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. Archaeology

    Stone Age figurine has contentious origins

    A new study suggests that an ivory female figurine from Germany dates to at least 35,000 years ago, but that conclusion has sparked debate over the Stone Age origins of figurative art.

  2. Anthropology

    Hobbit foot, hippo skulls deepen ancestral mystery

    Hobbit fossils pose puzzling evolutionary questions for scientists in two new studies, one of hobbit foot bones and another of brain size in extinct pygmy hippos.

  3. Life

    Birds bust a move to musical beats

    Parrots and possibly other vocal-mimicking animals can synchronize their movements to a musical beat, two new studies suggest.

  4. Psychology

    Males, females swap sex-role stereotypes

    Analysis finds that mating strategies are not universal

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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

  11. 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.

  12. 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.