Culture

Bragging to coworkers about a recent promotion, or posting a photo of your brand new car on Facebook, may seem like harmless ways to share good news.

However, a new study from City University London, Carnegie Mellon University and Bocconi University shows that self-promotion or a "humblebrag" often backfires.

Young children who hear more than one language spoken at home become better communicators, a new study from University of Chicago psychologists finds. Effective communication requires the ability to take others' perspectives. Researchers discovered that children from multilingual environments are better at interpreting a speaker's meaning than children who are exposed only to their native tongue.

Political discussions conducted on social networking sites like Facebook mirror traditional offline discussions and don't provide a window into previously untapped participants in the political process, according to a new study that includes two University of Kansas researchers.

Everyone likes to look at young babies. But who wants to listen? Well...it turns out that other babies do. In fact, a McGill University/UQAM research team has discovered that 6-month-old infants appear to be much more interested in listening to other babies than they are in listening to adults. It is an important finding because the researchers believe that an attraction to infant speech sounds may help to kick start and support the crucial processes involved in learning how to talk.

Infant sounds grab infant attention

Extremely high levels of cardiovascular risk factors have been found in people with established psychosis, with central obesity evident in over 80 per cent of participants, in a study by researchers from the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and King's College London.

May 11, 2015 -- (BRONX, NY) -- A survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults has found that misperceptions about miscarriage and its causes are widespread. Results of the survey, conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Health System, show that feelings of guilt and shame are common after a miscarriage and that most people erroneously believe that miscarriages are rare.

Going to the dentist might have just gotten a little less scary for the estimated 1 in 68 U.S. children with autism spectrum disorder as well as children with dental anxiety, thanks to new research from USC.

In an article published on May 1 by the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, researchers from USC and Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) examined the feasibility of adapting dental environments to be more calming for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Mass murders in the United States are rare, but they receive a lot of media attention and are the focus of an ongoing controversy regarding the link between mass murder and mental illness among the perpetrators of these heinous acts, almost always men.

The mental health problems most common in mass murderers and why men at risk are so difficult to identify before they can carry out mass killings are discussed in "Mass Murder, Mental Illness, and Men" in Violence and Gender.

U.S. Congress approval ratings are at record lows. Now a new study suggests that this may be partly due to a decline in the use of warm, agreeable language in the House.

The study, co-authored by University of British Columbia business professor Karl Aquino, found that the use of prosocial words -- language such as cooperate or contribute -- by lawmakers predicts public approval of Congress six months later.

A new study finds that a simple reminder via electronic health record systems may go a long way in encouraging patients to get the HPV vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. The HPV vaccine has the lowest completion rates of any other vaccine.

Recent reports on undergraduate education have emphasized the crucial role of authentic research experiences. A genomics research article published in the May issue of G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics allowed 940 undergraduate students not only to engage in original scholarship, but also to be authors on a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The research, on the evolution of an unusual chromosome in fruit flies, was powered by the contributions of students at 63 higher education institutions across the US, coordinated by the Genomics Education Partnership (GEP).

If a farmer's goats, cattle or sheep are sick in Kenya, how's the health of the farmer? Though researchers have long suspected a link between the health of farmers and their families in sub-Saharan Africa and the health of their livestock, a team of veterinary and economic scientists has quantified the relationship for the first time in a study.

Writing in the journal Plos One, authors say the study offers a unique view of human health through the lens of animal health.

According to new research co-authored by Binghamton University's Seth Spain, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the impact of Saturday morning cartoons.

The research examines how fantasy-based stories, in particular the popular 1980s cartoon series The Transformers, can shape children's perceptions of what behaviors are associated with effective leadership. It also could provide a basis for workplace-training programs.

Some of the most popular social media sites are filled with images of extremely thin women that might be harmful to those who view them -- whether they are seeking them or not, according to research from the University of California, Davis. The images were often cropped to remove heads or focus on just a few body parts.

A new WaSH Performance Index, developed by The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been and it shows which countries are leaders in improving access to water and sanitation for their citizens.

The WaSH Performance Index evaluates country performance in improving access to water and sanitation and in eroding inequalities in access. High-performing countries for 2015 are those that achieved significant improvement in recent years compared to their peers.