Reviews & Analysis

Can loneliness be reduced by changing perceptions of empathy? A large-scale study by Pei et al. shows that people tend to underestimate others’ empathy, and correcting this misconception fosters social connection and increases the formation of friendships.

Tamnes et al. explore the complex relationship between ill-being—including mental and behavioural disorders—and mental well-being.

Individuality in social behaviour is of interest across several academic fields, yet there are many barriers to interdisciplinary efforts. In this Perspective, Kuper et al propose an integrative, interdisciplinary approach, and detail their recommendations for researchers interested in this topic.

This Perspective from Summerfield et al. considers the impacts of advanced artificial intelligence systems on the process and function of democracy. The authors explore a wide range of potential risks and opportunities.

As backlash against migrants and refugees intensifies and governments scale back support, private hosting and sponsorship have emerged as promising alternatives. A new study sheds light on their potential — and limitations — in fostering refugee integration, and offers insight for policymakers who are navigating an era of shrinking political and fiscal space.

This network meta-analysis of 152 randomized controlled trials found that personalized and group-customized digital smoking-cessation interventions — particularly text messages and app-based tools — significantly improved cessation outcomes, as compared with standard care. These interventions demonstrated greatest efficacy in middle-aged adults and short-to-medium-term programmes. The work provides a foundation for future digital smoking-cessation frameworks.

In a cross-national behavioural experiment, we examined how providing information about negative externalities and making decisions observable influence prosocial behaviour. Across countries, we found that knowledge of negative externalities (as compared with opportunities for ignorance) robustly increased prosociality, and that guilt-prone individuals were more responsive to information about these negative consequences of their actions.

What aspects of socioeconomic status predict health and happiness? In an ecological momentary assessment study with more than 70,000 people, Newman et al. find that income is linked to happiness but good health is more strongly associated with education.

Physical inactivity is a major public health concern. This Perspective advocates for a complex systems approach to physical activity, emphasizing dynamic, interdisciplinary strategies to design more effective, theory-informed interventions.

In this Perspective, Götz et al. propose the unifying Geographical–Psychological Interactionist Framework, which aims to integrate psychology and geography to account for the context in which human behaviour takes place.

New archaeological results from the oldest Pleistocene site yet to be identified in high-altitude Australia indicate that human occupation began about 20,000 years ago, during the peak of the last glacial maximum. This site — Dargan Shelter — provides evidence of repeated human movement through and adaption to a periglacial environment in Australia.

We estimate the causal effects of following the news on social media by randomly assigning participants to follow either news or non-news accounts on social media. Participants who followed news accounts became more knowledgeable, better able to distinguish true from false news, and more trusting of the news.

People not only inhabit social networks, but also form beliefs about their social world. We assessed these beliefs in isolated villages in Honduras, and found that individuals overestimated kinship ties in their social networks, misperceived ties across social and economic lines, and exhibited perceptual biases that systematically varied.

Conspiracy theories and conspiracy thinking are becoming an increasing concern for researchers, politicians and policymakers. In this Perspective, the authors examine the evidence for how conspiracy beliefs affect sustainability beliefs and attitudes.

Genome-wide association studies of monozygotic twins revealed genes associated with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental traits that are environmentally sensitive, which means their function might depend on environmental factors such as stress.

Surveys in 20 countries reveal strong public support for global policies such as a tax on millionaires to finance low-income countries or a carbon price to finance a global basic income. Survey experiments in Western countries confirm that support is sincere and that citizens prefer political platforms that include global redistribution policies.

Contemporary information systems face growing public distrust across a range of issues including public health, election integrity and climate. This Perspective introduces the Community-Centered Exploration, Engagement, and Evaluation system to help detect and mitigate potential information harms, integrating community participation and response at its core.

A cooperative online quiz game called Tango reduced partisan animosity, improved democracy-related attitudes and was rated as highly enjoyable by participants. The effects of the quiz game were durable and persisted up to four months, and they were similar for Republican and Democrat players.

Neglected tropical diseases impose severe health, social and economic burdens on millions in impoverished regions. This narrative Review examines current interventions and highlights the role of human behaviour and community engagement and involvement in driving intervention success, sustainability and ownership within communities.

Why do people follow rules that they often have an incentive not to follow? Across four sets of experiments, we showed that respect for rules and conformity with social expectations are fundamental factors of rule-following that can explain why people follow laws and social norms even in the absence of incentives.