social sciencese

Social scientists have their own language, which occasionally can confuse English speakers who are unfamiliar with the secret meanings normal everyday words take on in Social Sciencese - and which at other times obstinately insists on using dense indecipherable phrases instead of common words that mean the exact darn same thing.

This is a holding page for examples of such offenses.

Words social scientists use in other ways from you and me:

• To moderate

Phrases for which normal everyday English just won't do:

• Intimate extradyadic behavior = having an affair

recent research

From Kevin Lewis' April picks:

• Want to be more effective on the soapbox? Be abstract with your followers and concrete with those who may be more skeptical. (Michella Menegatti and friend)
• For DC interns, polarized workplaces breeds polarization. (David Jones)
• It takes more than just homophily (hanging out with people like ourselves) to breed partisanship: we need a dose of confirmation bias too. (Pranav Dandekar and friends)
• Twittering ourselves into political silos. (Itai Himmelboim and friends)
• The extreme partisanship in Congress is said to not reflect the public's views - but it may reflect the part of the public that pays attention to Congress. (Benjamin Lauderdale)
• People prefer doing meaningful work - even on mTurk. (Dana Chandler and friend)
• Online social mobilization's limits explored. (Alex Rutherford and friends)
• The Wikipedia magic formula for crowdsourcing may be losing its magic. (Aaron Halfaker and friends)
• A mini experiment showing what we all kinda know: playing as part of a team makes us generally more cooperative with our teammates. (Tobias Greitemeyer and friend)
• You are what you like. (Mickal Kosinski and friends)
• The great experiment in grading NYC kitchen cleanliness - comes up short. (Daniel Ho)

recent research

A selection of Kevin Lewis' March picks:

• Chimps' sense of fairness. (Darby Proctor and friends)
• One reason we act morally: it gets us trustworthiness points. (Brent Simpson and friends)
• Our GPA's are affected by our friends. (Deanna Blansky and friends)
• Sharing a similar sense of humor makes us want to share more. (Oliver Curry and friend)
• Revealing our names and photos makes us more open on blogs. (Erin Hollenbaugh and friend)
• Cool. Figuring out how we may make sense of info flowing through social networks - using agent based modeling. (Mark Laidre and friends)
• Facebook, profile photos and influencing sexual norms. (Sean D. Young and friend)
• Incivility online polarize perceptions - even on topics like technology. (Ashley Anderson and friends)
• We're all proselytizers of our lifestyle choices. (Krisin Laurin and friends)