News

December

• When people retire, they often take up activities like volunteering. But is this simply because they have more spare time on their hands or is something deeper happening? Drawing on novel research, Alina Velias, Sotiris Georganas and Ioannis Laliotis find evidence that retirement fosters greater kindness in people. Read the post in LSE's European Politics and Policy blog. (16 December 2024)

• We were saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Ivana Marková on 1 December 2024. Ivana was Professor Emerita of the University of Stirling and held visiting professorships in many universities, including in our department. She gave keynote addresses in numerous countries and was an inspirational mentor to generations of social psychologists. Her absence will be sorely felt in academic communities across the globe. Read the LSE condolences blog. 

• Christian Krekel, Ganga Shreedhar, Paul Dolan and others explored wellbeing returns from volunteering in England’s National Health Service (NHS) Volunteer Responders. They found that volunteers reported improved wellbeing, a greater sense of belonging, and stronger connections to their local communities, and that the benefits of the programme substantially exceeded its costs. Learn more about the research. (3 December 2024)

November 

• Dallas O'Dell, Davide Contu and Ganga Shreedhar investigated U.S. public support for degrowth policies and their relationship with sufficiency behaviours through a discrete choice experiment. They found strong backing for fossil fuel caps and universal healthcare. Sufficiency behaviours correlated with support for fossil fuel restrictions, but the connection to socially oriented policies was less clear. Read the paper. (28 November 2024) 

• Martin W. Bauer, Gordon Sammut and co-authors analysed policy communication and reception in Kuwait in terms of the worldviews they advance. Their findings suggest that, to enhance public support and engagement with science policies, policymakers should consider managing a wider range of worldviews and psychological traits, rather than just focusing on traditional sociodemographic factors. Learn more about the research. (28 November 2024)

• A recent paper, co-authored by Atrina Oraee, introduces a framework to identify and prioritise factors of organisational attractiveness (OA) in the airline industry using fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods. The framework helps airline managers enhance their value proposition to attract and retain skilled employees, offering strategic insights for improving OA in a competitive talent market. Read the article. (28 November 2024)

• Liam Delaney and co-authors redesigned hospital validation letters to include nudges, aiming to increase response rates from patients on waiting lists. The new letters significantly improved patient compliance with the validation process and have since been adopted by all public hospitals in Ireland. Read the paper. (28 November 2024)

• A recent essay, co-authored by Martin W. Bauer and Bankole Falade, proposes a framework combining Open Science (OS) and Science Communication (SciComm) to enhance public engagement and trust in science. By integrating transparency and accessibility, the framework aims to bridge the gap between scientific expertise and public understanding, fostering an inclusive and informed common good. Learn more. (28 November 2024)

• Jens Madsen and Jeanie So interviewed protesters from the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement to uncover how a leaderless movement can develop trust in fellow protesters and information channels. They found a sophisticated attendance to structural information source dependencies where protestors use a mixture of social, communicative, and dependency cues to decide who and what to trust. Read the paper. (25 November 2024)

• Our department was well represented at the recent LSE Excellence in Education Awards. These awards are made, on the recommendations of Heads of Department and Divisions, to staff who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments. Read more about the Excellence in Education awards. (25 November 2024)

• Sandra Jovchelovitch was a key participant in the G20 Social event “The Favela at the Centre of the Global Debate: The Relevance of the G20 Favelas on the International Agenda”. Professor Jovchelovitch presented an update on her research project ‘Supporting bottom-up development in cities in the Developing World’, and spoke about the model of social development that originated in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Learn more about the G20 Social. Learn about Sandra's project ‘Supporting bottom-up development in cities in the Developing World’. (19 November 2024)

• Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within firms is linked with either positive or neutral firm performance outcomes, according to new research by Teresa Almeida and Grace Lordan. They found that DEI is positively associated with long-term market valuation and innovation, suggesting that DEI initiatives can be of strategic importance for organisations. Read the report. Read the LSE news article. (18 November 2024)

• Dario Krpan argues that, in order to address the world's biggest challenges, an understanding of transformative behavioural change is essential. He proposes a seven-step agenda for how psychological and behavioural science can become the science of transformative behavioural change. Read the article in Behavioural Public Policy. (18 November 2024)
  

• Breaking Beliefism, Paul Dolan’s new podcast, is a weekly 30 minute chat with someone with a fresh perspective on an important issue. Topics include why two parent households are the route out of poverty, who's the best tennis player of all time, and why gambling is good for us. Listen to the podcast. (11 November 2024)

October

• The generational tech divide is narrowing. Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan surveyed more than 1,400 UK and US professionals and found that the ability to manage your attention and minimise task-switching is more important than how old you were when you first used a keyboard. This makes intergenerational diversity and inclusion key for productivity. Read the article in LSE Business Review. (28 October 2024)

• Ben Tappin and Luke Hewitt analysed the cost-effectiveness of using survey experiments to pre-test public health messages for pandemic responses. They found that pre-testing can increase campaign impact, especially for well-funded campaigns, by identifying the most effective messages. Learn more about the research. (28 October 2024)

• Kate Laffan and Emma Howard explored UK meat eaters' responses to requests for vegetarian meals across different social settings. Perceptions varied based on the requester's dietary identity (vegetarian or meat restrictor) and cited motives (health, environmental, or none). Environmental motives were perceived more negatively, while health motives were seen positively, with reactions differing by respondents' attachment to meat. Read the paper. (28 October 2024)

• Michael Muthukrishna has been awarded a 2024 Philip Leverhulme Prize in the Psychology category for his work on cultural transmission and evolution. These prizes recognise and celebrate the achievements of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future careers are exceptionally promising. Congratulations, Michael! Read an LSE news article about the prize. Visit the Leverhulme prize page. (18 October 2024)

• Leonhard Lades and Liam Delaney introduce a survey method to measure self-control failures in everyday life, in order to identify their welfare costs in terms of associations with experienced subjective well-being. The authors discuss implications for behavioural welfare economics and behavioural public policy. Read the paper. (14 October 2024)

• The 2024 Khazanah Megatrends Forum (KMF) centred around ideas from Michael Muthukrishna's book A Theory of Everyone, and Michael gave the keynote address at the event. Learn more about KMF 2024 and the links to Michael's work. (14 October 2024)

• Benno Guenther, Matteo M. Galizzi and Jet G. Sanders introduce the Pandemic DOSPERT (PDOSPERT), a new risk-taking scale specifically tailored for pandemic-related risk behaviours. Their findings indicate that that the PDOSPERT scale significantly improves predictions for pandemic-related risk behaviour as compared to the original DOSPERT. Read the paper. (7 October 2024)

• In an LSE Business Review blog post, Paul Dolan introduces the concept 'beliefism', and argues that we should refrain from surrounding ourselves only with people whose beliefs we agree with. Read the blog post. (4 October 2024)

• Ilka Gleibs discusses the importance of a social identity approach to crisis leadership in the context of global crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and emphasises the interconnected relationships between leaders and followers. Read the paper. (1 October 2024)

September 

• Jens Koed Madsen looks at how we can ‘inoculate’ against misinformation by teaching people about how it can be created and spread. He finds that for these techniques to be effective, people must believe that misinformation affects them and believe that the source of misinformation training is trustworthy. Read the blog. (24 September 2024)

• Drawing on a large body of empirical research, Saadi Lahlou new book Why People Do What They Do: And How to Get Them to Change shows that people’s behaviour is predictable and shaped by ‘installations’ combining three sets of factors: what is technically possible (affordances of the environment), what people are able to do (embodied competences), and what monitors and controls behaviour (social regulation). Learn more about the book. (20 September 2024)

• A new paper by Alex Gillespie and co-authors illustrates how integrating big qualitative data analysis with qualitative analysis can enable researchers to see the micro within the macro, and vice versa. Read the paper. (18 September 2024)

• Kate Laffan and co-authors used the day reconstruction method to zoom on particular moments in everyday life in order to examine links between specific pro-environmental behaviours and different aspects of well-being. Results revealed generally positive associations, but also substantial variation. Learn more about the research. (16 September 2024)

• A recent paper, co-authored by Martin W. Bauer, investigated  whether, in the context of rising nationalism, drawing attention to national innovation strategies influences public health behaviours, such as vaccine uptake. Results showed no significant impact of national framing on vaccine willingness, even among those with nationalist or science-sceptical views, suggesting that public health authorities should be cautious with nationalist framing as it may be ineffective, or even counter-productive. Read the paper. (16 September 2024)

• Michael Muthukrishna spent part of the summer in Berlin to work on a joint project with Iyad Rahwan, the director of the Max Planck Center for Humans and Machines. This visit, which was funded by LSE's Global Research Fund, intended to kickstart a long-term collaboration on AI and human behaviour and provided time to work on a joint grant proposal. Learn more about Michael's visit. (11 September 2024)

• In an article for LSE Business Review, Dima Sayess, Ilona Sediha and Paul Dolan explore how policymakers can harness the power of storytelling to address today’s big issues. Read the article. (11 September 2024)

• Michael M. Prinzing and Kate Laffan investigated whether awareness of links between pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) and well-being can motivate sustainable lifestyle shifts in US adults. Messaging about PEB's well-being benefits improved attitudes and made individuals more persuasive in promoting sustainability. Read the paper. (11 September 2024)

• In his latest Psychology Today blog post, Saadi Lahlou considers the difference between goals and motives, and outlines why being aware of this difference is important when pursuing 'the good life'. Read the blog post. (4 September 2024)

August

• Jens Madsen and Lee de Wit argue that, rather than labelling people as irrational, psychologists and behavioural scientists should start from an assumption that humans are fundamentally reasonable. This will allow for the development of more effective and contextually relevant theories and interventions. Read the blog post. (29 August 2024)

• In a new blog series for Psychology Today, Saadi Lahlou writes about why people do what they do, and how we can encourage change. In the first post, Professor Lahlou considers how thinking about the similarities and differences between plants and humans can help us live a better life. Unlike plants, humans can move and choose an environment that we think will help us thrive. However, like plants, we can also adapt to our environment, which may sometimes be the better course. Read the article. (19 August 2024)

July

• Common sense is the endless frontier in the development of artificial intelligence, but what exactly is common sense, can we replicate it in algorithmic form, and if we can – should we? In this new book, Martin W. Bauer and Bernard Schiele, together with their contributors from a range of disciplines, analyse the nature of common sense, and the consequent challenges of incorporating into artificial intelligence models. More about the book. (22 July 2024)

• Hyper-realistic silicone masks are increasingly used for identity fraud, and new research co-authored by Jet Sanders investigated whether 'super-recognisers' (SRs) were better at detecting these masks than typical recognisers. SRs excelled in both covert and explicit detection tasks, and eye, mouth, and nose regions, were found to be particularly indicative of the presence of a mask. Access the paper. (16 July 2024)

• Pronoun use, especially “we”, plays an important role reflecting social identity and predicting leadership success in the political realm. Novel research by Robin Bachmann and Ilka Gleibs explored the evolution of We-language in the German parliament and its predictive capacity for political success. Using traditional We-counts in combination with new Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools, they found an upward trend of We-language in recent decades. Moreover, such usage predicted both next-term re-election and total re-elections into parliament. Read the paper. (15 July 2024)

• Paul Dolan and co-authors compared the efficacy of the Foundations app, a digital mental health intervention, compared to a waitlist control group in university students. They found that while well-being scores improved in both groups, improvements were significantly greater in the Foundations group after 4 weeks. Learn more about the research. (15 July 2024)

• Mistakes can be opportunities for learning and personal and professional growth. But for that to happen, employees need psychologically safe work environments. Jasmine Virhia and Grace Lordan write that, by fostering acceptance, respect, and open communication, organisations can unlock the full potential of their teams, enabling them to learn from their mistakes and engage in behaviours that drive collaboration and continuous improvement. Read the article in LSE Business Review. (1 July 2024)

June 

• Inoculation theory research offers a promising psychological ‘vaccination’ against misinformation. Expanding on the inoculation metaphor, this new paper by Alexandra Johnson and Jens Madsen introduces the concept of ‘inoculation hesitancy’ as a framework for exploring reluctance to engage with misinformation interventions. Read the paper in Royal Society Open Science. (26 June 2024)

• Umar Taj, Owain Service and Edward Gardiner are building the “behavioural AI” programme, initially to help call centre handlers be more empathetic when fielding calls. Over time, they believe the programme could evolve into a “large behavioural model” (LBM), with wider applications. Read more in LSE Business Review. (18 June 2024)

• The book Embodiment, Political Economy and Human Flourishing: An Embodied Cognition Approach to Economic Life, by Frédéric Basso and Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, presents embodied economics as a foundational alternative to behavioural economics and other projects integrating economics and psychology inspired by the computational paradigm. It argues that embodiment grounds and bounds market processes, and, more broadly, economic life, and reinstates Political Economy against economic orthodoxy. Learn more about the book. (18 June 2024)

• A new paper, co-authored by Christian Krekel, introduces the WELLBY, a new measure of social value and progress, which can contribute to the assessment of progress towards the wellbeing of the economy and steer towards activities with the most wellbeing per financial resources invested. Read the paper. (11 June 2024)
• Research co-authored by Elizabeth Stokoe used topic modelling to analyse the full text of all journal articles returned to the education subpanel of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF2021). The authors found that the topics which units wrote about explained 84.1 per cent of the variance in the scores they received from the expert panel. There were also strong associations between type of research and score, with interview-based work receiving lower scores than analyses of large-scale data. Read the article. (11 June 2024)

