Researchers have validated a technique for studying how people make “moral” decisions when driving, with the goal of using the resulting data to train the artificial intelligence used in autonomous vehicles. These moral psychology experiments were tested using the most critical audience researchers could think of: philosophers.

Democracy is in danger. Two out of three people worldwide currently live in an autocracy; 20 years ago, it was only one in two. Even in traditionally stable democracies such as the US, institutions are being weakened, norms violated, and freedoms massively eroded. Now science is also coming under pressure. That is why researchers from a wide range of disciplines, led by Potsdam cognitive scientist Prof. Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, have published a handbook in response to the global resurgence of autocracy. With their “Anti-Autocracy Handbook,” they aim to provide scientists and civil society actors with tools to understand the causes of this change and counteract it.

Higher levels of wellbeing may help reduce the risk of memory loss in middle age, suggests new research, which tracked more than 10,000 over 50-year-olds across a 16-year span.

Having poor access to food, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood and not having strong friend and family support may lead to worse outcomes after stroke, according to a study published on June 18, 2025, online in Neurology^® Clinical Practice, an official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Conversely, the study found that people with these negative social factors had better survival rates after stroke. The study does not prove that socioeconomic factors lead to worse outcomes and better survival from stroke; it only shows an association.

In a new study, Jim Albertus at Carnegie Mellon University evaluated the impact of tax incentives on foreign-owned U.S. businesses’ income shifting, employment, and investment decisions. He found that foreign multinational firms engage in a modest degree of tax-motivated income shifting out of the United States. The results inform the potential effects of the “Revenge Tax” provisions of the June 2025 tax bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress.

Low-income students who received a preschool intervention focused on social-emotional development continued to benefit from it during their teen years according to a recent study published in the journal Child Development. The researchers, led by Karen Bierman, Evan Pugh University Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, found that their Head Start Research-based, Developmentally Informed (REDI) intervention improved students’ behavior and mental health during high school.