Although a deviation from the physiologically optimal weight increases the probability of dying, the steady state for an expected lifetime-utility maximiser is a state of overweightness. However, even a small initial deviation from this rationally stationary weight is followed by explosive oscillations. These oscillations might lead to severe and chronic underweightness in a late stage of life....

BACKGROUND Many young men and women expect to co-parent their newborn infant. This may have a positive or negative impact on decisions to breastfeed, which is an important health behaviour, influenced by cultural and psycho-social norms. We investigated the relationship between shared parenting, infant feeding beliefs and intentions in male and female (non-parent) adolescents, comparing Nordic ...

Background The Sami in Norway have a legal right to receive health services adapted to Sami language and culture. This calls for a study of the significance of language choice and cultural norms in Sami patients' encounters with mental health services. Objectives To explore the significance of language and cultural norms in communication about mental health topics experienced by Sami patients r...

The recognition of biological differences as an important explanatory and predictive element in political behavior has created the need to integrate various models from a variety of fields into a more cohesive theoretical framework. The ostensibly perplexing coexistence of individual differences in the face of universal human design needs to be reconciled. Here we introduce evolution as a theor...

Cooperative behavior depends on cultural environment, so what happens when people move from to a new culture governed by a new norm? The dynamics of culture-induced cooperation has not been well understood. We expose lab participants to a sequence of different subject pools while playing a constrained Trust Game. We find prior exposure to different subject pools does in fact influence cooperati...

Background: People with disability experience various problems to access to healthcare services. This study aimed to identify cultural barriers in access to healthcare services for people with disability in Iran.    Methods: We conducted a qualitative study using content analysis to identify the cultural barriers.  We used semi-structured interviews to collect data. Participants...

Partner violence is a serious public health problem affecting mostly women. This qualitative study assessed the perceptions of rural Igbo women of Nigeria of intimate partner violence. Information was elicited using in-depth interviews and focus group discussion. Women of childbearing age were selected from the various women age grades in Ozubulu, Anambra State, Nigeria. Findings revealed that ...

Psychologists have long studied the ways in which individuals draw inferences from evidence in their environment, and the conditions under which individuals forgo or ignore those inferences and instead conform to the choices of their peers. Recently, anthropologists and biologists have given considerable attention to the ways in which these two processes intersect to jointly shape culture. In t...

Explanation of economic interactions within East Asia has long been split between those who view action as an outcome of rational decision-making by an autonomous state and those who view it as a result of cultural patterns ingrained in Confucianism and other elements of traditional culture. This paper shows how these two approaches can used in a complementary rather than conflicting manner to ...