Nature Human Behaviour最新文献

{"title":"The future of AI-assisted science is both fast and slow.","authors":"Yusuke Moriguchi, Yasuhiro Kanakogi","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02574-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02574-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148866069","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":"Anatomical white matter tracts span the cortical hierarchy to support cognitive diversity.","authors":"Joëlle Bagautdinova, Golia Shafiei, Audrey C Luo, Margaret K Pecsok, Taylor Salo, Aaron F Alexander-Bloch, Dani S Bassett, Margaret E Gardner, Raquel E Gur, Ruben C Gur, Allyson P Mackey, Steven L Meisler, Bratislav Misic, Tyler M Moore, David R Roalf, Russell T Shinohara, Valerie J Sydnor, Tien T Tong, Fang-Cheng Yeh, Russell A Poldrack, Matthew Cieslak, Theodore D Satterthwaite","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Long-range white matter (WM) tracts support cognition by enabling communication between distant cortical regions, which are organized along a hierarchy defined by the sensorimotor-to-association (S-A) axis. However, it remains unknown how WM tracts are positioned within the cortical hierarchy to support cognition. Here we show that WM tracts are differentially positioned in the cortical hierarchy to support specific cognitive functions, and that tracts spanning the hierarchy connect regions with greater cognitive diversity. Moreover, tracts situated within the same hierarchical level connect biologically similar regions, while those crossing the hierarchy bridge distinct biological milieux to support diverse cognitive functions. The placement of tracts in the cortical hierarchy also reflects developmental variation in tract microstructure and individual differences in cognition. Together, these findings provide a framework that moves beyond conventional categories of association or projection tracts and links WM tract anatomy to cortical organization, cognitive function, cortical neurobiology and neurodevelopment. We anticipate that this cortex-anchored framework for describing WM tracts may aid the interpretation of individual differences in WM structure related to development and behaviour.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13662668/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148866126","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":"Social technology use and life satisfaction in a five-wave panel study of US adults.","authors":"Kostadin Kushlev, Kibum Moon, Matt Motyl, Nathanael J Fast, Juliana Schroeder","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02564-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02564-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Here, in five waves of panel data (N = 1,966 US adults), we examined associations between life satisfaction and self-reported use of ten common social technologies measured every 3 months on a six-point frequency scale from 'I did not use' to 'multiple times daily'. At this measurement level and timescale, Bayesian and frequentist random-intercept cross-lagged panel models showed little credible evidence that any social technology use predicts subsequent life satisfaction. In the reverse direction, increases in life satisfaction predicted only modest increases in (video) calling in select demographic groups. In analyses comparing different people, frequency of texting was associated with higher life satisfaction, whereas frequency of YouTube and TikTok use was associated with lower life satisfaction. Despite limited ability to detect within-person change due to temporal stability in responses, the absence of cross-lagged effects is informative: there is scant evidence of a meaningful relationship between social technology use and subsequent life satisfaction.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148851355","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":"Mentalizing and heuristics as distinct cognitive strategies in human teaching.","authors":"Sevan K Harootonian, Thomas L Griffiths, Yael Niv, Mark K Ho","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02540-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02540-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Teaching is a foundational social behaviour that can result from mentally effortful reasoning or cognitively frugal heuristics. When do people use these strategies to teach? Here we investigated this using behavioural experiments and computational modelling with adult participants recruited via Prolific. Experiment 1 (N = 100) revealed robust individual differences: some participants taught by reasoning about a learner's knowledge, consistent with an optimal Bayesian pedagogy model, while others relied on simple heuristics that do not require mentalizing. In two preregistered follow-up experiments, we found that people persist in using heuristics even when they are no longer effective (experiment 2, N = 253, P < 0.001, rank-biserial r = 0.287, 95% confidence interval 0.149-0.419) but that this tendency is pre-empted when inference about a learner's knowledge is scaffolded using an auxiliary task (experiment 3, N = 759, P < 0.001, partial <math> <mrow> <msubsup><mrow><mi>η</mi></mrow> <mrow><mi>p</mi></mrow> <mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow> </msubsup> <mo>=</mo> <mn>0</mn> <mo>.