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Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 10-May-2026 04:16 ET (10-May-2026 08:16 GMT/UTC)

Personal perception of body movement changes when using robotic prosthetics

North Carolina State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The way we understand the movement of our own bodies plays an important role when learning physical skills, from sports to dancing. But a new study finds this phenomenon works very differently for people learning to use robotic prosthetic devices.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

Study shows brain responses to wildlife images can forecast online engagement — and could help conservation messaging

Stanford University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Research suggests that images featuring socioemotional features like visible faces or cues about an animal's mental state drive the most engagement, offering insights that could help environmental organizations design more effective communication campaigns.

Journal: PNAS Nexus
Funder: Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, National Geographic Society, Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources

Psychology study: You can teach an old dog new tricks

Heidelberg University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

You can teach an old dog new tricks. Younger and older adults alike are able to adopt new socio-emotional behaviors. Even older adults benefit from a personality intervention aimed at handling stress and challenging social situations better. This is the conclusion of a psychological aging research study conducted by researchers from Germany and Switzerland led by Prof. Dr Cornelia Wrzus (Heidelberg University) and Prof. Dr Corina Aguilar-Raab (University of Mannheim). The study examined the effects of an intervention program in participants of varying ages. It concluded that social and emotional skills training benefits both younger and older adults.

Journal: Communications Psychology

Early puberty may increase the risk of poor mental wellbeing and higher consumption of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

Aarhus University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Three new studies point to a higher risk of developing mental health difficulties and a greater use of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs if young people enter puberty early.

Journal: Journal of Affective Disorders

Brain imaging reveals how wildlife photos open donor wallets

PNAS Nexus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Brain imaging identifies the social and emotional features of wildlife photos that drive engagement on social media. Tara Srirangarajan and colleagues scanned the brains of 34 adults while the participants viewed 56 wildlife images from National Geographic’s Instagram feed and made decisions in a matter of seconds about whether to “like” posts and/or donate to depicted species.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

Government censorship of Chinese chatbots

PNAS Nexus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Chinese chatbots may be censored by the state, according to a study. China has a robust program of censorship and all China-originating LLMs must be approved by the Chinese government before release. Jennifer Pan and Xu Xu compared the responses of foundation LLMs developed in China (BaiChuan, ChatGLM, Ernie Bot, and DeepSeek) to those developed outside of China (Llama2, Llama2-uncensored, GPT3.5, GPT4, and GPT4o) to 145 questions related to Chinese politics. The questions were sourced from events censored by the Chinese government on social media, events covered in Human Rights Watch China reports, and Chinese-language Wikipedia pages that were individually blocked by the Chinese government before the entire site was banned in 2015. Chinese models were significantly and substantially more likely to refuse to respond to questions related to Chinese politics than non-Chinese models.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

Wiley to expand Advanced Portfolio

Wiley
Business Announcement

Wiley will significantly expand the Advanced Portfolio into life, health, and social sciences disciplines, with plans to launch eight new journals by the end of 2026 and more to follow over the next several years.