Feature Channels: Behavioral Science

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Over the long term, being a bystander of high-school violence can be as damaging to mental health as being directly bullied, a new study finds.

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A vastly expanding gap in age, gender and diversity is creating an even deeper divide between the Republican and Democratic parties. And a Vanderbilt University law expert on the 26th Amendment says this chasm between the nation’s largest generation—millennials— and baby boomers is exacerbating voter discrimination.

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ASU study shows the difference one calorie can make when it comes to influencing shoppers' health perceptions of 100 calorie mini packs

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Rather than social work practice being based solely on a therapist’s intuition and assumptions, social workers should consider a system of evaluation and measurement based on hard data, suggests a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis.“Not only do current professional social work therapists not know their past performance stats, they also are not able to provide any performance measures regarding their active patient caseload,” said David Patterson Silver Wolf, associate professor at the Brown School and author of the piece “The New Social Work,” published Sept.

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Some kindergartners and first-graders suspended from school can find it challenging to reverse the negative trajectory in their academic life, says a University of Michigan researcher.

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Researchers at the University of New Hampshire will undertake the largest study ever conducted on intimate partner violence among lesbian, gay, bisexual and other sexual minority college students thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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As if college were not difficult enough, more than one-third of first-year university students in eight industrialized countries around the globe report symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental health disorder, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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For thousands of years, humans have relied on storytelling to engage, to share emotions and to relate personal experiences. Now, psychologists at McMaster University are exploring the mechanisms deep within the brain to better understand just what happens when we communicate.

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While conventional wisdom says that people don’t like uncertain gains or rewards, a study from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that uncertainty can play an important role in motivating repeat behaviors.

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Research from Michigan State University shows that keeping up with email traffic places high demands on managers, which prevents them from achieving their goals and from being good leaders.

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People who use drugs in New York City have adjusted their behaviors to avoid overdose, finds a study by the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at NYU.

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Voting increased among young people from poor backgrounds after their families began receiving regular disbursements of unearned income, according to a new paper co-authored by a Johns Hopkins Carey Business School researcher.

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Bereaved children whose late mothers were very religious are likely to be less religious after their mother dies than those who do not suffer a maternal loss. Conversely, youths whose late mothers placed no value on religion are more likely to become religious.

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Reminding people that nobody has all the answers and everyone has something to contribute can reduce racial inequality and improve outcomes in group projects.

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New research from Binghamton University, State University at New York finds that showing compassion to subordinates almost always pays off, especially when combined with the enforcement of clear goals and benchmarks.

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A University of Delaware professor explores the effect the Internet and social media has on our well-being in a new book. One finding: The use of smartphones and other mobile devices that allow people to be online wherever they are has created new and different problems with interpersonal communication.

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They may start as well-intentioned efforts to calm anxiety, improve sleep or ease depression. But prescriptions for sedatives known as benzodiazepines may lead to long-term use among one in four older adults who receive them, according to new research. That’s despite warnings against long-term use of these drugs, especially among older people.

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WASHINGTON -- Why do some people trust their gut instincts over logic? It could be that they see those snap decisions as a more accurate reflection of their true selves and therefore are more likely to hold them with conviction, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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The U.S. Census Bureau will release its 2017 statistics on poverty this week. The University of Michigan has experts available to discuss the latest findings compared to 2016 rates of 12.7 percent (40.6 million people) for poverty.

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Campus Pride chose 30 colleges and universities based on their overall ratings on the Campus Pride Index and specific LGBTQ-inclusive benchmark measures. UWM is proud to be among them for the fourth year in a row.

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Women who suffered from sexual violence, even those who were not diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), had more intense memories – even years after the violence occurred – that are difficult, if not impossible to forget., according to a new Rutgers University–New Brunswick study.

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Research shows having a partner whom you feel understands you, and cares about and appreciates you is linked to better health and well-being. A Cornell human development expert and his colleagues have just discovered it also can lead to a longer life.

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From the Brett M. Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearing to people burning their Nike products, as the country approaches the 2018 midterm elections, our national rhetoric is more polarized than ever. Rudeness, name-calling, bullying and insults have become so commonplace that many Americans have tuned out. Can these behaviors be curbed, and can we learn to disagree civilly? To address these and other questions, the American Psychological Association and the National Institute for Civil Discourse have partnered to present “A National Conversation on Civility.”

