Becoming aware of previously unrecognized aspects of one’s psychological and behavioral challenges is one of the central mechanisms of positive psychotherapeutic change. Yet the specific neurocognitive processes that underlie new realizations remain poorly understood. What must occur in one’s mind and brain for awareness to emerge? Here, we present a novel, detailed, process-based framework for understanding how new awareness arises during psychotherapeutic dialogue. Central to this framework are the concepts of “mental navigation” and “cognitive map expansion,” which we explain at both the conceptual and neuroscientific levels. Namely, individuals construct internal world models in the form of cognitive maps. Mental-health difficulties may reflect maps that are overly rigid or narrow. Therapeutic change may thus involve expanding these maps by mentally navigating beyond their current boundaries and forming new trajectories in the conceptual and neural activity space. We conclude by exploring clinical-practice implications as well as offering directions for empirically validating this model.

Many effective psychological interventions change maladaptive interpretations of oneself or of one’s context by offering more adaptive narratives, which are associated with desirable responses and outcomes. Psychologically wise interventions from the social-psychological tradition have used this approach to great effect in improving important outcomes across a variety of life domains—including, but not limited to, academic performance, physical and mental health, relationships, organizational culture, and civic behavior. Although these psychologically wise interventions target people’s narratives, they do not focus on teaching effective strategies for pursuing valued goals—let alone a sustained mental habit of considering strategies that can make goal pursuit generally more effective. How might we better support and maintain adaptive narratives that psychologically wise interventions offer, especially in goal-directed, effective, and generalizable ways? I propose a complementary approach: guiding people to ask and answer strategic questions. These are questions that can elicit strategy generation, access, and use. As I explain, asking and answering strategic questions can elicit adaptive appraisals and responses to adversity. Importantly, people can learn an orientation toward self-prompting strategic questions. Understanding and intervening on strategic questioning and answering offers new frontiers for research and practice.

The development of generative artificial intelligence capable of sustaining complex conversations has created a burgeoning market for companion chatbots promising social and emotional connection. The appeal of these products raises questions about whether chatbots can fulfill the functions of close relationships. Proponents argue that relationships with chatbots can be as meaningful as relationships between humans, whereas critics argue they are a dangerous distraction from genuine connections. This analysis applies theoretical tools from more than 50 years of research on close relationships to evaluate the extent to which human–chatbot interactions meet the definition of and fulfill the functions of close relationships. Interactions between humans and chatbots do possess some characteristic features of close relationships: Humans and chatbots can influence each other and engage in frequent and diverse conversations over time. Chatbots can be responsive in ways humans perceive as supportive, generating feelings of connection and opportunities for growth. Yet because chatbots make only superficial requests of their users, relationships with them cannot provide the benefits of negotiating with and sacrificing for a partner and may reinforce undesirable behaviors. Research that attends to the characteristics of users, chatbots, and their interactions will be crucial for identifying for whom these relationships will be beneficial or harmful.

Emotions play a prominent role in personality psychology, yet personality researchers most frequently study them as broad dimensions (e.g., negative affect) rather than distinct emotions (e.g., fear). We argue that a greater incorporation of distinct emotions into personality research would enrich our understanding of personality. We highlight four ways in which personality research can be expanded by considering distinct emotions as inputs driving personality processes, mediators and moderators of relationships between personality factors and life outcomes, and outputs of personality processes. We then discuss how a personality-based methodological approach might enhance distinct emotions research and highlight an area in which the integration of distinct emotions has already benefited personality science. We conclude by reviewing methodological tools that personality researchers can use to measure distinct emotions empirically.

Cognitive dysfunction is essential to conceptualizing, defining, and assessing much of psychopathology. Despite this prominence, cognitive abilities are not included in the prevailing empirically based classification system: the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP). This gap exists because the factor-analytic literature the HiTOP is based on has solely used reporter measures rather than neuropsychological tests needed to measure cognitive ability. Given HiTOP’s influence on research and clinical practice, the omission of cognitive functions from the model is consequential. This study aimed to determine how cognitive abilities fit into the empirical structure of psychopathology with a meta-analytic joint factor analysis. We pooled data from three published meta-analyses into a single correlation matrix of eight disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and seven cognitive functions. We then fit a series of models to the meta-analytic correlation matrix using exploratory factor analysis and correlated factors across levels to estimate the hierarchical structure. The highest level of the model included a general factor with strong loadings of all disorders and cognitive functions (median λ = |.51|, range = |.30| to |.64|). At the lowest level were three superspectra: psychosis and cognitive dysfunction, externalizing, and emotional dysfunction. Our results show cognitive abilities can be integrated into the HiTOP model and point to actionable next steps in research to accomplish this goal.

Meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated the robustness of the cross-race effect (CRE; i.e., better recognition of same-race faces compared with different-race faces). These analyses have unveiled variations in the dependent variables associated with the CRE across combinations of participant and target races. However, the underlying factors driving these variations remain poorly understood. We posit that although the CRE is robust, its generalizability may be contingent on the specific racial groups compared, particularly when contrasting majority and minority racial groups. In this article, we delve into the dynamics of the CRE across distinct racial groups and explore how minority-race status may influence research outcomes. We considered the articles included in the latest meta-analyses of the CRE with a spotlight on minority-race status. We suggest that minority-race status may explain why many studies considering non-White participants do not show a CRE. The CRE might not be as robust as it appears to be because much of the research on the effect has focused on majority-race participants and minority-race faces. Going forward, researchers should consider incorporating measures relevant to the minority effect, fully crossing participant and target races and studying a greater variety of races.

A recently published article by van Heijst et al. attempted to reconcile two research approaches in the science of emotion—basic emotion theory and the theory of constructed emotion—by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the body whereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotion into objective physical states and subjective feelings involves three misleading simplifications that fundamentally misrepresent the theory of constructed emotion and prevent progress in the science of emotion. In this article we identify these misleading simplifications and the resulting factual errors, empirical oversights, and evolutionary oversimplifications. We then discuss why such errors will continue to arise until scientists realize that the two theories are intrinsically irreconcilable. They rest on incommensurate assumptions and require different methods of evaluation. Only by directly considering these differences will these research silos in the science of emotion finally dissolve, speeding the accumulation of trustworthy scientific knowledge about emotion that is usable in the real world.

Basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) have both made significant contributions to the field of affective science despite a persistent divide between the two camps. We argue that focusing on which camp is right hampers possibly fruitful collaborations between affective researchers working within different theoretical frameworks. The TCE and BETs can complement each other because they focus on different features of and questions about affective processes. Clearly defining and operationalizing these questions is crucial to further elucidating the evolutionary basis of emotion and feeling.

In psychological research, noise is often considered a nuisance that obscures rather than contributes information. This simplification overlooks that noise can be informative and that by exploring the nature of the noise one can often draw additional conclusions concerning the underlying psychological processes. It is arguably only in recent years that the mainstream of researchers has taken this idea to heart and demonstrated that it can lead to breakthroughs in the understanding of human behavior. The aim of this special section is to showcase some of the ways in which systematic exploration of noise can be achieved and how it can enrich psychological research. In this introductory article, we introduce the idea of treating noise as endogenous as opposed to exogenous to the theoretical and statistical models of psychological phenomena. We then contribute a historical review of the role of noise in psychological research, including discussions of previous endogenous treatments of noise in the literature. As an illustration, we describe our own research on the precise/not precise model and show how noise distributions can be used to delineate analytic and intuitive modes of reasoning. Finally, we briefly introduce the other contributions to this special section.