behavioural sciences

An international study on public trust in science conducted in 68 countries, including Spain, has found that most people trust scientists and believe that they should be more involved in society and in policy-making. In addition, a majority of survey participants believe that researchers should play a more active role in society and in political decision-making. The Spanish population's confidence in science ranks seventh out of the 68 countries analysed. The research, which surveyed 71,922 people, provides the largest global data set on trust in scientists since the covid-19 pandemic. The study is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and has Spanish participation, led by FECYT.

People who grow up with more brothers or sisters may have a more cooperative personality, i.e. with traits such as honesty, humility and agreeableness, according to a study published in PNAS. Using data from 700,000 adults surveyed online, the research concludes that mean honesty-humility and agreeableness scores are slightly higher in people with more siblings. Among those with the same number of siblings, people born middle and last have a slightly higher mean score than firstborns.

Adults make better decisions than adolescents, according to a study of 92 participants aged 12 to 42. So-called ‘noise’ in decision-making - making choices that are not the most efficient - decreases with age and is linked to the development of skills such as flexibility and planning, according to the study published in PLoS Biology.

A report by the Lancet Commission on Self-Harm highlights that at least 14 million episodes of self-harm occur each year - particularly among young people and in low- and middle-income countries. The paper argues that their impact has been neglected by governments globally and sets out a series of recommendations to reduce their incidence. 

The Twinning project is a UK-based initiative that organises soccer-based programmes, with the collaboration of professional clubs such as some Premier League clubs, to improve the mental and physical health of prisoners. Research has studied the behaviour of more than 670 of these participants and a group that did not participate, as well as collecting data related to the possible reintegration of those who were in this programme. According to the authors, who publish their research in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, ‘the results indicate that social bonding is associated with better behaviour in prison and a greater willingness of host communities to support reintegration efforts’.

A research team has discovered a type of cell that appears to be linked to parental care in Oldfield mice, a monogamous species. These cells are not present in Deer mice, other rodents of the same genus that engage in promiscuous behaviour. The results "provide an example by which the recent evolution of a new cell type in a gland outside the brain contributes to the evolution of social behaviour," the authors conclude in their paper, published in Nature. 

Chimpanzees can learn a new skill by observing each other — a phenomenon known as social learning — according to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings suggest that chimpanzees may have the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, which was previously considered to be an exclusively human trait.

Sexual harassment on public transport affects the health and well-being of women around the world, according to a study by the University of Valencia. These events cause them to change their behaviour - for example, they travel accompanied, avoid certain places and stations or certain times of the day - as explained by the research, which analyses almost 30 previous studies carried out on several continents. The authors, whose study is published in PLoS ONE, highlight the contrast between "high government awareness of the problem and the paucity of measures to improve women's safety on transport". In addition, they propose including women in transport decision-making.

The absence of visits from friends and family is associated with a higher mortality rate, according to an analysis of data from more than 450,000 people followed for more than a decade in the UK. The study, published in BMC Medicine, focussed on five indicators of loneliness, and concluded that having no visits from family or friends was associated with higher all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality. According to the authors, this kind of study helps to identify at-risk populations and measures of social connectedness that could provide the most benefit.

A study led by researchers from Northeastern University and Stanford University in Boston (USA) has analysed the source of exposure to partisan or unreliable news when searching on Google. After tracking the information consumption of approximately 1,000 people in the 2018 and 2020 US election periods, their conclusions are that such exposure is determined more by users' own active search than by the content displayed by the search engine's algorithm. The results are published in the journal Nature.