Life News (Social & Behavioral Sciences)

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Educational programs aimed at helping women reduce their risk of sexual assault may not be very effective, a new study suggests. The study found that women participating in such a program were just as likely to experience sexual assault as those who didn't participate. .

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Does Television News' Coverage of Violence Instill Fear in Children? News Briefing at the 106th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco: Monday August 17, 1998 at 10:30 AM

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New research suggests that girls as young as ten years old who are teased or socially victimized by peers relate such experiences to their own body image.

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One of the most widespread forms of bias crime among teenagers and young adults - violence against sexual minorities - is rarely motivated by genuine hatred, but is instead "an expression of cultural norms that are entrenched even among preadolescent children," says a forensic psychologist.

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Eating disorders are a turnoff about equally for college men and women, but not so for obesity: Men are much more uncomfortable dating an obese person that women are, says Jeffery Sobal, a nutritional sociologist and associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University.

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What is the Prevalence of Youth Gambling and How Addicting is it? News Briefing at the 106th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco: Saturday, August 15, 1998 at 10:00 AM

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Between five and eight percent of young Americans and Canadians have a serious gambling problem (compared with one to three percent of adults). Research also shows that adolescents may become more addicted to gambling than they are to alcohol, smoking and drugs and sometimes gamble for reasons other than winning money.

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Most older drivers are safe drivers, but older adults with cognitive impairments and those above age 80 have a much higher risk for causing and/or being in a car accident, say psychologists who have been studying the determinants of auto safety in older drivers.

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Two University of Kansas researchers have learned that by sharing their homes with younger people who pay rent or help with chores, many senior citizens have found a promising alternative to moving into a nursing home or moving in with a relative.

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Johns Hopkins University economist Steve H. Hanke--recently at the center of Indonesia's economic crisis--is the author of the only book on Russian currency reform. This dogged advocate of currency boards predicted the current Russian crisis and believes he has its cure.

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It's not surprising that high-prejudice people think differently than others when they're asked to evaluate statements made by Blacks or homosexuals. But new research suggests that the difference between high and low-prejudice people isn't what common wisdom would dictate.

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GLMA's 16th Annual Symposium will be held August 27-29 in Chicago at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. GLMA can provide background information on, and can arrange interviews for articles related to, these plenaries and workshops.

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A study developed at the University of Kansas indicates that cooperative housing units are a satisfying alternative to nursing homes for senior citizens in the Midwest. In fact, an overwhelming majority of respondents to a survey indicated that living in a rural senior housing cooperative had a positive effect on their overall happiness.

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Citizens who make a concerted effort to restrict teenagers' access to tobacco can significantly influence youth smoking rates in their community, according to a University of Minnesota study that will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

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A Johns Hopkins constitutional expert has a surprising answer: Yes! And he says there may be political advantage to such a move.

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As children prepare to go back to school this fall, memories of the tragic shootings in American schools last school year will cause anxiety and fear among many.

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The problem of raising money by challengers is a major barrier to electoral competition in Illinois, two University of Illinois political scientists have found. Almost half of all Illinois General Assembly races in 1994 and 1996 were not actively contested in the general election.

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Historian Peter Fritzsche disputes the standard explanation for the rise of Nazism in Germany -- that it came out of nowhere and succeeded beyond all expectation because Germany ìwas pushed to the very edge of crisisî by military defeat, inflation and economic depression.

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When it comes to how Americans perceive different job-related activities, and how they relate to one another, people apparently think alike, says a University of Illinois researcher.

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The 325th anniversary of the first European contact with the Illini, a once large and powerful confederacy of Native American tribes that lived in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, is being celebrated this summer, not with cake and ice cream, but with shovels and buckets.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and other institutions report that nearly 4 in 10 female emergency room patients have been victims of physical or emotional domestic abuse sometime in their lives, and 14 percent have been physically or sexually abused in the past year.

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For mental illness patients, having a social network-even just one understanding friend to rely on-can mean the difference between hospitalization and the ability to cope in mainstream society, says Bernice Skirboll, exec. director of Compeer,a volunteer organization.

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University of New Hampshire researchers have found that children who are never or rarely spanked have higher scores on tests of cognitive ability than those who are frequently spanked. The findings are based on a nationally representative sample of 960 children who were ages 1 to 4 at the start of the study.

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A Colorado State University psychology professor is using computer graphics and a mock "car" with brakes, gas pedal and steering wheel to replicate snarled traffic and other scenarios to determine whether certain road conditions are more likely to provoke road rage.

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How many friends you have, not how much money you have, predicts how happy you're likely to be right after you retire, a University of Michigan study suggests.

