Most recent papers:

• The Promise of Generative AI for Personalized Persuasion.
  Jacob D. Teeny, Kimberly Klugescheid, Johannes Luther, Sandra C. Matz.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. yesterday
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Generative AI (GenAI) has transformed many aspects of modern life. In this article, we explore the potential of GenAI for personalized persuasion: the process of tailoring the content of a persuasive message to an individual’s unique preferences, needs, ...

  May 20, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261424859   open full text
• On Evaluating Abstraction and Analogy in Humans and Machines.
  Melanie Mitchell.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 22, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  This article reviews two case studies in which AI systems were evaluated for abstraction and analogy-making capabilities and compared with those of humans. These studies illustrate how AI systems should be evaluated not only for accuracy on benchmark ...

  April 22, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261433528   open full text
• Implications of the Racial Position Model for Intraminority Relations.
  Linda X. ZouDepartment of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 22, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  This article is temporarily under embargo.

  April 22, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261432563   open full text
• The Integration of Explanation and Prediction in Behavioral Science.
  Abdullah Almaatouq, Robin Na.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 10, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Behavioral scientists aim to explain and predict behavior. In principle, these goals align; in practice, common approaches to pursuing them have become distinct traditions in tension with one another. The explanatory tradition often examines causal ...

  April 10, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261419427   open full text
• Intellectual Humility in the Eyes of Others: Implications for Social Perception and Trust.
  Jonah Koetke, Karina Schumann.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 10, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Prior research offers compelling evidence for the social, personal, and societal benefits of intellectual humility (IH). This article shifts the focus to social perception by examining the emerging literature on perceived IH—how people judge others’ ...

  April 10, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261419421   open full text
• Crossing Boundaries: A Culture-First Approach to Studying Early Learning.
  Su-hua WangDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 10, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  How do children learn in everyday situations? This article reviews recent findings of cultural variation in effective support for infants’ learning and navigating challenging situations to illustrate a culture-first approach to studying early learning. It ...

  April 10, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261417958   open full text
• Facing Ambiguity: What We Do in the Space Between Stimulus and Response.
  Maital NetaCenter for Brain, Biology, and Behavior, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. April 01, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  An extensive body of research on human and nonhuman animals has examined responses to clear valence, including stimuli that either represent a relatively clear threat (e.g., electric shock) or a clear reward (e.g., money). But daily life is replete with ...

  April 01, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261429347   open full text
• Meaningful Long-Term Thought Partnerships of Minds and Machines.
  Katherine M. Collins, Lionel Wong, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Judith E. Fan.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. March 31, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Many innovations have come from people working together as partners in thought. These partnerships, however, are not restricted to single encounters. Some of the most meaningful collaborations evolve over weeks, months, or even lifetimes. What are the ...

  March 31, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251412712   open full text
• Collective Memory Is More Than What We Remember: Quantifying Interconnections.
  Suparna Rajaram, Garrett D. Greeley, Jingwen Jin.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. March 28, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  For more than a century, experimental research on human memory has focused on individuals learning and remembering in isolation; memory scientists began a study of social influences in earnest only in the last 3 decades. A key phenomenon driving this ...

  March 28, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251398487   open full text
• The Structure Beneath the Symbols: How Children Develop an Understanding of Place Value.
  Chuyan Qu, Daniel Ansari.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. March 18, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  The place-value concept is fundamental to understanding the symbolic number system. It dictates that the value of a digit in a number is based on its position or place within the number (e.g., the “5” in “510” is five units of 100, whereas the “5” in “51” ...

  March 18, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261417968   open full text
• Generative Behaviors as Key Targets for Cognitive Models.
  Judith E. FanDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. February 22, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Human behavior is fundamentally generative: People create pictures, write stories, compose music, and engage in conversation. Traditional approaches in psychology and cognitive science have not focused on this open-endedness, instead favoring more ...

  February 22, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261416790   open full text
• From a Baby’s Point of View: How Infants’ Face Diets Shape Their Face Perception.
  Charisse B. Pickron, Laurie Bayet.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. February 19, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Individual variations in face-perception expertise become apparent by the second year of life. We propose that infants’ “face diet”—the nature and quantity of their visual interactions with faces—provides a useful lens for understanding how individual ...

  February 19, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261416505   open full text
• Using Artificial Intelligence to Better Understand Human Intelligence.
  Gordon Pennycook, Thomas H. Costello, David G. Rand.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. February 12, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  A consistent pattern emerges from the history of psychology: Technological advances change the way that we understand ourselves. We argue that, in addition to various uses that are already common (e.g., qualitative coding), large language models can be ...

  February 12, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261417960   open full text
• Understanding, Predicting, and Preventing Suicide: Recent Advances Using Digital and Computational Methods.
  Matthew K. Nock, Shirley B. Wang.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. February 07, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Suicide is among the most perplexing of all human behaviors. It has been a leading cause of death for decades, and despite significant study it continues unabated. Over the past few years, the development of new digital and computational methods has ...

  February 07, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251414021   open full text
• Acknowledgment.
  
