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- Volume 76, 2025
Annual Review of Psychology - Volume 76, 2025
Volume 76, 2025
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Categories in Social Interaction: Unlocking the Resources of Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization for Psychological Science
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 531–557More LessThis article reviews two related approaches—conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA)—to sketch a systematic framework for exposing how categories and categorial phenomena are (re)produced in naturally occurring social interaction. In so doing, we argue that CA and MCA address recent concerns about psychological methods and approaches. After summarizing how categories are typically theorized and studied, we describe the main features of a CA approach to categories, including how this differs from conventional psychology. We review the core domains of research in CA and how categories can be studied systematically in relation to the basic machinery of talk and other conduct in interaction. We illustrate these domains through examples from different settings of recorded naturally occurring social interaction. After considering the applications that have arisen from CA and MCA, we conclude by drawing together the implications of this work for psychological science.
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What Gets Shared, and Why? Interpersonal Communication and Word of Mouth
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 559–581More LessInterpersonal communication is an integral part of everyday life. People are constantly sharing thoughts, opinions, and information with others, both online and offline. Further, such social sharing has important implications for what people think, buy, and do. However, while it is clear that interpersonal communication is both frequent and important, research is only starting to understand what people share and why. This article reviews the literature on interpersonal communication and word of mouth, focusing on the drivers of social transmission and the implications for individuals and society at large. It discusses how factors like audiences, modalities (e.g., speaking or writing), channels (e.g., email or text), and devices (e.g., phone or PC) moderate what gets shared, and it outlines areas that deserve further attention. Such areas include the diffusion of false information, conversations and conversational dynamics, and how automated textual analysis can be used to shed light on a range of interesting questions.
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The Power and Pitfalls of Social Norms
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 583–606More LessSocial norms have long been considered across the social and behavioral sciences for their effects on human behavior. This review focuses on norms that explicitly or implicitly convey socially shared views about what people should or should not do. Such injunctive norms can be powerful influences on behavior through internalization or through formal or informal enforcement. They can underpin interventions to shape people's behavior through conformity but can also be drawn upon by individuals to question social practices. However, norms also have pitfalls and may fail to affect behavior as intended: They can pose a threat to the individual's self (autonomy, morality, values), compromise motives and social meanings (intrinsic motivation, trust, sincerity), or be egocentrically reconstrued (through biased perceptions and selective social/temporal referents). Depending on one's stance on an issue, such pitfalls may also be turned into powers to inoculate against undesirable norms or to advance social change.
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Seeking Communal Emotions in Social Practices That Culturally Evolved to Evoke Emotions: Worship, Kitten Videos, Memorials, Narratives of Love, and More
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 607–633More LessIn many instances, emotions do not simply happen to people by chance. Often, people actively seek out an emotion by engaging in practices that have culturally evolved to evoke that emotion. Such practices tend to be perpetuated and spread if people want to experience the emotion, like to recall it and tell others about it, want to give the emotion to others and experience it together, and/or regard the emotion as a sign of something wonderful. We illustrate this with a newly delineated emotion, kama muta. Many social practices around the world are structured to evoke kama muta. In those culturally evolved practices, and outside them, what typically evokes kama muta is a sudden intensification of communal sharing, or a sudden shift of attention to a communal sharing relationship. It seems probable that other social-relational emotions are also evoked by sudden changes in relationships or the sudden salience of a relationship. This change or saliencing may be incorporated in social practices that are perpetuated because they evoke the sought-after emotion. We suggest that such practices, as well as sudden changes in relationships that occur elsewhere, are especially promising places to discover social-relational emotions.
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Gender Identity and Aggression
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 635–661More LessGender identity, or people's deeply felt, internal sense of their gender, plays an important role in aggression perpetration and victimization. In this article, I review and organize the psychological research literatures on gender identity–based aggression. I first discuss the need to move beyond binary, cisgender understandings of gender by embracing expansive definitions that more fully capture people's experiences and identities. Next, I summarize relevant research indicating two paths from gender identity to aggression. In one path, individuals with a more masculine (i.e., dominant, agentic) gender identity use aggression proactively, motivated by pursuit of social dominance. In another path, individuals with a more uncertain (i.e., insecure, precarious) gender identity use aggression defensively—and often toward vulnerable, gender nonconforming targets—as a means of protecting their gender identity against threats. I end by identifying important areas for future research and considering how interventions might best mitigate gender identity–based aggression.
