Reviews & Analysis

Virtual reality (VR) enables highly controlled exposure to environments that feel real, which can substantially improve mental health treatments. In this Review, Bell and colleagues describe current VR-based treatments and discuss technological and psychological tools that might promote enhanced immersive experiences.

The decline in intergroup relations is evident in myriad conflicts around the world. This Review consolidates research from four domains in social psychology (prejudice reduction, conflict resolution, intergroup reconciliation and affective polarization) to elucidate the critical features necessary for successful intergroup interventions.

Authenticity is promoted by cultural norms, institutions and folk wisdom, but there is disagreement about what exactly authenticity is. In this Review, Sedikides and Schlegel describe major conceptualizations of the subjective experience of authenticity and discuss its relevance for psychological functioning.

Prosocial behaviour involves acting with care towards oneself and others. In this Review, Malti and Speidel detail the development of prosociality, the effects of adversity on this development, and interventions to foster prosocial outcomes.

Many people conceal some of their identities to successfully navigate intergroup contexts. In this Perspective, Le Forestier and Lewis propose a model of identity concealment that makes specific predictions about when people choose to engage in concealment that applies to a broad range of motives and identities.

Awe has considerable psychological implications, but its multifaceted nature has hindered researchers in understanding the underlying processes. In this Review, Jiang et al. discuss how awe impacts the self and provide an integrative framework of the psychological consequences of awe.

Young children learn the meanings of the words from limited information. In this Review, Babineau and colleagues synthesize the word-learning research landscape and detail the role of syntactic bootstrapping and related learning mechanisms.

Rhythmic elements including beat and metre are integral to human experiences of music. In this Review, Snyder and colleagues discuss leading theories of rhythm perception and synthesize relevant behavioural, neural and genetic findings.

Declines in adolescent mental health over the past decade have been attributed to social media, but the empirical evidence is mixed. In this Review, Orben et al. describe the mechanisms by which social media could amplify the developmental changes that increase adolescents’ mental health vulnerability.

Emotional memories can be vivid and detailed but are prone to change over time. In this Review, Wardell and Palombo detail the malleability of emotional autobiographical memories, the role of narrative and the use of these memories in future thinking.

Changing behaviours might be central to responding to societal issues such as climate change and pandemics. In this Review, Albarracín et al. synthesize meta-analyses of individual and social-structural determinants of behaviour and the efficacy of behavioural change interventions that target them across domains to identify general principles that can inform future intervention decisions.

Humans have a unique capacity for objective and general causal understanding. In this Review, Goddu and Gopnik describe the development of causal learning and reasoning abilities during evolution and across childhood.

Environments shape reward learning, which can result in individual differences in behaviour. In this Perspective, Nussenbaum and Hartley consider the development of reward learning through the lens of meta-learning models, in particular meta-reinforcement learning.

Experiences of objects and features are biased to appear more like previously seen stimuli than they really are. In this Perspective, Manassi and Whitney describe this phenomenon of positive serial dependence and propose continuity fields as the underlying mechanism.

Theories of how human cognition differs from that of non-human animals often posit domain-specific advantages. In this Perspective, Cantlon and Piantadosi posit that differences in domain-general information capacity underlie uniquely human capacities.

Off-job recovery and optimal work motivation are vital for reducing or avoiding work stress and promoting occupational health and work performance. In this Perspective, Kujanpää and Olafsen propose a dual-pathway model of proactive recovery strategies that delineates how individuals can self-manage their off-job time through proactive recovery strategies to optimize motivation across life domains.

Visual temporal attention involves the prioritization of certain points in time at the expense of others. In this Review, Denison synthesizes experimental results and computational models of voluntary temporal attention and distinguishes it from related phenomena.

Personality is relatively stable over long timescales but remains malleable to some degree. In this Review, Jackson and Wright examine the mechanisms responsible for intentional and naturally occurring change as well as mechanisms that promote stability, thereby limiting potential change.

Focal neuromodulation approaches are promising therapeutic options for challenging-to-treat neurological and psychiatric symptoms, but might indirectly or directly affect cognition. In this Review, Rabin et al. describe the cognitive effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation and ablative techniques.

Sounds are generated by interactions between objects in the world. In this Review, Winkler and Denham describe how representations of sources and actions enable humans to segment complex auditory experience into meaningful units.