Norms are perceptions or beliefs about what we understand the rules for acceptable behavior to be. Trump’s impeachment could help restore some of them.
Do children understand the lesson that if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours? Developmental psychologists suggest they’re more likely to punish bad behavior than they are to reward good deeds.
What goes into all for one and one for all?
Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com
Where do the cooperative skills that hold together human societies come from and why don’t our selfish instincts overwhelm them? Evolutionary game theory suggests that empathy is a crucial contributor.
In the US, smiling is a reflexive gesture of goodwill, but Russians view it as a sign of stupidity. Social psychology research could help explain this cultural contrast.
Illegally logged rosewood in Antalaha, Madagascar, 22 February 2005.
Erik Patel
The illegal timber trade is a huge global business worth up to US$150 billion yearly. One way to curb it is by convincing consumers in wealthy countries that buying contraband wood products is wrong.
A leading Twitch streamer was disciplined for gender bias.
Screenshot of Trainwreckstv on Twitch
Because Australian roads were built and designed with motorists in mind, it is easy for Australian motorists to feel cyclists are using ‘their’ roads and disrespecting the natural order.
Social definitions of sex tend to oversimplify the biological determinants of gender and anatomy.
renawgraphy/flickr
When his partner was pregnant, Russell Brand announced he may raise the child ‘gender-neutral’ to avoid social constraints associated with being a boy or a girl. So what determines your ‘sex’?
What if people don’t tell pollsters the truth?
Liar image via www.shutterstock.com.
The polls convinced many that Clinton was headed to the White House. But the polls were misleading – and one behavioral scientist thinks emotion led respondents to mislead pollsters on purpose.
Why does that one video crack you up?
Laughing image via www.shutterstock.com.
Studies can’t predict an individual’s behavior. But meta-analyses of social science research turn up differences in men’s versus women’s leadership styles, on average.
Does what’s most usual seem inherently good to you?
Fish image via www.shutterstock.com.
It’s a common quirk of human psychology to make the mental leap that the way things are is the way things ought to be. New research into how we explain the world around us sheds light on the phenomenon.
A seemingly purified city is not necessarily a healthy or diverse one.
AAP/Paul Miller
Heightening liquor regulation has for centuries been the immediate response of urban policymakers when confronted with people and behaviours deemed socially undesirable.
A detail from Stanisław Wyspiański’s “Macierzynstwo” (1905).
Wikimedia Commons
If you use a tablet device to keep a child quiet at the dining table or other event then you could be limiting their social skills. That could have an impact on the way they behave later in life.