The woman who thinks violence is in our genes | The Observer A tendency to aggression and antisocial behaviour is encoded in certain people’s DNA, argues Kathryn Paige Harden – and it could have profound implications for crime and punishment

'Behavioural genetics makes people uncomfortable because it gets at the fundamental tension of being human, “which is that we are both caused creatures and experience ourselves to be subjective agents” '.

New interview in @theobserveruk.bsky.social

observer.co.uk/culture/inte...

Idiographic Network Models of Social Media Use and Depression Symptoms - Cognitive Therapy and Research Background Disentangling the impact of social media use on well-being is a priority for psychological research. Numerous studies suggest that active social media use (ASMU) enhances well-being, wherea...

"active social media use (ASMU; posting, commenting, direct messaging) vs passive social media use (scrolling through news feed without engaging)...ASMU appears to enhance well-being, increase self-esteem, strengthen social bonds, build social capital" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Beliefs about god buffer against the health risks of loneliness and social isolation in five major religions and 22 countries www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I love a figure @pewresearch.org made similar to this with their 2014 Global Attitudes Survey. So, I found some more recent data using questions on the #WorldValuesSurvey to examine how different nations understand social structure as shaping life outcomes. U.S. highlighted in red on both figures.

New paper out in JPSP with @erichehman.bsky.social! We asked: What is the framework underlying our impressions of environments? Our large bottom-up study shows that people pay attention to 4 factors. We’re calling it the Environment Impressions Model: doi.org/10.1037/pspa...

Does love in the ivory tower fix the leaky pipeline? A new study by Antonia Velicu, Manon Fauvelais, Julia Jerke, Heiko Rauhut, and Bruno Lemaitre investigates how homogamous relationships shape caree...

"actively supporting dual-career couples (including hiring practices) could be an effective tool for retaining talented women in science...Mentoring schemes, peer networks, and a genuinely collegial culture can help replicate some of these benefits for everyone" www.suz.uzh.ch/de/forschung...

Does Romantic Involvement Benefit Everyone? Testing a Foundational Tenet in Relationship Science Through the Case of Asexuality - Giulia Zoppolat, Manuela Barreto, Pamela Qualter, Jasmine Crosbie, David Matthew Doyle, 2026 It is established that romantic relationships can benefit well-being and buffer against loneliness. But is that true for everyone? We put this foundational tene...

"...from over 41,000 participants in the BBC Loneliness Experiment, researchers found that, unlike heterosexual and other sexual minority participants, asexual people experienced similar levels of loneliness whether or not they were in a romantic relationship" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

classic

A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career Brian Donovan had persuaded high school teachers and education researchers that prejudice might be ended by changing how genetics is taught.

Read this. this is what the administration wants to happen. this is how they destroy science... www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

"NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely." what!!!! No. No. Nope. No. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Huge meta-research project puts claims in social-science papers to the test Three experts discuss lessons learnt from a large-scale dissection of the reproducibility, analytical robustness and replicability of published results.

"Perhaps most notably, replication rates did not vary greatly across the fields, ranging from about 43% to 63%...no field seems to be completely broken...findings should serve as a wake-up call" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Robert Trivers, Eccentric Scientist Who Probed Human Nature, Dies at 83

Robert Trivers, Eccentric Scientist Who Probed Human Nature, Dies at 83 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/s...

Humans share acoustic preferences with other animals Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefer some sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergent evolution may generate similarities in preference across species and underlie Darwin...

"human participants preferred sounds that the nonhuman animal receivers preferred and with the same strength. This was true across multiple different taxa, including birds, frogs, and amphibians" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When Jon Haidt Called Me a Cheater Science, Snark, and the Moral Mind

Entertaining and interesting post by @kurtjgray.bsky.social on how science works using his own research on moral psychology in contrast to @jonathanhaidt.bsky.social's work.

