Featured Content
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How Climate Shaped Our Minds—and How It Might Still Save Us from Climate Change
Over generations, cultures including those in Yazd, Iran, develop customs, habits, and values that are adapted to water scarcity.
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Global Science Requires Greater Equity, Diversity, and Cultural Precision
Three authors discuss the discrepancy between espoused ideals for a global science and implicit biases that perpetuate unequal visibility and representation in psychological science.
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The Limitless Applications of Psychological Science
“I think there’s never been greater interest in and relevance and importance of translating rigorous research and academic scholarship for practitioners,” said Michael Fenlon of PricewaterhouseCoopers in this exclusive interview with APS President Wendy Wood.
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Unleashing the Power of Emotional Responses for Pro-Environmental Action
Engaging in pro-environmental behavior can trigger spillover effects, creating a ripple of positive changes in individuals and their communities.
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Scientific Storytelling for the Current Climate
Achieving almost any of the world’s major climate interventions will require collective action. Stories are among the most universal, scalable approaches to convincing others to embrace these collective efforts.
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Up-and-Coming Voices: Behavior and Climate
Four researchers share their research related to behavior and climate.
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Careers Up Close: Kimin Eom on Keeping the Faith in Sustainability Research
Assistant professor at Singapore Management University Kimin Eom discusses his research into prosociality, maintaining morale, and helping others build on their successes.
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Teaching: Why the Bias Blind Spot Matters and How to Reduce It
We often recognize bias in others but rarely in ourselves. Teaching students about the bias blind spot can help them increase their self-knowledge and reduce interpersonal conflicts.
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Teaching: The Perils of Post-Event Identification
Eyewitness memory is susceptible to distortions that can lead a witness to mistakenly identify an innocent suspect as a perpetrator. Teach students about the challenges inherent in identifying a face from a video image.
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Student Notebook: Tips and Tricks for International Students’ Survival in a Foreign Land
“The good news is that most international students have an ultimately positive experience, just as I have,” says Doroteja Rubez in this column. “Here are my suggestions for other international students—as well as their allies.”
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Back Page: Bringing Climate Change Home
Norman D Henderson Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at Oberlin College Cindy Frantz discusses her research into humans’ relationship with the natural world, promoting sustainability, and developing strategies that can help generate support to addressing climate change.
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APS Teaching Fund Showcase: Psychological Detective Activity Boxes
With the help of a $5,000 grant from the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, John Marazita and Maryam Elmajadoubi, an undergraduate honors student, created Psychological Detective Activity Boxes to promote a new generation of psychological scientists.
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Exploring the Future of Clinical Science Training
APS Fellow Ann Kring provides a breakdown of the Clinical Science Summit, where psychological scientists gathered to discuss methods to strengthen and improve clinical science for the generations to come.
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Bringing Greater Rigor to Behavior-Change Research: NIH Best Practices
In a workshop at the 2023 APS Annual Convention, researchers from the Science of Behavior Change Research Network discussed the importance of adopting a framework that seeks to better understand and respond to the underlying mechanisms driving forms of behavior change.
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Complexities and Lessons in Researching Culture-Specific Experiences
Gheirat exemplifies a complex, culture-specific experience that requires using culturally sensitive research practices to investigate. Explore these case-specific ideas and solutions for researching phenomena from little-understood and/or studied phenomena.
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Diversity, Trust, and Informed Consent: Making Genetics Research Effective for All
Research on genetic risk factors is paving the way for precision mental healthcare, but the field needs more racially diverse participants and perspectives for all people to benefit equally.
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The Bad-Behavior Blend
“The one gene, one disease idea is a thing of the past.” Scientists aren’t simply trying to identify people who are innately predisposed to incivility, immorality, or lawlessness. They’re examining how parenting, education, and other life experiences trigger those biological leanings.
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Communicating Psychological Science: Neurodiversity in the Workplace
Özge Gürcanlı Fischer-Baum explores how greater awareness of neurodiversity has influenced great (but not enough) change in research, advocacy, and cultural expectations.
