A state law signed Feb. 28, 2025, removes gender identity as a protected status from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, leaving transgender people vulnerable to discrimination. The rights of transgender people ' those who present gender characteristics that differ from what has historically been expected of someone based on their biological sex traits ' are under political attack across the United States. There are now hundreds of anti-trans bills at various points in the legislative process. Reasons given usually center on protecting children, protecting cisgender women's rights in bathrooms and sports competitions, and on removing funding for gender-affirming care. Some efforts appear to stem from fear-driven motives that are not supported by evidence. Bias against trans people may not always feel like bias. For someone who believes it to be true, saying there can only be biological men who identify as men and biological women who identify as women may feel like a statement of fact. But research shows that gender is a spectrum, separate from biological sex, which is also more complex than the common male-female binary....

This prediction is based on several decades of research that my colleagues and I have been undertaking at the University of Oxford to establish what makes people willing to fight and die for their groups. We use a variety of methods, including interviews, surveys, and psychological experiments to collect data from a wide range of groups, such as tribal warriors, armed insurgents, terrorists, conventional soldiers, religious fundamentalists, and violent football fans. We have found that life-changing and group-defining experiences cause our personal and collective identities to become fused together. We call it 'identity fusion.' Fused individuals will stop at nothing to advance the interests of their groups, and this applies not only to acts we would applaud as heroic'such as rescuing children from burning buildings or taking a bullet for one's comrades'but also acts of suicide terrorism. Fusion is commonly measured by showing people a small circle (representing you) and a big circle (representing your group) and placing pairs of such circles in a sequence so that they overlap to varying degrees: not at all, then just a little bit, then a bit more, and so on until the little circle is completely enclosed in the big circle. Then people are asked which pair of circles best captures their relationship with the group. People who choose the one in which the little circle is inside the big circle are said to be 'fused.' Those are people who love their group so much that they will do almost anything to protect it....

In 2018, the Australian philosopher Kate Manne coined the word 'himpathy' to describe what she called 'the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior'. This happened to former US President Donald Trump who was found liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll in 2023. Carroll faced abuse from online trolls, she received death threats and was driven from her home. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to a human behaviour expert whose research seeks to understand what makes some people more inclined to support perpetrators of sexual misconduct than the victims. Samantha Dodson is an assistant professor of organisational behaviour and human resources at the University of Calgary in Canada. She first started researching the ways people react to accusations of sexual misconduct around the time of the #MeToo movement, as women came forward with accusations of sexual harassment in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein case....

AIs are often described as 'black boxes' with researchers unable to to figure out how they 'think'. To better understand these often inscrutable systems, some scientists are borrowing from psychology and neuroscience to design tools to reverse-engineer them, which they hope will lead to the design of safer, more efficient AIs....

While researchers know that space travel can stress space crew members both physically and mentally and test their ability to work together in close quarters, missions to Mars will amplify these challenges. Mars is far away ' millions of miles from Earth ' and a mission to the red planet will take two to two and a half years, between travel time and the Mars surface exploration itself. As a psychiatrist who has studied space crew member interactions in orbit, I'm interested in the stressors that will occur during a Mars mission and how to mitigate them for the benefit of future space travelers. Given the great distance to Mars, two-way communication between crew members and Earth will take about 25 minutes round trip. This delayed contact with home won't just hurt crew member morale. It will likely mean space crews won't get as much real-time help from Mission Control during onboard emergencies. Because these communications travel at the speed of light and can't go any faster, experts are coming up with ways to improve communication efficiency under time-delayed conditions. These solutions might include texting, periodically summarizing topics and encouraging participants to ask questions at the end of each message, which the responder can answer during the next message....

While institutional trust is decreasing, political polarization is increasing. The majority of Republicans (72%) and Democrats (64%) think of each other as more immoral than other Americans ' a nearly 30% rise from 2016 to 2022. When compared with similar democracies, the United States has exhibited the largest increase in animus toward the opposing political party over the past 40 years. When public trust and political consensus disappear, what remains' This question has occupied my research for the past 20 years, both as a scholar trained in social anthropology, organizational science and social cognition and as a professor of psychology. Researchers don't have all the answers, but it seems that even in the absence of public trust and agreement, people can share experiences. Whether watching a spelling bee or a football game, 'we' still exist if 'we' can witness it together. My colleagues and I call this human capacity to take a collective perspective theory of collective mind. The foundation of collective mind, and what we study in the lab, is shared attention, instances when people experience the world with others....

American young people are reporting historically high levels of hopelessness, sadness and loneliness. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 20% of adolescents have seriously considered suicide ' and suicide is the second-leading cause of death for children ages 10-14. Perhaps even more alarming than the prevalence of youth mental health problems is the inaccessibility of mental health support for the many children who need it. About 60% of depressed adolescents do not receive any treatment ' and around 950,000 children do not have health insurance that covers mental health services. One solution is to provide mental health care in schools, where kids are. This is already happening. School counselors, psychologists and social workers provide support, teach coping strategies and work with caregivers to help students overcome mental health challenges. Such vital care is essential, but clearly more help is needed. I study school-based positive psychology interventions. My colleagues have found that students who've been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness feel more satisfied with life, experience more positive than negative emotions and have fewer emotional and behavioral problems....

Being bullied can make your life miserable, and decades of research prove it: Bullied children and teens are at risk for anxiety, depression, dropping out of school, peer rejection, social isolation and self-harm. First, let's define what bullying is: It's mean-spirited, harmful behavior by someone with more power or status ' like a popular kid at school or a supervisor at work ' who repeatedly picks on, harasses, irritates or injures a person with less power or status. Bullying can take many forms ' physical, like pushing, shoving and hitting; relational, such as spreading rumors, keeping somebody out of a friend group or just rude remarks; or sexual harassment and stalking behavior. Sometimes, bullies target someone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or appearance. People from the LGBTQ+ community, or who are overweight, or with a physical or developmental disability are more likely to be bullied. As a result, they may develop mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and self-harming behavior....