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. January 29, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  

  January 29, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214261420200   open full text
• Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence.
  Julia A. Leonard, Reut ShachnaiDepartment of Psychology, Yale University.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. January 27, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Persistence is essential for learning, but children cannot and should not persist at everything. How do young children decide what is worth their effort? We build a theory of young children’s state persistence as the outcome of a socially guided decision-...

  January 27, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251401848   open full text
• Toward Complementary Intelligence: Integrating Cognitive and Machine AI.
  Cleotilde Gonzalez, Tailia MalloyDepartment of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. January 27, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  This article calls for complementary human-AI intelligence. Rather than redefining intelligence to fit machine capabilities, we argue for designing AI that complements and extends human cognition. We distinguish betweencognitive AI, which is grounded in ...

  January 27, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251407571   open full text
• Historical Change in Midlife Development From a Cross-National Perspective.
  Frank J. Infurna, Yesenia Cruz-Carrillo, Nutifafa E. Y. Dey, Markus Wettstein, Margie E. Lachman, Denis Gerstorf.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. January 26, 2026
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  We summarize empirical evidence documenting that (a) U.S. middle-aged adults have displayed historical trends of elevations in loneliness and depressive symptoms and declining memory and physical health and (b) this pattern is largely confined to the ...

  January 26, 2026   doi: 10.1177/09637214251410195   open full text
• Does Altruism Exist? Implications of Selective Investment Theory for Solving Social Problems.
  Stephanie L. Brown, R. Michael Brown, David Cavallino.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. December 26, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 84-91, April 2026.
  This article provides an overview of the debate within social psychology concerning the possible existence of altruistic motivation. After presenting the social-psychological background, we describeselective investment theory, an evolutionary theory of ...

  December 26, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251382091   open full text
• The Structure-Mapping Engine: A Multidecade Interaction Between Psychology and Artificial Intelligence.
  Dedre Gentner, Kenneth Forbus.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. December 06, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  This article describes the structure-mapping engine (SME) and its relation to psychological theory and research. SME was created in 1986 as a simulation of structure-mapping theory (SMT) and is still in use, both on its own and as part of larger scale ...

  December 06, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251395678   open full text
• Empathy for and From Embodied Robots: An Interdisciplinary Review.
  C. Daryl Cameron, Alan R. Wagner, Martina Orlandi, Eliana Hadjiandreou, India G. Oates, Stephen Anderson.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. December 05, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Several years ago, the world was stunned when the cute robot HitchBOT was destroyed. Does empathy for robots—sharing experiences and feeling compassion—make sense for humans? How do people empathize with robots, and what are the ethical and practical ...

  December 05, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251392861   open full text
• Metacognition and Uncertainty Communication in Humans and Large Language Models.
  Mark Steyvers, Megan A. K. Peters.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. November 19, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
  Metacognition—the capacity to monitor and evaluate one’s own knowledge and performance—is foundational to human decision-making, learning, and communication. As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly embedded in both high-stakes and widespread ...

  November 19, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251391158   open full text
• A Framework for Automation in Psychotherapy.
  Zac E. Imel, Torrey Creed, Brent Kious, Tim Althoff, Dana Atzil-Slonim, Vivek Srikumar.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. November 08, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 66-76, April 2026.
  Psychotherapy is a conversational intervention that has relied on humans to manage its implementation. Improvements in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) have accompanied speculation on how technologies might automate components of psychotherapy, ...

  November 08, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251386047   open full text
• Signatures of Reinforcement Learning in Natural Behavior.
  Catherine A. Hartley, Susan L. Benear, Aaron S. Heller.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. October 25, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 92-99, April 2026.
  Across myriad real-world contexts, people encounter the challenge of learning to take actions that bring about desirable outcomes. The theoretical framework of reinforcement learning proposes formal algorithms through which agents learn from experience to ...

  October 25, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251381193   open full text
• Escaping the Jingle-Jangle Jungle: Increasing Conceptual Clarity in Psychology Using Large Language Models.
  Dirk U. Wulff, Rui Mata.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. October 22, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 59-65, April 2026.
  Psychology has long struggled with conceptual redundancy, particularly in the form of “jingle-jangle fallacies,” in which different constructs share the same label or the same construct is described using different terms. This lack of conceptual clarity ...

  October 22, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251382083   open full text
• Multicultural Experiences: Impacts on the Mind and Self.
  Ying-yi Hong, Letitia Lee, Andrea Soledad MatosDepartment of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. October 22, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 77-83, April 2026.
  Globalization has brought unprecedented opportunities for individuals to be exposed to or interact with elements or people from different cultures. Recent research has examined how multicultural experiences could impact human psychology. Borrowing from ...

  October 22, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251382089   open full text
• Psychological Science at the Cellular Level: Mitochondria’s Role in Health and Behavior.
  Christopher P. Fagundes, E. Lydia Wu-Chung, Cobi J. Heijnen.
  Current Directions in Psychological Science. October 22, 2025
  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 100-109, April 2026.
  The biopsychosocial model (BPSM) has guided psychological science for decades by emphasizing the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors in health. Despite its influence, the model has been critiqued for lacking mechanistic specificity, ...

  October 22, 2025   doi: 10.1177/09637214251380214   open full text