https://phys.org/science-news/social-sciences/ en-us The latest news on social sciences, history, political science, psychology and sociology The moment we take a sip of our morning coffee or our first bite of lunch, the brain begins interpreting what we taste. Is it sweet? Sour? Or something else entirely? But the brain does not create flavor based solely on signals from the tongue. That is the finding of a new study from the Department of Food Science, published in Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-music-flavor-food.html Social Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:00:15 EDT news711877524 Researchers studying facial movements have found that it's not just what you say, but what your face does when you say it, that counts when it comes to appearing confident when answering a question. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-brows-speakers-confident.html Social Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:40:11 EDT news711877322 What causes adversaries to escalate conflicts into costly, prolonged wars even when neither side wants to fight? And in the fog of war, what might help them break that cycle and find a path to peace? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fog-war-game-based-boundaries.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:00:13 EDT news711805381 Compulsive use of social media may be associated with a strong desire for reassurance among people who are afraid to rely on others and engage in face-to-face interactions, according to a study published Oct. 21, 2026, in the journal PLOS One by Chris Bjornsen and Allen Harbaugh of Longwood University in the U.S. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-compulsive-social-media-linked-reliance.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:00:45 EDT news711733321 Researchers led by Carina Hahn at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), U.S., have found that forensic specialists in facial identification need only one or two features, such as eyes or ears, to identify a face when looking for a match. Published in PLOS One, the study found that specialists find ears to be the most useful but are capable of adapting when recognizing that another feature might be more beneficial. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-forensic-specialists-facial-features-individuals.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:00:28 EDT news711733561 The old saying that one bad apple spoils the barrel suggests that an individual behaving badly can have a negative influence on the entire group. The idea now has some fresh scientific backing. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-people-bad-behavior-quickly.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:30:01 EDT news711806166 An international study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF) in Barcelona, the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, Harvard University and the University of the Basque Country (EHU) has reconstructed the genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula between the first and eighth centuries A.D. using 243 ancient genomes from 31 archaeological sites. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-suebi-alans-visigoths-erase-deep.html Archaeology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:46 EDT news711719289 Sometimes, while people are interacting with each other, their movements and physiological responses can fall into step. Some past studies have linked synchronized bodily responses to cooperation and being attuned to the emotions of others. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-synchronized-bodily-responses-cooperation.html Social Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 06:40:01 EDT news711638284 Imagine sitting on a city bus full of strangers. Look around at the people riding with you. If you needed help, how would you choose whom to trust? By scanning people's faces, your brain is already making interpretations about their personalities by judging certain facial features. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-personality-uncovers-key-patterns.html Social Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:20:12 EDT news711727442 At its best, negotiation is the art of mutual value creation. But once created, that value must be capitalized upon in the post-negotiation environment. That means the formal end of negotiations is often only the end of the beginning. Time will tell whether the gains and losses sustained during a negotiation are as solid as they seem when the counterparties get up from the table. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-aftermath-winners-losers-vice-versa.html Social Sciences Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:40:19 EDT news711713852 New research from Michigan State University finds that popular music has gradually become less explicit about emotion and relationships—both across generations of artists and within artists' careers. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-popular-song-lyrics-emotion-analysis.html Social Sciences Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:20:05 EDT news711429475 Researchers already know that humans have a tendency to use egocentric anchoring—a cognitive bias in which people use their own preferences, beliefs and perspectives as a mental starting point (or anchor) to understand or predict what another person thinks, feels or prefers. This is not necessarily a sign of selfishness or self-importance, but a way for us to better understand others. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-strangers-easier-theyre.html Social Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:40:02 EDT news711375971 With the 2026 midterm elections around the corner, voters may be feeling everything from excitement to fear. But how might anger motivate political activism and, ultimately, influence who turns out to vote? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-belief-political-anger-voting-intentions.html Social Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:00:01 EDT news711371403 Many owners will enthusiastically attest that their cat has improved their quality of life. Some studies support this common claim that caring for a feline friend has positive effects on human health and well-being. However, the evidence is inconsistent, and other studies have even reported possible negative effects of cat ownership. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-owners-cats-tend-positive-moods.html Social Sciences Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:40:01 EDT news711353290 Female protagonists in animated films have come a long way over the past several decades. Take the 1959 movie "Sleeping Beauty": Soft-spoken and vulnerable, Princess Aurora is cursed as an infant by the evil fairy Maleficent and ultimately saved not by her own wits, but by a prince's kiss. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-animated-nonhuman-characters-overwhelmingly-male.html Social Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:00:01 EDT news711298282 In 2024, a collaborative Penn venture introduced a more objective way for people to examine how different outlets cover the same events and ultimately decide how they perceive and use information shared in the media. The Media Bias Detector, conceived in Penn's Computational Social Science (CSS) Lab, a joint venture of Penn Engineering, the Annenberg School for Communication and the Wharton School, uses artificial intelligence to analyze news articles for characteristics including topic, tone, political lean, and the facts and people included in coverage. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ai-media-bias-voters-news.html Social Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:00:12 EDT news711283345 People who tackled arithmetic problems while stressed by a countdown clock, error buzzers and an observer nearby later gave potential losses less weight when deciding whether to accept a gamble. This finding from a new study suggests that pressure may change the balance between how people perceive what they could stand to gain and what they could lose. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-math-pressure-gamble-downside-smaller.html Mathematics Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:18 EDT news711115765 The anatomical differences in our vocal tracts could be one of the sources of our Tower of Babel—the vast difference in languages spoken around the world, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Steven Moran and Tiena Danner from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-variations-human-vocal-tract-language.html Social Sciences Tue, 13 Oct 2026 14:00:22 EDT news711014795 In baseball, a borderline pitch is more likely to be called a strike when the batter has three balls and no strikes than when the count is no balls and two strikes. The official strike zone hasn't changed. The umpire's judgment has. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ball-baseball-umpire.html Other Mon, 12 Oct 2026 09:40:10 EDT news710765903 Two cartoon characters appear on a screen. One belongs to a group of three, and the other to a group of two. Which character would you rather play with? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-preschool-boys-favor-bigger-groups.html Social Sciences Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:20:01 EDT news710765673 Pokémon, sports and other physical trading and collectible cards have been around for decades but have surged in popularity since COVID. These cards are usually obtained through gambling-like packs containing random cards. Most packs do not offer any highly desirable cards, but a few packs will. Consumers, often including children, therefore buy many packs in the hope of obtaining rare chase cards. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-card-odds-rare-cards.html Social Sciences Thu, 08 Oct 2026 21:40:01 EDT news710677562 Our experience of eating is shaped by the combined influence of vision, smell, touch and taste. The way food is presented can shape diners' expectations before they even taste it. Visual features, such as arrangement and aesthetic design, can influence perceptions of taste, quality, healthiness and overall appeal. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-plating-sauce-placement-dish-healthier.html Social Sciences Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:20:02 EDT news710676841 Ahead of World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, attention is turning to the question of what causes psychological strain at work. A study by Bielefeld University shows that inappropriate tasks are not the only factor associated with exhaustion. Changes in day-to-day work can also leave employees feeling exhausted, even when the number of burdensome tasks decreases. Perceived uncertainty plays an important role. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-unnecessary-tasks-links-greater-employee.html Social Sciences Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:00:01 EDT news710595157 As women go through menopause, their voices tend to become deeper. This is partly because the vocal folds may swell and the surrounding muscles lose elasticity, resulting in a lower pitch. Age-related physiological changes can also affect the pronunciation of certain vowels. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-linguists-madonna-voice-defies-age.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:40:01 EDT news710511870 Imagine you're an infant. Just a few months in the world, trying to gather your faculties, testing gravity—you're pretty helpless and fully reliant on the people around you. As a result, one of your primary tasks as a new person—even before hand-eye coordination and responding to your own name—is to figure out how the people you've just met are connected to each other. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-young-infants-saliva-bond.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:50:01 EDT news710525522 Alongside words, humans have a treasure trove of nonverbal tools to help express themselves. We chuckle, sigh and gasp to communicate our feelings without uttering a word. What has amazed researchers for ages is how we rarely stop to think about how we know which sound belongs in which situation. Could unwritten social rules guide these everyday nonverbal sounds? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-laughter-reveal-unwritten-social-everyday.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:40:14 EDT news710511820 Favorite songs can stay with us for a lifetime, but their shelf life on the music charts is fleetingly short. Tracks that shoot up the U.S. Billboard charts may flood the airwaves for a short while, but just a few weeks later, they have vanished. The outlook for albums is far more enduring, according to a new paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-songs-faster-billboard-albums.html Social Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:20:15 EDT news710511843 When everyone in a meeting voices the same opinion, an organization can miss important warning signs and new ideas. A research team from KAIST suggests that when members feel securely accepted within their group, they can express dissenting opinions in greater detail and more persuasively, and other members may be more willing to use those opinions in decision-making. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-group-dissenters-stronger-arguments.html Social Sciences Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:00:06 EDT news709827267 Say "I'm angry" out loud, and your brain reacts to it, reducing the use of emotional brain regions. But this trick does not work if you say it in your second language. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that it doesn't work in any language if you are a balanced bilingual. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-bilingual-emotional-dont.html Social Sciences Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:20:24 EDT news710071261 During puberty, as boys transition into men, the dramatic drop in their vocal pitch has sparked a long-running debate among scientists. Why did such deep voices evolve in the first place? Was it to attract female mates or to intimidate rival men? Or perhaps something else is going on. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-deeper-voice-men.html Social Sciences Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:00:11 EDT news710063387