• Paul Dolan, Christian Krekel and Sarah Swanke propose a conceptual framework of 'affective paternalism', which explicitly accounts for the role of affect in paternalistic decision-making, identifying all entry points through which affect may create systematic deviations in decision outcomes. Read the paper. (11 June 2024)

• New research, co-authored by Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington and based on work with the Norwegian Twin Registry, reports that social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) have no shared environmental correlation with the attachment system (thus going against the prominent dual process model in political psychology), and have a genetic linkage to trust and altruism, suggesting these two basic social orientations are part of a ‘behavioural syndrome’ for navigating hierarchy. Read the paper in Behavior Genetics. (6 June 2024)

• Organisational culture plays a role in firm performance and can help improve employee satisfaction, engagement and commitment. But sometimes corporations can behave more like a cult, a phenomenon that can lead to employee exploitation and harmful or unethical behaviour. In an article for LSE Business Review, Teresa Almeida lists five signs to help you tell the difference between an organisation with a strong culture and one that is a bit too “cultish”. Read the blog post. (6 June 2024)

• Jens Madsen and colleagues evaluated the pedagogical impact of didactic classes, which are designed to enhance classroom interactivity, in an undergraduate cognitive psychology course. An external expert was invited to relate the course content to real-life problems. Students’ sense of understanding and their perspective in applying cognitive sciences to real-world problems significantly increased after the class. Read the paper. (4 June 2024)

• Writing in Nature Human Behaviour, Julia P. G. Jones and Ganga Shreedhar argue that causal inference is needed to understand the effectiveness of conservation efforts. Behavioural science plays a crucial role, and a focus on design over data, embracing mixed methods and support from funders will help to provide the evidence needed to reverse biodiversity loss. Read the article. (4 June 2024)

• Bankole Falade examined predictors of vaccine hesitancy in 40 countries in Africa. Using data from the 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor, results showed that perceptions of vaccine safety, importance and effectiveness differed based on language, trust in social actors, education levels, and perceptions of science as progress. Learn more about the research. (4 June 2024)

• In a recent episode of the talktank podcast, hosted by LSE SU Entrepreneurs, Michael Muthukrishna talks about how behavioural and psychological science, along with cultural factors and evolutionary theory, play pivotal roles in the level of innovation a society can achieve. Listen to the episode. (4 June 2024)

• Rachel Spicer and Michael Muthukrishna consider how improved methodologies and theory-driven approaches can better assess the role of culture in replicability and generalisability of psychological research. Read the paper.  (4 June 2024)

May

• We all want to live our happiest lives, but until now it has not been possible for governments to identify which policies will increase citizens' wellbeing the most. LSE researchers, including Christian Krekel of PBS,  working together with the UK government, are now aiming to change this. Learn more in LSE Research for the World. (23 May 2024)

• New research, co-authored by Kate Laffan, finds that people show a preference for homegrown renewable electricity, compared with electricity that is generated further afield. This is particularly true for people with strong place identity and green consumer values. Read the paper. (22 May 2024)

• Should policymaking assume humans are irrational? Using empirical, theoretical, and philosophical arguments, Jens Madsen and co-authors suggest a more useful frame is that human behaviour is reasonable. Read their arguments here. (22 May 2024)

• Traditionally, research into how organisational culture contributes to institutional failure has focused on causal factors, such as norms. How culture prevents such problems from being corrected is less well understood. A new paper by Julie Hald, Alex Gillespie and Tom Reader introduces a 'corrective culture' model to address institutional failures by focusing on problem detection, interpretation, and action. Learn more about the research. (21 May 2024)

• A new paper by Kate Laffan explores meat consumption in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Utilising nutritional surveys, Dr Laffan found that meal type, day of the week and location influence meat and red meat consumption, with variations across countries and genders, thus highlighting the value of targeted interventions. Read the paper. (16 May 2024)

• Our department has been ranked number 1 in the UK for psychology in the Complete University Guide subject league table for 2025. Learn more about the rankings. (15 May 2024)

• Ground-breaking research by Eric Schnell and Michael Muthukrishna disproves current thinking over how to achieve global collaboration. Using modelling, the authors show that people care more about immediate rewards than benefits that will come over time. This has important implications for issues that require large-scale cooperation, such as climate change. Read the paper in PNAS. Read an LSE news article about the research. (9 May 2024)

• A recent paper, co-authored by Paul Dolan, explored how patients' subjective wellbeing (SWB) was influenced by pre-treatment conditions and treatment experiences. They found anxiety, depression and mobility to be more significant predictors of SWB than treatment experiences. Read the paper in the Journal of Health Psychology. (9 May 2024)

• Michael Muthukrishna and Carl Falk have won the Canadian Psychological Association's Excellence in Quantitative Methods Research Award for their paper "Parsimony in model selection: Tools for assessing fit propensity". This annual award celebrates outstanding contributions to the field of psychology through research focusing on quantitative methods. Read the paper in Psychological Methods. Learn more about the research. (8 May 2024)

• Behavioural Economics and Policy for Pandemics is edited by Joan Costa-Font and Matteo M. Galizzi and includes contributions from world-class experts, many with links to LSE and PBS. The book examines the successes and failures of behavioural economics and policy in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and discusses learnings for how to address future pandemics. Learn more about the book. (7 May 2024)

April

• Laura M. Giurge and colleagues explored how employees can be encouraged to access mental health support in the workplace. Working with a large multinational company, the researchers ran a randomized controlled trial with 2,400 employees. They found that hearing about colleagues' mental health struggles increased uptake to an existing peer-to-peer support programme by eight per cent. Read about the research in HBR. (23 April 2024)

• Congratulations to PBS Undergraduate Programme Manager Martha Clarke who was commended for the ‘EDI Champion Award’ at the recent LSE VIP awards! The VIP Awards celebrate Professional Services staff who have shown outstanding contribution or commitment to the School. (23 April 2024)

• PhD student Heidi Zamzow uses behavioural interventions to support and strengthen regulatory and market mechanisms which facilitate more sustainable dietary norms. One of her projects involved working with the LSE catering team to try and encourage people to choose more low carbon food options in LSE’s catering outlets. Learn more about Heidi's research. (23 April 2024)

• The 2023/24 Human Development Report, issued by the United Nations Development Programme, includes a focus on cultural evolution and cooperation and cite a number of papers by Michael Muthukrishna. Read the report. (22 April 2024)

• Laura M. Giurge and co-authors examined conference calls made by CEOs to inform market participants about their companies’ prospects during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that the more 'human care statements' CEOs made, the better their companies fared on the stock markets during a downturn. This suggests that it can be beneficial for CEOs to go beyond mere financial information and show some humanity. Read the paper. (18 April 2024)

• In a new article for LSE Business Review, Paul Dolan and co-authors argue that when addressing behavioural biases, it is essential to consider the context in which they arise. They present the STEM (society, thoughts, emotions and motivation) framework, which encourages decision-makers to consider the biases and their solutions in ways that are fit for purpose. Read the article. (8 April 2024)

• Anna Bashkirova and Dario Krpan investigated the interplay between practitioner judgments and AI recommendations in mental health diagnostic decision-making. They found that psychologists were more likely to trust and accept AI recommendations when they aligned with their initial diagnoses and professional intuition. Read the paper.(8 April 2024)

March

• In a recent paper, Alex Gillespie discusses the complexities involved in conceptualising "otherness". He argues that Otherness is not ‘in’ the perspective of the other, but rather a two-sided relational quality that arises between the shifting perspectives of self and other. Learn more. (25 March 2024)

• Research co-authored by Jet G. Sanders investigated the impact of including self-administered lateral flow tests in COVID-19 testing policies. While changing test advice did not affect expected testing behaviour, self-test availability increased the timeliness of testing, the number of people testing as well as overall test strategy sensitivity, suggesting that they are a helpful tool during a pandemic. Access the paper. (25 March 2024)

• Ploutarchos Kourtidis, Barbara Fasolo and Matteo M. Galizzi explored whether communication strategies that targeted COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy had any spillover effects on public health behaviours. They did not find any evidence of spillover effects on intention to engage in protective, compliance or prosocial behaviours, suggesting that vaccination campaigns can be tailored to specific populations to increase uptake and compliance. Learn more about the research. (21 March 2024)

• A recent paper, co-authored by Thomas Curran, investigated links between perfectionism and suicide ideation through the Perfectionism Social Disconnection Model (PSDM) and the Existential Model of Perfectionism and Depressive Symptoms (EMPDS). The authors found that socially prescribed perfectionism indirectly predicted suicide ideation via difficulty accepting the past, and recommend that future research include suicide ideation in the PSDM and EMPDS. Read the paper. (21 March 2024)

• Research co-authored by Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington explored the genetic underpinnings of political attitudes in twins. Results indicate that the genetic foundations of ideological traits and political attitudes are largely non-overlapping with the genetic foundations of Big Five personality traits. Read the paper in the Journal of Personality. (21 March 2024)

• Working mothers can struggle to find a balance between their identities as mothers and their identities as professional women. New research by Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo explores these tensions and outlines how we can provide better support. Read the article in the Research for the World magazine. (20 March 2024)

• In a new blog post, Alex Gillespie, Vlad Glăveanu and Constance de Saint Laurent discuss their new book, Pragmatism and Methodology. The book argues for a new methodological pragmatism in social science research to address contemporary challenges. Methodological pragmatism is presented as an inclusive approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to tackle complex challenges effectively, encouraging researchers to think creatively about methodology. Read the blog post. (5 March 2024)

• In a recent post for the LSE Impact Blog, Elizabeth Stokoe and co-authors summarise the findings from their recent research into what constitutes a successful REF Environment Statement. They highlight eight qualities that they found to be correlated with high-scoring statements in the 2021 REF. Read the blog post. Read the research paper. (5 March 2024)

• Elizabeth Stokoe and colleagues analysed delegate interactions in the "parallel chat" function during an online conference. They used conversation analytic methods and developed a coding scheme. In addition to positive assessments and appreciations, the authors found evidence of extensive engagement between participants and of 'learning moments'. They argue that analysing actual participation and its content, rather than relying only on post-hoc reports and surveys, can provide a better understanding of participation and engagment during online events. Read the paper. (4 March 2024)

February

• A new paper, co-authored by Matteo M. Galizzi, investigated which non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) people in six European countries believed were most effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Mask-wearing and outdoor meetings were perceived to reduce risk the most, whereas physical distancing, meeting duration and meeting size were thought to be least effective. Read the paper in Nature Scientific Reports. (29 February 2024)

• A recent study, co-authored by Thomas Curran, evaluated a two-factor model of perfectionism in sport, with perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns as the two higher-order dimensions. Participants were athletes from community and university sports clubs in the UK. The two-factor model was found to provide a better fit than when various contentious subscales were included, and when compared with unidimensional models. More information about the study. (29 February 2024)

• In a paper in Behavioural Public Policy, Ganga Shreedhar, Cahal Moran and Stuart Mills coin the term 'brown sludge' to describe 'multi-level impediments to pro-environmental behaviour change'. They note that brown sludge can occur at the individual, social, institutional and societal levels, and can include examples such as confusing eco-information, delay and disinformation campaigns, as well as complicated systems and infrastructure. Read the paper. (27 February 2024)

• Luc Schneider, Aleksandar Matic, Teodora Sandra Buda and Paul Dolan investigated how personality moderates the relationship between thoughts and well-being. They found that the relationship between thoughts and experiences of happiness and worthwhileness is specific to each individual, but that little of these differences can be explained by personality traits as measured by the Big Five. Read the paper in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences. (21 February 2024)

• New research, co-authored by Ganga Shreedhar, explored British news coverage of climate actions over a 7 month period. The authors found that conservative publications cover climate actions more unfavorably and more inaccurately than other publications. Legal actions are generally covered more favorably than illegal ones in both conservative and non-conservative outlets and receive more coverage. Read the paper. (20 February 2024)

• Ganga Shreedhar, Anandita Sabherwal and Ricardo Maldonado explored whether climate fiction, or cli-fi, increased people’s support for pro-climate initiatives. In addition to comparing cli-fi to fact-text, they compared different media formats of cli-fi (text, audio and film) and found that cli-fi videos were most effective in increasing pro-environmental charitable donations, as well as self-reported feelings of happiness, hope, and inspiration. Learn more about the research. (20 February 2024)

• Elizabeth Stokoe and colleagues analysed 1888 disciplinary ‘unit-level’ environment statements from the 2021 'REF' (Research Excellence Framework). They were able to identify eight topics that collectively predicted almost 60% of the variance in units' environment scores. This indicates that the way in which these  statements are written significantly contributes to the perceived quality of a unit’s research environment. Read the paper. (19 February 2024)

• A new paper, co-authored by Maxi Heitmayer and Paulius Yamin-Slotkus, explored prevalence and attitudes towards psychological and/or economic intimate partner violence (PE-IPV) in Lithuania. The research found that almost 50% of women in Lithuania had experienced PE-IPV, and that mental health conditions were more common in this group. However, only one tenth of survivors had approached mental health services for support. Read the paper. (13 February 2024)

• Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir and Ilka Gleibs explored how group memberships, such as religious identity, contribute to individual helping responses through perceived similarity in the context of a refugee emergency. They found that while perceived similarity, political support and intention to help were affected, charitable donation was not. Read the paper in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. (8 February 2024)
• New research, co-authored by Christian Krekel, explored associations between episodic memory, working memory and fluid intelligence with urban density among older adults in Berlin. The authors found higher density of urban fabric to be correlated with higher levels of working memory and fluid intelligence. Read the paper. (5 February 2024)
• In a world where we seem to be surrounded by conflict, Michael Muthukrishna explores what the science of cooperation can teach us about getting along. Read Michael's article in TIME. (5 February 2024)
• In a new article for the LSE Politics and Policy blog, Ganga Shreedhar and Cahal Moran discuss optimism bias in the context of the HS2 project, and provide some suggestions for how this can be managed in government decision making. Read the blog post.(5 February 2024)
• A new paper, co-authored by Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, examines both the “internal” aspects of crowdsourcing research practices, such as data quality issues, reporting transparency, and fair compensation, and the “external” aspects, in terms of how the widespread use of crowdsourcing data collection shapes the nature of scientific communities and our society in general. Read the paper. (5 February)
• In a recent post for LSE's International Development blog, Bankole Falade and Grace Yuehan Wang explore China's involvement in the African energy market through the lens of African newspapers. They conlude that these sources provide a more nuanced understanding of China's contributions, compared with the limited coverage in mainstream international media. Read the blog post. (5 February 2024)
• In the latest instalment of our Spotlight series, we spoke to Dario Krpan about, among other things, his interest in transformative behavioural change and some of the challenges associated with research in this area, his favourite project to date, and what he thinks are the best and worst things about being an academic. Read the interview with Dario. (1 February 2024)

January

• Paul Dolan was interviewed in The Independent about falling marriage rates. Paul talked about why having close relationships is more important for wellbeing than marriage itself, and why men tend to benefit more from being married than women. Read the article in The Independent. (31 January 2024)

• A recent paper, co-authored by Saadi Lahlou, explored how some personal characteristics such as BMI, bariatric surgery, comorbidities, or age, and mediating factors (eg subjective health) impacted state anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. The sample consisted of 532 French women. Learn more about the research. (30 January 2024)

• Research by Lucía Macchia, Liam Delaney and Michael Daly explores global pain levels before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Gallup data from over half a million people from 146 countries, the authors do not find a significant change in the percentage of people in pain during the pandemic. Read the paper. (30 January 2024)

• Taking a pragmatist approach to methods and methodology that fosters meaningful, impactful, and ethical research, this book, co-authored by Alex Gillespie, rises to the challenge of today's data revolution. It shows how pragmatism can turn challenges, such as the abundance and accumulation of big qualitative data, into opportunities. The authors summarize the pragmatist approach to different aspects of research, from epistemology, theory, and questions to ethics, as well as data collection and analysis. Learn more about the book. (29 January 2024)
  

• In an interview in LSE Business Review, Elizabeth Stokoe discussed  conversation analysis; what it entails and how it can help improve communication across a range of settings, from chatbots to medicine. Read the interview. (29 January 2024)

• A new paper, co-authored by Jens Madsen, presents a computational model of fisher agents’ decision-making, which includes mechanisms for learning, social comparisons, and thresholds for economic satisfaction. The model can thus provide an insight into how fishers may respond to changes in policy, economic conditions or social pressures. Read the paper. (25 January 2024)

• Robots are becoming increasingly common across all walks of life, and if we are to regulate them effectively, we must first understand their impact on people. Dario Krpan has been researching how we think, feel and act towards these devices.  Read about the research in LSE Research for the World. (24 January 2024)

• With meat-based diets contributing significantly to climate change, we need to limit meat consumption. Work by PBS Visiting Fellow Sanchayan Banerjee explores how policies like nudging and nudge+ could encourage more sustainable choices. Read the LSE Research for the World article. (24 January 2024)

• New research, co-authored by Jens Madsen, proposes two approaches for use in “data-limited” fisheries, where information doesn’t allow precise determination of fish stock status and where subsequent management responses are thus limited: rejection sampling and agent-based models. Read the paper. (19 January 2024)

• In a recent article in Business & Society, Laura M. Giurge and colleagues explore the topic of 'time theft'. They argue that time theft, ie, "the act of causing others to lose their time without adequate cause, compensation, or consent", perpetuate and exacerbate socioeconomic inequality. The authors offer some practical suggestions for how time theft can be addressed at a societal level.  Read the article. (19 January 2024)

• PBS Professor Elizabeth Stokoe has been appointed to the newly created role of Academic Director of Impact at LSE. In this role, Professor Stokoe will work closely with Vice President and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) Professor Susana Mourato, leading on developing an enhanced impact and engagement culture across our School. Congratulations Liz! (19 January 2024)

• A recent issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, which focuses on Organizational Risk and the Covid-19 pandemic, was guest edited by Tom Reader and colleagues. The issue included an article co-written by Tom entitled "Risk, the COVID-19 pandemic, and organisations: Extending, repurposing, and developing theory". Access the special issue here. (18 January 2024)

• PBS Research Officer Bankole Falade has been awarded sub-grant by the International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society (INSBS) for a study titled: "African publics’ perceptions of science and spirituality post COVID-19 pandemic". The main grant is from the Templeton Religion Trust. This mixed methods study uses data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2018 and 2020, which measured trust in science and belief across Africa before and after the pandemic, and hybrid interviews with collaborators in Ghana, South Africa and Kenya. (18 January 2024)

• PBS academics Christian Krekel and Kate Laffan have created a unique new course on Happiness and Policy for LSE Summer School 2024. This course caters to the increasing demand by governments and organisations in all sectors for analysts with a rigorous training in wellbeing. It's the first comprehensive Summer School training in the science of wellbeing and its application to policy design, appraisal, and evaluation. Learn more about the course. (10 January 2024)

December 

• Our department was very well represented at the LSE Excellence in Education awards ceremony. These awards are made to staff who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments. Huge congratulations to all PBS winners! Learn more about the Excellence in Education awards. (7 December 2023)
• A new paper by Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo and colleagues explored the identity changes experienced by professional women when they become mothers. Interviews with 80 individual mothers revealed the emergence of two coexisting identity narratives; one that understands motherhood as a linear process, and one that challenges this linear and finite view by highlighting the transition to motherhood as a continuous, liminoid, and never-ending process. Read the paper. (5 December 2023)
• A recent working paper by Christian Krekel, Johannes Rode and Alexander Roth explored whether wind turbines impact the health of nearby residents negatively. Linking longitudinal household panel data to wind turbines in Germany, they find no evidence of negative effects on general, mental or physical health. Read the working paper. (5 December 2023)
• Liam Delaney, Atrina Oraee and Jet G. Sanders have contributed a chapter on Behavioural science: ethics, expertise and systemic risk in the recently published Research Handbook on Nudges and Society, edited by Cass R. Sunstein and Lucia A. Reisch. Access the book. (5 December 2023)
• In a new podcast episode for the LSE Higher Education Blog, Dallas O'Dell talks to Fred Basso and Emma Garnett about degrowth, and whether academics working fewer hours might help the planet. Listen to the podcast. (1 December 2023)

November 

• Gym memberships, free lunches and meditation apps are not the key to happiness in the workplace. Instead, people want work-life balance and decent pay, finds new research by Jasmine Virhia and Grace Lordan. The researchers interviewed 100 people across banking, finance and professional services in the UK and created the Beyond Workplace Wellbeing Framework to advise employers. Learn more about the research. (27 November 2023)
• A new conceptual paper co-authored by Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo explores and theorizes family entrepreneuring. It offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring. Read the paper. (21 November 2023)
• In the latest issue of LSE's Research for the World magazine, Christian Krekel talked about his research with George MacKerron. Asking people to rate their hedonic experiences in real time (using a mobile phone app), the resarchers were able to calculate the Value of Time for a wide range of common activities such as walking, commuting and socialising. Read the Research for the World article. (21 November 2023)
• Jens Madsen, together with Lee de Wit from Cambridge University, has been awarded a significant grant from the prestigious Templeton World Charity Foundation to study perceptions of source independence and polarisation. (8 November 2023)
• In his new podcast series Get Happier, Paul Dolan seeks to explain what the science of happiness tells us about how to be happy. He guides the listener through the evidence on the causes and consequences of happiness to help you navigate your own way towards being happier. Listen to the podcast. (1 November 2023)
• Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and robots hold the potential to help people change their behaviour for the better. In a new post for LSE Business Review, Dario Krpan, Fatima Koaik, Pujen Shrestha and Robin Schnider envision a future in which policymakers use technological interventions via various personal devices and appliances, from virtual reality glasses to IoT devices. Read the blog. (1 November 2023)

October 

• Work Force, a new podcast series by Grace Lordan, unravels the behavioural science behind things that happen in the workplace that impact your success and wellbeing, blending academic evidence with real life experiences. Listen to the podcast. (31 October 2023)
• Elizabeth Stokoe recently attended the Chatbot Summit 2023, where she was interviewed for the CoinGeek podcast about why her research field of conversation analysis is important for chatbot and conversation design. Watch the interview. (30 October 2023)
• Research by Sanchayan Banerjee, Matteo M. Galizzi, Peter John and Susana Mourato explored dietary choices in an online experiment with more than 3,000 UK participants. They found that all behavioural interventions significantly promoted sustainable dietary intentions compared with the control group, thus reaffirming the credibility of behaviour change strategies to mitigate carbon emissions from food consumption. Read the paper. (16 October 2023) 
• In an ambitious new paper, Dario Krpan, Jonathan E. Booth and Andreea Damien investigated people's psychological reactions to robots. Using a data-driven approach that combined qualitative and quantitative techniques, they conducted seven studies, sampling more than 9,000 individuals. Read the paper. Read a blog post about the research. (3 October 2023)
• PhD candidate Alexandra Kirienko and Assistant Professor Laura Giurge were recently runners up in the Future of Work Global Research Prize for their research project “Is Hybrid Work the Future of Work? Examining Outcomes of Different Hybrid Work Arrangements on Employee Well-Being and Productivity”. Congratulations, Alexandra and Laura! Read more. (2 October 2023)

September 

• Michael Muthukrishna's book, A Theory of Everyone, was published on 28 September 2023. The book draws on  research from across the sciences, humanities, and the emerging field of cultural evolution to paint a panoramic picture of who we are and what exactly makes human beings different from all other forms of life on the planet. Find out more. (28 September 2023)
• Michael Muthukrishna argues in The Guardian that our education system needs to a radical rethink in order to keep up with a rapidly evolving world. He cites the example of Estonia, where innovative teaching methods have led the country to top the OECD's Pisa tables in maths, reading and science. Read the article. (25 September 2023)
• New research by Patrick McGovern, Sandra Obradovic and Martin Bauer explored the framing and salience of income inequality across selected UK and US print media from 1990 to 2015. Read the paper. (19 September 2023)
• We are exceptionally proud to have been rated the best university in the UK for psychology in The Times and Sunday Times UK University Rankings 2024. LSE was ranked the fourth best university overall. Read more here. (18 September 2023)
• Thomas Curran appeared on the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast, talking to host Steven Levitt about perfectionism. He explained how the drive to be perfect is harming education, the economy, and our mental health. Listen now. (15 September 2023)
• Research co-authored by Professor Elizabeth Stokoe used conversation analysis to explore how examiners reach joint decisions when grading oral examinations. The authors found that proposing and deciding grades involved a stepwise calibration through which examiners adjusted their individual positions. Read the paper. (12 September 2023)
• A paper, co-authored by Dr Laura Guirge, explored people's reactions to positive bias. Across seven studies, the authors found that when a victim was made salient, beneficiaries of bias were more likely to recognise and condemn positive bias, and to act to correct it. Access the paper here. (11 September 2023)

August 

• Dr Thomas Curran recently appeared on Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow's podcast, where he talked about the negative impact of perfectionism on mental health. Tom and Gwyneth discussed why perfectionism is on the rise, and how we can learn to escape the perfection trap in order to be happier. Listen to the episode. (31 August 2023)
• While the A.I revolution will undoubtedly lead to a large number of jobs disappearing, roles that require abstract thinking and interpersonal skills are less likely to be affected, writes Grace Lordan in Fortune. Statistics show that women are more likely to gravitate towards jobs where such 'soft' skills are required. As a result, we may see more women in prominent positions in business. Read the article. (29 August 2023)
• A study by Nitish Upadhyaya and Matteo Galizzi explored reciprocity in human-bot interactions. In an online experiment using a well-establised Trust Game, they found that people were less likely to recipricate when interacting with bots than with humans. Read the paper. (28 August 2023)
• A discussion paper by Kristen Cooper, Mark Fabian and Chris Krekel considers new approaches to measuring welfare, beyond traditional revealed preference methods.  Read the paper. (24 August 2023)
• A study by Liam Delaney, Lucie Martin and Orla Doyle investigated the time and well-being costs of administrative burdens across ten domains. The authors found that disadvantaged groups, e.g. people with poor health and low financial well-being, experienced disproportionately higher well-being costs compared to their better-off peers. Read the full paper. (24 August 2023)
• We are delighted to have Professor Jeremy Ginges join our department. Jeremy's research focuses on two related problems: how do humans decide whether to cooperate across cultural boundaries, and why do people sacrifice everything (their own lives, the lives of loved ones) for an abstract cause like nation or god? His work has been published in renowned publications and covered extensively in the popular press. It has also been used in policy briefings in the UK and US. View Jeremy's profile. (23 August 2023)
• Can we inoculate people against polarising social media content? A recent paper, co-autored by Jens Madsen, explored whether psychological resistance against polarising online content could be conferred and found some evidence that to support this idea. Read the paper. (22 August 2023)
• Research by Paul Dolan, Cahal Moran and Ingo Outes found that people who had two children of the same sex were more likely to have a third child (quickly), indicating a desire for a child of the opposite sex. Moreover, having three children of the same sex negatively affected life satisfaction. This effect was entirely driven by mothers who had three daughters. Read the full paper. (2 August 2023)

