An international research team led by the University of Zurich has published a review of more than 200 academic studies, revealing that success isn’t just about talent, hard work, or luck – it’s deeply shaped by hidden social forces. The study shows that our intuition about how these social forces shape success is often misleading, and it maps how recent research has challenged long-held assumptions. The collected findings have implications for policy, education, and careers. The authors explained that future efforts to better understand success could pave the way toward social systems where success better reflects quality, talent, and societal values – and where everyone has equal opportunities to flourish, regardless of their backgrounds.

Black immigrant adults in the United States are more likely to be uninsured than their U.S.-born and non-Black immigrant counterparts, despite having the highest employment rates among the groups studied, according to new research from the Equity Research Institute (ERI) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Learning to think more about specific events in the future appears to reduce impulsivity,  improve decision-making, and shows potential as a therapy for alcohol use disorder, a new Virginia Tech study found. The study, which involved 24 participants whose brains were scanned during both resting-state and task-based fMRI, showed brain connections were altered by future thinking.