https://phys.org/science-news/social-sciences/ en-us The latest news on social sciences, history, political science, psychology and sociology When humans are making decisions, they are known not to rely solely on their own considerations and the evidence available to them. Past behavioral science and psychology studies have shown that people are often also influenced by the choices and opinions of others. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-disagreement-groups-trustworthy-mathematical-framework.html Mathematics Sat, 05 Sep 2026 10:00:04 EDT news707734830 Despite efforts to encourage broader participation, women earn about 25% of undergraduate engineering degrees and 18% of undergraduate computer science degrees—and men remain a small minority among people earning nursing and education degrees. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-students-grades-degrees-academic-major.html Social Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:20:01 EDT news707740774 Jeffrey Rosenthal was a young professor at the University of Toronto when he discovered he was born on a Friday—though not just any Friday. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-full-moon-bad-luck-friday.html Mathematics Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:20:03 EDT news707730421 Is a kiss just a kiss? Or is it a sign of love, affection, a biological urge, a contract or even an assault? Law, history, evolution and anthropology show that it can be all those things. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-legal-history-property-consent.html Social Sciences Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:50:01 EDT news707585281 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 Michele Gelfand has studied and taught negotiation for years. A professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, she sees negotiation as a skill that is imperative for everyone to learn. "It's not something we're born with," she says. "It's something we learn over time." https://phys.org/news/2026-09-class-workers-higher-pay.html Social Sciences Wed, 02 Sep 2026 10:40:10 EDT news707560921 For millennia, people have been drawn to cities for opportunities, jobs and the possibility of sharing a sidewalk with diverse and interesting groups of people. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-people-urban.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:00:11 EDT news707485802 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 How important is it that kids learn to tell right from wrong? Businessman and former university chancellor David Gonski recently called for ethics classes to be rolled out in all Australian schools to boost social cohesion. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-largest-formal-ethics-students-moral.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:20:11 EDT news707474617 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 Before buying a product, booking a hotel or streaming a movie, many people check online reviews. But not every glowing recommendation or one-star takedown reflects a genuine customer experience. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-qa-online-age.html Social Sciences Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:40:07 EDT news707463362 On the surface, posting online reviews looks like a win-win activity. It helps both businesses we like and people who might frequent them. But although posting reviews can benefit others, it can also put us all at risk, according to new research from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. It can inadvertently expose our personal connections and make us and our online friends more vulnerable to cyberattacks. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-length-online-scammers-friends.html Social Sciences Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:00:02 EDT news706979465 The physical, cognitive and emotional loads of running a household should be recognized when examining the health of a couple's relationship, new research has found. A University of Queensland study examined the "tri-load" of household labor—physical (traditional chores such as washing, cleaning and cooking); cognitive (planning shopping lists, scheduling appointments); and emotional (anticipating, caring, comforting, consoling). https://phys.org/news/2026-08-everyday-household-tasks-impact-relationships.html Social Sciences Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:00:04 EDT news706966936 Children in the postmedieval Dutch workforce worked so hard that their spines became worn and deformed, with some children affected before they even had a chance to lose their baby teeth, a new study published in the International Journal of Paleopathology finds. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-centuries-child-labor-left-spinal.html Archaeology Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:10:01 EDT news706868481 Artificial intelligence is often discussed with a simple safeguard in mind: Keep a human in the loop. But what happens when AI is already shaping the information, options and recommendations that inform a decision? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-decisions-human-loop.html Social Sciences Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:40:08 EDT news706968781 Intelligent people tend to perform better at school and at work, as numerous studies have shown. But what happens in domains where incentives such as good grades or financial rewards don't apply and where socioeconomic status is not a significant factor? Wine knowledge is a case in point. Intelligence researcher Maximilian Krolo of Saarland University has investigated whether intelligence can predict the acquisition of deep knowledge in a specialized domain. The findings have now been published in the journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities in an article co-authored with Professor of Psychology Timothy C. Bates of the University of Edinburgh. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bright-people-wine-higher-intelligence.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:40:03 EDT news706889575 When one person helps, or refuses to help, another in public, this may change not only the provider's reputation but also the recipient's. A theoretical study led by Kobe University offers a simple explanation for how cooperation in large communities becomes stable and provides insights into phenomena like the bystander effect. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-people-reputation-stabilize-cooperation.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:20:05 EDT news706868534 Large language models (LLMs) are making writing styles more similar without changing the overall meaning, according to an analysis of more than 880,000 texts across different writing types published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings indicate that using LLMs could make it more difficult to identify important clues about aspects of a person's identity, personality and mental health from their language. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-chatbots-similar-identity-personality.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:40:04 EDT news706868528 The closer two people grow, the more alike their brains work—or so the assumption goes. Two ETH Zurich studies challenge this idea by examining the brain activity of younger and older adults who drew together over several weeks. Despite growing closer, the similarity of their brain activity did not simply increase. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-collaborative-insights-strangers-friends.html Social Sciences Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:00:01 EDT news706462950 When we read a news story about a new cancer treatment, an Alzheimer's breakthrough or an innovative technology, we rarely think about everything that happens behind the scenes before that information reaches newspapers, radio or television. Scientists publish their findings in specialist journals, and journalists decide which of those papers are worth reporting to the public. This selection shapes the scientific information available to society, influences public opinion on specific topics and creates trends of interest that may even affect which areas of research receive more or less funding in the future. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lab-headlines-news-dont.html Social Sciences Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:50:01 EDT news706456741 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 Consistent enforcement of rules is more important than the severity of the punishment itself, and children expect adults to treat every member of their group impartially and equally. Moreover, fair punishment brings emotional relief to children, according to research by scientists from SWPS University and the University of Michigan. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-children-fair-unequal-treatment.html Social Sciences Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:00:09 EDT news706435441 An online survey published in the journal Psychology of Music asked 136 women ages 40 and older about their experiences at electronic dance music (EDM) events. Nine in 10 respondents (91%) said clubbing contributes positively to their well-being, with more than six in 10 agreeing they go clubbing to escape the realities of life. The researchers say club nights should be open and inclusive to all so these benefits can be shared. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-clubbing-boost-women-midlife.html Social Sciences Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:40:07 EDT news706435266 How similar are "joy" and "surprise"? Conversely, how far apart are "joy" and "sadness"? We naturally organize words that express emotions—such as "happy," "afraid," and "angry"—according to similarities and differences in their meanings. However, investigating this entire structure using human participants alone is not easy because the number of comparisons rises rapidly as more emotion terms are included. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-prompts-tool-emotion-concepts.html Social Sciences Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:20:01 EDT news706365001 As AI continues to develop at a rapid pace, social robots powered by AI are becoming more commonplace in customer service settings such as retail, hospitality, tourism and health care. But as these robots become smarter and appear more human, little attention has been given to how this might affect the consumers interacting with them. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-interacting-ai-people-robots.html Social Sciences Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:40:01 EDT news706357742 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 Artificial intelligence can develop solutions that humans would be unlikely to discover on their own. But what happens when machines do more than solve individual problems and actually discover entirely new solution strategies? And can such discoveries become part of human knowledge? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-discoveries-human-cultural-evolution.html Social Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:30:03 EDT news706283281 In Korean, the term "aegyo" denotes a playful cuteness put on by adults to win someone's affection, typically in romantic contexts. This is usually accomplished with bashful expressions or a childlike manner of speaking sometimes known as "baby talk" in Western cultures. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-korean-aegyo-speech-cute-adults.html Social Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:00:04 EDT news706202762 Machine learning models can identify jazz pianists from recordings and reveal the musical "fingerprints" that make individual performers recognizable, according to a study investigating 20 famous jazz pianists. The research, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, could offer insight into artist attribution and style, cultural heritage, and music education. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-iconic-jazz-musicians.html Social Sciences Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:00:01 EDT news706190762 Scientists are increasingly relying on powerful data sources and tools that they often cannot fully understand, inspect or verify, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-black-technologies-undermine-confidence-scientific.html Social Sciences Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:00:02 EDT news705830101