Climate crisis presents a near-term existential threat to the human species, one that society has neither the physical nor psychological infrastructure to manage. Eco-anxiety increases as awareness about climate crisis spreads. Despite an urgent need for resources on how to help people cope with the psychological ramifications of climate crisis, there is little literature that both addresses people’s

In the past 2 decades, interoception has received increasing attention in the fields of psychology and cognitive science, as well as neuroscience and physiology. A plethora of studies adopted the perception of cardiac signals as a proxy for interoception. However, recent findings have cast doubt on the methodological and intrinsic validity of the tasks used thus far. Therefore, there is an ongoing

Rational numbers (i.e., fractions, percentages, decimals, and whole-number frequencies) are notoriously difficult mathematical constructs. Yet correctly interpreting rational numbers is imperative for understanding health statistics, such as gauging the likelihood of side effects from a medication. Several pernicious biases affect health decision-making involving rational numbers. In our novel developmental

Scientific discovery is a driving force for progress involving creative problem-solving processes to further our understanding of the world. The process of scientific discovery has historically been intensive and time-consuming; however, advances in computational power and algorithms have provided an efficient route to make new discoveries. Complex tools using artificial intelligence (AI) can efficiently

Collective memories of trauma can have profound impact on the affected individuals and communities. In the context of intergroup conflict, in the present article, we propose a novel theoretical framework to understand the long-term impact of historical trauma on contemporary intergroup relations from both victim and perpetrator perspectives. Integrating past research on intergroup conflict and the

Why people do or do not change their beliefs has been a long-standing puzzle. Sometimes people hold onto false beliefs despite ample contradictory evidence; sometimes they change their beliefs without sufficient reason. Here, we propose that the utility of a belief is derived from the potential outcomes associated with holding it. Outcomes can be internal (e.g., positive/negative feelings) or external

Considerable research has been carried out in the last two decades on the putative benefits of cognitive training on cognitive function and academic achievement. Recent meta-analyses summarizing the extent empirical evidence have resolved the apparent lack of consensus in the field and led to a crystal-clear conclusion: The overall effect of far transfer is null, and there is little to no true variability

Repeated assessments in everyday life enables collecting ecologically valid data on dynamic, within-persons processes. These methods have widespread utility and application and have been extensively used for the study of stressors and stress responses. Enhanced conceptual sophistication of characterizing intraindividual stress responses in everyday life would help advance the field. This article provides

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet to understand how the mind works, one must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored) but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents

A critical mission of psychological science is to conduct research that ultimately improves the lives of individuals who experience psychopathology. One important aspect of accomplishing this mission is increasing the likelihood that treatments will work for each person. I contend that treatment prognosis can be improved by moving toward a precision-medicine model. I advance a principle-driven framework

In a 2011 article in this journal entitled “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing” (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 215–218), Norton and Sommers assessed Black and White Americans’ perceptions of anti-Black and anti-White bias across the previous 6 decades—from the 1950s to the 2000s. They presented two key findings: White (but not Black) respondents perceived decreases

Women are thought to fare better in verbal abilities, especially in verbal-fluency and verbal-memory tasks. However, the last meta-analysis on sex/gender differences in verbal fluency dates from 1988. Although verbal memory has only recently been investigated meta-analytically, a comprehensive meta-analysis is lacking that focuses on verbal memory as it is typically assessed, for example, in neuropsychological

In the study of consciousness, qualia, the individual subjective experience, is neglected. It remains impenetrable because the objective perspective used for scientific investigations misses its subjective nature. In 1974, Thomas Nagel suggested that studying qualia requires an “objective phenomenology method” whose goal would be to describe the subjective character of experiences in an independent

Psychological science is in a unique position to identify and dismantle the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that maintain and increase racial inequality, yet the extent to which psychological science can do so depends on the extent to which race scholarship is supported in psychological science. We theorized that the lack of racial diversity among editors at mainstream journals might obstruct the

Despite the tangible progress in psychological and cognitive sciences over the last several years, these disciplines still trail other more mature sciences in identifying the most important questions that need to be solved. Reaching such consensus could lead to greater synergy across different laboratories, faster progress, and increased focus on solving important problems rather than pursuing isolated

