Over the past decades, numerous studies have investigated the neural and cognitive processes underpinning intergroup conflict, as this could help to explain what fuels belligerent behavior, political clashes, and wars. While these works gathered some interesting...
The internet has given rise to new forms of deceit and misinformation, including phishing attacks, romance scams and fake news. While many psychological studies have investigated the factors that influence people's ability to tell if others are lying in person, lie...
The social behaviors of humans and animals often unfold over two distinct phases, namely a motivational and an action phase. The first of these phases entails instinctual and reward-seeking mental states, characterized by sexual or aggressive drives to perform...
Previous neuroscience studies suggest that transient increases in brain dopamine are critical signals for learning about reward, and the motivation to obtain more rewards. Researchers at University of California San Francisco carried out a study exploring transient...
Surveys and statistics suggest that mental illnesses are becoming increasingly widespread, as the number of people worldwide accessing mental health services has increased in recent years. Understanding the factors that can predict well-being and contribute to the...
In their daily lives, humans can encounter many situations that can put them at a varying degree of risk, or in other words, situations in which their choices can increase or decrease the possibility that an adverse event will occur. In these situations, different...
Humans commonly evaluate the beauty of other humans, as well as objects, places, natural landscapes, and even animals. The innate human tendency to make aesthetic judgments has been the topic of numerous psychological studies, yet its neural and cognitive...
Adverse early experiences, such as parental neglect, abuse, the death of a loved one, or other traumatic events, are known to influence how humans will behave as adults. For instance, studies have found that victims of childhood abuse are at a higher risk of...
When humans are completing a specific task, their minds can shift from what they are doing to their own internal thoughts. This shift of attention from a task to internal events, known as off-task thinking or mind-wandering, is well-documented and has been studied...
Mammals can engage in a wide range of cooperative and aggressive social behaviors. These behaviors are known to be influenced by different neural circuits, yet the molecular underpinnings of these circuits and their development over time remain poorly understood.