Psychology

Happy hormones | Fuel costs | Drive-in parking | Guys and girls | Young or old? | Singapore pollutionRe your report (‘Pull the plug’: protesters resort to direct action against AI firms, 6 October), the US neuroscientist Ben Rein has shown that there is a fundamental difference in our cognitive response according to the type of interaction we have. In-person meetings and conversations show a dramatic increase in serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine – “feelgood” hormones – compared with online interactions. I have been encouraged to speak to people at bus stops.Judith FurnerEastbourne, East Sussex• Re easing winter fuel costs (Report, 6 October), it would benefit everyone if th..

Source: Yahoo News - Top HeadlinesU.S. President Donald Trump lamented the Norwegian Nobel Committee not choosing him for its annual peace prize on Friday, telling a crowd that the decision left "an indelible stain on the country of Norway." Speaking at a political rally, he claimed to have "saved more lives than anyone in history." Earlier Friday, the prize went to Navi Pillay, an 85-year-old South African legal pioneer who led a U.N. panel that concluded Israel committed...

Source: Yahoo News - Top HeadlinesAn artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic submitted a fabricated tip about an unsolved homicide to Philadelphia police, authorities said Friday, criticizing the company for taking two months to report the incident. The Philadelphia Police Department said the false submission was made in July through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, a public website where people can share information about unsolved killings.

Source: Yahoo News - Top HeadlinesU.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's revelation that the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will be streamed live has drawn fierce criticism and calls for him to reconsider. But it has also put the spotlight on whether social media companies will allow government accounts to stream the death by firing squad on their platforms. Hasan is set to die by firing squad at 1 pm on December 3 at the Texas Army installation, the defense secretary...

Source: Yahoo News - Top HeadlinesSecretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on as President Donald Trump speaks to the news media, on the South Lawn of the White House on October 6. - Finn Gomez/Getty Images Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's announcement that the execution of the convicted Fort Hood mass shooter would be shown in public caught people across the Pentagon and the Army off guard, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Hegseth made the announcement in an...

Source: PBS News HourNavi Pillay, a former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel which found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international humanitarian law. Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom rejected the commission's...

Source: Al JazeeraThe Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay. The committee's announcement of the 125th Nobel Peace Prize, made Friday in Oslo, said the award would go to the South African jurist for her work to promote peace and international law. It added that Pillay, a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, had been instrumental in ensuring war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are...

More than one in five adults in the US experience mental illness each year, according to data from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Researchers found that placing sauces separately can make a dish appear healthier even before tasting.

University of Phoenix researchers have published a new peer-reviewed study examining how stress, self-regulation, resilience, belonging, psychological safety and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) interact in the experiences of non-traditional online students.

Source: Yahoo News - Top HeadlinesThe firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, the Pentagon said Thursday—a stunning revelation about plans for the first military execution in more than 65 years after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had described it as being "public." The Army announced this week that the execution would take place on December 3 after Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the...

Source: PsyPostAttitudes toward group-based inequality and social hierarchies may be linked to brain structure and a personality trait tied to reward seeking. According to a new study published in Current Psychology, adults high in social dominance orientation tend to have less gray matter in a brain area involved in empathy and emotional processing. The results suggest that sociopolitical worldviews may be partly a function of basic motivational and emotional...

Source: United Nations NewsOver 30 million people were violently uprooted from Africa and condemned to a life of slavery, yet no country involved in the slave trade or colonialism has fully confronted this past. Moreover, the legacy of enslavement and colonialism continues to shape the lives of Africans and people of African descent, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said on Thursday, calling for urgent action to deliver reparatory justice beyond financial compensation.

Source: Science Daily - Top HealthBlocking a receptor called P2X7 significantly reduced inflammation in human brain tissue, revealing a potential new treatment strategy for neurological and psychiatric disorders. The discovery, published in the journal Brain, could help researchers repurpose existing drugs to treat conditions that include traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, and schizophrenia.

More than half of US students surveyed said the problem damaged their ability to do academic work, study findsProcrastination is the biggest problem that can harm students’ academic performance at university, according to a study of more than 65,000 young people who placed it above issues such as ADHD, anxiety or financial worries.The study found that nearly half of the students surveyed named procrastination as the thing damaging their ability to do academic work, more than twice the number who named depression, while the same proportion said procrastination caused them significant distress above any other problems including family pressures or bullying. Continue reading...

Vaccine-hesitant adults were more likely to consider getting a COVID-19 vaccine when public health messages acknowledged distrust of government and affirmed values such as personal liberty, a new study found.

A gene primarily active in fat and muscles could make a person more susceptible to anorexia nervosa, a deadly eating disorder with one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disease.