This chapter examines distributed semantics and language models, Word2Vec and BERT, for obtaining word and sentence embeddings to extract knowledge representations from naturalistic stimuli in behavioural data science applications. These representations enable large-scale study of human cognition and behaviour, providing insights into higher-level psychological processes. Utilising distributed semantics is cost-effective due to pretrained language models’ availability. However, integrating perceptual data with semantic representations is crucial, as these representations are experience-based and may not fully capture complex sentences’ meaning. Future research can address questions like memorability using semantic representations and explore individual differences by training models on data from distinct sub-populations. High-dimensional representations from embedding models offer numerous opportunities to study human behaviour on a larger scale than previously possible.

We present historical background, contemporary status, and potential future development of the psychology of religion (PoR) in China (Eastern traditions), beginning with its origins: the formative people, places, and various intellectual schools of thought. Writing about the current state of the topic, we reflect on influential factors that are either facilitating or inhibiting the study of PoR, including publication options, topical emphases, practitioners, orientations, methodologies, and professional organizations.

We offer opinions concerning future development topics that are emerging as important in the immediate future and/or are perennially important in order to stimulate creative and useful research including Western theoretical relevance, the extent to which Western PoR theories may or may not contain reasonable expectations and concepts for this region, contextual nuances, Indigenous theoretical concerns, collaborative research opportunities, and common faux pas – reflections on what people unfamiliar with this region commonly and incorrectly assume about conducting PoR work in this context.

Pro-social nudging has become a prominent strategy in behavioural public policy, aiming to encourage cooperative, altruistic or community-enhancing behaviours without coercion or significant economic incentives. By subtly altering the choice architecture or informational framing of decisions, pro-social nudges seek to elicit actions that benefit others, such as donating to charity, conserving energy, recycling, volunteering or adhering to public health measures. This chapter offers a critical, data-driven examination of pro-social nudging as a methodological and theoretical construct within behavioural data science. It traces the evolution of the concept from early experimental interventions to digitally enabled nudging in algorithmically mediated environments. The chapter investigates how pro-social nudges function across different domains and populations, evaluates the psychological mechanisms and empirical evidence behind their efficacy and considers the role of emerging technologies – such as AI, digital twins and real-time behavioural tracking – in designing, personalising and evaluating these interventions. Ethical concerns, including paternalism, manipulation and differential impacts across social groups, are addressed in depth. By integrating theoretical reflection with practical applications, this chapter highlights the importance of context-sensitive, transparent and equitable designs in pro-social nudging strategies. It concludes with a call for participatory co-design, longitudinal validation and interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure that pro-social nudges serve the public good without compromising autonomy or equity.

This chapter challenges the claim that the first decade of the nineteenth century was a disciplinary moment in which the arts and sciences were separated. It analyzes a publishing phenomenon of that decade: scientific publications for children, women, and artisans produced as conversations, dialogues, or catechisms. A wealth of such publications emerged in the years 1800 to 1810. They offer important insights into the competing scientific cultures of the turn of the century, in which professionalized disciplinarity had by no means eclipsed the amateur, even un disciplined, natural philosophy of the late eighteenth century. This essay focuses on Jeremiah Joyce, a scientific educator and author, analyzing the development of his educational writings and those of his interlocutors in this decade. Though these years produce new models of scientific instruction, experiment, and print communication, there are strong continuities with the natural philosophical and pedagogical practices of the previous century.