Life News (Social & Behavioral Sciences)

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It’s basketball fans’ favorite time of year — March Madness. Whether it is the love of basketball, or the thrill of competition, every fan is rooting on a favorite team.What does it take to win it all? Marc Cormier, director of the Sport and Exercise Psychology graduate program housed in the University of Kentucky College of Education Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion, and director of Counseling and Sport Psychology Services in UK Athletics, recently explained to UKNow how student-athletes handle high-pressure situations.

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“The poor play the lottery, the rich play the stock market.” This comical statement seems to hide both hope and the bitter truth. An economics professor at Chulalongkorn University invites us to understand why many Thais put their hopes into lotteries and analyzes how their popularity relates to social inequality, upward mobility and corruption.

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Spring Break is upon us and the amount of alcohol consumed during the week can leave young people vulnerable and put them at risk of being sexually assaulted. A forensic nurse at Memorial Hermann in Houston gives tips on how kids can stay safe.

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While previous studies have focused upon identifying potential school shooters, little is known about the mental health and associated characteristics of students who make threats in schools. A study by Stony Brook child psychiatry experts uncovers the wide range of psychiatric diagnoses, learning disorders, educational and treatment needs of this population.

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Both conservative and liberal Americans share fake news because they don’t want to be ostracized from their social circles, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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A new study suggests the rise in mental health disorders in children and teens is attributed to a decline over decades in opportunities for them to play, roam and engage in activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults. Although well intended, adults’ drive to guide and protect children has deprived them of the independence they need for mental health, contributing to record levels of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people.

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Americans likely are receiving smaller tax refunds than they have in recent years, and most people will not be going out to spend this money, according to the February 2023 Consumer Food Insights Report.

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Eating disorders are “complex medical and psychiatric conditions that patients don’t choose and parents don’t cause.” Two Penn State Health experts describe the conditions and what you can do about them.

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The traditional line of thought is that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is caused by directly experiencing the traumatic event. However, about 10 percent of diagnosed PTSD occurs when people witness these events versus experiencing it directly themselves. Little is known about these cases of PTSD, but that’s something that Tim Jarome, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences School of Animal Sciences, is aiming to change with a $430,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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While marketers seem to love creating new brand names by deliberately misspelling real words, a new study shows that consumers almost never like this tactic. In a series of studies, researchers found that consumers respond less positively in a variety of ways to new products when their brand names use unconventional spellings of real words, like “Klear” instead of “Clear.”

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The so-called ‘meal-recall effect’ – remembering a recent meal – can reduce how much food a person will eat later.

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Over the past 20 years, the death rate from drug poisonings in the U.S. has tripled and suicide and alcoholic liver disease death rates have increased by 30 percent — particularly among middle-aged white Americans. Daniel Hungerman, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and his co-authors studied the connection between a sharp downturn of religious participation in the late 1980s and the swift rise in these "deaths of despair" among white Americans ages 45 to 54 in the early 1990s.

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Researchers are looking to small towns in Iowa to understand how some support aging in place better than others. Their findings could help communities plan for the future and preserve a high quality of life for all residents.

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SNAP serves as the nation’s and the state’s largest line of defense against hunger and food insecurity. SNAP, formerly called food stamps, provides cash benefits to purchase food to eligible individuals with low incomes. Elena Serrano, director of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Family Nutrition Program, says, “Ending the enhanced benefits will affect households who have the most to lose, those households that qualified for maximum benefits, who will lose an added $95 per month in benefits. On average SNAP participants will lose $82 per month.”

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A new national study published in BMC Public Health suggests that problematic social media use in early adolescents is associated with both positive and negative alcohol beliefs, which play a key role in predicting alcohol use and, potentially, the development of alcohol use disorder later in life.

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Fluctuating impulsivity in college students is linked to increased positive thoughts about alcohol, heavier drinking, and more negative consequences, a new study suggests—information that could inform more effective intervention programs to reduce alcohol harm. Almost a third of young adults report binge drinking in the past month, and 16% meet criteria for alcohol use disorder in the past year. Impulsivity, a tendency to act rashly without considering consequences, is known to be associated with heavier drinking. A predictive behavioral model theorizes that impulsive people are particularly predisposed to certain beliefs about alcohol and that this influences their consumption. These beliefs—alcohol expectancies—determine how individuals perceive the positive and negative effects of drinking. Positive expectancies (e.g., increased sociability) are linked to higher alcohol use, while negative expectancies (e.g., becoming impaired) are thought to restrain drinking behavior. Recent resea

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New research explores the reasons for, and antidotes to, persistent racial disparities in policing, despite police departments’ repeated investments in bias-training programs.

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Over the past fifty years, there have been remarkable claims about the effects of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music. Reports about alleged symptom-alleviating effects of listening to Mozart’s Sonata KV448 in epilepsy attracted a lot of public attention. However, the empirical validity of the underlying scientific evidence has remained unclear. Now, University of Vienna psychologists Sandra Oberleiter and Jakob Pietschnig show in a new study published in the prestigious journal Nature Scientific Reports that there is no evidence for a positive effect of Mozart's melody on epilepsy.

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Adults with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) seeking to moderate their drinking respond differently to interventions depending on their age, a new study suggests.

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Black people living in rural areas of North Carolina were found to have better mental health than white people despite their exposure to various forms of racism and discrimination. This paradoxical finding was reported by researchers at Georgetown University and their colleagues in the journal Social Science & Medicine: Mental Health in March 2023.

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The latest news on media and journalism on Newswise.

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By the end of March, Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing for U.S. subscribers. This announcement has been met by surprise, outrage, and confusion as consumers ponder how their Netflix accounts will be affected. Jadrian Wooten, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech, provides his perspective on the issue.

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Chulalongkorn School of Integrated Innovations (ScII), in collaboration with the Embassy of Israel in Thailand, invites all to join the special event “Women & Innovation: Celebrating International Women’s Day 2023” on March 8, 2023, from 9:00 – 11:40 am at Toemsakdi Krishnamra Hall, Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University.

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Johns Hopkins University information security expert Anton Dahbura is available to discuss the Biden administration's newly released national cybersecurity strategy.

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The February 2023 SLU/YouGov Poll interviewed 900 likely Missouri voters about issues facing the Missouri legislature and their opinions about school safety and guns, following the October school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. The survey found that 56% of voters reported they were somewhat or very worried about a shooting happening at Missouri schools, and there is bipartisan support for safety and gun reforms.

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Thousands of languages spoken throughout the world draw on many of the same fundamental linguistic abilities and reflect universal aspects of how humans categorize events. Some aspects of language may also be universal to people who create their own sign languages.

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Detailed images of illness, death and cancelled activities; these were some of the common themes of children’s drawings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Utah’s consumer sentiment decreased from 75.6 in January to 70.4 in February, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s Survey of Utah Consumer Sentiment.

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Faculty in Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice are No. 1 in the country for research productivity and influence among faculty in their field, according to a quantitative assessment in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.  The journal’s findings draw from data gathered from criminology and criminal justice doctoral programs in the United States from 2015-2021.

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A new study reveals that although private automobiles continue to be the dominant travel mode in American cities, the share of car trips has slightly and steadily decreased since its peak in 2001. In contrast, the share of transit, non-motorized, and taxicab (including ride-hailing) trips has steadily increased.