Society

Green transport initiatives such as bicycle lanes or creating spaces for electric vehicle charging points have become heated political battlegrounds in the United Kingdom, and British people respond to such proposals broadly in line with their political party preference and political orientation, new research from the University of Bath shows.... Read more

It's well known that governing parties often lose voters over time—the so-called cost of governing. But a new study from Frederik Hjorth, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, documents a lesser-known but potentially crucial side effect of being in government: politicians begin to speak less simply... Read more

Elected officials, political analysts, and nonprofit organizations have for years spotlighted the spread of online election information in Western democracies—largely with a focus on media platforms popular in these nations, such as X and Facebook.... Read more

New Jerseyans continue to give a somewhat split assessment on the direction of the Garden State, and pocketbook issues top the list of residents' biggest concerns, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.... Read more

People on TikTok tend to follow accounts that align with their own political beliefs, meaning the platform is creating political echo chambers among its users. These findings, from a study my collaborators, Yanlin Li and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, and I published in the academic journal New Media & Society,... Read more

For decades, Americans' trust in one another has been on the decline, according to the most recent General Social Survey.... Read more

In an international study, participants' attitudes toward certain social groups—namely, politicians and Black people—were more strongly related to their attitudes towards the men than the women of each group, suggesting that men are the "default" for attitudes towards these groups.... Read more

A UK study of data on more than 30,000 crimes sheds new light on crime after dark, suggesting that the overall risk of crime rises when darkness falls, but that risk varies depending on type of crime and geographical area. Jim Uttley of the University of Sheffield, UK, and colleagues... Read more

The number of state laws preempting local policies governing transgender rights in the United States has been steadily increasing since 2019, according to newly updated research by the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University School of Law.... Read more

A new study by Dr. Heylel-li Biton of the Hebrew University Business School sheds light on a long-standing question in global finance: Why do foreign firms listed in the United States choose one accounting regime over another?... Read more

The United States' and Israel's strikes on Iran are concerning, and not just for the questionable legal justifications provided by both governments.... Read more

Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, and they also significantly overestimate how much others agree with them, Cornell psychology researchers have found. The study indicates that belief in conspiracies may be less about a person's needs and motivations and more about their failure to recognize... Read more

A gunman entered the homes of two Minnesota lawmakers on June 14, killing one representative and her spouse and wounding the second couple. The incidents—which coincided with a major military parade in Washington, D.C., and thousands of "No Kings" rallies across the nation—are the latest in a growing number of... Read more

Civility isn't gender equality's friend in televised political discussions, where women typically speak less and are shown less respect than men, according to a new study of gendered conversational norms co-authored by a University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher.... Read more

Migration agreements between "transit countries," such as Turkey or Libya, and Europe have in recent years become the norm as emergency measures to try to stop irregular migration.... Read more

Black women's beauty and fashion are complex, meaningful acts, deliberate strategies for engaging with the world that make bold statements about identity, political resistance and empowerment, Black women said in a recent study.... Read more

The quantity of adaptation finance has been a controversial political issue, and a critical negotiating point for developing countries in international climate negotiations. At the United Nations climate conference (COP29) in Baku last year, developed countries agreed to provide more money for climate adaptation in emerging market and developing economies.... Read more

Researchers are warning that millions of people around the world aren't being counted in census and survey data, leaving policymakers in the dark about the populations they govern.... Read more

Police spending will rise by a real-terms 2.3% per year between now and 2028–29, the government announced in its latest spending review, drawn from local council tax. The government says this will help its mission to put 13,000 neighborhood police on the streets, and "keep communities safe."... Read more

Many of us have become immersed in debates with family about a contentious political issue, or found ourselves on the other side of a political divide than our friends. In these contentious times, it can be all too easy for courteous debate to devolve into polarized discord.... Read more

When news sources aligned to a particular business or political ideology choose to share misinformation, it can trigger an "arms race" where their rivals start sharing their own misinformation to compete, according to an international research study.... Read more

The food industry will go to great lengths (and spend a fortune) to lobby policymakers, confuse the public and politicize scientific findings. You can see the results in the UK's delay of a ban on junk food advertisers targeting children, or the orchestrated backlash to a report that recommended cutting... Read more

A new report from UC Berkeley Law's student-led Homelessness Service Project (HSP), available on the SSRN preprint server, analyzes the impact of a crackdown on California's unhoused population since the U.S. Supreme Court's Grants Pass v. Johnson decision last summer.... Read more

