Debunking is an effective means to mitigate the impact of health misinformation. However, even after receiving a corrective message, misinformation often persists in influencing individuals' judgements and decision-making. I review evidence on effective components of debunking in health contexts and propose three mechanisms for how expressions of empathy might help reduce the continued influence of health misinformation. Empathetic debunkings might decrease feelings of discomfort and increase believability of debunkings by (1) decreasing perceived threat to underlying attitude roots, (2) decreasing perceived threat to face or (3) increasing perceptions of trustworthiness. Moreover, I review pitfalls of using empathetic communication that should be considered by practitioners and further investigated in research addressing empathy to tackle misinformation.

Democracies depends on citizens to make informed decisions about their health, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. Science is complex and thus science-informed decisions and policy requires trust in qualified experts. Mistrust of experts can contribute to science doubt, resistance, and denial. This article reviews psychological issues behind these challenges as well as the role of epistemic trust in science understanding and acceptance. It also offers suggestions about building public trust in science.

Public trust in science is vital for tackling global challenges. Recently, global surveys and Many Labs collaborations have begun to broaden the scope of research. However, these studies have also highlighted theoretical and methodological challenges. Here, we review these challenges and argue that beyond expanding geographical coverage, greater conceptual clarity and harmonized measures are essential to improve comparability across studies on trust in science. We conclude by encouraging reflection on the normative assumptions that currently guide research on trust in science.

Mistrust of the scientific consensus around issues such as climate change and vaccination is mainstream, compromising our ability to respond to existential global threats. In the wrong hands, Generative AI can spread misinformation with unprecedented scale and psychological sophistication. However, large language models (LLMs) have also shown considerable promise for reducing misinformation and conspiracy theories, potentially revolutionizing science communication. This review summarizes the rapidly evolving frontier of empirical research on how conversational AI such as ChatGPT can be used to defuse mistrust of science around hot-button scientific issues. These studies find negligible evidence that LLM responds to human queries by reproducing conspiracy theories or misinformation about scientific topics. Rather, conversations with LLMs typically reduce participants' levels of science skepticism and misinformation endorsement. We conclude that LLMs (in their current form) have potential to complement existing science communication strategies, provided their use is accompanied by safeguards that preserve informational integrity and public trust.

Mistrust in science can arise from the belief that science or scientists act in ways that undermines our wellbeing or go against our best interests (Jaiswal & Halktis, 2019). Such actions may also constitute a perceived moral violation. Considering how science and scientists are perceived to uphold or undermine moral norms and values may therefore provide helpful insights for understanding relationships of trust. In this review of the trust literature, I explore some of the ways that individuals or communities may perceive different categories of moral values (i.e., Harm, Purity/Sanctity, Authority, Loyalty, and Fairness) as being upheld or undermined by science or scientists. Firstly, examples of harm are discussed (e.g., physical and spiritual harms), followed by research on trust in science and individual differences (i.e., disgust sensitivity, religiosity, and worldviews and ideologies). Research around social identity, and fairness are also examined. Identifying where and why perceived moral violations may arise could be helpful for furthering our understanding relationships of mistrust in science and developing tailored interventions to build and sustain trust. It also provides an opportunity for scientists and researchers to reflect on the moral values that they and any communities they seek to work with hold to ensure any procedures and practices do not inadvertently undermine the trust relationship.

Aggression is a pernicious social problem. We present a neurocognitive model of reactive aggression and view four potential treatments through the lens of this model. These interventions include mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral therapies, omega-3s (e.g., fish oils), and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The model specifies the following neuropsychological mechanisms that can be modified via these therapies: emotion regulation, the acute threat response, reward representation of aggression, and response inhibition. Although more research is needed, this review generally supports the notion that all four interventions can reduce aggression and improve anger regulation. The studies reviewed here provide partial support for the hypothesis that these interventions can improve reward functioning and response inhibition. Furthermore, each intervention affects brain function in a putatively adaptive manner.

