Hacker News with Generative AI: Social Science

A demanding work culture could be undermining efforts to raise birth rates (psypost.org)
China’s falling birth rate has become a major national concern, and a new study published in Biodemography and Social Biology suggests that the country’s demanding work culture may be partly to blame.
Study: People select feedback to flatter others, except when they dislike them (phys.org)
People generally try to make other people feel good about themselves, but not when they dislike them. That's the finding of a new study by psychologists at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania investigating the extent to which people promote "positive self-views" for total strangers.
Patience is a coping strategy, not a virtue (bps.org.uk)
According to a well-known proverb, patience is a virtue. According to a recent study in the Personality and Social Psychology Review, though, it's actually a coping mechanism that we employ to stop everyday frustrations from getting on top of us.
Finland is the happiest country in the world (euronews.com)
For the eighth year in a row, Finland has been named the world’s happiest country in the World Happiness Report published on Thursday.
World Happiness Report 2025 Dashboard (worldhappiness.report)
Show HN: I made a worldwide sexual life dashboard (worldsexmap.com)
The idea of World Sex Map is to share data-based insights about sexual life.
Should Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment Be Retracted? (retractionwatch.com)
Philip G. Zimbardo passed away in October 2024 at age 91. He enjoyed an illustrious career at Stanford University, where he taught for 50 years. He accrued a long list of accolades, but his singular and enduring contribution to scholarship was the Stanford Prison Experiment, a simulation carried out in the university’s psychology department in August 1971. The research project became the best-known psychological analysis of institutionalization at the time.
Marrying Up and Marrying Down (medium.com)
The most important decision we make is who we partner with, who we marry. However, for many, marriage isn’t an essential life choice … it’s a luxury item. I asked my friend, the social scientist Richard Reeves, to pen a post on the subject.
Men overestimate women's preference for masculinity (bps.org.uk)
Emergence of collective oscillations in human crowds (nature.com)
Dense crowds form some of the most dangerous environments in modern society1. Dangers arise from uncontrolled collective motions, leading to compression against walls, suffocation and fatalities2,3,4.
A hexagonal-tiled cartogram for U.S. counties (jordanroga.com)
Mapping data isn’t just about geography - it’s about telling stories hidden in numbers. Recently, I created a cartogram that tiles all U.S. counties into a uniform grid of hexagons. This approach transforms our traditional view of the nation, offering fresh insights into population, density, and other socio-economic variables that are often obscured on conventional maps.
Brits still associate working-class accents with criminals – study warns of bias (cam.ac.uk)
People who speak with accents perceived as ‘working-class’ including those from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford and London risk being stereotyped as more likely to have committed a crime, and becoming victims of injustice, a new study suggests.
The Typical Man Disgusts the Typical Woman (betonit.ai)
Ever seen this famous OkCupid graph? The quick summary is just: “Men rate women more highly than women rate men.”
Human Civilization at critical junction:authoritarian collapse or superabundance (eurekalert.org)
A new scientific study published in the journal Foresight concludes that human civilisation is on the brink of the next ‘giant leap’ in evolution. However, progress could be thwarted by centralised far-right political projects such as the incoming Donald Trump administration.
The Global Loss of the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness (afterbabel.com)
There is a literature of at least 600 published papers suggesting that happiness is U-shaped in age and, conversely, that unhappiness is hump-shaped in age.
Revisiting Stereotype Threat (michaelinzlicht.com)
Another day, another idol falls.
Santa Prefers Wealthy Sick Children (2023) (taylor.town)
It has long been thought that Santa Claus gives presents to nice but not naughty children. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to dispel the myth that Santa visits children based on behaviour and suggests socioeconomic deprivation plays a greater role in determining a visit. It raises important ethical dilemmas, such as whether children should be told and what should be done about Santa.
The Anti-Autism Manifesto (woodfromeden.substack.com)
I have always been skeptical of the high-functioning autism label. “Autism” was originally a very severe disability. Then all other psychiatric diagnoses for children with social difficulties were removed, so quite suddenly, also otherwise normal people with some social quirks are said to be autistic.
Revisting the Stanford Prison Experiment 50 years later (arstechnica.com)
In 1971, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a notorious experiment in which he randomly divided college students into two groups, guards and prisoners, and set them loose in a simulated prison environment for six days, documenting the guards' descent into brutality.
Bribery is largely subject to circumstance: study (elpais.com)
A year-long experiment was conducted at the self-service checkouts of a supermarket chain in Modena and Ferrara in Italy to test whether there was any link between corruption scandals and how honest consumers were with their shopping.
The Median Researcher Problem (lesswrong.com)
Claim: memeticity in a scientific field is mostly determined, not by the most competent researchers in the field, but instead by roughly-median researchers. We’ll call this the “median researcher problem”.
The Obvious-Once-You-Think-About-It Reason Why Education Cuts Fertility (betonit.ai)
As education goes up, fertility goes down. This rule works within countries: High-education individuals have fewer kids than low-education individuals. This rule works across countries: High-education nations have fewer kids than low-education nations.
The Rise and Fall of IQ: The Cognitive Divide (onepercentrule.substack.com)
For most of the 20th century, IQ scores steadily climbed, a phenomenon so consistent it was named the “Flynn effect” after the psychologist James Flynn, who first documented it.
Philip Zimbardo, psychologist behind the 'Stanford Prison Experiment' dies at 91 (news.stanford.edu)
Philip G. Zimbardo, one of the world’s most renowned psychologists, died Oct. 14 in his home in San Francisco. He was 91.
'Stanford Prison Experiment' Psychologist Zimbardo Dies at 91 – AP News (apnews.com)
Stanford psychologist behind the controversial “Stanford Prison Experiment” dies at 91
The illusion of moral decline (2023) (nature.com)
Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining1,2.
"Switzerland is as deeply polarized as the USA" (news.uzh.ch)
In many democracies, those on the left and right of the political divide are drifting further apart. Political discourse is increasingly spiteful and hostile. Silja Häusermann and Simon Bornschier from the Department of Political Science at UZH explain why this is the case and whether it poses a threat to democracy.
The Atlantic: Studies Show Short People Are Dumb, Poor, Criminals (theatlantic.com)
There are plenty of studies that claim it pays to be tall. A 2004 report found that each inch of height amounts to a salary increase of about $789 per year (controlling for gender, weight and age). Another concluded that taller people are flat out smarter. Indeed, no American president has been below average height since 1888.
What the World Is Like: Who Knows It – and Why (1983) (chomsky.info)
You’ve written about the way that professional ideologists and the mandarins obfuscate reality. And you have spoken — in some places you call it a “Cartesian common sense” — of the commonsense capacities of people. Indeed, you place a significant emphasis on this common sense when you reveal the ideological aspects of arguments, especially in contemporary social science. What do you mean by common sense? What does it mean in a society like ours?
Can Generative Multi-Agents Spontaneously Form a Society? (arxiv.org)
Generative agents have demonstrated impressive capabilities in specific tasks, but most of these frameworks focus on independent tasks and lack attention to social interactions.