July 

• Grace Lordan wrote in the Financial Times about the evolution of bad bosses. While the old-fashioned bully boss is no longer as common, a new type of persona has emerged. This new type of boss appears empathetic, but uses subtle forms of mistreatment towards colleagues that they do not rate. These forms of harassment are more difficult to spot and less likely to be taken seriously by HR. Read the article here. (31 July 2023)
• Research by Christian Krekel and George MacKerron measured people's hedonic experiences in real-time to value time. They used data collected through a smartphone app, which measured people's momentary feelings and activities as they went about their daily lives.Read the CEP discussion paper here. (26 July 2023)
• New research by Bogdana Humă and Elizabeth Stokoe investigated Business-to-Business "cold" sales calls. Using discursive psychology and conversation analysis, they identify two practices; “blocks”, which close down the ongoing action, and “stalls”, which slow down the progress of the attempted sale. Read the paper. (24 July 2023)
• Elizabeth Stokoe and colleagues analysed the use of conversational user interfaces (CUIs) and smart home systems as assistive technologies for elderly and disabled people. Access the full paper. (19 July 2023)
• Using conversation analysis, Elizabeth Stokoe and Rein Ove Sikveland explored how police negotiators offered “help” to suicidal persons in crisis. They found that when negotiators explicitly used the word "help", the person in crisis was more likely to resist assistance. However, when negotiators reframed their proposal to e.g. "sort it out", they were met with weaker forms or resistance. Read the paper. (12 July 2023)

June

• Research by Georgios Melios, Kate Laffan, Laura Kudrna and Paul Dolan explored the relative importance of individual- and country-level factors in predicting both evaluative and experiential low subjective wellbeing (SWB). Read the full paper. (27 June 2023)
• Dimitris Thomopoulos, EDI Officer and Executive Officer to PBS Head of Department, was a runner-up in the recent LSE VIP Awards, EDI Champions category.  The VIP Awards are given to Professional Services staff who have shown outstanding contribution or commitment to the School. Congratulations Dimitris! (22 June 2023)
• Research by Kate Laffan, Leonhard Lades and Liam Delaney explored the situational correlates of intention-behaviour gaps in meat consumption. They found that hedonic consumption was particularly predictive of intention-behaviour gaps, and thus suggest that interventions should target these situations in particular. Read the full paper. (19 June 2023)
• New research by Kate Laffan and Pablo Navarrete Hernandez, published in Nature Scientific Reports, investigates the impact of incorporating small‑scale green infrastructure into urban streetscapes on residents' affective perceptions. Read the full article. (15 June 2023)
• Why is change so hard? People’s habits die hard and many seemingly reasonable change interventions have little or no effect. If those who propose changes sit behind their desks, they will find it hard to understand the lived realities of the people who would be the target of the interventions. Dr Jens Madsen argues that, to avoid failure, proponents must be humble, listen to each other and engage with stakeholders in the target communities. Read the full blog post. (8 June 2023)
• New research by Laura Fonseca and Sandra Jovchelovitch, utilising longitudinal qualitative data, investigates encounters between former guerrilla members and urban university students in a community-based educational space in rural Colombia. Read the full paper here. (7 June 2023)
• Michael Muthukrishna was recently awarded the Human Behavior and Evolution Society's (HBES) Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution, as well as the HBES Rising Star Award, which is presented to outstanding HBES members in the earliest stages of their research careers post-PhD. Visit HBES website. (6 June 2023)
• 'The Perfection Trap' by Thomas Curran was published on 1 June 2023. The book discusses the dangers of perfectionism, why it's rising and how it can stand in the way of happiness, health and success. More information about the book. (1 June 2023)

May 

• Thomas Curran, author of the The Perfection Trap, was interviewed by The Times about the dangers of perfectionism to our health. Thomas talked about how we can learn to accept that 'good enough' is good enough, and how to raise non-perfectionist children. Read the full article here. (27 May 2023)
• Kate Laffan spoke to the UN's One Planet Network about how behavioural science can be used to map people's usage of plastic products, and to identify contextual barriers to opting for alternatives. Read the full article. (24 May 2023)
• How did humans become distinctively smarter than other animals? Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich consider how larger, more diverse and optimally interconnected networks have worked not only to aid innovation, but to making us individually "smarter". Read the full paper here. (24 May 2023)
• The pressure of the after-hours email is one felt by many, so how can we ensure a positive work-life balance when our phones so easily connect us to the workplace at all times? Laura Giurge, who combines management theory and real-world insights to study emerging challenges in the workplace, has some ideas. Read more in this LSE Research for the World article. (24 May 2023)
• PBS teacher Barry Rogers was Highly Commended in the Welfare and Pastoral Support category at the recent LSE Students' Union Teaching Awards. Congratulations Barry! More information here. (24 May 2023)
• Life satisfaction is positively correlated with adherence to preventative health behaviours during Covid-19 lockdowns, finds new research by Christian Krekel, Sarah Swanke, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Daisy Fancourt. Read the full paper. (18 May 2023)
• Research by Juliet Hodges, Lilia Stoyanova and Matteo Galizzi explored whether framing of end-of-life preferences impacted decision making, and whether this was affected by exposure to information about the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the paper. (18 May 2023)
• Professor Elizabeth Stokoe recently gave the National Centre for Research Methods annual lecture. Professor Stokoe's talk, 'A Method in Search of a Problem: The Power of Conversation Analysis', showed how conversation analysis can be used to identify, describe and share effective communication practices, as well as challenge common communication myths and expose inequalities. Watch a recording of the lecture here. (15 May 2023)
• Congratulations to PBS teachers Deema Awad, Atrina Oraee and Anandita Sabherwal, who were awarded the LSE Class Teacher Awards. These awards are given to Graduate Teaching Assistants, Teaching Fellows and Guest Teachers in recognition of their very special contribution to teaching at LSE. Nils Mallock and Giulia Serino were highly commended. More information here. (11 May 2023)
• Professor Saadi Lahlou was recently elected to the prestigious Academia Europaea in the area of Social Psychology: Social Change and Social Thought. Congratulations Saadi! More details here. (10 May 2023)
• In a new paper, published in Psychological Inquiry, Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington and Dr Lotte Thomsen frame the question of political polarisation in terms of competing views of which relational model (a la Alan Fiske) should apply to society. Read the full article. (8 May 2023)

April

• In a new paper in The Lancet, Dr Dario Krpan and Dr Fred Basso propose a framework which rearranges the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into five main categories to which behavioural and social scientists can relate: wellbeing, inclusivity, sufficiency, empowerment, and resilience (WISER). Read the full paper. (18 April 2023)
• PBS faculty members Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington and Dr Thomas Curran were recently promoted to Associate Professors - congratulations! (13 April 2023)
• In an innovative piece of research, Amanda Henwood, Mike Rinck and Dario Krpan investigated how people's natural tendencies to either approach or avoid different stimuli (in this case sad/happy faces and social scenes) were impacted by reduced social interactions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Read the full article. (13 April 2023)
• Using conversation analysis, Professor Elizabeth Stokoe and Dr Emma Richardson explored emergency calls made to a UK police service relating to cases of potential domestic violence. Their findings have implications for how call-takers may be trained to recognise and act on ambiguous communications in cases of domestic violence. Read the full article. (3 April 2023)

March 

• In a new paper, Dr Kate Laffan, Dr Leonhard Lades and Professor Liam Delaney examined the intention behaviour gaps in pro-environmental behaviours. Shedding light on the situations in which people fail to enact their good intentions can help inform strategies to encourage them to follow through, for example by highlighting external constraints that get in peoples’ way that need to be addressed for behaviour change to happen. Read the full article. (23 March 2023)
• Mathematics Anxiety may sound like a trivial issue once school exams are over, but, argues Meena Mehta Kotecha, it has far-reaching consequences for both individuals and society. Her research explores its impact and identifies ways educators can help reduce unfavourable narratives about mathematics. Read the full article. (23 March 2023)
• Celestin Okorji, Ilka Gleibs and Simon Howard recently published a paper on their experiments relating to whether unemployed people are less likely to receive a callback when they apply for a job than employed candidates.  The full article is available at Plos One. (13 March 2023)
• Ranu Sinha and Jens Koed Madsen published a piece which discusses the driving behaviors among farmers and fishers. The article identifies both psychological and economic drivers for human behaviour. Read the full article. (9 March 2023)
• Saadi Lahlou was elected to the French Academy of Technologie. Each year, the Academy of Technology recruits new members to expand or deepen its field of expertise, reflection and action, as part of a demanding selection procedure. Learn more. (7 March 2023)
• In a new systematic review, Alex Goddard and Professor Alex Gillespie identify and evaluate 123 Textual Indicators of Deliberative dialogue (TIDDs) for measuring the quality of online dialogue under a deliberative model. Read the full article. (6 March 2023)
• A recent study by Juliana Prelez, Feiyang Wang and Ganga Shreedhar provides experimental evidence that only "co-benefits framing" had a higher significance when related to food waste. Read the full article via LSE Research Online. (1 March 2023)

February

• A special issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology, edited by two former PBS PhD students, Clare Coultas and Geetha Reddy, on ways how social psychology remains to be complicit in "perpetuating uncertainty" among individuals. Read the full article. (20 February 2023)

January 

• A new paper by Dr Michael Muthukrishna and Robin Schimmelpfennig proposes cultural evolution as a framework for addressing some of the contextual challenges faced by behavioural science. Read the full paper. (24 January 2023)

December

• How often do you scroll through your smartphone while also watching TV or check your notifications while working on your computer? Sixty per cent of the time we use an electronic device, we are using at least one other device at the same time. This is according to new research by Dr Maxi Heitmayer. Read the LSE news story. The full paper is available here. (8 December 2022)

November 

• We interviewed Dr Jens Koed Madsen about his research looking at information, disinformation and social networks for the latest in our Spotlight interview series. Read it here. (30 November 2022)
• "Firms that demand their employees are in the office for no reason will lose out on diverse talent pools." Dr Grace Lordan comments in The Times on her new research with Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF). Read it here. (28 November 2022)
• Faculty and Professional Services Staff from PBS were awarded at the LSE Excellence in Education Awards. The awards are designed to support the School’s aspiration of creating ‘a culture where excellence in teaching is valued and rewarded on a level with excellence in research’. See the full list of winners for 2022 and 2021 on the LSE website. (15 November 2022)
• Professor Alex Gillespie and Dr Tom Reader presented their latest research exploring online patient feedback as a “safety valve” for concerns about healthcare services. The research was published ealier this year 2022 in Risk Analysis and featured as a news story for LSE. (10 November 2022)

October

• For decades, companies have fought hard to retain customers, pushing the ‘customer is always right’ mantra to its limits. Staff shortages and the need to cut costs during the pandemic have challenged this approach, writes LSE Visiting Professor Ben Voyer. Read the article in Forbes here. (21 October 2022)
• In a short film for LSE, Dr Michael Muthukrishna explains how social fractures are exacerbated by crisis, and suggests policymaking interventions to alleviate the stressors and tensions felt by many in society today. Watch on Instagram. (21 October 2022) 
• Professor Saadi Lahlou has been awarded the Gary Lilien ISMS-MSI-EMAC Practice Prize as co-author of the work “Effect of front-of-pack labels on the nutritional quality of supermarket food purchases”. The work reported the results of a large-scale randomized controlled trial conducted by a multidisciplinary research team at the request of the French Government. Read more about the award here and find the paper here. (19 October 2022)
• Dr Grace Lordan spoke to The Leader podcast on what the UK Government's budget plans, and the fallout from the mini-Budget, mean for the pound in people's pocket this winter. Listen to the podcast and the article via the Evening Standard here. (11 October 2022)
• PhD candidate Alexandra Kirienko discussed her research which explores employee wellbeing and hybrid working, and finding the best ways for companies to make meaningful structural changes. Read the interview in full here. (6 October 2022)
• Dr Ganga Shreedhar joined a discussion on the dangers of greenwashing, what it’s like to witness an environmental catastrophe and how we can change our behaviour to benefit the planet. Listen to the LSE iQ podcast via LSE Player here. (5 October 2022)
• New research by Heidi Zamzow and Dr Frederic Basso, investigates how ethical framing influences consumer choice in the dairy industry. The authors found – in an online experiment of 267 participants - that information about the dairy company’s environmental practices influenced perceptions of their animal welfare practices and to what degree they would recommend the brand: a ‘humane halo’ effect. The paper is available here. (4 October 2022)
• Dr Laura Giurge commented on the growing popularity of non-linear workdays that have stemmed from the pandemic. Read the article in full on BBC Work-Life. (4 October 2022)

September

• New research, co-authored by Jet G. Sanders, suggests that patients are more likely to attend medical appointments scheduled for later in the week, with important implications for improving attendance in healthcare settings. A weekday intervention to reduce missed appointments is available to read at PLOS ONE. (30 September 2022)
• Dr Thomas Curran spoke to The Wall Street Journal on rising levels of perfectionism for an article on embracing mediocrity. Read the article in WSJ here. (12 September)
• PhD student Daniele Pollicino spoke to Ecolo about his research into sustainable food behaviours. Read it here (in Italian). (9 September)
• "The metaverse and metatech can only exist for as long as they address a genuine consumer need," says Visiting Professor Ben Voyer in his first article as Contributor for Forbes. Read the article here. (6 September 2022)

