Humans have evolved cognitive processes favoring homogeneity, stability, and structure. These processes are, however, incompatible with a socially diverse world, raising wide academic and political concern about the future of modern societies. With data comprising 22 y of religious diversity worldwide, we show across multiple surveys that humans are inclined to react negatively to threats to homogeneity (i.e., changes in diversity are associated with lower self-reported quality of life, explained by a decrease in trust in others) in the short term. However, these negative outcomes are compensated in the long term by the beneficial influence of intergroup contact, which alleviates initial negative influences. This research advances knowledge that can foster peaceful coexistence in a new era defined by globalization and a socially diverse future. social diversity | trust | intergroup contact | well-being | health G lobal modernization has dramatically changed the demographic composition of most countries (1-3). Societies are in constant flux and current levels of intercultural exchange are transforming social ecosystems (4). Pessimistic appraisals about the potential effects of these changes have dominated recent and critical geopolitical events (e.g., the election of Donald Trump as president in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the refugee crisis globally), but it is not yet known how living in a socially diverse world affects the quality of people's lives.Models of human evolution applied to social diversity (1) support the notion that adaptation to a socially diverse context may be problematic and lead to negative outcomes. According to these models, the human brain evolved to sustain motivated cognition and behavior relevant to ingroup survival and cooperation, and to defend against potential threats from unknown outgroups (5). Humans are predisposed to distinguish ingroups from outgroups and this dichotomy is adaptive given that survival is contingent upon cooperation and reciprocity from other ingroup members (6, 7). Perhaps to facilitate this dichotomization, humans have evolved a preference for homogeneity and stability (8), as well as being with similar others (9). Moreover, outgroups are approached with a degree of uncertainty (10), as unknown others could be friends or foes, and caution in new encounters could dictate one's survival. This reasoning is substantiated by influential work in the social sciences showing that interpersonal trust and social cohesion are lower in ethnically heterogeneous communities (11-13). Subsequent work across multiple disciplines expanded on these findings by revealing that social diversity is associated with conflict (14) and may have negative implications for economic growth (15) and public goods provision (16). The mechanism hypothesized to underlie these outcomes is that diversity erodes social cohesion and trust in others (17). Meta-analyses in the field of psychology substantiate this reasoning by demonstrating that, at least initially, intergroup ...

This article tests how religion relates to helping strangers, an important but rarely studied measure of social solidarity and informal social capital. It uses the Gallup World Poll, a survey with nationally representative samples of 179,961 respondents from 126 countries. It finds that religious people, members of minority religions, and people in religiously diverse countries were more likely to help a stranger. Individuals living in devout countries were more likely to help strangers even if they themselves were not religious. The results suggest that religion plays a particularly important role in promoting the prosocial norms and values that motivate helping strangers.

The success of public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is sensitive to public trust in experts. Despite a great deal of attention to attitudes towards experts in the context of such crises, one significant feature of public trust remains underexamined. When public policy claims to follow the science, citizens are asked not just to believe what they are told by experts, but to follow expert recommendations. I argue that this requires a more demanding form of trust, which I call recommendation trust. I argue for three claims about recommendation trust: recommendation trust is different from both epistemic and practical trust; the conditions for well-placed recommendation trust are more demanding than the conditions for well-placed epistemic trust; and many measures that have been proposed to cultivate trust in experts do not give the public good reasons to trust in expert-led policy.

Drawing on a 2010 analysis of the reform and costs of adult social care commissioned by Downing Street and the UK Department of Health, this paper sets out projected future costs under different reform scenarios, reviews what happened in practice from 2010-19, explores the impact of the growing gap between need and funding, and explores the relationship between future spending and economic growth. In the process, it identifies a ‘lost decade’ in which policy makers failed to act on the warnings which they received in 2010, draws attention to the disproportionate impact of cuts on older people (compared to services for people of working age) and calls for urgent action before the current system becomes unsustainable.

Spinal cord stimulation provided pain relief and significant improvement of patient psychological and functional outcome measures.