The last decade has seen a surge in research on science attitudes, trust in science, and science rejection. As a result, our understanding of the psychology of science rejection has substantially improved. This is important, because science rejection is a pernicious problem that can obstruct potential solutions to various pressing societal and environmental challenges. At the same time, this field of inquiry is limited in-at least-two important ways. First, much of the work conducted is descriptive in nature and not sufficiently guided by theory. Second, research has largely and disproportionately focused on a limited range of science domains, resulting in narrow and/or fuzzy conceptualizations and operationalizations of 'science'. In this article, we argue that for the field to move forward it needs to pay more attention to theory and validity.

We discuss willful ignorance and information avoidance in prosocial decisions from the perspective of economic theory, i.e. based on the ideas of utility maximization and the instrumental value of information. We provide a definition of information avoidance, empirical evidence from a paradigmatic experiment, and discuss the motives behind the phenomenon. We discuss its relevance in applications and avenues for future research.

Although humans exhibit many prosocial behaviors, when the social benefits of their options are uncertain, surprisingly many avoid learning them before choosing, using ignorance as an excuse to dodge moral obligations and revert to selfish behavior. This kind of willful ignorance is robust in the sense that researchers have documented it using a wide array of methods, across diverse settings, and a time period spanning nearly two decades. At the same time, however, the degree to which it manifests is inconsistent across and within studies. Some of these inconsistencies stem from obvious factors, while the moderators driving others have yet to be identified or are poorly understood. This study synthesizes and organizes these contextual factors, providing recommendations for future research.

Adolescent dating violence is a growing public health concern that threatens youth well-being worldwide. Early exposure to invalidating environments, such as parental maltreatment and peer rejection, can foster patterns of violence in later romantic relationships. Drawing on developmental theories of attachment and social learning, we synthesize evidence linking these early adverse experiences to dating violence. Specifically, we examine how maltreatment distorts attachment security and models aggression as a relational tool, and how peer rejection compounds these effects by normalizing hostility and impairing emotion regulation. We propose that rejection sensitivity is a central mechanism linking early invalidating relationships to adolescent dating violence. Findings underscore the need for prevention programs addressing both family and peer contexts of violence.

Willful ignorance is often framed as a strategy for avoiding moral responsibility in social decision making. We propose a broader view: individuals also avoid or seek information in purely individual contexts as a way to regulate emotions. People may delay confronting themselves to useful, yet painful, truths, or, paradoxically, pursue distressing but useless information to relieve uncertainty. This duality reflects a strategic balance between the emotional costs of knowing and the psychological discomfort of not knowing. We review recent research illustrating how information avoidance and search serve both self-protection and moral regulation. Ultimately, willful ignorance is reframed as a dynamic emotion-regulation strategy that helps individuals navigate the tension between uncertainty, truth, and emotional endurance in both social and personal domains.

Informational policies such as labeling requirements and public awareness campaigns generally attract higher public support and face less political resistance than more interventionist policy measures such as taxes or bans. Yet, their behavioral impact is small, partly due to willful ignorance. This review discusses evidence of scalable, low-cost interventions that may reduce willful ignorance and increase information uptake. We group these interventions into two categories: (1) making information harder to ignore, through greater salience, strategic placement, and personalization; and (2) increasing perceived net benefits of becoming informed, by simplifying information, boosting self-efficacy, encouraging contemplation, framing outcomes as gains, bundling with valued content, or offering incentives. Evidence suggests these interventions can be effective at enhancing information uptake, but their impact often varies by context and population. We highlight the potential of using machine learning and AI to optimize the interventions' effectiveness, through both audience targeting and content tailoring.

