Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 02 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02606-1Fonn et al. find that boys but not girls prefer larger groups by age three, and these preferences predict support for group-based hierarchy among adults. This suggests that gendered motives for intergroup formidability are rooted in earliest childhood.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02585-3In this study, Vollberg and Gross show that both selfish and prosocial individuals exaggerate the social benefits of their choices, with selfish-serving distortions proving to be socially contagious.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02573-7Tangible rewards are known to sharpen visual processing of associated objects. Tomić et al. show that an internal sense of confidence—acting as an intrinsic reward—similarly biases attention, revealing how the brain prioritizes limited resources.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 30 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02580-8Corpus et al. examine how the introduction of an AI writing tool impacted Change.org petitions, finding that it increased petition homogeneity but did not improve petition outcomes.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 29 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02604-3Acquiring knowledge and expertise is a long process. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) tools can amplify what people are able to do, but this may pose problems for the development of the next generation of experts, argues Sheng-Tun Li.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 25 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02520-6McNamee and Peyton find that land acknowledgements raise awareness of, but not curiosity about, Indigenous nations. These practices improve organizational reputations, but their effects on political attitudes and support for reparations are insignificant.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 22 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02577-3Analyses of data from more than 3,000 adolescents found that loneliness and desire for thinness contribute to the higher prevalence of depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation among girls than in boys. Young people’s perspectives informed the pathways that were investigated.

In this Perspective, Fehr and Wu argue that applying fairness research to markets, organizations and public policy requires solving fundamental unresolved questions about how fairness concerns are act...

The idea of meritocracy — that income differences should reflect performance rather than luck or inherited privilege — can be used to justify inequality. Yet people who consider meritocracy to be fair...

Artificial intelligence (AI) companions promise connection at low cost, but their effects are not evenly distributed. When user vulnerabilities, platform control loopholes, and governance gaps coincid...

Global health inequity is increasingly driven by the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. To address it, we must place health at the centre of climate and enviro...

Socioeconomic inequalities shape who accesses early childcare, even in countries that claim universal provision. This entrenched inequality limits child development, women’s employment and gender equa...

Nature Human Behaviour - Embryo screening and the new reproductive divide

Inequalities in education, health, technology and social status are often studied in isolation. This Focus issue shows how these inequalities are interconnected in the real world, and how competing vi...

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02601-6Seeing a deadly ‘civil war’ unfold among chimpanzees has been a painful experience for John Mitani. His decades of watching wild great apes now evoke his family’s experience with xenophobia. But to him, the war highlights what makes humans unique: not our conflicts, but our unparalleled capacity for tolerance and cooperation.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02602-5Is a 50% replication rate too high, too low or just right? We need a target replication rate to answer this question. Here, I evaluate two potential target rates, the ‘optimal’ replication rate and the ‘expected’ replication rate, and I call for an educational intervention to better appreciate their limitations.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02551-zA genome-wide meta-regression analysis of social behaviour studying ~500,000 observations from ~70,000 individuals, modelling context-specific SNP variation as explained by social domains, informants and age, identified six associated loci.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02576-4Dong, Qiao and Zhou show how variations in the level of air pollution impact the productivity of scholarly researchers in China.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02582-6Large-scale experiments now underpin much of modern social science. This Perspective highlights six emerging challenges and suggests directions for future research.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02593-3Bridging the gap between evidence production and policy impact requires understanding how evidence becomes useful, usable and used. Spohn et al. discuss the obstacles and set a research agenda for evidence adoption.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02594-2Returning to academia after extended leave often depends on luck and goodwill. We need better and formalized systems to facilitate returns and retention, argues Theresa Mercer.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02578-2Girls tend to show higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation than boys. This work suggests that loneliness and pressure to be thin explain much of this gap, suggesting that social factors are key targets for youth-focused support, policy and intervention.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02502-8Boger and Firestone show that humans possess a domain-general, cross-modal representation of complexity.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02595-1Can AI do more than deliver health information? This Perspective argues that AI should be designed to support understanding, informed decision-making and action, placing health literacy at the centre of AI design and governance.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02571-9Before the British invasion in 1788, Australia’s Indigenous population is estimated to have numbered about 2.2 million people, exceeding previous estimates. An estimated 2.06 million excess deaths occurred between 1788 and 1861.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02525-1Talhelm et al. propose responsibilism as a specific conceptualization of collectivism that emphasizes responsibilities, duties and roles in close relationships. The responsibilism scale effectively captures cross-cultural differences.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02586-2How Registered Reports can improve trust in machine learning research