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A Congressionally-mandated study has found scientific evidence that 15 different methods of crime prevention are effective. The study, conducted by University of Maryland criminologists for the National Institute of Justice, also found 23 programs that had been proven ineffective.

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The newly-released results of an independent national survey sponsored by Resources for the Future confirm that most Americans believe global climate change is real and damaging and that the federal government should take significant steps to combat it.

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Preparing for marriage is crucial, but a Purdue University expert on family budgeting suggests that the slogan "look before you leap" may be just as important when it comes to divorce.

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The American Sociological Association's Annual Meeting August 21-25 in San Francisco will feature hundreds of presentations on topics including immigration, affirmative action, families and children, health care, violence, and criminology.

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 8 program, designed to expand housing options for low-income recipients, may actually encourage discrimination, according to a student researcher at the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.

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Using historical records and modern medical knowledge, a University of Kansas doctor is diagnosing what really killed Britain's House of Stuart 300 years ago

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University of Kansas anthropologist uses DNA studies, archaeological and linguistic evidence to support theories on origins of Native Americans and to review medical and evolutionary costs of mixing of populations.

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Right now, Melissa Loewenstern is in the Iron Age. By summer's end, she hopes to land in the Bronze Age. This Cornell student is spending her summer excavating an archaeological site in Israel. Read her latest dispatches from Tel Dor, a site rich in the history of biblical times.

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The mission of Purdue's Breaking New Ground Resource Center is to assist farmers who have been disabled. A survey of those farmers found that church accessibility was their top community accessibility concern.

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World governments might be more successful in removing the nearly 100 million children from the labor market by working to increase adult wages and employment rates rather than pursuing legislative action against child labor, which could be effective only in certain countries, say two Cornell University economists

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A new report to Congress from the National Institute of Mental Health concludes that treating mental disorders like physical disorders--mental health parity--might increase mental health costs by 1 percent while reducing total health costs by up to 50 percent.

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The federal government issued its second annual report today on the well-being of America's 70 million children, revealing some good news about their overall health and educational achievements.

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Parents of young adolescents may be tempted to bypass after-care programs and allow their children to fend for themselves for the couple of hours between the end of school and the time parents return home from work. But a pair of psychologists at Vanderbilt University agree that it's not a good idea to leave youngsters unsupervised.

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"Making Sense of Behavior: The Meaning of Control" by William T. Powers is the long-anticipated introduction to Perceptual Control Theory for lay readers. Bill Powers is chief theorist and founder of the Control Systems Group which this year celebrates its 25th year as an international coalition of scientists studying and modeling control theory as it applies to living systems.

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While children are often commended for good grades and high test scores, new research illustrates that complimenting children for their intelligence and academic performance may lead them to believe that good test scores and high grades are more important than learning and mastering something new.

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New research suggests that the most dangerous people are "those who have a strong desire to regard themselves as superior beings." The research, which will be published in the July issue of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, demonstrates that actual self-esteem may have little if any relation to aggression.

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Cancer-causing ultraviolet-B (UVB) light can snake its way around the shade, according to Purdue University agronomist Richard Grant and the U.S. Forest Service's Gordon Heisler.

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A study by a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher says negative attitudes toward homosexuality can lead to low self-esteem and increased risk for HIV among young African-American gay and bisexual men.

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While conventional wisdom has been that hate crimes in the United States rise with a declining economy, an analysis of hate crime in New York City from 1987 to 1995 has found little evidence linking racial, religious, ethnic, or homophobic incidents to deteriorating economic conditions.

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The theory behind much recent welfare reform is that welfare recipients will go to work if government just provides the right incentives.

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The question has been asked in some form after every school shooting that has occurred in recent months: Why didnít someone see the signs that the child would do this?

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The photo exhibit "Sisters in Spirit: Celebrating the Iroquois Influence on the Early Women's Rights Movement" opened June 27 at the Urban Cultural Park/Heritage Area Visitor Center in Seneca Falls, NY. Cornell University provided expertise.

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Candidates whose names appear first on an election ballot may attract more voters simply because they're listed before their rivals, a new study suggests.

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Increases in industrial research and development (R&D) activities are the highest recorded since the early 1980s, according to a new National Science Board (NSB) report to Congress.

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Dr. Claudia Osborn's life changed forever on a warm summer night in 1988 when a bike ride through her quiet neighborhood ended when she was hit by a car. Now a volunteer faculty member at Michigan State University, Osborn has chronicled her 10-year journey from serious head injury to a different yet happy life in a book titled "Over My Head."