Social Science Bites

<p></p> <p >This Social Science Bites podcast offers a dollop of good news and heaping helping of bad. The good news is that since the end of American Civil War the economic condition of Back Americans has improved...

<p >There is a value to shared knowledge that tends to go unrecognized because it's so ubiquitous. Nonetheless, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker explains in this Social Science Bites podcast, common knowledge...

<p></p> <p >A key insight social anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee had while observing electoral behavior in a Bengali village was that -- at least in the India of that moment -- elections were sacred. This was not a...

<p></p> <p >In 2016 psychologist Paul Bloom wrote a book titled Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (a naming decision he still wrestles with). In the book, as in his career and in this Social Science...

<p></p> <p >What does your accent – and yes, every speaker has one – say about you? Or perhaps the better question is, what do others hear in your accent? These are the sorts of questions that Devyani Sharma, a...

<p></p> <p >As a practical matter, how much effort do you put into pinning down the causes behind daily occurrences? To developmental psychologist Frank Keil, who studies causal thinking, that answer is likely along the...

<p></p> <p >Having been raised in Los Angeles, a place with vast swathes of single-family homes connected by freeways, arriving in Costa Rica was an eye opener for the young cultural anthropologist Setha Low. "I thought...

<p></p> <p >As an anthropologist, Victor Buchli has one foot in the Neolithic past and another in the space-faring future. A professor of material culture at University College London, his research has taken him from...

<p></p> <p >Let's say you were asked to name the greatest health risks facing the planet. Priceton University economist Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder and director of the One Health Trust, would urgently suggest you...

<p></p> <p >Flexibility is a cardinal virtue in physical fitness, and according to political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod, it can be a cardinal virtue in our mental health, too. How she came to that...

<p></p> <p >When economic news, especially that revolving around working, gets reported, it tends to get reported in aggregate – the total number of jobs affected or created, the average wage paid, the impact on a...

<p></p> <p >Are university students unhappy? We won't generalize, but many are, and this was something Bruce Hood noted. Being an experimental psychologist who teaches at the University of Bristol, an opportunity...

<p > Let's cut to the chase: "The overwhelming majority of murders in the United States involve guns," says economist Jens Ludwig. "And in fact, most of the difference in overall murder rates between the United States...

<p > A new people has emerged in the digital age, that of 'internet famous' celebrities. And that new people has a class of social scientist focused on studying them, the digital anthropologist. Crystal Abidin, a...

<p></p> <p >Everyone, we assume, wants to be their best person. Few of us, perhaps, none, hits all their marks in this pursuit even if the way toward the goal is generally apparent. If you want to know how to do a...