https://phys.org/science-news/social-sciences en-us The latest news on social sciences, history, political science, psychology and sociology If there's one thing most office workers can agree on, it's that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-workers-productive-typos-afternoonespecially-fridays.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Thu, 03 Aug 2023 03:56:43 EDT news610253796 In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, U.S, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-teamwork-environments-linked-white-employees.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189589 A single accessory—an ornate necklace from a child's grave in ancient Jordan—provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d'Azur, France and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-neolithic-necklace-child-grave-reveals.html Archaeology Social Sciences Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189573 Researchers are more likely to pen scientific papers with co-authors of the same gender, a pattern that cannot be simply explained by the varying gender representation across scientific disciplines and time, according to joint research from Cornell and the University of Washington. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-same-gender-co-authors.html Social Sciences Education Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:59:58 EDT news610192796 When Iowa State University switched from in-person to remote learning halfway through the spring semester of 2020, psychology professor Jason Chan was worried. Would unsupervised, online exams unleash rampant cheating? https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evidence-online-unsupervised-exams.html Social Sciences Education Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:11:31 EDT news610020686 Cognitive and computer scientists at the University of Toronto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies have found child language development and the historical evolution of the world's languages share a common cognitive foundation—a core knowledge base where patterns of children's language innovation can predict patterns of language evolution, and vice versa. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-common-cognitive-foundation-child-language.html Social Sciences Education Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609683338 An international team of linguists and geneticists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population. The work is published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-insights-indo-european-languages.html Archaeology Social Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609672188 The Social Media Archive at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research has released data focusing on the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes during the U.S. 2020 elections. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-facebook-instagram-presidential-election.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609672171 In addition to describing biological interactions, evolutionary theory has also become a valuable tool to make sense of the dynamics of social norms. Social norms determine which behaviors should be regarded as positive, and how community members should act towards each other. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evolution-double-sided-social-norms-cooperative.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:05:18 EDT news609678315 The United States has more than 10 times the number of mass shooting incidents than other developed countries, yet little research has shown the distribution and types of shootings, geographically. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-mass-states.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 26 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609579701 A study recently published in Psychological Science reveals that when people repeatedly encounter headlines about corporate wrongdoing, they view the wrongdoing as less unethical and are more likely to believe the headlines are true. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-headlines-wrongdoing-perception-moral-offense.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:31:56 EDT news609503513 Organized crime casts a long shadow, driving violence and an illicit economy. But our research, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, has uncovered some more subtle dimensions to its influence, too. We've found that organized crime can undermine the civic honesty of ordinary, law abiding people. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-mafia-threatens-democracy-ordinary-people.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:18:03 EDT news609502681 When people who publicly reject COVID-19 vaccines later die from the disease, observers have complex reactions to their fates, a new study suggests. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-people-anti-vaxxers-die-covid-.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:59:03 EDT news609429541 Eliminating forced labor is a vital starting point for creating a just and sustainable food supply, but most of us don't know much about the labor conditions involved in producing our food. It's possible that the people who picked and processed some of the items on our dinner table worked in conditions that involved force, fraud, coercion, or debt bondage. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-labor-widespread-food.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Mon, 24 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609408520 In the face of existential dilemmas that are shared by all of humanity, including the consequences of inequality or climate change, it is crucial to understand the conditions leading to cooperation. A new game theory model developed at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) based on 192 stochastic games and on some elegant algebra finds that both cases—available information and the lack thereof—can lead to cooperative outcomes. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-game-theory-people-decisions-environments.html Mathematics Social Sciences Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:31:05 EDT news609409862 Partisan politics played a role in exacerbating public health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study suggests that partisan politics could also play a role in addressing those challenges—at least when it comes to getting people vaccinated. