Summary

People need social contact to build relationships. At the same time, close contact carries a risk of spreading infectious diseases. In a study appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , researchers from institutions including the Karolinska Institutet sought to understand how people balance these factors against one another. The researchers collected data from 42,756 people in 61 communities worldwide, ranging from Sweden and other European countries to countries in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Oceania.

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