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A new study led by an international team of scientists has investigated how people evaluate whether information is true or false, and how this evaluation is affected by source credibility. For the purposes of the study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, participants rated their belief in statements from the campaign trail of Donald Trump— described by many as perhaps the most polarising political figure of recent times.

Ralina Joseph , University of Washington associate professor of communication, has guest co-edited a special triple issue of the interdisciplinary journal Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society with her former mentor and dissertation adviser, Jane Rhodes of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

How liberal or conservative a person is predicts how likely they are to believe information about potential hazards, a new UCLA-led study has found. The study, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, found that people who hold more socially conservative views were significantly more likely than people with liberal beliefs to find false information about threats credible.

Disputes over science-related policy issues such as climate change or fracking often seem as intractable as other politically charged debates. But in science, at least, simple curiosity might help bridge that partisan divide, according to new research. In a study slated for publication in the journal Advances in Political Psychology , a Yale-led research team found that people who are curious about science are less polarized in their views on contentious issues than less-curious peers.

Volatile gasoline prices have caused regulators and carmakers alike to question the cost and effectiveness of fuel economy standards in the United States, with some arguing they are too stringent and others saying they should be even stricter. A new study by Ryan Kellogg, professor at the Harris School of Public Policy , responds to both sides of the debate by proposing a novel, market-based alternative that indexes the standard to rise and fall with the price of gasoline.

The key to bridging the broad ideological division in the United States is for both sides to work on understanding the core values that the other holds dear. The unprecedented level of political division in the United States has been worrisome to many Americans, but bridging that gap is not an impossible task, according to a Stanford sociologist.

New Court of Session papers, missing for more than 200 years, have been unearthed by the Faculty of Advocates and Professor Gerard Carruthers, University of Glasgow. The newly found papers shine light on Thomas Muir and how he courted controversy in his early years, which may have contributed to his treatment by the justice system in later life.

German Research Foundation Supports New Research Group at Freie Universität Berlin ' 423/2016 from Dec 01, 2016 A new research project at Freie Universität Berlin is dealing with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved a grant for the sub-project "CONNECT: Networking and Influence of International Secretariats Environmental and Disability Policy over Time" at the Division of Educational Research and Social Systems.

ANN ARBOR?Democrats and Republicans are polarized on many issues, including gender and equity, and the divide in their support of women candidates can be traced to attitudes regarding workplace gender discrimination, a new study shows. Researchers at the University of Michigan and four other universities surveyed 800 delegates at the national party conventions in 2008.

As they grow up, do children become young Robin Hoods? Depending on their age, they do not allocate resources in the same way between dominant and subordinate individuals. Thus a tendency towards egalitarianism develops and becomes even stronger between the ages of 5 and 8 years. These findings by a team of scientists from the CNRS and the Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France), Lausanne and Neuchâtel (Switzerland) universities provide a clearer understanding of how the notion of equality develops in human beings, and of their sense of justice.

Dominik Hangartner from UZH's Department of Political Science and the London School of Economics and Political Science teamed up with colleagues from Stanford University (USA) to compile 180,000 fict

Depressive symptoms are associated with a higher risk of sympathies for violent protest and terrorism (SVPT), according to a study led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). The study, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry , also found that some adverse life events and levels of political engagement were associated with a lower risk of SVPT.

AUSTIN, Texas - Political campaigns and organizations are turning to digital media in an effort to mobilize voters, and now a new study from The University of Texas at Austin shows just how Facebook can serve as an effective tool for increasing voter turnout. In a study published in the Journal of Communication , researchers found that individuals are significantly more likely to vote if they receive reminders through Facebook that voting records are public - and either messages of encouragement or shame to vote.

Boredom may be contributing to a widening of political views among voters, according to a new study by researchers from King's College London and the University of Limerick. Published in the European Journal of Social Psychology , the findings are based on one experiment and two scientific surveys carried out in the Republic of Ireland.

When it's time to move their hives, honeybees are able to quickly identify a high-quality nesting site without approval from the king or queen bee. Carnegie Mellon University economist and complexity theorist John H. Miller argues that there are lessons to be learned by understanding how bees in a hive, and a variety of other systems, interact.

A new poll of California voters by Stanford University's Bill Lane Center and the Hoover Institution shows an age divide in the Democratic Party and GOP voters slow to embrace Donald Trump. There were mixed views on the superdelegate issue and the state's open primary system. With California's June 7 primary only a week away, a new Hoover Institution Golden State Poll finds Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with large leads in their respective primaries but cautionary signs ahead, and good news for Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez.

In the 2015 federal elections, the FDP consolidated its position as the leading economic party. The SVP made gains thanks to its solid ground-level support and the widespread concerns about migration. On the other hand, the GLP and BDP could rely only on a small number of core voters, and in 2015 the electorate didn't identify them with specific issues or solutions.

A new study has found that seemingly positive media coverage of feminist campaigner Malala Yousafzai is actually full of patronising assumptions about women in Muslim countries. The study analysed more than 140,000 words of coverage of activist Yousafzai in the nine months after she was attacked by the Pakistani Taleban.

Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall found that contentious primaries that receive heavy media coverage and voter attention tend to produce nominees who do less well in the general election. A divisive political primary that receives heavy media scrutiny reduces the party nominee's chances in the general election, Stanford research shows.

In five different experiments, Stanford sociologist Robb Willer found that popular support for the Tea Party derives in part from perceived threats to the status of whites in America. The same dynamics may help explain the rise of Donald Trump in this year's presidential campaign, he added. Threats to racial status among white Americans has driven support for the Tea Party political movement and may also help explain the rise of Donald Trump, a Stanford sociologist said.