The EU commission’s Digital Services Act aims to protect children and adolescents from psychological harm on social media platforms. This initiative needs to be carried out in close cooperation between the EU commission and independent academics.

Analysis of different operationalizations shows that many scientific results may be an artifact of the operationalization process. A culture of multi-operationalization may be needed for psychological research to develop valid knowledge.