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SocArXiv papers

• The Geometry of Power: Path Integrals in the Dynamics of Political Regimes
  This paper, "The Geometry of Power," presents a path-integral framework for analyzing the dynamics of political regimes under uncertainty. Whereas the earlier work, The Calculus of Power, focused on optimal paths, the present approach replaces single optimal paths with ensembles of permissible political histories, each weighted by an action functional. In this paper, we also introduce the concepts of path entropy, state entropy, and free action to describe the structures of political accessibility and strength. We then used Monte Carlo simulations, calibrated with political, economic, and conflict indicators, to test the validity of the framework on six East African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The aim of the analysis is to evaluate the relative accessibility of democratic, authoritarian, military, and collapsed regime endpoints. The results show that the stability of regimes and shifts is governed not only by minimizing costs but also by the "entropy of the geometry" that shapes rational political behavior under uncertainty. Authoritarian regimes are found to be structurally strong under prevailing regional constraints. However, democratic transitions are restricted to narrow and fragile pathways.
• Models for emergent structures in mobility: Specification and individual-level interpretation
  It is increasingly common to study mobility and migration of individuals between social and physical locations as networks in which locations are nodes connected by mobile people. This conceptualisation as mobility networks facilitates the analysis of how individuals influence one another in their mobility destinations. Technically, this amounts to analysing interdependence between individuals' mobility paths. A recently proposed framework - the endogenous log-linear model (ELMo) - allows the statistical modelling of these social processes and, therefore, dependence in mobility, combining insights from exponential random graph models (ERGMs) and log-linear models. However, little attention was paid to how such models should be specified in a principled, theoretically informed way. In this study, we apply statistical theory to propose model specifications that can be used to analyse emergent structures in mobility. We first reformulate the model under analysis as a conditional multinomial logit with dependent observations. Subsequently, we show how to specify models that (i) are based on clear dependence assumptions on the individual level, that (ii) have a clear individual level interpretation, and that (iii) avoid (near-)degeneracy, a common problem for models with dependent observations. We end with an example application pertaining to the mobility of computer science faculty between university departments.
• Predicting St. Louis Housing Prices with Machine Learning on Market and Assessor Data
  Housing markets are more complex than a simple supply-demand relationship. Prices are set by complex market and spatial neighborhood dynamics. Certain cities like St. Louis, MO have experienced dramatic population decline marked by extreme vacancy and abandonment. Amidst its population decline, St. Louis simultaneously demonstrates neighborhoods with sharp housing shortages and competition alongside others with entrenched vacancy and disinvestment mere blocks away from one another. We use supervised machine learning models to predict housing prices with a diverse feature set that incorporates spatial aspects of vacancy among other traditional housing amenities in St. Louis. Our results show how proximity to vacancy may impact a home's value even more than its number of bedrooms. These findings, we expect, may prompt policymakers to combat vacancy even more urgently to maintain neighborhood market stability.
• Occupational Dark Matter: How Occupations Shape Intergenerational Mobility Beyond Social Class and Status
  Existing models of intergenerational mobility often fail to adequately capture the associations between parents' and children's occupations, leaving a substantial share of detailed mobility unexplained. This article systematically examines off-diagonal occupational mobility patterns beyond big social class effects and gradational affinities. We investigate whether micro-class mobility is primarily determined by origin-specific aspirations or similarities in human, cultural, and social capital between micro-classes. Drawing on data from the General Social Surveys in the United States and Germany, we employ a new structural modelling approach that integrates log-linear models and network methodology. Our findings reveal distinct micro-class mobility patterns shaped by institutionalized "mobility corridors," with concentrated mobility along specific origin-destination paths after accounting for big-class and gradational characteristics. These patterns are asymmetrical, with elevated mobility rates from micro-class A to B not reciprocated from B to A. This asymmetry indicates that individuals target specific micro-classes based on origin-specific aspirations rather than relying on symmetric resource transferability. Thus, we demonstrate the mechanisms by which micro-classes shape intergenerational mobility beyond gradational affinities and big-class effects.
• Matter, Fields, Dark Matter and Dark Energy in a New Phenomenal Ontology
  Contemporary physics distinguishes between physical bodies, fields, dark matter, and dark energy as fundamentally different constituents of physical reality. While this classification has proven empirically successful, it has also generated persistent ontological tensions--especially in cosmology--where increasingly exotic entities are invoked to account for observed gravitational phenomena. This paper proposes an alternative interpretive framework in which these distinctions are understood not as differences in ontological kind, but as differences in phenomenal accessibility--that is, accessibility relative to a specific mode of perception, namely the human mode, extended by instruments, mathematical formalisms, and experimental practices. Within a phenomenal ontology of physical reality, we argue that physical bodies correspond to regimes of maximal phenomenal accessibility, characterized by localization, persistence, and stability; fields represent distributed but still phenomenally accessible structures; dark matter reflects non phenomenal constraints acting on spacetime geometry without themselves becoming phenomenally articulated; and dark energy signals a global evolution of the conditions under which phenomenal reality remains coherent at cosmological scales. Rather than postulating new physical substances or modifying established dynamical laws, the proposed framework reinterprets dark components as indicators of the limits and internal stratification of phenomenal manifestation. This approach preserves the empirical and formal successes of contemporary physics while reducing ontological inflation and clarifying the scope of physical explanation. The resulting picture replaces a fragmented ontology of entities with a unified, scale-dependent structure of phenomenal accessibility, offering a new perspective on fundamentality, cosmology, and the meaning of physical reality.
• Hail Caesar! The political economy of China's national security turn in economic governance
  There has been a national security turn in China that has marked a shift in modus operandi from 'development-first' to 'security-first', but why would the leadership downplay a highly legitimising governance approach that has underpinned China's massive growth rates and the basis of regime survival for over 40 years? This article problematises dominant explanations that centre great power competition, adopting instead a Gramscian approach that takes seriously the domestic and transnational sources of state authority. We argue that China's national security turn is best understood as a Caesarist hegemonic project defined by charismatic leadership, arbitration between social groups, and coercive rule, rooted in global, state and societal conflicts inherent to global capitalism. Driven by crisis-prone conditions of escalating US-China rivalry, intra-state factional stalemates over China's industrial overcapacity, and deepening societal inequality, the article demonstrates how a Xi Jinping-led national security faction has sought to recalibrate the Chinese hegemonic project. In this light, the national security turn is not wholly a response to inter-state security competition but also a means to further extract the latent growth potential from China's development model and consolidate the position of Chinese state actors and of China between a US-led Global North and China-led Global South.