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Student Notebook: Applying Lessons From Sports to Academics
Third-year doctoral student Teona Velehorschi provides tips to help students manage the demands associated with the world of academia.
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Teaching: Applying a Growth Mindset to Mental Disorders
Although genetic profiling can provide useful information that can enhance personalized treatment plans for individuals, Ahn and Perricone (2023) argue that learning more about one’s genetic risk for mental disorders can have unintended and potentially negative consequences.
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Teaching: Are Romantic Relationships Actually Good for Mental Health?
Few psychologists realize that a potent risk factor for psychological disorders has been hiding in plain sight: people’s dissatisfaction with their current romantic relationship. Teach critical thinking about risk factors and relying on scientific evidence rather than intuition.
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Up-and-Coming Voices: Genetics Research in Psychological Science
Previews of relevant research by students and early-career scientists.
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Research Briefs
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Careers Up Close: Katie Ehrlich on Studying Intergenerational Health Disparities, Finding Your Footing, and Helping Others Succeed
An associate professor at the University of Georgia, Katie Ehrlich researches how social experiences as a child can shape mental and physical health across the lifespan.
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It’s Time We Trained Students for Diverse Careers in Psychological Science
The variety of positions held by psychologists is not a new development, writes APS President Wendy Wood in her debut column. So why has psychology graduate training largely retained the classic model of a direct path to an academic job?
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Peak Science: At 35, the APS Annual Convention Hits Its Stride
The 2023 APS Annual Convention began with a keynote by Catherine Alexandra Hartley (New York University) examining the causes and consequences of exploration across the lifespan.
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Decades at the Helm: APS 2023 Convention Honors APS Founding Executive Director Alan G. Kraut
APS Founding Executive Director Alan G. Kraut received a special proclamation for his contributions to APS and the field more broadly.
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More Effective Policymaking Keeps the Audience in Mind. Here’s the Science Behind Storytelling
Stories may complement established policy tools. Walsh and colleagues define the elements of storytelling and discuss stories’ key features and functions, providing design principles for policymakers interested in building stories.
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Silver Linings in the Demographic Revolution
Podcast: In her final column as APS President, Alison Gopnik makes the case for more effectively and creatively caring for vulnerable humans at either end of life.
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Behavioral Insights in the Global South
Seven authors provide case studies that illustrate both the potential of behavioral science to improve people’s lives and some of the unique challenges of applying it in Global South settings.
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Teaching: Big Smile—Distant Diversity Drives Emotion Culture
Why do people from some regions tend to be more extroverted and agreeable than those from other regions? Teaching about the ancestral diversity theory of culture and human emotion.
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Teaching: Phenomenological Control—What Is Reality, Really?
Phenomenological control refers to the ability to construct subjective experiences that distort objective reality. Teaching tips and guidelines for this fascinating area of research.
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The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Psychological Science Timeline
COVID-19 remains a reality around the world, but the pandemic itself has largely receded. We’ve created a timeline of some of the ways in which APS and psychological science more broadly have responded to COVID-19.
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Research Briefs
Recent highlights from APS journals articles on the link between self-esteem and eating disorders, how to be liked in first encounters, the effects of stress on rigid learning, and much more.
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Careers Up Close: Joel Anderson on Gender and Sexual Prejudices, the Freedoms of Academic Research, and the Importance of Collaboration
Joel Anderson, a senior research fellow at both Australian Catholic University and La Trobe University, researches group processes, with a specific interest on prejudice, stigma, and stereotypes.
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Up-and-Coming Voices: Informing Public Health Through Psychological Science
Previews of relevant research by students and early-career scientists.
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Friend and Foe: How Inflammation Fights Disease and Fuels Depression
Our immune system uses inflammation to fend off infection and heal injuries, but when this system is overburdened, inflammation can also fuel mental health conditions.
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The Value of Values in Poverty Reduction
Anti-poverty programs in the developing world often sputter because they clash with local culture and values. But researchers are finding success with programs that align with the tenets of the communities they’re trying to help.
