A recent study published in the journal Human Nature provides evidence that romantic love is highly valued worldwide when people consider long-term relationships. Most people across different cultures are unwilling to commit to marriage without feeling love for their partner.…

TikTok, a widely used social media platform with over a billion active users worldwide, has become a key source of news, particularly for younger audiences. This growing influence has raised concerns about potential political biases in its recommendation algorithm, especially…

In what is becoming a sadly regular occurrence, two popular free software projects, X.org and Alpine Linux, need to rally some of their millions of users so that they can continue operating. Both services have largely depended on free server…

A lot of human society requires what’s called a “theory of mind”—the ability to infer the mental state of another person and adjust our actions based on what we expect they know and are thinking. We don’t always get this…

Like a lot of the rest of the federal government right now, NASA is reeling during the first turbulent days of the Trump administration. The last two weeks have brought a change in leadership in the form of interim administrator…

A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour reveals that unmarried individuals, regardless of whether they are single, divorced, separated, or widowed, tend to experience depressive symptoms more often than their married counterparts. However, the size of this difference varies…

Artemiy Pavlov, the founder of a small but mighty music software brand called Sinesvibes, spent more than 15 years building a YouTube channel with all original content to promote his business’ products. Over all those years, he never had any…

Even the most permissive corporate AI models have sensitive topics that their creators would prefer they not discuss (e.g., weapons of mass destruction, illegal activities, or, uh, Chinese political history). Over the years, enterprising AI users have resorted to everything…

Individuals who strongly endorse right-wing authoritarianism are more likely to view minority groups as a threat, according to new research published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. This tendency was evident across various countries and cultures, but it was…

Over the weekend, President Trump issued executive orders heaping significant additional tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners, Canada, China, and Mexico. To justify the tariffs—”a 25 percent additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent additional…

According to Amazonian folklore, the area’s male river dolphins are shapeshifters (encantade), transforming at night into handsome young men who seduce and impregnate human women. The legend’s origins may lie in the fact that dolphins have rather human-like genitalia. A…

Research published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology finds that Americans in lower social class contexts perceive their contributions to society as less significant than those in higher social class contexts. Ellen C. Reinhart and colleagues examined the…

In a recent experiment, students watched a video depicting a female student offering verbal and tactile support to another female student who had failed a midterm exam. The study found that verbal support centered on emotions was perceived as the…

At this point, anyone following artificial intelligence is familiar with the many (often flawed) benchmarks companies use to demonstrate a model’s effectiveness at everything from math and logical reasoning to vision and weather forecasting. But even careful AI watchers might…

Two new independent estimates of revenue from SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service suggest it is rapidly growing, having nearly tripled in just two years. An updated projection from the analysts at Quilty Space estimates that the service produced $7.8 billion in…

Honda provided flights from Daytona to Columbus then Washington, DC, and accommodation so Ars could visit its factories. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. ANNA, Ohio—Honda’s Anna Engine Plant has changed a little since I last visited. As we…

Last month, Microsoft announced that it was increasing the prices for consumer Microsoft 365 plans for the first time since introducing them as Office 365 plans more than a decade ago. Microsoft is using new Copilot-branded generative AI features to…

A new study published in Law and Human Behavior shows that people tend to perceive criminal suspects who exercise their right to remain silent or request a lawyer as more likely to be guilty compared to those who waive their…

A new large-scale study of crevasses on the Greenland Ice Sheet shows that those cracks are widening faster as the climate warms, which is likely to speed ice loss and global sea level rise. Crevasses are wedge-shaped fractures and cracks…

A study on rats found that administering 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine before giving them an opportunity to take heroin reduced their motivation to do so—that is, it lowered the maximum effort the animals were willing to expend to obtain a single dose of…

There’s a lot of talk of cozy games these days, and Civilization is definitely my personal cozy game. It’s relaxing to get lost in a flow state, making “a series of interesting decisions” for “one more turn,” then another, late…

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology challenges the common belief that men are inherently more creative than women. Instead, the research suggests that men and women tend to express their creativity in different ways, with men…

A new study published in Frontiers in Social Psychology suggests that the popular social media platform TikTok may be manipulated to conceal content critical of the Chinese government while amplifying narratives aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The research,…

A new psychological concept called “lay theories of diversity initiatives” may help explain why diversity programs sometimes face resistance from White Americans. This concept encompasses two distinct beliefs: “zero-sum beliefs,” which see diversity as a trade-off where minorities gain at…

A recent study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs suggests that people who use psychedelic substances may experience less anxiety about death compared to those who do not. The research indicates that this reduced fear is not directly caused…

A longitudinal study in Israel found that fathers with more pronounced alexithymia before the birth of their child provided worse parental care when the baby was three months old. At two years of age, children of these fathers tended to…

A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General suggests that widely used research methods for studying racial differences in perceptions of racism may be misleading. While people in different racial categories often show average differences in how…

Higher levels of attachment avoidance in both mothers and fathers were associated with lower sexual satisfaction in themselves, as reported in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. Romantic attachment and sexual satisfaction are closely interconnected, with attachment security fostering intimacy…

A new study published in Computers in Human Behavior explores how competitive attitudes influence in-game impulse purchases, focusing on the psychological mechanisms that drive spending in gaming environments. The study found that while competitiveness alone does not directly lead to…

The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s gigantic Starship rocket came to a disappointing end a little more than two weeks ago. The in-flight failure of the rocket’s upper stage, or ship, about eight minutes after launch on January 16 rained…