New research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Turku reveals that female gorillas make strategic decisions about when to take risks and challenge powerful groupmates. The study found that 42 percent of aggressive interactions originated from lower and targeted higher ranks - more than expected. Among females of different reproductive states, pregnant females took the greatest risks by targeting more powerful group members, highlighting a link between energetic needs and risk-taking. Females targeted more powerful groupmates when there were more males in the group, potentially protecting females, but they targeted less powerful groupmates when there were more females in the group, suggesting that females prefer to target weaker opponents when given the option. These findings suggest that animals can adapt their competitive behaviour and risk-aversion according to the social context and their individual needs.

The question “What is the meaning in life?”, asked for millennia, is one of the central questions of philosophy. There has been a growing movement to approach this question by carefully analyzing the “meaning in life.” Now, Professor Masahiro Morioka of Waseda University has proposed a new idea: to explore “meaning in life” as a kind of geographical landscape experienced when a person tries to engage with their life with a certain attitude or intention.

Once an electoral candidate is in the lead, the public views them as the winner. If the candidate then loses, fraud seems a likely explanation, and even the winner’s supporters might be inclined to be suspicious about the final result. This is because of the cumulative redundancy bias (CRB). The CRB is a cognitive effect that makes it difficult for us to ignore information that we have already processed, even if the previously processed information is redundant to the most recent observation. “This effect plays a major role in the communication of election results in the USA in particular,” explains Dr. Moritz Ingendahl from the Social Cognition Lab at Ruhr University Bochum with regard to the presidential election in 2020. The researchers report their findings in the journal Psychological Science from July 24, 2025.

Self-disclosure is vital for communication. In the present century, various innovative forms of communication have emerged, including video-conferencing and embodied virtual reality (VR). In this context, researchers from Japan have recently demonstrated that embodied VR, especially with unrealistic avatars, facilitates the revelation of personal feelings. Moreover, female-to-female pairing had the highest self-disclosure score, underlining the role of gender.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that causes hallucinations, delusions, and social and cognitive impairment. Animal models are valuable for understanding the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia. However, conventional behavioral assessments are limited by the need for human intervention and external stimuli. Researchers from Fujita Health University, Japan, have established a semi-naturalistic platform using the automated ‘IntelliCage’ system for the comprehensive assessment of schizophrenia-like behaviors. The model can enhance translational research in psychiatric disorders and improve therapeutic development.