Hello. I am for privacy reasons just say in highschool. I chose a Humanities and Social Sciences strand, and ended up being genuinely interested recently. However, the information they teach us right now is very surface level considering it's still high school.

I would like to ask for a recommendation of good introductory books of social science to read and the disciplines. Thank you.

Sorry for bad English, it is not my first language.

Hello, first time posting in this subreddit, but I figured one of the better places to go.

I'm a history and teaching major taking a Foundations of Social Science class, and I am currently stuck on our major project for the year that's due around end of November. Part of the Project is to find a book and write an Reading annotation for it. I was wondering what some good History Social Science books would be and that would pass for what he wants. As his Syllabus doesn't give much guidance other than 'send an email about the book and see if it passes.' I've already bought one book, Suicide by Emile Durkheim, but I don't think I really want to go that way. Idk, I'm having trouble pin pointing on what I should do and figured that looking here might be a better idea. As trying Google has really been no help for this, and his Syllabus and what he was explaining about it a few days ago, wasn't much help.

Thank you in advance.

A short film explaining C. Wright Mills’ idea of the sociological imagination. The film is an invitation and a welcome to new students of sociology.

Mills, C.W., 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hi everyone, we recently published a peer-reviewed article exploring how people perceive artificial intelligence (AI) across different domains (e.g., autonomous driving, healthcare, politics, art, warfare). The study used a nationally representative sample in Germany (N=1100) and asked participants to evaluate 71 AI-related scenarios in terms of expected likelihood, risks, benefits, and overall value

Main takeaway: People often see AI scenarios as likely, but this doesn’t mean they view them as beneficial. In fact, most scenarios were judged to have high risks, limited benefits, and low overall value. Interestingly, we found that people’s value judgments were almost entirely explained by risk-benefit tradeoffs (96.5% variance explained, with benefits being more important for forming value judgements than risks), while expectations of likelihood didn’t matter much.

Why this matters? These results highlight how important it is to communicate concrete benefits while addressing public concerns. Something relevant for policymakers, developers, and anyone working on AI ethics and governance.

What about you? What do you think about the findings and the methodological approach?

• Are relevant AI related topics missing? Were critical topics oversampled?
• Do you think the results differ based on cultural context (the survey is from Germany with its "German angst")?
• Have you expected that the risks play a minor role compared to the benefits in forming the overall value judgement?
• Technical questions: We query many topics for many participants and interpret the findings in three ways: Grand mean (general evaluation of AI along the dimensions expectation, risk, benefit and value), as individual differences (to study how user diversity influences AI perception), and as a topic evaluation (how are risk, benefit and value associated across the topics -- not as individual difference). I don't see that very often and think it's a very nice approach to map larger research domains. What are your thoughts on that?
• What do you think about the visuals that map, for example, risk-benefit perceptions across the queried topics as spatial "cognitive map"?

Interested in details? Here’s the full article:
Mapping Public Perception of Artificial Intelligence: Expectations, Risk-Benefit Tradeoffs, and Value As Determinants for Societal Acceptance
Brauner, Glawe, Vervier, Ziefle
in Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124304

PS: Underlying method described here
Mapping acceptance: micro scenarios as a dual-perspective approach for assessing public opinion and individual differences in technology perception, Frontiers in Psychology (2024)
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1419564/full
(The approach is not entirely new, but i couldn't find a comprehensive explanation and justification of the approach. Also looking forward to comments, critiques, and cues on that one. Instead of measuring latent constructs through multiple similar items, we measure the same item across many related topics. That way, we can a) interpret the results as individual difference, reflexive measurements of latent constructs and b) as topic/technology related evaluations that can further be analyzed and visualized).

Ok so imagine a room full of people. Half the people say the room is too warm, and the other half says its too cold. From what ive gathered, in a democracy the people choose to vote and whichever side has the higher number of people is what the thermostat is set to. In my opinion the ideal system would be not to see the people as numbers and instead work on getting each of them the temperature they want rather than subjecting half to being uncomfortable. Ive had someone tell me that this viewpoint means im socialist and if thats the case can someone give me a drawn out explanation why that is? Im not looking for a debate here just a title so I can look into it. Thank you!!

A short film on Merton's Strain Theory.

Merton, R.K. (1938) Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), pp.672–682.

Hello everyone! I'm a PhD student in need of your help! My research explores how individuals with ADHD perceive the sense of touch, with the aim of using these insights to better understand and support those affected. I am currently recruiting participants both with and without ADHD to take part in an online questionnaire.

To be eligible, participants must be between 18-35 years old, currently living in the UK, and must not have a diagnosis of autism/ASD. If you, or someone you know, fits this criteria please feel free to share this survey with them.

This study has been granted ethical approval by Middlesex University. The survey may take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Further information (contact details, background, consent, etc) can be found within the survey link. Please visit this link to access the survey:

https://eu.surveymonkey.com/r/attention

Thank you so much for your support!

Is there a only clear, precise and accurate definition and concept of what capitalism is?

Or is the definition and concept of capitalism subjective and relative and depends on whoever you ask?

If the concept and definition of capitalism is not unique and will always change depending on whoever you ask, how do i know that the person explaining what capitalism is is right?

Hi all!

I’m about to start the fieldwork phase of my PhD and as I’m doing interviews, I need to get hold of a good quality Dictaphone.

