Health policy is motivated by a variety of factors including moral concerns, values and convictions. Policymakers are motivated to consider how constituents and those directly impacted by policies will react to the policies they enact. Thus, it is advantageous for policymakers to understand the psychological processes that shape constituents' reactions toward health policies. We outline how and when policymakers and constituents are motivated to empathize, moralize, and compromise on divisive health policies, such as opioid-related policies, by considering the motivational frameworks of empathy and the plurality of moral values that inform attitudes. We offer insight for policymakers balancing tradeoffs between different moral values and concerns, suggesting that policymakers should consider cultivating an active dialogue around the relevant moral emotions felt by both supporters and opponents. For example, when considering syringe services programs, supporters and opponents may both be motivated by the moral concern of harm—as supporters may see services as preventing infections and keeping people healthy, while opponents may see services as promoting drug use and in turn, harmful health outcomes. We suggest that such a morally pluralistic effort will (1) highlight moral alignment amongst supporters to cultivate collective resolve and (2) acknowledge the competing moral concerns of opponents so that they feel understood and in turn, feel more willing to understand competing perspectives. While leaning into moral emotions may feel like a turn toward divisiveness, we suggest that acknowledging the plurality of moral values at stake sets the foundation for support and compromise.

Colorblindness may undermine the effective translation of psychological research findings to policy insights. Colorblindness, the ideological position that race should be ignored, may shape psychological research to the extent that psychologists assume that race does not matter to an understanding of human thought and behavior. This assumption creates a large gap between psychological research and the lived experiences of U.S. individuals, for whom resources, wealth, and opportunities are frequently contingent on racial group membership. This article suggests that colorblindness in psychology 1) increases the likelihood that policies aligned with psychological findings will exacerbate inequality rather than address racial disparities, 2) reduces the relevance of policy insights from psychological research to people of color, and 3) reduces the relevance of policy insights from psychological research to White individuals. Recommendations for deriving racially equitable and conscious policy insights from psychology are discussed.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as unprecedented drivers of cultural homogenization, operating at scales and speeds that exceed all previous technologies. This paper examines how LLMs reduce cultural diversity across three cultural domains. Drawing on recent empirical studies, we demonstrate that LLMs disproportionately reflect a narrow demographic, primarily western, liberal, high-income, highly educated, male populations from English-speaking nations, while marginalizing not only non-Western cultures but also diverse groups within Western societies, including older adults, religious communities, and minority populations. Unlike earlier technologies that primarily transmitted cultural content, LLMs actively shape communication styles and knowledge systems, creating a feedback loop where AI-generated content becomes training material for future systems, progressively standardizing human expression with each generation. These homogenizing effects extend beyond representation to behavioral influence, reshaping how users communicate and make decisions. We propose targeted policy interventions across the LLM development pipeline and emphasize the critical need for standardized benchmarks to evaluate how well LLMs understand and represent diverse cultures across all stages. These interventions require coordinated action among AI developers, policymakers, social scientists, and diverse cultural communities to ensure that cultural diversity becomes a non-negotiable requirement rather than an optional enhancement. Without such efforts, AI risks eroding humanity's cultural plurality, replacing diverse traditions with homogenized norms shaped by a narrow subset of the global population.

