Science Explains Why Your Mom Calls You by Your Brother's Name

The next time your mom calls you by your brother's name (or even your dog's name), don't be offended — she's probably not doing it because she thinks you look like him, a new study finds.

Why Do People Risk Their Lives for the Perfect Selfie?

In February, Argentinian tourists passed around a baby La Plata dolphin in order to take selfies with it. The endangered animal subsequently died from stress and heat exhaustion.

Risky Behavior Is 'Contagious,' Study Finds

Countless parents have asked, "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?"

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

If you, me and every person and thing in the cosmos were actually characters in some giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it.

Here's the Best Way to Apologize, According to Science

We've all been there — after you've given what seems to you like a heartfelt apology, the other person just doesn't buy it. Well, science is here to help: An effective apology has six key elements, according to a new study.

What's in a name? In some cases, longer life

Black men with historically distinctive black names such as Elijah and Moses lived a year longer, on average, than other black men, according to new research examining 3 million death certificates from 1802 to 1970.

Wisdom is a matter of both heart and mind, research finds

The fluctuations of your heartbeat may affect your wisdom, according to new research. The study suggests that heart rate variation and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues.

How societies learn to count to 10

In some traditional cultures, counting is as easy as one, two, three—because it stops there: Their languages have no words for higher numerals, and instead simply use varieties of words like “many.” But over time some societies acquired higher numbers, as the major languages spoken on the planet today must have done long ago. Now, a new study of an Australian language family reveals how languages add, and sometimes lose, higher numbers—and how some languages lasted for thousands of years without them.