Science education is pivotal in enhancing scientific literacy and potentially contributing to trust in science. The paper examines how trust in science has been addressed in science education by investigating the content of 5 leading research journals. Of the 116 articles published between January 2024 and June 2025 that mentioned "trust" and "mistrust", only 17 directly engaged with trust in science. Analysis revealed an emphasis on the epistemic aspects of science, with limited attention to affective or political dimensions, and a disproportionate focus on global issues such as COVID-19 and climate change rather than local issues. There was a marked lack of an explicit definition or conceptualisation of 'trust' in the papers. We argue that science education research would benefit from interdisciplinary perspectives on trust, including frameworks on the emotional, relational, and ideological characterisations of trust. Such multiplicity of perspectives is relevant to science education given educational contexts inherently embody not only epistemic but also social, political and affective dimensions. Suggestions are made for future directions in science education research for a critical yet balanced account so that trust in science can be appropriated.

Science today operates in an environment increasingly described as a crisis of trust, where confidence in institutions has eroded and consensus over truth is fragmented. While still among the most trusted actors, science faces pressing trust-related challenges: populist rhetoric can frame scientists as part of a detached elite, polarized debates fuel delegitimizing narratives, scientific knowledge is increasingly presented as another opinion and therewith competing against direct experiences and gut feelings, and news media dynamics can intensify a spiral of negativity in which scandals and threat-oriented framings overshadow science's constructive role. These dynamics undermine science's epistemic authority and risk fueling disengagement from knowledge altogether. We caution against the rise of epistemic indifference, where individuals lose motivation to seek, evaluate, or trust knowledge, and highlight the need to safeguard the legitimacy of science in an era of pervasive skepticism.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is the most prevalent form of gender-based violence (GBV) and remains a pervasive global concern. This manuscript provides a brief, comprehensive overview of IPV against women, using intersectionality as a guiding framework. IPV can have devastating mental, physical, and reproductive health consequences for survivors. While IPV affects women across all backgrounds, certain identities, including race, sexual orientation, disability status, and gender identity are linked to heightened vulnerability. Intimate partner homicide (IPH) is the most extreme form of IPV and is a clearly gendered phenomenon. Specific risk factors for IPH are reviewed. This review highlights that IPV, IPH, and GBV warrant continued prevention and intervention efforts, as well as advocacy, legal protections, and research efforts.

The spread of harmful misinformation poses a growing global threat, undermining trust in science, public health, and democracy. Psychological inoculation (i.e. "prebunking") offers a promising approach to help people distinguish credible from manipulative content. We re-analyzed 33 inoculation experiments (combined N = 37, 025) using Signal Detection Theory within a hierarchical Bayesian framework. Results show that both gamified and video-based interventions consistently improve discrimination between reliable and unreliable news, without increasing response bias-that is, participants did not become more uniformly skeptical or credulous. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of psychological inoculation in enhancing discrimination while avoiding unintended side effects on trust in credible news, offering robust support for its use as a scalable misinformation intervention.

We reviewed the evidence on the memory undermining effects of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and imagery rescripting. Both therapies appear to undermine memory quality by making memories less vivid and emotionally-negative. Also, while eye movements used in EMDR seem to increase spontaneous false memories, they do not increase the susceptibility to suggestion. Inconsistent findings have emerged on the effects of imagery rescripting on false memory generation. Furthermore, a substantial number of clinicians who use EMDR strongly believe in the notion of repressed memory and EMDR has been associated with the occurrence of recovered memories. The belief in repressed memory might encourage suggestive therapeutic techniques, thereby increasing the risk of false memory creation. Overall, nuance is required on potential memory undermining effects of EMDR and imagery rescripting.

Despite the growing popularity of mindfulness, mindfulness-based programs (MBPs), and meditation, potential harms have largely been overlooked. Recent studies reveal that 25-87 % of those who engage in meditation report adverse effects (AEs), with 3-37 % experiencing functional impairment (e.g., inability to work). It remains unclear to what extent AEs reflect transitory discomfort vs. lasting harm. Common AEs include anxiety, depression, and traumatic re-experiencing. Factors such as retreat attendance and pre-existing mental health conditions may increase the risk of AEs, though causality remains unclear. The review emphasises the need for thorough screening, informed consent, and ongoing monitoring in clinical practice. Recommendations include setting clear expectations, offering psychoeducational support, and adapting interventions when necessary and where appropriate. By addressing these concerns, clinicians can better balance the potential benefits with the potential risks, ensuring more responsible implementation of mindfulness and meditation in mental health care and beyond.