"abundance increases attraction to masculinity in male faces and femininity in female faces...points to a more general mechanism through which positive ecological conditions amplify attraction to sexually dimorphic features" assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-894...

First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

Stereotyping bisexuality: warmth, competence, and category-level prejudice in the Stereotype Content Model We used the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) to compare perceptions of bisexual identities with heterosexual, gay, and lesbian identities, and to assess whether partner gender shapes these perception...

"category-level prejudice, rather than partner-gender cues, organises stereotypes of bisexual people within the SCM, highlighting the persistence of bisexual-specific marginalisation" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"Do you believe the world will come to an end within your lifetime, and does that belief change the way you see existential threats to humanity? One third of Americans answer yes to the first question; we venture to answer the second question here."  doi.org/10.1037/pspi...

Evolved psychology, eco-phenotypic feedbacks and the social construction of culture This paper responds to more than twenty commentaries on The Ecological Approach to Culture, written by researchers in evolutionary biology, behavioral…

"when it renders cultural phenomena predictable, quantifiable, and experimentally investigable..If cultural ecology succeeds in doing so—progressively turns cultural puzzles into objects of explanation rather than exceptions—then it is the right framework." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Gender equality predicts female overrepresentation only in competitive domains where they have a relative advantage over males Abstract. Nature and nurture perspectives of the gender-equality paradox frequently talk past each other because they do not share underlying assumptions r

"emerging perspectives in historical psychology...emphasizes psychological patterns evaluated as products of historically unfolding social change rather than as static cross-sectional regularities...Gender Equality Paradox cross-nationally and cross-temporally" academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

NLP across cultures...Hou, D. X., Thapa, S., & Tay, L. (2026). Bridging cultures in the era of big data: A cross-language equivalence framework in machine-learning research with social media texts. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Psychologists clash over the safety and effects of the cry it out parenting strategy Few parenting topics spark as much debate as the "cry it out" method. While some experts warn it causes psychological harm, a study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry argues it does not negatively affect infant development.

Psychologists clash over the safety and effects of the cry it out parenting strategy

Cross-sex and intrasexual theory of mind..."Men overestimated women's desire for sexual variety...Unexpectedly, women showed similar biases when estimating the desires of men...both men and women overestimated the sexual desired of their same sex peers." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The interdisciplinary journal "Culture and Evolution" brings all the scientific tools for studying culture and evolution to the same table…publication fees waived for papers submitted by Dec 31, 2026; registered reports and replication studies welcomed! submit.akademiai.com/cultev/index...

Do You Agree? Do You Strongly Agree? The Effect of the Number of Response Categories on Response Processes and Verification of Substantive Hypotheses Abstract. This study investigates how the number and labeling of response categories in survey scales affect respondent behavior, psychometric properties,

This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

Frontiers | Gender differences in emotional disconnection and emotional loneliness in romantic couples: a 3-day ecological momentary assessment study BackgroundEmotional disconnection and loneliness significantly impact romantic relationship quality and individual well-being. Despite the established links ...

Gender differences in emotional disconnection and emotional loneliness in romantic couples: a 3-day ecological momentary assessment study www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

"daily study of psychopathy and Machiavellianism states...covariance higher between-person, compared to
within-person...different pattern of fluctuations over time...qualitatively different constructs linked by antisocial"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

35,000 participants, 25 countries..."replicated gender differences in sexual attraction to preferred and non-preferred gender...gender typicality (self-rated femininity for women and masculinity for men) positively associated with attraction to preferred gender" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"people from cultures with strict social norms tend to be less skilled at coming up with funny material compared to those from more relaxed cultures" www.psypost.org/cultural-tig...  doi.org/10.1037/amp0...

Job Alert: Want to come work in a great Psychology Department? Able to teach within Cognitive/Behavioral Neuroscience areas? Well, we have a spot you'll love full well here in Kansas! Applications close March 1, 2026; Anticipated pay range $70,000 annually careers.k-state.edu/jobs/teachin...