</mo> <mn>107</mn></mrow> </math> , 95% confidence interval 0.068-0.148). These results demonstrate sophisticated arbitration between planning and heuristics during teaching and elucidate the more general mechanisms involved in adapting mental effort during social interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148831115","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":"Public perceptions of polygenic testing and embryo selection for non-medical traits.","authors":"Edmond Awad, Clara Colombatto, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Brian D Earp, Jim A C Everett, Peng Liu, G Owen Schaefer, Ilina Singh, Dominic Wilkinson, Julian Savulescu","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02562-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02562-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Some advances in reproductive technologies raise substantial ethical and psychological challenges, for example, the use of preimplantation genetic testing to select embryos based on non-medical traits. While studies have explored public willingness to use preimplantation genetic testing for medical or non-medical attributes, stated willingness may not reflect implantation decisions when such information is available. This large cross-national study examined public views on polygenic embryo testing. In a US sample (N = 1,467), participants were more willing to test for medical conditions (for example, heart disease) than non-medical traits (for example, antisocial behaviour or low intelligence), although over half supported testing for non-medical traits. In a forced-choice implantation task, participants used medical and non-medical information to a similar extent when making decisions. Similar patterns were observed in Chinese participants (N = 623). These findings suggest variability in choices across specific traits and conditions, rather than a uniform distinction between medical conditions and non-medical traits. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 7 October 2025. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/vb9c2 .</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148831097","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":"Ongoing thoughts at rest reflect functional brain organization and behaviour.","authors":"Jin Ke, Taylor A Chamberlain, Hayoung Song, Anna Corriveau, Ziwei Zhang, Taysha Martinez, Laura Sams, Marvin M Chun, Yuan Chang Leong, Monica D Rosenberg","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02563-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02563-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC)-brain connectivity observed when people rest with no external tasks-predicts individual differences in behaviour. Yet, rest is not idle; it involves streams of thoughts. Are these ongoing thoughts reflected in FC and do they contribute to the relationship between rsFC and behaviour? Here, to test this question, we used an annotated rest paradigm where participants rated and verbally described their thoughts after each rest period during functional MRI (N = 60). Our findings revealed rich and idiosyncratic thoughts across individuals. Similarity in thoughts was associated with more similar FC patterns within and across individuals. In addition, both thought ratings and topics could be decoded from FC. Furthermore, neuromarkers of these thoughts generalized to unseen individuals in the Human Connectome Project dataset (N = 908), where decoded thought patterns during rest predicted positive vs negative trait-level individual differences. Together, our findings reveal that ongoing thoughts at rest are reflected in brain dynamics and these network patterns predict everyday cognition and experiences. Understanding subjective in-scanner experiences is thus crucial in characterizing the relationship between individual differences in functional brain organization and behaviour.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148831106","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":"Educational interventions are effective in improving students' ethical and moral outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.","authors":"Geetanjali Basarkod, Liana S Cahill, Adam Burston, David Barnett, John Mahoney, Shantell Griffith, Ghassani Swaryandini, Emma L Bradshaw, Emma K Devine, Md Akhtaruzzaman, Theresa Dicke, Matti Wilks, Peter Slattery, Alexander K Saeri, Emily A C Grundy, Chris Lonsdale, Herbert W Marsh, Suzanne K Chambers, Michael Noetel","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02456-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02456-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Addressing society's greatest challenges, such as climate change, requires us to act as moral agents. If effective, interventions within schools and universities could cultivate ethical and moral attributes in millions of people. This systematic review and meta-analysis, preregistered on the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/bdn2u ), synthesizes evidence from 92 randomized controlled trials conducted in naturalistic education settings across primary, secondary and tertiary education levels (k_effects = 381; 12,693 students). Studies were identified through MEDLINE, ProQuest, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases, last searched on 28 February 2025. Eligible interventions explicitly focused on other-focused moral or ethics education and reported on ethical or moral outcomes. We conducted a three-level multilevel random effects meta-analysis and assessed study quality using the Cochrane Risk of Bias (ROB2) tool. Interventions effectively improved students' moral outcomes compared with control groups (g = 0.65, 95% CI [0.49, 0.81], p < 0.001; n_studies = 54; k_effects = 185). While effectiveness did not differ significantly across outcome types, improvements were found for sensitivity, judgement and motivation, with inconclusive evidence for character. Interventions with added student discussions were more effective than those relying solely on unidirectional or passive information transfer. Evidence from studies comparing two alternative ethics interventions (n_studies = 60; k_effects = 196) supported the advantages of interactive approaches. While the overall quality of the evidence base was limited, with only one study rated as having low risk of bias and very few having preregistered trials, our review suggests that educational interventions can improve students' ethical and moral attributes, and offers guidance for prioritizing and planning future interventions to increase these attributes at scale.