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Back Page: Singular Sensation
Clinical psychologist Dominika Ochnik discusses her research into singlehood and well-being, mental health risks among young people, and her plans to study associations between urbanization and mental health.
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Truth, Lies, and the Consequences of Science Denial
What accounts for resistance to science-backed evidence and vulnerability to misinformation and conspiracy theories? Takeaways from an integrative science symposium at APS’s 2023 International Convention of Psychological Science.
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Productive Failure and the New Frontiers of Psychology Education
During the Teaching Institute at APS’s 2023 international convention in Brussels, teachers of psychology from around the world learned from experts and peers how novel empirical approaches might strengthen their own teaching.
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Exploration vs. Exploitation: Adults Are Learning (Once Again) From Children
Podcast: Why should kids have all the fun? Alison Gopnik on how science and business, too, can resolve the tension between the lure of the crazy new thing and the safe haven of the tried and true.
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Myth: The Lightbulb Moment, Innovation’s Most Misleading Meme
Edward Wasserman explores the origin of the famous “lightbulb moment,” how the popular cliché originated, and what can be learned from it.
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Deconstructing Entrepreneurial Discovery
An adaption of a 2022 preprint article published in Technovation, this article explores how alertness might be related to entrepreneurial discovery and whether positivity or negativity are more associated with alertness.
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The Science of Starting Up
A burgeoning assortment of psychological scientists is studying the factors that distinguish successful entrepreneurs from those that falter. Their work is particularly salient amid today’s challenging economic climate.
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Latin American Psychological Science: Will the Global North Make Room?
Seven authors outline factors that influence scientific advancements in Latin America and identify potential avenues for reframing research conducted in the region, especially by Latin American researchers, in the global scientific landscape.
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Sword From the Stone: Developing Leadership Across the Ages
Other than a handful of modern monarchs and heirs to proverbial corporate thrones, most leaders aren’t born, they’re developed. Researchers are just beginning to investigate how individuals of all ages learn to take the reins.
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Artificial Intelligence: Your Thoughts and Concerns
APS members weigh in on the biggest opportunities and/or ethical challenges involving AI within the field of psychological science. Will we witness vast and constructive cross-fertilization—or “a dystopian cyberpunk corporation-led hellscape”?
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Smooth Operator: The Editor Who Keeps the APS Journals Machine Flowing
Michele Nathan, the longest-tenured managing editor in the history of APS’s journals, is stepping away from this work in 2023. Two of her many longtime colleagues pay tribute to some of the ways in which her contributions have been so important to the science of psychology.
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A Very Human Answer to One of AI’s Deepest Dilemmas
Imagine that we designed a fully intelligent, autonomous robot that acted on the world to accomplish its goals. How could we make sure that it would want the same things we do? Alison Gopnik explores. Read or listen!
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How Machine Learning Is Transforming Psychological Science
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are providing insights that will soon transcend scientists’ observational capabilities, potentially leading to revolutionary advances in understanding human psychology.
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Religion and the Development of a More Contextually Responsive Discipline: The Case of Indonesian Psychology
Growing interest in studying the transformative aspects of local religions and religiosity is not only important for the development of psychological science in Indonesia but also sociologically meaningful.
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I, Psychologist: Exploring the Ethical Hurdles and Clinical Advantages of AI in Healthcare
Patients are often resistant to the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. But AI-assisted care could usher in a new era of personalized medicine.
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Up-and-Coming Voices: Artificial Intelligence in Psychological Science
Previews of relevant research by students and early-career scientists.
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Research at the Interface of Artificial Intelligence and Psychological Science, 2018–2022
A collection of research on various aspects of AI, published between 2018 and 2022 in the APS journals.
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Psychedelic Research Reborn: Opening the Doors of Creativity and Social Connection
A resurgence of research into psychedelics has renewed interest in their potential impact on creativity and social connectedness.
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Charging up the Creative Battery
Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) can be used to help bolster areas of the brain associated with creative thought. By learning about the neural patterns of creative thought, scientists are exploring how to steer them in new directions.
