Pub Date : 2026-03-23DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02413-8
Adeline Lo, Jonathan Renshon, Lotem Bassan-Nygate
Outgroup bias is well documented and pernicious, manifesting in negative attitudes and behaviour towards outgroups. Addressing it is a first-order priority for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programmes, as well as society more generally. Empathy—taking the perspective and understanding the experiences of others—holds promise for attenuating outgroup bias, but existing methods are expensive. Through seven pilots, we develop a low-cost, easily scalable ‘peer praise’ intervention that encourages empathy. In this report, we experimentally test (N = 5,303) whether our intervention promotes empathy and inclusive behaviour/attitudes among White US respondents towards Black and Latino/a Americans, a context where outgroup bias is particularly durable. We measure costly choices to engage in empathy, test whether peer praise promotes political (an index of letter writing and donations) and attitudinal (an index of social distance and thermometer ratings) inclusion, and, in a separate experiment (N = 4,404), test whether praise specifically from co-partisans can also promote inclusion. We find that peer praise for empathy neither motivates White participants to engage in empathy for racial outgroups, nor changes their attitudes or self-reported empathy towards outgroups. However, peer praise for empathy does encourage politically inclusive behaviour towards racial outgroups in the form of writing letters on behalf of racial equality to the government. Other registered analyses show that peer praise for empathy can change attitudes both in the short term (Wave 1) and over time (in our longitudinal Wave 2) but only for certain subgroups. Overall, this study provides an examination of a treatment to promote outgroup empathy. That treatment is demonstrated to be effective for behavioural outcomes related to political inclusion across all respondents and can even change attitudes, although only for some demographics. Broadly, our study suggests the importance of targeting empathy-promoting interventions towards receptive groups as well as the difficulty in promoting outgroup empathy, particularly when group identity is highlighted.
{"title":"The effect of praise from peers on empathy and political inclusion towards racial or ethnic outgroups","authors":"Adeline Lo, Jonathan Renshon, Lotem Bassan-Nygate","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02413-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02413-8","url":null,"abstract":"Outgroup bias is well documented and pernicious, manifesting in negative attitudes and behaviour towards outgroups. Addressing it is a first-order priority for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programmes, as well as society more generally. Empathy—taking the perspective and understanding the experiences of others—holds promise for attenuating outgroup bias, but existing methods are expensive. Through seven pilots, we develop a low-cost, easily scalable ‘peer praise’ intervention that encourages empathy. In this report, we experimentally test (N = 5,303) whether our intervention promotes empathy and inclusive behaviour/attitudes among White US respondents towards Black and Latino/a Americans, a context where outgroup bias is particularly durable. We measure costly choices to engage in empathy, test whether peer praise promotes political (an index of letter writing and donations) and attitudinal (an index of social distance and thermometer ratings) inclusion, and, in a separate experiment (N = 4,404), test whether praise specifically from co-partisans can also promote inclusion. We find that peer praise for empathy neither motivates White participants to engage in empathy for racial outgroups, nor changes their attitudes or self-reported empathy towards outgroups. However, peer praise for empathy does encourage politically inclusive behaviour towards racial outgroups in the form of writing letters on behalf of racial equality to the government. Other registered analyses show that peer praise for empathy can change attitudes both in the short term (Wave 1) and over time (in our longitudinal Wave 2) but only for certain subgroups. Overall, this study provides an examination of a treatment to promote outgroup empathy. That treatment is demonstrated to be effective for behavioural outcomes related to political inclusion across all respondents and can even change attitudes, although only for some demographics. Broadly, our study suggests the importance of targeting empathy-promoting interventions towards receptive groups as well as the difficulty in promoting outgroup empathy, particularly when group identity is highlighted.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147496833","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-23DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02430-7
Matthew E. K. Hall, B. Tyler Leigh, Brittany C. Solomon
Despite increasing concerns about American democracy, recent studies find little public support for undemocratic practices. However, these studies ignore democratic neutrality—that is, expressing neither agreement nor disagreement with undemocratic practices. Here, integrating research on uncertainty, indifference, ambivalence, conditionality and socially desirable responding, we argue that democratic neutrality poses an overlooked threat to democracy. Reanalysing prominent survey data (N = 45,095) and conducting two original surveys (N = 3,039; including a candidate-choice experiment), we document democratic neutrality as (a) prevalent (half of Americans express neutrality towards one or more undemocratic practices), (b) reflecting substantively meaningful attitudes (versus inattention), (c) correlated with theoretically related constructs, (d) distinct from opposition to undemocratic practices, and (e) as consequential as outright support for undemocratic practices in shaping preferences for anti-democratic candidates. Our findings challenge optimistic empirical accounts of Americans’ attitudes towards democracy. Democratic neutrality may help explain, and be targeted to ameliorate, democratic backsliding.
