Nature Human Behaviour最新文献

{"title":"Large estimated size of the Australian Indigenous population before its extensive decline following colonial invasion.","authors":"Alan N Williams, Raymond Tobler, Billy Griffiths, Sean Ulm, Matthew C Nitschke, Michael I Bird, Shane Ingrey, Frédérik Saltré, Kirsty Beller, Ian J McNiven, Nicholas Pitt, Lynette Russell, Alistair Paterson, Christopher Wilson, Corey J A Bradshaw","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02571-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02571-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Estimating the size of Indigenous populations in Australia before European colonial invasion is invaluable to truth-telling and reconciliation. Robust estimates of the population dynamics of pre-colonial Indigenous Australians are poor owing to lethal diseases, frontier and structural violence, and absence of systematic censuses. Here we review ethnographic observations, archaeological and genetic reconstructions, and modelled carrying capacity to infer Indigenous population size before colonial invasion. Congruency of the modelled and genetics-based (not historical or ethnographic accounts) estimates suggests a bootstrapped pre-colonial median of 2.22 million, or 0.29 people km^-2. This allows an estimate of the number of excess deaths in the post-colonial era. For a median pre-colonial population of 2.22 million, ~28,200 excess deaths per year (2.06 million deaths in total) would have had to occur over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from colonial invasion-related mortality to align with census records. These estimates speak to how the aftermath of invasion was experienced by Indigenous Australians, and recent census records show their survival and recovery since. We warn readers that the content of this study is confronting and possibly distressing.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148977597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How Registered Reports can improve trust in machine learning research","authors":"Kristin Jankowsky,&nbsp;Kim-Laura Speck,&nbsp;Jamie Cummins,&nbsp;Ulrich Schroeders","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02586-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02586-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"10 10","pages":"1857-1859"},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148930761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A case for fast science amid calls for slow science.","authors":"Zachary Witkower","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02589-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02589-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148930738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effects of a randomized controlled trial of unconditional cash transfers on epigenetic measures of ageing and cognition in children and mothers","authors":"Laurel Raffington,&nbsp;Yayouk E. Willems,&nbsp;Jessica F. Sperber,&nbsp;Sepideh Zarandooz,&nbsp;Molly A. Costanzo,&nbsp;Daniel A. Notterman,&nbsp;Colter Mitchell,&nbsp;Elliot M. Tucker-Drob,&nbsp;Greg J. Duncan,&nbsp;Nathan A. Fox,&nbsp;Lisa A. Gennetian,&nbsp;Katherine A. Magnuson,&nbsp;Sonya V. Troller-Renfree,&nbsp;Hirokazu Yoshikawa,&nbsp;Elisabeth B. Binder,&nbsp;K. Paige Harden,&nbsp;Kimberly G. Noble","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02568-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02568-4","url":null,"abstract":"Here we present epigenetic findings from a randomized controlled trial studying the impact of unconditional cash gifts of US$333 per month (children n = 313; mothers n = 329) or US$20 per month (children n = 423; mothers n = 448) to US mothers with low income during their child’s first four years of life. Salivary DunedinPACE-pace of aging, a DNA-methylation predictor of healthy lifespan, and Epigenetic-g, a DNA-methylation biomarker of cognition, were preregistered as secondary outcomes (clinical trial identifier NCT03593356 ). As hypothesized, high-cash compared with low-cash gifts caused a −0.17 s.d. (95% confidence interval −0.32 to −0.01, P = 0.037) difference in children’s DunedinPACE. We found no evidence supporting our hypothesis that higher cash gifts increased children’s Epigenetic-g, although it did correlate with children’s brain activity. There was no evidence that the cash gift had an impact on these epigenetic indices in mothers. These findings show a detectable impact of monthly unconditional cash received through early childhood on epigenetic indices of 4-year-old children in families with low income. Whether this epigenetic effect persists and how it may relate to behavioural and health outcomes remains unknown. Raffington et al. find that providing low-income mothers with cash gifts for the first four years of their children’s lives appears to change the children’s epigenetic biological ageing in ways associated with better health in adulthood.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"10 10","pages":"2002-2015"},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02568-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148912776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mourning the loss of AI companions.","authors":"Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02569-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02569-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As artificial intelligence (AI) shifts from tool use to social interaction, company-initiated updates can disrupt user well-being. Here we develop an attachment-based account in which AI companions function as attachment figures such that disruptive updates are associated with separation distress. Across two natural experiments-Replika's erotic role play removal and ChatGPT's GPT-5 rollout-we analysed 54,861 posts from Replika and ChatGPT subreddits and analysed data from 1,452 participants across seven surveys. Both updates increased negativity, loss framing and restoration desires (Replika negative posts, +24.7 percentage points, 95% CI 20.1 to 29.2; ChatGPT, +13.0 percentage points, 95% CI 10.8 to 15.2), with larger Replika (versus ChatGPT) increases in sadness (d = 2.67 versus 1.41) and negative mental health (d = 1.72 versus 0.63). Replika users reported closeness exceeding common human ties (versus friend d = 0.47) and anticipated mourning higher than other technologies (d = 0.32-0.57). These findings inform how companies and regulators evaluate psychological risks of generative AI updates.