Nature Human Behaviour最新文献

Public trust in scientists is critical to our ability to face societal threats. Here, across five pre-registered studies (N = 2,034), we assessed whether perceptions of scientists’ intellectual humility affect perceived trustworthiness of scientists and their research. In study 1, we found that seeing scientists as higher in intellectual humility was associated with greater perceived trustworthiness of scientists and support for science-based beliefs. We then demonstrated that describing a scientist as high (versus low) in intellectual humility increased perceived trustworthiness of the scientist (studies 2–4), belief in their research (studies 2–4), intentions to follow their research-based recommendations (study 3) and information-seeking behaviour (study 4). We further demonstrated that these effects were not moderated by the scientist’s gender (study 3) or race/ethnicity (study 4). In study 5, we experimentally tested communication approaches that scientists can use to convey intellectual humility. These studies reveal the benefits of seeing scientists as intellectually humble across medical, psychological and climate science topics.

The Internet is increasingly important in addressing age-related mental health challenges. We used linear mixed models and meta-analyses to examine the association between Internet use and mental health among 87,559 adults aged ≥50 years from 23 countries. Internet use was associated with fewer depressive symptoms (pooled average marginal effect (AME), -0.09; 95% confidence interval (CI), -0.12 to -0.07), higher life satisfaction (pooled AME, 0.07; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.10) and better self-reported health (pooled AME, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.12 to 0.17). For two countries (the USA and England) with genetic data available, positive associations between Internet use and mental health were observed across three genetic risk categories. For three countries (the USA, England and China), a higher frequency of Internet use was related to better mental health. Our findings are relevant to public health policies and practices in promoting mental health in later life through the Internet, especially in countries with limited Internet access and mental health services.

Young adults from low socioeconomic backgrounds face an increased risk of early mortality. Here we utilize population-wide data from 17 Norwegian birth cohorts (N = 986,573) to assess whether this risk gradient was explained by early-life educational performance, specifically grade point average at 16 years of age. We show that the gradients in both parental education and income largely disappeared when adjusting for school performance in the models. Specifically, among boys, those with the lowest parental education had an unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 2.04 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.86–2.22) compared with peers with the highest parental education, while for girls, the HR was 1.64 (95% CI 1.35–1.93). After adjusting for school performance, these estimates dropped to 0.99 (95% CI 0.79–1.19) for boys and 0.87 (95% CI 0.55–1.19) for girls. Similarly, the mortality risk for those from the lowest parental income quartile decreased from 1.79 (95% CI 1.67–1.91) to 1.25 (95% CI 1.12–1.38) for boys and from 1.63 (95% CI 1.44–1.83) to 1.24 (95% CI 1.03–1.46) for girls. Low educational performance remained strongly associated with early mortality in analyses accounting for unobserved heterogeneity at the family level; boys with a grade point average in the lowest quartile had an HR of 3.04 (95% CI 2.38–3.89), while for girls, the HR was 1.79 (95% CI 1.22–2.63). External causes of death, particularly accidents and poisoning, were most overrepresented among individuals with poor school performance.