Social Psychology News

April 30, 2025

Top Headlines

Personality Traits Shape Our Prosocial Behavior

Apr. 28, 2025 — Why do some people do more for the community than others? A new study now shows that personality traits such as extraversion and agreeableness correlate with volunteering and charitable ...

Awkward. Humans Are Still Better Than AI at Reading the Room

Apr. 24, 2025 — Humans are better than current AI models at interpreting social interactions and understanding social dynamics in moving scenes. Researchers believe this is because AI neural networks were inspired by the infrastructure of the part of the brain that ...

Empathy Might Be Retained in Alzheimer's Disease

Apr. 23, 2025 — People with Alzheimer's disease may retain their ability to empathize, despite declines in other social abilities, finds a new ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 19, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...

Latest Headlines

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Environmental Variability Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation Among Humans: A Simulation-Based Analysis

Apr. 18, 2025 — Researchers have demonstrated that intensified environmental variability (EV) can promote the evolution of cooperation through simulation based on ...

Finding Friendship at First Whiff: Scent Plays Role in Platonic Potential

Apr. 17, 2025 — Two women meeting for the first time can judge within minutes whether they have the potential to be friends -- guided as much by smell as any other sense, research on friendship formation ...

Nurturing Now, Thriving Later: The Lasting Power of Affectionate Mothering

Apr. 16, 2025 — Affectionate mothering in childhood may have a lasting impact on important personality traits, potentially influencing life outcomes such as educational achievement, economic success, and health and ...

Nature-Based Activity Is Effective Therapy for Anxiety and Depression, Study Shows

Apr. 16, 2025 — Researchers evaluating a nature-based program of activities for patients with mild to moderate mental health conditions have shown that improvements ...

How Does Our Brain Regulate Generosity?

Apr. 14, 2025 — Are there areas of the brain, which regulate prosocial, altruistic behavior? Researchers have studied a very special group of patients and established that the 'basolateral amygdala' (part of the ...

Lip Sync: Study Reveals Gender Differences in Preference for Lip Size

Apr. 9, 2025 — Shifting cultural perceptions of beauty could drive 'lip dysmorphia', so psychologists tested the response of 32 people to altered images of lips to see how they responded. The results were ...

Even Under Stress, Male-Female Pairs Had Each Other's Backs

Apr. 8, 2025 — When faced with a potential threat, mice often freeze in place. Moreover, when two animals are together, they typically freeze at the same time, matching each other's periods of immobility. In a new ...

Childhood Experiences Shape the Brain's White Matter With Cognitive Effects Seen Years Later

Apr. 7, 2025 — Investigators have linked difficult early life experiences with reduced quality and quantity of the white matter communication highways throughout ...

Fear of Rejection Influences How Children Conform to Peers

Apr. 4, 2025 — The fear of rejection -- familiar to many children and adults -- can significantly impact how kids behave in their peer groups, according to new ...

Balance Between Two Competing Nerve Proteins Deters Symptoms of Autism in Mice

Apr. 1, 2025 — In mice, autism symptoms arise when a certain pair of competing nerve proteins falls out of equilibrium, according to a new ...

My Robot Therapist: The Ethics of AI Mental Health Chatbots for Kids

Mar. 31, 2025 — AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use ...

PTSD Can Undermine Healthy Couple Communication When People Fear Their Emotions

Mar. 31, 2025 — Fear of emotions among couples with PTSD is associated with unproductive communication, according to a new ...

Repetitive Behaviors and Special Interests Are More Indicative of an Autism Diagnosis Than a Lack of Social Skills

Mar. 26, 2025 — People with autism are typically diagnosed by clinical observation and assessment. To deconstruct the clinical decision process, which is often subjective and difficult to describe, researchers used ...

Study Explores How Characteristics of Communications Networks Affect Development of Shared Social Identity, Group Performance

Mar. 25, 2025 — Researchers explored how the characteristics of communication networks in groups (i.e., density and centralization) affected the development of shared social identity and, as a result, group ...

