EurekAlert! News by Subject: Social & Behavior - News by Subject: Social & Behavior

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-Dec-2025 06:11 ET (2-Dec-2025 11:11 GMT/UTC)

New study supports the value of medical humanities in illuminating the root causes of health care disparities in Washington, DC

Georgetown University Medical Center
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study analyzing dozens of published papers over five decades focusing on health care disparities in Washington, DC, found that those that employed medical humanities approaches identified crucial barriers and opportunities for intervention that quantitative studies often miss.

Journal: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Our brains recognise the voices of our primate cousins

Université de Genève
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The brain doesn’t just recognise the human voice. A study by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) shows that certain areas of our auditory cortex respond specifically to the vocalisations of chimpanzees, our closest cousins both phylogenetically and acoustically. This finding, published in the journal eLife, suggests the existence of subregions in the human brain that are particularly sensitive to the vocalisations of certain primates. It opens a new window on the origin of voice recognition, which could have implications for language development.

Journal: eLife

Does the "use it or lose it" principle determine brain plasticity and shape how we age?

Genomic Press
Reports and Proceedings

A new Genomic Press Interview with Prof. Dr. Paul Lucassen shares insights from his research spanning 30 years in which he explores how the adult brain continues to produce new neurons, and how this process, and other plasticity-related aspects like cognition, are modulated by (early life) stress, exercise, nutrition, and inflammation, revealing unexpected connections between early childhood experiences and later vulnerability to psychiatric disorders and dementia. His work offers hope that brain plasticity can maybe one day be harnessed for therapeutic and preventive approaches.

Journal: Brain Medicine

Evidence from professional golf shows political divides undermine focus and hurt performance at work

University of California - Berkeley Haas School of Business
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An analysis of over 25,000 player-tournament-rounds from more than 700 PGA Tour tournaments between 1997 and 2022 found professional golfers perform significantly worse when randomly grouped with competitors holding opposing political views. Even more striking, this performance gap nearly triples during periods of heightened national political polarization—and it translates directly into lower winnings.

Journal: Management Science

Losing sleep over money: Rice study reveals how financial stress follows workers to bed

Rice University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study from Rice University reveals how financial stress disrupts sleep by increasing “stress-before-bed behaviors” such as worry, tension and mental overactivation at night. Tracking full-time Army and Air National Guard members over nine months, researchers found that economic strain predicted elevated bedtime stress, which then led to shorter sleep, more insomnia symptoms and lower sleep satisfaction. The findings highlight a measurable pathway connecting money stress to sleep health and point to strategies for workplaces and individuals to help break the stress–sleep cycle.

Journal: Journal of Business and Psychology
Funder: U.S. Department of Defense

Social media marketing falls flat as a signal of quality, new research finds

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

New research published in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research finds that social media marketing (SMM) does little to help high-quality firms stand apart from competitors. Instead, it often pushes companies of all quality levels toward similar spending and pricing strategies, blurring the very signals firms hope will differentiate them in digital marketplaces.

Journal: Information Systems Research

FAU survey: Hurricane season ends, but weather woes push Floridians to move

Florida Atlantic University
Reports and Proceedings

A new FAU survey finds that 36% of Floridians have moved or are considering moving due to hazards such as hurricanes, flooding and extreme heat. Nearly a quarter of North Floridians say weather hazards have influenced their past moves and about 20% of respondents in the rest of the Peninsula south say they are considering a move at least in part due to weather hazards. More than 60% are concerned about stronger storms and flooding, and nearly half are concerned about homeowner’s insurance costs.

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