social sciences

For the last 18 years, UCLA’s Lisa Snyder has been bringing to life the bygone glory of a true architectural, social and cultural wonder — the Chicago World’s Fair.

The researchers suggest that universities could encourage more risk-taking in research by decoupling job security from productivity.

The model, developed from six years of mathematical research and a decade of police crime data, has been so successful that the LAPD adopted it for use in 14 of its 21 divisions.

Researchers found that people envision an unknown “black”-named character in similar ways to an unknown “white”-named male convicted of assault.

Men who buy sex have less empathy for women in prostitution than men who don’t buy sex, and they are more likely to report having committed rape and other acts of sexual aggression.

Sociologist Edward T. Walker writes in the New York Times that rich corporations are leveraging social media to get customers and ordinary citizens to act as de facto lobbyists.

On the 50th anniversary of the Watts riots, historian Robin D.G. Kelley writes in the L.A. Times that the era gave birth to social justice and arts organizations that remade the community and whose legacy continues today.

Regardless of where they are from, people judge acts like lying, theft and assault to be wrong — but less wrong if those acts happened far away or long ago.

The Labor Studies Applied Research Methods course at the UCLA Labor Center introduces students to basic social science research methods by immersing them in a hands-on project to assist community organizations.

UCLA scholar Ramesh Srinivasan has established a center that will link scholars who want to study the role digital technology plays in cultures globally.

A social psychologist at UCLA Anderson explores how human behavior can be modified by bringing people closer to their future selves.

The donor says he hopes the gift, which will benefit students, faculty and the community, will honor his family’s legacy of giving — one that started with his late grandmother.

Individualistic values have been rising in China as the country has undergone rapid economic and social change, researchers report.

Anthropology professor Alan Page Fiske writes in an op-ed that the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ attackers, like so many people who use violence, probably thought they were acting righteously.

In a new book, UCLA and Northwestern social scientists ascribe most acts of violence to a truly surprising impulse: the desire to do the right thing.

UCLA’s Laure Murat writes that for at least several centuries people have ascribed acts of terror to madness, often to advance political agendas.

Study finds that putting opponents of gay marriage in contact with people who can explain the issue’s personal importance can have dramatic results.

That most people have never heard of Hatshepsut — a pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who was the greatest female ruler of the ancient world — is emblematic of the challenges women have always faced in politics, writes UCLA Egyptologist Kara Cooney.

UCLA professor Lynn Vavreck writes in The New York Times that if the Democrats lose the Senate, it would follow recent electoral history for the party of an unpopular president. Also, watch a video of Vavreck speaking about political TV ads.

Actor Henry Winkler, who played “The Fonz” on the long-running sitcom “Happy Days,” recently talked with UCLA students about the process he goes through in co-authoring the popular “Hank Zipzer” series of children’s books.

In the 18th century, two teams of scientists set out to answer whether the earth was shaped more like a tomato or a Japanese eggplant?

In a new mainstream biography, Kara Cooney sets out to rehabilitate the image of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman whose successes were later erased or reassigned to male forebears.

Many white Americans are becoming less enthusiastic about diversity and multiculturalism as the U.S. moves toward becoming a minority-majority nation, UCLA psychologists report.

In his latest documentary, “Bitter Honey,” UCLA anthropologist Robert Lemelson tracks the abuses suffered by wives trapped in polygamous marriages.

A new book by a UCLA professor shows how ailments presented in 19th century French mental hospitals held up a kind of fun-house mirror to the often horrific political dramas of the country's post-revolutionary era.