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.
A commentary published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour discusses the scientific evidence for why rape victims are often involuntarily paralysed, unable to defend themselves or express themselves without consent, and the implications this has for the world's legal systems.
More than two thirds of Spanish citizens think that artificial intelligence presents a very high or high risk that we will be manipulated with our data by companies or governments. However, just over a third believe that artificial intelligence will have an impact on improving the quality of public services and companies. These are some of the results gathered in the 2022 edition of the Survey of Social Perception of Science and Technology published today by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), carried out among more than 6,000 people with face-to-face interviews in the 17 autonomous communities.
Recent research published by researchers of Carlos III University of Madrid shows that individuals perceive less COVID-19 infection risk and engage in less health-protective behaviors when they associate the risk with close friends – a phenomenon labeled as the “friend-shield effect”.