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Morality in Our Mind and Across Cultures and Politics
Kurt Gray, and Samuel PrattVol. 76 (2025), pp. 663–691More LessMoral judgments differ across cultures and politics, but they share a common theme in our minds: perceptions of harm. Both cultural ethnographies on moral values and psychological research on moral cognition highlight this shared focus on harm. Perceptions of harm are constructed from universal cognitive elements—including intention, causation, and suffering—but depend on the cultural context, allowing many values to arise from a common moral mind. This review traces the concept of harm across philosophy, cultural anthropology, and psychology, then discusses how different values (e.g., purity) across various taxonomies are grounded in perceived harm. We then explore two theories connecting culture to cognition—modularity and constructionism—before outlining how pluralism across human moral judgment is explained by the constructed nature of perceived harm. We conclude by showing how different perceptions of harm help drive political disagreements and reveal how sharing stories of harm can help bridge moral divides.
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The Social Psychology of Justice Repair
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 693–716More LessJustice scholars have elaborated a variety of social psychological mechanisms that contribute to our desire to see some action following an injustice, to see justice done. Research over the past 20 years has significantly advanced our understanding of how to repair a sense of justice by articulating the psychological needs that follow from its experience from victim, offender, and observer perspectives. In this review, we summarize key insights from this literature, including the specific needs identified as relevant to justice, the challenges that arise when seeking justice for multiple parties in a conflict, and the procedural approaches that can aid in reconciling disparate perspectives. Following this review, we challenge our own assumption that justice repair is necessary. As a departure from this deficit model, we draw inspiration from adjacent fields of study to propose “justice making” as an alternative avenue for reconciliation in situations where justice repair is unachievable.
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Partisan Bias in Political Judgment
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 717–740More LessThis article reviews empirical data demonstrating robust ingroup favoritism in political judgment. Partisans display systematic tendencies to seek out, believe, and remember information that supports their political beliefs and affinities. However, the psychological drivers of partisan favoritism have been vigorously debated, as has its consistency with rational inference. We characterize decades-long debates over whether such tendencies violate normative standards of rationality, focusing on the phenomenon of motivated reasoning. In light of evidence that both motivational and cognitive factors contribute to partisan bias, we advocate for a descriptive approach to partisan bias research. Rather than adjudicating the (ir)rationality of partisan favoritism, future research should prioritize the identification and measurement of its predictors and clarify the cognitive mechanisms underlying motivated political reasoning. Ultimately, we argue that political judgment is best evaluated by a standard of ecological rationality based on its practical implications for individual well-being and functional democratic governance.
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Alexithymia: Toward an Experimental, Processual Affective Science with Effective Interventions
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 741–769More LessAlexithymia is a multi-dimensional personality trait involving difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and an externally oriented thinking style. Poor fantasy life is debated as another facet. For over 50 years, the alexithymia literature has examined how alexithymia-related disturbances in perceiving and expressing feelings contribute to mental and physical disorders. We review the current understanding of alexithymia—including its definition, etiology, measurement, and vulnerabilities for both mental and physical illness—and its treatment. We emphasize the importance of further experimental and processual affective science research that (a) emphasizes facet-level analysis toward an understanding of the nuanced bases of alexithymia effects on neural, cognitive, and behavioral processes; (b) distinguishes between emotion deficits and emotion over-responding, including when over-responding is functional; and (c) clarifies when and how impairments occur for neutral and positively valenced information or contexts. Taken as a whole, a clarification of these issues will provide clear directions for effective and tailored alexithymia interventions.
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Self- and Observer Reports of Personality
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 771–795More LessPeople's personality trait levels are often assessed by obtaining self-reports or observer (informant) reports on questionnaires (inventories). When the target person is closely acquainted with the observer—as in the case of spouses, close relatives, or close friends—several findings are obtained for full-length measures of the Big Five (Five-Factor Model) or HEXACO personality factors. First, mean scores tend to be comparable between self-reports and observer reports, although Openness to Experience tends to be higher in self-reports than in observer reports. Also, self/observer agreement (in the sense of convergent correlations) tends to be rather high, albeit somewhat lower for cooperation-related traits (HEXACO Honesty-Humility, HEXACO Agreeableness, Big Five Agreeableness) than for other traits. Finally, Openness to Experience and Honesty-Humility (and, to some extent, Big Five Agreeableness) show some degree of similarity and assumed similarity between closely acquainted persons.
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Shedding Light on Antisocial Behavior Through Genetically Informed Research
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 797–819More LessAntisocial behavior (ASB) refers to a set of behaviors that violate social norms and disregard the well-being and rights of others. In this review, we synthesize evidence from studies using genetically informed designs to investigate the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in ASB. We review evidence from studies using family data (twin and adoption studies) and measured DNA (candidate gene and genome-wide association studies) that have informed our understanding of ASB. We describe how genetically informative designs are especially suited to investigate the nature of environmental risk and the forms of gene–environment interplay. We also highlight clinical and legal implications, including how insights from genetically informed research can help inform prevention and intervention, and we discuss some challenges and opportunities within this field of research.
