https://phys.org/science-news/political-science/ en-us The latest news on political science A new study sheds light on how Syrian archaeologists risked their lives to rescue approximately 30,000 priceless artifacts from the Deir ez-Zor Museum during the summers of 2014 and 2015 as the city faced the imminent threat of capture by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-archaeological-treasures-imminent-destruction-syria.html Archaeology Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:40:04 EDT news708943201 Republicans and conservatives are more likely than Democrats or liberals to justify political violence in 17 surveyed situations, according to a study published in PLOS One by Garen J. Wintemute of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-americans-political-violence-vary-sharply.html Social Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:00:24 EDT news708777241 From social media to the streets of Washington, D.C., the organized white nationalist movement has become more visible in the United States over the past few decades. But the extent of this extremist movement's appeal to the broader public is less certain. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-predominantly-online-friendships-linked-greater.html Social Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:00:05 EDT news708776221 As countries compete for skilled workers and grapple with aging populations and labor shortages, understanding who is moving across borders is increasingly important. A new study provides the first global data set of immigration composition disaggregated simultaneously by age, sex and educational attainment, offering a new basis for tracking brain gain and brain drain and improving population projections. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-global-dataset-immigrating.html Social Sciences Wed, 09 Sep 2026 10:00:06 EDT news708162541 Common global narratives about political polarization are skewed because of an overreliance on literature about the U.S., leaving governments unprepared to tackle the problem at home. In new research led by King's College London and published in Nature Communications, experts across the U.K., Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S. point to how common narratives about polarization are overgeneralized and often based on evidence from the U.S. alone. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-politics-world-template-polarization-experts.html Social Sciences Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:00:02 EDT news707574782 Although it's been 25 years since the World Trade Center collapsed after terrorists flew commercial airplanes into each of the center's two towers, the trauma experienced by many first responders and recovery workers is still being felt by their children. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-effects-trauma-children.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:40:06 EDT news707477101 A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Center for Global Healthy Cities, published in JAMA Network Open, found that the California city of Richmond's Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) was responsible for a 61% reduction in the city's firearm homicides and injury shootings over the past 14 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-peacemaker-linked-decline-gun-violence.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:40:07 EDT news707473801 Two administrations, the Biden administration and the second Trump administration, reached opposite conclusions about whether vehicle emissions standards should be rolled back. These conclusions came from different assumptions, including whether avoiding air pollution has value to society and the degree to which car buyers value future fuel savings from getting a more efficient vehicle. Both assumptions matter, and disagreement over either accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars in the government's cost-benefit math on vehicle emissions standards—math that, in this year's rollback, also assumes gas prices are lower than what drivers are actually paying at the pump. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-reverses-case-vehicle-emissions-standards.html Economics & Business Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:10:04 EDT news707415242 Election rumors, such as unverified accounts of voter fraud, have run rampant in the U.S. in recent years. Powered by the speed of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), it can be hard for people to know what messages to trust. Now, a team led by Caltech researchers is using AI as a tool for good in the fight against election misinformation. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-thwart-election-misinformation.html Political science Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:20:06 EDT news707050621 Do your social media accounts feed you content that reflects your core beliefs and guiding principles? Our new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the algorithms supplying your feeds may be prioritizing content that clashes with your values. That's because the algorithms heavily weigh online posts that you reply to, and social media users tend to comment more often on content they take issue with than on content they agree with. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-social-media-algorithms-dont.html Social Sciences Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:40:06 EDT news706447381 When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars in 2022, nearly 250,000 public comments flooded in—a record response that led the Biden administration to delay a final decision. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tobacco-companies-federal-comment-stalled.html Economics & Business Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:00:06 EDT news706436041 A new study finds that one side effect of Trump-era trade wars has been cheaper whiskey in much of the United States. But if you live in whiskey hubs Kentucky or Tennessee, your prices actually went up. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-foreign-tariffs-whiskey-cheaper.html Economics & Business Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:20:01 EDT news706375081 Companies with strong political connections are more likely to escape scrutiny over greenwashing, according to new research from Durham University Business School. Greenwashing occurs when organizations overstate or misrepresent their environmental performance to appear more sustainable than they really are. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-greenwashing-firms-scrutinized-politicians-pockets.html Economics & Business Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:00:03 EDT news706354130 Researchers at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, examined the ideological stance of large language models—artificial intelligence systems trained to understand and generate human language—and discovered that when informed of a user's political views, they tend to mirror those views. According to the researchers, this behavior could exacerbate political polarization in Brazil. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-artificial-intelligence-ideological-chameleon-deepen.html Social Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:30:01 EDT news706293961 Military leaders frequently underestimate how big the wars they engage in will get. Gen. Douglas MacArthur predicted U.S. troops could come home from the Korean War in time for Christmas, just months after the conflict started. But Chinese attacks that winter extended the war for years. And President Donald Trump said in March that the Iran war would be a "short-term excursion," but it has now lasted more than five months, with periods of escalation. