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Pryor et al. show that people conform to social norms, even when they understand that the norms have been determined arbitrarily and do not reflect people’s actual preferences. Prominent, rationality-based explanations of norm effects cannot explain these results.
Michelmann and colleagues investigated how humans search for information in episodic memory. Using MEG, the authors show fast, forward-directed memory replay, with speed changing flexibly depending on the task.
An analysis of all Wikimedia projects shows that a small number of editors have a disproportionately large influence in the formation of collective knowledge.
Bollen et al. tracked changes in the emotions of Twitter users before and after they expressed a feeling online. Emotions grow quickly before—and decrease rapidly after—their expression, confirming previous affect labeling studies showing that putting one’s feelings into words can alleviate their intensity.
A new study by Keynan and colleagues provides evidence that training in amygdala self-regulation via EEG neurofeedback (‘electrical fingerprint’) results in neurobehavioural markers of stress resilience in a cohort of individuals undergoing military training.
Randomly informing people that they had a high or low genetic risk of obesity changed their gene-related physiology and subjective experience in a manner consistent with the perceived risk, regardless of their actual genetic risk of obesity.
The attention received by cultural products—including scientific papers, patents, songs, movies and biographies—decays following a biexponential function, suggesting that collective memory follows a universal pattern.
Analysing the results from four major sports leagues and a multiplayer online game reveals that prior shared success as a team significantly improves the odds of winning beyond what is explained by the skill of individual players.
A century after being predicted by theory, the authors detect and quantify the genomic signature of assortative mating in ~400,000 contemporary human genomes, and report new genetic evidence for assortative mating on height and educational attainment.
McGovern and co-workers combine human brain signal measurements underlying decision formation with computational modelling to probe age-related differences in perceptual decision-making.
When searching for rewards in complex, unfamiliar environments, it is often impossible to explore all options. Wu et al. show how a combination of generalization and optimistic sampling guides efficient human exploration in complex environments.
Bentz et al. estimate the phylogenetic signals of environmental factors and population size on more than 6,000 phylogenetic trees of 46 language families and find that environment influences the evolution of language families beyond neutral drift.
Kahn et al. show that learners capitalize on higher-order topological properties when they learn a probabilistic motor sequence based on a network traversal.
Smithers et al. find that, although there is some evidence that non-cognitive skills are associated with improved academic, psychosocial and health outcomes, the evidence is weak and heterogeneous. More rigorous research is required in this field.
Using a high-throughput experimental design and statistical modelling, the authors show how jurors and lawyers weigh different types of crime and evidence when assessing the guilt of someone accused of a crime.
Jepma and colleagues provide evidence that prior beliefs about pain influence perceived intensity of pain, and the degree of learning about pain intensity. This finding helps to explain why beliefs are often resistant to updating with experience.
Analyses of transactions in a new monetary system (Sardex community currency) reveal that transaction cycles increase in prevalence over time and that economic activity within these cycles is higher compared to linear transactions through the network.
Reputational concerns reinforce the instinct to cooperate in social situations. McAuliffe et al. find that cooperative habits can be overturned in one-shot anonymous interactions, when people learn that defection will not damage their self-interest.
Having too many choices can lead to choice overload. Reutskaja et al. find that brain activity in striatum and anterior cingulate reflects subjects’ engagement in decision making as a function of choice set size and can serve as an indicator of choice overload.
A five-arm trial with 228,000 participants found that a single mailed letter increased absolute influenza vaccination rates in individuals ≥66 years of age by about 1%. The framing of the letter made no significant difference to the outcome.