{"title":"Psychological processes underlying normative transformation and social change","authors":"Roberto González, Héctor Carvacho, Nicole Tausch","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00448-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00448-8","url":null,"abstract":"There have been widespread social changes in the past decade, including changes in gender norms, increases in political polarization and populism, and noticeable shifts toward sustainability. In this Review, we analyse the psychological processes that drive social change, considering factors at the group and individual levels of analysis. We centre our analysis around the concept of social norms — socially shared views of what is common or desirable — and argue that the processes that trigger social change often begin when there is a substantive tension between norms within society. Normative tension can occur vertically between norms at the societal level and the norms that emerge at the group level, or between individuals’ normative preferences and the norms of their groups. Normative tension can also occur horizontally between the norms that different groups have regarding their values, preferences and behaviours. We explain how normative tension mobilizes individuals to engage in collective action and how conflicting social norms are contested at the group level. We also highlight individual differences that predispose people to challenge or defend existing social norms. Together, our Review highlights the complex interactions between societal, group and individual-level variables in societal transformations. Social norms are the formal and informal rules that define acceptable and desirable group member behaviour. In this Review, Gonzalez et al. explain how tensions between societal and group norms, between individual and group norms, and between norms of different groups mobilize collective action and promote social change.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 6","pages":"404-416"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the lab to a career in data science","authors":"Teresa Schubert","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00452-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00452-y","url":null,"abstract":"Nature Reviews Psychology is interviewing individuals with doctoral degrees in psychology who pursued non-academic careers. We spoke with Teon Brooks about his journey from a postdoctoral scholar to a data science consultant.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 5","pages":"307-308"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Pluess, Felicity L. Brown, Catherine Panter-Brick
{"title":"Supporting the mental health of forcibly displaced children","authors":"Michael Pluess, Felicity L. Brown, Catherine Panter-Brick","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00447-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00447-9","url":null,"abstract":"Close to 50 million children under 18 years of age are currently forcibly displaced from their homes because of armed conflict and other emergencies. Displaced children and adolescents are at increased risk of developing poor mental health. However, knowledge about how best to support their mental health and well-being is limited. In this Review, we consolidate knowledge on the prevalence of mental disorders in settings of forced displacement, discuss individual differences in response to war and displacement, and review existing mental health and psychosocial support approaches. Critical assessment of this literature indicates a substantial mental health burden among displaced children and supports a broad range of risk and resilience mechanisms. Although some specific mental health and psychosocial support interventions have positively influenced forcibly displaced children’s mental health, there is a need for more culturally and contextually relevant, accessible and evidence-based services that also address family and community factors during displacement. We discuss recommendations to ensure that these services are linked to strategies that target adverse conditions and structural barriers and strengthen the socio-ecological resources that contribute to children’s positive development and well-being. Mental health risk and resilience in children who have been forcibly displaced are linked to individual, social and structural factors. In this Review, Pluess et al. synthesize differences across children and communities impacted by war and other conflicts, and discuss the effectiveness of mental health interventions.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 6","pages":"370-387"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A learning and memory account of impression formation and updating","authors":"David M. Amodio","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00445-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00445-x","url":null,"abstract":"Impression formation is the process of learning about people — how a perceiver infers another person’s traits, goals and preferences while also forming their own attitude towards that person. Emerging research shows that impression formation involves a variety of learning mechanisms — a multimodal process rooted in multiple underlying memory systems. In this Perspective, I describe the roles of episodic, semantic, instrumental and Pavlovian memory systems in impression formation and updating. By considering the unique and interactive functions of learning and memory mechanisms, this memory systems framework expands and clarifies theories of how impressions are formed, changed and expressed in behaviour, moving beyond prior accounts based on semantic memory models. This framework also illuminates longstanding debates on the nature of implicit social cognition and how social information is represented in the mind. Impression formation occurs when a perceiver infers another person’s traits, goals and preferences and forms an attitude towards that person. In this Perspective, Amodio describes the unique and interactive contributions of episodic, semantic, instrumental and Pavlovian memory systems to impression formation and updating.