Correspondence |
Featured
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News & Views |
What surveys really say
Increasing the sample size of a survey is often thought to increase the accuracy of the results. However, an analysis of big surveys on the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines shows that larger sample sizes do not protect against bias.
- Frauke Kreuter
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News & Views |
Benefits of megastudies for testing behavioural interventions
Trials of behavioural interventions are hard to compare, hampering policy decision-making. The effects of more than 50 interventions on exercise behaviour have been compared using an experimental design called a megastudy.
- Heather Royer
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Nature Podcast |
How 'megastudies' are changing behavioural science
Speeding up comparisons of behavioural interventions, and what to expect from the James Webb Space Telescope.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science
A massive field study whereby many different treatments are tested synchronously in one large sample using a common objectively measured outcome, termed a megastudy, was performed to examine the ability of interventions to increase gym attendance by American adults.
- Katherine L. Milkman
- , Dena Gromet
- & Angela L. Duckworth
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Research Highlight |
Does police outreach cut crime? Efforts in six nations give a bleak answer
Community policing in the global south fails to reduce crime rates or public mistrust.
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News & Views |
Context is key for learning motor skills
A sophisticated theory for learning motor skills places emphasis on the need for inferring context — drawing conclusions about the structure of the environment — for efficiently storing and expressing motor memories.
- Anne G. E. Collins
- & Samuel D. McDougle
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Article |
Contextual inference underlies the learning of sensorimotor repertoires
A theory of motor learning based on the principle of contextual inference reveals that adaptation can arise by both creating and updating memories and changing how existing memories are differentially expressed, and predicts evoked recovery and context-dependent single-trial learning.
- James B. Heald
- , Máté Lengyel
- & Daniel M. Wolpert
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News |
Millions of helpline calls reveal how COVID affected mental health
Data from almost 20 countries suggest that many callers were anxious and lonely rather than experiencing abuse or suicidal impulses.
- Heidi Ledford
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Article |
Mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic as revealed by helpline calls
Data collected from crisis helplines during the COVID-19 pandemic show that pandemic-related issues replaced rather than exacerbated underlying anxieties, and demonstrate that helpline data are useful indicators of public mental health.
- Marius Brülhart
- , Valentin Klotzbücher
- & Stephanie K. Reich
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News |
When are masks most useful? COVID cases offer hints
Masks offer the greatest protection indoors and during long exposures to people infected with the coronavirus — but other public-health measures matter, too.
- Ariana Remmel
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Research Highlight |
Deadline divide: women shy away from asking for extensions
Even when deadlines are flexible, women are less likely than men to seek extra time for assignments.
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News |
Climate change: Nature readers say their fears are growing
Poll shows that 80% of respondents are more concerned in the run-up to the COP26 climate meeting than they were ahead of the Paris conference 6 years ago.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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World View |
COVID lesson: trust the public with hard truths
When governments assume that people will panic, that exacerbates the pandemic.
- Michael Bang Petersen
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Nature Careers Podcast |
The mentoring messages that can get lost in translation
The scientific workplace can be a melting pot of different cultures and mentoring styles, leading to some interesting lab dynamics.
- Julie Gould
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature a look at psychology in industrial workplaces, and a mystery surrounding fish in a Swiss lake.
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News |
Face masks for COVID pass their largest test yet
A rigorous study finds that surgical masks are highly protective, but cloth masks fall short.
- Lynne Peeples
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Research Highlight |
Victims of Mt Vesuvius reveal ancient Romans’ gendered diets
Skeletal remains suggest that men and women in Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the same eruption that buried Pompeii, had distinct diets.
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News |
Genetic patterns offer clues to evolution of homosexuality
Massive study finds that genetic markers associated with same-sex encounters might aid reproduction. But some scientists question the conclusions.
- Sara Reardon
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Book Review |
Think outside the brain box
Can our bodies, tools and surroundings take more of the cognitive load?
- Alison Abbott
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Research Highlight |
‘Robber’ experiment tests generosity — with sobering results
People who give freely to a single individual get selfish in a crowd.
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News & Views |
Text-message nudges encourage COVID vaccination
A field trial shows that text-message ‘nudges’ encourage people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. To be effective, nudge approaches such as this must combine three aspects: they must prompt, enable and motivate behaviour.
- Mitesh S. Patel
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News |
A simple text has the power to increase COVID vaccinations
People who received a short ‘nudge’ by mobile phone were more likely to get a jab than were those who did not.
