Feature Channels: Behavioral Science

• share
• favorite_border

It’s basketball fans’ favorite time of year — March Madness. Whether it is the love of basketball, or the thrill of competition, every fan is rooting on a favorite team.What does it take to win it all? Marc Cormier, director of the Sport and Exercise Psychology graduate program housed in the University of Kentucky College of Education Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion, and director of Counseling and Sport Psychology Services in UK Athletics, recently explained to UKNow how student-athletes handle high-pressure situations.

• share
• favorite_border

Spring Break is upon us and the amount of alcohol consumed during the week can leave young people vulnerable and put them at risk of being sexually assaulted. A forensic nurse at Memorial Hermann in Houston gives tips on how kids can stay safe.

• share
• favorite_border

A physics theory that’s proven useful to predict the crowd behavior of molecules and fruit flies also seems to work on another group – NBA players.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have discovered early social learning in insects. They found signaling communicated by honey bees about food sources—transmitted through a “waggle dance”—is an intricate form of social learning and one of the most complex known examples of non-human spatial referential communication.

• share
• favorite_border

While previous studies have focused upon identifying potential school shooters, little is known about the mental health and associated characteristics of students who make threats in schools. A study by Stony Brook child psychiatry experts uncovers the wide range of psychiatric diagnoses, learning disorders, educational and treatment needs of this population.

• share
• favorite_border

Both conservative and liberal Americans share fake news because they don’t want to be ostracized from their social circles, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study suggests the rise in mental health disorders in children and teens is attributed to a decline over decades in opportunities for them to play, roam and engage in activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults. Although well intended, adults’ drive to guide and protect children has deprived them of the independence they need for mental health, contributing to record levels of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people.

• share
• favorite_border

Americans likely are receiving smaller tax refunds than they have in recent years, and most people will not be going out to spend this money, according to the February 2023 Consumer Food Insights Report.

• share
• favorite_border

Eating disorders are “complex medical and psychiatric conditions that patients don’t choose and parents don’t cause.” Two Penn State Health experts describe the conditions and what you can do about them.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have begun to explore the underlying neural activity of eating behaviours in fruit flies to better understand the motives that drive feeding.

• share
• favorite_border

While marketers seem to love creating new brand names by deliberately misspelling real words, a new study shows that consumers almost never like this tactic. In a series of studies, researchers found that consumers respond less positively in a variety of ways to new products when their brand names use unconventional spellings of real words, like “Klear” instead of “Clear.”

• share
• favorite_border

The so-called ‘meal-recall effect’ – remembering a recent meal – can reduce how much food a person will eat later.

• share
• favorite_border

Over the past 20 years, the death rate from drug poisonings in the U.S. has tripled and suicide and alcoholic liver disease death rates have increased by 30 percent — particularly among middle-aged white Americans. Daniel Hungerman, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and his co-authors studied the connection between a sharp downturn of religious participation in the late 1980s and the swift rise in these "deaths of despair" among white Americans ages 45 to 54 in the early 1990s.

• share
• favorite_border

Will AI drive the next biomedical revolution? Why is RNA so powerful? What can we learn from studying bias? You’ll get the answers to these questions and more at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to be held March 25–28 in Seattle.

• share
• favorite_border

For people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), there is a constant, vicious cycle between changes to the brain and changes to behavior. AUD can alter signaling pathways in the brain; in turn, those changes can exacerbate drinking.

• share
• favorite_border

A new national study published in BMC Public Health suggests that problematic social media use in early adolescents is associated with both positive and negative alcohol beliefs, which play a key role in predicting alcohol use and, potentially, the development of alcohol use disorder later in life.

• share
• favorite_border

Treatment with the drug memantine was associated with significant improvements compared to a placebo for patients with trichotillomania and excoriation disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 25% of parents surveyed report that they were less than truthful about their children’s COVID-19 status or that they didn't follow the disease’s preventive guidelines during the pandemic for their offspring, according to a nationwide study led in part by University of Utah scientists.

• share
• favorite_border

Fluctuating impulsivity in college students is linked to increased positive thoughts about alcohol, heavier drinking, and more negative consequences, a new study suggests—information that could inform more effective intervention programs to reduce alcohol harm. Almost a third of young adults report binge drinking in the past month, and 16% meet criteria for alcohol use disorder in the past year. Impulsivity, a tendency to act rashly without considering consequences, is known to be associated with heavier drinking. A predictive behavioral model theorizes that impulsive people are particularly predisposed to certain beliefs about alcohol and that this influences their consumption. These beliefs—alcohol expectancies—determine how individuals perceive the positive and negative effects of drinking. Positive expectancies (e.g., increased sociability) are linked to higher alcohol use, while negative expectancies (e.g., becoming impaired) are thought to restrain drinking behavior. Recent resea

• share
• favorite_border

New research explores the reasons for, and antidotes to, persistent racial disparities in policing, despite police departments’ repeated investments in bias-training programs.

• share
• favorite_border

By the end of March, Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing for U.S. subscribers. This announcement has been met by surprise, outrage, and confusion as consumers ponder how their Netflix accounts will be affected. Jadrian Wooten, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech, provides his perspective on the issue.

• share
• favorite_border

Have you ever wondered how pedestrians ‘know’ to fall into lanes when they are moving through a crowd, without the matter being discussed or even given conscious thought?

• share
• favorite_border

Social animals should limit individuality to conform with the behaviour of the group, a University of Bristol study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Detailed images of illness, death and cancelled activities; these were some of the common themes of children’s drawings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• share
• favorite_border

Adding evidence to the importance of early development, a new study links neutral maternal behavior toward infants with an epigenetic change in children related to stress response.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers recommend primary care physicians screen adolescents and young adults for inappropriate or misuse of social media and cyberbullying utilizing screening tools developed for use in the health care setting. Physicians also can ask about the many symptoms that could be warning signs of cyberbullying such as sleep disorders, mood disorders, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, self-harm behaviors, academic problems, fatigue and headaches. They also can undergo training to detect bullying and ensure that their staff is trained appropriately.

• share
• favorite_border

With so much mental health care taking place in primary care settings, programs to help providers get rapid access to psychiatrists to consult on diagnosis and treatment have started in multiple states. This story looks at Michigan's program, called MC3, which just turned 10 years old.

• share
• favorite_border

After polling 6,000 graduate and postdoctoral respondents across 17 US institutions, researchers found that self-efficacy was generally lower than anticipated, particularly among those with higher levels of expertise and experience. Their results were recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study reveals that although private automobiles continue to be the dominant travel mode in American cities, the share of car trips has slightly and steadily decreased since its peak in 2001. In contrast, the share of transit, non-motorized, and taxicab (including ride-hailing) trips has steadily increased.

• share
• favorite_border

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health crises, death anxiety in the United States has significantly increased. Christian Seiter, assistant professor of human communication studies at Cal State Fullerton, analyzes how different emotions — such as worry and humor — impact people’s willingness to confront their mortality.