• La prospettiva civica. Nuove letture dell'associazionismo sociale tra ricerca, comunita e trasformazione
  Confronto a piu voci intorno ai risultati del decimo Rapporto sull'associazionismo sociale curato dall'Istituto di ricerche educative e formative (Iref) delle Acli, che offre una lettura aggiornata del fenomeno in un momento in cui il terzo settore e il mondo del volontariato si trovano ad affrontare sfide inedite e profonde trasformazioni. Il dibattito ha messo al centro il ruolo delle associazioni nel costruire riconoscimento, legami di comunanza e spazi sottratti alla logica del mercato, ripensando le dinamiche locali e il significato stesso della partecipazione civica.
• Social constructed childbearing motivations and fertility intentions: theories integration and empirical evidence
  This paper begins from the premise that motivations for having (or not having) children are not fixed or purely personal, but socially constructed. These socially shaped motivations influence how young adults approach the prospect of parenthood and ultimately shape their fertility intentions. Yet existing research lacks a theoretical framework that clarifies how social influences on motivation become the psychological mechanisms driving such intentions and subsequent behaviors. We address this gap by integrating Self-Determination Theory with the Theory of Planned Behavior, proposing that socio-cognitive factors - attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control - affect fertility intentions not directly but through the type of motivation they foster, whether intrinsic, extrinsic, or amotivated. Using nationally representative survey data on Italian young adults and structural equation modeling, we show that fertility intentions depend less on socio-cognitive factors themselves and more on the motivational orientations they generate. Intrinsic motives are associated with stronger intentions, whereas extrinsic and amotivated forms correspond to weaker or absent commitments. These findings underscore the importance of considering motivational type in fertility research and demonstrate the value of a TPB-SDT integrated framework for explaining variation in fertility intentions across individuals and social contexts.
• Europe's Gender Equality Lens (1999-2024): A Bibliometric Analysis of Institutionalist and Post-Structuralist Frames
  European gender equality research now constitutes a substantial and internally diverse body of scholarship, yet the ways in which it is conceptually organized are rarely examined directly. This article maps the field's underlying structure by analyzing recurring patterns in the language scholars use to frame gender inequality. Drawing on a bibliometric and vocabulary-based framing analysis of 2,241 English-language social science articles published between 1999 and 2024 and indexed in Scopus, the study examines titles and abstracts using theoretically informed dictionaries associated with institutionalist and post-structuralist approaches. The analysis uncovers a persistent theoretical dichotomy: institutionalist and post-structuralist viewpoints constitute separate conceptual clusters that influence the definition, explanation, and remediation of gender inequality in the literature. Alongside these dominant orientations, a small but enduring group of publications combines elements of both, while a broader residual category reflects neighboring disciplinary traditions. Longitudinal evidence shows that institutionalist and post-structuralist approaches have expanded concurrently rather than in a converging manner. The dual configuration sheds light on the persistence of unresolved debates within feminist scholarship and demonstrates the value of reflexivity regarding theoretical choices and their implications for policy-oriented research.
• Designing social tipping interventions: a systematic framework for scaling up behavioural change
  Social tipping, the process by which a new behaviour spreads rapidly upon reaching a critical mass, offers a promising pathway for large-scale behavioural change. However, systematically designing interventions to trigger such tipping points remains a key challenge. This paper introduces a two-phase framework to guide researchers and policymakers in developing effective social tipping interventions. The first phase involves assessing the potential for social tipping by evaluating the prevalence of the target behaviour and the underlying preferences and social expectations that sustain it. We propose a method for eliciting individual thresholds for changing behaviour, distinguishing between conditional subjects (those who require social proof for changing behaviour) and unconditional subjects (those who are independent of others' decisions). The second phase uses the diagnostic information to inform strategic decisions about whom to target and how to intervene to activate the social tipping process. We analyze the trade-offs between targeting different subpopulations (e.g., amenable vs. resistant individuals) and propose a "stepping stone" approach that breaks down change into manageable steps, which can be particularly effective in populations with polarized individual thresholds. Taken together, our framework offers a roadmap for scaling up large-scale behavioural change through social tipping.
• Effects of Unemployment Benefit Sanctions Among Young Adults With and Without Labour Market Disadvantages: A Register-Based Target Trial Emulation in Finland.
  Background To encourage transitions into employment or education, governments impose benefit sanctions on unemployed individuals who fail to comply with programme requirements. However, evidence on the effectiveness of such sanctions remains limited, particularly among young adults. We investigated whether sanctions are associated with transitions into employment or education and whether effects differ among individuals facing labour market disadvantages. To estimate causal effects using observational data, we applied a target trial emulation framework. Methods We used nationwide Finnish register data on 51,312 unemployed individuals under the age of 25 in 2022. Following a target trial emulation framework, we treated sanctions as the intervention and applied coarsened exact matching with importance weights to approximate random allocation. We constructed a labour market disadvantage score by summing five indicators associated with poorer labour market attachment. Time-to-event outcomes over a 24-month follow-up were estimated using Kaplan-Meier methods and parametric survival models. Results Overall, 78% of young adults transitioned to employment or education within an average of 10 months. With all sanctions, the median time to employment or education was slightly shorter for individuals who were sanctioned, with hazard ratios over 24 months. Among individuals without labour market disadvantages, sanctions were associated with a 2.7-month reduction in time to transition into employment or education. Among those with 3 to 5 labour market risks, the reduction was 0.1 months. Survival analyses supported the divergent associations among individuals with and without labour market disadvantages. Conclusions Unemployment benefit sanctions can facilitate transitions to employment or education among unemployed young adults without labour market disadvantages. However, the effects of sanctions differ between those with and without such disadvantages. Policymakers may use these findings to retarget sanctions or combine them with supportive measures.
