https://phys.org/science-news/social-sciences en-us The latest news on social sciences, history, political science, psychology and sociology 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 Seemingly overnight, a yoga studio replaces a barbershop, a coffee café takes over a small grocery, and a multi-story apartment building looms where older single-family homes once stood. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-ai-images-visual-indicators-gentrification.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Tue, 05 Mar 2024 10:37:39 EST news628857453 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 In the complicated world of human interactions, helping others can come back around, a concept known as indirect reciprocity. It's like a societal credit score, where one's good deeds build up a good reputation, prompting others to return the favor in the future. But what if this credit score wasn't just a single individual's but shared with a group they're associated with? https://phys.org/news/2024-03-reputation-indirect-reciprocity-affect-cooperative.html Social Sciences Mon, 04 Mar 2024 09:17:33 EST news628766250 Suppose two speakers of the same language are playing a guessing game where each has the same color swatches, and Player 1 tries to get Player 2 to guess a hue by naming the color. If the second player consistently guesses correctly as often as possible, that indicates their language has an efficient color naming system. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-role-history-efficient-evolve.html Social Sciences Fri, 01 Mar 2024 06:42:03 EST news628497721 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 Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. Kobe University-led research, published in PNAS Nexus, has implications for how we evaluate the difference of archaeological artifacts across cultures. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-captures-pottery-culturally-distinct.html Archaeology Social Sciences Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:35:03 EST news628331701 The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge centuries of Western music theory and encourage greater experimentation with instruments from different cultures. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-pythagoras-wrong-universal-musical-harmonies.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 27 Feb 2024 11:31:20 EST news628255860 Human coexistence depends on cooperation. Individuals have different motivations and reasons to collaborate, resulting in social dilemmas, such as the well-known prisoner's dilemma. Scientists from the Chatterjee group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now present a new mathematical principle that helps to understand the cooperation of individuals with different characteristics. The results, published in PNAS, can be applied to economics or behavioral studies. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-math-social-dilemmas.html Mathematics Social Sciences Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:00:02 EST news628159474 Inequality among people has become an increasingly salient issue globally, with data indicating a rise in inequality levels across many countries in recent years. This, in turn, has generated concerns both from the perspective of the sustainability of economic growth, as well as from the perspective of social cohesion and well-being. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-economic-metrics-gini-index-big.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:03:57 EST news628178628 Research conducted by scientists from IIASA and Princeton University suggests that a combination of insurance subsidies and policies that promote "prosocial preferences"―decision-making preferences that account for community well-being―can help facilitate optimal climate risk management and reduce economic losses. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-prosocial-smallholder-farming-communities-climate.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Mon, 26 Feb 2024 13:02:03 EST news628174921 Gamers who chose to be good Samaritans while playing through a zombie apocalypse were more likely to be prosocial post-game, according to new QUT research. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-video-game-rewards-reveals-gamer.html Social Sciences Mon, 26 Feb 2024 12:19:10 EST news628172347 The average researcher thinks they are better than their colleagues at following good research practice. They also think that their own research field is better than other research fields at following good research practice. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-overestimate-honesty.html Social Sciences Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:42:24 EST news628166542 A new study has revealed that employees who are more mindful in the digital workplace are better protected against stress, anxiety and overload. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-mindfulness-stress-burnout.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Fri, 23 Feb 2024 14:00:01 EST news627905009 Student enrollment in districts that provided in-person schooling in fall 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic showed a greater decline among nonwhite students than white students. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-reveals-racial-disparities-school-enrollment.html Social Sciences Education Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:08:06 EST news627901681 A team of economists from Switzerland and Germany has found, via model testing, that two leading theories created to explain why humans engage in cooperation with one another tend to fail under scrutiny. In their paper published in the journal Nature the group describes how further model and field testing showed that it was only when the two theories were combined that they proved able to describe scenarios where humans cooperated. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-combines-theories-people-cooperate.html Social Sciences Thu, 22 Feb 2024 11:20:02 EST news627821302 Rumormongers, blabbermouths, busybodies—no matter what you call them, gossipers get a bad rap. But new theoretical research conducted by University of Maryland and Stanford University researchers argues that gossipers aren't all that bad. In fact, they might even be good for social circles. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-gossip-gabbing-bad.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:27:04 EST news627755221 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 In the late 1800s and early 1900s, anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States was high, as working-class laborers in the country viewed Chinese workers as a threat. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-chinese-migrants-los-angeles-chinatown.html Archaeology Social Sciences Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:23:21 EST news627236596 After a long, steady decline in national suicide rates, those numbers began steadily ticking up in the late 1990s and have generally risen ever since, with nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. taking their own lives in 2022, up 3% from the previous year. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-suicide.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:01:38 EST news627224490 Picture your ideal family. Do you have children? How many? https://phys.org/news/2024-02-people-equally-child.html Social Sciences Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:17:11 EST news627221822 Gender, culture, and age all appear to play a role in how emojis are interpreted, according to a study published in PLOS ONE by Yihua Chen, Xingchen Yang and colleagues from the University of Nottingham, UK. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-emojis-differently-gender-culture-age.html Social Sciences Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:00:01 EST news627128974 A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, and research has shown that the human brain does indeed better retain information from images than from text. These days, we are taking in more visual content than ever as we peruse picture-packed news sites and social media platforms. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-online-images-clock-gender-bias.html Social Sciences Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:37:03 EST news627133021 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 In writing a good online dating profile, the average love-seeker will likely fill it up with all the appealing qualities and interests that make them special. They paraglide and do hot yoga on the weekends, enjoy Riesling on the beach or seeing indie bands in basements, are a Libra with Scorpio rising, or have a dog or three kids or an iguana. There's one thing they routinely leave out, however: what they want to know about their potential partner. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-reveals-key-irresistible-online-dating.html Social Sciences Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:15:42 EST news626710537 If you're looking for a long-term relationship or to boost your social status, lower your pitch, according to researchers studying the effects of voice pitch on social perceptions. They found that lower voice pitch makes women and men sound more attractive to potential long-term partners, and lower voice pitch in males makes the individual sound more formidable and prestigious among other men. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-voice-pitch-strangers-cultural.html Social Sciences Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:44:09 EST news626625841