- Max Kozlov
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Article
| Open AccessBehavioural nudges increase COVID-19 vaccinations
Two randomized controlled trials demonstrate the ability of text-based behavioural ‘nudges’ to improve the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, especially when designed to make participants feel ownership over their vaccine dose.
- Hengchen Dai
- , Silvia Saccardo
- & Daniel M. Croymans
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Correspondence |
Global climate models do not need more behavioural science
- M. Granger Morgan
- & Hadi Dowlatabadi
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News |
COVID vaccines have higher approval in less-affluent countries
Surveys show that people in ten low- and middle-income nations are generally more eager to receive the COVID-19 jab than are people in two wealthier nations where vaccine is plentiful.
- Max Kozlov
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News Feature |
Gun violence is surging — researchers finally have the money to ask why
With historically high levels of new funding, US gun-violence research is starting to find its footing.
- Nidhi Subbaraman
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Comment |
Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies
Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.
- Jathan Sadowski
- , Salomé Viljoen
- & Meredith Whittaker
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Perspective |
Human social sensing is an untapped resource for computational social science
The ability of people to understand the thoughts and actions of others—known as social sensing—can be combined with computational social science to advance research into human sociality.
- Mirta Galesic
- , Wändi Bruine de Bruin
- & Tamara van der Does
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Outlook |
Better brain training for treating psychological conditions
Start-up GrayMatters Health wants to improve treatment for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder by combining two neuroscience techniques.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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News & Views |
Trip frequency is key ingredient in new law of human travel
An analysis of mobile-phone tracking data has revealed a universal pattern that describes the interplay between the distances travelled by humans on trips and the frequency with which those trips are made.
- Laura Alessandretti
- & Sune Lehmann
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Research Highlight |
Why national attitudes about science matter for vaccine acceptance
Views on vaccination are coloured by an individual’s stance on science — and by their society’s stance, too.
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News Feature |
How COVID is changing the study of human behaviour
The pandemic is teaching us key lessons about crisis, communication and misinformation, and is spurring changes in the way scientists study public-health questions.
- Christie Aschwanden
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Correspondence |
Afghanistan: vaccinate drug users against COVID-19
- Attaullah Ahmadi
- , Blaise Ntacyabukura
- & Don Eliseo Lucero-Prisno III
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Comment |
Cooperative AI: machines must learn to find common ground
To help humanity solve fundamental problems of cooperation, scientists need to reconceive artificial intelligence as deeply social.
- Allan Dafoe
- , Yoram Bachrach
- & Thore Graepel
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News & Views |
Conversations, and how we end them
How we feel about the duration of our conversations has rarely been studied. New research has asked people about the lengths of their conversations, and whether they end when they want them to.
- Elizabeth Stokoe
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Research Highlight |
Want fresh results? Analysis of thousands of papers suggests trying new teammates
A deep dive into the physical-science literature links the most original research with the most recently formed teams of co-authors.
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Nature Video |
Less is more: Why our brains struggle to subtract
Experiments show that people default to adding as a solution in various situations
- Shamini Bundell
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News & Views |
Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving
A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient.
- Tom Meyvis
- & Heeyoung Yoon
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Article |
People systematically overlook subtractive changes
Observational and experimental studies of people seeking to improve objects, ideas or situations demonstrate that people default to searching for solutions that add new components rather than for solutions that remove existing components.
- Gabrielle S. Adams
- , Benjamin A. Converse
- & Leidy E. Klotz
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World View |
To quell misinformation, use carrots — not just sticks
Social-media platforms should reward users for reliable, accurate and trustworthy posts.
- Tali Sharot
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Article |
Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online
Surveys and a field experiment with Twitter users show that prompting people to think about the accuracy of news sources increases the quality of the news that they share online.
- Gordon Pennycook
- , Ziv Epstein
- & David G. Rand
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Research Highlight |
How long should a conversation last? The people involved haven’t a clue
Participants in a tête-à-tête often misjudge when the other person is ready to call it quits.
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Research Highlight |
Spice is nice in many cuisines — but for unexpected reasons
A huge collection of recipes helps to overturn the idea that spicy food gained popularity for its antimicrobial powers.
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News Q&A |
This COVID-vaccine designer is tackling vaccine hesitancy — in churches and on Twitter
Immunologist Kizzmekia Corbett helped to design the Moderna vaccine. Now she volunteers her time talking about vaccine science with people of colour.
- Nidhi Subbaraman