August

• Measuring organisational culture is important for detecting the values and practices that increase organisational risk. In a new research article, Dr Tom Reader and Professor Alex Gillespie explore unobtrusive indicators of culture (UICs) - a single measure of organisational culture drawn from data collected without engaging employees - drawn from different data sources, across 312 large European companies. Read the article in Journal of Risk Research here. (19 August 2022)
• Online patient feedback may help hospitals in the UK to improve patient safety and reduce mortality rates, suggests a new paper from Professor Alex Gillespie and Dr Tom Reader, published in Risk Analysis. Read the news story about this research via LSE News here. (10 August 2022)
• Michael Muthukrishna spoke to The Guardian on the rise in aggressive behaviours in the UK.  Read the article in full here.  (4 August 2022)

July

• In a new report highlighting the psychological impact of class-based inequalities and discrimination, the British Psychological Society (BPS) argues that to truly ‘level up’ and tackle the widening social mobility gap, social class should be protected under the Equalities Act. Co-authored by LSE's Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington. Read more via the BPS. (21 July 2022)
• Grace Lordan discusses why ending favouritism is the key to building a diverse workforce, for the Financial Times. Read it here. (21 July 2022)
• Michael Muthukrishna spoke to New Scientist on an article exploring the historical links between epidemics and social transformations. Muthukrishna explains that the type of shock experienced as a result of an epidemic can cause constellations of ideological "mutations", the most successful of which filter through social networks, becoming more established. The article is available (full access available via subscription) on New Scientist. (18 July 2022)
• New research suggests that stronger beliefs in COVID-19 science increase compliance and reduce trust in conspiracy theories. When beliefs in COVID-19 science become convictions, social trust and cohesion may suffer. Access 'The dark side of belief in Covid-19 scientists and scientific evidence' here. Authors Paul Dolan and Maja Grasso explore the implications of this research for the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. Read it here. (8 July 2022)
• The Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science is delighted to have received a 100% Agree score for ‘Overall satisfaction’ for our undergraduate BSc Psychological and Behavioural Science programme in the 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) - feedback given directly by students on the programme. More about the NSS 2022 results can be found on the Office for Students website here. (7 July 2022)
• Employees feel they need to be seen to be working longer hours to do well but this out of step with the shift in employees seeking more flexibility, not been matched in the way employers assess performance. Dr Laura M. Giurge spoke to BBC Worklife. Read the article in full here. (6 July 2022)
• A new paper, led by Professor Saadi Lahlou, introduces a Mutlilayered Installation Design (MID) method to understand complex social environments such as video conferencing, and offers directions for design. Available in Social Sciences and Humanities Open. (5 July 2022)

June

• Professor Elizabeth Stokoe was appointed to the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, starting in January 2023. Elizabeth’s research focusses on social interaction across settings and contexts from first dates to healthcare and medicine and from crisis negotiation to conversational technologies. (27 June 2022)
• The book 'Public Communication of Research Universities 'Arms Race' for Visibility or Science Substance', edited by Dr Marta Entradas (Visiting Fellow, LSE) and Professor Martin W. Bauer (LSE), was published. It analyses communication of university research institutes, with a focus on science communication. Advancing the ‘decentralisation hypothesis’, it asserts that communication structures are increasingly built also at ‘subordinate unit’ levels of research universities. Available via Routledge here. (2 June 2022)
• New research, co-authored by  Dr Tom Reader and Dr Alex Gillespie, examines how national policies structure local practices of complaint handling in English hospitals, how they are understood by those responsible for enacting them, and if there are any discrepancies between policies-as-intended and their reality in local practice. They find that national policies and regulations for complaint handling can impede, rather than promote, quality improvement in local settings.Out now in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine here. The article was also covered in the Evening Standard. (1 June 2022)

May 

• Jobs that require abstract thinking, people engagement and soft skills are less likely to be automated, according to new LSE research led by Cecily Josten and Grace Lordan. In comparison, occupations that involve physicality and muscle, or those that can be codified or delivered online, are more likely to be replaced by machines. Read about this research in LSE News here, and access the research article in PLOS One here. (24 May 2022)
• Well designed, informational nudges do not reduce long-run credit card debt, according to findings from a natural field experiment of 183,441 UK cardholders. The study, co-authored by LSE Visiting Senior Fellow Paul Adams, along with Stefan Hunt, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Lucy Hayes, Neil Stewart and David Laibson was published in Economica. (19 May 2022)
• Thomas Curran spoke to Adam Grant on the WorkLife podcast (TED) about the culture of perfectionsim and the dangers it can pose to our mental health. Access the Breaking Up with Perfectionism podcast episode via Apple Podcasts here and Google Podcasts here. (17 May 2022)
• LSE Fellow Stuart Mills has co-authored an article for The Conversation exploring why cryptocurrencies have recently crashed and some of the behaviours behind these types of investments. Read the article here. (13 May 2022)
• In a new article published in Artifical Intelligence Review, Paris Will, Dario Krpan and Grace Lordan show that AI is mostly better than humans in improving diversity. However, there is a perception among candidates and recruiters that AI is worse than humans. Read the article here. (9 May 2022)

April

• A new PERISCOPE study of eight European countries, co-authored by Dr Matteo M. Galizzi, suggests that COVID-19 vaccination campaign messages often prove ineffective and health authorities should avoid a one-size-fits-all messaging approach.Access the article COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in eight European countries: Prevalence, determinants, and heterogeneity here. (28 April 2022)
• In an interview for Sudwest Presse, social psychologist Dr Ilka Gleibs explains why, in Germany, people have shown such willingness to help refugees escaping conflict in Ukraine. Read the article (paywall access required) here. (15 April 2022)
• How effective are public health messages in influencing vaccination uptake? New research, co-authored by Dr Matteo M. Galizzi, suggests that vaccination intention increased when messaging conveyed a greater level of vaccination coverage, suggesting that people may adopt behaviours of others ('band-wagoning' effect). However, when messaging conveyed vaccination coverage above 75%, the impact flatlined, suggesting a 'free-riding' effect and a decreased intention to be vaccinated. Read 'Bandwagoning, free-riding and heterogeneity in influenza vaccine decisions: An online experiment' here. (7 April 2022)

March

• Rising parental expectations and criticism are linked to an increase in perfectionism among college students, which can have damaging mental health consequences, according to new research led by Dr Thomas Curran (LSE) and Andrew. P. Hill (York St John University). Out now in Psychological Bulletin. (31 March 2022)
• The Inclusion Initiative (TII) at LSE, led by Founding Director and Associate Professor in PBS Dr Grace Lordan, has been awarded £2 million by the Economic and Social Research Council to study the link between diversity and productivity, in collaboration with researchers from Institute for Fiscal Studies, University of Sheffield, University College London and University of Warwick. Read the LSE news story here. (29 March 2022)
• A new COVID-19 study suggests that when people place too much faith in scientists - and these beliefs become convictions -  they may be more likely to misjudge unsupported scientific claims. These are the findings from a study co-authored by Amanda Henwood and Professor Paul Dolan,. Read 'The dark side of belief in Covid-19 scientists and scientific evidence'. (28 March 2022)
• Open scholarship has transformed research, but with it increased the breadth of terminology which can create barriers to effective understanding. A new glossary of open scholarship terms, co-authored by Dr Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir (PBS), has been prodcued to address this. Read 'A community-sourced glossary of open scholarship terms' in Nature Human Behaviour. (28 March 2022)
• Laura M. Giurge spoke to Cambridge ThinkLab about the relationship between increased connectivity, responsiveness and unhealthy work cultures. Watch the presentation on YouTube here. (22 March 2022)
• Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community and Culture by Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch has been published in Chinese. Published in 2019 as a classics edition, Jovchelvitch revisits her influential work on the societal and cultural processes that shape the development of representational processes in humans. (22 March 2022)
• Our smartphones don’t distract us, we distract ourselves by constantly checking them, argues Maxi Heitmayer in LSE's Research for the World magazine. Read the article here. (16 March 2022)
• Is remote work actually better for the environment? Not necessarily, and companies taking action on environmental sustainability need to be conscious of this as they develop remote work policies, say Ganga Shreedhar, Kate Laffan and Laura M. Giurge in Harvard Business Review. Read it here. (8 March 2022)
• For International Women's Day we put together a collection of research, comment and media from women in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, around the theme Break the Bias. We also invited students in the Department to respond to this theme by writing a blog post for Psychology LSE. Read them all here. (8 March 2022)
• The traditional 9-to-5 work week has been replaced in many cases by hybrid hours tailored to individual needs. But working outside traditional hours, and checking in at all hours of the day, night, weekends, and holidays, is not necessarily beneficial for the 21st-century workforce, according to new research co-authored by Laura M.Giurge (LSE) and Kaitlin Woolley (Cornell University). Read more via LSE News. (4 March 2022)
• Anandita Sabherwal and Dr Ganga Shreedhar spoke to Anthropocene about their study  that suggests that positive stories of people taking everyday pro-environmental actions can resonate with readers and their environmental behaviours.Read the news story in Anthropocene here. Read 'Stories of intentional action mobilise climate policy support and action intentions' in Scientific Reports here. (2 March 2022)

February

• MTurk provides a convenient platform to crowdsource data, but to protect the individuals who perform these tasks – including monetarily & from exposure sensitive materials - there needs to be greater transparency throughout the process, argue Dr Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir and Dr Ilka Gleibs. Commentary in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. (8 February 2022)
• Schools for Forgiveness and Reconciliation (ES.PE.RE) enable individuals and communities who have been affected by armed conflict in Colombia, to rebuild trust, strengthen community ties and re-imagine their futures. These are the findings from the three-year project Pathways to Reconciliation.  More information about the project, including a short film, can be found here. (1 February 2022)

January

• Dr Grace Lordan writes about the tools that employees can utilise, such as storytelling, to negotiate a pay rise. Read in the Financial Times. (31 January 2022)
• Short fiction stories that feature an everyday hero taking intentional, pro-environmental actions in day-to-day life can encourage readers’ climate policy support and action intentions, suggests new research from Anandita Sabherwal and Dr Ganga Shreedhar. Read the article in full on the Scientific Reports website. (21 January 2022)
• Dr Jet G. Sanders co-authors an analysis examining the role of public health agencies in gathering behavioural insights during the COVID-19 crisis and how these insights can contribute holistically to pandemic management.Read the analysis in full via the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies here. (19 January 2022)
• The burden of COVID restrictions fell unequally across the population, and some of those most affected were not represented at the policy table, write Michael Daly (Maynooth University) and Professor Liam Delaney (LSE) for the LSE COVID-19 blog. Read more. (18 January 2022)
• Genes and culture are deeply intertwined. Dr Ryutaro Uchiyama’s pioneering new framework reconciles these two areas. In LSE's Research for World online magazine, with Dr Michael Muthukrishna and Dr Rachel Spicer, here. (18 January 2022)
• Dr Michael Muthukrishna and Robin Schimmelpfennig use dual inheritance theory and cultural evolution as a framework to address contextual gaps in public policy interventions. Part of the Templeton World Charity Foundation's Grand Challenges for Human Flourishing. Read the blog post here. (14 January 2022)
• A paper by Amanda Henwood and Professor Paul Dolan calls into question the assumption that doing more of what we like will show up in making us happier, particularly where current measures are based on self-reported analysis or subejctive wellbeing (SWB). Access the paper, published in Scientific Reports, here. (11 January 2022)
• Dr Ilka Gleibs co-authors 'Us and the Virus: Understanding the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Social Psychological Lens' for a special Covid-19 open-access issue in European Psychologist. Access the article here. (5 January 2022)
• Professor Paul Dolan and Professor Liam Delaney contributed research articles to the latest edition of LSE Public Policy Review's wellbeing issue. Read 'Incorporating Well-Being and Mental Health Research to Improve Pandemic Response' by Michael Daly and Liam Delaney. Read 'Accounting for Consequences and Claims in Policy' by Paul Dolan. (4 January 2022)
• Paul Dolan writes about the  "Welleye" framework, created with Dr Kate Laffan and Dr Laura Kudrna, which shows the role of attention in linking the objective circumstances of people’s lives to how they spend their time – and ultimately to how they feel. Read the blog post via LSE Business Review here. (3 January 2022)

As Libya faces its first national election since 2014, Dr Miriam Tresh evaluates the voter intention-behaviour gap, public perception and the consequences for voter turnout. Read the expert brief for Al Sharq Strategic Research. (22 December 2021)

A new ‘cultural evolvability’ framework, out now in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, aims to unlock the potential for innovation through a more nuanced understanding of diversity. The paper is co-authored by Dr Michael Muthukrishna (LSE) with Robin Schimmelpfennig (University of Lausanne), Layla Razek (McGill University) and Eric Schnell (LSE). The paper can be accessed here. Read the news story about this framework on the LSE website here. (13 December 2021)

A study, co-authored by Professor Paul Dolan, aims to build a better understanding of day-to-day experiences of meaning at work. Out now in Group & Organization Management. (6 December 2021)

Faculty and Professional Services Staff (PSS) from the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science have been recognised in the LSE's Excellence in Education Awards - awarded to those who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments. (3 December 2021)

