Lucas Woodley, Evan DeFilippis, Shankar Ravi, Joshua D. Greene
{"title":"Defusing political animosity in the United States with a cooperative online quiz game","authors":"Lucas Woodley, Evan DeFilippis, Shankar Ravi, Joshua D. Greene","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02225-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02225-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Rising political animosity threatens democracy in the United States and other nations. Previous research indicates that intergroup contact under favourable conditions can reduce animosity. Other research indicates that mutually beneficial cooperation is essential for maintaining complex social structures. Building on these ideas, we asked whether mutually beneficial cooperation can reduce animosity between opposing political party members and whether this is possible in an anonymous online context. We created an online quiz game, Tango (letstango.org), where Republicans and Democrats partner and communicate in real time. Across five experiments (<i>N</i> = 4,493, four preregistered), we find that an hour of gameplay with an outparty partner can reduce negative partisanship, with increased self-reported warmth, more equitable economic allocations and more favourable outparty meta-perceptions persisting for up to four months. Gameplay also improves democracy-related attitudes, with effects persisting for one week. The game receives high enjoyability ratings, which may increase motivation to engage with this intervention.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144201808","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":"Political expression of academics on Twitter","authors":"Prashant Garg, Thiemo Fetzer","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02199-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02199-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Academics play a vital role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge, ideas and narratives. Social media provide new, more direct ways of science communication. Yet, since not all academics engage with social media, the sample that does so may have an outsized influence on shaping public perceptions of academia through the set topics they engage with and their style and tone of communication. We describe patterns in academics’ expression online using an international dataset covering nearly 100,000 scholars linking their Twitter content to academic records. We document large and systematic variation in politically salient academic expression concerning climate action, cultural and economic concepts. We show that US academics often diverge from the US Twitter population at large in topic focus and style, although academics are not necessarily more extreme in their beliefs. Future work should examine potential impacts on public trust and the reasons why academics express themselves politically on social media.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144201813","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":"Mental graphs structure the storage and retrieval of visuomotor associations","authors":"Juliana E. Trach, Samuel D. McDougle","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02217-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02217-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Much of human memory takes the form of cognitive graphs that allow us to relate and generalize knowledge. The influence of structured memory in the motor system is less clear. Here we examine how structured memory representations influence action selection when responses are retrieved from newly learned, hierarchical visuomotor maps. Human participants (<i>N</i> = 182) learned visuomotor mappings with (or without) an imposed latent structure that linked visual stimulus features (for example, colour or shape) to intuitive motor distinctions, such as hands and pairs of fingers. In participants who learned structured visuomotor mappings, transitional response times indicated that retrieving the correct response from memory invoked the ‘traversal’ of a structured mental graph. Forced-response experiments revealed similar computations within individual trials. Moreover, graph-like representations persisted even after multiple days of practice with the visuomotor mappings. Our results point to direct links between internal computations over structured memory representations and the preparation of movements.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193030","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":"More US scientists must speak out","authors":"Peter H. Gleick","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02240-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02240-3","url":null,"abstract":"The Trump administration has launched an extraordinary and dangerous attack on US science. Climate and water scientist Peter Gleick calls on scientists who are able and willing to do so to speak out publicly, and argues that although dissent carries risks, it is riskier to stay silent.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193028","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 chronospatial revolution in psychology","authors":"Mohammad Atari, Joseph Henrich, Jonathan Schulz","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02229-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02229-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Psychology’s definition and scope have shifted over the discipline’s short history, yet it has largely remained ahistorical and geographically narrow. Here we call for psychology to become a historical and geographical science, a transformation we term the chronospatial revolution. We list four barriers to this shift in psychology: problems in scope, data, synergy and theory. We discuss the need for psychology to adopt a more holistic lens and propose a research agenda that integrates historical processes, cultural dynamics and ecological variations into psychological inquiry. Such an integrated approach not only enriches our microscopic understanding of <i>Homo sapiens</i> but also draws a more telescopic map of human psychology that encapsulates the human journey. By embedding psychology within time and space, we can better account for cross-cultural psychological diversity, historical change and evolved psychological mechanisms, ultimately fostering a more globally representative, historically enriched and theoretically robust discipline.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193031","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":"An interdisciplinary explanation of rule-following in the absence or presence of incentives","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02197-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02197-3","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193175","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}
Alyssa H. Sinclair, Mallory J. Harris, Clio Andris, Danielle Cosme, Ellen Peters, Angela Fagerlin, Emily B. Falk, Joshua S. Weitz
{"title":"NIH indirect cost cuts will affect the economy and employment","authors":"Alyssa H. Sinclair, Mallory J. Harris, Clio Andris, Danielle Cosme, Ellen Peters, Angela Fagerlin, Emily B. Falk, Joshua S. Weitz","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02238-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02238-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent US policy changes will have far-reaching consequences for the economy and employment, in addition to health and safety. Here we describe an interactive, geospatial visualization that illustrates the projected effect of funding cuts on communities nationwide.</p><p>The US government has historically invested in a health research ecosystem that has positioned the USA as a leader in preventing and treating heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, infectious disease and more<sup>1</sup>. Federal investments have paid off; for instance, over 99% of new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019 had received funding support, in part, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)<sup>2</sup>.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"84 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193027","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":"Dissociable habits of response preparation versus response initiation","authors":"Yue Du, Adrian M. Haith","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02215-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02215-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Behaviours we repeat often tend to become habitual. The process of habit formation in humans is commonly studied in the context of learning an arbitrary association between stimuli and responses. Assessing whether or not this association becomes habitual usually involves testing either whether participants can withhold certain responses or whether participants can generate different responses to certain stimuli. However, studies using these two methods have yielded conflicting findings. Here we propose that this discrepancy arises because these approaches target distinct forms of habit associated with different components of action control: response initiation and response preparation, respectively. Through a series of experiments (total <i>n</i> = 215), along with computational models, we show that these two approaches indeed measure dissociable forms of habit. Our results illustrate that a given behaviour can become habitual in multiple, qualitatively different ways, with important implications for how habits can best be promoted or eliminated.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193032","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}
Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso, Dallas O’Dell, Jason E. Hickel, Giorgos Kallis
{"title":"A call for psychological and behavioural science on degrowth","authors":"Dario Krpan, Frédéric Basso, Dallas O’Dell, Jason E. Hickel, Giorgos Kallis","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02211-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02211-8","url":null,"abstract":"Degrowth is a socioeconomic paradigm that prioritizes planetary health and human wellbeing through a democratically planned reduction of unnecessary production and consumption. We urge psychological and behavioural scientists to study this important topic and suggest ways to develop an integrated research agenda for degrowth.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144165278","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}
Julia Marshall, Matti Wilks, Lucius Caviola, Karri Neldner
{"title":"When development constricts our moral circle","authors":"Julia Marshall, Matti Wilks, Lucius Caviola, Karri Neldner","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02212-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02212-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many people believe that our ‘moral circle’ expands as we grow up. We first care for family members and friends, then gradually extend this care to distant others. Some scholars argue that this presumed broadening of moral concern is driven by our increasing capacity to recognize, through reason, that the suffering of strangers matters as much as the suffering of those we love. Yet, recent research complicates this story. In several domains, younger children start out with a more expansive moral circle than older children and adults. Younger children are more likely than their older counterparts to judge relationally, physically and phylogenetically distant others as worthy of help or protection. These findings suggest, counterintuitively, that development may not widen our moral circle but may sometimes narrow it. This Perspective raises the possibility that, rather than focusing on overcoming biases against caring for distant others, we should also recognize that, in some domains, we possess an early-emerging tendency to care for them.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144153350","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}