https://phys.org/science-news/political-science en-us The latest news on political science Hate speech incidents are widespread in all areas of society and are often unchallenged by uninvolved bystanders. LMU researchers have investigated what significance the reactions of bystanders to verbal hate attacks have for the formation of social norms. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-responsibility.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:31:33 EST news628950688 Science is one of the most highly regarded institutions in America, with nearly three-quarters of the public expressing "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in scientists. But confidence in science has nonetheless declined over the past few years, since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has for most other major social institutions. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-science-high-scientists-adherence-norms.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:16:04 EST news628794961 New York City ranks in the top 15% safest of more than 800 U.S. cities, according to a pioneering new analysis from researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, suggesting the effectiveness of the city's efforts to mitigate homicides there. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-york-city-safest-big-cities.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:02:50 EST news628444965 Think before you click. That's the advice from Alexander Stewart, Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews, whose research indicates inattentive readers are more likely to click on a false news story, with misinformation content producers exploiting this attention gap. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-attention-lapses-exploited-fake-news.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 28 Feb 2024 10:23:40 EST news628338217 A new study of American voters by researchers at Rice University and Stanford University shows that while response rates to political surveys are on the decline, people are more polarized than ever. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-american-voters-polarized.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 20 Feb 2024 13:51:03 EST news627659461 Changes to the social and political landscape between 2011 and 2018, with dramatic events such as DACA rule changes, new presidential leadership, immigration bills and more, have left one major threat looming—deportation. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-worsening-distress-latinos-states.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 19 Feb 2024 15:00:01 EST news627557608 From 9/11 to COVID, researchers including La Trobe University's Dr. Mathew Marques, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, surveyed just shy of 500 Australians and New Zealanders over the course of six months to determine whether people change their minds frequently or stick tenaciously to their beliefs, regardless of what evidence they come across. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-people-beliefs-conspiracy-theories.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:01:03 EST news627562862 Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) is Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning effort to explain the contrasting histories of Native Americans, Africans, and aboriginal Australians vs. Europeans and Asians. One of his intriguing proposals was that Eurasian political and military dominance could be partially explained by its unique continental orientation. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-eurasia-dominant-east-west-axis.html Archaeology Political science Wed, 14 Feb 2024 12:23:45 EST news627135823 Using social media data and artificial intelligence, a new University of Michigan-led study reveals that nearly 15% of Americans deny that climate change is real. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-americans-deny-climate-real-ai.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 14 Feb 2024 05:00:01 EST news626460835 Research shows reading corrections from others online can reduce the perceived accuracy of and engagement with incorrect content. Experts found the format and strength of corrective comments do not matter much. Social media users do not need to write long and detailed comments to flag false content. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-short-comments-social-media-users.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 13 Feb 2024 12:48:33 EST news627050909 National media coverage of police brutality influences public perceptions of law enforcement more than the performance of people's local police departments, according to data analysis from NYU Tandon School of Engineering, challenging the assumption that public confidence in police depends mostly on feeling safe from local crime. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-high-profile-incidents-police-brutality.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 08 Feb 2024 12:14:04 EST news626616842 Many Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world are leading very satisfying lives despite having very little money. This is the conclusion of a study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which shows that many societies with very low monetary income have remarkably high levels of life satisfaction, comparable to those in wealthy countries. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-indigenous-local-communities-happiness-doesnt.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 05 Feb 2024 15:00:02 EST news626344817 Methods commonly used to measure poverty can lead to vastly different conclusions about who actually lives in poverty, according to a new Stanford University-led study. Based on household surveys in sub-Saharan Africa, the first-of-its-kind analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores the importance of accurately defining and measuring poverty. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-reveals-significant-discrepancies-common-poverty.html Economics & Business Political science Mon, 05 Feb 2024 15:00:01 EST news626344880 People who were more skeptical of human-caused climate change or the Black Lives Matter movement and who took part in conversation with a popular AI chatbot were disappointed with the experience, but left the conversation more supportive of the scientific consensus on climate change or BLM. This is according to researchers studying how these chatbots handle interactions from people with different cultural backgrounds. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-chats-ai-shift-attitudes-climate.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:23:04 EST news625422181 In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming, the U.S. has enacted several ambitious federal laws, such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in 2022 and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-climate-policies-effectively.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 17 Jan 2024 12:13:38 EST news624716015 Northeastern researchers say that when confronted with "fake news," Republicans and younger people are more likely to say they believe the false headlines than Democrats and older people. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-age-politics-people-endorse-aware.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 15 Jan 2024 12:39:41 EST news624544777 Polluting companies could be liable for trillions in damages from climate lawsuits. But few investors and regulators are taking these risks into account when evaluating companies' climate-related financial risks, according to new Oxford Sustainable Law program research published Jan. 11 in Science. The research calls for an overhaul in how climate litigation risks are assessed and provides a new framework for doing so. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-investors-flying-climate-lawsuits.html Economics & Business Political science Fri, 12 Jan 2024 11:19:42 EST news624280780 A multidisciplinary team of researchers from LMU, the University of Bath, and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have analyzed changes in the use of language on social media in Ukraine before and during the Russian war of aggression. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-war-language-ukrainian-russian.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 10 Jan 2024 11:56:03 EST news624110161 Well-managed migration can enable migrants to boost sustainable development, research shows. Sustainable development means enhancing well-being in ways that equitably meet needs of present and future generations. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-migrants-sustainable.html Economics & Business Political science Mon, 08 Jan 2024 15:00:01 EST news623926720 Conventional wisdom suggests that searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation would reduce belief in it. But a new study by a team of researchers shows the opposite occurs: Searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-truthfulness-fake-news-online-chances.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 20 Dec 2023 11:00:01 EST news622280058 Certain facial features—like downturned lips and a heavy brow—are known to make someone appear untrustworthy to others, even though these do not indicate a person's actual character. Such facial biases influence our everyday social interactions as well as high-stakes decisions, including who we hire, or elect to political office. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-jurors-death-penalty-based-bias.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 14 Dec 2023 12:00:01 EST news621768231 A new global study led by Kai Ruggeri, Ph.D., at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health involving over 80 collaborators from more than 30 countries underscores the crucial role of behavioral sciences in formulating policy decisions, while also asserting the need for clear standards for what evidence gets used in policy decisions. The findings are published in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-large-evidence-importance-behavioral-sciences.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 13 Dec 2023 11:00:01 EST news621686282 Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve, appear to become more fragile as they age, according to an analysis of hundreds of pre-modern societies. A new study, which holds implications for the modern world, provides the first quantitative support for the theory that the resilience of political states decreases over time. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-aging-societies-vulnerable-collapse-analysis.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 04 Dec 2023 10:34:04 EST news620908442 Despite a similar statutory tax rate for multinational corporations (MNCs) across many countries, the effective tax rate that MNCs actually pay differs greatly—as low as 1% of gross income in Luxembourg and as high as 67% in Norway. That's one conclusion of a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Javier Garcia-Bernardo of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, Petr Janský of Charles University, Czechia, and Thomas Tørsløv of Danmarks Nationalbank, Denmark. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-reveals-real-tax-paid-multinational.html Economics & Business Political science Wed, 29 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EST news620476111 A new analysis suggests that a person with higher cognitive ability may have been more likely to vote "Remain" in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and that a spouse's cognitive skills may also be linked to Brexit voting decisions. Chris Dawson and Paul Baker of the University of Bath, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 22, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-higher-cognitive-ability-linked-chance.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 22 Nov 2023 14:00:01 EST news619867735 Using generic terms in politics may be exacerbating political division, a new study suggests. Statements such as "Democrats want to have tougher gun laws" and "Republicans want to ban abortion," can heighten perceived differences between the two political parties, the study says. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-generic-statements-widen-political-parties.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 16 Nov 2023 09:54:03 EST news619350841 People in many parts of the United States possess few chances for the robust community engagement that underpins healthy democracies, according to a new report that for the first time maps civic opportunity across the country. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-unequal-civic-opportunity.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:00:02 EST news619090219 A new study examining the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade's constitutional protection of abortion rights, finds that the American public's support for abortion increased after the decision. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-supreme-court-restricted-abortion-rights.html Political science Thu, 09 Nov 2023 16:40:43 EST news618770439 A trio of data scientists, two with Graz University, in Germany, the other with the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, has found that Wikipedia gives more attention to events that happen in richer countries than those in poorer countries. In their study, reported in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Thorsten Ruprechter, Denis Helic and Keith Burghardt analyzed thousands of articles posted on the free online encyclopedia, looking at the amount of coverage on events in different parts of the world. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-wikipedia-pays-attention-events-richer.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 09 Nov 2023 10:10:02 EST news618746433 Misinformation is a key global threat, but Democrats and Republicans disagree about how to address the problem. In particular, Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on removing misinformation from social media. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-democrats-republicans-sharply-attitudes-misinformation.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:19:25 EST news618495563