Social Behavior | featured news

Toddlers seem to know the difference between a whiner and somebody who is justifiably upset, and the young children often show less sympathy for crybabies, a new study shows.

Twitter confirms it: People tend to wake up in a good mood and are happiest on weekends. The fast-paced forum is offering scientists a peek at real-time, presumably little-filtered human behavior and thoughts. Cornell University researchers turned to the microblog to study mood and found a pretty consistent pattern.

As any single person with married friends can testify, their constant patter about how great marriage is for just about everything (Your heart! Your mood! Your life expectancy !) can be a little annoying. Research supports those pitying glances they shoot in your direction when you defend your singleness; long-term committed relationships like marriage really are good for your health. But, still.

The tabloids are abuzz about a new study suggesting that Facebook can exacerbate the negative self-conceptions of kids troubled by low self-esteem. If you have 18 friends and see your neighbor has 1,118, the study says your sense of not measuring-up will get worse.

Girls are hitting puberty earlier than ever, a change that puts them at higher risk for behavior problems now, cancer problems later, a study ...

Man's best friend serves as model for understanding human social behavior