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02589-zA case for fast science amid calls for slow science

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02568-4Raffington et al. find that providing low-income mothers with cash gifts for the first four years of their children’s lives appears to change the children’s epigenetic biological ageing in ways associated with better health in adulthood.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02448-xGender polarization in fields such as engineering or nursing has served as a barrier to students whose genders do not conform to these norms. Cimpian et al. demonstrate that this polarization also protects lower-performing students who do conform, while impeding LGBTQ+ students in male-dominated fields.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02575-5In this Perspective, Haubrock et al. argue that today’s scientific structures constrain creativity and that strategic conformity is a rational response. They discuss how this holds back early-career researchers from reaching their full potential as scientists.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02569-3People can form emotional bonds with AI companions. Using two AI product updates as natural experiments and combining with survey evidence, De Freitas et al. show that changes to AI companions can elicit attachment-related loss and restoration desires.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02510-8Cimpian et al. demonstrate disparities in representation by gender and LGBTQ+ identity across US college majors and levels of academic achievement. They identify an in-group advantage among lower-achieving students.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02587-1Paying people for their biometrics raises complex ethical and legal questions about consent, privacy and the long-term risks of handing over irrevocable personal data. This Comment examines why such models require caution and what safeguards could better protect the public.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02560-yAcross more than 1.6 million posts on Twitter, Reddit and 8chan, Candia et al. find that moral language is associated with higher engagement up to a measurable sweet spot. Beyond it, moral saturation is linked to lower engagement.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02552-yUsing large language models and experimental methods, this study investigates the prevalence and impact of overreaching causal claims in the social sciences. The results show that these claims are common and are increasing over time, and that they can affect readers’ interpretation, in both humans and large language models.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02570-wCode underlying published findings in the social sciences often fails to reproduce reported results when others re-run it on the original data. This Comment proposes four recommendations to strengthen computational reproducibility, facilitating the trustworthiness and reliability of research.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 31 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02574-6Across the behavioural sciences, artificial intelligence (AI) will speed up research that is digitally accessible, scalable and often Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD). But evidence about human behaviour cannot always be scaled. We need to connect rapid, automated work with slower research in real settings.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 31 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5Bagautdinova et al. study how white matter tracts are organized along the brain’s hierarchy and how they connect diverse biological environments to support complex human cognition and neurodevelopment.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 28 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02564-8What is the relationship between life satisfaction and social technology use? That is the question of the current research. Using five waves of panel data on self-reported use of ten common social technologies measured and life satisfaction, the authors found only scant evidence of a meaningful relationship between social technology use and subsequent life satisfaction.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02563-9Ke et al. show that the resting brain is not idle: spontaneous thoughts can be decoded from brain network dynamics, helping explain why resting functional brain organization relates to everyday cognition, traits and behaviour.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02540-2Harootonian et al. find that people switch between effortful, tailored teaching and easier, simple shortcuts, favouring shortcuts even when unhelpful. Prompting participants to reflect on learners’ limitations restores effective, personalized instruction.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02456-xBasarkod et al. synthesize evidence from 92 randomized controlled trials, finding that interventions in naturalistic education settings effectively improve students’ moral outcomes.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02562-wThis Registered Report presents a cross-national study examining public views on polygenic embryo testing in US and Chinese samples.

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 25 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02506-4In this Perspective, the authors examine how behavioural and social sciences studied human behaviour during COVID-19. They argue that these fields adopted a narrow definition of rational behaviour in response to COVID-19, which limited the scope of inquiry, and propose directions for future research.