The False Memory Archive is a unique art collection which contains hundreds of false memory reports submitted by members of the general population to analyse these reports. In this paper the authors examined whether some of the memories reported in these submissions were better described as nonbelieved memories (NBMs). Furthermore, the researchers investigated the reasons for why people decided that their memory was false and assessed the verification strategies that people used to validate their mental representation.

How can we achieve the UNAIDS goal to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030?

To achieve the UNAIDS goal to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, action is needed to optimise the uptake of HIV testing and effective HIV prevention technologies, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication and treatment as prevention (TasP). Although significant gains in this area have been achieved globally, there is still a need to rethink how we target difficult-to-reach subpopulations.

In this Nudgeathon Associate Professor Dr Jason Ong, Research Fellow at the Melbourne Sexual Health Clinic, Monash University and Professor Daniel Read, Professor of Behavioural Science at the Warwick Business School are leading a team to investigate how successes in behavioural change from other disciplines may help to address the issue of controlling HIV using behavioural economics.

What is the relationship between dishonesty and self awareness? Can this realtionshbe explained by cognitive dissonnace?

In this working paper Ceren Beng¨u C¸ ıbık and our newest academic lead Professor Daniel Sgroi explore the relationship between self-awareness and dishonesty in a preregistered experiment with 1,260 subjects. By varying vary the level of awareness of subjects’ own past dishonesty and exploring the impact on behaviour in tasks that include the scope to lie: results showed that We find that in single-person non-interactive tasks, self-awareness of dishonesty helps to lower dishonesty in the future. However, in tasks that are competitive in nature becoming more aware of past dishonesty raises the likelihood of dishonesty. In this thought provoking paper, results showed when and why pointing out those who have been (dis)honest in the past can be an effective way to induce honesty in the future and when it might back-fire badly. It perhaps also shed some light on perceived increases in dishonesty in politics, the media and everyday life.

Professor Daniel Sgroi and Dr Anthony Tuckwell, working with computer scientists Dr Alessandro Ragano and Dr Emmanouil Benetos create a new measure of national life satisfaction based on the emotional content of a country’s most popular songs. Using machine learning to detect the valence of the UK’s chart-topping song of each year since the 1970s, they show that it is very effective at predicting the leading survey-based measure of life satisfaction. Moreover they find that music is better able to predict life satisfaction than a recently-proposed measure of happiness based on the happiness enshrined within words (a method pioneered by Professors Thomas Hills, Daniel Sgroi and co-authors and published in Nature Human Behaviour in 2019). Our results have implications for the role of music in society, confirming the place of music as a “language of the emotions” and building on the use of language as a practical measure of public sentiment.

A new technique developed by researchers at the University of Warwick uses the latest findings of Artificial Intelligence to detect hypoglycaemic events from raw ECG signals, via wearable sensors.

New research by Sunita Sah and Daniel Read (Warwick) investigates whether people understand that if others (marketers or politicians) withhold information from them, its likely to be bad news for the person from whom the information is being withheld. The short answer is that to a large degree people do not understand this. Useful to know the next time you come to restaurant that has not posted its hygiene rating on the door.

Professor Nick Chater asks why people don't rise up against dictatorial regimes.

A study of 34,000 people by Warwick researchers finds our memory is significantly affected by pollution.

Scientists from Warwick have discovered the year we were at our happiest. Our national happiness levels of previous centuries (1820-2009) measured for the first time.

Services for homeless people could be improved greatly through the use of data science, thanks to the UK's inaugural 12-week Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) programme.

Daniel Read presents new ideas on how to nudge people into thinking more of the future when making choices that extend into it.