Evolutionary psychology aims to understand the origins of the human mind, including disease. Several theories about the origins of disease have been proposed. One concerns a developmental mismatch—a mismatch might occur at the individual level between the environment experienced during childhood and the environment the adult finds herself in, possibly resulting in disease. A second theory concerns

A metastudy is a set of many tiny studies (microstudies) created from a much larger collection of possibilities. Metastudies can yield many of the benefits of time-consuming replications and meta-analyses but more efficiently and with greater attention to generalizability and the causal effects of moderators. Statistical precision and power are higher than in studies with the same total sample size

Attention represents a key element of self-control, and multiple theoretical accounts have highlighted the role played by abundant attentional capacity in effecting successful self-regulation. What, then, are the consequences of living in today’s world, in which attention can become so easily divided by a multitude of stimuli? In this article, we consider the implications of divided attention for self-control

Concerns about parenting adolescents are not new, but the rapid diffusion of digital technologies has heightened anxieties over digital parenting. Findings are decidedly mixed regarding the impact of digital technologies on adolescent well-being, and parents are left to navigate their concerns without an empirically based road map. A missing link for understanding the state of the science is a clear

According to the predictive-processing framework, only prediction errors (rather than all sensory inputs) are processed by an organism’s perceptual system. Prediction errors can be weighted such that errors from more reliable sources will be more influential in updating prior beliefs. It has previously been argued that autism-spectrum conditions can be understood as resulting from a predictive-processing

Despite decades of research in the fields of judgment and decision-making, social psychology, cognitive psychology, human-machine interaction, behavioral economics, and neuroscience, we still do not know what “cognitive effort” is. The definitions in use are often imprecise and sometimes diametrically opposed. Researchers with different assumptions talk past each other, and many aspects of effort conservation

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there are two major dimensions of social perception, often called warmth and competence, and that warmth is prioritized over competence in multiple types of social decision-making. Existing explanations for this prioritization argue that warmth is more consequential for an observer’s welfare than is competence. We present a new explanation for the prioritization

Historically, studies of childhood and adult resilience have typically focused on adaptation to chronic life adversities, such as poverty and maltreatment, or isolated and potentially traumatic events, such as bereavement and serious illness. Here, we present a complementary view and suggest that stressors experienced in daily life may also forecast individual health and well-being. We argue that daily

Psychopathology is a common element of the human experience, and psychological scientists are not immune. Recent empirical data demonstrate that a significant proportion of clinical, counseling, and school psychology faculty and graduate students have lived experience, both past and present, of psychopathology. This commentary compliments these findings by leveraging the perspectives of the authors

How common are mental-health difficulties among applied psychologists? This question is paradoxically neglected, perhaps because disclosure and discussion of these experiences remain taboo within the field. This study documented high rates of mental-health difficulties (both diagnosed and undiagnosed) among faculty, graduate students, and others affiliated with accredited doctoral and internship programs

We comment on an article by Sheldon et al. from a previous issue of Perspectives (May 2021). They argued that the presence of positive emotion (Hypothesis 1), the intensity of positive emotion (Hypothesis 2), and chronic positive mood (Hypothesis 3) are reliably signaled by the Duchenne smile (DS). We reexamined the cited literature in support of each hypothesis and show that the study findings were

In principle, successful replications should enhance the credibility of scientific findings, and failed replications should reduce credibility. Yet it is unknown how replication typically affects the influence of research. We analyzed the citation history of 98 articles. Each was published by a selective psychology journal in 2008 and subjected to a replication attempt published in 2015. Relative to

As many schools and departments are considering the removal of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) from their graduate-school admission processes to enhance equity and diversity in higher education, controversies arise. From a psychometric perspective, we see a critical need for clarifying the meanings of measurement “bias” and “fairness” to create common ground for constructive discussions within

We examined the wrecked-by-success hypothesis. Initially formalized by Sigmund Freud, this hypothesis has become pervasive throughout the humanities, popular press, and modern scientific literature. The hypothesis implies that truly outstanding occupational success often exacts a heavy toll on psychological, interpersonal, and physical well-being. Study 1 tested this hypothesis in three cohorts of