• FReDA Module: Causes and Consequences of Economic Abuse in Intimate Partnerships
  This document describes a newly developed module on economic abuse in intimate partnerships that will be integrated into Wave 6 of the FReDA (Family Research and Demographic Analysis) panel study. The module aims to capture key dimensions of economic abuse within intimate relationships and to expand the analytical potential of the FReDA data in this field. It comprises three conceptual batteries: economic control (Wirtschaftliche Kontrolle / Ressourcennutzungsverhinderung), economic sabotage (Wirtschaftliche Sabotage / Ressourcenaneignungsverhinderung), and economic exploitation (Wirtschaftliche Ausbeutung / Ressourcenmissbrauch). Together, these batteries provide a comprehensive and systematic measurement of economic abuse, enabling detailed empirical analyses of its prevalence, forms, and consequences.
• Integrated Inequality Database. User Guide and Data Sources
  This document describes the dataset that provides information on 201 economies by combining inequality and income statistics from four major sources: the UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database (WIID), Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP), and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). For each platform, this document reports the version used and provides direct links to the corresponding sources. We provide a brief overview of each underlying dataset to contextualize the conceptual and methodological differences that shape inequality estimates.
• Conceptual Misalignment in XAI
  This paper argues that the prevailing XAI paradigm suffers not from technical limitations but from a profound philosophical misconception: the assumption that explanation is primarily about transparency. We argue that the development of useful explanation is not fundamentally a question of information transfer, but of epistemic parity. Through a case of harbor monitoring we show that stakeholders are indeed conceptually misaligned; however, these misalignments ultimately reflect underlying conflicts between domain-specific assumptions and authority claims. We call for replacing transparency-focused XAI with a new paradigm of Domain Authority Negotiation (DAN) that explicitly acknowledges explanation as a contestation of epistemic power rather than a mechanism of revelation.
• Como la Industria Farmaceutica se acerca e influye en los Medicos
  En las ultimas decadas, la industria farmaceutica se ha consolidado como uno de los sectores mas poderosos de la economia global y, ademas de la innovacion, sostiene parte de ese poder mediante estrategias controvertidas de marketing, lobby e influencia sobre la investigacion, la regulacion, las guias clinicas y la propia practica medica. Este reportaje cientifico sintetiza los principales hallazgos del estudio "Relaciones e Influencias de la Industria Farmaceutica sobre la Practica Medica", basado en el analisis de Open Payments (CMS), sistema publico de Estados Unidos que registra transferencias de valor a medicos y hospitales universitarios. Los datos indican que, entre 2015 y 2024, los fabricantes reportaron cerca de US$ 23,2 mil millones en pagos a medicos y US$ 23,3 mil millones a hospitales universitarios, evidenciando la escala de un engranaje que opera tanto mediante grandes contratos como a traves de "cortesias" cotidianas. La literatura internacional revisada converge en asociar estos beneficios con cambios en el patron de prescripcion - a menudo sutiles e incluso inconscientes -, incluyendo mayor preferencia por medicamentos de marca, mayor alineacion con productos de las empresas pagadoras y aumento de costos para los sistemas de salud, en ocasiones con ganancias clinicas marginales. Casos limite, como las controversias en torno a Xarelto y el esquema promocional de Insys/Subsys en medio de la crisis de los opioides, ilustran como los incentivos y la promocion pueden aproximarse a practicas ilicitas, aunque la influencia mas comun sea discreta y rutinaria. El reportaje discute mecanismos explicativos de la psicologia social y de la comunicacion - reciprocidad, sesgo de autoservicio y efecto de tercera persona (third-person effect) - y destaca la centralidad de las comidas y los pequenos obsequios, con evidencia de efecto dosis-respuesta, lo que sugiere que las interacciones repetidas pueden ampliar la receptividad a los mensajes promocionales incluso sin percepcion consciente por parte de los medicos. Por ultimo, aborda el "curriculo oculto" en las facultades de medicina y argumenta que la transparencia y los topes para obsequios son insuficientes, y propone respuestas estructurales: restricciones mas firmes y modelos institucionales transparentes de financiamiento, con gobernanza independiente, para proteger la integridad clinica, reducir conflictos de interes y preservar la confianza publica.
• Economic Conditions Constitute Zero-Sum Beliefs as a Predictive and Classifiable Cognitive Structure
  The social competition has become increasingly fierce, and individuals' perception of success is guided by cooperation and shared benefits. Some people define success as a scarce and exclusive resource, which is referred to as the "zero-sum construal of success". This viewpoint will weaken individuals' tendency to actively help others and their willingness to share knowledge. This study aims to evaluate whether the zero-sum construal of success has a predictable structural basis shaped by macroeconomic and social-status factors. We based our research on replicating the research of Sirola and Pitesa (2017), using Bayesian regression and XGBoost models introduced to empirically assess the predictability of the zero-sum construal of success. We find little evidence supporting the replicability of the original findings. The research results indicate that zero-sum belief is not a randomly formed attitude tendency but a psychological cognitive structure constructed by socioeconomic factors. It also shows that economic pressure affects individuals at the emotional level, and it shapes competitive cognitive paradigms through learnable social mechanisms. The findings of this study provide a new research perspective for understanding the relationship between economic cycle fluctuations and social psychological changes.
• Replication Study on "Machine Learning from a 'Universe' of Signals: The Role of Feature Engineering" (Li et al., 2025)
  This paper replicates and extends the study of Li et al. (2025) to investigate the role of feature engineering in machine learning (ML)-based cross-sectional stock return prediction. We construct a 3-tier feature system with 78 effective features, including basic financial ratios, financial change features, and growth quality features, using CRSP and Compustat data. Through a recursive rolling window approach from 1969 to 2018, we compare the performance of boosted regression trees (BRT), neural networks (NN), and the newly added extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models. The results show that XGBoost produces the highest accuracy in prediction since it captures statistical correlations among features efficiently, while it underperforms in terms of investment return due to its sensitivity to limited feature quality and the gap between statistical fitting and economic profitability. On the contrary, the BRT model generates the most robust performance for a strategy since it is more tolerant of noisy features within an incomplete information environment. Compared with Li et al. (2025), our strategy exhibits a lower Sharpe ratio and an insignificant risk-adjusted alpha. It is mainly due to the smaller number of features and the different sample period. This paper confirms the core conclusion of the original paper that feature engineering rather than model complexity is crucial for ML investment strategies. It offers empirical knowledge regarding real-time portfolio construction.
