Social Science, Ideology, Culture, & History
Social science gives us ideas about human nature. What does it mean for the science when those ideas don’t just describe our nature, but shape it?
Social science gives us ideas about human nature. What does it mean for the science when those ideas don’t just describe our nature, but shape it?
The common constraint for all life is the ability to find and use energy, yet we take it for granted, says Michael Muthukrishna. In his new book, he makes the case that energy should be central in how we understand ourselves and how we design our world.
Michael Muthukrishna wants to integrate the science of human beings, from genes to culture to our environments, into ‘a theory of everyone.’ Doing so, he says, is key to advancing social and behavioral science.
Most of us tend to think of randomness as being “well spaced.” Genuinely random distributions seem to contradict our inherent ideas of what randomness should look like.
Good thinkers frequently ask themselves this question, the way good doctors frequently check their practices against the Hippocratic oath they swore.
The Many Co-Authors project is a new initiative, led by a group of Gino’s coauthors, aimed at reviewing of Gino-led studies to help address concerns surrounding the body of her coauthored work.
Francesca Gino is under scrutiny for allegedly fabricating data in at least four studies. Here’s what we know and the questions that remain unanswered.
Writing reports and setting goals is the easy part. Turning those goals into practice is much tougher; as behavioral scientists know, there is often a gap between intention and action.
There’s much to be gained by broadening out from designing choice architecture with little input from those who use it. But we need to change the way we talk about the options.
If behavioral science is baked into the core structures of the organization, then it will continue to produce benefits, regardless of the leadership’s decorative preferences.