News by Subject Social & Behavior

If the current trend in diagnostic practices holds, the definition of autism may get too blurry to be meaningful, a Canadian research team finds.

Impulsiveness in adolescence isn't just a phase, it's biology. And despite all the social factors that define our teen years, the human brain and the brains of other primates go through very similar changes, particularly in the areas that affect self-control. Two researchers review the adolescent brain across species on Aug. 20, 2019 in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.

Public safety officers know that their profession could draw them into the line of fire at any moment, as it did recently for six officers wounded in a shooting standoff in Philadelphia.

QUT early childhood researchers develop fun rhythm and movement program to support young children's brains.

USC researchers looked at 'emotion-induced blindness,' which refers to distractions caused by emotionally arousing stimuli. In four experiments using a quickly presented sequence of images, they examined how older adults prioritize emotional information. They found both younger and older adults demonstrated emotion-induced blindness, but older adults were more distracted by positive information and less distracted by negative information.

When acting as one part of a group charged with deciding how to punish someone -- a jury, for example -- individuals are swayed by their peers to punish more often than they would if deciding alone, a new study found.

Differences in how our brains respond when we're anticipating a financial reward are due, in part, to genetic differences, according to research with identical and fraternal twins published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings suggest that how we experience pleasure and reward is at least partly heritable.

Female adolescents are experiencing relationship abuse at alarming rates, according to a new Michigan State University study that specifically researched reproductive coercion -- a form of abuse in which a woman is pressured to become pregnant against her wishes.

Using in-depth interviews with adolescents (16-19 years of age) who used alcohol and marijuana, this study examines the role that social and physical contexts play in adolescent decision-making about simultaneous use of alcohol and marijuana.