• A Bibliometric Mapping and Conceptual Integration of Child-safe Marketing in Digital Spaces
  The rapid expansion of digital marketing has intensified concerns about children's exposure to persuasive and often opaque commercial practices. Influencer endorsements, algorithmic targeting, and immersive platform architectures increasingly shape children's online environments, raising questions about fairness, autonomy, and wellbeing. While research on these issues has grown, scholarship remains fragmented across public health, communication, psychology, law, and marketing, limiting theoretical integration and practical guidance. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of 176 Scopus indexed publications (2015-2025) to map the intellectual structure of child safe marketing research and identify its thematic evolution. Using citation, co citation, and co occurrence analyses, the study reveals accelerating scholarly attention, concentration in high income regulatory contexts, and a shift from compliance oriented perspectives toward strategic and governance focused approaches. Australia's 2024 Online Safety Amendment exemplifies emerging regulatory tightening that elevates the strategic value of proactive child protective practices. Building on the bibliometric findings, the study proposes a five level integrative framework spanning individual vulnerability, organizational practices, platform governance, regulatory structures, and strategic value creation. This framework demonstrates how ethical commitments can generate reputational capital and competitive advantage. The study offers a consolidated foundation for future research and actionable insights for policymakers, platforms, and practitioners.
• Como a Industria Farmaceutica se aproxima e influencia Medicos
  Nas ultimas decadas, a industria farmaceutica consolidou-se como um dos setores mais poderosos da economia global e, alem da inovacao, sustenta parte desse poder por meio de estrategias controversas de marketing, lobby e influencia sobre pesquisa, regulacao, diretrizes clinicas e a propria pratica medica. Esta reportagem cientifica sintetiza os principais achados do estudo "Relacoes e Influencias da Industria Farmaceutica sobre a Pratica Medica", baseado na analise do Open Payments (CMS), sistema publico dos Estados Unidos que registra transferencias de valor a medicos e hospitais universitarios. Os dados indicam que, entre 2015 e 2024, fabricantes reportaram cerca de US$ 23,2 bilhoes em pagamentos a medicos e US$ 23,3 bilhoes a hospitais universitarios, evidenciando a escala de uma engrenagem que opera tanto por grandes contratos quanto por "cortesias" cotidianas. A literatura internacional revisada converge ao associar esses beneficios a mudancas no padrao de prescricao - muitas vezes sutis e ate inconscientes -, incluindo maior preferencia por medicamentos de marca, maior alinhamento com produtos das empresas pagadoras e aumento de custos para sistemas de saude, por vezes com ganhos clinicos marginais. Casos-limite, como controversias envolvendo o Xarelto e o esquema promocional da Insys/Subsys em meio a crise dos opioides, ilustram como incentivo e promocao podem se aproximar de praticas ilicitas, embora a influencia mais comum seja discreta e rotineira. A reportagem discute mecanismos explicativos da psicologia social e da comunicacao - reciprocidade, vies de autoatendimento e third-person effect - e destaca a centralidade de refeicoes e pequenos brindes, com evidencias de efeito dose-resposta, sugerindo que interacoes repetidas podem ampliar a receptividade as mensagens promocionais mesmo sem percepcao consciente por parte dos medicos. Por fim, aborda o "curriculo oculto" nas escolas medicas e argumenta que transparencia e tetos para brindes sao insuficientes, defendendo respostas estruturais: restricoes mais firmes e modelos institucionais transparentes de financiamento, com governanca independente, para proteger a integridade clinica, reduzir conflitos de interesse e preservar a confianca publica.
• Exploitation Versus Exploration in Technology Search Strategies: A Machine Learning Replication of Morandi Stagni et al. (2021) "A Bird in the Hand Is Worth Two in the Bush"
  This study replicates the instrumental variables (IV) analysis from Morandi Stagni et al. (2021), "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush: Technology search strategies and competition due to import penetration," which examines how import penetration affects firms' technology search strategies, distinguishing between exploration (new knowledge) and exploitation (refining existing knowledge). We replicate this work to interrogate its assumptions, including the exogeneity of instruments (tariffs and exchange rates) affecting search only through import penetration, the linearity of effects, potential omitted variable bias from domestic confounders (e.g., firm size, R&D intensity, domestic competition), and sample biases toward larger firms due to missing data filters, which may limit generalizability in complex global trade domains. Employing the original IV method in R with publicly available datasets (NBER Patent Data, CRSP-Compustat, and Peter Schott's trade data) for U.S. manufacturing firms from 1991 to 2006, we yield 5,076 firm-year observations from 319 firms, closely matching the original after sales adjustments. We extend the analysis using XGBoost machine learning to assess variable importance in a non-linear, multivariate context, excluding tautological variables (e.g., total_cites, patent_stock_lag). The IV replication successfully reproduces the original outcomes: increased import penetration, instrumented by tariffs and exchange rates, significantly reduces technological exploration (mean = 0.038) and increases exploitation (mean = 0.962) across 3,259 observations with non-zero citations. Surprisingly, the XGBoost extension reveals that import penetration adds minimal predictive power (not in the top 10), with firm fundamentals (e.g., xrd, sale, capx) and domestic competition metrics (total_sim, hhi) dominating rankings--China-specific penetration ranks modestly (#8-#9). This coherently links to the original's assumptions by highlighting omitted confounders and non-linear interactions that overstate foreign shocks' causal role, implying domestic and internal drivers primarily shape search strategies in global environments and calling for nuanced policies beyond trade protections.
• Azerbaijani Identity in Iran: A Systematic Review, Identity Spectrum, and Analysis of Contemporary Developments
  Context. Estimates suggest that 20-30 million Azerbaijanis live in Iran, a population two to three times larger than that of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Although officially recognised as a major ethnic and linguistic group, this recognition remains tightly bounded. Identity is largely confined to spoken language use, while cultural, educational, media, and political expressions have been persistently constrained. Objective. This study examines how Azerbaijani identity in Iran is formed, negotiated, and transformed under conditions of partial recognition and institutional constraint, with particular attention to recent identity awakening. Method. The study adopts a mixed qualitative design, combining a thematic literature review with semi-structured interviews and contextual analysis of developments since the early 2000s. Interview data were analysed iteratively using an identity-spectrum framework, supported by member checking and triangulation. Results. Increased visibility and articulation of Azerbaijani identity have occurred alongside continued suppression and selective recognition, producing asymmetric identity change. Individuals are more likely to shift toward stronger Azerbaijani identification following experiences of misrecognition, with collective arenas such as sport, media, activism, and politics amplifying these dynamics. Conclusion. Azerbaijani identity awakening in Iran is best understood as a structurally produced response to long-term recognition deficits rather than an externally driven process.
