EurekAlert! News by Subject: Social & Behavior - News by Subject: Social & Behavior

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 31-Dec-2025 12:11 ET (31-Dec-2025 17:11 GMT/UTC)

Parker receives funding for Elementary Education Program Professional Development School (PDS)

George Mason University
Grant and Award Announcement

Audra Parker, Professor and Elementary Education (ELED) Academic Program Coordinator, College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), received funding for: “Elementary Education Program Professional Development School (PDS).”

Funder: Loudoun County Public Schools

Tayac receives funding for community engagement project

George Mason University
Grant and Award Announcement

Gabrielle Tayac, Associate Professor, History and Art History, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for the project: “INCL: Indigenous America 250 Community Engagement PHASE 2.”

Funder: National Park Service

Location, individual circumstances impact caregiver well-being, researchers find

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Roughly a quarter of adults in the U.S. are caring for elderly family members or children with an illness or disability — and sometimes both at the same time. Despite family caregiving consuming time and resources for both individuals and governments, social scientists don’t fully understand how it affects the people who do the caregiving, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State. In collaboration with colleagues at Purdue University and the University of Minnesota, the researchers conducted an expansive study of caregiver well-being, finding that the type of geographic location and individual circumstances can impact a caregiver’s health, comfort and happiness even more than their state’s family care policies.

Journal: Rural Sociology
Funder: U.S. Department of Agriculture

UT Extension consumer economics specialist receives national award

University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture
Grant and Award Announcement

Christopher Sneed, an associate professor and consumer economics specialist in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) at the University of Tennessee, has received the 2025 Excellence in Extension Award for an individual.

The prestigious national award was presented at the recent Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Conference by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Cooperative Extension and the APLU. The award recognizes one Cooperative Extension professional who has demonstrated outstanding scientific programming, visionary leadership and positive community impact.

Don’t look away: Study shows teenage girls who avoid potentially negative feedback prone to higher anxiety

University of Kansas
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Teenage girls who refrained from looking at a source of potentially negative feedback as they gave speeches reported the most anxiety three years later

Journal: Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Easter Island’s statues actually “walked” – and physics backs it up

Binghamton University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For years, researchers have puzzled over how the ancient people of Rapa Nui did the seemingly impossible and moved their iconic moai statues. Using a combination of physics, 3D modeling and on-the-ground experiments, a team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has confirmed that the statues actually walked – with a little rope and remarkably few people.

Journal: Journal of Archaeological Science

KU program found effective in helping reduce stress among child welfare service providers

University of Kansas
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers in the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare have published a study showing that Resilience Alliance, an intervention designed to help reduce secondary traumatic stress among child welfare service providers was effective. The intervention helped increase resilience as a skill and reduce the amount of toxic stress the service providers experienced. That can lead to better health outcomes for the providers, better outcomes for families across Kansas and could help reduce burnout and improvement for workers doing a stressful job across the country, researchers argue.

Journal: Traumatology An International Journal