News by Subject Social & Behavior

Research just published in the peer-reviewed journal Personality and Individual Differences looks at the psychological underpinnings of making yourself seem more desirable by withholding obvious signs of romantic interest.

Do couples that share a bed sleep better, worse, or just different? A new study in Frontiers in Psychiatry sheds light on the effects of sharing a bed with a partner by measuring subjective and objective sleep parameters.

Affection is partly genetic for women but not for men, finds a new study led by the University of Arizona. Those predisposed to being more affectionate may be struggling with 'skin hunger' amid COVID-19 physical distancing.

A five-minute role-play done with men before the birth of their first child predicted the quality of their parenting after the baby arrived, a new study showed.

Men and women choose partners according to different criteria. These are the same almost all over the world and have remained unchanged in the last 30 years, according to a new survey of 14 000 people.

A new longitudinal study sought to determine the long-term impact on youth of parenting that is psychologically controlling. Although the study did not establish causation, it found that overbearing and overcontrolling tactics by parents when children were 13 years old were associated with difficulties in social relationships and educational attainment by the time the teens reached age 32.

For many couples, COVID-19 quarantine has shattered the normal routine and led some to renegotiate who does what around the house. A new study led a team that analyzed the role that communication plays in the division of household labor. They found that partner communication is the most important factor linking the division of household labor to satisfaction in the relationship. But the way that the partners' communication matters depends on gender.

A team of researchers from the University of Rochester and the Israeli-based Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya examined the effects of playing hard to get, a mating strategy that is likely to instill a certain degree of uncertainty. In a new study they show that making the chase harder increases a potential mate's desirability.

Researcher Judith Lind has studied how staff at fertility clinics view the assessments that childless couples and women undergo in order to access assisted reproduction. It emerges in the interviews that the assessment of the potential parents is based on the child's future welfare and on the responsible use of public resources.

Breast cancer survivors in romantic relationships who feel happy and satisfied with their partners may be at lower risk for a host of health problems, new research suggests.