Towards a cognitive citizen science

Eva Van den Bussche, Kirsten A. Verhaegen, Gethin Hughes & Bert Reynvoet

Psychology is slowly embracing citizen science, in which non-professional scientists are actively involved in research. This approach has great potential to inspire research with greater relevance for society in cognitive science and beyond.

Curiosity about the world and its phenomena has been a strong driving force in the emergence of science as a formal profession. However, science is typically an endeavour reserved for a select group of people who have completed years of formal training, excluding the majority of society.

‘Citizen science’ emerged as an approach that incorporates the perspectives of non-professional scientists or ‘citizens’ through their active participation in scientific research. Citizen science can be seen as an extension of participatory (action) research. However, where participatory research typically aims to involve the expertise of those with lived experience to tackle a social issue in co-creation (such as working with minoritized communities)1, citizen science encompasses different degrees of participation in research by all citizens. The implementation of citizen science can have a range of levels of citizen involvement, from a passive contributory role to co-creation of research2.

Over the past decade, citizen science has rapidly gained academic and public interest and has been highly encouraged by agencies such as the European Commission, the US government and the United Nations. Citizen science in psychology is a special case, because people’s behaviour, cognition and attitudes are the object of study, and therefore citizens automatically act as participants in research. However, taking part in surveys or experiments designed and conducted by scientists hardly empowers citizens in the scientific process. Indeed, passive citizen participation can in some cases be alienating, if scientists do not carefully consider the experience of the citizens they aim to investigate, and this can prevent a sense of meaning from their participation3. This disconnection is felt particularly acutely in research on psycho-pathology, mental health and neurodiversity, in which research has historically not been conducted in collaboration with the people whose specific challenges are being studied4,5. However, in the past 5years, these fields have begun to increasingly integrate the voices of people with lived experience into the scientific process4.

Citizen science approaches can extend to other disciplines within psychology. For example, citizen science remains largely unexplored in investigations of the basic mechanisms of human behaviour and cognition, although it is not completely nonexistent. One example is a large-scale study of the effect of classroom breaks to perform physical activity on cognitive performance in schools across the UK, with over 7,000 participating children6. Volunteering teachers guided children in collecting data on themselves while educating them on the scientific method.

Another example is a study that investigated the effects of inhibition training in children, in which teachers and researchers co-designed training activities, randomly assigned children to the experimental conditions and collected the data7.

Another study used a citizen science approach to study the impact of nitrogen dioxide on selective attention (among other variables)8.

However, citizen science approaches to study human cognition and behaviour are still rare and are often limited to citizen involvement in data collection. The potential of citizen science to involve citizens in multiple steps of the research cycle, such as co-creation, remains largely underexplored.

Opportunities: The examples above highlight crucial opportunities of the citizen science approach. First and foremost, the perspectives and unique experience-based knowledge of research participants can lead to the development of new, timely and impactful research questions and methods. For example, in the study of nitrogen dioxide on attention, citizens identified topics they wished to investigate with regards to air pollution and health, translated their concerns into research questions and co-designed the study protocol8. This involvement uncovered the priorities of citizens on this topic — for instance, exposing their interest in understanding the effects of air pollution on cognition — which established a new direction in the field8. Second, when the topic of scientific research is defined according to the needs and concerns of citizens, research becomes more relevant for society and can influence the behaviour and opinions of citizens and policy makers. This relevance can also make study results easier to communicate to a broad audience9 and enhance trust in science and scientific experts2. Third, citizen science research has the potential to achieve large sample sizes10 or reach samples of participants that are typically more difficult to access by massively extending the potential participant base and decreasing reliance on researcher and participant mobility for collecting data (for instance, reaching people who are unable to come to the lab). In that respect, citizen science can help to address the issues of replication and failure to generalize in psychology10. Finally, through participation in citizen science projects, citizens become more acquainted with scientific methods and reasoning, which can increase their scientific literacy6.

Scientific literacy is indispensable in today’s information-rich society, in which people need to make complex decisions (such as regarding their health) by appropriately evaluating sources of knowledge. Collaboration between citizens and traditionally defined scientists can bidirectionally enrich both groups. It can help scientists to define societally important research questions about cognition and behaviour in daily life that they perhaps had not even thought of and aid them in realizing studies of an unprecedented scale or complexity. It can also help citizens to be heard by science and to receive answers to their key concerns, and provide them with increased knowledge about and trust in science.

Challenges: Despite these advantages, citizen science is still scarce in psychology and cognitive science. This scarcity might be caused by a lack of researcher familiarity with citizen science, but also by specific challenges for citizen science in psychology. For instance, it can be Check for updates nature reviews psychology science projects. Although psychology is not yet well-represented in these resources, they offer a good starting point to begin the citizen science journey. Inspired by examples within cognitive science and beyond, we hope that citizen participation in research design and execution will become more mainstream in cognitive science, thereby contribut-ing to the development of citizen science within the broader field of psychology. Ultimately, citizen involvement in cognitive science has the potential to inspire unique and impactful cognitive research that complements existing methodologies.

