Humans

21 March 2013
Emotional content of books diverging by country, say language sleuths
A computer analysis of more than five million digitized books has revealed a distinct stylistic divergence since the 1960s, with American books becoming decidedly more "emotional"...

17 March 2013
Overheard cellphone conversations "uniquely intrusive"
Confirming what many of us have long suspected, a new study has found that a one-sided cellphone conversation in the background is much more distracting than overhearing a conversation between two people...

21 February 2013
Tweet this: human language may have evolved from birdsong
Charles Darwin speculated that language might have had its origins in singing and now linguists from MIT are taking that theory a step further by proposing that human language could be a grafting of two communication forms found in the animal kingdom...

13 January 2013
Ancient faces reconstructed
A new DNA system employed to analyze modern forensic samples has also been used to establish facial characteristics from centuries old human remains. A study in the journal Investigative Genetics details how the system was able to reconstruct hair and eye color from teeth up to 800 years old...

7 January 2013
Modern parenting crippling kids' brains, says Notre Dame prof
Social practices and cultural beliefs of modern life are preventing healthy brain and emotional development in children, according to an interdisciplinary body of research presented at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame...

20 December 2012
Human hands evolved for punching, not just dexterity, says prof
A University of Utah study suggests human hands evolved not only for the manual dexterity needed to use tools or play a violin, but also so we could make fists and punch hard...

10 December 2012
The nose knows: Pinocchio effect reveals liars
Applying thermography techniques to the field of psychology, Spanish researchers have observed the "Pinocchio effect," where a person's nose becomes warmer when they are lying...

14 November 2012
Husbands stay close with oxytocin
The first evidence that oxytocin promotes relationship fidelity in humans has been provided by a study that measured the distance men keep between themselves and an attractive woman...

26 October 2012
Men enjoy dirt-eating as much as pregnant women, Harvard study finds
Harvard scientists say that pica (particularly geophagy - the eating of soil) is far more prevalent in Madagascar than previously thought, and men are partaking as often as pregnant women...

15 October 2012
Knife-on-bottle is "nastiest sound," say scientists
Frenetic activity between the emotional and auditory parts of the brain explains why the sound of a knife on a bottle is so unpleasant, say researchers who have been examining brain scans of subjects listening to different sounds...

10 October 2012
The prettier the guiltier
Past research has linked physical attractiveness to success in a variety of fields, but a new study from Europe shows that beauty can be a handicap when it comes to culpability in domestic violence crimes...

11 September 2012
Joke boffins analyze tragedy humor
"Too soon!" complained the audience when comedian Jeffrey Ross did a skit about the recent shootings in Colorado, but psychologists exploring humor and tragedy say it's not quite as simple as "too soon"...

5 September 2012
Women better with colors
A study examining visual processing in the brain found that men have greater sensitivity to detail and rapidly moving stimuli, while women are better at discriminating between colors...

1 September 2012
Booze intake influenced by glass shape
Research subjects drank beer from a curved glass almost twice as fast as from a straight sided glass, but the shape of the glass made no difference when the drinks were non-alcoholic...

5 August 2012
Waitresses in red win tips race
Male restaurant customers give consistently higher tips - around 20 percent more - to waitresses wearing red, say hospitality researchers...

26 July 2012
Brain hardwired for objectification of women
A new series of experiments have shown that when presented with images of men, both male and female subjects perceive the person as a whole, whereas images of women are perceived as an assemblage of various body parts...

26 June 2012
Reading: up close and personal
There are no significant gender-related differences in the eye's ability to focus at near distances, so scientists have been looking for other reasons why women need higher power reading glasses than men of an equivalent age...

8 June 2012
Coolness no longer cool, say boffins
An intriguing new study - "Coolness: An Empirical Investigation" - suggests that the characteristics associated with coolness today are markedly different than those that originally generated the concept of cool...