• Admissions Priorities and Campus Diversity: Insights from the Common Data Set
  Selective college admissions shape access to opportunity in U.S. higher education, yet researchers have limited systematic evidence on how institutions' publicly stated admissions priorities relate to who enrolls. We ask whether colleges and universities that report considering alumni familial relation--"legacy status"--enroll smaller shares of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM) first-year students. We compile a new panel of Common Data Set (CDS) reports from highly selective U.S. institutions spanning the 2010-2022 admissions cycles and collapse it to institution-level measures. After adjusting for sector and for the broader bundle of reported admissions priorities, institutions that report considering legacy status enroll roughly 7-8 percentage points fewer URM students. The pattern persists under alternative control constructions, functional forms, and influence checks. Legacy ratings change rarely within institutions over this period, so the association is driven primarily by stable differences across institutions. In our elite sample, the binary legacy contrast is identified among public institutions. Treating CDS admissions priorities as standardized organizational signals, our CDS-based approach provides a replicable framework for tracking how institutions' stated priorities align with enrollment composition--an issue likely to draw heightened attention in the post-Students for Fair Admissions environment.
• Diffusion of Violent Political Protest - Geographic Evidence from Bangladesh
  Theories on authoritarian resistance and violent collective action posit that individuals are likely to engage in protest behavior when they assess that: (i) politically organizing will achieve their objectives; and (ii) the gains received will outweigh the risks of punishment. Initially, citizens have incomplete information to make these judgments successfully. To obtain the necessary information, protesters rely on external sources, such as news or social media networks. Most importantly, however, is the information generated from neighbors and other nearby citizens. Social proof, where individuals seek optimal decision-making in times of uncertainty by observing the actions of others, is significant where criminal laws may be violated. Individuals' apprehensions regarding government reprisal are mitigated when observing successful protests with analogous law enforcement conditions and comprising similar participants. Previous studies have demonstrated that geography exerts a pivotal influence on the diffusion of protests. Despite increasing use of communication technologies, I hypothesize that geography remains an important predictor of violent protest diffusion, specifically due to the ongoing necessity for social proof. This study provides both a substantive and methodological contribution. Substantively, this study analyzes a country that is in the process of democratic backsliding at an exponential rate, which is not considered in other papers on protest diffusion. Methodologically, I employ a novel Hawkes process model to assess violent protest data from Bangladesh and map the spatio-temporal clustering of events. Unlike prior uses of Hawkes processes in protest diffusion, this model accounts for continuous spatial and temporal dependencies simultaneously, avoiding the artificial boundaries imposed by traditional spatial weight matrices. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate the enduring significance of geographic proximity in the diffusion of violent protests, highlighting the need for a nuanced understanding of the underlying mechanisms. The analysis unveils distinct patterns of diffusion at varying geographical scales, underscoring the importance of administrative levels in discerning baseline intensities, triggering effects, and temporal decay rates.
• How the Pharmaceutical Industry approaches and influences Physicians
  In recent decades, the pharmaceutical industry has consolidated itself as one of the most powerful sectors of the global economy and, beyond innovation, sustains part of that power through controversial strategies of marketing, lobbying, and influence over research, regulation, clinical guidelines, and medical practice itself. This science report synthesizes the main findings of the study "Relationships and Influences of the Pharmaceutical Industry on Medical Practice", based on an analysis of Open Payments (CMS), the United States' public system that records transfers of value to physicians and teaching hospitals. The data indicate that, between 2015 and 2024, manufacturers reported about US$ 23.2 billion in payments to physicians and US$ 23.3 billion to teaching hospitals, highlighting the scale of a mechanism that operates through both large contracts and everyday "courtesies." The reviewed international literature converges in associating these benefits with changes in prescribing patterns - often subtle and even unconscious - including a greater preference for brand-name drugs, closer alignment with products from paying companies, and increased costs for health systems, sometimes with marginal clinical gains. Edge cases, such as controversies involving Xarelto and the Insys/Subsys promotional scheme amid the opioid crisis, illustrate how incentives and promotion can approach illicit practices, although the more common influence is discreet and routine. The report discusses explanatory mechanisms from social psychology and communication - reciprocity, self-serving bias, and the third-person effect - and highlights the central role of meals and small gifts, with evidence of a dose-response effect, suggesting that repeated interactions may increase receptivity to promotional messages even without physicians' conscious awareness. Finally, it addresses the "hidden curriculum" in medical schools and argues that transparency and caps on gifts are insufficient, advocating structural responses: stronger restrictions and transparent, institutional funding models with independent governance to protect clinical integrity, reduce conflicts of interest, and preserve public trust.