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If You’d Love to Create Something, Let It Go
Artists are haunted by the specter of creative burnout, but research suggests that the best way to overcome barriers to creativity may be to accept them as part of the process.
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Children, Creativity, and the Real Key to Intelligence
APS President Alison Gopnik writes that the contrast between the reasoning of creative 4-year-olds and predictable artificial intelligence may be a key to understanding how human intelligence works.
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Failure and Flourishing: Three Lessons From Psychological Science
Why not make our setbacks more visible? An excerpt from How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind, the newest book by psychological scientist David G. Myers.
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Psychological Science Editorial Connects New Submission Evaluation Criteria to APS Strategic Plan
Changes at the flagship journal align with two strategic goals in APS’s five-year strategic plan.
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Up-and-Coming Voices: The Science of Creativity
Previews of relevant research by students and early-career scientists.
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Special Issue of Clinical Psychological Science Examines the Effects of COVID-19 on Mental Health
Eight articles focus on different aspects of mental health in the context of the global pandemic.
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Methods: Don’t Be Too Creative With Your Measures! Avoiding Questionable Measurement Practices
Researchers provide a guide to implement good measurement practices and strengthen the validity of psychological science research.
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Communicating Psychological Science: Engaging the Youngest of Audiences
It’s much harder to share the science with younger children than adolescents and teenagers, whose brains can handle more detailed and complex ideas. But, although the youngest audiences may not be receptive to research, they can be reached in various other ways.
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Student Notebook: Clinical Psychology Graduate Student Adaptation—Living and Learning
Mariana Furtado explores how unhealthy competition among students can shape their graduate-school experience and affect their mental health.
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Careers Up Close: Amy Belfi on Music Perception and Cognition
Amy Belfi, an assistant professor at Missouri S&T, discusses her research into the impact that audio and music have on the brain—and looking forward to learning more, getting tenure, and playing the upcoming Nintendo Zelda game.
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Psychology in the Arab Region: A Critical Perspective on Challenges and Ways Forward
Five psychologists delve into the realities of doing psychology for many students, scholars, and practitioners in the Arab region and provide recommendations for advancing psychological science in non-WEIRD countries.
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New APS Board Members Look to Strategic Plan, Emerging Researchers to Advance the Science
Three influential psychological scientists known for their work involving behavior change, intergroup relations, and memory have joined the APS Board of Directors for 2022–2023.
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How the Classics Changed Research Ethics
Some of history’s most controversial psychology studies helped drive extensive protections for human research participants. Some say those reforms went too far.
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Love Lets Us Learn: Psychological Science Makes the Case for Policies That Help Children
APS President Alison Gopnik discusses the increasing amount of scientific evidence that our experiences as children shape our adult lives.
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What’s in a Word? Computational Modeling Puts the Science of How We Learn Language to the Test
Language, whether spoken or read, is a tool that is constantly changing and growing, but research demonstrates that it may still be possible to pin down how it functions at its core.
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Experimental Methods Are Not Neutral Tools
Ana Sofia Morais and Ralph Hertwig explain how experimental psychologists have painted too negative a picture of human rationality, and how their pessimism is rooted in a seemingly mundane detail: methodological choices.
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The New Riddle of the Sphinx: Life History and Psychological Science
In her inaugural column as APS President, Alison Gopnik explores how the life-history perspective is suited to the mission of APS.
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Dueling Diagnoses
Concerns about overlapping symptoms, complex disorders lend momentum to diagnostic models that could supplement—or even supplant—the DSM.
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Thriving After Therapy: More Common Than Reported, More in Need of Research
We often hear of the adverse chronic effects and burden of psychopathology. But many patients go on to attain a purposeful and autonomous life.
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P is for Problem, Publish, and Psychology: Multilingual Scholars and the Challenges of Publishing in English
Two Filipina researchers advocate for broader representation in academic psychology and outline considerations for others whose first language is not English.