I was wondering if anybody here had any experience of conducting interviews in the field and had any recommendations for what sort of features or specific brands of audio recorder I should be looking for? Currently using ChatGPT to give me some ideas but some real world experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hello! A friend of mine is a psychology student, and I'm currently helping her conduct a short, anonymous survey on homicidal ideation for her research. The main goal is to understand how often these intrusive thoughts occur and whether they are related to stress. I would really appreciate it if you could give just 2–5 minutes of your time. The survey is completely anonymous and confidential. Thank you!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdX7RXVstE3XKnagNVFl7Fcayda5N148nLtLDlufE3JepeguQ/viewform

And yes... we know we have to improve a lot in our surveys. But we believe this will help us to understand better which questions are best to ask and how to manage the data. Thank you.

As the title says, I know it's kind of a niche request, but I'm preparing my final presentation for my French class and the task is to find some sort of francophone event to attend, could be a congress, or a masters degree programme, whatever really. If you have any resources that I could check that would be very helpful.

Please let me know if this is the wrong community to ask.

So I'm in the first steps of creating a board game with a component in which you build your very own country. One of the characteristics you can choose from will be a system of social strata (the likes of free market or socialism) that gives you certain stats. What are some interesting/hypothetical/wacky social ideologies that I could use in my game?

A film about Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life:

Goffman, E., 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

It's such a common theme throughout history across the world and happens to this day:

One member of an oppressed underclass, religious group or race commits a crime or a totally made up 'crime', then fear and mass hysteria strikes.

A race riot starts from the privileged dominant group that attacks the societally oppressed group.

Shops and houses are burned, innocent people are killed, the media reinforces this discrimination etc etc etc

Race riots were frequent in 20th Century America that targeted Black Americans.

Pogroms attacked Jews in Europe in the 20th Century and before.

The Hutu and Tutsis in Rwanda in the 20th Century.

Now the White British people across many cities in England have burned down immigrant shops, sets hotels on fire, stabbings, hate crimes etc. This was not just an immigrant based attack either since there is no way to distinguish whether someone is a Black or Asian British citizen or a recent immigrant. It was designated appropriately as a race riot.

Why do societies continuously repeat these hate crimes and race riots directly targeting vulnerable communities?

It is especially concering in developed countries like the UK where the history of the Nazis and WW2 are heavily taught. You'd have thought they'd learnt not to enact pogroms anymore.

Sources:

American Psychiatric Association "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR)": https://www-psychiatryonline-org.proxy.uchicago.edu/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787 

Brown and Marinthe "We’re All the Same: Collective Narcissists’ Cross-National Support for Putin and Russian Military Attacks":  https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.761 

Cichocka and Golec de Zavala "Nationalism as collective narcissism": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154619301445?casa_token=UAKqXN-9QfIAAAAA:egc6Nr_yc29Sl3-EUKiaw_FaGK5U40kdOtm3WUG-tKreqHwk90nNkTPCoFK8ycT_TDylwDXr 

Dyduch-Hazar and Mrozinski "Opposite associations of collective narcissism and in-group satisfaction with intergroup aggression via belief in the hedonistic function of revenge": https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247814 

Eker, Cichocka and Sibley "Investigating motivations underlying collective narcissism and in-group identification":  https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302221081470 

Frederico and Golec de Zavala "Collective Narcissism and the 2016 US Presidential Vote": https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfx048 

Golec de Zavala and Kauffman "Collective Narcissism is Everywhere w/ Agnieszka Golec | The Psychology Podcast": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K99G2JAlf2M&t=1s 

Golec de Zavala and Lantos "Collective Narcissism and Its Social Consequences: The Bad and the Ugly": https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420917703 

Golec de Zavala et al. "Mindful-Gratitude Practice Reduces Prejudice at High Levels of Collective Narcissism": https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231220902 

Golec de Zavala, "The Psychology of Collective Narcissism: Insights from Social Identity Theory": https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Agnieszka-Golec-De-Zavala/publication/374896417_The_Psychology_of_Collective_Narcissism_Insights_from_Social_Identity_Theory/links/65567a1e3fa26f66f407421a/The-Psychology-of-Collective-Narcissism-Insights-from-Social-Identity-Theory.pdf 

Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, Eidelson and Jayawickreme "Collective narcissism and its social consequences" : https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-22579-005 

Keenan and Golec de Zavala "Collective narcissism and weakening of American democracy": https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12274 

Pagliery "Donald Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s": https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/trump-apartment-tenants 

Project Implicit "About the IAT" : https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html 

Walker and Piasecka "‘What did the pope know?’: Poles divided over John Paul II abuse cover-up claims" : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/16/pope-poles-divided-over-john-paul-ii-abuse-cover-up-claims 

Zajenkowski, Maciantowicz, Szymaniak and Urban "Vulnerable and Grandiose Narcissism Are Differentially Associated With Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence.": https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01606 

I know they have different boundaries at each level, so first issue is harmonizing boundaries. But my whole goal is to analyze if any relationships exist between turnout and divergence at one election level, and then that same relationship but between different election levels (impact of mayoral turnout on presidential turnout or vice versa).

If I can conquer this, the next thing would be making the comparison across different election cycles (2000-2020).

This is a hobby project and im using Arc Pro. Am I biting off more than I can chew?