Mindful of the Challenge
Is it possible to raise national happiness?
Alberto Prati & Claudia Senik
Journal of Public Economics, May 2026
Abstract:
We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective and current life evaluations, and apply it to unexploited archival data from the USA. When correcting for rescaling, we find that the well-being of Americans has substantially increased, on par with GDP, health, education, and liberal democracy, from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Using several datasets, we shed light on other happiness puzzles, including the apparent stability of life evaluations during COVID-19, why Ukrainians report similar levels of life satisfaction today as before the war, and the absence of parental happiness.
Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing
Ruben Laukkonen et al.
University of Oxford Working Paper, May 2026
Abstract:
Existing alignment research is dominated by concerns about safety and preventing harm: safeguards, controllability, and compliance. This paradigm of alignment parallels early psychology's focus on mental illness: necessary but incomplete. What we call Positive Alignment is the development of AI systems that (i) actively support human and ecological flourishing in a pluralistic, polycentric, context-sensitive, and user-authored way while (ii) remaining safe and cooperative. It is a distinct and necessary agenda within AI alignment research. We argue that several existing failures of alignment (e.g., engagement hacking, loss of human autonomy, failures in truth-seeking, low epistemic humility, error correction, lack of diverse viewpoints, and being primarily reactive rather than proactive) may be better addressed through positive alignment, including cultivating virtues and maximizing human flourishing. We highlight a range of challenges, open questions, and technical directions (e.g., data filtering and upsampling, pre- and post-training, evaluations, collaborative value collection) for different phases of the LLM and agents lifecycle. We end with design principles for promoting disagreement and decentralization through contextual grounding, community customization, continual adaptation, and polycentric governance; that is, many legitimate centers of oversight rather than one institutional or moral chokepoint.
Subjective social status and mortality risk in the United States: Asymmetry and subgroup variation
Alexi Gugushvili & Grzegorz Michal Bulczak
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Method: Data come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (over 12,000 participants), followed from early adulthood into midlife for 160 months. SSS [subjective social status] was measured with the MacArthur ladder. Survey-weighted Cox models estimated mortality hazards by SSS, adjusting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, self-rated health, health insurance, income, education, and occupation. We compared continuous and categorical SSS and ran stratified models.
Results: SSS was a consistent predictor of mortality. Each one-step increase on the ladder was associated with an 11% lower hazard in fully adjusted models. In categorical analyses, those in the upper part of the ladder had 40% lower risk than those at the midpoint, indicating concentration of benefit at high SSS once covariates were included. Protective associations were clearest among men and non-White respondents.
From bear attacks to neutral faces: Dangerous world belief predicts elevated perception of threat
Nicholas Kerry & Jeremy Clifton
Journal of Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Generalized world beliefs (e.g., “the world is safe,” “the world is beautiful”) have been theorized to shape how people perceive most people, things, and environments as the individual navigates life. While some research on Belief in a Just World is consistent with this theory, few studies have tested other world beliefs. Four studies (pre-registered, N = 2,841) found that dangerous world belief (DWB) is associated with greater perception of specific real-world threats -- even when the potential source of danger was identical. In Studies 1 and 2, people in the top quintile for DWB estimated incidences of low-frequency threatening events (e.g., murder, assault, and animal attacks) on average 4.2x higher than those in the bottom quintile. In Studies 3 and 4, people higher in DWB evaluated unfamiliar faces as more criminal and less trustworthy. These associations were specific to dangerous world belief (vs. other negative beliefs), and were robust across multiple covariates, including personality traits, anxiety, and current mood.
Us against them: Oxytocin response to competition in a small-scale human society
Charlotte Debras et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, May 2026
Abstract:
Cooperation can be an effective way to compete. The neurohormone oxytocin (OT) may modulate this by enhancing both cooperation and competition. However, studies of endogenous OT reactivity during real-world competition are scarce. Here, we tested the hypothesis that OT modulates inter-group competition in a human subsistence society, the Tsimane’ of Bolivia, by measuring urinary OT in football players before and after matches. Matches varied in group salience, involving intra-community, inter-community and interethnic opponents. Urinary OT was quantified using radioimmunoassays. We observed an increase in urinary OT levels following competition among men, but not among women. OT responses were strongest during both intra-community and interethnic matches. This pattern suggests sensitivity to familiar rivalries, consistent with the ‘nasty neighbour effect’, as well as heightened responses to out-groups. Our results support the hypothesis that OT mediates group-level competition in humans and reveal that OT reactivity varies by group salience. Moreover, our results showed a sex-specific response, with OT increases in men but not in women.
