Society, Arts and Humanities

Top News
Top news RSS feed
man stealing bag from car

Biases may stoke victim blaming, or reduce it, no matter what the crime

6/20/18

General biases may be at work when people blame or criticize victims of crimes, including rape and robbery victims, according to criminologists. For example, about 80 percent of participants in two studies on the role biases play in victim blaming assigned some direct blame to victims of robbery, while about 43 percent of the participants leveled some direct blame at rape victims.

Restored statue platform with standing moai on the south coast of Rapa Nui. Note that one of the moai is adorned with a red scoria pukao.

Hats on for Easter Island statues

6/4/18

How do you put a 13-ton hat on a giant statue? That's what a team of researchers is trying to figure out with their study of Easter Island statues and the red hats that sit atop some of them.

Melnick.McElroy

Researchers to study conditions at senior centers across the Commonwealth

6/1/18

Janet Melnick, associate teaching professor in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State Scranton, and Heather Shanks-McElroy of Keystone College are collaborating on a research project focusing on conditions at senior community centers throughout Pennsylvania to determine how they are meeting the needs of older Pennsylvanians.

Refugees in Uganda use computers

IST researcher's new book explores the world of 'digital refugees'

5/29/18

With nearly 100 million refugees and displaced persons around the world, a new book by Carleen Maitland, associate professor of information sciences and technology, explores how information and communication technologies are being used to provide humanitarian aid and connect refugees with family and friends.

Jiro Yoshida

Alternative inflation rate may offer more accurate economic guidance

5/24/18

Estimates of inflation rates guide decisions on a range of policy moves, from cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security to whether interest rates should be raised or lowered. A team of economists are suggesting that the way housing rents are assessed in official inflation indexes may mean the actual inflation rate is inaccurate. They are working to create an alternative inflation rate index that addresses this inaccuracy.

Group of kindergarten-aged children

Ties between oral vocabulary and STEM difficulties to be investigated

5/21/18

Young children with early vocabulary difficulties in turn often have difficulty with reading during the primary grades. Penn State researchers will investigate if these oral vocabulary difficulties also lead to math and sciences difficulties throughout elementary school in a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation-funded research project.

Friends in a cafe

New research to identify what makes conversations supportive

5/18/18

Researchers from Penn State, the University of Mississippi and the University of Minnesota aim to clarify how conversations about everyday stressors convey support and how they lead to different emotional outcomes in a new three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Azeta Hatef

Doctoral candidate studies how media shocks culture

5/16/18

Penn State doctoral candidate Azeta Hatef spent a month in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul to examine how its people transitioned both culturally and socially from the dramatic change from a five-year media blackout to the ban lifting in 2001. Specifically, she studied the relationship between media and the changing beauty industry through interviews with consumers of cosmetic surgery.

Grace Hampton Gullah basketry

Mending the Gap

5/15/18

Art, culture, sport, and a new kind of volunteer bring old and young together to strengthen the social fabric.

spiritual

Researcher examines religion and patient-therapist relationships

5/10/18

Stephanie Winkeljohn Black, assistant professor of psychology in Penn State Harrisburg’s School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, sees a gap between how mental health counselors manage religious beliefs and the type of understanding and care that their clients need. She has made closing that gap a mission.

older adults at a computer

Posting, commenting and customizing on Facebook involves, empowers older adults

5/1/18

It's easy to look at social networks as something that is either all bad, or all good. But, researchers suggest it's how you use the network that matters. Older adults who post personal stories, customize their profile, and comment more often indicate the site makes them feel more empowered and gives them a better sense of community. These features, then, might help ease isolation for older adults who are less mobile.

Smeal research: success of female CEOs influenced by male predecessors

4/30/18

The Academy of Management, the largest global association devoted to management and organization research, published a new study recently that found the success of female CEOs can be influenced by their mostly male predecessors. Under specific conditions and by leveraging their own status and power within an organization, predecessor CEOs can be a formidable force in facilitating the subsequent success of female CEOs.

Pages