Transition Point in Romantic Relationships Signals the Beginning of Their End

Mar. 21, 2025 — The end of a romantic relationship usually does not come out of the blue but is indicated one or two years before the breakup. As the results of a psychological study have demonstrated, the terminal ...

Can Online Games Be an Effective Intervention to Help Adolescents Reduce Substance Abuse?

Mar. 19, 2025 — For adolescents struggling with substance abuse, traditional in-person interventions such as counseling are not always effective, and rural areas often lack access to these services. A researcher is ...

Gender Gap in Teenage Depression Is Twice as Large in London Than in Tokyo, New Study Finds

Mar. 18, 2025 — Research has tracked depressive symptoms in 7100 young people from Tokyo and London and shown girls have more depressive symptoms than boys in both cities. The study found that this gap is around ...

Attention Can Be Used to Drive Cooperation

Mar. 17, 2025 — Our ability to cooperate with others may be influenced by how our attention is captured and directed, as much as by how altruistic we are feeling, according to a new ...

Oxytocin System of Breastfeeding Affected in Mothers With Postnatal Depression

Mar. 14, 2025 — The oxytocin system -- which helps release breast milk and strengthens the bond between mother and baby -- may be affected during breastfeeding in mothers experiencing postnatal ...

Why It's Good to Be Nostalgic: Study Suggests You May Have More Close Friends

Mar. 13, 2025 — Do you have lots of close friends -- and work hard to keep it that way? If you've answered 'yes', you are probably ...

Retiring Abroad Puts Older Adults at Risk for Loneliness

Mar. 13, 2025 — Many people dream of retiring to a warmer, less expensive country. But retirees who move abroad may be at greater risk of loneliness than those who stay in their home country, according to new ...

How the Brain Uses 'Building Blocks' to Navigate Social Interactions

Mar. 12, 2025 — Our brains use basic 'building blocks' of information to keep track of how people interact, enabling us to navigate complex social interactions, finds a new ...

Good Parenting Helps, but Has Limits Under Major Deprivation

Mar. 11, 2025 — Parenting skills can make a big difference in fostering a newborn's language acquisition and cognition, but there may be a limit to how far parenting can go to make up the challenges to ...

Decoding the Neural Basis of Affective Empathy: How the Brain Feels Others' Pain

Mar. 10, 2025 — A research team has uncovered key insights into how the brain processes others' distress. Using miniature endoscopic calcium imaging, the researchers identified specific neural ensembles in the ...

Urban Highways Cut Opportunities for Social Relationships

Mar. 6, 2025 — Urban highways promise to get people to their destinations faster -- and bring them together. But at the same time, they reduce social connections between people within the city, especially at ...

Prenatal Maternal Stressors Linked to Higher Blood Pressure During First Year After Birth, Study Shows

Mar. 4, 2025 — Psychosocial stress during pregnancy could lead to higher blood pressure during the first year postpartum according to new ...

Teaching Kids How to Become Better Citizens

Mar. 3, 2025 — In our polarized society, a new study offers hope for the future: Even young children can learn to discuss and argue about meaningful problems in a respectful and productive way. Researchers found ...

How Many Languages Can You Learn at the Same Time? -- Ghanaian Babies Grow Up Speaking Two to Six Languages

Feb. 28, 2025 — Africa is a multilingual continent and many adults speak several languages fluently. An empirical study by a psycholinguist now shows that the roots of this multilingualism can be found in infancy: ...

Research Indicates Effects of PTSD on Body Vary by Culture

Feb. 28, 2025 — Anthropologists, social scientists and veterans are analyze the relationship between the hormones cortisol and testosterone and PTSD in a non-industrialized ...

Improving Relationships Between Dads and Daughters... It's a Walk in the Park

Feb. 27, 2025 — A simple walk in the park could hold the key to unlocking a close and loving relationship between fathers and daughters, a new study has ...