Latest science news in Psychology & Sociology
J.K. Rowling's characters turn up in medical literature, too
'Harry Potter and the Recessive Allele'? The books have inspired research topics in genetics, psychotherapy and other fields.For more than a decade, the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series has provided...
Everyday inspiration shines through at the Google Science Fair | Alice Bell
The inpsired finalists of the Google Science Fair may provide valuable lessons for practising scientistsWhat questions would the public choose to invest scientific time and resources in, if given the chance to shape...
Scientists Seek to Understand Tornado Outbreak Impact
A team of scientists from The University of Alabama in Huntsville want to learn more about the physics behind the deadly outbreak of tornadoes earlier this year, as well as...
Your Mother Was Right: Good Posture Is Important
Sitting or standing up straighter actually decreases your sensitivity to pain, a new study shows.
Smokers not very receptive to shocking anti-smoking images
Researchers have found clear changes in how emotions are processed in smokers. After an abstinence period of 12 hours, the brain's fear center was mostly out of commission in addicts....
Popular TV shows teach children fame is most important value, psychologists report; Being kind to others fell dramatically in importance over 10 years
Fame is the No. 1 value emphasized by television shows popular with 9-11 year-olds -- a dramatic change in 10 years, psychologists report in a new study. From 1997 to...
Consider yourself ethical? New research says think again
When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are,...
Threat of gossip can rein in selfishness, study finds
Gossip can be hurtful, unproductive, and mean. It can also be an important part of making sure that people will share and cooperate, according to a new study.
African-American women stress compounded
Using incense or lighting a candle may seem like good ways to let go of racial stress, but a recent study found that might not be the case in terms...
Biomarker for autism discovered
Siblings of people with autism show a similar pattern of brain activity to that seen in people with autism when looking at emotional facial expressions. Researchers have now identified the...
Consortium warns U.S. policymakers against clear-cutting selected science budgets
More than 140 scientific societies and universities today sent a letter urging U.S. policymakers, in their need to cut spending, to avoid singling out specific programs -- such as the...
Value of test-driven education questioned by UB researcher
Research by Jaekyung Lee, PhD, professor of counseling, school and educational psychology at the University at Buffalo, is helping to expose failures in America's controversial test-driven educational policies.
Evidence for 'food addiction' in humans
New research suggests that people can become dependent on highly palatable foods and engage in a compulsive pattern of consumption, similar to the behaviors we observe in drug addicts and...
Researchers connect neurons to computers to decipher the enigmatic code of neuronal circuits
Machine logic is based on human logic. But although a computer processor can be dissembled and dissected in logical steps, the same is not true for the way our brains...
Employers with tipped employees
Employers increasingly face wage and hour enforcement actions and costly class action lawsuits under the federal and state laws that regulate minimum wages and tipping. With wide variations in federal...
Facebook teams with Time Warner to fight bullies
(AP) -- Facebook and Time Warner are ganging up on bullies to address a problem that torments millions of children and young adults.
Evidence for ‘Food Addiction’ in Humans
New research suggests that people can become dependent on highly palatable foods and engage in a compulsive pattern of consumption, similar to the behaviors we observe in drug addicts and...
Cultivating wisdom: Studies identify a promising way (w/ video)
(Medical Xpress) -- Adopting a psychologically distanced perspective enhances wisdom, according to University of Michigan research just published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Chinese toddler who fell 10 storeys wakes from coma
A two-year-old girl who fell 10 storeys in China and survived after being caught by a passer-by awoke from a 10-day coma and called out to her parents, according to...
Receptor limits the rewarding effects of food and cocaine
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers have long known that dopamine, a brain chemical that plays important roles in the control of normal movement, and in pleasure, reward and motivation, also plays...
'Dogma on mental illness is a threat to progress'
It is commonplace for people to hold very firm views about the nature and causes of mental illness, based on hunch, ideological perspective and anecdote. For example, some believe all...
Eating disorders impact brain function, new brain research suggests
Bulimia nervosa is a severe eating disorder associated with episodic binge eating followed by extreme behaviors to avoid weight gain such as self-induced vomiting, use of laxatives or excessive exercise....
Chicks dig certain types of music
What accounts for the sounds we like to hear? Is it something about the properties of our auditory systems or brains? Or are such tastes learned? Two-month-old human infants show...
Owl study expands understanding of human stereovision
Using owls as a model, a new research study reveals the advantage of stereopsis, commonly referred to as stereovision, is its ability to discriminate between objects and background; not in...
Even before language, babies learn the world through sounds
It's not just the words, but the sounds of words that have meaning for us. This is true for children and adults, who can associate the strictly auditory parts of...
News in Brief: Humans
Poorer families take bigger risks, plus untrustworthy mugs and adulterous wives in this week's news
Experts defend bashed potato
They say tuber's bad reputation is overstated, linked to fryingSchool cooks know them as a sure bet and farmers depend on them for a living, and neither group takes kindly...
Call to ease China one-child rule
China's richest and most populous province has asked the central government to relax the law that restricts most families to one child.