Knowledge that Transforms

The numerous executive orders directed at transgender youth in the weeks following the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration were likely a signal to these youth—and their parents—that the federal government no longer supported them. Using a longitudinal design spanning 3 years prior to the inauguration (2022–2024) and 2 months surrounding the inauguration, we tested whether the mental health and well-being of U.S.-based transgender youth and their parents declined relative to that of cisgender youth and their parents in a sample that, on the whole, did not support the new administration ( N = 160 youth, aged 12–17 years; N = 167 parents). Across preregistered analyses, we observed significant declines in the mental health and well-being of parents of transgender youth compared to parents of cisgender youth; we observed fewer differences over time between transgender versus cisgender youth themselves. Our findings identify an immediate potential cost of the current political environment for supportive parents of transgender youth.

Empowering people to navigate online information competently is essential to complement systemic content moderation and platform regulation. A nationally representative randomized controlled study among adults in Germany ( N = 2,666) compared two media-literacy interventions: a source-focused lateral-reading strategy to help participants distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy news outlets, and a claim-focused search strategy to help them assess the credibility of specific claims. Both interventions showed small improvements in discernment, but not all effects were statistically distinguishable from zero. At a 2-week follow-up, discernment improved in all groups, and differences between the intervention and control groups were no longer statistically distinguishable. We found no evidence of backfire effects. An exploratory analysis of discernment pretreatment indicated the lowest performance for supporters of populist radical-right parties. Behavioral measures suggested increases in information search in both intervention groups. On average, lateral reading reduced trust in untrustworthy sources, and online search increased trust in trustworthy sources.

-specular reflections from the surface of the eye that vary with the position of light sources in the environment. This study tested whether eye glint influences face perception, particularly in how observers perceive the gaze direction of a person they are viewing. Adult participants viewed computer-rendered face images that varied in eye direction, head rotation, and illumination. The presence of eye glint had little influence on the accuracy or precision of perceived gaze direction when faces were viewed under simplified conditions. However, biases in perceived gaze direction caused by changes in head orientation or illumination direction were reduced when eye glint was present relative to when it was absent. This suggests that eye glint can help an observer to maintain constancy in gaze perception despite variability in the appearance of the eye region that occurs across viewing conditions.

Investigations into people’s ability to use multiple working memory representations to concurrently search for targets have led to mixed findings. Although the discourse has predominantly centered around capacity limits in multitarget search, we here propose that people can switch between sequential and concurrent search. In Experiment 1 ( n = 16 adults), manual responses and oculomotor behavior revealed that participants could search sequentially, and concurrently for at least two targets, when instructed. In Experiments 2a ( n = 16 adults) and 2b ( n = 16 adults), participants were free to choose how they searched. Trial-level modeling showed that participants primarily used sequential and concurrent search as specific modes and flexibly adjusted between either mode depending on template set size, template availability, stimulus properties, and individual preference. Our findings stress the dynamic and adaptive nature of visual search. Moreover, understanding that different search modes can be flexibly picked as “tools from the toolbox” may reconcile inconsistencies in prior findings.

Realizing a sustainable future requires the active participation of today's young generations. How can we foster adolescents' proenvironmental engagement? In a preregistered, cross-national, longitudinal field experiment, we tested a novel approach to promoting adolescent behavior change: motive alignment. We hypothesized that presenting proenvironmental behavior as aligned with adolescents' developmentally salient motives (in this case, autonomy and peer status) would enhance their engagement. In Study 1 (the Netherlands), a motive-alignment (versus control) intervention implemented in secondary schools increased adolescents' proenvironmental food choices on the day of the intervention. Although this effect faded after 4 weeks, participants in the intervention condition continued to donate more to an environmental organization at follow-up. In Study 2 (China), we replicated these findings. Motive alignment thus offers a promising approach to strengthen interventions promoting adolescents' proenvironmental behavior; it presents scalable and affordable opportunities to foster youth behavior change.