{"title":"The overlooked threat of democratic neutrality in the USA","authors":"Matthew E. K. Hall, B. Tyler Leigh, Brittany C. Solomon","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02430-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02430-7","url":null,"abstract":"Despite increasing concerns about American democracy, recent studies find little public support for undemocratic practices. However, these studies ignore democratic neutrality—that is, expressing neither agreement nor disagreement with undemocratic practices. Here, integrating research on uncertainty, indifference, ambivalence, conditionality and socially desirable responding, we argue that democratic neutrality poses an overlooked threat to democracy. Reanalysing prominent survey data (N = 45,095) and conducting two original surveys (N = 3,039; including a candidate-choice experiment), we document democratic neutrality as (a) prevalent (half of Americans express neutrality towards one or more undemocratic practices), (b) reflecting substantively meaningful attitudes (versus inattention), (c) correlated with theoretically related constructs, (d) distinct from opposition to undemocratic practices, and (e) as consequential as outright support for undemocratic practices in shaping preferences for anti-democratic candidates. Our findings challenge optimistic empirical accounts of Americans’ attitudes towards democracy. Democratic neutrality may help explain, and be targeted to ameliorate, democratic backsliding.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147496832","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-23DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02426-3
Lara M C Puhlmann, Alina Koppold, Gordon B Feld, Tina B Lonsdorf, Kirsten Hilger, Susanne Vogel, Çağatay Gürsoy, Alexandros Kastrinogiannis, Louisa Kulke, Alexander Lischke, Anett Müller-Alcazar, Julian Packheiser, Matthias F J Sperl, Yu-Fang Yang, Laura Bechtold, Sebastian Ocklenburg, Helena Hartmann
{"title":"Sustainable neuroscience through open science.","authors":"Lara M C Puhlmann, Alina Koppold, Gordon B Feld, Tina B Lonsdorf, Kirsten Hilger, Susanne Vogel, Çağatay Gürsoy, Alexandros Kastrinogiannis, Louisa Kulke, Alexander Lischke, Anett Müller-Alcazar, Julian Packheiser, Matthias F J Sperl, Yu-Fang Yang, Laura Bechtold, Sebastian Ocklenburg, Helena Hartmann","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02426-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02426-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147504402","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-18DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02418-3
{"title":"Measuring thresholds for individual change can improve social change interventions.","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02418-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02418-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"197 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147478900","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-16DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02417-4
Radu Tănase, René Algesheimer, Manuel S. Mariani
Addressing global challenges often involves stimulating the large-scale adoption of new products or behaviours. Research traditions that focus on individual decision-making suggest that achieving this objective requires identifying the drivers of individual discrete adoption choices. However, computational approaches rooted in complexity science focus on maximizing the propagation of a given product or behaviour throughout social networks of interconnected adopters. Here, by integrating discrete-choice modelling into the complex contagion theory, we propose a method to estimate individual-level thresholds to adoption. We validate the predictive power of this approach in two choice experiments. By integrating the estimated thresholds into computational simulations, we show that state-of-the-art seeding policies for initiating large-scale behavioural change might be suboptimal if they neglect individual-level behavioural drivers, which can be corrected through the proposed experimental method.
