News by Subject Social & Behavior

A new paper by researchers based at the University of Kansas has been published in the Journal of Sex Research examining if flirting has a particular facial cue effectively used by women to indicate interest in a man.

People who were children when their parents were divorced showed lower levels of oxytocin -- the so-called "love hormone" -- when they were adults than those whose parents remained married, according to a Baylor University study. The lower level may play a role in having trouble forming attachments when they are grown.

Over the long-term, what one partner in a two-person relationship wishes to avoid, so too does the other partner -- and what one wants to achieve, so does the other. These effects can be observed regardless of gender, age and length of the relationship, as researchers from the University of Basel report in a study of more than 450 couples.

A new analysis of sibling records from more than 300,000 individuals suggests that some parents continue to reproduce until they have children of both sexes.

When couples argue, mediation improves the outcome of the confrontation. But that's not all: mediation is also linked to heightened activity in key regions of the brain belonging to the reward circuit. This is the main conclusion of a study carried out by the University of Geneva. This is the first time that a controlled, randomised study has succeeded in demonstrating the advantages of mediation for couple conflicts and identifying a related biological signature.

Men and women react differently to different types of infidelity. But new findings about how we forgive unfaithfulness on the part of our partners surprised researchers.

Nine out of 10 US men ages 18 to 35 support health care providers asking about intimate partner violence, according to new survey analysis. Data from a 2014 nationally representative survey showed that while most men support health care-based intimate partner violence screenings, only about 10 percent reported being asked by their doctor.

A nationally representative survey of young men finds that 90 percent believe their doctors should ask whether they have perpetrated or experienced domestic violence -- but only 13 percent have ever been asked. The large gap suggests that physicians have an opportunity to begin more conversations about domestic violence and potentially intervene, says Tova Walsh, a professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study.

Contrary to popular views, parental smartphone use is rarely associated with poor parenting, and more often than not, tends to be associated with warm and attached parenting.

Fathers' social media posts were evaluated for changes in behavior (engagement with the platform), emotions, linguistic style, and discussion topics following the birth of their child.