EurekAlert! News by Subject: Social & Behavior

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 25-Oct-2026 14:16 ET (25-Oct-2026 18:16 GMT/UTC)

8-Jul-2026

HSE researchers determine which internet users are more likely to fact-check

National Research University Higher School of Economics
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at HSE University examined the strategies employed by Russian internet users to verify unreliable information and the factors that motivate them to do so. The study found that more than half of users who encounter potentially false information online attempt to verify it by locating the original source. The likelihood of fact-checking is influenced by several factors, including age, place of residence, social status, information literacy skills, and the use of AI. The findings have been published in Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes.

Journal: The monitoring of public opinion economic&social changes

8-Jul-2026

Does a hotter climate lead to more same-sex mounting? Evidence from corpse-eating beetles

Society for Experimental Biology
Reports and Proceedings

New research suggests that heat stress increases the occurrence of same-sex sexual interactions between male burying beetles – but also that a surprising amount of male-male encounters occur under control conditions. This ongoing project is currently investigating whether a possible trade-off between heat-protection and social communication cuticular hydrocarbons may be involved in possible sex recognition errors, and if these behaviours may result in any costs to reproductive success.

Meeting: SEB Conference 2026

8-Jul-2026

The reinforcement effect of social media likes in depression

JAMA Network
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In this study, depressive psychopathology was associated with a greater tendency to be reinforced by a type of social reward on Twitter, in contrast to typical laboratory-based findings of blunted reinforcement learning in depression. These findings suggest potential mechanisms linking social media use to worse mental health or vice versa, and emphasize the importance of studying real-world behavior.

Journal: JAMA Psychiatry

8-Jul-2026

Researchers may have discovered how parenting behavior evolved in ants

Rockefeller University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Parental care appears to have evolved in ants by repurposing ancient neural circuits rather than inventing entirely new brain systems. Because the same family of neuropeptides regulates caregiving in ants and mammals, evolution may have relied on a common molecular blueprint for social behavior. The findings establish ants as a powerful new model for studying how parenting came to be. Moreover, because the researchers found that caregiving behaviors change over an ant’s lifetime, their findings also contribute insights into how healthy aging naturally reshapes the brain and behavior.

Journal: Nature

8-Jul-2026

Study explores social media's role in tornado disaster communication

University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Peer-Reviewed Publication

When a powerful EF-4 tornado tore through Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on March 24, 2023, social media became a critical tool for sharing weather warnings, damage reports and recovery information. But a new study from University of Nebraska–Lincoln media scholar Cory Armstrong found that the same disaster also exposed persistent communication gaps facing rural and underserved communities.

Journal: News Research Journal

8-Jul-2026

Virtual patients, real-world training

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science
Grant and Award Announcement

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Penn’s Linguistic Data Consortium have received a two-year, $4 million grant from the Wellcome Trust to develop STELLAR, an AI-powered platform for training mental health clinicians through controllable virtual patient simulations. The project will create “digital twin” patients whose psychiatric symptoms can be adjusted, allowing trainees to practice clinical interviews that better reflect the complexity of real mental health care.

Funder: Wellcome Trust

8-Jul-2026

Social media influencers who match racial, ethnic identity of their audiences have a bigger—and unhealthy—impact

New York University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study by a team of psychology and health researchers finds that racial and ethnic minority youth reported paying more attention to influencers who looked like them and shared their racial identity. Moreover, this heightened visual interest was associated with stronger engagement with social media posts and a stronger preference for unhealthy foods.

Journal: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology