New research sheds light on how the structure of online social networks causes misinformation to go viral on the internet. The findings, published in PLOS One, indicate that social “echo chambers” act like kindling that gives misinformation the initial flare up it needs to quickly spread. “While the link between ‘echo chambers’ and ‘fake news’ has been both widely discussed and been the subject of significant research effort, this discussion has largely left out the impact of the complex network dynamics that are so quintessential to online social media,” said study author Petter Törnberg, a sociologist from the University of Amsterdam.

Clicking ‘Like’ is something most of us do without thinking. It’s a form of social currency that gives us a momentary jolt and revs up our dopamine centers. Yet who knew all our ‘Likes’ could predict our personality and be turned into a tool of political persuasion against us?

Everyone’s social nightmare might have lasting effects on relationships.

The internet could be fuelling a rise in new conditions such as cyberchondria and cyberhoarding, experts have warned. While researchers say most internet use is benign, it can lead some people to develop problems. Now experts are calling for more research to understand the range of problems that exist, who might be at risk, and how individuals can be helped.

Social media has created a world in which everyone seems ecstatic – apart from us. Is there any way for people to curb their resentment?

Past research has found that women tend to be less attracted to men who are shorter than themselves. Now, a new study suggests that women are also less attracted to men who are dumber than themselves. The findings appear in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.

The self-rated personalities of men and women differ more in more gender equal countries, according to recent research from the University of Gothenburg, University West and the University of Skövde. In the study over 130,000 people from 22 different countries filled in a validated personality test. The test measured the “big five” personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), regarded as the most accepted categorization within personality research.

Greed might not be so good if you hope to make money and pass on your genes. According to new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, selfish people tend to have fewer offspring and lower incomes than their less selfish counterparts. “In research on human cooperation and its evolution it is often taken for granted that selfishness pays,” said study author Kimmo Eriksson of Stockholm University.

Beliefs can be hard to change, even if they are scientifically wrong. But those on the fence about an idea can be swayed after hearing facts related to the misinformation, according to a study led by Princeton University.

As told by a 20-something graduate student.

People can die simply because they’ve given up, life has beaten them and they feel defeat is inescapable, according to new research. The study, by Dr John Leach, a senior research fellow in the University of Portsmouth’s Department of Sport and Exercise Science, is the first to describe the clinical markers for ‘give-up-it is’, a term used to describe what is known medically as psychogenic death.

Humans’ fascination with robots follows a long tradition of connecting emotionally to inanimate objects.

There are many studies about how we process tonal music and figurative painting, but philosophers are just beginning to understand how our brains react to more abstract work.

In a recent study of the parental caregiving environment, psychologist Rebecca Waller found that within identical twin pairs, the child who experienced harsher behavior and less parental warmth was at a greater risk for developing antisocial behaviors.

A year ago, a 24-year-old woman with depression was given an unusual prescription by her doctor: a weekly swim in cold water. The patient, Sarah, was filmed as part of the BBC documentary series The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, presented by Christoffer van Tulleken, a doctor and researcher at University College London.

New sorting algorithm yields more robust, replicable results than other methods.

In what feels like an increasingly polarised world, trying to convince the “other side” to see things differently often feels futile. Psychology has done a great job outlining some of the reasons why, including showing that, regardless of political leanings, most people are highly motivated to protect their existing views. However a problem with some of this research is that it is very difficult to concoct opposing real-life arguments of equal validity, so as to make a fair comparison of people’s treatment of arguments they agree and disagree with.

Not content to let customers sit back and enjoy some light jazz, companies have turned hold music into a marketing exercise.

A study of thousands of lottery winners reveals that greater wealth improves life satisfaction, and that these effects are highly durable.

The conventional wisdom is that morning people are high achievers, go-getters, while late risers are lazy. But what if going to bed in the wee hours is actually an advantage?

Frequent sex might enhance our performance on certain cognitive tasks. A growing body of research on both humans and animals published in the last decade points to this conclusion, including a new study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Here's a look at the accumulated evidence and what it suggests about how sex might benefit the brain.

