Breaking up with a loved one is often a painful life experience, one that is difficult to recover from. Researchers from SWPS University, however, suggest that a simple step can help. Writing down the story of a past relationship increases the effectiveness of thinking about the past and future in close relationships. It is also associated with a better understanding of the causes of relationship breakdown, they write in the journal PLOS One.
Can technology really replace human relationships? As philosophy scholars who focus on human happiness and on artificial intelligence (AI), we tackle this question in a recent paper.
Public debates about transgender issues are often framed as disagreements over evidence or safety. In my new article published in the International Journal of Transgender Health, I argue current policy shifts are better understood as part of a recognizable escalation pattern.
Why do individuals and organizations sometimes rationalize decisions that conflict with their stated values? According to Leah P. Hollis, professor of education policy studies in the Penn State College of Education, the answer may lie in "moral disengagement"βa psychological process through which people justify actions that might otherwise conflict with ethical or institutional standards.
What makes a speaker engaging? Both what is said and how it is said matter, but in different, complementary ways, a new study conducted at the McGill School of Communication Sciences and Disorders has found.
Food has always had a unique way of bringing people together. It becomes especially evident during family mealtimes, when children and adults gather around the table to share more than just a meal. They share stories, catch up on their day and discuss issues they are dealing with. The scene at the dinner table has, however, changed. People still sit together, but attention often shifts away from the conversation to the devices in their hands.
It has often been suggested that we now live in a "post-truth" world. People increasingly rely on their own feelings as a yardstick for what is true. Psychologists at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have now developed the "Youniversalism" scale to allow them to measure people's belief in subjective and experiential truths. The research is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
At an international heritage symposium in Japan, I heard a word that stayed with me: "contaminated." The discussion concerned whether Indigenous peoples needed to be named explicitly in a new World Heritage framework. One argument was that Indigenous cultures had changed through contact, survival and adaptation, and therefore no longer required distinct recognition. I found that deeply troubling.
Children are innately curious, and throughout any given day they come up with all manner of questions: Why don't fish have hair? Why do flowers wilt so quickly? Their need to understand the worldβand develop their language skills and ideasβmakes them tireless conversationalists.
Career interest tests can be very helpful for teenagers and young adults deciding which career to pursue. New research from Michigan State University challenges the assumption that vocational interests are only relevant for early career decision-making; rather, they remain relevant into adulthood.
A Concordia-led team of researchers has developed a new artificial intelligence-based method of detecting toxic online content that is faster and more accurate than existing tools. The system is designed to ensure social media platforms can reliably prevent user-generated content they deem harmful from appearing online.
Individuals subject to extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), or "red flag" laws, were significantly less likely to be arrestedβincluding for violent and firearm-related offensesβwhile the orders were in effect than in the six months before. Strikingly, the drop in arrests did not end when the orders expired and continued for months afterward, according to a new study published in PNAS Nexus.
Every year, more people in England and Wales are involved in disputes before the civil courts than in the criminal courts. More than 1 million claims a yearβfor personal injury, debt, housing disrepair, faulty consumer goods or breach of contract, for exampleβare dealt with in the county court.
The Life House Impact Project, led by Dr. Georgia Bowers, Professor Andrew King and Dr. Richard Green, worked with older LGBTQ+ people to document their real concerns about housing and social careβand then brought those experiences into training for the people responsible for that care. The report shows that the proportion of staff who said they regularly or always met their LGBTQ+ service users' needs rose from 55% to 85% in the weeks following the training.
Half of young men in Switzerland are concerned that "real men" are increasingly being marginalized in society. A large-scale study by the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich (UZH), in collaboration with mΓ€nner.ch, shows how prevalent restrictive and dominance-based concepts of masculinity are. These ideas go hand in hand with misogyny, a propensity for violence and opposition to gender equality. Prevention efforts should start in schools.
In 2013, Chicago Public Schools closed 49 elementary schoolsβthe largest mass public school closure in U.S. history at the time. A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in Social Science & Medicine, shows that, in addition to limiting access to education, the school closures also led to increases in gun violence.
It's the time of year when parents are thinking of registering their children for kindergarten in Septemberβa much-anticipated moment in the lives of many parents and their young ones.
"What do dads do on Tuesdays?" This wasn't a rhetorical question when I posed it to my wife as our daughter's birth approached. Before my daughter was born, I had seen my father just once in the past 27 years. That's more than 1,400 Tuesdays. In fact, as a kid I hardly saw fathering any day of the week, save for on TV sitcoms; absent dads were prevalent within my family and among my peers.
At the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bielefeld University is looking for fans of all national teams. The Football Fever Study uses smartwatch data to record how match events affect fans' heart rates and stress levels. Anyone wearing a device from one of 13 supported brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and Garmin, can take part.
As public trust in the U.S. Supreme Court continues to fall, new research from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania finds that jury service is associated with more positive attitudes toward courts and judgesβbut that Americans' opportunities to serve are shrinking as jury trials become increasingly rare.