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A study using EEG shows how the brain re-prioritizes information following changes in the environment. Past memory cues can have different effects on neural representations based on when they’re presented, suggesting that the brain has several different mechanisms to help boost memory performance following a sudden change in the priority or relevance of a given piece of information. Findings suggest that the brain can use several different methods to re-prioritize mental representations depending on how long they’ve been stored.

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Could graduate students’ religious beliefs prevent them from gaining confidence as scientists? A West Virginia University sociologist is exploring the conflicts between graduate students’ religious and professional identities and how those conflicts influence their career goals.

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A new study shows a difference between how risk is cognitively processed by self-reported law-abiding citizens and self-reported lawbreakers, allowing researchers to better view and understand the criminal mind.

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West Virginia University researcher Robert Bossarte has received a $13.3-million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to compare three treatment strategies for rural depressed patients: antidepressants alone; antidepressants combined with unguided cognitive behavior therapy provided online; and antidepressants combined with guided online cognitive behavior therapy.

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Even in cases where a rape has clearly taken place, traditional beliefs and assumptions about masculinity can cause both witnesses and victims to be uncertain about reporting it, according to new research conducted at Binghamton University, State University at New York.

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If you want smokers to remember cigarette-warning labels, include a graphic image of the results of long-term smoking, a new study suggests.

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It is well-recognized that women are at increased risk of depression during the postpartum period when hormone levels are changing, but the risk of depression associated with perimenopause — the time right before menopause when female hormones are in decline — remains under-recognized and clinical recommendations on how to diagnose and treat this kind of depression in women have been lacking until now.

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Psychopaths, the monsters in the closet of so many of our favorite television shows and podcasts, are far more complex than we might have initially imagined.

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New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that people significantly underestimate the positive impact a letter of gratitude has on its recipient.

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Precision lifestyle medicine is an emerging field that tailors behavioral treatments and lifestyle modification recommendations based on an individual’s genetics, lifestyle and environment.Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in collaboration with their colleagues at Stanford University and the University of Washington, will look at how an integrated behavioral therapy aimed at helping people with co-occurring obesity and depression can be adapted for individuals based on how their brain function changes in response to the intervention.

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When they must act quickly, selfish people are likely to act more selfishly than usual, while pro-social people behave even more pro-socially, a new study found.

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Prior research has shown that alcohol use disorders and eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa – binge eating often followed by self-induced vomiting – may have a shared genetic risk. It is unclear, however, whether this risk extends to eating-disorder symptoms other than those associated with bulimia nervosa. This study examined several measures of alcohol use and drive for thinness and body dissatisfaction, which are core eating-disorder symptoms, in adolescent female and male twins.

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Professor of Psychology Melinda Green is greatly expanding her research on eating disorders with the notification that she’s been awarded a grant for nearly $400,000 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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American workers’ occupational status reflects that of their parents more than previously known, reaffirming more starkly that the lack of mobility in the United States is in large part due to the occupation of our parents, finds a new study.

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A research study in the works for more than two years documents bias and discrimination against women seeking CEO jobs ion the workforce.

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The latest research and features on ecology and wildlife.

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Providing "targeted" social support to other people in need activates regions of the brain involved in parental care – which may help researchers understand the positive health effects of social ties, reports a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published in the Lippincott Portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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Researchers at The University of Alabama are bringing together their expertise in geography, modeling and criminal activity to better understand how enforcement activity influences drug trafficking in Central America.

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Teens are more prone to addiction because it’s a form of learning. Just as it’s easier for a younger brain to pick up new languages, athletic techniques, or musical instruments, it’s easier for them to pick up addictions.

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Religious people who lack friends and purpose in life turn to God to fill those voids, according to new University of Michigan research.

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Temple Grandin, a renowned expert on animal behavior and activist for people with autism, is coming to Iowa State University on Sept. 13.

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Psychology researchers have developed a new personality test that is both faster to take and much harder to manipulate by those attempting to control the outcome.

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Independence in mobility is the single most important factor affecting quality of life in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI), reports a study in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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Regardless of whether or not they have had a prior mental health diagnosis, risk factors were still similar among soldiers who attempted suicide, according to a new JAMA Psychiatry study published Aug. 29.