2 June 2012
U.S. heads getting bigger
In the space of less than 200 years, the average U.S. Caucasian skull size has increased nearly 7 percent, becoming taller and narrower. The researchers say they cannot pinpoint a reason as to whether the change is primarily due to evolution or lifestyle changes...

15 May 2012
Ovulation goggles make Mr Wrong look like Mr Right
Nice guys finish last when women are wearing ovulation goggles, say researchers who have been investigating exactly why females in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle choose sexy, rebellious cads to pair-up with...

6 May 2012
"Seeing" auras is really synesthesia, say Euro scientists
Spanish researchers say that healers who claim to be able to see the auras surrounding people are actually suffering synesthesia, the neuropsychological phenomenon that mixes the senses...

21 April 2012
Humans drawn to high emotion
Pictures of the left side of the face are perceived and rated as more pleasant than pictures of the right side of the face, leading scientists to hypothesize that we prefer the left side's more intense expressions of emotionality...

17 April 2012
Chin augmentation skyrockets
The always fascinating annual statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons show that chin augmentation is the fastest growing plastic surgery procedure - a phenomenon, speculate surgeons, sparked by a desire for success in the workplace...

9 April 2012
Empirical evidence for homophobia's link to repressed same-sex attraction
In the first study of its kind, UK and US researchers have found that homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex...

2 April 2012
Beer-goggles effect explained
Alcohol reduces our ability to assess facial symmetry in others, according to UK researchers who say the effect is most pronounced in women...

2 March 2012
Wine subtleties mostly irrelevant to consumer palates
Biology appears to play a major role in wine experts' acute sense of taste, suggests a study that found consumers are "taste blind" to the subtleties of wine, including even fundamental characteristics such as the balance of sugar and acid...

17 February 2012
Texting stunting our reading skills?
The general assumption that text messaging encourages unconstrained language is a myth, says a Canadian researcher who contends that texting has a negative impact on people's linguistic ability to interpret and accept words...

30 January 2012
Ankle gets top rating for scratching pleasure
American itch boffins have been studying which parts of the body produce the most pleasure when scratched. Their analysis of itch relief at different body sites and related pleasurability reveals the ankle to be a scratch-pleasure hotpspot...

23 January 2012
IQ plummets for women in social settings
A new study highlights the unexpected and dramatic consequences subtle social signals in group settings can have on individual cognitive functioning, especially for women...

20 January 2012
Say what? Ambiguity makes language more efficient
To avoid conversational confusion and optimize language, linguists argue that every word should have just one meaning, but a new study from MIT turns that notion on its head, showing instead that ambiguity in words actually makes language more efficient...

18 January 2012
Why gossip is good for you
Gossip has traditionally had a bad reputation, but a convoluted series of experiments carried out in the US have demonstrated the physiological benefits of gossiping...

13 January 2012
Researchers mull bacterium's link to autism
The bacterium Sutterella was found to be present at "remarkably high levels" in the gastrointestinal tracts of children with autism and scientists are pondering what the connection might be...

1 December 2011
Creative types more likely to cheat
While creativity helps people solve difficult problems, it also makes them more likely to cheat than less creative people, claims new research that suggests creativity increases a person's ability to rationalize their cheating...

1 November 2011
Boffins take aim at finance bubbles
US and European scientists have proposed two different methods for detecting finance bubbles, one analyzes verb and noun usage in financial reporting and the other throws some heavy mathematics at the problem. The verdict? There isn't a gold bubble but some recent IPOs look bubblish...

20 October 2011
Men 2% funnier than women
A University of California study has found that men are funnier (funnier ha-ha, rather than funnier peculiar) than women, but not by much, and probably not because it helps them find mates...

14 October 2011
Londoners lead in cell phone crap stakes
British poo boffins say that, on average, one-in-six cell phones is contaminated with fecal matter and that phones owned by Londoners were by far the worst, with nearly one-in-three contaminated with dangerous E. coli bacteria...

29 September 2011
Awfulness of poverty ensured global spread of class system
Ironically, it appears that the worst inequities of the class system were the reason they spread across the planet and destroyed more egalitarian cultures during the early era of human civilization...