Evolutionary theories suggest that retributive sentiments evolved to deter antisocial behavior, yet psychological evidence shows punitive sentiments imperfectly optimize deterrence. Recent theories resolve this paradox, suggesting that retributive sentiments serve to restore mutual benefit between partners by both compensating the victim and imposing an additional deterrent cost on the transgressor. In four experiments, we tested predictions of this hypothesis with adults from a small-scale, politically decentralized society (Mentawai horticulturalists, Indonesia; N = 74) and a large-scale society (the United States; N = 600). Consistent with compensatory concerns, participants demanded that victims be rewarded in the currency of their loss and that more severe punishment be imposed when victims suffered more, holding aggressor benefit constant. Consistent with compensation being entangled with deterrence, participants endorsed additional penalties beyond restitution that were higher for recidivism and intentional offenses. This proximate entanglement of compensation and deterrence helps resolve apparent contradictions about the function of punishment in humans.

People often understand parts of languages that are closely related to their native tongue. But do they understand what the speaker intends to convey? We discovered that linguistic similarity induces an illusion of understanding, leading people to believe they understand more than they actually do. In Study 1, adult native Italian speakers overestimated their understanding of a speaker's intent more when they listened to Spanish (close language) than to Northern Jiangsu Chinese (distant language). In Study 2, adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers overestimated their understanding more when they listened to Northern Jiangsu Chinese (close language) than to Spanish (distant language). When listening to the closer language, listeners were more confident, and this mediated their overestimation of understanding. An illusion of understanding, then, increases not despite language closeness but because of it. This has theoretical implications for the role of calibration in communication and practical implications for miscommunication in international settings.

In 2012, Livingston et al. found that Black women were buffered against gender backlash; whether Black women were dominant or supportive toward an employee did not affect people’s perceptions of them as leaders in an organization. Conversely, White women incurred a status penalty for being dominant. Twelve years later, no direct replication has been published, and related research reached different conclusions: that Black women experience the most gender backlash for being dominant (as politicians) or that race does not affect gender backlash (for expressing anger). Given the seemingly contradictory results and limitations of previous research, the relationship between race and gender backlash warrants reexamination. In this registered report, we conducted a high-powered direct replication and extension of Livingston et al. with adult participants online ( N = 1,996). We found that both Black and White women (as well as men) suffered a status penalty for displaying dominance, suggesting a failure to replicate Livingston et al.’s findings. We discuss implications for theories of intersectional gender backlash.

The present work evaluates the rise, impact, and imbalances of big-team psychology via an analysis of 3,023,895 articles published in the 21st century. Results indicate that big teams—ranging from 10 to more than 100 authors—are relatively unusual ( n = 49,695) but increasing in popularity. More notably, such collaborations generate unusually high impact in terms of yearly mentions in scholarly articles ( n = 39,788,158), the news ( n = 1,018,639), social media ( n = 5,971,965), and policy documents ( n = 69,959). An examination of country-level sociocultural indicators revealed that first authors, in general, tend to be in regions that are relatively WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. However, this imbalance is slightly more pronounced among larger teams. In summary, results suggest that big-team science is an emerging trend in psychology—one that is unevenly deployed across world regions to generate high-impact scientific insights.

Conscious experiences appear to play a central role in human behavior, yet most neural processing occurs outside of consciousness. Understanding how the mind prioritizes information for consciousness is, therefore, crucial for theories of cognition. Prior research has largely focused on vision, but generalization is tenuous given the vastly different characteristics of the senses—particularly for audition, which lacks foveation and cannot be intentionally stopped. We examine the affective domain, for which prioritization is not well understood. In three experiments (two preregistered), 101 Hebrew-speaking adults completed a visual task with a stream of auditory pseudowords in the background. Occasionally a meaningful word appeared, and participants were asked about its presence. Using objective and subjective awareness measures, we found that neutral words were prioritized over negative words, regardless of task difficulty, intelligibility, and low-level features. These findings challenge theorizing and modal intuitions, and we discuss ways in which those can be reconciled.