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Tending the Family Tree: Intervening in Intergenerational Mental Health
Unaddressed mental health concerns can echo through the generations of a family, but the exact path depression, anxiety, and other disorders may take through the branches of a family tree isn’t always straightforward.
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Counting Ability May Emerge From the “Cognitive Technology” of Number Words
Humans’ ability to count may be limited by our knowledge of number words, according to a study of an isolated indigenous group in the Bolivian Amazon.
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Vaccinating Against Bunk: Curbing Viral Misinformation
Online games and nudges aim to curb viral misinformation around vaccines and more.
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Past Imperfect: Exploring the Challenges—and the Promise—of Memory’s Malleability
While many researchers continue to wrestle with the extent to which our memories can be relied on, others are exploring how this malleability can be harnessed to improve well-being.
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Surviving Imposter Phenomenon: One Psychological Scientist’s Story
How powerful are those self-defeating voices? Overcoming them took decades for this psychological scientist.
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Collected Research on War, Conflict, and Authoritarianism
Research on war, conflict, and authoritarianism published in various APS journals between 2008 and 2020.
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Robert B. Cialdini and Jennifer L. Eberhardt on The 7 Principles of Influence
Jennifer L. Eberhardt and Robert B. Cialdini explore the power of influence and the importance of “shipping” psychological science to address real-world challenges.
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How a Nudge Can Make a Habit: The Subversive Nonchalance of Small Changes
Policymakers see promise in “nudges,” norms, habit formation, and other approaches centered around self determination.
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The Emerging Science of Suicide Prevention
Advances in assessment and intervention could help tip the scale toward survival, one life at a time.
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Opioids, Addiction, and the Promise of Psychological Interventions
Can psychological science provide safer approaches to managing chronic pain and overcoming addiction?
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Perspectives Editor Klaus Fiedler to Spotlight Pluralism, Theory, “Best Practice” Examplars
APS Fellow Klaus Fiedler is APS’s first journal editor in chief based at an institution outside North America.
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The Promise and Perils of Behavioral Measurement Technologies
In Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13 teams of researchers explore the potential consequences of behavioral measurement technologies.
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Psychological Science Needs the Entire Globe, Part 3
Psychological science’s long-term viability may depend on solving the “WEIRD” problem.
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Ships at Sea: Exploring the Mysteries of Self and Consciousness
Psychological scientists are exploring the myriad ways consciousness influences the highs and lows of human experience.
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On the Right Side of Being Wrong: the Emerging Culture of Research Transparency
Spurred by the so-called replication crisis, researchers are embracing a new culture of transparency.
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Fully Credited: Making Publishing More Equitable
A new model of “contributorship” addresses the marginalization of early-career researchers in scientific publications.
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The Littlest Linguists: New Research on Language Development
New research on language acquisition, bilingualism, and speech perception.
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Chemistry Between People: A Sum of Their Connections
Have you ever felt a special “spark” with someone—an intense bond with a potential partner, friend, or colleague? If so, you probably thought you experienced “chemistry.” Literary references to interpersonal chemistry appeared as early as 1590
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The Magnitude of Our Mythology
Jennifer L. Eberhardt and Jennifer A. Richeson explore the persistent mythology of racial progress–a prevailing narrative that progress toward racial equality is steadily, linearly, naturally, and automatically getting better across time.
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The Grand Challenges of Psychological Science
An unprecedented confluence of forces has created what many psychological scientists consider an existential threat to the field. APS members share their concerns and hopes.
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Mobility and Opportunity Across the Lifespan
Researchers explore the science of what changes, and what stays the same, as we age. Topics include the lifelong impact of childhood experiences, mitochondria’s powerful role in healthy aging, and the need for a new “map of life” as life expectancies increase.
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Charting a New Map of Life
A conversation between Jennifer L. Eberhardt and Laura L. Carstensen about lengthening life expectancies, recasting the built environment, and rethinking social norms.
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Childhood Residue in the Aging Body
Science explores the formidable link between our earliest life experiences and our health in old age.