Eva Van den Bussche   1,3 , Kirsten A. Verhaegen1,3, Gethin Hughes2,4 & Bert Reynvoet1,41Brain & Cognition, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. 2Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK. 3 These authors contributed equally: Eva Van den Bussche, Kirsten A. Verhaegen. 4These authors jointly supervised this work: Gethin Hughes, Bert Reynvoet. e-mail: eva.vandenbussche@kuleuven.bePublished online: xx xx xxxxReferences1. Cornish, F. et al. Participatory action research. Nat. Rev. Methods Primers 3, 34 (2023).2. den Houting, J., Higgins, J., Isaacs, K., Mahony, J. & Pellicano, E. ‘I’m not just a guinea pig’: academic and community perceptions of participatory autism research. Autism 25, 148–163 (2021).3. Malmqvist, E. “Paid to endure”: paid research participation, passivity, and the goods of work. Am. J. Bioeth 19, 11–20 (2019).4. Todowede, O. et al. Best practice guidelines for citizen science in mental health research: systematic review and evidence synthesis. Front. Psychiatry 14, 1175311 (2023).5. Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S. et al. Participatory translational science of neurodivergence: model for attention-deicit/hyperactivity disorder and autism research. Br. J. Psychiatry 224, 127–131 (2024).6. Booth, J. N., Chesham, R. A., Brooks, N. E., Gorely, T. & Moran, C. N. A citizen science study of short physical activity breaks at school: improvements in cognition and wellbeing with self-paced activity. BMC Med. 18, 62 (2020).7. Letang, M., Citron, P., Garbarg‐Chenon, J., Houdé, O. & Borst, G. Bridging the gap between the lab and the classroom: an online citizen scientiic research project with teachers aiming at improving inhibitory control of school‐age children. Mind Brain Educ. 15, 122–128 (2021).8. Gignac, F. et al. Short-term NO2 exposure and cognitive and mental health: a panel study based on a citizen science project in Barcelona, Spain. Environ. Int. 164, 107284 (2022).9. Van Brussel, S. & Huyse, H. Citizen science on speed? Realising the triple objective of scientiic rigour, policy inluence and deep citizen engagement in a large-scale citizen science project on ambient air quality in Antwerp. J. Environ. Plann. Manage. 62, 534–551 (2019).10. Li, W., Germine, L. T., Mehr, S. A., Srinivasan, M. & Hartshorne, J. Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility. Infant Child Dev. 33, 2348 (2024).11. Szigeti, B. et al. Self-blinding citizen science to explore psychedelic microdosing. eLife 10, e62878 (2021).12. Resnik, D. B. Citizen scientists as human subjects: ethical issues. Citiz. Sci. 4, 11 (2019).Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.challenging for citizens to collect data on themselves, as they would simultaneously take the roles of both researcher and participant. If the participant is aware of the hypotheses of the study, social desir-ability bias and confirmation bias might influence the results. However, there are ways to decouple the roles of researcher and participant. For example, the citizens collecting data and those providing data do not have to be the same group. With support and training from scientific experts, citizens can test each other7. Furthermore, citizens can be trained in how to self-test in ways that aim to avoid bias, for example with self-anonymizing procedures11 or extensive guidelines and support during self-testing6. Admittedly, overcoming this challenge requires out-of-the-box thinking, and best practices remain to be developed as psychology embraces citizen science.A second challenge for citizen science in psychology is ethical considerations for citizen researchers. Psychology researchers who deal with personal and often sensitive data have to follow strict ethical guidelines determined by their institution and privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law in Europe. If citizens are to be involved in the collection or processing of other citizens’ personal data, these directives will apply to them. Thus, efforts must be made to advance knowledge on the specific ethical and legal considerations of citizen science within psychology12.It is a misconception that citizens must be involved in data collec-tion for a study to qualify as citizen science. Citizens can be involved in other phases of research, such as formulating research questions, study design, data processing and the interpretation of results. Indeed, co-created or participatory (action) research1, in which citizens par-ticipate in the design and planning of research but not necessarily in its execution, is a particularly accessible form of citizen science for psychology and its subdomains to adopt.OutlookPsychology domains such as psychopathology, mental health and neurodiversity have started to embrace citizen science, but fields such as cognitive science lag behind. However, citizen science is applica-ble across psychology. Researchers embarking on their next project should ask themselves whether it might benefit from a citizen sci-ence approach. Perhaps citizen input could help to define or refine the research questions or approach. Maybe citizens could be involved in data collection and/or analysis. Researchers should reflect on the optimal level of citizen participation, the potential challenges that might arise with that approach and how to mitigate these challenges. Finally, anyone who develops a new citizen science methodology within psychology should consider contributing to openly shared guidelines and resources to benefit the field of psychology as a whole. Citizen science organizations and governments (such as EU-Citizen.Science, European Citizen Science Association and CitizenScience.gov) provide resources, good practices and even funding opportunities for citizen