Insights

Photo of textbooks for various different languages stacked on top of each other.

Efforts To Protect Endangered Minority Languages: Helpful Or Harmful?

Headlines abound with the plight of endangered minority languages around the world. Read a few of these and you’ll see some common themes: the rising number of languages dying worldwide, the distressing isolation of individual last speakers and the wider cultural loss for humanity.

2 weeks ago
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Outdoor picture of Melissa Kearney

Melissa Kearney on Marriage and Children

In this Social Science Bites podcast, economist Melissa Kearney reviews the long-term benefits of growing up in a two-parent household and details some of the reasons why such units have declined in the last four decades.

3 weeks ago
3073
Book pages flipping against a blue background

Book Review: A Memoir Highlighting Scientific Complexity

In this brief, crisply written memoir, “In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems,” Parisi takes the reader on a journey through his scientific life in the realm of complex, disordered systems, from fundamental particles to migratory birds. He argues that science’s struggle to understand and master the universe’s complexity, and especially to communicate it to an ever-more skeptical public, holds the key to humanity’s future well-being.

3 weeks ago
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Photo of a cafe worker in a yellow apron leaning against the counter and looking back at some frowning customers.

Customer Incivility: A Call for Constructive Resistance

Conventional wisdom suggests that frontline employees should appease uncivil customers to resolve the unpleasant situation as quickly as possible and minimize the distraction and associated damage. However, this approach has not been effective in reducing or stopping customer incivility.

2 months ago
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Scary silhouette of knife-wielding attacker

True Crime: Insight Into The Human Fascination With The Who-Done-It

Half of Americans say they enjoy true crime — stories portraying real-life instances of murder, kidnapping and other shocking crimes — and 35 percent say they consume true crime content at least once a week. Why are people, especially women, so fascinated with the genre, and how does interest in the who-done-it affect consumers’ thoughts and behaviors

2 months ago
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Carsten de Dreu in office setting

Carsten de Dreu on Why People Fight

Trained as a social psychologist, Leiden University social psychologist Carsten de Dreu uses behavioral science, history, economics, archaeology, primatology and biology, among other disciplines to study the basis of conflict and cooperation among humans.

3 months ago
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