Can you guess which psychology experiments had correct findings and which ones were bogus, just from reading a brief description of their results? Depending on how long you want to play, we'll describe 10, 15 or 21 recent findings published in the world's top journals - Nature and Science - and you'll have to guess whether a repeat of the same experiment, with a much larger sample size, got the same result. Before starting this project - whch was published in Nature in August 2018 - the people who organised these 21 replications asked expert psychologists and gamblers to predict which results would hold up.

The world of magic defies rational explanation, but beware dismissing it as nonsense. Like religious experience and poetry, it is a crucial aspect of being human, writes the Dark Materials author

In recent years behaviours on university campuses have created widespread unease. Safe spaces, trigger warnings, and speech codes. Demands for speakers to be disinvited. Words construed as violence and liberalism described as ‘white supremacy’. Students walking on eggshells, too scared to speak their minds. Controversial speakers violently rebuked – from conservative provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulos to serious sociologists such as Charles Murray, to left-leaning academics such as Bret Weinstein.

The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. This bias is widely prevalent in many areas of life, and has a powerful influence on the way people make decisions and shape their beliefs. In the following article, you will learn more about the confirmation bias, about why people experience it, and about how it relates to other cognitive biases. Then, you will see what you can do in order to reduce the influence of the confirmation bias, both in other people’s thought process as well as in your own.

Eating meat is a symbol of power and status, and those who see themselves as having lower socio-economic status prefer meat, and eat more meat, due to this perception, according to new research from Monash University and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). The paper, published this week in the journal Appetite, found participants who rated themselves lower on socio-economic status showed a stronger preference for meat-based foods compared to participants who rated themselves higher on a socio-economic scale.

On Amazon, you can shell out about $15 to buy pills made of cellulose, titanium dioxide, gelatin, and dye. None of these ingredients have any medical effect, but customers report taking these pills for pain relief, to reduce excessive sweating, and even to quit smoking. It’s not surprising, really. Medical quackery has a long and proud history, and so long as there’s gullible people, there will be somebody selling snake oil. But here’s the rub: Right on the bottle, in big, blue letters is the word “placebo.” The only claim the manufacturer makes about these pills is that they are guaranteed not to contain any kind of medicine.

It doesn’t make you look authoritative. It makes you look out of control to your kids. It makes you look weak.

You are in a strange neighbourhood, your cell phone’s dead, and you desperately need to find the closest garage. A couple of people on the street chime in, each sending you in opposite directions. One person sounds like a local and speaks in a nonchalant manner, while the other uses a loud, confident voice but speaks with a strong accent. Who are you going to trust? A recently published study shows that unless they speak in a confident tone of voice, you’re less likely to believe someone who speaks with an accent. And, interestingly, as you make this decision different parts of your brain are activated...

Loot boxes in games could lead to problem gambling, according to a study by the Australian Environment and Communications Reference Committee. Over 7,400 game enthusiasts were surveyed for the study, the results of which were presented during a public hearing in Canberra yesterday, as part of the Australian senate inquiry into micro-transactions and chance-based items.

“I myself am a victim to narrative,” says Alex Rosenberg, a Duke University philosophy professor whose new book hopes to convince readers that narratives — and especially narrative history — are flawed as tools of knowledge. Rosenberg is a philosopher of science and a writer of historical fiction. How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories, out this week from MIT Press, does not deny that stories can be wonderful as art and effective at eliciting emotions that then push action.

Ever feel during one of these recent sweltering days that it’s just so hot you can’t think straight? Well, maybe you can’t.

The pursuit of perfection, taken to extremes, can lead to OCD and depression – and the number of students reporting the problem has jumped by 33% since 1989

Nick Chater argues our brain is a storyteller, not a reporter from an inner world.

People who are labeled as transgender are viewed as less attractive dating partners, according to new research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. The new study, which was conducted with heterosexual college students, indicates that gender identity affects perceptions of attractiveness.