Social Sciences

On New Year's Day, millions of people in Japan visit Shinto shrines to pray for good fortune. In summer, many return to their hometowns to honor ancestors in Buddhist rituals. Families often maintain household altars, and seasonal festivals remain a central part of community life. Though this may look like... Read more

How partners respond to stress may be as important as the stress itself, according to two new Canadian studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary couples. Known collectively as sexual and gender diverse (SGD) couples, these partners recover more efficiently from acute stress and display more engaged and coordinated... Read more

A mythical army of genetically engineered raccoons has helped Australian researchers show that belief in conspiracy theories may be less common than previously thought.... Read more

Regions with greater socioeconomic inequalities are more affected by cold weather, whereas areas with higher levels of wealth and urbanization are at greater risk during heat waves and lower risk during cold spells. This is shown by a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).... Read more

Forming social connections online and via social media reduces how much people engage with and learn from the content posted but significantly boosts their networking performance, according to new research. The study, published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, led by the University of Bristol in the UK in partnership... Read more

Earlier this year I gave a talk about my research at Oxford's All Souls College, and worked with a chef to design an accompanying menu.... Read more

How are ordinary people drawn into extremist circles—and what role can artificial intelligence play in that process? This question is addressed by a new study which, for the first time, combines psychological theories of radicalization with knowledge of modern AI technologies such as recommendation algorithms, generative AI and botnets.... Read more

Sexual arousal can lead to "tunnel vision" that makes it more difficult to recognize when someone is just not that into you, according to new research in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.... Read more

Making sure that employees are properly credited for their ideas can go a long way toward improving workplace culture, a University of Toronto Scarborough study has found.... Read more

New research led by Prof. Gurit Birnbaum, a researcher of sexuality in close relationships at Reichman University's Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, and conducted in collaboration with her graduate student Kobi Zholtack and Prof. Harry Reis of the University of Rochester, examines how sexualized online dating profiles shape viewers' perceptions... Read more

The "love hormone" oxytocin (OT) plays a role not only in moments of intimacy but also in competitive situations. Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) have shown that OT levels increase when rivalry or clearly defined groups are involved—particularly in men.... Read more

A new study of online communities suggests that their interaction dynamics can amplify small, local imbalances in opinions, rapidly turning initially mixed-opinion communities into highly-polarized ones—even without the algorithms and homogeneity-seeking behaviors typically blamed for sculpting echo chambers. Petter Törnberg of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, presents these findings... Read more

A new analysis of inter-family marriages in the mafia-type organized crime group 'Ndrangheta, suggests that matrimonial ties between non-powerful families may play a previously under-appreciated role in maintaining the resilience of the entire 'Ndrangheta network. Maurizio Catino and colleagues at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, present these findings in the... Read more

Researchers at the University of Vermont have uncovered a powerful new insight about how language works—one that overturns a cornerstone assumption in psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence that has stood for more than 70 years.... Read more

Across Australia, universities and governments say increasing the numbers of Indigenous graduates is one of the main priorities in tertiary education.... Read more