Nature connectedness, which refers to the subjective sense of one's relationship with the natural world, is a multidimensional construct encompassing emotional, cognitive, and experiential ties, closely linked to personal and collective well-being. Strengthening this connection, especially among children and young people, requires active involvement in the places where they live and act. This article reviews evidence on two main areas: (1) immersive and regenerative experiences in natural contexts, and (2) nature contact in urban contexts. Across both domains, participatory methods, such as Youth Participatory Action Research and Photovoice, emerge as a transversal approach that transforms individual experiences into shared responsibilities, fostering ecological citizenship, community belonging, and sustainable, locally rooted relationships with nature.

Questionable health behaviors, such as intentional non-adherence to medical recommendations and the use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine pose a global threat to public health. These behaviors do not reflect a mere dismissal of scientific authority, but rather a specific reconfiguration of epistemic trust, where selective scepticism is applied, marked by exaggerated doubt towards evidence-based authority and simultaneous uncritical acceptance of pseudoscientific claims. We review key psychological drivers of these behaviors - i.e. irrational beliefs - and different ways they interact with science. We then examine communication strategies that divert trust from unreliable sources and encourage trust in reliable ones. Understanding and reshaping the way dialogue and trust is cultivated is essential in countering the rise of questionable health practices.

Public trust in science and in scientists is often conflated, yet these are distinct concepts shaped by different factors. This review synthesizes recent scholarship to highlight three insights. First, separating trust in science (confidence in scientific claims) from trust in scientists (judgments of credibility and motives) can help resolve persistent inconsistencies across disciplines. Second, sociocultural and political environments exert stronger influences on trust than commonly acknowledged, explaining cross-national variation. Third, science is not monolithic: trust levels differ across domains and issues, partly due to politicization. The review identifies important gaps, including the need for multi-dimensional measures, globally comparative research, and strategies to convey uncertainty without eroding credibility. Addressing these challenges can help advance both theory and practice.

Public trust in science and scientists contributes to important social beliefs and behaviours. Yet it is sometimes believed to be in crisis. This article reviews what trust consists of and how it is typically measured. Drawing on national and international survey data, it shows there is little evidence of a public crisis of trust. While there is evidence of a polarisation of trust in certain countries, this picture does not apply more widely. Nonetheless, initiatives to maintain public trust are important; but these should focus on scientists' wider social position and roles rather than simply emphasising their competence. If there is a problem, it lies in the limited influence of scientific messages rather than in public distrust of scientists.

Positive public attitudes towards science are of pivotal importance in combating societal and environmental challenges. To better understand these attitudes, an integration of different research lines is needed. We argue that adopting a psychological network approach presents one viable way towards such integration. In this paper, we present a brief summary of the field's current research lines, explain the psychological network approach towards attitudes and how it can improve our understanding of science attitudes, and finally present an empirical case study to exemplify this network approach and its added value. Adopting the psychological network approach will improve our understanding of science attitudes, which will help inform theory as well as strategies for improving public attitudes towards science.

Revealing "the person behind the science" (i.e., personal self-disclosure) is common advice for science communicators to bridge a stereotypical distance, foster trust, and communicate effectively. A review of the literature, however, paints a disenchanting picture: Self-disclosure in science communication is a trade-off. While having the potential to increase warmth-related perceptions (e.g., closeness, benevolence, liking), it also comes at the cost of decreasing competence-related perceptions (e.g., expertise). Overall, these ambivalent effects result in lacking downstream impact (e.g., on behavioral intentions, funding and policy support) and might even bear risks. Altogether, empirical findings question the value of this popular practical recommendation and highlight the need for theory-driven, evidence-based research in science communication.

