LiveScience Topics: Human Nature

More Human Nature News and Information

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  Donated Vaccines Could Save 2.5 Million Quiet Little Lives

  No death is more painful, more poignant, more of a waste, than the death of a child. In Rwanda, swine flu isn't the big culprit.

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  Denial Can Bring Marital Bliss

  Is long-term love possible? It all has to do with perceptions.

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  Key to Happiness: Location, Location, Location

  People who live on, say, Hawaiian beaches have fewer bouts of emotional problems than people who live in the hollows of Appalachia.

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  Losing It: Why Self-Control Is Not Natural

  It takes a lot to live with people day after day and not kill them.

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  Single Parents: Not What Nature Intended

  Why does it unsettle us to see one person go it alone as a parent?

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  Teen Leaders More Likely to Have Kids Later

  Leadership and overachievement might be a good predictor of which kids will go on to become parents.

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  Gifts Burden Men, Gladden Women

  Gratitude when receiving a gift is, apparently, a typical response for a woman. For men, they feel obligation.

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  Bad Biology: Girls Should Not Get Pregnant

  U.S. women often delay marriage to jump-start careers, but in other countries, women tend to marry young, sometimes too young.

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  Disgust Makes Us Truly Sick

  "You make me sick" —this metaphor for disapproval can also be very real disgust.

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  Why New Mothers Need Extra Attention

  Childcare is fraught with difficulty, and women navigate tough choices as they try to breast-feed and bring up a child.

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  The Romantic Evolution of True Love

  Are humans really naturally pair-bonded, that is, designed to court and mate one person 'til death do us part?

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  Love Makes Kids Smarter

  For some odd reason, it takes constant reminders that we primates need nurturing.

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  8 Is Enough: The Limits to Human Reproduction

  It's great those octuplets are here and healthy, but really, humans aren't designed to have litters.

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  Inauguration Worry: No Place to Pee

  Many Americans are trekking to Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration. Will there be enough toilets?

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  Where Words Come From

  Any research that informs us about language production is important because words are what make humans special.

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  Why Our Outlook for 2009 Is Sunny

  It's been a hard year, a scary year, but we'll all be OK, won’t we?

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  The Perfect Mate: What We Really Want

  Is it the face, body, personality or promises? The evolutionary psychologists have an answer but is it right?

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  The Shopping Mall: A 2,000-year-old Tradition

  It seems that we have been thankful for the mall for a very long time.

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  The Perfect Family Is a Myth

  There's something "right" about a nuclear family, or so we think.

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  The Human Soul: An Ancient Idea

  An Iron Age stone slab confirms that people have been into the idea of a soul for a long time.

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  Painful Labor: A Modern Thing

  A new fossil pelvis upends evolutionary thinking about painful labor during birth.