Comment

LLM agents can now pass as human participants, threatening the validity of online social science. We urge a shift from ad-hoc checks to multi-layered, adaptive defenses, borrowing from internet anti-bot practice, and call for cooperation across researchers, platforms, and institutions, to guard against this challenge.

This Comment advocates promoting children’s psychological agency to building climate resilience. This approach includes physical and digital climate learning, engaging families, educators, and communities to empower children and provide emotional support.

Consciousness Science is entering an age of unprecedented opportunity, thanks to recent empirical and theoretical advances, increasing interest in the topic, and technological advances in neuroscience. The role theories will play in a maturing science of consciousness deserves a closer look.

Consciousness research has long been dominated by competing grand theories, yet consensus remains elusive. We propose shifting focus toward construct-based, data-driven, and iterative approaches that identify the empirical building blocks of conscious experience and provide a more cumulative, integrative path forward for the field.

Why do many citizens of Western Europe appear complacent about their societies’ democratic backsliding? One explanation is the effect of personal experience on risk perception: a stable democratic past lulls humans into a false sense of security.

Psychology is committed to the principle of nonmaleficence. This Comment argues that psychology as a discipline and psychological associations as its representatives should uphold their ethical responsibility

When communicating psychological intervention research, two pernicious tendencies have become prominent: using imprecise terms with lay meanings and sensationalizing outcome descriptions. This Comment examines the consequences of these communication styles and proposes strategies for effective communication, ensuring enthusiasm does not come at the cost of credibility.

Widespread belief in unfounded conspiracy theories is a risk. Yet, academics also mustn’t commit the reverse error, in adopting a Protective Conspiracy Framing and labelling credible theories and proposals conspiracies when these would deserve scientific scrutiny.

Misinformation is often framed as a cognitive failure, focusing on the vulnerabilities of those who believe it. But misinformation often stems from deliberate disinformation campaigns—which should be considered proactive intergroup aggression.

The use of social media field experiments has led to calls for revised ethical guidelines—but none have stuck. A participatory governance approach, similar to developments in AI, can improve practices and collectively align the interests of researchers, platforms and users.

Beginning to conduct psychological research in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is daunting. Where do you start? In this reflexive commentary, we raise three critical questions that researchers should ask themselves before conducting research in LMICs.

Behavioral sciences should be systematically integrated with urban planning. Urban form is a critical choice architecture for making people’s choices more climate-friendly, and improve liveability of cities.

Interventions targeting children’s eco-anxiety have focused on fostering hope, however this is disconnected from children’s need to explore and express despair regarding the climate crisis. Adults can help by acknowledging and discussing these emotions with children.

Innovations in generative AI can cause social, psychological, and political harms. This Comment explains how psychologists can mobilize their extensive theoretical and empirical resources to better anticipate, understand, and mitigate those harms.

Analysis of different operationalizations shows that many scientific results may be an artifact of the operationalization process. A culture of multi-operationalization may be needed for psychological research to develop valid knowledge.

The terminology used in discussions on mental state attribution is extensive and lacks consistency. In the current paper, experts from various disciplines collaborate to introduce a shared set of concepts and make recommendations regarding future use.

Proliferation and variability of psychological measures are part of the scientific process. While sometimes an indication of questionable research practices, there are also benign reasons for measurement proliferation and the community’s response must take both aspects into account.

There are racial, gender, and geographical disparities for editors-in-chief in psychology. This is a problem, and many counter arguments are not persuasive. It is time for the field – and in the power of individuals - to implement suitable measures to make change happen.

Although often stigmatised in mainstream psychology, self-relevant research offers many benefits including increasing the presence of underrepresented researchers and promoting more valid and representative research. Psychology should de-stigmatize and leverage this approach.

The literature on action control is rife with differences in terminology. This consensus statement contributes shared definitions for perception-action integration concepts as informed by the framework of event coding.