Reviews & Analysis

How did human culture become ecologically dominant? Morgan and Feldman re-examine existing theoretical accounts and propose that, contrary to previous belief, cumulative change and high transmission fidelity are not unique to human culture.

Intergenerational mobility — an adult’s ability to exit poverty and earn more than their parents — is falling in the USA. Parolin et al. compare intergenerational poverty persistence (a measure of immobility) in the USA to four peer countries and conclude that disproportionately high poverty persistence in the USA is due to a weak safety net.

In this Perspective, the authors advance a view for the science of collaborative cognition to engineer systems that can be considered thought partners, systems built to meet our expectations and complement our limitations.

This Perspective calls for a new sociology of humans and machines to study groups and networks comprising multiple interacting humans and algorithms, bots or robots. A deeper understanding of human–machine social systems can contribute new and valued insights for AI research, design and policy.

This Perspective describes the roles of generative AI in providing personalized support, diversity and innovative assessment in learning. However, it also raises ethical concerns and highlights issues such as model imperfection, underscoring the need for AI literacy and adaptability.

Language reveals clues to human emotions, social behaviours, thinking styles and cultures. This Review provides a brief overview of computational methods to analyse natural language from written or spoken text as a new tool to investigate social processes and understand human behaviour.

Honesty oaths are commonly used to promote ethical behaviour, but their effectiveness is not well understood. A mega-study involving thousands of people shows that taking an oath to be honest can reduce tax evasion in an online economic game.

A behaviourally informed WhatsApp chatbot that encouraged people in Argentina to get the next dose of the COVID-19 vaccine more than tripled vaccination rates, and nearly doubled them compared to a one-way message reminder. The chatbot has several features built in that helped people to find out where, when and how to get the vaccine.

Although research on misinformation and fact-checking flourishes, developmental studies that involve younger participants remain scarce. Through two experiments among 4- to 7-year-olds and a computer simulation study, Orticio et al. found that when children encountered more misleading information, they intended to seek more evidence before accepting new claims.

Participating in the Twinning Project — a football-based prison intervention — notably improved behaviour in prison and desistance from crime after release. This research highlights the importance of fostering positive group bonds and community support to enhance reintegration efforts and reduce reoffending rates.

Our ears are known for their ability to detect fine temporal features of sound. But what about our sense of smell? Yuli Wu and colleagues have discovered that humans can discriminate between odour sequences with an impressive temporal precision of 120 ms, which reveals an unprecedented temporal sensitivity in human olfaction.

Despite much anecdotal evidence, few studies show pervasive racial bias in promotion and tenure decisions. By analysing 1,571 real promotion and tenure cases across five US universities, Masters-Waage et al. find double standards negatively applied to scholars of colour, and especially women of colour, even after accounting for scholarly productivity.

We found that across a sample of 51 diverse languages, consonants at the beginning of words are on average 13 ms longer than their non-initial counterparts. Considering that this finding is robust across languages from all over the world, we argue that this effect helps to mark the boundaries of different words in the continuous stream of speech.

Collective intelligence is the basis for group success and is frequently supported by information technology. Burton et al. argue that large language models are transforming information access and transmission, presenting both opportunities and challenges for collective intelligence.

Could online warning labels from fact-checkers be ineffective — or perhaps even backfire — for individuals who distrust fact-checkers? Across 21 experiments, we found that the answer is no: warning labels reduce belief in, and sharing of, posts labelled as false both on average and for participants who strongly distrust fact-checkers.

In this Review, Drew Bailey et al. present an accessible, non-technical overview of key challenges for causal inference in studies of human behaviour as well as methodological solutions to these challenges.

The foundations of modern economic systems are rooted in the economic behaviour of contemporary humans, and ‘primitive’ societies have been assumed not to fit standard economic theory. But an analysis of metal fragments — effectively, money — shows that modern-style economic behaviour can be identified at least as far back as 3,500 years ago.

Analysis of a dataset on zoonotic diseases such as Ebola and avian flu reveals that although zoonotic outbreaks can reduce the incidence of civil war, they increase social conflicts that involve civil defence groups, vigilantes and other identity militias.

It is rare to formally identify ethnographically known rituals in the archaeological record that are more than a few hundred years old. David et al. report two buried miniature fireplaces from Cloggs Cave, southeastern Australia, that match the structure and contents of ethnographically known Australian Aboriginal rituals, which signals 500 generations of cultural tradition.

Emergency medical services and emergency departments face strain from calls and visits about non-emergency medical issues. A randomized controlled trial now shows that nurse-led triage of calls about non-emergency medical issues can reduce strain on ambulance systems and emergency departments, while connecting callers with appropriate and timely primary care.