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148831141","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":"Refining the role of behavioural and social sciences in pandemic response post-COVID-19","authors":"Maja Grašo,&nbsp;Karl Aquino,&nbsp;Stefan Baral,&nbsp;Nathan Berg,&nbsp;Cory J. Clark,&nbsp;Lucian Gideon Conway III,&nbsp;Paul Dolan,&nbsp;Steven Grover,&nbsp;Kyriaki Fousiani,&nbsp;Claudia C. Kitz,&nbsp;Dario Krpan","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02506-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02506-4","url":null,"abstract":"With the acute stage of COVID-19 behind us, reflection can inform future preparedness. During the pandemic, behavioural and social sciences often studied human behaviour through the lens of alignment with public health recommendations, implicitly treating concern and compliance as desirable and rational. While understandable, this emphasis was relatively narrow. Uncertainty, uneven risk distribution and competing values could have led to heterogeneous appraisals of risk and intervention benefit, even with the evidence available at the time. We show that engaging with the possibility that people could have been heterogeneously rational can broaden understanding of behaviour during COVID-19. Our aim is not to revisit the legitimacy of the response but to encourage reflection on the role of behavioural and social sciences in knowledge generation and highlight opportunities to examine pandemic salience and risk calibration. We outline research directions to guide the field and strengthen decision-making, trust and adaptability in future crises, promoting short-term compliance and long-term trust. In this Perspective, the authors examine how behavioural and social sciences studied human behaviour during COVID-19. They argue that these fields adopted a narrow definition of rational behaviour in response to COVID-19, which limited the scope of inquiry, and propose directions for future research.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"10 10","pages":"1884-1897"},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148819148","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 shrinking landscape of linguistic diversity in the age of large language models","authors":"Zhivar Sourati,&nbsp;Farzan Karimi-Malekabadi,&nbsp;Meltem Ozcan,&nbsp;Colin McDaniel,&nbsp;Alireza Ziabari,&nbsp;Jackson Trager,&nbsp;Ala N. Tak,&nbsp;Meng Chen,&nbsp;Fred Morstatter,&nbsp;Morteza Dehghani","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02550-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41562-026-02550-0","url":null,"abstract":"Language is far more than a communication tool; it encodes a wealth of information about a person’s identity, psychological state and social context, providing valuable insights for diverse fields including psychology, marketing and healthcare. Across three studies spanning seven datasets in different domains and over 880,000 texts, we show that the widespread adoption of large language models (LLMs) as writing assistants is linked to declines in linguistic diversity, interfering with the societal and psychological insights language provides. While core content is retained when LLMs polish and rewrite texts, LLMs also homogenize writing styles, reducing writing-complexity variance by a statistically significant 21–50% across datasets and models (P ≤ 0.05), and amplify patterns associated with dominant characteristics while suppressing others, emphasizing conformity over individuality. These trends hold across different LLMs, prompts and contexts, with potential implications for diagnostic processes, personalization efforts, hiring assessments and cultural preservation. Sourati et al. find that variance in writing complexity dropped on social media, news and scientific writing after ChatGPT’s release, a shift from individuality towards uniformity. LLM polishing strips cues to gender, age, ideology and moral values.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"10 10","pages":"1925-1942"},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148813589","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":"Trial-by-trial fluctuations in decision criterion shape confidence.","authors":"Robin Vloeberghs, Lara Navarrete Orejudo, Anne E Urai, Kobe Desender","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02544-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02544-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many decisions are accompanied by confidence. One influential view couched within signal detection theory views confidence as the distance between a decision variable and a static decision criterion. However, recent work suggests that the criterion undergoes trial-by-trial fluctuations. Here, combining theory and model simulations, we predict that fluctuations in the decision criterion shape confidence. In 15 datasets, trial-by-trial estimates of the decision criterion were obtained with the hierarchical model for fluctuations in criterion. Across datasets, we confirmed our pre-registered hypothesis that confidence is shaped by a single-trial criterion state. This effect was found in 14 out of 15 datasets, indicating a robust pattern across a variety of paradigms and confidence scales. Beyond self-reports, the effect was also observed in reaction times, pupil-linked arousal and a neural signature of confidence. Our results show that variability in confidence, often treated as noise, actually reflects genuine sensitivity to the current state of the (fluctuating) decision criterion.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148813597","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}