In navigating the complexities of social life, humans have evolved to interpret invisible odorous chemical cues, with profound behavioural impacts often unbeknown to the conscious mind. The manifestation of this in humans is evident in the scent of androstadienone (androsta-4,16-dien-3-one), an odorous compound which is considered a putative human pheromone. The current study investigated the effect of androstadienone on social distance-dependent prosocial behaviour measured by a social discounting task, in which participants chose between selfish and generous options. Based on our pre-registration, we predicted a sex-specific effect, with males exposed to androstadienone exhibiting increased generosity, while females would choose more selfishly. Employing a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design, we recruited 170 participants who were randomly assigned to either the androstadienone or control condition. Olfactory stimuli were administered while participants completed the social discounting task. Inconsistent with our hypothesis, inhaling androstadienone did not impact social distance-dependent prosocial behaviour. This finding was supported by multiple estimates of prosociality, including model-free, model-based and maximum likelihood estimation. Further analyses indicated that androstadienone administration did not influence perceived social distance or bias participants towards being generous or selfish. Thus, our empirical findings provide no support for the hypothesis that androstadienone modulates generosity.

UNASSIGNED: Mental illness in China has traditionally been attributed to physical factors and somatization tendencies, which seldom result in stigma. How has this perception changed after decades of social change?
UNASSIGNED: Based on the Chinese General Social Survey database in 2011, this study constructed a structural equation model to analyze the effects of causal attribution and emotional responses on social distance. The causal attributions include dangerousness, controllability, and responsibility. And the emotional responses encompass negative affect, traditional prejudice, treatment carryover, and exclusionary sentiments. In addition, higher scores indicating greater social distance, whereas a low score reflected stronger emotional responses or a greater degree of internal attribution.
UNASSIGNED: The results reported a high level of social distance towards people with mental illness. These findings indicated that emotional responses have a direct impact on social distance. Specifically, when negative affect, traditional prejudice, and exclusionary sentiments increase by one standard deviation, the social distance decreases by 0.497, 0.178, and 0.073 standard deviation, respectively. Conversely, as the level of treatment carryover rises, social distance increases by 0.087. Meanwhile, the causal attribution only exerts a significant indirect effect on social distance by the function of emotional causal responses.
UNASSIGNED: The results indicated that the public attributes mental illnesses like depression primarily to psychological issues rather than somatic ones. It suggested widespread stereotypes and public stigma towards people with mental illness in China, as well as an arduous task in anti-stigma. In addition, a targeted way to address public stigma lies in changing the stereotype of people with mental illness.

BACKGROUND: The present study examines the relationship between stereotypical beliefs about people with intellectual disabilities, desire for social distance, and general knowledge about human sexuality with attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities.
METHODS: Two hundred fifty participants from staff, family and community samples completed an online set of questionnaires.
RESULTS: Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs and lower sexual knowledge were associated with less normalising and more paternalistic attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs was also associated with more negative attitudes. On the other hand, willingness to interact with these adults was associated with more normalising and less paternalistic attitudes.
CONCLUSIONS: Interventions that aim to support adults with intellectual disabilities in relation to their sexuality should also address the perceptions of their support network towards them as individuals with disabilities, as well as their knowledge about sexuality.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines whether racism exists among Jewish and Arab patients in Israel, as reflected in patient preference for receiving treatment from a nurse with the same ethnic background.
BACKGROUND: We examine the relationship between racism and the level of trust in a nurse from a different ethnic group than the patient, as well as the preferred level of social distance, in the context of ongoing conflicts between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in Israel.
METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a unique study questionnaire that asked 534 Jewish and 478 Arab respondents to express their preference for an Arab and a Jewish nurse.
RESULTS: Among both the Jews and the Arabs, there is a similar tendency of racism toward nurses of the dissimilar ethnic group. This racism was also prevalent among participants who live in a mixed environment or those who studied or are studying and worked or work in a mixed environment. As the trust in nursing staff members from the other group increases, the level of racism decreases. The greater the social distance the participants felt from the members of the other group, the more racist the attitudes they expressed.
CONCLUSIONS: Both Jews and Arabs preferred to be treated by nurses of their own ethnic group. In contrast to the contact hypothesis theory, participants who live in a mixed environment did not express fewer racist preferences. We conclude with some useful practical suggestions aimed at decreasing racism in health care.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings imply that prospective patients prefer to receive nursing care from nurses of their own ethnic group and trust these nurses more than they trust nurses of different ethnic group.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented changes in behaviour. To estimate if these persisted, a final round of the CoMix social contact survey was conducted in four countries at a time when all societal restrictions had been lifted for several months. We conducted a survey on a nationally representative sample in the UK, Netherlands (NL), Belgium (BE), and Switzerland (CH). Participants were asked about their contacts and behaviours on the previous day. We calculated contact matrices and compared the contact levels to a pre-pandemic baseline to estimate R0. Data collection occurred from 17 November to 7 December 2022. 7477 participants were recruited. Some were asked to undertake the survey on behalf of their children. Only 14.4 % of all participants reported wearing a facemask on the previous day. Self-reported vaccination rates in adults were similar for each country at around 86 %. Trimmed mean recorded contacts were highest in NL with 9.9 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 9.0-10.8) contacts per person per day and lowest in CH at 6.0 (95 % CI 5.4-6.6). Contacts at work were lowest in the UK (1.4 contacts per person per day) and highest in NL at 2.8 contacts per person per day. Other contacts were also lower in the UK at 1.6 per person per day (95 % CI 1.4-1.9) and highest in NL at 3.4 recorded per person per day (95 % CI 43.0-4.0). The next-generation approach suggests that R0 for a close-contact disease would be roughly half pre-pandemic levels in the UK, 80 % in NL and intermediate in the other two countries. The pandemic appears to have resulted in lasting changes in contact patterns expected to have an impact on the epidemiology of many different pathogens. Further post-pandemic surveys are necessary to confirm this finding.

Researchers have long recognized that friends tend to exhibit behaviors that are more similar to each other than to those of non-friends. In recent years, the concept of neural similarity or neural synchrony among friends has garnered significant attention. This body of research bifurcates into two primary areas of focus: the specificity of neural similarity among friends (vs. non-friends) and the situational factors that influence neural synchrony among friends. This review synthesizes the complex findings to date, highlighting consistencies and identifying gaps in the current understanding. It aims to provide a coherent overview of the nuanced interplay between social relationships and neural processes, offering valuable insights for future investigations in this field.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries adopted social distance measures and lockdowns of varying strictness. Social contact patterns are essential in driving the spread of respiratory infections, and country-specific measurements are needed. This study aimed to gain insights into changes in social contacts and behaviour during the early pandemic phase in Norway.
METHODS: We conducted an online panel study among a nationally representative sample of Norwegian adults by age and gender. The panel study included six data collections waves between April and September 2020, and 2017 survey data from a random sample of the Norwegian population (including children < 18 years old) were used as baseline. The market research company Ipsos was responsible for carrying out the 2020 surveys. We calculated mean daily contacts, and estimated age-stratified contact matrices during the study period employing imputation of child-to-child contacts. We used the next-generation method to assess the relative reduction of R0 and compared the results to reproduction numbers estimated for Norway during the 2020 study period.
RESULTS: Over the six waves in 2020, 5 938 observations/responses were registered from 1 718 individuals who reported data on 22 074 contacts. The mean daily number of contacts among adults varied between 3.2 (95%CI 3.0-3.4) to 3.9 (95%CI 3.6-4.2) across the data collection waves, representing a 67-73% decline compared to pre-pandemic levels (baseline). Fewer contacts in the community setting largely drove the reduction; the drop was most prominent among younger adults. Despite gradual easing of social distance measures during the survey period, the estimated population contact matrices remained relatively stable and displayed more inter-age group mixing than at baseline. Contacts within households and the community outside schools and workplaces contributed most to social encounters. Using the next-generation method R0 was found to be roughly 25% of pre-pandemic levels during the study period, suggesting controlled transmission.
CONCLUSIONS: Social contacts declined significantly in the months following the March 2020 lockdown, aligning with implementation of stringent social distancing measures. These findings contribute valuable empirical information into the social behaviour in Norway during the early pandemic, which can be used to enhance policy-relevant models for addressing future crises when mitigation measures might be implemented.

