News by Subject Social & Behavior

Researchers at Edge Hill University in England have helped identify personality traits which make people more (or less) susceptible to persuasion than others.

Researchers have shown that a new way of assessing women's relationship with their bodies during pregnancy could help predict how well the mother might bond with her unborn baby and her longer-term emotional wellbeing.

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry shows that infants who are later diagnosed with autism react adequately when others initiate joint attention, but seldom actively seek to establish such episodes themselves. This finding provides support for the view that children with autism have reduced social motivation already as infants.

An increased willingness to take risks, reciprocating friendliness, and a conviction that they are in control of their own lives lead to refugees gaining a foothold in Germany faster.

Almost 70 per cent of drivers would be willing to install smartphone apps that block texting and browsing according to new Australian research from Queensland University of Technology -- but only if they can still do hands-free calls and listen to Bluetooth music. The national survey of 712 drivers also found one in six admitted to texting, browsing and even writing emails while behind the wheel.

People who see themselves as being in a higher social class may tend to have an exaggerated belief that they are more adept than their equally capable lower-class counterparts, and that overconfidence can often be misinterpreted by others as greater competence in important situations, such as job interviews, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

As our memories fade, we rely on our current assessment of a person to remember how we felt about them in the past, and new research suggests this extends to some of the most central figures in our lives: our parents. The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Young adults both believe and react negatively to messages that members of their age group are more entitled and narcissistic than other living generations, suggests new research presented by Joshua Grubbs of Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and colleagues in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 15, 2019.

Why do some people easily meet their fitness goals and love eating healthy foods while others struggle to do either? New research from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that people with a stronger sense of life purpose are more likely to respond positively to health messages and experience less activity in brain regions associated with conflict processing when exposed to these messages.