• Harmony vs. Honesty: The Guilt-Repair Paradox
  - Abstract While guilt is traditionally characterized as a moral emotion that motivates individuals to repair damaged social bonds, this paper investigates conditions under which this reparative impulse comes into tension with the ethical demand for honesty. We conceptualize Short-Term Relational Focus (STRF) as a multi-level phenomenon encompassing evolutionary pressures for social cohesion, psychological mechanisms of ego-protection, and ethical tensions between immediate harmony and long-term integrity and epistemic clarity. Drawing on experimental evidence (Li & Jain, 2021), organizational observations, and philosophical perspectives from Kant, Nietzsche, and Aristotle, the paper develops a bidirectional framework for understanding social repair. This framework examines the Guilt-Honesty Paradox from both the sender's and the receiver's perspective, highlighting how attempts at relational repair may unintentionally undermine trust, learning, and accountability. The paper further outlines practical strategies--supported by case illustrations, tables, and applied examples across organizational, educational, healthcare, and digital contexts--for reconciling concern for relationships with commitments to truthfulness. Keywords: Guilt; Honesty; Social Repair; Moral Emotions; Temporal Narrowing; Trust; Ethical Decision-Making
• Land, Power, and Emancipation: The Historical Demise of the Khoti System and Its Social Consequences
  This research critically examines the Khoti system in the Konkan region of western India as a historical manifestation of agrarian exploitation, wherein intermediary landlords imposed exorbitant rents upon cultivators - predominantly from marginalized castes - systematically depriving them of land ownership, rights, and dignity. Situating this feudal framework within the broader socio-economic discourse, the study investigates how entrenched hierarchies sustained structural inequality and economic disenfranchisement. Central to the analysis is Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's constitutional vision, which redefined Indian democracy through the inseparable pursuit of social and economic justice. His transformative legal architecture not only dismantled exploitative land relations but also facilitated the emergence of an inclusive middle class across diverse sectors. Employing a historical-analytical methodology, this paper interrogates the transition from feudal dependency to constitutional empowerment by engaging with economic theory, constitutional provisions on equality, abolition of untouchability, and land reforms. By juxtaposing pre- and post-Constitutional realities, the research elucidates how juridical reform can function as an instrument of social emancipation and equitable redistribution. Ultimately, this study contributes to global discourses on agrarian justice by positioning India's constitutional experience as a replicable model for reform, capable of addressing similar socio-economic inequities in other parts of the world. Keywords: Khoti system; Agrarian exploitation; Marginalized castes; Agrarian justice JEL Classification: Q15; N55; O13; D63; P48; J43
• The dynamics of cultural systems
  Culture is not just traits but a dynamic system of interdependent beliefs, practices and artefacts embedded in cognitive, social and material structures. Culture evolves as these entities interact, generating path dependence, attractor states and tension, with long-term stability punctuated by rapid systemic transformations. Cultural learning and creativity is modelled as coherence-seeking information processing: individuals filter, transform and recombine input in light of prior acquisitions and dissonance reduction, thereby creating increasingly structured worldviews. Higher-order traits such as goals, skills, norms and cognitive gadgets act as emergent metafilters that regulate subsequent selection by defining what counts as coherent. Together, these filtering processes self-organise into epistemic niches, echo chambers, polarised groups and institutions that channel information flows and constrain future evolution. In this view, LLMs and recommender algorithms are products of cultural embeddings that now act back on cultural systems by automated filtering and recombination of information, reshaping future dynamics of cultural systems.
• Modelling cultural evolution
  Formal modelling provides a toolkit for understanding cultural dynamics, from individual decisions to recurring patterns of change. This chapter explains what models are and why they matter. Using a precise, shared language, they aid thinking and communication by turning fuzzy assumptions into clear, comparable, testable claims. The chapter describes the modelling process, trading explanatory clarity against predictive specificity. Four families of models are surveyed, from the micro-level with optimising agents to macro-level dynamics with heuristic or even implicit agents, covering reasoning (Bayesian inference, game theory), adaptive updating (reinforcement learning, evolutionary games), mean-field approaches (compartmental models, population dynamics), and complex systems (agent-based models, social networks). Building on these, a general template for modelling cultural evolution is outlined that connects system states, cognitive processes, behaviour, and macro-level outcomes in dynamic loops, linking individuals, groups, institutions, and their environments. Taken together, these tools support a pluralist but coherent understanding of cultural change.
• Social Movement Activism Outline Guide for Beginners: How to Start a Food Insecurities Social Movement in Your Community
  Disclaimer: This paper is written as an applied sociological guide for students, community members, and emerging activists interested in building reform-oriented social movements. Rather than advancing a narrow empirical claim for peer-reviewed journals, the paper is intentionally pedagogical and praxis-oriented, integrating multiple sociological theories to demonstrate how theory can be translated into real-world organizing social movement strategies. Abstract: This blueprint is designed for emerging activists, students, and community members who want to build effective, reform oriented social movements but may not know where to begin. Using food insecurity and food deserts in Los Angeles County as a case study, the guide demonstrates how ordinary people can organize, mobilize resources, and create structural change without needing political power, institutional backing, or prior experience. The reading translates major sociological theories--including Resource Mobilization Theory, Framing Theory, Legal Consciousness Theory, Collective Action Frames, Political Process Theory, Performance Activism, and the Sociological Imagination--into clear, actionable strategies that beginners can apply in their own communities. Alongside theoretical grounding, the blueprint offers practical steps for securing funding, recruiting volunteers, framing injustice, engaging policymakers, and building real-world interventions such as community gardens. While centered on hunger, the framework is intentionally adaptable: the same tools can be used to address a wide range of social inequalities. This guide serves as an accessible, theory-informed roadmap for anyone ready to transform personal frustration into collective action and build a movement capable of creating meaningful, community-driven change.
• Beyond Gatekeeping: A Manifesto for Governing Scholarship in the Open Commons
  Open access has triumphed in the dissemination of research, making it widely available and discoverable beyond the confines of journal enclosures. The current challenge lies not in access, but in evaluation. While dissemination has evolved, scholarly judgment systems remain ensnared by opaque and anonymous gatekeeping. This study contends that governance, rather than quality, is the core issue. By synthesizing the literature on citations, trust, prestige, and scholarly behavior, we demonstrate that open research is extensively used, cited, and trusted by researchers. Journal branding serves as a residual signal, yet evaluative authority remains confined within closed processes that are misaligned with the ways knowledge is produced, encountered, and assessed. In response, we propose Governance by Guide (GG), a model for evaluating preprint-based scholarly commons. This model replaces gatekeeping with open, attributed guidance; rejection with non-erasure; and final verdicts with public records of critique and response. Evaluation becomes an additive process of stewardship rather than an act of certification. The ultimate evaluative authority rests with the sovereign reader empowered by transparency. We conclude that sustaining a credible open scholarly commons requires abandoning journal-centered certification in favor of transparent, community-governed evaluation. The GG offers a practical framework for achieving this realignment, aligning scholarly authority with openness, accountability, and lived research practice.
• The Arab Spring as the End of a Long Electoral Cycle of Aging Authoritarian Regimes
  This article interprets the Arab Spring as the terminal phase of a long electoral cycle, introduced in the article as an analytical concept capturing the long-term dynamics of authoritarian regimes in the region. In contrast to dominant socio-economic and diffusion-based explanations, the analysis foregrounds the temporal dimension of political instability and the phenomenon of regime aging. It demonstrates that by 2010-2011 a substantial share of Arab autocracies had simultaneously entered a phase of legitimational exhaustion, coinciding with electoral and quasi-electoral points of vulnerability, including elections, constitutional amendments, and succession crises. From this perspective, the Arab Spring is understood as the outcome of the synchronization of these processes rather than as a series of isolated national crises.