To explore the impact of social distance and information presentation types on self-other risk preferences in monetary tasks. Risk preferences were examined in decision-making tasks and experiential information tasks within different frameworks when participants made decisions for themselves and others. Experiment 1 employed experiential decision tasks and revealed individual differences in decision-making for oneself and others. In gain situations, participants exhibited more risk aversion when deciding for others compared to themselves. Experiment 2 presented both types of information simultaneously to investigate whether risk decisions for oneself and others are influenced by information types. Results indicated that experiential information led participants to make more conservative choices for others, while descriptive information eliminated this effect. This study discovered the influence of social distance on self-other risk decisions and the role of information presentation types in self and other risk decision-making. Future research could further explore self-other decision-making from the perspectives of decision-makers\' traits and culture.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that personality traits (i.e., openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) relate to prejudicial attitudes. However, one of the aspects of prejudice is social distance; its association with personality traits was overlooked by previous studies. Therefore, this study examines the connection between the Big Five personality traits and social distance toward certain social groups.
METHODS: Participants from the general population were recruited through leaflets, the institutional webpage, Facebook, and through the project recruitment website and assessed via paper-and-pencil or online form. A total of 214 participants were included (of whom 68.2% were women and the mean age was 32.65, SD = 11.27, range 18-72) who completed the Bogardus Social Distance Scale and the 44-item Big Five Inventory questionnaire.
RESULTS: The results showed a relationship between social distance, agreeableness, and openness to experience. Agreeableness seems to lower the social distance toward all studied groups. In comparison, openness to experience seems to lower the social distance towards groups that evoke more polarized attitudes in the majority (e.g., migrants). Furthermore, the influence of demographic characteristics (i.e., age, education level, and gender) is also significant.
CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that personality is significantly related to social distancing and expression of prejudicial attitudes. In particular, agreeableness and openness to experience have different effects on social distance and attitudes towards different groups. Further implications are discussed.

BACKGROUND: The incidence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV‑2) infection was highest among older adults early in the COVID-19 pandemic; however, this pattern was later reversed with young adults showing the highest incidence. The aim of this study was to identify risk factors in healthcare workers (HCWs) associated with this evolution.
METHODS: We conducted a survey nested within a prospective cohort study of 680 HCWs from a tertiary referral public hospital who received 2 doses of SARS-CoV‑2 vaccine in January and February 2021 (VACCICO-VAO cohort). In October 2022 all participants were invited to participate in a survey. Risk factors were tested for association with COVID-19 ever, the number of COVID-19 episodes, and the time to the first episode.
RESULTS: Among 350 respondents (51% response rate, 90% female, mean age 48.1 years), 323 COVID-19 episodes were diagnosed during the study period. Multivariable analysis revealed that age < 35 years vs. > 50 years (odds ratio, OR 2.12, 95% confidence interval, CI 1.27-3.51; P = 0.004) and not maintaining social distance at social events (OR: 1.82, 95% CI: 1.16-3.19; P = 0.011) were associated with a higher risk of COVID-19. Age < 35 years (hazard ratio, HR 1.70, 95% CI 1.14-2.54; P = 0.010), and not maintaining social distance (HR 1.34, 95% CI 1.05-1.72; P = 0.020) were also associated with the time to the first episode.
CONCLUSIONS: The youngest HCWs had the highest incidence rate of COVID-19, which was not explained by occupational risk factors or health conditions. The increase in nonoccupational exposure since the end of the lockdowns in summer 2020 could by a key factor.