Behavioral Science

Bonn, Germany — Meat substitutes are on the rise: While they used to have a niche existence in health food stores or organic stores, wheat salami, tofu schnitzel or soy mince can now be found in every well-stocked supermarket. “We wanted to know why consumers choose these alternatives,” explains Jeanette Klink-Lehmann, who is doing her […]

Bern, Switzerland — Exposure to stress activates a group of natural physiological and cerebral responses that orchestrate the necessary behavioural changes for facing threats to one’s life, such as fleeing or fighting when confronted by a potential aggressor. Exposure to situations of intense or repeated stress can nonetheless have insidious effects and trigger psychiatric problems characterized by […]

Baltimore, MD — Previous studies by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers showed that psychedelic treatment with psilocybin relieved major depressive disorder symptoms in adults for up to a month. Now, in a follow-up study of those participants, the researchers report that the substantial antidepressant effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy, given with supportive psychotherapy, may last at least […]

Tokyo, Japan — As we have experienced during the COVID pandemic, loneliness, or perceived social isolation, is a major stress for social animals and increases the risk of various mental and physical health issues such as depression, substance abuse, obesity, and premature death. In efforts to understand the neural basis for loneliness, Kansai Fukumitsu and […]

Columbia, MO — A new analysis by David Geary at the University of Missouri and Gijsbert Stoet at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom finds career aspirations from nearly 500,000 adolescents shows consistent sex differences across 80 nations, suggesting biologically-influenced preferences can play a role in gender segregation in the workplace later in […]

Ottawa, ON, Canada — A study from the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences has revealed the limitations of manipulating emotional responses to counter distressing moments, with participants – particularly women – relying on spontaneous regulated emotion rather than a forced response to cope. These findings cast doubt on past research that suggested using […]

Morgantown, WV — Christian nationalists are less likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine while political conservatives express high skepticism toward the coronavirus in general, two new studies published by West Virginia University sociologists conclude. In their first report, published in Vaccine, researchers found that Christian nationalism—the belief that Christianity should permeate American civic life ‑ is one of […]

Lancaster, UK — Employers could undo the progress made over the last 18 months and deepen workplace inequalities if organisations fail to override the deep-rooted perceptions of ‘office culture’, a leading think tank has warned. New research, led by the Work Foundation and the Chartered Management Institute, finds that ‘traditional’ views of the workplace still […]

New York, NY — COVID-19 lockdowns scrambled sleep schedules and stretched waistlines. One culprit may be social isolation itself. Scientists have found that lone fruit flies quarantined in test tubes sleep too little and eat too much after only about one week of social isolation, according to a new study published in Nature. The findings, which describe how […]

London, UK — The strength of brain connections at birth may predict the future emotional and social development of babies born prematurely, according to new research published in eNeuro. Children born prematurely — roughly 10 percent of all births — are at greater risk of developing social and emotional problems. Yet there is no clear way to distinguish […]

Munich, Germany — Many of us have experienced the following: the day before an exam, we try to cram a huge amount of information into our brain. But just as quickly as we acquired it, the knowledge we have painstakingly gained is gone again. The good news is that we can counteract this forgetting. With […]

Hefei, China — Early-life inflammation, such as trauma and viral infections, strongly increases the risk of individual for depression in adulthood, however, the mechanisms are not clear yet.  A team led by Prof. ZHANG Zhi from Division of Life Sciences and Medicine of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy […]