Hello everyone!

I am doing a project about diachronic conceptual change in English! Basically I will analyse the changes of (a set of) concepts through time (e.g., 18th century vs modern day) and see how social belief is expressed through languages. As my background is Computational Linguistics, I focus mostly on the technical part and have no clue about which concepts would be significant or interesting!

Could you guys recommend me some, or point me to some literature for some motivations? Ideally the concepts should relate to some social issues (e.g., migration, masculinity) since it would be easier to collect the data! But any other idea is welcomed (e.g., some people have analysed some scientific concepts such as oxygen vs air).

Thank you!

When I walk into a western clothing store, I tend to see more of neutrals/pastels, I see a lot of whites and beiges. That is not to say that they don’t carry colorful options but it is lesser.

But when I walk into an Indian store, a lot of fabrics tend to be heavy on prints, and brightly colored. Floral prints are common.

So what inspires this difference, is it just the likes and dislikes of people? If so, why did such preferences develop?

I see this claim often that the news portrays the world as way more negative than it actually is, but I wonder if this is true as the things that are reported are things that actually happen.

Note that I'm talking about quality news based on fact reporting, not news that's riddled with falsehoods.

We're not the only species that has been observed to practice democracy.

Also, isn't sex biological?

And haven't bullying, leadership, authority, power, peace, education, work, violence, communication, social roles, and competition been observed in both humans and non-humans?

And isn't violence biologically rooted to some extent? And also bullying? And authority? And communication? And competition? And trust? And don't human groups of a large enough size require leadership? Don't some people have a bias for authority that's biologically rooted?

Claiming peace is a social construct feels to me like claiming conflict is a social construct.

Also, diversity is an ecological concept. I guess there's racial diversity and ethnic diversity.

And don't social roles and community have ecological significance?

Trumpism is one example where no matter what he does such as January 6 (and will pardon them), Americans will vote for him just because the economy. Other possibly are Russians supporting and voting for Putin, Turks voting for Erdogan etc.

When I see trans women talking about their transitions, a recurring them is people perceive them as less competent than when they looked like men. https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/1hd698d/quick_question_for_the_people_that_didnt_always/ But if you look at the survey results, people say that women are as competent as men, or more competent than men. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/07/women-equally-more-competent

How do you reconcile those 2 things?

Recently, I have seen several articles arguing that Democrats should avoid preventing Republicans from implementing policies that the writer believes will be unpopular with the public, e.g. tariffs. The belief is that by shielding voters from the consequences of voting for the opposing party they retain positive impressions of the opposing party, which would not be the case if they were allowed to enact unpopular policy. Have there been any studies of this tactic? Does it genuinely benefit the party opposing the policies, or does it just allow bad policies to be enacted unchecked?

It's been frequently mentioned online and in news stories that today, roughly 50% of gamers are female. However, I haven't been able to find any actual statistics on this anywhere which would include the methodology used to reach these figures.

In particular, there's rarely any sort of breakdown used to differentiate between the person who plays solitaire on their phone or work computer a few hours per week, and the person who owns a gaming PC or console and plays AAA games 25 hours per week. So, for example, this study counts anyone as gaming who plays at least 1 hour per week on a pc, console, phone, etc. https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Essential-Facts-2024-FINAL.pdf

Or this study, which simply asks "do you ever play video games?", and then breaks this down by sex and age and so on. https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2015/12/PI_2015-12-15_gaming-and-gamers_TOPLINE.pdf

The general feeling that most people have, backed up by the makeup of the people found in voice chat in games or in forums and subreddits about games, is that the great majority of gamers are male for most games, with exceptions for some games highly appealing to women, and for casual mobile games. The statistics claiming this is false seem counterintuitive to many people, so I'm trying to see the details on these statistics, if they're available anywhere.

Here is the definition by Weber of the notion State. State is a "political organization of institutional character" that "successfully claims the monopoly of legitimate physical violence"

Harari's dismissal of objective morality seems dangerous and logically flawed. If all moral codes are equally fictional, then there's no objective difference between morally repugnant acts such as slavery or genocide and acts of kindness and compassion, which brings about the ethical consequences of such a relativist stance.

Or Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) as it's now known clinically.

Oftentimes with high profile psychopaths - serial killers and cult leaders and so on - people will seek to impute their callousness and depravity to some seminal events in their formative years; abuse, neglect and general maltreatment, head injuries, death or loss, bullying... is there much evidence that people can be natural born psychopaths?

Anecdotally the closest thing I know of are twin brothers I went to school with, one of whom is a kind compassionate empath, the other a violent, mean spirited criminal who pushed someone in front of a bus, cut a girls hair off with scissors in class, bullied mentally challenged kids, lit an animal on fire, and 's now doing prison time for bricking someone (smashing them over the head with a brick). I asked Tom about his childhood and he said they had identical upbringings but Jake was always spiteful and violent. I'm not sure that Jake has ASPD and maybe he has other mental disorders like ADHD and Anger Management or IED or whatever but he's definitely a rotten apple who isn't fit for free society unless he completely reforms which is unlikely.

I've also met toddlers who just seem to have a mean streak that seems to go beyond nurture or mirroring.

What's your understanding of it?

I know this is a sociopath subreddit and I don't want to conflate them with psychopaths

I would expect it to be common for those officially educated in sociology, social policy or even public health (or you could even extend this to modern social work, which is like "applied social science") to be interested in politics, as many of the non-desirable social situations they study are dependent on politics and I believe many people study these subjects because they are interested in social justice or in the world becoming a better place.

How common is it for them to go into politics? I can think of government ministers with economics or politics degrees (especially the course "philosophy, politics and economics" in the UK government, which dozens of politicians ranging from Boris Johnson to Tony Benn did their bachelors in. And former PMs of countries like Australia, Pakistan, Ghana, Peru, Thailand) - but not other social sciences, like social policy or sociology.

Looking at historical health and social care secretaries in the UK, I can see politics, economics, law or history degrees (and one former postman, in Alan Johnson), but nobody with a public health degree, even though it's obviously very relevant to the policy area.

This seems to be true for prominent politicians in all major parties. Are certain types of parties more likely to have sociology/social policy/pubhealth graduates amongst their politicians? What about in other countries? For example, in the US the Democrat and Republican parties' politicians are largely highly-educated, big shot professional class politicians (94% of US House of Reps and 99% of Senate members have a bachelors. Over half of Congress are millionaires), but the UK Labour Party has a bigger percentage of prominent members who are not from such a background (eg Angela Rayner, Whittome, Corbyn - all don't have a degree and the first two worked as care workers. Only 85% of House of Commons members have a degree, very few are millionaires, especially outside of the Conservative Party) - this is an example of politicians in different countries being drawn from very different pre-politics backgrounds, and it also demonstrates that people without econ/history/pol/law university degrees can become politicians, but somehow none of them have a sociology degree. Perhaps some other countries are more likely to have sociologists in their ranks, compared to the UK or US? Of course, the US and UK are both Anglophone countries with first-past-the-post elections (FPTP leads to less policy and ideology diversity of elected politicians).

Is it known why it's uncommon for non-econ social science-eduated people to become politicians, if it indeed it is uncommon? Is it that they don't try, or is it that they don't get very far? Has it been researched or theorised about?

Based on all recent elections, college graduates are significantly less likely to be conservative and more likely to be liberals. This is something that can be seen not only in America, but also in Britain and most of Europe.

Then I read about voter demographics from the 1960 and 1964 election, which left me confused. In the 1960 election, liberal candidate John Kennedy won the election, even though conservative candidate Richard Nixon won among college graduates. And in the 1964 election, liberal candidate Lyndon Johnson won by a landslide, but conservative Barry Goldwater nearly tied in the votes of college graduates.

Votes by demographic subgroup, 1960:

Total vote: 50.1% Kennedy / 49.9% Nixon

Less than high school: 55% Kennedy / 45% Nixon

High school: 52% Kennedy / 48% Nixon

College graduates: 39% Kennedy / 61% Nixon

Votes by demographic subgroup, 1964:

Total vote: 61% Johnson / 38% Goldwater

Less than high school: 66% Johnson / 34% Goldwater

High school: 52% Johnson / 38% Goldwater

College graduates: 52% Johnson / 48% Goldwater

By "social value", I mean people being more likely to associate with people who exhibit signs that they are likely to help them maintain or better their social standing (these signs can be existing social connections, job, accent, demeanour, attire, physical looks, material possessions, life experiences that suggest social value). Things like a person starting to befriend someone, but stopping if they find out the person doesn't have their own social connections that can benefit them. Or employers viewing candidates who desperately need a job or have an employment gap as being undesirable, because they figure there must be something negative about them if they're not already desired by other employers. Or in some South Asian cultures, when choosing a spouse for their adult child families often look at the social value (employment, connections, signs of success) of the suitors and the suitors' families. Or mentioning life experiences or connections into a conversation, to help them come across as someone who provides a more valuable social connection (professional, acquaintancy, friendship, romantic). Or a more undeniable example (unless you were homeschooled or an extremely small rural school) is kids in school wanting to be friends with the popular kids in order to increase their social standing in the school. Or a new kid ideally wanting to get in with moderately popular kids and not end up in a group with unpopular kids, as it could harm their own social standing (not all kids, but it not being universal doesn't mean it's not a real phenomenom - just like how not everyone is overtly racist, but overt racism still is a sociologically relevant phenomenom).

What's closest to this concept (as it's described, not necessarily the name "social value")? If one was looking in the library or waterstones/bookstore, what books might be relevant? Or what subheading in a sociology textbook?

In some cases the judgement can link to the just-world fallacy. At the very extreme end it can also link to the concept of social death, and maybe people caring about the social value of others is sometimes fuelled by a fear of social death. It could also link to Emile Durkheim's "excessive individuation" in his Suicide book (not read it, just saw it yesterday in a shop). But these are all only tangentially related to the concept I've described.

We don’t think twice about removing a painful wisdom tooth or getting surgery for a bad knee. That pain is just your body’s way of saying, “This needs fixing,” and we act on it.

It’s an "acceptable" response to a physiological signal.

But what about body dysmorphia? The distress from body dysmorphia might be a similar kind of signal, pushing someone to reshape their body to match how they feel inside.

You might say that body dysmorphia isn't painful like knee pain, but often people who suffer from it do consider what they experience to be "pain", though it is entirely mental.

A claim I've heard is that body dysmorphia was useful evolutionary in early human societies when fitting in and belonging to a group was of utmost importance.

One could argue that belonging to a group continues to be important in modern society, where loneliness and social ostracism can be devastating for a person's happiness. If our lives are so short, why not change ourselves to fit in, especially when doing so will improve our quality of life?

Why is getting a plastic surgery or taking steroids considered not rational? Why is it socially acceptable to allow a teenage girl to have her wisdom teeth removed, but it is not socially acceptable for her to get breast implants?

Why does the commonly-accepted rationale towards body modification change when considering gender-affirming procedures, which are increasingly viewed as valid and necessary treatments?

Let's say that we lived in a futuristic world where surgeries were free and had near perfect success rates. Would changing one's body based on body dysmorphia be illogical in this case?

Have read a number of sources and articles about the declining birth rates especially among whites (ex. https://apl.wisc.edu/data-briefs/natural-decrease-18) and was curious if there are any social explanations for this or legit books that have been written on this topic?

I am an American, but recently I have for whatever reason been getting recommended YT shorts of Canadian parliament. In these shorts I can't help but notice the environment seems entirely different to anything you'd see in the US congress. People are cracking jokes, they've got people sitting behind them cheering and laughing, there's this one guy that's in all of them who whenever he talks he sounds like he's doing a standup routine, he's laughing and smiling all the time, the whole atmosphere seems more jovial. In the United States occassionally a congressmen comes out with a good zinger against an opponent, but you don't see anything like I've seen in the Canadian parliament. I've also heard stories about the British and Austrailian parliaments where they talk like this as well and have even gotten into fist fights with each other (people of opposing parties in the respective parliaments, not a fist fight between the British parliament and Australian parliament). What is it about the American presidential system that creates such a stiff and formal congress?

I wonder if this phenomenon has affected all the world equally or if perhaps countries were people have more respect to authority are more resilient.

I'm asking, specifically, conservative compared to their contemporaries. I was recently thinking how the most famous examples of conservatives in our modern age of divisive politics will probably be viewed unfavorably in the long run for their decisions which slow down the progress of our country or actively harm our society and societal standards (I'm thinking taking away civil liberties, particularly here). Which led me to consider all the greatest heroes of our country's history I can think of off the top of my head. The founding fathers were all radical liberals of their time. Lincoln and FDR were staunchly liberal as well. Dr. King considered himself a socialist and opposed capitalism (which I feel are today more progressive or liberal ideals). [If my thinking on any of these are incorrect, please let me know.]

But this is where the shallow depth of my knowledge begins to run out, in terms--at least--of the history of political ideology in US history.

So what are the best examples of figures that helped our country by making conservative decisions?

I’m a 40-year-old woman living on a fixed income of $2,500 per month, which is the maximum I can earn right now. I’ve been independent since I was 16, but without a network of family or friends who truly understand financial hardship, I’ve never had access to meaningful financial advice. Most people in my life either don’t face financial struggles or are simply getting by themselves, offering advice that doesn’t fit my reality.

I’ve spent years trying to secure stable housing, and the experience has been difficult. I became disabled at 27, and since then, I’ve never had a consistent living situation that made me feel secure. To me, housing stability goes beyond simply having a roof over my head—it means feeling safe and not constantly worrying about rent increases, potential moves, or the instability that comes with unpredictable landlords or roommates.

I live with an invisible disability (I’m on the autism spectrum and have complex PTSD), which often complicates my interactions with landlords and property management companies. There’s a frequent power struggle when renting, and I struggle with how landlords assert control, which can feel emotionally draining. The stress of these dynamics, combined with the challenges I face due to my disabilities, has made renting particularly difficult.

I’m reaching out to this community because I want to understand how social science concepts—such as power dynamics, social structures, and housing policy—might help explain my experiences.

Specifically:

• What social or psychological factors contribute to the power dynamics I experience with landlords and property managers?

• How might my disabilities (invisible and otherwise) influence these interactions, and is this a recognized issue in social science research?

• Are there broader societal or structural factors at play that make it harder for people in my situation to find stable housing?

• What are the best ways to address or cope with these challenges from a social science perspective?

Additionally, I’m considering alternative housing options, such as buying a motorhome or tiny house, or moving to more affordable land in a remote area, but these decisions come with their own set of social, emotional, and financial challenges.

I’d appreciate any insight or resources from a social science perspective that could help me better understand these issues, especially in the context of disability, financial hardship, and the complex dynamics of renting and housing in general.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but thinking about a place like Andorra, ruled by the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France, what would you call such an arrangement, where an independent nation is ruled by someone outside the country? Obviously there are things like personal unions and colonial empires, but what I'm asking about is a bit different. Is there even a term for it?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about the old culture surrounding the gammadion before it was used by Hitler and now called the swastika. They were talking a little about how hard it is for people who still practice to use that symbol anymore, even though it's their original culture.

This made me curious, can symbols that represent hate or "bad things" ever be "saved". Is there historical precedent for such a thing? Would it be a big stretch to assume that there are symbols that we either use or at least see every day that no longer hold the meaning or even memory of what they once were?

And if so, what does history tell us about how long the swastika will "belong" to Hitler before it can finally be reclaimed by the original or maybe a new meaning?

There are many individuals launching donation campaigns or requesting financial aid in war zones like Gaza right now. While we should absolutely help in any way we can, I am worried that donating directly to the people will only exacerbate inequality and contribute to price surges and thus not solve anything.

What do you think is the best approach to providing aid in such situations? Are there ways to mitigate potential negative effects while maximizing the positive impact? I'd love to hear perspectives, especially if you have insights from economics, humanitarian work, or personal experiences.

If a group of people are waiting, they form an orderly queue. Why does this happen, as in why specifically do they form a line?

This article from Wired recently reported on a non-academic study from Originality AI, which is a firm that sells AI detection services. One of the findings was that a good portion of longer LinkedIn posts, at least according to the firm, seem to have been created by generative AI models. Of interest, the author also references (via quotes from interviewees) the typical backlash faced when people perceive or find out that gen AI was used to create work outputs. The first is the ethical and legal problem of training models on the intellectual property of others without permission, and that one is easier for me to understand.

The second is the general backlash that individuals could face when revealing that they used gen AI to complete a professional deliverable, which represents a general sort of distaste for work done with the help of AI. I am not suggesting that this is a generalized response or that it would hold up across all cultural contexts, though I am intrigued what the mechanism could be to explain negative reactions to this.

Even intuitively, it makes some sense. People might negatively judge when they learn that someone does not do their own work or obtained outside assistance, as it could be construed as a form of dishonesty. Also, I am not convinced that potentially negative reactions to AI use (well, when revealed) are unique to AI solely. For example, it is not uncommon to hear criticism lobbed at businesses that use outside labor for certain tasks or products, such as a restaurant that does not make its own desserts, for example.

Are there any relevant theories, concepts or studies to help me understand negative perceptions in these contexts? Open to any relevant perspectives from psychology, sociology, economics and beyond. Thanks!

I can't entirely remember it, but something like:
"After searching through 67% of a sample set of random values, you should pick the highest of those 67%, and [spend your remaining time on that]"
The last part I'm not sure about.

The example that was given as to how you could apply it was:
"If you want to find your fiancé in 10 years, you should spend 6.7 years going on dates and then after those 6.7 years you should pick the most compatible partner, and [spend the remaining time on them]."
Again I don't remember the ending.

I think I found this on a science YouTube Channel, but I am not sure. It could also be from a book like Humble Pi.
Of course the examples are most likely not exactly like the original, but they are as close as I can remember.
If someone else have heard about this or recognise anything please comment your thoughts.

Hello! I have to write an essay for my Eastern Europe polisci course. It has to focus on the accuracy of the labels of "postcommunist" countries and grouping "eastern" and "central" European countries together as a "homogenous" group. I wanted to provide case examples of countries that are grouped but have very diverging political experiences to further my point that these labels are indeed misguided. Could you suggest some that you think will be relevant to my essay?

Like if people didn’t know rich people existed would they feel bad about being poor.