New briefing paper urges policy makers to empower people to 'level up' and back a real living wage - a briefing paper published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) as part of the 'From Poverty to Flourishing' campaign, co-authored by Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington (Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE). Read about the paper on the BPS website here. (29 November 2021)

The Inclusion Initiative (TII) marks its one-year anniversary. In the last year, TII has published research in major impact journals, conducted numerous high-profile events and produced highly impactful thought leadership. (24 November 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna awarded SAGE Early Career Trajectory Award. Read more about the SPSP award winners for 2021 here. (23 November 2021)

New research, co-authored by Dr Ilka Gleibs, supports previous research to show that leaders who build a sense of social identity protect teams from the adverse effects of workplace stress. Out now (open access) in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Read the article in full here. (18 November 2021)

Research has shown that teenage girls with perfectionist traits are more likely to suffer harm on social media. Marianne Etherson and Dr Thomas Curran suggest ways to help in this piece for the Independent. (15 November 2021)

Automatic facial expression coding offers promising insights into the immediate emotional impacts of calorie labelling. A study led by Dr Kate Laffan (LSE), Professor Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard University) and Professor Paul Dolan (LSE), published open access in Behavioural Public Policy conducted in the LSE Behavioural Lab for Teaching & Research. Read the open access article Facing it: assessing the immediate emotional impacts of calorie labelling using automatic facial coding, Cambridge University Press here. (15 November 2021)

A study led by Professor Paul Dolan, out now in Social Choice and Welfare, explores the characteristics of people with the lowest levels of subjective well-being, that could prove useful for policymakers wanting to successfully identify these individuals. Read the open-access article in full on the Springer website here. (8 November 2021)

Dr Grace Lordan spoke to Ali Abdaal about her book Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want, touching on some of the behavioural science concepts behind it. Watch the podcast interview on YouTube here. (1 November 2021)

Research led by Dr Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, investigates the experiences of stigmatised groups, incuding the long-term unemployed, and uncovers a typology of responses capturing stigmatisation as a multi-level phenomenon. Published in Organization Studies. (1 November 2021)

New research from Dr Ganga Shreedhar and Dr Matteo Galizzi (LSE) provides insights about framing behavioural interventions to motivate sustainable actions and their potential spillover and carryover effects. Out now in Environmental Psychology. (21 October 2021)

A major international study, co-authored by Professor Martin W. Bauer (LSE), looking into science journalism suggests that work has become ‘more intense’ for professionals around the world, but that the vast majority still see themselves staying in their occupations for the foreseeable future.Read our news article on the Global Science Journalism Report 2021 here. Access the report in full on the SciDev.Net website here. (21 October 2021)

New research from Dr Michael Muthukrishna (LSE) and Carl Falk (McGill) shines a light on the role of parsimony in current approaches to model selection, and offers an R package (ockhamSEM) for researchers to better understand and evaluate fit propensity. 'Parsimony in model selection: tools for assessing fit propensity', in Psychological Methods here. (18 October 2021)

New behavioural research explores engagement with wildlife conservation adverts on social media. This is the finding from new research by Dr Ganga Shreedhar. Read our research article here. Read the paper in full in Conservation Science and Practice here. (5 October 2021)

Professor Paul Dolan spoke at the Conservative Party Conference 2021.  Watch the discussion live on YouTube here. (4 October 2021)

A large amount of smartphone use takes place on a locked screen. The paper, authored by Dr Maxi Heitmayer, provides a systematic description of locked use, the context in which it occurs, and makes suggestions for thinking about smartphone use based on duration and intensity of interactions. Access the paper in full here. Read the news story about this research here. (29 September 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna spoke at the World Bank's Fifth Future of Government event 'How will citizens' trust in government be affected?', for the fifth Future of Government event hosted by the World Bank. (28 September 2021)

Julia Buzan, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, has been awarded a Cumberland Lodge Fellowship, awarded to doctoral students who are firmly committed to promoting social progress. Read more about Julia and the research she does to support this work as a Cumberland Lodge Fellow here. (23 September 2021)

Vaccine intention increased in the Netherlands between November 2020 and March 2021. New research suggests that national shifts in COVID-19 vaccination beliefs predict COVID-19 shifts in vaccination intention, which could be supported by reliable, national informational campaigns. Out now in Euro Surveillance, led by Dr Jet G. Sanders. (16 September 2021)

People are more likely to engage with social media advertisements by wildlife conservation organisations when the messaging focusses on the negative impact of human behaviour, and when the species has been used less often in these types of stories. However, increased engagement did not result in donations.New research from Dr Ganga Shreedhar, out now in Conservation, Science and Practice. Read the article here. (15 September 2021)

Dr Thomas Curran appeared on the BBC Three programme Hayley Goes to discuss the impact that striving for perfection has on young people's mental health. Watch Hayley Goes Filter Free on BBC Three here. (14 September 2021)

People who share the same religious beliefs have unique, common, cultural traits, that persist across geographic and political boundaries. This is the key finding from research by York University (Canada), the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of British Colombia. Read the press release here. (9 September 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna reviews the evolutionary literature on cooperation both across societies and through history, and considers ways it can be applied in policies for reciprocity across the lifecycle, including pensions and welfare. Read The Ties that Bind Us in LSE Public Policy Review. (7 September 2021)

Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch delivered a keynote address for the 15th International Conference on Social Representations. This online conference took place from 9 September to 11 September 2021.

Dr Ilka Gleibs and Dr Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir report on the outcomes of a test to replicate major findings concerning intergroup biases and conflict. They highlight some of the major research and policy implications of these findings, including designing effective interventions that better support novel groups such as refugees and minorities. Read the 'Letter to the Editor' in Psychological Science here. (August 2021)

"We’re seeing more ‘quits’ in corporate companies linked to work-life balance because people are more willing to fight for it", says Dr Grace Lordan in this article for Wired UK. Read the article in full here. (27 August 2021)

Professor Liam Delaney and Professor Paul Dolan spoke to the Financial Times about why some people have reverted to comfort-seeking behaviours or, "treat brain", during the pandemic. Read Treat brain: how the pandemic is rewiring our brains here. (26 August 2021)

PBS academic launches new scientific journal: Seeds of Science. Seeds of Science, co-founded by Dr Dario Krpan (PBS at LSE), aims to address some of the issues in academic publishing by providing a unique peer-reviewed platform for non-traditional scientific writing. Visit the Seeds of Science website for more information and to contribute. (19 August 2021)

The ABCDE framework for better decision-making. A new five-step framework, proposed by Professor Paul Dolan and Amanda Henwood, aims to help decision-makers avoid the narrative traps that can negatively impact some areas of society. Read the press release. Access the article 'Five Steps Towards Avoiding Narrative Traps in Decision-Making' in Frontiers in Psychology. (12 August 2021)

COVID-19 and risk taking behaviours: The authors investigated if and how different parts of the population differ in their willingness to take various types of risk during the pandemic, published in Frontiers in Psychology in April 2021, here. Read the blog post about this research for the LSE School of Public Policy here. (11 August 2021)

Dr Grace Lordan writes about some of the cognitive biases that hamper career progression. Read 'How to get your career moving: lessons from a behavioural scientist' in the Financial Times. (5 August 2021)

'Book publication: The Psychology of Social Influence: Modes and Modalities of Shifting Common Sense' by Dr Gordon Sammut (University of Malta, LSE Visiting Fellow) and Professor Martin W. Bauer (LSE) brings together the full range of modalities of social influence - from crowding, leadership, and norm formation to resistance and mass mediation - to set out a challenge-and-response 'cyclone' model. Published by Cambridge University Press. Find out more about 'The Psychology of Social Influence' here. (22 July 2021)

A new framework highlights dual role of genetics and culture in inheritance. The framework, set out in a forthcoming paper by Ryutaro Uchiyama, Rachel Spicer and Michael Muthukrishna (all of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE), uses a dual inheritance approach to predict how cultural factors – such as technological innovation – can affect heritability. Read the press release by LSE here. (13 July 2021)

Grandmothers provide vital scaffolding that helps support maternal mental health, nutrition and infant feeding practices, particularly in low-income families, according to new research conducted in Colombia, led by Dr Natalia Concha and Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch (LSE). Read the article in Maternal and Child Nutrition here. (13 July 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna hosts Science in the Time of Cancel Culture for BBC Radio 4. Listen to Science in the Time of Cancel Culture for Analysis on BBC Radio 4. (12 July 2021)

Dr Grace Lordan speaks to the BBC World Service about the impact of automation on the workplace. Lordan addresses the fourth industrial revolution and says that access to education will be key to enable more people to navigate it. Listen to The Real Story on the BBC World Service here. (9 July 2021)

Patient complaints should be integrated with staff incident reporting data to give a more holistic analysis of critical safety incidents and provide greater insight on the many potential factors that may give rise to unsafe care, according to a study out now in the Journal of Health Services and Research Policy. Jackie Van Dael, Alex Gillespie and Tom Reader used five years of patient complaints and staff incident reporting data at a large multi-site hospital in London. Read the article Getting the whole story: Integrating patient complaints and staff reports of unsafe care here. (8 July 2021)

The adoption of moralising religious beliefs may have originated earlier in history and by much smaller populations than a previous study has shown, reveals a fresh analysis of the original data, published in Nature, co-authored by Dr Michael Muthukrishna and Dr Rachel Spicer (LSE). Read the press release. (8 July 2021)

Dr Bradley Franks speaks to LSE IQ about research on conspiracy theories. Listen and download 'Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?' by LSE IQ here. (7 July 2021)

Dr Grace Lordan discusses research on equality for Bloomberg TV. Lordan discusses recent research on the limited success for women in the finance sector. Watch the video on Bloomberg TV here. (1 July 2021)

Delay lifting Covid-19 restrictions may inflict disproportionate harm on the younger generation, small businesses and the creative industries in the UK. Professor Paul Dolan (LSE) and Professor Sunetra Gupta (University of Oxford) write for the LSE Covid-19 blog. Read Locked-in syndrome: why this must all end on 19 July here. (30 June 2021)

Dr Miriam Tresh has been awarded an LSE Class Teacher Award in recognition of her contribution to teaching in 2020-2021. Dr Frederic Basso and Dr Matteo Galizzi were highly commended for their teaching. See the full list of awards for 2021 on the LSE Class Teacher Awards website. (23 June 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna speaks to BBC Radio 4 about the nature of originality. Michael spoke to Matthew Syed about originality, drawing on research into cultural evolution and the "collective brain". Listen to the episode 'Originality Armaggedon' on Sideways from BBC Radio 4, from 00.12.05 here. (23 June 2021)

New research, led by the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, recommends that behavioural science teams working with governments on pandemic responses should increase their efforts to engage with the public and media narratives on the role of science and its role in policy. Lessons From the UK's Lockdown: Discourse on Behavioural Science in Times of COVID-19 is out now in Frontiers in Psychology. Access the article here. (17 June 2021)

The GOOD FINANCE Framework, a unique, action-focused framework that aims to create a better work environment for the financial and professional sectors, has been published by Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF), LSE's The Inclusion Initiative (TII) and The Wisdom Council. Read The GOOD FINANCE Framework. (16 June 2021)

Dallas O'Dell, PhD student in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, and PBS alumna Denise Baron, have been awarded a Summer Research Grant by the LSE Phelan United States Centre. The grant will go towards research on topics related to the Centre’s overall mission of promoting internationally-oriented scholarship on America's changing role in the world. Visit the LSE Phelan United States website. (3 June 2021)

Levels of wellbeing increased significantly for individuals who participated in the NHS Volunteer Responders (NHSVR) programme, with effects lasting months after the volunteering period had ended, suggests new research from PBS academics, published by the Centre for Economic Performance. Continue reading. (31 May 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna joins the CIFAR Azriele Global Scholars programme. Muthukrishna joins nineteen outstanding early-career researchers, and has been selected to be part of the Boundaries, Membership & Belonging research programme. Find out more about the programme on CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars website here. (26 May 2021)

New research uses the dual inheritance framework to understand the interaction between genes and culture. The authors use this to predict the ways in which heritability should differ between societies, socioeconomic levels and other groupings within some societies but not others, over the life course. Read 'Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability' in Behavioral and Brain Sciences here. (24 May 2021)

Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington joins board of Associate Editors for the British Journal of Psychology. The British Journal of Psychology, from the British Psychological Society (BPS), publishes original research on all aspects of general psychology. Visit the British Journal of Psychology website. (4 May 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna has been selected as one of 11 teams in the Templeton World Charity Foundation’s Grand Challenges for Human Flourishing request for ideas. Keep reading. (29 April 2021)

Duck-Rabbit: taking sides, hosted by PBS's Professor Paul Dolan, has been published as part of the LSE's Shaping the Post-Covid World series, focussing on a different topic relating to polarisation, from Covid to healthy lifestyles. Start listening to the Duck-Rabbit podcast here. (26 April 2021)

Research from the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE suggests strong commands made by government officials during the Covid-19 pandemic may have increased people’s intentions to comply with public health orders.Access the LSE news story Did the UK Government's Direct Messaging During the Early Stages of the Pandemic Work?  Read the article You Must Stay at Home! The Impact of Commands on Behaviors During COVID-19, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. (21 April 2021)

The Database of Religious History (DRH), a collaboration between the University of British Colombia (UBC) and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), has received a grant of $4.8 million from the John Templeton Foundation in the United States. Religion remains a large driver of human behaviours in society. For social scientists and policymakers this database could help uncover the religious roots of how different communities engage with the world today, including attitudes towards vaccinations and other healthcare interventions. Read more. (20 April 2021)