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 6","pages":"417-432"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Top-down influences on the perception of emotional stimuli","authors":"Aprajita Mohanty, Jonathan Freeman, Jingwen Jin","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00446-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00446-w","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to quickly and accurately perceive external emotional stimuli — events in the environment that evoke changes in feelings, physiology and behaviour — is vital for adaptive social interactions and effective decision making in everyday life. Contemporary theories of emotional perception emphasize the influence of top-down information (such as prior knowledge and context) in shaping the perception of emotional stimuli. However, experimental research has mainly focused on the automatic, bottom-up aspects that are driven by the stimuli themselves (such as salience). Research in the adjacent field of visual perception has used behavioural, computational and neuroimaging techniques to reveal how prior knowledge aids perception in a top-down manner. In this Review, we explore studies that leverage similar methods to demonstrate how top-down influences — including social and emotional attention, expectations and context — shape the perception of emotional stimuli. In doing so, we aim to promote the development of comprehensive models that incorporate top-down factors with bottom-up factors to explain the perception of emotional stimuli. Perception of emotional stimuli involves a mix of bottom-up stimulus information and top-down information. In this Review, Mohanty and colleague explore how top-down processes, including attention, expectations and context, shape the perception of emotional stimuli.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 6","pages":"388-403"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Representing place locations and orientations in cognitive maps","authors":"Weimin Mou \u0000 (, )","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00442-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00442-0","url":null,"abstract":"Human navigation relies on multiple levels of spatial knowledge, including place knowledge, route knowledge (sequences of places) and map-like survey knowledge, which encodes straight-line spatial relationships among places. Survey knowledge is often referred to as a cognitive map, a concept proposed nearly 80 years ago. In this Review, I examine the situations in which humans seem to navigate using cognitive maps, focusing on the role of environmental variables and cognitive processes. I begin by reviewing studies in vista environments, where clear straight-line spatial relations facilitate the formation of a cognitive map. Then I review research on large-scale environments, highlighting reliance on path integration and the influence of path complexity. Throughout, I differentiate between cognitive maps focused solely on place location and those that incorporate place orientation. Whereas straight-line pointing based on verbally instructed orientation requires only a cognitive map of place location, pointing from view-based orientations might require cognitive maps that encode place orientation. Future research should investigate the conditions that foster each type of cognitive map, as well as those under which cognitive maps do not form. Human navigation involves encoding spatial relationships among places. In this Review, Mou examines the use of cognitive maps for navigation and the circumstances in which both place and orientation information are encoded.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 5","pages":"347-360"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"It is time to abandon student evaluations of teaching","authors":"Gordon Hodson","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00444-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00444-y","url":null,"abstract":"Student teaching evaluations are discriminatory against women and racialized groups, exhibit poor construct and predictive validity, and undermine teaching and learning standards. It is time to replace them with unbiased, empirically driven tools.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 7","pages":"433-434"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The functional role of interpersonal dehumanization and associated brain networks","authors":"Lasana T. Harris, Naira Delgado","doi":"10.1038/s44159-025-00439-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44159-025-00439-9","url":null,"abstract":"Dehumanization is typically considered as an intergroup phenomenon, whereby people are reduced to less-than-human status on the basis of group affiliations. However, in everyday life, people often disregard the emotional states of others, which could be considered a more subtle form of dehumanization. In this Review, we examine interpersonal dehumanization, which we define as a failure to infer another person’s mental state. First, we describe the functions of interpersonal dehumanization at three temporal scales: as retrospective justification for past moral violations, as a facilitator of present behaviours and as a proactive empathy-regulation strategy. Next, we consider the brain networks that facilitate and influence daily dehumanization: specifically, networks associated with social cognition, empathy and moral decision making. We conclude by suggesting future research directions for the study of interpersonal dehumanization and its implications that could inform the development of concrete solutions to foster more humane and ethical interactions in everyday life. Dehumanization is typically considered as an intergroup phenomenon, but failures to infer another person’s mental state also occur in everyday interpersonal contexts. In this Review, Harris and Delgado describe the functions of interpersonal dehumanization at three temporal scales and discuss their supporting brain networks.","PeriodicalId":74249,"journal":{"name":"Nature reviews psychology","volume":"4 5","pages":"336-346"},"PeriodicalIF":21.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}