https://phys.org/science-news/political-science/ en-us The latest news on political science Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated the cultural landscape. Uptake across various sectors, including law enforcement, quickly followed, usually with minimal foresight and little to no guardrails, like effective policies or laws, to govern AI use. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-aipowered-policing-endangering-police.html Social Sciences Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:40:02 EDT news707126222 In July 2026, more than 200 community members gathered at Mandoon Bilya (Helena River) in Perth's eastern suburbs. They planted more than 3,000 native plants as part of a wetland restoration project. The hopeful scene was a stark contrast to what the river might have become. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-centers-australia-indigenous-policy.html Social Sciences Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:20:03 EDT news707115902 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 Envy plays a greater role when resources are allocated through majority voting than when we make decisions individually. This is shown by new research from Linköping University, Sweden. According to the researchers, the explanation may be that our sense of personal responsibility diminishes when an individual vote is unlikely to determine the outcome. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-envy-vote.html Social Sciences Thu, 27 Aug 2026 07:23:26 EDT news707034183 Everyone shares a similar moral compass about right and wrong, but where liberals and conservatives disagree is over who counts as a victim, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-political-differing-views-vulnerable.html Social Sciences Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:20:01 EDT news706966964 It can happen in fields, restaurants, hotels and construction sites—a type of human trafficking often hiding in plain sight and receiving far less media coverage. Labor trafficking is a human rights violation in which individuals are forced to perform labor or services through force, fraud or coercion. The National Human Trafficking Hotline identifies examples including domestic workers forced to work in homes, farmworkers coerced through violence as they harvest crops or factory workers held in inhumane conditions with little to no pay. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-human-rights-expert-labor-trafficking.html Economics & Business Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:40:01 EDT news706945442 From TikTok bans and age verification requirements to media literacy lessons in schools, U.S. states are exploring a wide range of strategies to protect young people online. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-laws-social-media-safer-young.html Social Sciences Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news706872841 Political preferences are generally explained by income, age and level of education. However, our research suggests that a far more unexpected trait may also have a hand in how we vote. A survey carried out in 18 western countries has shown that left-handed people tend to identify more strongly with the political left. This finding appears to be more related to identity than biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lefthanded-people-tend-leftleaning-voters.html Political science Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:40:01 EDT news706868642 When it comes to human rights, it probably won't surprise you that Scandinavian countries perform well by statistical measures, along with Canada and Australia. But did you know that Mozambique, the Philippines, and Rwanda are also considered "overperformers," meaning that they score higher on human rights than expected? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-human-rights-reveal-underperformers.html Political science Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:00:01 EDT news706811521 Recent Gen Z-led uprisings have reshaped political narratives across Asia, raising a pointed question: Can street-level youth outrage be transformed into governing power and lasting institutional change? Or does it burn out once the protests end? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-gen-zled-uprisings-asia-reveal.html Political science Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:40:05 EDT news706795022 Bad housing, high crime and poor schools are more important than transportation or income when it comes to accessing healthy food in neighborhoods historically subjected to "redlining"—the now-illegal practice once used to refuse loans, insurance or mortgages to people in certain neighborhoods that were disproportionately inhabited by racial and ethnic minorities. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-food-insecurity-historically-redlined-neighborhoods.html Social Sciences Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:00:03 EDT news706765981 Online spaces, and social media in particular, are forums for vigorous political debate. They provide a space for members of the public to express political opinions, organize and sometimes even interact directly with politicians. While they clearly have democratizing potential, these platforms have also become fertile ground for hate speech, toxic interactions and online violence. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-women-politics-personal-sexualized-men.html Political science Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:00:01 EDT news706522382 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 UC San Francisco's Industry Documents Library, in partnership with the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, has made public nearly 700 internal documents from a Midwest retailer as part of the state's lawsuit alleging the company ignored an internal warning before selling firearms to a straw buyer. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-firearm-industry-archive-reveals-suspicious.html Political science Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:40:04 EDT news706424581 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 Climate change is making Australia's housing crisis more dangerous for older women. Extreme heat, floods, fires and storms are turning insecure housing into a safety issue, not just an affordability issue. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-home-longer-safe-older-women.html Economics & Business Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:40:06 EDT news706361701 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 New research from the University of Kansas has found that the more media-literate people are, the more they trust institutions such as government and nonprofits. In addition, their social media habits can predict civic engagement. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-media-literacy-social-civic-engagement.html Social Sciences Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:40:05 EDT news706333562 Members of Parliament from the UK's three biggest political parties in the House of Commons significantly overestimate levels of public resistance to major policy proposals for tackling climate change, a University of Cambridge study suggests. The work is published in Communications Sustainability. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-uk-politicians-vastly-overestimate-opposition.html Political science Wed, 19 Aug 2026 05:00:04 EDT news706195141 New research in Economic Inquiry provides evidence of in-group bias operating within the judiciary—a setting where impartiality is expected. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-alumni-relationships-affect-court-lawyers.html Education Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:00:04 EDT news706193623 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 A new study found that people's beliefs about the harmfulness of an illegal substance are stronger predictors of support for both punishment and court-mandated treatment than beliefs about who is to blame. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-drug-policies-communicate-safety-user.html Social Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 17:40:03 EDT news706276142 Right-leaning Canadians' trust in the bodies that manage Canadian elections has declined significantly since 2019, a McGill-led research team has found. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-canadians-canada-electoral.html Political science Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:20:02 EDT news706271701 Young people who have lived in public housing for at least 10 years are significantly less likely to commit crimes or become victims of crime than their peers in the general population, a study by researchers from the University of Otago, Wellington—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Pōneke found. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-young-people-housing-involved-crime.html Social Sciences Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:10 EDT news706264441 Simultaneous belief in logically incompatible claims is linked to conspiratorial thinking, according to a study that models belief using a Bayesian framework. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-link-incoherent-beliefs-conspiracism.html Political science Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:00:08 EDT news706262762 "Students are funneled into echo chambers, lured into extremist content through innocent avenues such as gaming and workout videos, then exposed to extreme misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia." That's how one Australian teacher described what they're seeing in their classroom. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hostile-attitudes-women-extremism-young.html Social Sciences Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:00:05 EDT news706180923 Why do disagreements about vaccines, climate change or elections often feel so personal? Our research suggests it is not simply because other people have different beliefs. It is because we think those beliefs are mistaken. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-false-furious-bothered-beliefs-wrong.html Political science Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:20:02 EDT news705830906 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