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

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 14-Jul-2025 11:11 ET (14-Jul-2025 15:11 GMT/UTC)

New archaeological database reveals links between housing and inequality in ancient world

University of Colorado at Boulder
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new project collects more than 55,000 measurements of housing floor area across thousands of years of human history around the globe.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

How does our brain regulate generosity?

Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Are there areas of the brain, which regulate prosocial, altruistic behaviour? Together with colleagues from the universities in Lausanne, Utrecht and Cape Town, researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have studied a very special group of patients and established that the “basolateral amygdala” (part of the limbic system) plays an important role in this. In the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they describe that this region calibrates social behaviour.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Archaeologists measured and compared the size of 50,000 ancient houses to learn about the history of inequality -- they found that it’s not inevitable

Field Museum
Peer-Reviewed Publication

We’re living in a period where the gap between rich and poor is dramatic, and it’s continuing to widen. But inequality is nothing new. In a new study published in the journal PNAS, researchers compared house size distributions from more than 1,000 sites around the world, covering the last 10,000 years. They found that while inequality is widespread throughout human history, it’s not inevitable, nor is it expressed to the same degree at every place and time.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

New study finds surprising way to curb college-aged drinking harms—without cutting alcohol

Brown University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In a new study, researchers from the Brown University School of Public Health developed and tested an intervention called Counter-Attitudinal Advocacy and compared it to to the well-established Personalized Normative Feedback (PNF) to evaluate their effectiveness in decreasing drinks per week, peak blood alcohol concentration and alcohol-related consequences relative to a control group.

Journal: Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Learning about social interaction by studying dancing

Society for Neuroscience
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Brain activity that enables people to align their movements with others occurs only when dancers move to the beat of the same song and can see each other.

Journal: JNeurosci
Funder: European Research Council, European Union MSCA, European Union MSCA

Communicator award goes to German language education expert Petra Anders

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Grant and Award Announcement

Berlin-based researcher honoured for outstanding communication work promoting reading and language skills in primary education / Award ceremony on 30 June in Hamburg

Deep-sea mining risks leads study to urge shift to circular solutions

University of British Columbia
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Deep sea mining operations are expected to increase the negative impact on environmental indicators by up to 13 per cent, a change categorized as having “great” significance, relative to the “without” DSM scenario, the study published in PLOS One said, notably through increased coastal vulnerability, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Journal: PLOS One