Louise Casey's recent report on grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation in the UK lays bare institutional failings. It highlights that, at present, victims cannot rely upon the criminal justice system—and that it has badly let them down in the past.... Read more

In November 2021, in the city of Chandler, Arizona, Chris Pelkey was shot and killed by Gabriel Horcasitas in a road rage altercation.... Read more

Can artificial delegates—autonomous agents that make decisions on our behalf—help us reach better outcomes in situations where collective failure looms, such as climate change policymaking or the urgent response required during pandemics?... Read more

New research from the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, in partnership with researchers at Panthéon-Sorbonne and the MIT Sloan School of Management, reveals partisan differences in which posts get flagged as misleading by the social media platform X's Community Notes program. The study's findings show that misinformation is shared... Read more

ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, and the promise and perils of artificial intelligence (AI) have loomed large in the public consciousness ever since. Because perceptions of a new technology like AI can help shape how the technology is developed and used, it is important to understand... Read more

New York City's mayoral election has become the race to watch because of its surprisingly competitive nature but also the electoral system that's helped it become so competitive: ranked choice voting.... Read more

Israel's conflict with Iran represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis—it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come.... Read more

A new global study shows that people in societies characterized by corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence are more likely to develop aversive, "dark" personality characteristics such as selfishness or spitefulness.... Read more

What makes a person willing to use violence?... Read more

NPR recently reported that the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Futures Lab is experimenting with tools such as DeepSeek and ChatGPT to explore how artificial intelligence could change—and improve—how foreign policy decisions are made.... Read more

"China virus," the Chinese virus—at the start of the 2020 pandemic, this epithet was often encountered in the media. The use of geographically based labels to define the disease (COVID-19) and the virus causing it (SARS-CoV-2) had significant consequences on public opinion, fueling and amplifying—sometimes with very serious outcomes—prejudices against... Read more

Populist parties have long ceased to be a marginal phenomenon. They are now an established political force in many European countries and are fundamentally challenging the democratic system. These parties use harsh rhetoric against the "elite" and present themselves as the sole representatives of the "true will of the people."... Read more

Households affected by high electricity prices during the energy crisis tend to be more negative toward climate policy. Research from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg shows that perceived unfairness reinforces misconceptions about fuel taxes.... Read more

Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation—and the vital productivity gains it supports.... Read more

An international research collaboration used AI as research participants and discovered that knowledge-enhanced large language models are able to critically assess forensic expert testimonies.... Read more

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the UK this week announced sanctions against two members of the Israeli cabinet: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.... Read more

There was a time when corporate America was not very online. Most companies used social media for promoting products and services or engaging with consumers in a friendly fashion. Political posts on a company Twitter account were rare.... Read more

Nearly 40% of U.S. cities analyzed in a study in NPJ Complexity diverge from the common narrative that Republican-dominated areas have high levels of implicit racial bias while Democratic strongholds are more tolerant.... Read more

People with higher levels of trust—in both others and institutions—report higher levels of subjective well-being, an important indicator of quality of life and predictor of health and longevity, than those with lower levels of trust, according to research published in Psychological Bulletin.... Read more

The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's war on Ukraine, geopolitical tensions, climate change and other events highlight our growing exposure to complex, interconnected, and intertwining risks. In view of this development, the focus of risk research has shifted towards the comprehensive analysis of interconnected and mutually interactive risk sources and crises.... Read more

Over the past two decades, conflicts in more than 40 countries, including El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines, have ended in comprehensive peace agreements. But these broader accords don't happen all at once.... Read more

A recent study by researchers at the University of Padua and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) has revealed that political differences between partners can significantly increase the risk of separation. Using long-term data from UK couples, the researchers found that those with different party preferences were substantially... Read more

A new study by Northwestern University asks whether voters approve of politicians who use the power of their office to retaliate against corporate political speech criticizing the politician's actions.... Read more

Since becoming president, Donald Trump has aggressively sought to fulfill his campaign promise to reverse the Biden administration's protection of transgender Americans.... Read more

The number of armed conflicts in the world reached a historic high in 2024. This is shown by new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University. Despite a marginal decrease in total fatalities, targeted violence against civilians increased significantly.... Read more

Walter Cronkite was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" as he delivered the news on CBS in the 1960s and '70s—a time when fewer news options created a "shared reality" that scholars argue fostered civic engagement, empathy, and shared national identity. The situation looks quite different in... Read more

The Dutch Golden Age, beginning in 1588, is known for the art of Rembrandt, the invention of the microscope, and the spice trade of the Dutch East India Company. It ended a little under a century later in a frenzy of body parts and mob justice.... Read more