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

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 11-Sep-2025 07:11 ET (11-Sep-2025 11:11 GMT/UTC)

Could the timing of food assistance payments affect crime rates?

Wiley
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Based on more than a decade’s worth of data across 36 U.S. states, a study in Contemporary Economic Policy finds that spreading out food assistance payments over more days reduces financially motivated crimes—especially robberies.

Journal: Contemporary Economic Policy

Living in hurricane affected areas could increase mortality of older people by 9% years after disaster

Frontiers
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Staying put after a natural disaster is known to bring health risks. Now, scientists have calculated how much higher mortality risk from all causes is for people, aged over 65 and covered by health insurance, who continued to live for up to five years in areas that flooded after Hurricane Sandy’s landfall in 2012. On average, risk of death from all causes for these tri-state area residents increased by 9%, compared to those who lived in not flooded zip codes. Stark regional differences were found between some regions, which makes region-specific disaster planning crucial, the team said.

Journal: Frontiers in Public Health

Social media boosts news diversity amid traditional media decline

University of South Australia
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New research by the University of South Australia finds a silver lining to the struggling media landscape in the face of the digital age, revealing that social media is enhancing the diversity of news the community receives.

Journal: Media International Australia

Networks of long-distance female friends help gorillas move between groups

Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In many animal societies, individuals of one sex, or sometimes both, eventually leave their birth group to join another. In a smaller number of species, including humans and gorillas, individuals can change between groups multiple times. This process, known as dispersal, plays a key role in avoiding inbreeding, spreading gene diversity and shaping social relationships. But how do individuals choose where to go?

A new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, cracks this mystery, thanks to more than 20 years of data on multiple groups of wild mountain gorillas, continuously monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda.

Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Funder: Swiss National Science Foundation, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Open-access database offers insights into U.S. congressional candidates

University of Notre Dame
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Each election cycle, thousands of candidates vie for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Until now, there has been no comprehensive, publicly available resource cataloging what those candidates say about who they are or what they stand for. A new open-access database called CampaignView, created by researchers at the University of Notre Dame, offers researchers, journalists and educators a powerful tool to understand congressional elections.

Journal: Scientific Data
Funder: Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society, University of Notre Dame

Sleeter receives funding for revolutionary war teaching guides

George Mason University
Grant and Award Announcement

Nathan Sleeter, Research Assistant Professor, History and Art History, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for: “Revolutionary War Teaching Guides.”

Funder: Library of Congress

Watching our language

CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
Reports and Proceedings

Members of the editorial board of the Journal of Health Communication and the Nature Medicine Commission on Quality Health Information for All strongly endorse the BMJ’s recent call to retire the term “non-pharmaceutical interventions” in favor of the more balanced and affirmative “public health and social measures.”

Journal: Journal of Health Communication

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