Is it in our nature to go to war? Should we just accept the fact that humans have this innate tendency and are hardwired to kill members of other groups? No, says R. Brian Ferguson, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark. There is no scientific proof that we have an inherent propensity to take up …
From companies trying to resolve data security risks to coastal communities preparing for rising sea levels, solving modern problems requires teamwork that draws on a broad range of expertise and life experiences. Yet individuals receive little formal training to develop the skills that are vital to these collaborations. In a new scientific report published in …
Research carried out at the University of Adelaide and the University of Bristol has examined long-held beliefs that success in school and careers is due to more than just high intelligence. Non-cognitive skills are also important. The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour is the first to systematically review the entire literature on …
Maria Filsinger Interrante, Christian Choe, and Zach Rosenthal, aka Team Lyseia, strategize about upcoming experiments to test their new antibiotics. Credit: L.A. Cicero Women and girls are increasingly encouraged to pursue STEM careers, potentially leading to greater gender diversity within research organizations. While Stanford historian Londa Schiebinger sees that as a positive step, she wants …
Social media sites often present users with social exclusion information that may actually inhibit intelligent thought, according to the co-author of a University at Buffalo study that takes a critical look not just at Facebook and other similar platforms, but at the peculiarities of the systems on which these sites operate. The short-term effects of …
Crowd panics, market bubbles, and other unpredictable collective behaviors would not happen if people were smart about these things and just thought through their behavior before they acted. Right? That’s the perspective in economics, and even psychology and sociology. But a UC Davis researcher looked at how people behave in simple reasoning games and found …
Parents always worry about whether their children will do well in school, but their kids probably were born with much of what they will need to succeed. A new study published in npj Science of Learning by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and King’s College London explains the substantial influence genes have …
Dwelling in a political echo chamber—where you encounter only people who agree with you—is hardly conducive to a healthy democracy. But it turns out that broadening your horizons by perusing opposing points of view on social media may just make the partisan divide worse. That’s the depressing result of an unusual experiment involving 909 Democrats …
This month marks the four-year anniversary of protests over the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, an incident met with a heavily armed police response that stoked widespread concern. While proponents say militarized police units enhance officer safety and prevent violence, critics argue these tactics are targeted at racial minorities, and diminish trust …
No sex differences in attitudes or abilities are needed to explain the near absence of women from the battlefield in ancient societies and throughout history, it could ultimately all be down to chance, say researchers at the University of St Andrews. The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, have implications for our …