Genetic and environmental factors underlying the associations between attachment styles and mental and physical health
Keely Dugan et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that people who have relatively secure attachment styles tend to experience better mental and physical health across the lifespan (Pietromonaco & Beck, 2019; X. Zhang et al., 2022). Despite the growing body of research linking attachment styles to health outcomes, relatively little is known about why or how these associations arise. The present study analyzed data from 1,377 older adult twins, who completed measures of their general and relationship-specific attachment styles and five health assessments -- depressive symptoms, self-reported mental and physical health, physical illnesses, and waist circumference. Leveraging the study’s twin design, we estimated the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to the associations between attachment styles and health. Our findings suggest that the genetic factors underlying depression are largely overlapping with the genetic factors underlying attachment anxiety (e.g., genetic correlation, ra, = .70 between general attachment anxiety and depression) and show a moderate degree of overlap with the genetic factors underlying attachment avoidance (average ra = .34). In general, genetic and environmental factors each accounted for approximately half of the total phenotypic associations between attachment styles and mental health outcomes. Furthermore, we found moderate genetic correlations between attachment anxiety and physical health outcomes (average |ra| = .30), but little-to-no overlap among the environmental factors that contribute to attachment anxiety and physical health. Thus, the associations between attachment anxiety and physical health outcomes appear to be primarily attributable to a common or shared genetic liability. Attachment avoidance shared weak or near-zero associations with indicators of physical health.
Anxiety symptoms interact with approach motivations in adolescent risk-taking
Amanda Baker et al.
Development and Psychopathology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Adolescence represents a pivotal neurodevelopmental period marked by escalating anxiety symptoms and heightened approach motivations. Although anxiety is typically linked to avoidance, concurrent shifts in motivational systems and neurocircuitry may alter its behavioral and neural expression, shaping developmental trajectories and treatment response. This study investigated how approach motivations (Behavioral Activation System; BAS) interact with anxiety to influence behavior and brain function in N = 121 adolescents (ages 9–13; 44% girls; 33.1% White, 22.3% Latino, 19.8% Asian, 14.9% Black, 9.9% Mixed Race). Participants completed a decision-making task and resting-state fMRI. Dimensional analyses examined joint effects of anxiety and BAS on risk-taking behaviors, task-evoked neural activity and connectivity, and intrinsic connectivity at rest. Higher anxiety was associated with risk aversion and inhibition when BAS was low, but with risk-taking and impulsivity when BAS was high (risk-taking: β = 0.25, p = .012; inhibitory control: β = 0.13, p < .001). During risk-taking, anxiety and BAS showed interactive effects on striatal (β = −0.10, p = .006) and amygdala (β = 0.10, p = .005) activity alongside distinct effects on prefrontal–subcortical connectivity (β = −0.30, p = .014; β = 0.17, p = .01). Higher BAS was associated with stronger intrinsic prefrontal–striatal connectivity (β = 0.23, p = .012), while anxiety showed no significant resting-state effects. Findings underscore the role of reward-related systems in adolescent anxiety and support developmentally informed, personalized intervention strategies.
Enhanced autonomic fear conditioning at age 3 in successful adult criminal offenders
Adrian Raine, Yu Gao & Olivia Choy
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a dearth of data on “successful” criminal offenders who escape detection and no research on emotion processes characterizing this group. This study examines whether autonomic fear conditioning at age 3 years is associated with adult successful and unsuccessful (caught) criminal offending. Participants (N = 940) were drawn from a birth cohort on the island of Mauritius. Autonomic fear conditioning was assessed at age 3, with skin conductance recorded to reinforced (CS+) and unreinforced (CS−) auditory stimuli. Self-report criminal offending was assessed at age 39. Offenders were divided into successful and unsuccessful groups based on detection/conviction at ages 23 and 39 and compared with noncriminal controls. There was a significant Group × Conditional Stimulus interaction (p = .019). A breakdown of this interaction indicated that successful criminals showed significantly greater responding to the CS+ than both unsuccessful criminals (p = .003) and controls (p < .001), with no group differences on CS−, indicating superior conditioning in successful criminals. Three sensitivity analyses confirmed these findings. We hypothesize that enhanced fear conditioning in successful offenders results in an enhanced ability to detect environmental cues associated with punishment, resulting in escape from law enforcement agencies.