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-wars-nations-persistent-escalation-decades.html Political science Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:30:01 EDT news705771841 Across the United States, the number of people who do not have and do not want to have children is growing. While they are twice as likely to live in California as Louisiana, individual demographic characteristics are the strongest predictors of who is childfree, according to a study published in PLOS One by Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal from Michigan State University, U.S. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-californians-louisianans-childfree-demographics-story.html Social Sciences Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:00:09 EDT news705688082 This summer, America celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, widely recognized as the formal founding of our nation and one of the early stages of establishing a democratic government. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-civics-voter-dissatisfaction-political-corruption.html Political science Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:40:04 EDT news705679922 Just 34% of people arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during President Donald Trump's second term have a criminal conviction, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That's a near-historic low, the authors note. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-people-ice-criminal-conviction-reveals.html Political science Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:40:03 EDT news704711881 Mathematicians have shown that completely fair elections are—in a sense—impossible. No electoral system can guarantee both that local votes translate directly into local seats and that total seat distribution matches overall vote shares—not without an indefinitely growing parliament. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-math-vote.html Mathematics Fri, 31 Jul 2026 05:00:05 EDT news704551291 For years, social media companies have faced pressure from users and government watchdogs to stop misinformation from distorting elections, deepening political divisions and undermining Americans' trust in institutions. But what if dramatically reducing people's exposure to unreliable sources that frequently spread misinformation doesn't actually change what they believe? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-misinformation-facebook-instagram.html Social Sciences Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:20:08 EDT news704623622 How much of what you see on social media comes from sources that repeatedly post falsehoods? And if that content quietly vanished from your feed, would you believe anything different months later? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-exposure-untrustworthy-social-media-rare.html Social Sciences Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:40:01 EDT news704611262 Why do some people who embrace conspiracy theories simply hold those beliefs, while others act on them? A new study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology identifies three characteristics that help determine when conspiracy beliefs are most likely to shape real-world behavior: how certain people are that the belief is true, how personally important they consider it, and whether they see it as "actionable"—useful for deciding what to do. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-conspiracy-beliefs-action.html Social Sciences Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:20:08 EDT news704538721 Social networks, intended to bring people together, can actually increase polarization, new research finds, because while the links in the network may be plentiful, they're probably weak. A research team including Cornell sociologist Michael Macy has found that while the growing number of international contacts enabled by modern communications technologies may indeed contribute to greater polarization, as shown in previous studies, the underlying mechanism does not necessarily depend on an increase in close friendships. Instead, weaker social ties appear to play a more significant role, as they are more likely to foster hierarchical structures shaped by social status. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-deepen-polarization-social-weak.html Social Sciences Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:54:28 EDT news703950850 As generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in translation, questions have been raised about whether it could eventually replace professional interpreters. A joint study led by Lingnan University found that while AI can improve translation efficiency, it is still less capable than professional interpreters at adapting language to context and preserving rhetorical and communicative effects. The researchers conclude that human judgment and oversight remain essential, particularly in politically, diplomatically and culturally sensitive settings. These findings have been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-falls-short-context-cultural.html Social Sciences Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:20:08 EDT news703767301 In environmental, health and technology crises, Americans are more persuaded to take action by scientists and public consensus than by leaders in government and industry, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at Boston College and Princeton University. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-scientists-citizens-persuasive-industry-mobilizing.html Social Sciences Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:00:07 EDT news703140968 Psychedelic drugs are known to make people highly sensitive to their surroundings. In other words, a user's mindset and immediate environment heavily shape the entire trippy experience. In a study published in the journal Psychedelic Medicine, scientists wanted to test a brand-new idea: whether an invisible backdrop of national culture, rather than just a person's local setting, could influence people's support for partisan violence after taking a psychedelic. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-fourth-july-celebrations-national-political.html Social Sciences Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:30:01 EDT news702737327 A new ancient DNA study published in Science Advances provides evidence that political power among Scythian elites may have been inherited through family lineages that extended across multiple burial sites. By combining archaeology, anthropology and genetics, the new study offers fresh insight into how social inequality and political authority developed among ancient nomadic societies. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-newfound-family-link-scythian-elite.html Archaeology Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:00:09 EDT news702200941 AI-generated impersonations of political figures are judged by members of the public to be more authentic, relevant and coherent than the speakers' actual debate responses, according to a study appearing in PLOS One, written by Steffen Herbold of the University of Passau in Germany, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-generated-debate-outscore-real.html Social Sciences Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:00:18 EDT news702049502 When people think of workplace segregation, they usually think of race or gender. Yet Americans are also sorted at work by something employers rarely measure: how they vote. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-politics-door-workplaces.html Economics & Business Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:40:06 EDT news701609214 At the end of every presidential term, the End of Term Web Archive preserves that administration's web presence as a vast trove of documents and webpages. The archive began in 2008, with George W. Bush's second term, and runs through 2024, collecting images, text, graphs, redacted pages and other media. So while it contains important public information, finding that information in the glut can prove difficult. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-web-archive-easily-millions-documents.html Political science Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:10:04 EDT news701539021