Many of us rely on outdated visual cues when trying to distinguish real faces from highly realistic AI-generated ones, with even people who have exceptional face-recognition skills being fooled.

The founding of the United States of America has become one of the most polarizing eras in its history, new research finds, just as the country is starting to celebrate its 250^th anniversary this year. When asked which social movements and historical figures had the most positive impact on America today, survey respondents differed along racial and ideological lines. But the most unexpected differences were between generations.  

Who says that butterflies in the stomach are only for the young? A new study by psychologist Iris Wahring from the University of Vienna and her international team shows that when people over 50 enter into a new relationship and seal it by moving in together, their life satisfaction increases significantly. The study also challenges a common assumption: for couples who already live together, getting married later in life is not associated with a further increase in well-being on average. The findings were recently published in the International Journal of Behavioural Development.

A new study reveals that the image of a seamless global youth climate movement is fracturing as activists in the "periphery” feel increasingly sidelined by a Western-centric leadership. By investigating why these local chapters face a "crisis of connection," the research exposes how national security threats, democratic backsliding, and political rifts over issues like the Israel-Hamas war are breaking the "weak ties" that once bound the movement together. The study argues that when a global agenda ignores the differing local realities of its members, the human connection often fails long before the digital one.

Neural synchrony between socially interacting people is known to boost social and emotional connection and communication. Researchers have now shown that mothers who speak English as a second language during play with their bilingual toddlers aren’t less effective at achieving this desired ‘attuning’ of their brains. These results suggest that optimal learning and mother-child bonding don’t require native proficiency.