Volume 3 Issue 5, May 2024

A priori sampling decisions often constrain which age groups are tested in particular developmental studies, which can profoundly shape inferences about developmental change. Thus, it is important to pull back the curtain on what drives these decisions.

Nature Reviews Psychology is interviewing individuals with doctoral degrees in psychology who pursued non-academic careers. We spoke with Deepti Ramadoss about her journey from research scientist to director of graduate studies.

Personality is relatively stable over long timescales but remains malleable to some degree. In this Review, Jackson and Wright examine the mechanisms responsible for intentional and naturally occurring change as well as mechanisms that promote stability, thereby limiting potential change.

Humans have a unique capacity for objective and general causal understanding. In this Review, Goddu and Gopnik describe the development of causal learning and reasoning abilities during evolution and across childhood.

Off-job recovery and optimal work motivation are vital for reducing or avoiding work stress and promoting occupational health and work performance. In this Perspective, Kujanpää and Olafsen propose a dual-pathway model of proactive recovery strategies that delineates how individuals can self-manage their off-job time through proactive recovery strategies to optimize motivation across life domains.

Experiences of objects and features are biased to appear more like previously seen stimuli than they really are. In this Perspective, Manassi and Whitney describe this phenomenon of positive serial dependence and propose continuity fields as the underlying mechanism.