• Work for Stay: Balancing Reciprocity in Accommodation
  The sharing economy has reshaped tourism accommodation, fostering work-for-accommodation exchanges, where travellers trade labour for accommodation as a tourism experience. We conceptualise work exchange sharing accommodation as a reciprocity-oriented tourism form. Using social exchange theory, we investigate how perceived congruence and incongruence between travellers' giving (labour) and taking (lodging and experiences) influence satisfaction. Analysing 193,707 traveller reviews, we find a non-linear satisfaction curve, peaking at moderate balance but declining when exchanges become excessive. Notably, travellers report higher satisfaction when receiving slightly more than they give. These insights deepen understanding of exchange dynamics in sharing economy tourism, highlight perceived fairness in host-traveller interactions, and offer practical implications for travellers, hosts, and platforms in promoting sharing economy tourism.
• Caste, Class, and Stalled Social Mobility: Structural Constraints on Marginalized Communities in Contemporary India
  India's socio-economic transformation represents an emancipatory project whose achievements, though significant, remain structurally circumscribed. Constitutional equality, affirmative action, and the expansion of public education weakened entrenched forms of exclusion and enabled segments of historically marginalised communities to attain limited upward mobility, securing entry into formal employment and the lower middle strata. Yet this advancement has not culminated in durable economic elevation or meaningful access to elite positions, exposing a persistent disjunction between juridical liberation and substantive class mobility. This paper interrogates the paradox of chains broken yet ladders blocked by examining the structural constraints that impede progression beyond the middle tiers. Drawing upon economic and sociological perspectives, it demonstrates how asymmetries in access to land, financial capital, elite educational institutions, and influential social networks continue to govern patterns of wealth accumulation and occupational stratification across generations. It further contends that post-liberalisation growth, while expansive in aggregate terms, has recalibrated inequality by disproportionately valorising inherited assets and entrenched forms of cultural capital. The study concludes that India's development must be assessed not merely through growth metrics but through its capacity to institutionalise inclusive and intergenerational mobility. Keywords: Caste inequality; Intergenerational mobility; Marginalized communities; Social stratification; Economic liberalization. JEL Classification: J15; D63; O15; O53; Z13
• America's Geopolitical Blind Spots, the Global Right, and India as a Case Study
  This study interrogates the enduring geopolitical and economic architectures through which the United States has reproduced structural hierarchies from the World Wars to the contemporary era. It offers a theoretically grounded critique of U.S. hegemony, tracing how economic coercion, militarised trade regimes, religion-inflected strategic narratives, and technological monopolies collectively sustain global dependency circuits situates far right globalism. Using the alleged U.S. involvement in the May 2025 India-Pakistan confrontation as an analytical vantage point, the research reveals how pre-positioned arms infrastructures, destabilising economic instruments, sectarian energisation, and concentrated tech ecosystems undermine India's economic sovereignty and compress its social autonomy. The analysis advances policy pathways to reinforce democratic resilience, counter sectarian fragmentation, and reconfigure an equitable global architecture capable of resisting asymmetric federal world. By situating India's vulnerabilities within longer historical patterns of geopolitical decline, the study contends that neither right-wing nor left-wing paradigms can stabilise the international system; instead, a pluralistic, middle-way governance model offers a more sustainable alternative.
• Constructing Inquiry-Based Curricula: Theoretical and Practical Considerations for School Settings
  This paper proposes an integrative framework for inquiry-based curriculum design that synthesizes Narrative-based Sense-Making Theory with the Quatro Dynamic Thinking (QDT) Model. As education transitions toward inquiry-based pedagogies (Krajcik & Shin, 2014), curricula must facilitate authentic intellectual exploration rather than predetermined learning trajectories. Building upon constructivist traditions (von Glasersfeld, 1995; Vygotsky, 1978) and contemporary sensemaking research (Weick, 1995; Dervin, 1998), Sense-Making Theory establishes that learners actively construct meaning through experientially grounded memory chains (Bransford et al., 2000). Meaning indeterminacy--characterized by semantic diversity, polysemy (Eco, 1979), and tacit knowing (Polanyi, 1966)--is reconceptualized as generative rather than problematic. The QDT Model provides methodological scaffolding through four cognitive dimensions: Diving (analytical depth), Expanding (conceptual breadth), Networking (relational connections), and Flowing (temporal dynamics), drawing upon multidimensional thinking frameworks (Tanaka, 2025; de Bono, 1985; Paul & Elder, 2008). The integration yields seven curriculum design principles informed by backward design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005): honoring diversity in meaning construction, supporting engagement with indeterminacy, enabling multidimensional cognition, promoting integrative thinking, making visible transformation trajectories through metacognitive scaffolding (Schraw & Dennison, 1994), ensuring psychological safety, and establishing authentic contexts (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Implementation strategies feature inquiry cycles with multidimensional exploration, dialogic interaction (Alexander, 2006), iterative feedback (Black & Wiliam, 1998), and metacognitive reflection (Zimmerman, 2002). Assessment emphasizes developmental trajectories--memory chain elaboration, strategic dimension utilization, conceptual transformation quality, and metacognitive depth--rather than predetermined responses (Shepard, 2000). This framework reconceptualizes teachers as catalytic facilitators, redesigns learning environments for flexible dimensional transitions, and cultivates twenty-first-century competencies: meaning construction under uncertainty, multidimensional thinking, effective collaboration (Johnson & Johnson, 1999), and transformative learning.