Artificial intelligence (AI) models trained on large corpora must prioritize some information over others. Distilling vast data into simple user-friendly representations can lead to a prioritization problem , in which large AI models neglect crucial information in their outputs. This prioritization problem manifests for newsfeed-ranking algorithms and generative AI such as large language models (LLMs). This paper discusses two flavors of this problem: (1) models trained to prioritize coherence or engagement may inadvertently prioritize misleading information over accurate information, and (2) models trained to prioritize prevalent information will underrepresent the heterogeneity of voices, reflecting cultural perspectives that dominate the training data. The prioritization problem can critically undermine knowledge, but it is not inevitable. Policymakers can address the prioritization problem by modifying the training material, training objectives, institutional safeguards, and messaging around large AI models.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade established the federal right to terminate one's own pregnancy, and also established a triad: the woman who is seeking an abortion (actor), the abortion itself (behavior), and the physician who evaluates the situation and makes a determination (evaluator). Dobbs overturned Roe , delegating authority to restrict abortion access to the states, leading to a policy patchwork and uncertainty about how to make medical decisions. This has created a “decision vacuum,” which occurs when an evaluator is unclear, but decisions still must occur. Given Dobbs , the role of voters in imagining how pregnancy termination decisions occur becomes a matter of extreme import. Reviewing the literature clarifies decision making in low information environments, how experts versus novices mentally represent knowledge, and the role of potential biases. Two key targets for further research: (1) people as voter, tasked with imagining a decision framework that includes the triad of actor, behavior, and evaluator, and (2) people as evaluator , tasked with enacting standards that regulate the behavior of other actors. Psychology must turn its attention to the decision vacuums that increasingly surround us all.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) should not be peripheral goals for organizations and educational institutions but essential components of just and effective policy. Psychological, sociological, and historical evidence highlight how Whiteness is preserved as the invisible dominant cultural norm that structures US institutions—from education to governance—to serve White interests. This system marginalizes Black Americans and other racially and ethnically minoritized groups. Current political and institutional rollbacks of DEI efforts threaten to entrench racial inequities further. Any policy claiming to advance equity must address anti-Blackness as the foundational organizing principle of US society. Policies that ignore race or treat DEI as a business strategy rather than a moral imperative fail to achieve true inclusion. Policy recommendations for educational institutions and organizations should move beyond symbolic diversity and toward structural justice. Ultimately, defiant commitment to DEI is an act of moral leadership, collective resistance, and democratic preservation.

This paper critically examines the ethical concerns and harms associated with virtual reality (VR) technology, emphasizing their disproportionate impact on Black women and members of other multiply marginalized social groups. While VR offers significant potential across sectors, its development and deployment often perpetuate longstanding biases, resulting in privacy risks, lack of accountability, and cultural erasure. Key VR harms are enumerated—such as limited representation, intensified surveillance, and inadequate recourse for harassment—which are often amplified for individuals at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. This paper highlights how current VR policy approaches often overlook these compounded vulnerabilities. To address these gaps, the authors propose intersectional VR policy recommendations: enhancing user autonomy and accountability through rolling consent and robust reporting mechanisms; advancing intersectional representation via early education, inclusive recruitment, and community-based participatory research; and leveraging the lived expertise of Black women and members of other multiply marginalized groups to unlock VR's liberatory potential. These intersectional strategies are essential for equitable and socially transformative VR policy.

The last few decades have seen ambitious new mega-studies testing ways to change people's behavior for good. Studies with thousands of participants have tested the effectiveness of financial incentives and psychological nudges to encourage people to get vaccinated, go to the gym, and work harder. The emerging theme across these studies is that money tends to work better than nudges. Yet most of this research has been done in Western cultures. This paper reviews studies testing interventions outside of the West. Those studies often find that the power of money is smaller, with psychological nudges sometimes more cost-efficient than financial incentives. What's more, the messages that come with interventions tend to be more effective outside of Western cultures if they emphasize interdependence and connection to other people. In sum, new evidence is suggesting policymakers should be careful about exporting the lessons from mega-studies done in the West to cultures outside the West (and even groups within Western countries with different cultural norms, such as middle class versus working class Americans). Instead, new studies are pointing to ways to deliver interventions more effectively in non-Western cultures.

Honesty is highly valued across societies. Communicating in truthful ways is widely seen as moral and desired across interpersonal relationships. Despite the value societies place on honesty, there are personal and social factors that often inhibit truthful communication and its potential benefits. In the current paper, we describe the implications of honesty for policy in three key domains: in interpersonal and group relationships, within healthcare settings between patients and providers, and in broader online settings. We highlight honesty as an interpersonal communication process focused on sharing the truth and fostering its understanding in others. We further draw on insights on the personal and social factors that motivate people to communicate honestly, or not, and the associated costs and benefits of doing so. Anchoring on key theories and findings related to honesty, we highlight how truthful communication may have important policy implications for individuals, relationships, and society.

The United States incarcerates over a million people every year, and 45% of Americans have had an incarcerated loved one. This paper leverages research from the field of relationship science to analyze how policies surrounding incarceration affect people's relationships. We consider implications of policy during the pre-incarceration, incarceration, and reentry periods for the psychology of relationships among couples and families impacted by the justice system. Many policies in place make it more difficult for people to maintain strong close relationships, and policies that would support those relationships are often lacking. Despite these challenges, people can and do maintain relationships throughout this system, and those with close relationships experience greater well-being and are at lower risk for recidivism. Public policies that better support the close relationships of people involved in the criminal justice system would strengthen families and communities by reducing recidivism.