Experiences of Covid-19 are not uniform around the world and, in countries such as Western Libya where armed conflict exists, perceptions of the virus and the psychological impact of preventative measures differ greatly from global averages, suggests a study of over 700 people in Tripoli, Western Libya by Dr Miriam Tresh. Read the article here. (10 April 2021)

Professor Paul Dolan spoke to the Telegraph on lobbying for a wellbeing factor in future pandemic policy-making decisions. Read the article in the Telegraph here. (5 April 2021)

Those on the political left in the US and UK are more likely than those on the right to notice social inequality, but only when it affects typically disadvantaged groups, suggests new research co-authored by Dr Jennifer Sheehy Skeffington. Read the press release in full here. Access the paper in full on PNAS here. (30 March 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna, Associate Professor of Economic Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, has been awarded the Association for Psychological Science 'Rising Star' award, in recognition for innovative work in the field. Find out more about Michael's work here. Visit the APS website to find out more about the Rising Star award here. (9 March 2021)

To mark International Women's Day (IWD) 2021, PBS faculty, researchers, alumni and students were invited to contribute work that addresses issues affecting gender inequality today. Our page highlights work on women in tech, flexibile working, the gender pay gap, biases, and includes comment from Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington and Dr Natalia Concha. Visit the PBS International Women's Day page here. (8 March 2021)

The government should create a wellbeing impacts agency and a wellbeing commission to enable policymakers to consider citizens’ wellbeing and quality of life in future, state a leading group of LSE academics. Read the LSE news story here. Read the white paper in full here (PDF). (5 March 2021)

In this article for Centre Piece, Dr Chris Krekel (PBS and CEP at LSE) considers whether the wellbeing benefits of the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be worth the investment. If the same spillover wellbeing effects seen in the London 2021 Olympics could be matched, the investment would be worth it. Read Is Tokyo 2020 Worth It? in Centre Piece here. (March 2021)

More than three quarters of people in the UK now say they are ’very likely’ to have the vaccine says new report from University of Oxford and London School of Economics and Political Science, including Professor Martin Bauer (PBS). Read the full report here. (24 February 2021)

Dr Jet G. Sanders contributes the book chapter Realistic Masks in the Real World, for the newly released book titled Forensic Face Matching from Markus Bindemann. Find out more about the book on the Oxford University Press website. (8 February 2021)

There are no optimal decision-making strategies we can learn in the classroom, we need to view it as a work in progress. Dr Grace Lordan (PBS, The Inclusion Initiative) recently spoke at the 11th virtual India Investment Conference on disrupting decision-making. News story via Big News Network here. (8 February 2021)

Aardman Animations have released have a new campaign "What's Up With Everyone?" aimed at encouraging young people to become more aware of their mental wellbeing. PBS' Dr Tom Curran has been part of the research team behind the animation, providing expertise on perfectionism. Read the news story in full on the Aardman website. (8 February 2021)

PBS Visiting Fellow Professor Ben Voyer joins new research chair "Turning Points" to advance research on emerging business and societal challenges, for the global luxury brand Carier. Read the press release in full here (PDF). (3 February 2021)

The life-years saved from Covid-19 deaths that have been averted as a result of lockdown measures may be fewer than the life-years that will be lost from deaths resulting from curable diseases, according to a new research paper published in the European Journal of Clinical Oncology. Read more on this paper. (2 February 2021)

Research led by PBS's Dr Jet Sanders has set to capture public discourse and representation of behavioural science during a time of fast-track and high stakes national policy making: COVID-19. (January 2021)

Read the pre-print of Lessons from lockdown: Media discourse on the role of behavioural science in the UK COVID-19 response here.

“Guilt [can lead to people] avoiding the topic of climate change altogether because you’re made to feel like a bad person anytime you’re exposed to any issue about the environment,” says Dr Ganga Shreedhar, speaking to British Vogue. Read the article in full on the British Vogue website. (23 January 2021)

LSE has launched a new online magazine: Research for the World, featuring articles from PBS academics on perfectionism (by Dr Tom Curran) and workplace inclusion (by Dr Grace Lordan). Read The Problem With Perfection here. Read Behavioural Science and the City here. (18 January 2021)

New research co-authored by PBS's Dr Jens Koed Madsen, out now in the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, suggests that micro-targeting will become more prevalent in future elections. Understanding their effectiveness is imperative for fair & democratic elections. Read the research in full on the JASSS website. (8 January 2021)

STARS-C, a new partnership, jointly funded by Minciencias (Colombia) and ESRC/UKRI (UK), aims to build effective mental health provision in Colombian communities heavily affected by armed conflict and help build new roads to peace, using a bottom up, participatory approach. Continue reading. (7 January 2021)

Professor Paul Dolan spoke to Euronews about the stories people tell that often lead them to give up on their New Years resolutions. Watch the interview with Euronews here. (4 January 2021)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna writes about cultural evolution and the paradox of diversity for the National Academy of Engineering. Read the issue here. (18 December 2020)

In this article for Behavioural Public Policy, Dr Stuart Mills advances current theory on 'nudge' and 'sludge' theory, and argues that even greater emphasis should be made in the role of transparency in choice architecture, particularly those in policymaking roles. Read the article in full in Cambridge University Press. (2 December 2020)

A new report, published by the British Psychological Society and the Poverty to Flourishing campaign, shows how psychology can help to inform policies to support children and families. PBS's Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington is a member of the campaign and has explored the impact of poverty on people’s sense of control through her research. Read an article on the report in the January 2021 issue of The Psychologist. (30 November 2020)

A study, led by PBS's Maxi Heitmayer and Professor Saadi Lahlou, finds that 89% of mobile phone use is initiated by the user, and only 11% by notifications. Out now in Computers in Human Behaviour & reported in BBC News here. (23 November 2020)

Remote working has encouraged a shift in perception of what roles can be done flexibly, says a report commissioned by the Women in Banking & Finance network and PBS's Dr Grace Lordan. Read the article in Bloomberg here. (23 November 2020)

Research by Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir and Dr Ilka Gleibs shows that people are less likely to support global emergencies when the aftermaths are less clear. Read the full story. (14 November 2020)

Dr Grace Lordan has been appointed to the Department for Education’s (DfE) Skills and Productivity Board to advise on enhancing skills and inclusion for a post-COVID-19 economy. Read the story in full here. (13 November 2020)

LSE Behavioural Lab joins the European Commission’s €10million funded PERISCOPE consortium to study the effectiveness of COVID-19 policy messages on compliance behaviours. Read the story in full here. (20 October 2020)

Jess Winterstein speaks to Dr Thomas Curran, Associate Professor at PBS, about the potential pitfalls of wanting to be perfect. Our society values perfection, but is the concept of perfect really that good for us? This episode of LSE IQ explores perfectionism. Listen to the podcast on LSE Player here. (6 October 2020)

Dr Christian Krekel has led research showing that happier people were more compliant with COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, while unhappy people were less likely to comply. This research has been co-authored into a blog for LSE, available here. (24 September 2020)

Torben Emmerling and Duncan Rooders, both alumni of Executive MSc Behavioural Science, write about behavioural science strategies that can improve group decision making for Harvard Business Review. Read the article '7 Strategies for Better Group Decision Making' here. (22 September 2020)

A comic strip visualisation of the 2020 article 'Experimental evidence on the impact of biodiversity conservation videos on charitable donations' by Dr Ganga Shreedhar and Professor Susana Mourato from the journal Ecological Economics has been created by artist Joe Decie and published by LSE Library. View and download the cartoon at LSE Research Online. (17 September 2020)

Research co-authored by PBS and the Department of Georgraphy & the Environment at LSE will be presented at an event held by the UK Network of Environmental Economists on 16 September 2020, 12.15pm (BST). The research, co-authored by Dr Ganga Shreedhar, suggests that support for wildlife conservation is boosted when COVID-19 is linked to destruction of nature. Read the full research paper, published in Environmental and Resource Economics here. (16 September 2020)

PBS alumni and faculty including Professor Liam Delaney and Professor Paul Dolan have helped to launch the world's first independent organisation for applied behavioural scientists, GAABS.  More on GAABS here. (2 September 2020)

Dr Grace Lordan, Associate Professor in Behavioural Science, is set to release Think Big, utilizing behavioural insights to help people improve their careers, in 2021 with Penguin. (28 August 2020)

Commitment posters have been used in the US to reduce the number of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions. A randomised trial in the UK showed these were ineffective & that an automated message pre-appointment showed more promise. Research led by the Public Health England Behavioural Insights (PHEBI) and co-authored by Dr Jet Sanders (LSE). Read the research in Antibiotics. (11 August 2020)

Happier people are more likely to comply with social distancing and shielding at home orders to help suppress the spread of COVID-19. This is the key finding from a new working paper from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University of Oxford, and University College London (UCL). Read the news article here. (7 August 2020)

National attitudes to welfare recipients are related to political and media spheres, suggests a study of UK political speeches from 1996 to 2016 and 168,000 media reports. Read the research here. This research was led by Celestin Okoroji as part of his PhD thesis. (23 July 2020)

Patient compliment letters reveal the value of ‘extra-role’ behaviours and if properly utilised can improve patient safety and staff well-being, a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) suggests. Read the story. (22 July 2020)

Linking the human destruction of the environment to the spread of Covid-19 increases support for pro-wildlife conservation policy, new research from Dr Ganga Shreedhar and Professor Susana Mourato shows. Read the research in Environmental and Resource Economics. (15 July 2020)

Professor Martin W. Bauer speaks on the relationship between the public and science in the context of Covid-19, organised by UFRGS in Brazil. The discussion was held in light of the 2019 publication The Cultural Authority of Science: Comparing across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas available via Routledge here. Access the presentation slides (in English): Martin Bauer for UFRGS 2020 supporting information (6 July 2020)

Tom Reader & Alex Gillespie published a paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology showing that patient care could be improved if patient reports on unsafe clinical behaviours are systematically used as a metric of hospital safety. Read the paper here. (21 June 2020)

In a discussion paper for IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Grace Lordan and Cecily Josten investigate the impact of personality on responses to health policy, in this case the UK smoking ban. Read the paper here. (21 June 2020)

Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington was selected by the British Psychological Society (BPS) to join their Poverty Expert Reference Group, charged with working with their Policy Team to carry forward the Society’s priority focus on ‘From Poverty to Flourishing’. (21 June 2020)

PBS Honorary Fellow Jan Stockdale writes a tribute to Bram Oppenheim, who sadly died on 27 April 2020, one of the founding members of the Department of Social Psychology (now PBS) for the British Psychological Society. Read the tribute on the BPS website here. (17 June 2020)

Students who are suffering from symptoms of burnout, defined as exhaustion, cynicism and reduced efficacy,  achieve worse academic results, according to new research from York St John University and London School of Economics and Political Science, that highlights the need for better strategies to counteract stress. Read more. (16 June 2020)

A paper co-signed by Dr Fauquet-Alekhine & Professor Lahlou (SEBE-Lab http://www.sebe-lab.net) has been awarded (laureate level 1) at the XVth International PTSCIENCE CPD Competition for Scientific Works organised by the Panrussian Society for Scientific Development. (13 June 2020)

Only 15% of manuscripts explicitly test results derived from psychological theory, bringing in to question whether researchers are working within a theoretical consensus, claims new research compiled by early career researchers including PBS's Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir. Read the report here. (12 June 2020)

A one-size-fits-all approach to encouraging more compliance with social distancing rules, instead of targeting sub-groups, can be ineffective and may even lead to less compliance, a new working paper led by Dr Dario Krpan has found. Read more on LSE news here. (11 June 2020)

Low-income communities in the United States and Europe can learn from bottom-up development policies - people finding solutions for themselves where the state has faltered - like the grass-roots movements we are seeing in the favelas of Brazil says Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch to the Washington Post. Read more. (10 June 2020)

COVID-19 mental-health responses neglect social realities writes PBS alumna (MSc Health, Community and Development & PhD Social Psychology) Dr Rochelle Burgess who says "labelling a condition doesn’t make the social challenges around it disappear." Read the full article in Nature here. (27 May 2020)

PBS faculty (Dr Christian Krekel) and Professional Services  Staff (Will Stubbs) awarded at the LSE's Teaching Excellence Awards. (20 May 2020)

A report from LSE's The Inclusion Initiative (TII), led by PBS Associate Professor Dr Grace Lordan, identifies best practice for virtual inclusion in City of London firms during the pandemic. Read a blog post on the report on LSE Business Review. (5 May 2020)

The UK government’s policy to suppress the COVID-19 epidemic was expected to prevent around 189,000 incremental deaths, with a monetary value of £380 billion — around 17% of GDP — according to new research from Professor Paul Dolan and Pinar Jenkins. Read more on this story and access the report here. (20 April 2020)

Professor Paul Dolan writes for The Spectator about the social and economic costs, as well as the health costs, involved in the coronavirus lockdown measures. Read the full article on The Spectator here. (9 April 2020)

In this article for CNN International, Dr Michael Muthukrishna comments on the reasons why people may find physical distancing hard based on our complex societal structures. Read the article here. (2 April 2020)

Professor Martin Bauer speaks to Aljazeera about the World Health Organisation's decision to use 'physical distancing' rather than 'social distancing' is better for our mental health. Read the article here. (30 March 2020)

LSE launched The Inclusion Initiative (TII), co-founded by Grace Lordan, Associate Professor in Behavioural Science, and Karina Robinson, Master of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers. TII will tackle inclusion from within the firm itself, offering practical interventions based on academic research that aims to understand why people make the choices they do. Visit The Inclusion Initiative website at https://www.lse.ac.uk/tii (6 March 2020)

In this podcast interview for LSEIQ, Dr Michael Muthukrishna about corruption and the many forms it can come in, from bribery, extortion, cronyism, to nepotism – with varying levels of legality. Listen on SoundCloud. (3 March 2020)

Liam Delaney joins PBS as new Head of Department. Read our news story here. (10 February 2020)

Barry Rogers, Visiting Senior Fellow in PBS, was awarded a gold award for excellency in the 2019 Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management [HCM] Awards for Excellence in Miami, Florida. (7 February 2020)

The LSE Electoral Psychology Observatory formally launched in February 2020, aiming to understand the psychology of voters. Dr Sandra Obradovic has joined the team, bringing her expertise in political psychology. Read more here on LSE News.