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Psychological Determinants of Health Behavior
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 821–850More LessThis review provides a critical overview of current evidence on psychological health behavior determinants and its value in informing intervention and future determinants research. The review begins with work labeling and classifying the myriad of determinants available in the extant research to arrive at core groups of determinants. Next, the conceptual bases of these determinant groups are identified, and the weight of the evidence for their purported effects on health behavior, including belief-based determinants (e.g., outcome expectancies, capacity beliefs), determinants representing self-regulatory capacity (e.g., planning, action control) and nonconscious processes (e.g., habit, implicit cognition), and dispositional determinants (e.g., personality, regulatory control), is critically evaluated. The review also focuses on the theory-based mechanisms underpinning determinant effects and moderating conditions that magnify or diminish them. Finally, the review recommends a shift away from research on determinants as correlates, outlines how determinants can inform intervention development and mechanisms of action tests, suggests alternatives to predominant individualist approaches, and proposes future research directions.
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Boosting: Empowering Citizens with Behavioral Science
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 851–881More LessBehavioral public policy came to the fore with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice. Responding to critiques of nudging (e.g., that it does not promote agency and relies on benevolent choice architects), other behavioral policy approaches focus on empowering citizens. Here we review boosting, a behavioral policy approach that aims to foster people's agency, self-control, and ability to make informed decisions. It is grounded in evidence from behavioral science showing that human decision making is not as notoriously flawed as the nudging approach assumes. We argue that addressing the challenges of our time—such as climate change, pandemics, and the threats to liberal democracies and human autonomy posed by digital technologies and choice architectures—calls for fostering capable and engaged citizens as a first line of response to complement slower, systemic approaches.
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Synchrony Across Brains
Vol. 76 (2025), pp. 883–911More LessSecond-person neuroscience focuses on studying the behavioral and neuronal mechanisms of real-time social interactions within single and across interacting brains. In this review article, we describe the developments that have been undertaken to study socially interactive phenomena and the behavioral and neurobiological processes that extend across interaction partners. More specifically, we focus on the role that synchrony across brains plays in enabling and facilitating social interaction and communication and in shaping social coordination and learning, and we consider how reduced synchrony across brains may constitute a core feature of psychopathology.
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Previous Volumes
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Volume 76 (2025)
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Volume 75 (2024)
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Volume 74 (2023)
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Volume 73 (2022)
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Volume 72 (2021)
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Volume 71 (2020)
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Volume 70 (2019)
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Volume 69 (2018)
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Volume 68 (2017)
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Volume 67 (2016)
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Volume 66 (2015)
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Volume 65 (2014)
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Volume 64 (2013)
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Volume 63 (2012)
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Volume 62 (2011)
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Volume 61 (2010)
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Volume 60 (2009)
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Volume 59 (2008)
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Volume 58 (2007)
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Volume 57 (2006)
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Volume 56 (2005)
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Volume 55 (2004)
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Volume 54 (2003)
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Volume 53 (2002)
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Volume 52 (2001)
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Volume 51 (2000)
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Volume 50 (1999)
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Volume 49 (1998)
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Volume 48 (1997)
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Volume 47 (1996)
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Volume 46 (1995)
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Volume 45 (1994)
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Volume 44 (1993)
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Volume 43 (1992)
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Volume 42 (1991)
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Volume 41 (1990)
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Volume 40 (1989)
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Volume 39 (1988)
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Volume 38 (1987)
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Volume 37 (1986)
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Volume 36 (1985)
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Volume 35 (1984)
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Volume 34 (1983)
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Volume 33 (1982)
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Volume 32 (1981)
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Volume 31 (1980)
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Volume 30 (1979)
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Volume 29 (1978)
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Volume 28 (1977)
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Volume 27 (1976)
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Volume 26 (1975)
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Volume 25 (1974)
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Volume 24 (1973)
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Volume 23 (1972)
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Volume 22 (1971)
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Volume 21 (1970)
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Volume 20 (1969)
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Volume 19 (1968)
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Volume 18 (1967)
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Volume 17 (1966)
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Volume 16 (1965)
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Volume 15 (1964)
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Volume 14 (1963)
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Volume 13 (1962)
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Volume 12 (1961)
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Volume 11 (1960)
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Volume 10 (1959)
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Volume 9 (1958)
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Volume 8 (1957)
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Volume 7 (1956)
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Volume 6 (1955)
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Volume 5 (1954)
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Volume 4 (1953)
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Volume 3 (1952)
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Volume 2 (1951)
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Volume 1 (1950)
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Volume 0 (1932)