Journal: Nature Human Behaviour

Abbreviation

Nat Hum Behav

Publisher

Nature

Journal Volumes

ISSN

2397-3374

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2017 - 201952020 - 202519
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Publications1 - 10 of 24
  • Social network-based distancing strategies to flatten the COVID-19 curve in a post-lockdown world
    Item type: Journal Article
    Block, Per; Hoffman, Marion; Raabe, Isabel J.; et al. (2020)
    Nature Human Behaviour
  • A global analysis of the impact of COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions on crime
    Item type: Journal Article
    Nivette, Amy E.; Zahnow, Renee; Aguilar, Raul; et al. (2021)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.
  • A large-scale test of the link between intergroup contact and support for social change
    Item type: Journal Article
    Hässler, Tabea; Ullrich, Johannes; Bernardino, Michelle; et al. (2020)
    Nature Human Behaviour
  • Measuring inequality beyond the Gini coefficient may clarify conflicting findings
    Item type: Journal Article
    Blesch, Kristin; Hauser, Oliver P.; Jachimowicz, Jon M. (2022)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    Prior research has found mixed results on how economic inequality is related to various outcomes. These contradicting findings may in part stem from a predominant focus on the Gini coefficient, which only narrowly captures inequality. Here, we conceptualize the measurement of inequality as a data reduction task of income distributions. Using a uniquely fine-grained dataset of N = 3,056 US county-level income distributions, we estimate the fit of 17 previously proposed models and find that multi-parameter models consistently outperform single-parameter models (i.e., models that represent single-parameter measures like the Gini coefficient). Subsequent simulations reveal that the best-fitting model—the two-parameter Ortega model—distinguishes between inequality concentrated at lower- versus top-income percentiles. When applied to 100 policy outcomes from a range of fields (including health, crime and social mobility), the two Ortega parameters frequently provide directionally and magnitudinally different correlations than the Gini coefficient. Our findings highlight the importance of multi-parameter models and data-driven methods to study inequality.
  • Exposures and behavioural responses to wildfire smoke
    Item type: Journal Article
    Burke, Marshall; Heft-Neal, Sam; Li, Jessica; et al. (2022)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    Pollution from wildfires constitutes a growing source of poor air quality globally. To protect health, governments largely rely on citizens to limit their own wildfire smoke exposures, but the effectiveness of this strategy is hard to observe. Using data from private pollution sensors, cell phones, social media posts and internet search activity, we find that during large wildfire smoke events, individuals in wealthy locations increasingly search for information about air quality and health protection, stay at home more and are unhappier. Residents of lower-income neighbourhoods exhibit similar patterns in searches for air quality information but not for health protection, spend less time at home and have more muted sentiment responses. During smoke events, indoor particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations often remain 3-4× above health-based guidelines and vary by 20× between neighbouring households. Our results suggest that policy reliance on self-protection to mitigate smoke health risks will have modest and unequal benefits.
  • Self-regulating arousal via pupil-based biofeedback
    Item type: Journal Article
    Meissner, Sarah Nadine; Bächinger, Marc; Kikkert, Sanne; et al. (2024)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    The brain's arousal state is controlled by several neuromodulatory nuclei known to substantially influence cognition and mental well-being. Here we investigate whether human participants can gain volitional control of their arousal state using a pupil-based biofeedback approach. Our approach inverts a mechanism suggested by previous literature that links activity of the locus coeruleus, one of the key regulators of central arousal and pupil dynamics. We show that pupil-based biofeedback enables participants to acquire volitional control of pupil size. Applying pupil self-regulation systematically modulates activity of the locus coeruleus and other brainstem structures involved in arousal control. Furthermore, it modulates cardiovascular measures such as heart rate, and behavioural and psychophysiological responses during an oddball task. We provide evidence that pupil-based biofeedback makes the brain's arousal system accessible to volitional control, a finding that has tremendous potential for translation to behavioural and clinical applications across various domains, including stress-related and anxiety disorders.
  • The dopaminergic reward system underpins gender differences in social preferences
    Item type: Journal Article
    Soutschek, Alexander; Burke, Christopher J.; Raja Beharelle, Anjali; et al. (2017)
    Nature Human Behaviour
  • Individual risk attitudes arise from noise in neurocognitive magnitude representations
    Item type: Journal Article
    Barretto-García, Miguel; de Hollander, Gilles; Grueschow, Marcus; et al. (2023)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    Humans are generally risk averse, preferring smaller certain over larger uncertain outcomes. Economic theories usually explain this by assuming concave utility functions. Here, we provide evidence that risk aversion can also arise from relative underestimation of larger monetary payoffs, a perceptual bias rooted in the noisy logarithmic coding of numerical magnitudes. We confirmed this with psychophysics and functional magnetic resonance imaging, by measuring behavioural and neural acuity of magnitude representations during a magnitude perception task and relating these measures to risk attitudes during separate risky financial decisions. Computational modelling indicated that participants use similar mental magnitude representations in both tasks, with correlated precision across perceptual and risky choices. Participants with more precise magnitude representations in parietal cortex showed less variable behaviour and less risk aversion. Our results highlight that at least some individual characteristics of economic behaviour can reflect capacity limitations in perceptual processing rather than processes that assign subjective values to monetary outcomes.
  • The impact of private hosting on the integration of Ukrainian refugees in Germany
    Item type: Journal Article
    Herpell, Mathis; Marbach, Moritz; Harder, Niklas; et al. (2025)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    Amid the Ukrainian displacement crisis, private hosting of refugees in Europe has surged, yet its impact on integration remains understudied. This research examines the short- to medium-term effects of private hosting on Ukrainian refugee integration in Germany. Using data from one of the largest non-profit platforms that matches private hosts with refugees, we compare the multidimensional integration outcomes of refugees who were matched with private hosts to those of observably similar refugees who applied for private hosting but were not matched (n = 1,700). Our findings show significant improvements in the social, psychological and navigational integration of privately hosted refugees, with no discernible effects on linguistic, economic or political integration. This study provides causal evidence on the effectiveness of private hosting in enhancing refugee integration, underscoring its potential to complement traditional public asylum reception and housing systems, and to harness civil society engagement for refugee integration during humanitarian crises.
  • Large and persistent effects of green energy defaults in the household and business sectors
    Item type: Journal Article
    Liebe, Ulf; Gewinner, Jennifer; Diekmann, Andreas (2021)
    Nature Human Behaviour
    Non-monetary incentives that encourage pro-environmental behaviour can contribute to combating climate change. Here, we investigated the effect of green energy defaults in the household and business sectors. In two large-scale field studies in Switzerland of over 200,000 households and 8,000 enterprises, we found that presenting renewable energy to existing customers as the standard option led to around 80% of the household and business sector customers staying with the green default, and the effects were largely stable over a time span of at least four years. Electricity consumption had only a weak effect on default acceptance. Our data do not indicate moral licensing: accepting the green default did not lead to a disproportionate increase in electricity consumption. Compared with men, women in both the household and business sectors were slightly more likely to accept the green default. Overall, non-monetary incentives can be highly effective in both the household and business sectors.
Publications1 - 10 of 24