In this commentary, I highlight flaws in the article by Woo and colleagues (this issue) that undermine its credibility and utility as rigorous science that contributes to the field. I do so by discussing (a) the concept of epistemic oppression regarding the glaring exclusion of multiple germane bodies of research and (b) the importance of including construct validity within a psychometric article regarding

The article by Woo et al. (this issue) reviews the existing research on graduate-school admissions measures. The goal of this commentary is to expand on their review and suggest several ways of supplementing the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) to both increase the predictive validity of admissions decisions and improve the diversity of a graduate program. We rely on several decades of research to

This is a Lewinian-field-theory approach to understanding the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in the context of racism to contribute to the debate about whether graduate schools should remove GRE scores from admissions processes. Woo and colleagues (this issue; p. ♦♦♦) review the empirical literature on bias from a psychometric perspective. In this commentary, I challenge the definition of the underlying

The Woo et al. review (this issue) provides a foundation for considering the larger goals of higher education. We step back to consider the broader goals and ideals of higher education. Fundamentally, we want to admit a diverse set of students into graduate school and then produce the most accomplished scientists, artists, leaders, and innovators. In a world with inequality in preparation and finite

Older adults report surprisingly positive affective experience. The idea that older adults are better at emotion regulation has emerged as an intuitively appealing explanation for why they report such high levels of affective well-being despite other age-related declines. In this article, I review key theories and current evidence on age differences in the use and effectiveness of emotion-regulation

Publishing studies using standardized, machine-readable formats will enable machines to perform meta-analyses on demand. To build a semantically enhanced technology that embodies these functions, we developed the Cooperation Databank (CoDa)—a databank that contains 2,636 studies on human cooperation (1958–2017) conducted in 78 societies involving 356,283 participants. Experts annotated these studies

There is a critical disconnect between scientific knowledge about the nature of bias and how this knowledge gets translated into organizational debiasing efforts. Conceptual confusion around what implicit bias is contributes to misunderstanding. Bridging these gaps is the key to understanding when and why antibias interventions will succeed or fail. Notably, there are multiple distinct pathways to

A large portion of research in the social sciences is devoted to using interventions to combat societal and social problems, such as prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup conflict. However, these interventions are often developed using the theories and/or intuitions of the individuals who developed them and evaluated in isolation without comparing their efficacy with other interventions. Here,

Society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. But do people actually learn from failure? Although lay wisdom suggests people should, a review of the research suggests that this is hard. We present a unifying framework that points to emotional and cognitive barriers that make learning from failure difficult. Emotions undermine learning because people find failure ego-threatening. People tend to

Research on mixed emotions is flourishing but fractured. Several psychological subfields are working in parallel and separately from other disciplines also studying mixed emotions, which has led to a disorganized literature. In this article, we provide an overview of the literature on mixed emotions and discuss factors contributing to the lack of integration within and between fields. We present an

To successfully navigate their social world, humans need to understand and map enduring relationships between people: Humans need a concept of social affiliation. Here I propose that the initial concept of social affiliation, available in infancy, is based on the extent to which one individual consistently takes on the goals and needs of another. This proposal grounds affiliation in intuitive psychology

Psychedelic science has generated hundreds of compelling published studies yet with relatively little impact on mainstream psychology. I propose that social psychologists have much to gain by incorporating psychoactive substances into their research programs. Here I use (±)-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as an example because of its documented ability in experiments and clinical trials to

Researchers across disciplines, including psychology, have sought to understand how people evaluate the fairness of resource distributions. Equity, defined as proportionality of rewards to merit, has dominated the conceptualization of distributive justice in psychology; some scholars have cast it as the primary basis on which distributive decisions are made. The present article acts as a corrective

Whether women and men are psychologically very similar or quite different is a contentious issue in psychological science. This article clarifies this issue by demonstrating that larger and smaller sex/gender differences can reflect differing ways of organizing the same data. For single psychological constructs, larger differences emerge from averaging multiple indicators that differ by sex/gender

The mental-health-care treatment gap remains very large in low-resource communities, both within high-income countries and globally in low- and middle-income countries. Existing approaches for disseminating psychological interventions within health systems are not working well enough, and hard-to-reach, high-risk populations are often going unreached. Alternative implementation models are needed to

