Social Sciences
- Home
- Social Sciences
- California's most devastating wildfire—the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures—forced nearly half of all residents living within designated fire perimeters to relocate within a year.
- As Valentine's Day approaches, finding the perfect words to express your feelings for that special someone can seem like a daunting task—so much so that you may feel tempted to ask ChatGPT for an assist.
- Research papers in peer-reviewed academic journals are at the heart of academic integrity. New ideas and discoveries are vetted and checked by experts in the field as the boundaries of scientific knowledge are pushed forward. However, in recent years, there has been a rise in predatory journals, publications that exploit this model but skip the rigorous peer-review process entirely.
- International labor migration plays a vital role in supporting families across low- and middle-income countries, often providing a critical source of income for families back home. However, when mothers migrate abroad for work, young children may be left without steady parental care during important developmental stages. While this concern is widely discussed, there has been limited real-world evidence showing how policies that restrict maternal migration affect children's outcomes.
- For a long time, most scientists believed that early human hunter-gatherer societies were mostly equal, with little hierarchy or leadership, and that strong inequalities only emerged later with farming and complex societies. However, new research out of Arizona State University is challenging this. Archaeological finds, ethnographic studies and now psychological research suggest that inequality in influence—who people listen to, copy, and follow—may have been part of human societies deep into our evolutionary past. The research has been published in Nature Communications.
- "Many women tell me they want to have a man in their life, but they are no longer willing to be the only person giving in the relationship. They don't want to be with a man who needs to be taken care of. In that case, it's easier and more pleasant to be without a man."
- Young adults in Sweden feel significantly worse than older people in almost all areas of life. While older Swedes rank among the happiest in the world, young adults struggle with loneliness and psychological distress. These are the findings of a new large-scale study on flourishing in Sweden, published in the International Journal of Wellbeing and conducted by researchers at the Stockholm School of Economics, Lund University, Oslo Metropolitan University and Harvard University.
- Financial abuse is a common and often hidden type of abuse within family and domestic violence, characterized by behaviors that control, restrict, or hide money and financial information, frequently involving a person's bank accounts, credit cards, tax filings, and business reporting systems. Financial abuse is a very particular subset of economic abuse. It's an effective form of coercive control that restricts a person's financial autonomy, decision-making capacity, and access to their own funds, and it's estimated to cost the economy nearly $11 billion a year and affects more than 2.4 million Australians.
- Researchers at University of Tsukuba examined how artificial intelligence (AI) is represented in fictional media, including films, animation, literature, and games. Published in the journal AI & SOCIETY, their analysis indicates that AI is portrayed not only as a technological tool but also as a supporter, collaborative companion, and, in some cases, an equal partner. These portrayals highlight the diversity and evolution of imagined human-AI relationships across cultural narratives.
- A study by UC Riverside and USC education scholars found that Black and Latino teens are significantly more adept than their white peers at detecting online disinformation—particularly content related to race and ethnicity.
- In Bangladesh, programs targeting ultra-poor, rural households can help families escape extreme poverty. However, the programs may have the unintended consequence of reinforcing gender gaps, a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds. The paper, "How does a rural poverty alleviation program affect parents' aspirations about their children? Evidence from BRAC-TUP in Bangladesh," is published in the Journal of Development Studies.
- French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin created innovative, enduring paintings and sculptures set on Tahiti and other Pacific islands, but he had to leave his family to pursue his art. He also impregnated and abandoned multiple young teens, shattered his ankle in a drunken brawl, and at least once was photographed at a party playing the harmonium without pants; an example, psychology researcher Jordan Wylie said, of someone who lived as his true self while neglecting moral obligations and norms.
- A new study, published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, showed that children who receive interventions from child welfare services are more likely to have experienced complex health issues, adversity, or maltreatment.
- There may be a connection between how much a couple spends and saves and how happy they are in their relationship, according to a new study from the University of Georgia. The researchers found spouses who see their partners as "savers" tend to be more satisfied with both their marriages and their finances.
- AI can write songs, but still has a way to go before matching the creativity of tunes made by people, according to Carnegie Mellon University research.
- Every Feb. 2, Americans turn to a groundhog to see whether winter will stick around. But Groundhog Day is about much more than shadows and more weeks of cold. The tradition began in 1886, when the first Punxsutawney Phil was crowned in Pennsylvania. The first official celebration came in 1887.
- The Barrow-in-Furness accent is very different from the rest of Lancashire and Cumbria because of an intense mixing and rapid population change in the late 1800s, says new research by Lancaster University, which used the voices of Victorian speakers to inform the study.
- In a study conducted by Dr. Mahdi Alirezazadeh and Dr. Hanan Bahranipoor, published in Archaeological Research in Asia, two exceptionally well-preserved fetal burials from Chaparabad, Iran, dating to the mid-5th millennium BC, were analyzed including burial L522.1, one of the most complete prehistoric infant burials in the Iranian plateau. Despite being buried only meters apart, the two fetal burials exhibit distinct burial treatments, offering insights into the variable burial practices of prehistoric cultures in southwestern Asia.
- While most of us value honesty, we consider those who skew reality to avoid hurting others to be more moral. Despite that, we prefer to hear the harsh truth when the feedback concerns us, according to a study conducted by psychologists from SWPS University and the University of Wrocław.
- Community-engaged research often raises questions about who benefits from academic work and how knowledge moves between universities and the people most affected by the issues being studied. In his research and film projects, Kirk French, an assistant professor of anthropology and of film production and media studies at Penn State, works with communities as collaborators rather than subjects, shaping research questions, methods and outcomes alongside local partners.
Photographer: