Featured series 
Tag: Behavior
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Nation & World
Keep the dog cool
Science has shown that violence among monkeys, rats, and mice increases when the weather is warm. Now it seems we can add dogs to the list.
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Nation & World
CAPTURE-ing movement in freely behaving animals
Harvard researchers develop a new motion-tracking system that delivers an unprecedented look at how animals move and behave naturally.
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Nation & World
Personality pressure
Harvard researchers demonstrated a link between individual variation in risk-taking behavior and survival of animals in changing environments.
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Nation & World
Research sheds light on how parents operate
In a new study, Harvard researchers describe how separate pools of neurons control individual aspects of parenting behavior in mice.
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Nation & World
How to defend against your own mind
Harvard psychology chair Mahzarin Banaji is working with a research fellow to launch a new project called “Outsmarting Human Minds.”
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Nation & World
A cost of culture
A new study, authored by Collin McCabe, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, suggests that increased exposure to disease has played an important role in the evolution of culture in both humans and non-human primates.
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Nation & World
Putting the ‘estimate’ back in estimates
Professor M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon wants to bring the uncertainty back to forecasting, he said in a Harvard talk.
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Nation & World
Digging yields clues
As described in a Jan. 16 paper in Nature, a team of researchers led by Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, studied two species of mice – oldfield mice and deer mice – and identified four regions in their genome that appear to influence the way they dig…
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Nation & World
Seeking healthy inspiration
More than 100 students packed Harvard’s i-lab in Allston Tuesday evening (Dec. 11) for the kickoff of the Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge, a $75,000 contest seeking new ideas to improve the world’s health.
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Nation & World
Researchers awarded NARSAD grants
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced $11.9 million in new research grants, strengthening its investment in the most promising ideas to lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating mental illness, including 19 grants to Harvard researchers.
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Nation & World
Filling a gap between teachers, troubled children
Child psychiatrist Nancy Rappaport follows up her 2009 memoir that explored her mother’s suicide with a user-friendly guide for teachers dealing with behaviorally challenged students.
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Nation & World
Gestational BPA exposure growing concern
Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A (BPA) — a chemical used to make plastic containers and other consumer goods — is associated with behavior and emotional problems in young girls, according to a study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health.
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Nation & World
Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership
Paul Lawrence, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, offers an integrated explanation of both human behavior and leadership using a scientific approach — and Darwin, too! — to illustrate how good, bad, and misguided leadership are natural to the human condition.
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Nation & World
Miss Conduct to conduct online chat
Harvard will host an online chat with Robin Abrahams, the Boston Globe’s Miss Conduct, who also works as a research associate at Harvard Business School, on Jan. 18 at noon. The chat is part of a HARVie series that offers Harvard community members the opportunity to learn from experts across campus.
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Nation & World
NARSAD awards $720,000 to Harvard researchers
Twelve from Harvard are among 214 researchers named NARSAD Young Investigators.
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Nation & World
Figuring out suicidal behavior
Matthew Nock is a new professor of psychology at Harvard who uses scientific research to try to determine which medical treatments help to prevent suicide.
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Nation & World
More ways of defining diversity
A study by a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education suggests that university staffs and students value having a diverse campus, but doubt that strict racial preferences are the right way to develop it.
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Nation & World
Often, we are what we were
In his latest book, professor emeritus Jerome Kagan examines the temperaments of babies and how they can be predictors of adult behaviors.
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Nation & World
The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children — And Its Aftermath
Susan Clancy controversially bucks the norm with new research on child sexual abuse, which suggests that well-meaning professionals’ assumptions about abuse are wrong, and can actually do more harm than good.
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Nation & World
Newsmakers
Liu wins Wendell scholarship; Nye, Walt, and Ruggie recognized by Trip; Witzel receives recognition; CID awards Quadir prize; Koven-Matasy ’10 named Beinecke Scholar; Cheng named to USA Today All-USA College Academic Team; Satcher to give Richmond Lecture; Allison to receive NAS award
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Nation & World
The upside of rejection
Want a dose of veritas? Even at a place like Harvard, rejection and failure are regular visitors.
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Nation & World
Scholars take a look at decision making
Decisions, decisions. We all make them, starting with which side of the bed to get up on in the morning. But on a personal and public scale, many decisions have grave consequences for health, financial well-being, and — true enough — the fate of the planet.
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Nation & World
Pain is more intense when inflicted on purpose
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends in part on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. Participants in a study who believed they were getting an electrical shock from another person on purpose, rather than accidentally, rated the shock as more painful than those receiving the same shock…
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Nation & World
Cutler finds decline in cancer deaths
Improvements in behavior and screening have contributed greatly to the 13 percent decline in cancer mortality since 1990, with better cancer treatments playing a supporting role, according to new research from David Cutler of Harvard University.
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Nation & World
A single gene leads yeast cells to cooperate against threats
An ingenious social behavior that mobilizes yeast cells to cooperate in protecting each other from stress, antibiotics, and other dangers is driven by the activity of a single gene, scientists report this week in the journal Cell. The cooperating cells use the same gene, dubbed FLO1, as a marker for detecting “cheaters,” cells that try…
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Nation & World
Teach For America’s Kopp describes what works, what will work
The woman who created a national teaching movement out of her college thesis was on campus last week to advocate for broader support for public education. Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach For America (TFA) addressed a standing-room-only crowd at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) Askwith Forum at Longfellow Hall on Nov.…
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Nation & World
Herbert C. Kelman receives IPRA Peace Award
Herbert C. Kelman, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics emeritus and co-chair of the Middle East seminar at Harvard University, has received the 2008 Peace Award from the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). The award, honoring the founders of peace research, was announced this past July at IPRA’s global conference in Leuven, Belgium.
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Nation & World
Financial risk-taking behavior is associated with higher testosterone
Higher levels of testosterone are correlated with financial risk-taking behavior, according to a new study in which men’s testosterone levels were assessed before participation in an investment game. The findings help to shed light on the evolutionary function and biological origins of risk taking.
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Nation & World
NIH selects nine Pioneers, Innovators from Harvard
Nine Harvard faculty members are among 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was recognized Monday (Sept. 22) with the announcement of two grant programs through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Nation & World
Nobel Prize winner discusses judgment and intuition
“Most of the time,” said noted psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to a packed house of students, scholars, and faculty at the Yenching Auditorium (April 15), “we run at very low effort.” It was a sobering claim for the heady academic set, but according to Kahneman, no one is immune from the diagnosis. Even…