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148888244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How contemporary academic structures constrain scientific creativity and hold back early-career researchers.","authors":"Phillip J Haubrock, Antonín Kouba, Ismael Soto, Neil Angelo S Abreo, Lorenzo Vilizzi, Dagmara Błońska, Ali Serhan Tarkan, Vanessa De Santis, Ronaldo Sousa, António Barbosa Nogueira, Senne Heeren, Joana Garrido Nogueira, Carlos Cano-Barbacil, Bruno Cremella, Diederik Strubbe, Janine Pereira da Silva, Riccardo Poloni, Pablo Deschepper, Eli S J Thoré, Benjamin Misteli, Jingrui Sun, Martina Panisi, David Dudgeon, Valentini Stamatiadou, Shams M Galib, Chelly Maes, Nompumelelo C Baso, Wouter Beukema, Barbora Števove, Eva Záhorská, Irmak Kurtul, Davinder Kaur, Augusto Frederico Huber, Dariusz Halabowski, Janeide de Assis Guilherme Padilha, Paride Balzani, Cüneyt Kaya, Esra Bayçelebi, Michele Mugnai, Danish A Ahmed, Gülşah Saç, Sadi Aksu, Burak Malik Kaya, Mulkibar Ciftcioglu, Xiaoming Jiang, Marta Rodríguez-Rey, Irene Martín-Forés, Suzana Gonçalves Leles, Lucian Pârvulescu, Jan Pergl, Federica Rossetto, Hui Wei, Natalia I Kirichenko, Elizabeta Briski, Luca Gallitelli, J Robert Britton, Teun Everts","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02575-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02575-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We argue that contemporary scientific systems progressively constrain high-risk and conceptually innovative research while being increasingly structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria and risk-averse frameworks that favour predictable and non-transformative research outputs. Drawing on recent empirical literature, we show how such systems can place disproportionate pressure on early-career researchers by incentivizing safe, tractable and easily evaluated outputs. Structural academic mechanisms such as peer review and funding, escalating publication costs and institutional inequalities interact with precarious employment and hierarchical dependencies. In this environment, we contend that strategic conformity becomes a rational career path. This risks suppressing creativity and critical thinking precisely at the stage when scientific independence could otherwise emerge. Consequently, the probability of substantive contributions by early-career researchers is declining, while talent may increasingly abandon academia or cluster within a limited number of well-resourced institutions and national systems. By adopting a systems-level perspective, we argue that scientific creativity is not merely an individual trait but an emerging property of a supportive academic landscape and that maintaining or restoring it may require substantial structural reforms. These include promoting stable research pathways, decentralized decision-making and evaluation frameworks that better recognize collaboration, originality, persistence and nonlinear career trajectories. Without systemic change, we risk stifling the potential of early-career researchers to go beyond the confines of existing methods and approaches and deliver transformative advances. This would limit their capacity to meaningfully change our understanding of the world or benefit society, with impacts that fall short of their potential.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148888186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The gender gap reconsidered.","authors":"Bryce E Hughes","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02448-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02448-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148888254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Author Correction: On the conversational persuasiveness of GPT-4","authors":"Francesco Salvi,&nbsp;Manoel Horta Ribeiro,&nbsp;Riccardo Gallotti,&nbsp;Robert West","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02588-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02588-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"10 10","pages":"2047-2047"},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02588-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148888184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gender and LGBTQ+ representation across college majors and achievement levels using nationally representative US data.","authors":"Joseph R Cimpian, Zachary T McDermott, Jo R King, Nathaniel Woznicki, Taek H Kim","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02510-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02510-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Gender segregation across college majors persists, yet how these patterns vary across achievement levels and intersect with LGBTQ+ identity remains unclear. We examine whether field cultures and social norms may create 'in-group benefits' for lower-achieving members of field-specific majority groups. Using two nationally representative US longitudinal datasets (the High School Longitudinal Study, n = 6,340; and the Baccalaureate and Beyond Class of 2016, n = 12,950), we estimate relative representation across majors spanning male-majority physics/engineering/computer science to female-majority health fields. Across datasets, representation is most polarized among lower-achieving students, particularly in male-majority fields, where lower-achieving straight-cisgender males are overrepresented relative to lower-achieving straight-cisgender females (relative ratio, 2.62; 95% confidence interval, 2.29-3.00), while this representation gap is smaller among higher-achieving students (P < 0.001). The patterns persist after adjusting for achievement, coursework, interests and aspirations. In female-majority fields, evidence for analogous in-group benefits is mixed across models vis-à-vis LGBTQ+ identity. The findings suggest that the forces shaping field-level sorting operate differently across achievement levels, with implications for talent development and broadening participation.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148888182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Saturation of moral language predicts lower content engagement on social media.","authors":"Cristian Candia, Mohammad Atari, Nour Kteily, Brian Uzzi","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02560-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02560-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Moral language often travels widely online, but does more moral content always correspond to higher engagement? We analysed 1,621,147 observations across 13 socio-political topics on Twitter (n = 530,104), Reddit (n = 1,048,653) and 8chan (n = 42,390). Using Distributed Dictionary Representations-word embeddings scored against an expert-validated moral dictionary-we measured moral loading (that is, a post's overall moral relevance) and moral density (that is, concentration of moral content across words). Negative-binomial models showed that moral loading was positively associated with engagement (range 1.12 [0.96, 1.28] to 9.07 [8.21, 9.93], all P < 0.001). Conditional on moral loading, however, moral density was 'negatively' associated with engagement (range -4.71 [-5.41, -4.02] to -0.40 [-0.52, -0.27], all P < 0.001). Engagement peaked at density 0.30 [0.30048, 0.30070], P < 0.001, with lower engagement below (2.28-fold) and above (2.78-fold), consistent with an engagement advantage for moral language that is bounded by an overmoralization penalty pattern.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148880898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}