A comprehensive new review published in the Journal of Management synthesizes decades of research to understand the epidemic of workplace loneliness. By analyzing 233 empirical studies, researchers from Portland State University have identified how workplace conditions contribute to isolation and offer evidence-based paths to reconnection.

The research emphasizes that loneliness is distinct from social isolation. While isolation is about being alone, loneliness is the subjective feeling that one’s social relationships are deficient—meaning employees can feel deeply lonely even in a crowded office.

"Given the connection between workplace characteristics and loneliness, organizations should consider that loneliness is not a personal issue, and instead is a business issue," said Berrin Erdogan, professor of management at Portland State. "Businesses have an opportunity to design jobs and organizations in a way that will prioritize employee relational well being."

What kinds of marketing messages are effective — and what makes people believe certain political slogans more than others? New research from the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management explores how people constantly evaluate whether messages are true or false and finds that a surprisingly small ingredient — whether a word has an easy opposite — can shape how confident people feel when deciding whether a message is true.

Scientists have uncovered a previously unknown cluster of brain cells that may help explain differences in social behavior between males and females. The small neural circuit appears to function like an on–off switch, showing a striking pattern of activity that differs sharply by sex, an unusually clear contrast compared with most known brain sex differences, which tend to be more subtle and overlapping. Researchers also found that the circuit’s activity shifts with social and reproductive status, suggesting the brain may use this mechanism to adapt behavior across key life stages. 

A newly sequenced genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum, highlights the deep antiquity of treponemal diseases in the Americas. The findings, based on a 5,500-year-old specimen from Colombia, suggest syphilis’s emergence was not dependent on the agricultural intensification and population crowding often linked to the spread of infectious disease. Instead, it was dependent on social and ecological conditions of hunter-gatherer societies. “Reframing syphilis, alongside other infectious diseases, as products of both localized and highly specific evolutionary, ecological, and biosocial conditions and globalization may represent critical steps toward reducing stigma and improving public health,” write Molly Zuckerman and Lydia Ball in a related perspective. Treponemal diseases, such as syphilis, yaws, bejel, and pinta, have afflicted human populations across much of the world for thousands of years. However, much about the global antiquity and distribution of these diseases, as well as the evolutionary history of the bacteria that cause them, remains unknown. Among the most debated questions is the geographic origin and global spread of syphilis, which is caused by the bacterium T. pallidum. Some argue that the disease originated in the Americas and was brought to the Eastern Hemisphere following European contact in the late 15^th century. Others maintain that Treponema was already present in Europe before contact. Yet the rarity and ambiguity of skeletal evidence of these diseases and the technical difficulty of recovering ancient bacterial DNA from affected remains has made addressing these questions difficult.

 

David Bozzi and colleagues present a 5,500-year-old Treponema genome recovered from Middle Holocene-age human hunter-gatherer remains from Colombia. The new evidence extends the known genetic record of this pathogen by roughly 3,000 years. According to Bozzi et al., phylogenetic analysis shows that this genome (TE1-3) represents a previously unknown branch of T. pallidum that split off before all other known subspecies emerged. Although it falls clearly within the T. pallidum species, TE1-3 is genetically diverse and distinct from modern strains. Notably, the authors found that TE1-3 also carries the full suite of genetic features associated with virulence in modern T. pallidum. Moreover, the findings suggest that T. pallidum predates the rise of agriculture in the Americas, indicating that the pathogen’s emergence was not dependent on the agricultural intensification and population crowding often linked to the spread of infectious disease. Instead, the TE1-3 lineage is associated with the social and ecological conditions of hunter-gatherer societies, including high mobility, small community interactions, and close contact with wild animals. According to Bozzi et al., the study’s findings expand the temporal, ecological, and social framework for understanding treponemal disease worldwide.