beliefs

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The first institution we experience in life is family. As long as humans have existed, they have gathered in groups in order to survive—to pass down knowledge, lend protection, and form bonds. Not only does the institution of family help us survive, it has a strong hold on our political beliefs and attitudes. …

Selaginella. Credit: Vicky SpencerScientists at the University of Bristol have made a groundbreaking discovery that challenges previously held beliefs about the origin of branching in plants. Through a comprehensive examination of the underlying processes that drive branching, the research team has uncovered what the earliest land plants were likely to have looked like millions of years ago.Their findings have revealed a shared mechanism for branching in vascular plants, despite the fundamental differences in their growth…

The authors found that preventative measures, such as exposing participants to counterarguments before they encountered misinformation, were the most effective strategies to challenge conspiracy beliefs. Credit: Tom Carnegie, Unsplash, CC0 (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) A new review of previously published studies on methods for reducing conspiracy beliefs has shown that most of these methods are ineffective, but…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Researchers from Oklahoma State University and University of Florida published a new article explaining how marketers can capitalize on the power of perception through the structure of visual communications to influence beliefs about brand performance, which ultimately influences product interest and choice. …

A map showing country-level prevalence of witchcraft beliefs around the world. Credit: Boris Gershman, 2022, í, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) A newly compiled dataset quantitatively captures witchcraft beliefs in countries around the world, enabling investigation of key factors associated with such beliefs. Boris Gershman of American University in Washington, D.C., presents these findings in the open-access…

Developments in fatigue, policy stringency, and daily COVID-19 deaths (September 2020–July 2021). Solid lines are developments in fatigue based on our survey data using a lowess smoother. Dashed lines are developments in stringency of government responses to COVID-19 (based on the Oxford Stringency Index). Red areas are developments in daily COVID-19 deaths per million using a kernel smoother. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

It was originally believed that these selfish genes would not remain in populations for long periods of time.The finding could alter our understanding of how parasitic DNA affects genome evolution. Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their longevity over evolutionary time was thought to be brief…

For the first time, WEHI researchers have shown that a crucial subset of liver cells cannot undergo necroptosis, ruling out this kind of cell death as a cause of common liver diseases.The surprise discovery redirects liver disease treatment efforts.Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) have demonstrated that common liver diseases are not caused by inflammatory cell death as was previously believed. This discovery settles a long-standing controversy in gastroenterology and points to a new direction…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain White children who are exposed to larger racial inequalities in their daily lives and who see those inequalities as due to intrinsic differences between people are more likely to hold racial biases in their perceptions of Black children. By contrast, White children with the same levels of inequality exposure and who see external factors as forces driving inequality are less likely to show these…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new study in Social Science Quarterly found that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs about policy issues associated with race or evaluated through racial lenses—such as human-caused climate change or the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic—but not on less racialized issues—such as the safety of childhood vaccines.…