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-partisan-politics-health.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 20 Jul 2023 13:05:04 EDT news609077101 A pair of psychologists at Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University, has found evidence showing that married couples who regularly engage in phone snubbing (phubbing) have lower marriage satisfaction than couples who do not. In their study, reported in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, Suat Kılıçarslan and İzzet Parmaksız sent questionnaires to married couples in Turkey and compiled results from those that were returned. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-regular-phubbing-marriages.html Social Sciences Wed, 19 Jul 2023 15:00:01 EDT news608997353 ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by the company OpenAI, has a self-declared human alter ego. Her name is Maya, she's 35 years old and hails from a middle-class family in a suburban town in the United States. Maya is a successful software engineer who values self-direction, achievement, creativity and independence. She is also undeniably liberal. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-chatgpt-liberal-values.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 18 Jul 2023 15:53:16 EDT news608914393 English serves as a convenient, common language for science. However, this practice poses insurmountable barriers to those whose first language is not English—the majority of people around the world. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-non-native-english-speaker-science.html Social Sciences Education Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news608893822 Everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4, but why do we have arithmetic in the first place, and why is it true? Researchers at the University of Canterbury have recently answered these questions by "reverse engineering" arithmetic from a psychological perspective. To do this, they considered all possible ways that quantities could be combined, and proved (for the first time in mathematical terms) that addition and multiplication are the simplest. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-psychological-arithmetic-biologically-based-natural-consequence.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 18 Jul 2023 11:10:40 EDT news608897439 A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, examined the development of offense-related expertise in a sample of convicted burglars, depending on their age. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-reveals-older-burglars-outperform-younger.html Social Sciences Mon, 17 Jul 2023 16:35:59 EDT news608830556 Young citizens across the globe vote at relatively low rates, which contributes to political parties' de-prioritizing issues that matter to youth, from climate change to well-paying jobs. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-low-cost-online-interventions-young-voters.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 17 Jul 2023 13:26:04 EDT news608819162 Putting truth to the test in the "post-truth era," Boston College psychologists conducted experiments that show when Americans decide whether a claim of fact should qualify as true or false, they consider the intentions of the information source, the team reported recently in Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-intentions-source-affect-americans-true.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:38:03 EDT news608812681 In a new study, researchers and members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area are the first to publish evidence of wealth-driven patterns in maternal investment among ancient populations. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-ancient-california-matriarchal-society-daughters.html Archaeology Social Sciences Thu, 13 Jul 2023 14:30:01 EDT news608475147 Imagine moving from state to state while growing up in the U.S., transferring between high schools, and eventually attending college out of state. The first two events might seem disruptive, and the third involves departing a local community. And yet, these things may be exactly what helps some people thrive later in life. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-foster-robust-social-network.html Social Sciences Thu, 13 Jul 2023 14:22:57 EDT news608476972 People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to have antisemitic opinions than non-believers, new research shows. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-reveals-people-antisemitic-views.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 10 Jul 2023 15:16:02 EDT news608220961 When asked to draw their local wildlife, 401 UK schoolchildren aged seven to 11 most commonly drew mammals and birds, while amphibians and reptiles appeared in the fewest drawings, suggesting imbalances in children's ecological awareness. Kate Howlett and Edgar Turner of the University of Cambridge, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-children-nature-reveal-focus-mammals.html Social Sciences Education Wed, 05 Jul 2023 14:00:04 EDT news607766307 A team of human behavioralists at the University of Queensland, in Australia, working with a colleague from the University of Stirling, in the U.K., has found via experimentation that people tend to be more attracted to potential partners that look like them. In their study, reported in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, the group designed and conducted an experiment involving speed-dating volunteers. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-dating-people-potential-partners.html Social Sciences Wed, 05 Jul 2023 10:00:01 EDT news607769697 A small team of biostatisticians and engineers from Princeton, Harvard, and MIT, has found via survey, that Chinese scientists working in the U.S. no longer feel welcome in the country. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-aftermath-china-survey-chinese-scientists.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 04 Jul 2023 09:30:03 EDT news607680074 As part of their work, educators are often exposed to various stressful events, including violence between students or towards teachers, sexual assault and suicidal behavior, as well as death or illness of students or their family members. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-cognitive-flexibility-moderates-teacher-stress.html Social Sciences Education Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:51:43 EDT news607621897