16 August 2011
Is the quest for romance causing the gender gap in science?
Four new studies suggest that the goal of being romantically desirable is causing the persistent gender gap in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math...

27 July 2011
Scientists quantify critical-mass required for spread of ideas
If just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority, say cognitive scientists from the Rensselaer Institute. The findings have broad implications for the study of innovation, the spread of ideas and the movement of political ideals...

29 June 2011
War cheaper, more popular than ever
Far from the planet becoming more peaceful, the frequency of wars between states has increased steadily from 1870 by 2 percent a year. A new study argues that the rise in conflicts is being fed by economic growth and the proliferation of new borders...

20 June 2011
Chick-magnet pulling power confirmed
Driving a sports car makes a man more desirable to women, but only for uncommitted romantic flings and not as a marriage partner...

3 June 2011
The color red provides speed and strength boost
When humans see the color red, their reactions become both faster and more forceful. Most people are unaware of the color's muscle boosting effect, but a new study suggests it could give sportspeople the edge in activities in which a brief burst of strength and speed is needed...

27 May 2011
Radiation exposure impacting gender ratio
Analyzing data from population centers around normally functioning nuclear power stations, researchers have found that exposure to nuclear radiation leads to an increased percentage of male births...

26 May 2011
Happy men not sexually attractive to women
Men who date online may be inspired to update their profile photos after researchers discovered that women find pictures of brooding men sexier than smiling men...

11 May 2011
Study reveals how cops spot liars
The ability to effectively detect deception is a cornerstone of successful law enforcement, and now, the investigative interviewing techniques used by detectives and intelligence officers are available to everyone thanks to a new paper in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry ...

3 May 2011
Experiments reveal aggression to be a "manhood-restoring tactic"
Manhood is something that is difficult to earn and easy to lose; suggest experiments that also showed aggression as the preferred way for men to hold onto this precarious status...

29 April 2011
Scans reveal brain's in-built caste system
MRI scans reveal that people of higher subjective socioeconomic status show greater brain activity in response to other high-ranked individuals, while those with lower status have a greater response to other low-status individuals...

22 April 2011
Why are the happiest places also suicide hotspots?
The happiest countries (and happiest U.S. states) have the highest suicide rates, say an international team of researchers, who have pulled together a study that attempts to explain this seemingly paradoxical situation...

5 April 2011
Women: they don't make 'em like they used to
A study of 16th century European skulls has found that women are beginning to resemble men as differences in gender-associated craniofacial features become less pronounced over time...

22 March 2011
Men fueling plastic surgery boom
Statistics released this week show that more men are going under the knife to try and preserve their youthful looks. While cosmetic plastic surgery procedures in men were up only 2 percent overall in 2010, many individual procedures increased significantly. Facelifts for men rose 14 percent in 2010 while male liposuction increased 7 percent...

15 March 2011
Sex selection gender skew in East raises concerns
A preference for sons in China, India and South Korea combined with easy access to sex-selective abortions means that some provinces in China have 130 males for every 100 females, leading demographers to estimate that there may be a 20 percent excess of young men in the near future...

28 February 2011
Conservation scientists mull reconstruction of buddhas
Coordinated by UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a group of scientists is examining the debris left from the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and considering whether reconstruction of the giant statues might be feasible...

10 February 2011
Testosterone: empathy killer
An administration of testosterone under the tongues of volunteers negatively affected their ability to "read" the minds of others, an indication of empathy. Interestingly, this effect is predicted by a fetal marker of prenatal testosterone and provides further support for the androgen theory of autism...

28 January 2011
Penile presence makes for abominable affairs
Men are more than twice as likely to continue dating a girlfriend who has cheated on them with another woman than one who has cheated with another man, say University of Texas bonk boffins...

11 January 2011
Masculinity trumps intelligence for ovulating women
How human sexual selection evolved is becoming clearer with new findings showing that women in their fertile phase are more likely to fantasize about masculine-looking men and that a man's intelligence has no effect on a female's choice of partner...

