Bruce Bower

Bruce Bower

Behavioral Sciences Writer

Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences since 1984. He often writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues. Bruce has a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Following an internship at Science News in 1981, he worked as a reporter at Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, until joining Science News as a staff writer. In 1996, the American Psychological Association appointed Bruce a Science Writer Fellow, with a grant to visit psychological scientists of his own choosing. Early stints as an aide in a day school for children and teenagers with severe psychological problems and as a counselor in a drug diversion center provided Bruce with a surprisingly good background for a career in science journalism.

All Stories by Bruce Bower

  1. Psychology

    Males, females swap sex-role stereotypes

    Analysis finds that mating strategies are not universal

  2. Humans

    Rapid emotional swings could precede violence

    A tool from physics helps link the patterns of psychiatric patients’ symptoms and the likelihood they will commit violent acts.

  3. Humans

    Naps may help infants form abstract memories

    Napping critically assists 15-month-olds in remembering the underlying structure of the language adults speak to them, a new study indicates.

  4. Anthropology

    African pygmies may be older than thought

    A new DNA analysis indicates that pygmy hunter-gatherers and farming groups in Africa diverged from a common ancestral population around 60,000 years ago.

  5. Life

    Male chimps exchange meat for sex

    A long-term study of chimps living in western Africa indicates that males hunt down monkeys not only to eat their meat, but also to exchange the meat for sex with female chimps.

  6. Animals

    Chimps ambidextrous when digging wells

    A survey of water-collection holes dug on the banks of an African river by wild chimpanzees indicates that, unlike people, these apes don’t have a preference for using either the right or left hand on manual tasks.

  7. Anthropology

    Hobbit brain small, but organized for complex intelligence

    Evolution may have endowed a controversial species with small but humanlike brains equipped to support advanced thinking

  8. Health & Medicine

    Autism immerses 2-year-olds in a synchronized world

    By age 2, kids with autism focus on synchronized physical events, such as a person’s moving lips accompanied by sounds, rather than on eye movements and other social cues, a new study suggests.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Gestures speak volumes in the brain

    A new brain-imaging study suggests that an understanding of spoken language relies on changing sets of brain networks that exploit acoustic and visual cues.

  10. Animals

    Dogs show a fetching communication savvy

    In a sign of understanding that one object can be used to represent another, border collies fetch toys after being shown replicas or, in some cases, photos of those toys.

  11. Psychology

    Feelings, universal musical feelings

    Africans who spurn all things Western provide evidence that people everywhere recognize expressions of happiness, sadness and fear in music. Listen to some of the audio samples the study used.

  12. Humans

    Radio relief for Rwandans’ social conflicts

    Rwandans who listened to a yearlong radio soap opera developed increased tolerance for dissent, a greater sense of cooperation and more acceptance of marriage across ethnic lines.