Dr Tom W. Reader and Dr Alex Gillespie's article Patient‐Centered Insights: Using Health Care Complaints to Reveal Hot Spots and Blind Spots in Quality and Safety has been recognised as the most highly cited in The Milbank Quarerly's recent publication history. The article was published 11 September 2018 and is available to read on Wiley Online Library here. (6 February 2020)

Director Petra Costa, who studied MSc Health, Community and Development in 2008 in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (formerly Department of Social Psychology), has been nominated for Best Documentary for The Edge of Democracy at the 92nd Academy Awards. (14 January 2020)

Dr Ilka Gleibs was interviewed by LSE about her recent research (co-authored with Prof Daniel Frings & Dr Anne M. Ridley of LSEBU) into the challenge of managing different identities and how it can lower undergraduate performance. Read the full interview on the LSE website here. (5 December 2019)

Dr Michael Muthukrishna has written his views on cultural evolutionary public policy, including public policy interventions that aim to tackle harmful traditions such as FGC, for Nature Human Behaviour. Read the article on Nature Human Behaviour here. (5 December 2019).

PBS faculty awarded for excellence in teaching. More information about the LSE Excellence in Education Awards and the full list of winners can be found on the LSE website. (22 November 2019).

Some hyper-realistic face masks more believable than human faces, study suggests. A new study, released in the open-access journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, has found a higher than anticipated error rate amongst participants asked to identify a real face from a hyper-realistic face mask when two photographs are side-by-side. Read more in our news article. (21 November 2019)

Does re-framing health messaging lead to higher patient uptake? "Make the most of your life!" "Don't miss out!"Which message will get you to a health check-up? A new trial, co-authored by Dr Jet. G. Sanders, compared the effectiveness of the NHS Health Check invitation letter with gain- and loss-framed messaging to see how they impacted patient uptake. (18 November 2019)

What moderates the attainment gap? A new study into social identity in higher education. Dr Ilka Gleibs has co-authored an article for Social Psychology of Education looking at the issue of attainment gaps in higher education and specifically the effects of social identity incompatibility and practical incompatibility on the performance of students who are or are not Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME). Read the full article in Springer Link here. (6 November 2019)

Are bankers really that bad? A new study from PBS alumni. A new article out now in Nature has addressed the issue of reproductibility, and the increasing issue of replicating findings in 'inaccessible' environments. Zoe Rahwan studied on the Executive MSc Behavioural Science when it launched in 2014. Read the full article in Nature here. (November 2019)

Why plant-based diets are probably not a fad. To mark World Vegan Day (1 November 2019) LSE news have interviewed experts including PBS's Dr Ben Voyer and PhD student Heidi Zamzow who discuss why plant-based diets are not just a flash in the pan, but have strong links to identity. Read the article on LSE news here. (1 November 2019)

New research on identity among white British Muslims. New research out now in the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) from PBS PhD student Amena Amer, explores the experiences of identity (mis/non) recognition and strategies of identity performance among white British Muslims. Read the paper in full on Wiley Online Library here. (30 October 2019)

Understanding behavioural intervention strategies. Tackling environmental and social sustainability challenges cannot be done without changes in the everyday behaviours of people. Attempts to, for example, reduce energy consumption at home, increase recycling rates, reduce alcohol and prevent bullying, have popularly (an cost-effectively) been addressed by addressing social norms, such as media campaigns to help direct more positive behaviours. Read the article in full here in Sustainability. (21 October 2019)

A report published in Human Resource Management Journal shows that when employees are provided with a supportive environment to express their religious identity in the workplace they experience increased wellbeing and work more efficiently. The report comprises a literature review of 53 publications on religious beliefs and the workplace and is co-authored by Dr Ilka Gleibs. Read the full report on Wiley Online Library here. (19 July 2019)

In this interview for LSE news, Exec MSc Behavioural Science alumni Ian Hadden (lead author) explains how a short series of precisely targeted writing exercises can significantly improve the academic attainment of school students from low-income families, in this new study by a joint research team from PBS and the University of Sussex. Read the interview on LSE news. (9 July 2019)

Dr Grace Lordan has contributed an analysis of Healthy Minds, a research project by the London School of Economics and Bounce Forward into the ultimate secondary school PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic) curriculum, in light of the UK Government's plans to expand these subjects further by 2020. Read this piece in LSE Centre Piece here. 18 July 2019 - you can now read more on this in LSE news. (18 July 2019)

The Emirates Foundation has awarded Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington funding for the project, “Global identity in an uncertain world: A longitudinal study of the development of cosmopolitan social attitudes at an international elite university setting in the Middle East”. The money will fund a longitudinal study of social attitudes in the student population of NYU-Abu Dhabi, to be run in collaboration with PJ Henry at NYU-Abu Dhabi (Psychology) and Christian Haerpfer at United Arab Emirates University (Sociology), commencing in January 2020.

Dr Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo recently spoke at the conference Identity, Creativity and Innovation jointly organised by the Departments of Management and Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. The focus of the talk was on how despite entrepreneurship being proposed as a solution to extend working lives in the context of an increasingly ageing population, older entrepreneurs still face discrimination in society and the workplace. Read more about Lucia's research here.

Dr Grace Lordan features in the latest episode of the award winning LSE IQ podcast. On it she talks about her research into gender equality. Listen on LSE player. (18 June 2019)

New research on social influence. Forthcoming research in Personality and Social Psychology Review from Dr Michael Muthukrishna and Dr. Mark Schaller from University of British Columbia uses computational modelling to understand the specific ways in which cross-cultural differences may have long-term consequences for cultural stability and cultural change.

As part of a new publication Responsibility for Refugee and Migrant Integration, Dr Jet Sanders (with Elizabeth Castle, Karen Tan and Rob Jenkins) explores how behavioural science can be applied to refugee integration, in this case through education and employment, and how behavioural evidence can be used to facilitate drivers of integration. Access the publication here.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have announced new research projects to address issues facing Colombia’s transition from conflict to peace. Pathways to Reconciliation, led by Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch investigates the impact of Schools for Forgiveness and Reconciliation -ES.PE.RE - on the psychological and social wellbeing of victims of the Colombian conflict. Read more on the project on the UKRI website and follow the project on Twitter @reconciliaLSECo 

On 9 June 2019, 11am - 12pm, Professor Paul Dolan will speak about his new book Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life at the Cheltenham Science Festival. Find out more on the Cheltenham Science Festival website.

At LSE's 2019 Festival Joel Suss won the photography prize for his image of a Hong Kong urbanscape. Joel wanted to capture what it can feel like to live in a big city full of vibrancy and crowds and yet feel loneliness, anxiety and social dislocation – issues which many people in places like Hong Kong and London can experience. The LSE Festival 2019 theme was 'New World (Dis)Orders'.

Dr Kate Laffan has been awarded a Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission to study Intention-Behaviour Gaps in Environmentally Significant Consumption Behaviours. 

New study shows a reduction in meat consumption when animals are viewed as "friends". Dr Frederic Basso and PhD student Feiyang Wang provide evidence that exposure to the metaphor “animals are friends”, generates moral (guilt) feelings in meat consumers, which negatively influences their attitudes toward meat consumption and their behavioral intentions to eat meat. Read the article in Appetite here. (July 2019)

Book Release: Happy Ever After by Professor Paul Dolan. On Thursday 24th January in an event chaired by Professor Julia Black, Professor Paul Dolan discussed themes from his new book Happy Ever After.  View the webcast from the event here. 

UK and Colombian Researchers Working Together for Sustainable Peace. Ten new research projects to address issues facing Colombia’s transition from conflict to peace, including one from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), have been announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Pathways to Reconciliation will be led by Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch and Dr Fabio Idrobo, Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation (FSFB). It will investigate the impact of Schools for Forgiveness and Reconciliation -ES.PE.RE - on the psychological and social wellbeing of victims of the Colombian conflict. Read more here. (11 November 2019)

Gender Pay Gap Could Get Worse. Research by Dr Grace Lordan shows that girls born in the year 2000 are aspiring to do jobs that are paid 31 per cent lower than males. Boys born in 2000, on the other hand, have higher aspirations than previous male generations in terms of income, to the point where the gender pay gap could actually become larger than it is at present if these aspirations are fulfilled. Read more here. (10 October 2019)

Patient Complaints Reveal Quality and Safety ‘Blind Spots’ in Healthcare Delivery. Healthcare complaints made by patients can provide unique insight on aspects of healthcare delivery not easily evaluated by hospitals, a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has found. Read the article (10 October 2018)

Entrepreneurship Research: Dr Michael Muthukrishna. New research lead by Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, Dr Michael Muthukrishna, has shown that rates of entrepreneurship are higher in some countries than others and it may be because they are generally less risk-averse and more overconfident. Read the article (20 August 2018)

Podcast: Dr Ilka Gleibs Discusses the Psychology Behind Diversity. Professor Dr Ilka Gleibs discusses on the CB On Air podcast why people need to stop blaming women’s behaviour for a lack of diversity within economics and central banking. (31 July 2018)

ESRC Grant Assessment Panel Appointment. Associate Professor Dr Sophie von Stumm has been appointed to the ESRC grant assessment panel D, which looks after projects on secondary data analysis.

ESRC Celebrating Impact Awards. At the ESRC Celebrating Impact Awards, PHD student Brett Heasman won the Future Promise Prize and was named runner-up of the Outstanding Early Career Impact award. Congratulations to Brett whose work has helped improve public understanding of autism. (June 2018)

Professor Martin W Bauer elected a Fellow of acatech. Congratulations to Professor Dr Martin W Bauer, LSE Psychology and Behavioural Science Department Professor of Social Psychology, who has been elected a Fellow of Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften [German Academy of Technical Sciences; acatech].

2018 LSE Student-Led Teaching Awards. Congratulations to Assistant Professor in Social Psychology and Economic Psychology, Frederic Basso, who received the Highly Commended, Inspirational Teaching Award at the LSE Student-led Teaching Excellence Awards. (May 2018)

Diet choice research: Dr Dario Krpan. Research by Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, Dr Dario Krpan, has shown that frequent vegetarian meal eaters are less likely to select a vegetarian dish when presented with a separate section for this in a menu. Read the article. (13 March 2018)

PBS PhD candidate Nihan Albayrak wins LSE Festival Popular Prize. On Friday 23 February 2018, PhD candidate Nihan Albayrak was awarded the LSE Festival Popular Prize for her work on the ways in which we help the victims of global disasters. You can read an abstract from Nihan's work on the LSE Festival website. Find out more about Nihan. (23 February 2018)

Open day for our new undergraduate programme. In Autumn 2018, applications for our new BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science will open. You can find out more about this exciting and unique undergraduate programme from our faculty on 11 April 2018. 

Behavioural Science Hub Seminar: Ashley Whillans. On 30 November, Ashley Whillans spoke at the Behavioural Science Hub Seminar and presented her work, entitled "Exchanging cents for seconds: The happiness benefits of choosing time over money". Watch her presentation here: Ashley Willans (30 November 2017)

Book release: Installation Theory. On Wednesday 18 October in an event chaired by Dame Shirley Pearce, Professor Saadi Lahlou discussed themes from new book Installation Theory: The Societal Construction and Regulation of Behaviour. Listen to the event. Read the first chapter of Saadi's book, Installation Theory. (19 October 2017)

Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch to speak on importance of schools and parents in childhood and adolescent learning. On 4 October 2017, LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre (LACC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) hosted the conference Skills for Development in a Changing World. Prof. Sandra Jovchelovitch spoke as part of a panel discussion on learning during childhood and adolescence, drawing on years of fascinating research. Read (free e-book) Underground Sociabilities by Sandra Jovchelovitch. (4 October 2017)

Publication in nature human behaviour. Dr Michael Muthukrishna has recently published research on the dynamics of corruption, Corrupting Cooperation and How Anti-Corruption Strategies May Backfire Data. This research demonstrates that transparency only reduces corruption in certain circumstances: if economic opportunities exist or if the state has the strength and resources to punish law-breakers. If neither of these circumstances is present, transparency is ineffective—or can even make things worse.  Read more about the story | Read the paper. (10 July 2017)

Important study on autistic perspectives published in the international journal Autism. In the first study of its kind, Brett Heasman (PBS PhD student) and Dr Alex Gillespie used a two-way measure of perspective-taking to show that 'neurotypical' people struggle to imagine autistic perspectives, bringing attention to the many activities, such as job interviews, that rely on how autistic people are seen by others. Read the study (July 2017)

Dr Jana Uher presents research in public lecture. How do we judge others? Are people judged differently for the same things? Watch the presentation. (13 June 2017)