{"title":"Integrating behavioural experimental findings into dynamical models to inform social change interventions","authors":"Radu Tănase, René Algesheimer, Manuel S. Mariani","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02417-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02417-4","url":null,"abstract":"Addressing global challenges often involves stimulating the large-scale adoption of new products or behaviours. Research traditions that focus on individual decision-making suggest that achieving this objective requires identifying the drivers of individual discrete adoption choices. However, computational approaches rooted in complexity science focus on maximizing the propagation of a given product or behaviour throughout social networks of interconnected adopters. Here, by integrating discrete-choice modelling into the complex contagion theory, we propose a method to estimate individual-level thresholds to adoption. We validate the predictive power of this approach in two choice experiments. By integrating the estimated thresholds into computational simulations, we show that state-of-the-art seeding policies for initiating large-scale behavioural change might be suboptimal if they neglect individual-level behavioural drivers, which can be corrected through the proposed experimental method.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"110 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147465594","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-16DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02428-1
Ingebjørg A Iversen,Daniel S Quintana
{"title":"The value of living systematic reviews.","authors":"Ingebjørg A Iversen,Daniel S Quintana","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02428-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02428-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147465595","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-13DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02414-7
Ian M. Griffith, R. Preston Hess, Josh H. McDermott
Attention facilitates communication by enabling selective listening to sound sources of interest. However, little is known about why attentional selection succeeds in some conditions but fails in others. While neurophysiology implicates multiplicative feature gains in selective attention, it is unclear whether such gains can explain real-world attention-driven behaviour. Here we optimized an artificial neural network with stimulus-computable feature gains to recognize a cued talker’s speech from binaural audio in ‘cocktail party’ scenarios. Though not trained to mimic humans, the model produced human-like performance across diverse real-world conditions, exhibiting selection based both on voice qualities and on spatial location as well as selection failures in conditions where humans tended to fail. It also predicted novel attentional effects that we confirmed in human experiments, and exhibited signatures of ‘late selection’ like those seen in human auditory cortex. The results suggest that human-like attentional strategies naturally arise from the optimization of feature gains for selective listening.
{"title":"Optimized feature gains explain and predict successes and failures of human selective listening","authors":"Ian M. Griffith, R. Preston Hess, Josh H. McDermott","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02414-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02414-7","url":null,"abstract":"Attention facilitates communication by enabling selective listening to sound sources of interest. However, little is known about why attentional selection succeeds in some conditions but fails in others. While neurophysiology implicates multiplicative feature gains in selective attention, it is unclear whether such gains can explain real-world attention-driven behaviour. Here we optimized an artificial neural network with stimulus-computable feature gains to recognize a cued talker’s speech from binaural audio in ‘cocktail party’ scenarios. Though not trained to mimic humans, the model produced human-like performance across diverse real-world conditions, exhibiting selection based both on voice qualities and on spatial location as well as selection failures in conditions where humans tended to fail. It also predicted novel attentional effects that we confirmed in human experiments, and exhibited signatures of ‘late selection’ like those seen in human auditory cortex. The results suggest that human-like attentional strategies naturally arise from the optimization of feature gains for selective listening.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454753","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-05DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02422-7
Shoumita Dasgupta
{"title":"Behavioural genetics must prioritize communication.","authors":"Shoumita Dasgupta","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02422-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02422-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147365999","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-05DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02329-9
{"title":"The effects of Facebook and Instagram political advertisements on the 2020 US election.","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02329-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02329-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147359407","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}
Pub Date : 2026-03-04DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02411-w
{"title":"Large language models have the potential to level the playing field in consumer financial complaints.","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02411-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02411-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147350639","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}
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