7 January 2011
Male sex drive watered-down with tears
When we cry, we send all sorts of emotional signals. But scientists now say that tears carry chemical signals as well, after they observed that merely sniffing a woman's tears reduced sexual arousal in men...

10 December 2010
Country boys boast bigger junk
A European study involving more than 6,000 white males has found significant differences in penis size when comparing urban and rural populations...

1 December 2010
Attractiveness a significant handicap for working women
A new research paper; "Are Good-Looking People More Employable?" found that a double standard exists where attractive men are much more likely to be successful in finding a job than good looking women...

22 November 2010
More of oxytocin's effects revealed
New experiments with oxytocin, known as the love hormone because of its importance in bonding between romantic partners and mothers and children, have shown it to have a profound influence on value judgments as well as feelings of well-being and our sensitivity to advertising...

16 November 2010
Consumers' brains muddled by zero
Why does a one percent credit card interest rate appear more attractive to consumers than a zero percent rate? A new study finds that consumers are often flummoxed when it comes to the concept of zero...

1 November 2010
Modern concerns echoed in ancient papyrus
The annual Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists contains some fascinating insights into what concerned ancient Egyptian minds; miracle medical cures, religious confusion, and monetary safeguards - involving cabbages...

6 October 2010
Top reasons for Facebook unfriending revealed
Researchers spend a lot of time examining how people form friendships online, but little has been known about how those relationships end, until now...

29 September 2010
Fizzy drinks titillate pain receptors
Scientists have discovered that the carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks activates the same pain sensors as mustard and horseradish, leading them to speculate that the consumption of soda is "a macho thing"...

17 September 2010
Placebo a turn-on for women
Many women with low sex drives reported significant increases in sexual satisfaction after taking a placebo, according to new research from The University of Texas...

23 August 2010
Could oxytocin levels identify high risk parents?
It was known that birth and lactation boost oxytocin levels in new mothers and now researchers have found a link between oxytocin in new fathers and the quality of interactions they have with their new offspring; an association, say the researchers, that could help identify high risk parents...

5 August 2010
Ovulating women buy sexier clothes
Ovulating women unconsciously buy sexier clothes, doing so not to impress men, say the researchers, but to outdo rival women during the handful of days each month when they are ovulating...

4 August 2010
Women more likely to bed men in red
Red is typically thought of as a sexy color for women only, but a new study suggests that the link between the color red and sex also applies to men...

7 July 2010
Romantic rejection triggers reward and addiction centers in the brain
The pain and anguish of rejection by a romantic partner trigger activity in the parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings, according to a study that has implications for understanding why the feelings related to rejection can lead to stalking, homicide and suicide...

25 June 2010
Tactile sensations have profound effect on decision making
A comfortable chair makes a person more amenable to negotiation and a heavy clipboard makes a resume more substantive. Fascinating new research shows that we are heavily influenced by our sense of touch...

16 June 2010
Study suggests the war on drugs might really be a war on sex
Why is there so much heated argument about whether the use of recreational drugs is morally wrong? A new study suggests that the debate about drugs might really be about sex...

8 June 2010
Sexsomnia linked to illicit drug use
Nearly 1-in-10 sleep center patients report sexsomnia incidents and researchers say there is an association between sexsomnia and recreational drug use...

14 May 2010
Risky business and a woman's touch
Participants in a financial simulation were inclined to throw caution to the wind if a female experimenter patted them on the back, whereas similar patting from a male researcher had no effect...

23 April 2010
Sex appeal as important as education?
"Erotic capital" is the implicit but powerful commodity that can count just as much as educational qualifications in the labor market, politics, media or the arts, argues a new study...

13 January 2010
Poker paradox: the more hands you win, the more money you lose
Analyzing more than 27 million hands, a researcher has found that the more hands players win, the less money they're likely to collect – especially when it comes to novice players...