Efforts to reduce bias in selection often rely on blindfolding-concealing job-irrelevant factors such as race or gender. While this approach can reduce bias, it may also obscure and preserve it when selection tools are themselves biased. This paper introduces a novel framework showing when revealing sensitive information enables more accurate and fair decisions. By leveraging hidden correlations between potentially biasing factors and test scores, decision-makers can correct for bias and improve selection decisions. The framework offers guidance for policymakers and institutions. It also highlights resistance to revealing such information, rooted in the desire to preserve a positive social image. This tension between perceived and actual fairness helps explain reluctance to adjust biased tools.

Universal school-based mental health interventions involve lessons delivered to whole classes of young people irrespective of need, with the overall aim of improving mental health literacy, preventing mental health problems and/or reducing those that have already started. A number of high-quality trials show that universal interventions can have a range of negative effects, with participants in the intervention group experiencing worsening mental health or other negative outcomes. In this review, we summarise what we know so far about these negative effects, which we refer to as 'potential harm'. Two important questions remain poorly understood. First, the mechanisms driving potential harm are unknown, including whether negative effects are driven by reporting phenomena, the content of the intervention itself, or both. Second, individual differences in susceptibility to these effects is unclear. In the second half of the paper, we explore whether further universal trials should be run and argue that, if they are, the crucial issue of negative effects must be considered at all stages. In particular, we recommend that trials be designed in such a way to test mechanisms and individual differences in response. Information can then be provided to schools and policymakers about why young people might respond in different ways to an intervention, and how to support vulnerable students. Ultimately, this will lead to more effective and less harmful interventions for everyone.

Debates about issues such anthropomorphic climate change have raised alarm that there may be systematic differences in liberals' and conservatives' trust in science. Indeed, conservatives in the U.S. are much more skeptical of science than their liberal counterparts. However, there is little to no association between political orientation and trust in science in most non-U.S. countries and the cognitive processes underlying science denial are symmetric across ideological lines. Where ideological gaps emerge, politics is highly polarized, and one side has strategically sown doubt about scientific findings. Whether liberals trust science more than conservatives or vice versa depends on which side's party, leaders, and media promote skepticism about ideologically "inconvenient" scientific findings.

Children's engagement with nature enhances their well-being at both individual and community levels, yet systemic inequalities within local contexts shape children's access, proximity, quality, and safety in natural spaces. Research shows that children's understandings of nature and community are formed through their access to these spaces during their formative years. This article examines environmental subjective well-being (ESWB), an emerging interdisciplinary focus that captures the benefits of children's interactions with the natural environment and their influence on subjective well-being from a child-centred perspective. Understanding ESWB requires a nuanced contextualisation of place and inequality. We synthesise current evidence on children's engagement with nature in community settings and identify priorities for future research. We position children's engagement with nature as a social justice and children's rights imperative, with implications for policy and practice globally, particularly for the Global South.

This review summarizes research on the importance of distinguishing between behavioral trust and trustworthiness beliefs in the context of science communication research and practice. It argues that the scientific community would benefit from discussing and measuring trust-related beliefs and behaviors separately to help foster a more nuanced understanding of how specific groups think about scientists and to help focus communication efforts on areas of weakness. Although the labels used vary, key trustworthiness beliefs addressed by past research often include beliefs about scientists' abilities (i.e., expertise, competence), benevolence (i.e., goodwill, caring), and integrity (i.e., honesty). Science communication researchers are also often interested in openness beliefs. While there is general agreement on key concepts, much of the available work is correlational. The review found only a limited number of experiments focused on providing the scientific community with data on how to demonstrate specific dimensions of trustworthiness and thus argues for additional research.

Cultures of trust are characterized by norms that promote trusting behaviors and by the expectation that others will act in trustworthy ways. Trust in science is embedded within cultures, as perceptions of the trustworthiness of science, and scientists, are shaped by cultural contexts. Organizations often serve as the visible "face" of science, such that the presence or absence of organizational or institutional cultures of trust within scientific institutions functions as a proxy through which public trust in science is evaluated. Thus, in addition to personal characteristics, understanding trust in science requires attention to the interplay of societal, organizational, and institutional cultures that collectively shape how science and its representatives are perceived.