Do infectious disease outbreaks breed political mistrust? Ore Koren, Indiana University Bloomington (USA), and Nils Weidmann, University of Konstanz (Germany), have found out that they do. Their study will soon be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

New research reveals that infants just five days old can tell the difference between two distinct forms of prosocial and antisocial behaviour—and they prefer the prosocial. This suggests that some parts of how humans understand and evaluate the social world may be built into the brain from birth. Researchers showed a total of 90 newborns sets of simple animated videos. In one, a ball struggled to climb a hill. Another ball helped push it up. In a second video, playing right next to the first, the second ball pushed the climber down the hill, preventing it from reaching the top. Infants’ eyes lingered longer on the helping scenario. In another set of videos, one ball moved toward another as if trying to get close or say hello. In the other video, the ball moved away, like it was avoiding the other. Again, the newborns spent more time watching the friendly, approaching action.

People who view the world as a savage social jungle are more likely to admire antagonistic leaders, praising their competence, while those who see the social world as cooperative and benign might just call those leaders clueless, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.