Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 30, 2011

Engineering a New Face After Injury

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Today, surgeons face many limitations when it comes to helping a patient who suffers from a severe craniofacial injury, or an injury pertaining to the skull and the face. Most often a result of...

Jun 30, 2011

Sea Serpent Hunt Underway in Alaska

Video footage obtained from the waters off the coast of Alaska in 2009 contains what some claim is strong evidence of a sea serpent. It was examined by brothers Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, captains of a fishing boat featured on the television show Deadliest Catch, who then decided to hunt...

Jun 30, 2011

8 Ways to Ruin Your Relationship

While most of the time we try and stay positive here on World of Psychology, every now and again reality sucker-punches us back to our senses (although not personally affecting me). The fact remains that despite our wise advice over the years, we haven't budged the divorce rate in the...

May 31, 2011

Carrot or Stick? Both Work to Spur Cooperation

If you want to encourage cooperation, do you break out the carrot or the stick? A new study finds that either should work: Rewarding good behavior is equally as effective as punishing bad. A shame tactic can be effective, but rather surprisingly, we've also found that apparently honor has an...

May 31, 2011

From Inventor to Engineer

Jason Clark has an innate curiosity of how the world works. As a youngster, his curiosity led him to build a working-scale model of a volcano — on top of his mother's prized dining table. Mother was not amused. Clark's curiosity is now more focused. The enthusiastic young professor with...

May 31, 2011

The Benefits of Studying Bees

This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Marla Spivak is a MacArthur Fellow and Distinguished McKnight Professor and Extension Entomologist in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. Her research and extension efforts focus on honeybee health, breeding, behavior and on...

May 31, 2011

Americans Like Baby Boys Best

If they were only allowed to have one child, more Americans would prefer it be a boy rather than a girl, a new survey finds. Despite the intervening woman's movement, the results are very similar to those found when the same question was asked of Americans in 1941. The Gallup...

Apr 30, 2011

Punchline in Story of Bipedalism: Our Ancestors Stood Up to Fight

Humans might have evolved our two-footed posture for its fighting advantage; we punch harder standing than on all fours, and downward punches are much more forceful than upward ones. This could also be one reason why many females prefer taller mates, a new study finds. Selection for aggressive performance and...

Apr 30, 2011

When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope

If you're reading this, Harold Camping's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out. That's good news for most of us, but Camping and his followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be...

Apr 30, 2011

Most Divisive Moral Issues Revealed in Poll

Matters of birth and death are most likely to pit Americans against one another, according to new Gallup poll results finding that doctor-assisted suicide, abortion and having a baby out of wedlock are the most divisive issues in the United States. According to the poll results, released Tuesday (May 31),...

Mar 31, 2011

Sexy Action Heroines Push Dangerous 'Superwoman Ideal'

Watching Angelina Jolie kick robot butt in the 2001 movie Tomb Raider makes viewers expect real-world women to be both bold and beautiful — an ideal that has been linked to disordered eating. College students who watched clips of beautiful and aggressive women such as Jolie were more likely than...

Mar 31, 2011

The Most Hated Baby Names

There is no scientific study on the most-hated names, but these results, culled from hundreds of online message board postings by Baby Name Wizard blogger Laura Wattenberg, suggest that people have very strong opinions about what makes a good name. [Read full story] Here are the least-liked names for both...

Jan 31, 2011

Could You Become a Dictator?

Famously sadistic dictators like Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin share a personality profile marked by narcissism and paranoia, political psychologists say. But what of authoritarian-style dictators like Hosni Mubarak? Could an ordinary, well-meaning person turn into a repressive despot? Perhaps not overnight, but power does have an effect on the...

Jan 31, 2011

4-year-old’s Out-of-Body Experience: Religion or Science?

Several years ago, when Colton Burpo was 4 years old, he underwent cardiac arrest and was resuscitated during emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. Four months later, Colton started saying strange things to his father, a Nebraskan pastor named Todd, and his mother, Sonja, about his near-death experience (NDE). Colton...

Dec 31, 2010

College Students Learn Little

College is a time of learning, expanding the mind and gaining new skills, right? Not so much, according to a new study. By the end of sophomore year, 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, writing and complex reasoning, the Associated Press reports. The findings come...