the value of your social network

It's no longer prospective employers and online daters checking you out on Facebook.

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)

recent research

From Kevin Lewis' February picks:

• Our ballots may be secret, but most Americans either don't believe it or don't care. (Alan Gerber and friends)
• A new explanation for variations in political participation: electrodermal responsiveness. (Michael Gruszczynski and friends)
• The fundraising and frontrunner feedback loop - caught by economists. (James Feigenbaum and friend)
• An argument for not getting rid of the electoral college - it's pretty fair. (AC Thomas and friends)
• Education is correlated with higher political participation, but that may just be because education is a proxy for social status. (Mikael Persson)
• If you're a politician it doesn't matter whether you get falsely vilified or credited; either way, when the truth comes out, you're worse off. (Michael Cobb and friends)
• Forget Intrade and Nate Silver - just ask 19,000 people who will win the next election to get the best prediction. (Michael K. Miller and friends)
• All that money spent on presidential campaign advertising is apparently well spent. (Brett R. Gordon and friend)
• Hmm... we misjudge candidates in part because of the "false memories" we make about them. (Jason Coronel and friends)
• How best to "counter-frame." (Chong and Druckman)
• Social pressure to vote works on women and minorities too. (Costas Panagopoulus)
• Voting technology and mail-in-voting mean fewer bum ballots. (R. Michael Alvarez and friends)
• Evidence that surveys may not represent reality. (Christian Vossler and friend)
• Candidates have a role in inspiring confidence in the voting process. (Greg Vannahme and friend)
• Maybe conservatives are just more sensitive. (Samantha Joel and friends)
• Re-affirming the ego on Facebook. (Catalina Toma and friends)
• Charting out the link between values and political attitudes. (Diana Boer and friend)
• Legislators may not be all about getting re-elected - or at least not flip-flopping on policies just to gain votes. (James Lo)
• An odd argument for why hyper-partisanship exists - because legislators can emphasize their position preferences (rather than their ability to bring home the pork). (Justin Grimmer)
• Gerrymandering is supposed to help incumbents - except it doesn't. (Stephen Ansolobehere and friend)
• Evidence that politicians have something to do with how their constituents think. (Tetsuya Matsubayashi)
• Direct democracy - at least in the form of California ballot initiatives - may not be so good for democracy. (Ly Lac and friends)
• A different view of representation - it's not about reflecting your constituent beliefs, but listening to them. (Rebekah Herrick)
• One reason Americans aren't fond of Congress - when it's out of sync with popular opinion. (Mark Ramirez)
• Voters punish corrupt politicians - but only when economic times are tough. (Elizabeth Zechmeister and friend)
• Voters are rationally irrational - except when they're not. (Michael D. Thomas and friend)
• People get a kick out of giving - all across the globe. (Lara Aknin and friends)...
• ... possibly more so when they're feeling like a superhero as demonstrated in this wicked cool experiment. (Robin Rosenberg and friends)
• ... but not so much if they're feeling superior or inferior to others as demonstrated in this somewhat less cool experiment. (Jonathan Yip and friend)
• Peer pressure makes us bigger - but less happy - givers. (Diane Reyniers and friends)
• Love it. Humans are not the only species that behave altruistically toward strangers. (Jingzhi Tan and friend)
• ... and one of the reasons they may give to strangers is that it's a good way to make friends, just like with humans. (Sebastian Fehrler and friend)
• Power makes us better long-term planners. (Priyanka Joshi and friend)
• ... but more prone to dehumanize others. (Jason Gwinn and friends)
• We're all a little bit honest and a little bit liars. (Rajna Gibson and friends)

recent research

Kevin Lewis picks from January 2012:

• Remembering political events that never happened... especially if they fit your political predispositions. (Steven Frenda and friends)
• And conservatives and liberals are just as likely to shape facts to fit their preconceptions. (Dan Kahan) 
• Ideologues tend to exaggerate the moral extremity of their counter-ideologues. (Jesse Graham and friends)
• How it is partisans can agree on many issues but still hate each other. (Lilliana Mason)
• News on the internet is thought to divide partisans even further - but social media could push the other direction. (Solomon Messing and friend)
• Compromise is for sissies. (Michael R. Wolf)
• More evidence that growing partisanship may be a matter of sorting. (Gary C. Jacobson)
• ... leaving out those whose social and economic views don't align with either party. (Edward Carmines and friends)
• Finding the factors - and functions - of human intelligence. (Adam Hampshire and friends)
• Working with teams makes us smarter - even after we leave the team. (Boris Maciojovsky and friends)
• Any "prosocial" behavior humans have is not necessarily consciously prosocial. (Maxwell Burton-Chellew)
• We're more cooperative when we've had a chance to talk to others - even in our imaginations. (Rose Meleady and friends)
• This article says something about the relationship between money in politics and perceptions of corruption - though I can't tell what. (Daron Shaw and friends)
• It may be obvious to Hill watchers - but academics are still trying to demonstrate that earmarks and campaign donations are connected. (Michael Rocca and friend)
• Our overconfidence may be about projecting overconfidence. (Stephen Burks and friends)
• We have a prodigious memory for FB posts (though it's not clear why). (Laura Mickes and friends)

recent research

The Kevin Lewis trawl continues:

• Social exclusion "hurts" - but when the pain of exclusion is dulled (with a little electrical impulse) people don't mind so much being left out. (Paolo Riva and friends)
• When we're gentle with our criticism chances are we're not protecting the object of the critique, we're protecting ourselves. (Carla Jeffries and friend)
• The network structures that promote "contagions:" it's the close knit groups, not the popular hubs, that matter. (Nicholas Harrigan and friends)
• We treat our thoughts like things. (Pablo Brinol and friends)
• A couple experiments showing that emotions affect our political thinking. (Cengiz Erisen and friends)
• We're not only immediate gratifiers for ourselves - but also for our close relatives. (Fenja Ziegler and friend)
• Good idea generators tend to becomes less good once you acknowledge their ideas. (Barry Bayus)
• Research has shown that we do our best thinking when we let our minds wander - but that only may be true for women. (Mark Niuwenstein and friend)
• Deliberation may have positive outcomes - even among the deeply divided. (James Fishkin and friends)
• Cultural sharing differences on Facebook and RenRen. (Lin Qiu and friends)