EurekAlert! News by Subject: Social & Behavior

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 17-Jun-2026 12:16 ET (17-Jun-2026 16:16 GMT/UTC)

15-Jun-2026

Study finds positive aging videos affected women’s views of getting older – for the better

University of Connecticut
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Women who view TikTok videos of others comfortable with their gray hair and laugh lines start to feel more positive about their own aging the more they watch, a new UConn study has found, potentially influencing a woman’s ability to age well later in life.

Journal: Communication Research

15-Jun-2026

Model redefining conformity excels against real-world data

Santa Fe Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Imagine you poll your friends on how many minutes per pound to roast a turkey. Five respond with 15 minutes; one answers 33 minutes.

The most popular model of conformity, the French-Harary-DeGroot model (or commonly, Degroot Model), assumes that you would carefully weigh all six recommendations, calculating a cooking time of 18 minutes per pound. But under a model of conformity previously published by SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Kaleda Denton and colleagues, you would disregard the outlier and move ahead with 15.

In a paper published in [month TK] in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, Denton, SFI External Professor Marcus Feldman, and independent researcher Jonathan F. Johannemann build on this previous theoretical modeling work by testing the model against real-world data.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

15-Jun-2026

Feeling poorer than peers linked to lower wellbeing, even when incomes are similar

McGill University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New research is shedding light on how comparing ourselves to others affects happiness and life satisfaction.

Led by McGill University researchers, the study shows that people who feel worse off financially than their peers are more likely to report signs of languishing, even when their actual income is similar.

Journal: Social Science & Medicine

15-Jun-2026

Traditional legal systems ill-equipped for the fast-moving realities of climate change, study warns

University of Exeter
Book Announcement

Traditional legal systems around the world are increasingly ill-equipped to cope with the fast-moving impact of climate change on communities, new research warns.

15-Jun-2026

Researchers study 'double-edged' nature of workplace resilience

University of Mississippi
Peer-Reviewed Publication

From underdog stories to comeback victories, everyone loves a tale of perseverance. But a new study suggests that highlighting workplace resilience can sometimes leave observers feeling anxious instead of inspired.

Journal: Journal of Applied Psychology

15-Jun-2026

A universal brain mechanism for different languages

Society for Neuroscience
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Speaking different forms of words in English and Spanish involves the same mechanism in the brain.

Journal: JNeurosci

15-Jun-2026

Jury service boosts public trust in courts, but fewer Americans are serving

Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Reports and Proceedings

New research finds jury duty is linked to greater sense of court legitimacy, trust, and positive views of judges, even as jury trials decline.