Selfishness is central to many theories of human morality, yet its psychological nature remains largely overlooked. Psychologists often draw on classical conceptions of selfishness from evolutionary biology (i.e., selfish gene theory), economics (i.e., rational self-interest), and philosophy (i.e., psychological egoism), but such characterizations offer limited insight into the psychology of selfishness

Research on well-being has exploded in recent years to more than 55,000 relevant publications annually, making it difficult for psychologists—including key communicators such as textbook authors—to stay current with this field. Moreover, well-being is a daily concern among policymakers and members of the general public. Well-being science is relevant to the lives of students—illustrating the diverse

Social-science researchers have increasingly moved from conducting their studies in a face-to-face format to an online format. Although new and innovative remote platforms afford researchers generalizability and scale, many of these platforms also tend to solicit socially desirable responses. This pattern of socially desirable responding is evident in examinations of racial discrimination, in which

Cognitive development is marked by age-related improvements across a number of domains, as young children perform worse than their older counterparts on most tasks. However, there are cases in which young children, and even infants, outperform older children and adults. So when, and why, does being young sometimes confer an advantage? This article provides a comprehensive examination of the peculiar

Tools and tests for measuring the presence and complexity of consciousness are becoming available, but there is no established theoretical approach for what these tools are measuring. This article examines several categories of tests for making reasonable inferences about the presence and complexity of consciousness (defined as the capacity for phenomenal/subjective experience) and also suggests ways

Laboratory procedures have been used for decades as analogues for clinical processes with the goal of improving our understanding of psychological treatments for emotional disorders and identifying strategies to make treatments more effective. This research has often focused on translation from the laboratory to the clinic. Although this approach has notable successes, it has not been seamless. There

Although psychology’s recent crisis has been attributed to various scientific practices, it has come to be called a “replication crisis,” prompting extensive appraisals of this putatively crucial scientific practice. These have yielded disagreements over what kind of replication is to be preferred and what phenomena are being explored, yet the proposals are all grounded in a conventional philosophy

Psychological science is at an inflection point: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities that stem from our historically closed and exclusive culture. Meanwhile, reform efforts to change the future of our science are too narrow in focus to fully succeed. In this article, we call on psychological scientists—focusing specifically on those who use quantitative methods in the United States as

The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, and prejudiced attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive

It is often claimed that only experiments can support strong causal inferences and therefore they should be privileged in the behavioral sciences. We disagree. Overvaluing experiments results in their overuse both by researchers and decision makers and in an underappreciation of their shortcomings. Neglect of other methods often follows. Experiments can suggest whether X causes Y in a specific experimental

The search for genetic risk factors underlying the presumed heritability of all human behavior has unfolded in two phases. The first phase, characterized by candidate-gene-association (CGA) studies, has fallen out of favor in the behavior-genetics community, so much so that it has been referred to as a “cautionary tale.” The second and current iteration is characterized by genome-wide association studies

Gender differences in sexuality have gained considerable attention both within and outside of the scientific community. We argue that one of the main unacknowledged reasons for these differences is simply that women experience substantially worse sex than men do. Thus, in examinations of the etiology of gender differences in sexuality, a confound has largely been unacknowledged: Women and men are treated

Even though the motivation to feel worthy, to be respected, and to matter to others has been identified for centuries by scholars, the antecedents, consequences, and conditions of its activation have not been systematically analyzed or integrated. The purpose of this article is to offer such an integration. We feature a motivational construct, the quest for significance, defined as the need to have

Cultural psychologists often treat binary contrasts of West versus East, individualism versus collectivism, and independent versus interdependent self-construal as interchangeable, thus assuming that collectivist societies promote interdependent rather than independent models of selfhood. At odds with this assumption, existing data indicate that Latin American societies emphasize collectivist values

During crises and disasters, such as hurricanes, terrorist threats, or pandemics, policymakers must often increase security at the cost of freedom. Psychological science, however, has shown that the restriction of freedom may have strong negative consequences for behavior and health. We suggest that psychology can inform policy both by elucidating some negative consequences of lost freedom (e.g., depression

Consent is central to many of today’s most pressing social issues: What counts as sexual assault? Whom are the police allowed to search? Can they use people’s data like that? Yet despite the fact that consent is in many ways an inherently psychological phenomenon, it has not been a core topic of study in psychology. Although domain-specific research on consent—most commonly, informed consent and sexual