One of the most prestigious science journals in the world, PNAS publishes a huge variety of open access science with a particular focus on research of general interest to the public.

Articles Featured in our Library:

Short-Term Meditation Training Improves Attention and Self-Regulation (2007) – Yi-Yuan Tang, Yinghua Ma, Junhong Wang, Yaxin Fan, Shigang Feng and others

Symbolic Gestures and Spoken Language Are Processed by a Common Neural System (2009) – Jian Xu, Patrick J. Gannon, Karen Emmorey, Jason F. Smith, and Allen R. Braun

Universals and Cultural Variation in Turn-Taking in Conversation (2009) – Tanya Stivers, N. J. Enfield, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Makoto Hayashi and others

Here, we applied fMRI to record brain activity from both speakers and listeners during natural verbal communication. We used the speaker’s spatiotemporal brain activity to model listeners’ brain activity and found that the speaker’s activity is spatially and temporally coupled with the listener’s activity. This coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate.

Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Not Culturally Universal (2012) – Rachael E. Jack, Oliver Garrod, Hui Yu, Roberto Caldara, and Philippe G. Schyns

Bodily Maps of Emotions (2013) – Lauri Nummenmaa, Enrico Glerean, Riitta Hari, and Jari K. Hietanen

Coming to Terms With Fear (2014) – Joseph E. LeDoux

Topography of Social Touching Depends on Emotional Bonds Between Humans (2015) – Juulia T. Suvilehto, Enrico Glerean, Robin Dunbar, Riitta Hari, and Lauri Nummenmaa

Effects of Gendered Behavior on Testosterone in Women and Men (2015) – Sari M. van Anders, Jeffrey Steiger, and Katherine L. Goldey

Unraveling the Evolution of Uniquely Human Cognition (2016) – Evan L. MacLean

Testosterone Causes Both Prosocial and Antisocial Status-Enhancing Behaviors in Human Males (2016) – Jean-Claude Dreher, Simon Dunne, Agnieszka Pazderska, Thomas Frodl, John J. Nolan and others

Hedonism and the Choice of Everyday Activities (2016) – Maxime Taquet, Jordi Quoidbach, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Martin Desseilles, and James J. Gross

Dehumanization Increases Instrumental Violence, but Not Moral Violence (2017) – S. Tage, Piercarlo Valdesolo, and Jesse Graham

Pride is a highly pleasant emotion; this internal reward can incentivize people to undertake and persevere at costly but socially valued courses of action. Pride has a full-body display featuring an erect and expanded posture and gaze directed at the audience and thus it appears to generate common knowledge about the individual’s enhanced value. This display conveys achievement and dominance, is produced by congenitally blind individuals, and is recognized by young children and by adults across cultures.

Cross-Cultural Invariances in the Architecture of Shame (2018) – Daniel Sznycer, Dimitris Xygalatas, Elizabeth Agey, Sarah Alami, Xiao-Fen An and others

Mindfulness Training Reduces Loneliness and Increases Social Contact in a Randomized Controlled Trial (2019) – Emily K. Lindsay, Shamar Young, Kirk Warren Brown, Joshua M. Smyth, and J. David Creswell

Language Influences Mass Opinion Toward Gender and LGBT Equality (2019) – Margit Tavits and Efrén O. Pérez

All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for millennia, human populations have resided in the same narrow part of the climatic envelope available on the globe, characterized by a major mode around 11°C–15°C mean annual temperature (MAT).

The Plasticity of Well-Being: A Training-Based Framework for the Cultivation of Human Flourishing (2020) – Cortland J. Dahl, Christine D. Wilson-Mendenhall, and Richard J. Davidson

The Long-Run Effects of Religious Persecution: Evidence From the Spanish Inquisition (2021) – Mauricio Drelichman, Jordi Vidal-Robert, and Hans-Joachim Voth

Reducing Opinion Polarization: Effects of Exposure to Similar People With Differing Political Views (2021) – Stefano Balietti, Lise Getoor, Daniel G. Goldstein, and Duncan J. Watts

Eye Contact Marks the Rise and Fall of Shared Attention in Conversation (2021) – Sophie Wohltjen and Thalia Wheatley

Political opponents respect moral beliefs more when they are supported by personal experiences, not facts.

How old are the oldest Homo sapiens in Far East Asia? (2021) – Jean‐Jacques Hublin

The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Adult Personality: Evidence From the United States, Europe, and a Large-Scale Natural Experiment (2021) – Ted Schwaba, Wiebke Bleidorn, Christopher J. Hopwood, Jochen E. Gebauer, Peter J. Rentfrow and others

Out-Group Animosity Drives Engagement on Social Media (2021) – Steve Rathje, Jay Joseph Van Bavel, and Sander van der Linden

Talking With Strangers Is Surprisingly Informative (2022) – Stav Atir, Kristina Wald, and Nicholas Epley

Widespread Misperceptions of Long-Term Attitude Change (2022) – Adam Mastroianni and Jason Dana

Beliefs can be highly resilient in the sense that they are not easily abandoned in the face of counterevidence. This has the advantage of guiding consistent behavior and judgments but may also have destructive consequences for individuals, nature, and society. For instance, pathological beliefs can sustain psychiatric disorders, the belief that rhinoceros horn is an aphrodisiac may drive a species extinct, beliefs about gender or race may fuel discrimination, and belief in conspiracy theories can undermine democracy. Here, we present a unifying framework of how self-amplifying feedbacks shape the inertia of beliefs on levels ranging from neuronal networks to social systems.

Persistence of Gender Biases in Europe (2023) – Taylor J. Damann, Jeremy Siow, and Margit Tavits

The Global Human Day (2023) – William Fajzel, Eric D. Galbraith, Christopher Barrington-Leigh, Jacques Charmes, Elena Frie and others