The spread of misinformation, including "fake news," propaganda, and conspiracy theories, represents a serious threat to society, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social

Some individuals are better at learning about rewarding situations, whereas others are inclined to avoid punishments (i.e., enhanced approach or avoidance learning, respectively). In reinforcement learning, action values are increased when outcomes are better than predicted (positive prediction errors [PEs]) and decreased for worse than predicted outcomes (negative PEs). Because actions with high and low values are approached and avoided, respectively, individual differences in the neural encoding of PEs may influence the balance between approach-avoidance learning. Recent correlational approaches also indicate that biases in approach-avoidance learning involve hemispheric asymmetries in dopamine function. However, the computational and neural mechanisms underpinning such learning biases remain unknown. Here we assessed hemispheric reward asymmetry in striatal activity in 34 human participants who performed a task involving rewards and punishments. We show that the relative difference in reward response between hemispheres relates to individual biases in approach-avoidance learning. Moreover, using a computational modeling approach, we demonstrate that better encoding of positive (vs negative) PEs in dopaminergic midbrain regions is associated with better approach (vs avoidance) learning, specifically in participants with larger reward responses in the left (vs right) ventral striatum. Thus, individual dispositions or traits may be determined by neural processes acting to constrain learning about specific aspects of the world.

The idea that creativity resides in the right cerebral hemisphere is persistent in popular science, but has been widely frowned upon by the scientific community due to little empirical support. Yet, creativity is believed to rely on the ability to combine remote concepts into novel and useful ideas, an ability which would depend on associative processing in the right hemisphere. Moreover, associative processing is modulated by dopamine, and asymmetries in dopamine functionality between hemispheres may imbalance the expression of their implemented cognitive functions. Here, by uniting these largely disconnected concepts, we hypothesize that relatively less dopamine function in the right hemisphere boosts creativity by releasing constraining effects of dopamine on remote associations. Indeed, participants with reduced neural responses in the dopaminergic system of the right hemisphere (estimated by functional MRI in a reward task with positive and negative feedback), displayed higher creativity (estimated by convergent and divergent tasks), and increased associative processing in the right hemisphere (estimated by a lateralized lexical decision task). Our findings offer unprecedented empirical support for a crucial and specific contribution of the right hemisphere to creativity. More importantly our study provides a comprehensive view on potential determinants of human creativity, namely dopamine-related activity and associative processing.

Partisan and ideological identities are a consistent barrier to the adoption of climate change mitigation policies, especially in countries where fossil fuel reliance is the highest. We review how understanding collective cognition may help overcome such barriers by changing norms, promoting cooperation, downplaying partisan identities, or leveraging other identities to promote pro-climate change beliefs and behaviors. We also highlight several gaps in the literature and lay out a brief roadmap for future research. This review highlights the important role that social identity plays, both in terms of a barrier and a potential solution, in aid of promoting climate change mitigation. We also propose several key areas where research is lacking, and identify specific future directions.

The spread of misinformation, including “fake news,” disinformation, and conspiracy theories, represents a serious threat to society, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social problem. Here, we review the social & political psychology that underlies the dissemination of misinformation and highlight strategies that might be effective in mitigating this problem. However, the spread of misinformation is also a rapidly growing and evolving problem; thus, scholars also need to identify and test novel solutions, and simultaneously work with policy makers to evaluate and deploy these solutions. Hence, we provide a roadmap for future research to identify where scholars should invest their energy in order to have the greatest overall impact.

Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting sympathetic and relatable individuals with different political beliefs. We also identify several interventions that reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly by correcting misperceptions of outpartisans’ views – showing that anti-democratic attitudes, although difficult to move, are not intractable. Furthermore, both factor analysis and patterns of intervention effect sizes provide convergent evidence for limited overlap between these sets of outcomes, suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, different strategies are most effective for reducing partisan animosity versus anti-democratic attitudes. Taken together, our findings provide a toolkit of promising strategies for practitioners and shed new theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

Emotions are powerful drivers of human behavior that may make people aware of the urgency to act to mitigate climate change and provide a motivational basis to engage in sustainable action. However, attempts to leverage emotions via climate communications have yielded unsatisfactory results, with many interventions failing to produce the desired behaviors. It is important to understand the underlying affective mechanisms when designing communications, rather than treating emotions as simple behavioral levers that directly impact behavior. Across two field experiments, we show that individual predispositions to experience positive emotions in an environmental context (trait affect) predict pro-environmental actions and corresponding shifts in affective states (towards personal as well as witnessed pro-environmental actions). Moreover, trait affect predicts the individual behavioral impact of positively valenced emotion-based intervention strategies from environmental messages. These findings have important implications for the targeted design of affect-based interventions aiming to promote sustainable behavior and may be of interest within other domains that utilize similar intervention strategies (e.g., within the health domain).

HighlightsBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by interpersonal dysfunction.In BPD, the superior temporal sulcus is hyperactivated during social anticipation.In BPD, amygdala response to evaluative social feedback is also reduced.Amygdala suppression is induced by anterior cingulate rise during social anticipation.Atypical frontolimbic interactions may contribute to interpersonal dysfunction in BPD.