• Age-Coded Job Advertisements Inflate Labour Shortages in African Economies: Machine-Learning Evidence from a Seven-Country Study
  Purpose: This study interrogates the paradox of employer-reported "labour shortages" in labour-abundant African economies. It advances the claim that shortage signals are partly institutional outputs: they arise when screening rules narrow the effective labour pool, rather than reflecting exogenous skill scarcity. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on labour market segmentation, information economics, and critical institutionalism, we analyse 10,432 job advertisements scraped monthly (January 2024-June 2025) from leading portals in seven Anglophone African countries. A rigorously validated support-vector-machine classifier distinguishes explicit numeric age ceilings from implicit youth-coded cues to construct an Age-Coded Hiring Index (ACHI). We triangulate ACHI with employer-reported workforce-constraint indicators from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and labour-underutilisation (LU4) from ILOSTAT, estimating fixed-effects and interaction models to test whether age-coded screening predicts shortage complaints most strongly where latent labour supply is greatest. Findings: Age-coded screening is pervasive in vacancy texts: approximately 15-20% of postings impose numeric age caps and a much larger share deploys implicit youth signals. Higher ACHI is robustly associated with stronger shortage complaints net of underutilisation and macro controls, and the relationship steepens under high labour slack, consistent with an institutional mechanism in which screening rules convert latent labour supply into perceived scarcity. Originality/value: Conceptually, the paper reframes "shortage" indicators as partially endogenous to screening rules and to employers' definition of "suitability," rather than treating them as market facts. Empirically, it introduces a replicable NLP-based measure of exclusionary screening from vacancy text, enabling cross-country tests of institutional scarcity dynamics in low- and middle-income contexts. Practical implications: The results imply that diagnostic and policy responses to "shortages" should not presume supply failure alone; they should also examine how recruitment criteria restrict the recognised labour pool and thereby shape shortage measurement itself.
• Mechanisms underlying success in healthcare interventions for racially minoritised people with multiple long-term conditions
  In this paper we describe the mechanisms by which 15 interventions targeted at healthcare providers/systems lead to improved health outcomes (or lack thereof) for racially minoritised people with multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs). We extracted the mechanisms attributed to change as reported by the authors and conducted a narrative synthesis. Success was defined as statistically significant improvements in health outcomes for the intervention group post-intervention. Our findings suggest that interventions which adopt integrated, collaborative, multifaceted, patient-centred, individualised care can improve health outcomes for racially minoritised people with MLTCs. Assuring equitable and inclusive care (e.g. by involving family members and/or using facilitators who share similar racial/ethnic and socioeconomic background as patients) fosters trusts between healthcare providers and racially minoritised people with MLTCs. Expanding the role of existing staff (e.g. nurses) and incorporating care coordinators/managers/liaisons to support both patients and healthcare teams can ensure holistic healthcare provision and continuity of care, important aspects of MLTCs management. Interventionists must recognise the influence of wider societal processes (i.e. social determinants of health and available resources) on health(care) provision. It is important to leverage community assets while maintaining strong links to primary care services. We provide a logic model depicting key mechanisms by which the health outcomes of racially minoritised people can be improved and illuminate barriers to success, both of which are particularly relevant for all who seek to address the growing racial inequalities in MLTCs through healthcare interventions.
• The Functional-Actor Transition Dilemma: A Structural Explanation for Post-Intervention Attenuation in Prevention Programs
  Despite sustained investment in lifestyle prevention programs, many interventions demonstrate limited post-intervention sustainability, with behavior or practice adherence commonly declining upon withdrawal of external program support. This pattern reflects a persistent structural limitation in prevention science, whereby participants remain functionally dependent on continued programmatic actuation for behavioral continuity rather than transitioning into autonomous agents for preventive actions. This phenomenon is mediated by interventional prevention models prioritizing delivery-phase implementation and near-term outcomes, while under-theorizing the psychosocial and operational processes required for enduring behavior maintenance following program termination. Numerous existing frameworks and theories directly consider and aim to increase participant shareholding of preventive behaviors, yet in practice, there remains a gap between who is left with ownership of these behaviors or practices at the end of an intervention. To address this gap and stimulate intentional progress within prevention science around this gap, this manuscript formally identifies and articulates a foundational problem in prevention sustainability, herein termed the Functional-Actor Transition Dilemma (F-ATD), which characterizes the often unactuated transition process by which participants shift from reliance on external functional actors as drivers of behavior continuance to internally driven, self-regulated forces of behavior persistence.
• Healthcare interventions to improve health outcomes for racially minoritised people with multiple long-term conditions: A Systematic Review and Narrative synthesis
  Racially minoritised people with multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs) face inequalities across different dimensions of health(care), yet little is known about how to improve their health(care) outcomes. This systematic review and narrative synthesis seeks to identify and describe healthcare interventions designed to improve health outcomes for racially minoritised people with MLTCs and identify areas for further exploration. Given that primary care is considered the ideal setting to manage MLTCs, we focus on interventions targeted at healthcare providers/systems. We searched 9 bibliographic databases and one website and identified 6566 studies, 15 of which met the inclusion criteria. The studies were conducted in the US (n=13), Canada (n=1) and Australia (n=1). Most studies recruited racially minoritised people mainly of African American and Hispanic/Latinx descent with comorbid depression and a physical condition (diabetes (n=3), hypertension (n=3), cancer (n=2). Depression/mental health outcomes, patient-reported outcomes, clinical outcomes, medication use, and adherence were the most frequently assessed outcomes. All interventions made socio-cultural adaptations, thereby, promoting equitable and inclusive care. Community actors/assets were considered key to improving health outcomes. Of the 15 interventions, five resulted in statistically significant improvements in all outcomes of interest and nine resulted in improvements in some outcomes. This review illustrates the feasibility of socio-culturally adapted interventions, many of which successfully integrate physical and mental health care, delivered through multidisciplinary teams working collaboratively, and leveraging community assets to improve health outcomes for racially minoritised people with MLTCs. Future research is needed to assess the impact of these interventions beyond North America and Australia.
• The Potential Role of African Ethics in the K-Ricebelt Project based on the Impact of Traditional Confucian Ethics in Korea's Saemaul Undong Movement
  Inspired by the rapid success and development during the Korean Green Revolution, the K-Ricebelt Project, led by South Korea is a promising collaborative effort for agricultural modernization, increased food production, and economic self-sufficiency in African countries (Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya and Guinea) by implementing high-yielding and climate-resilient rice strains. This paper examines how the Confucian ethics and philosophy formed a prominent role in the success of the Saemaul Undong ('New Village') Movement, a key part in the Korean Green Revolution. The paper then surveys ideas and concepts in traditional African ethics and philosophy--particularly holism, animism, and 'life-force'--to discuss the potential for its incorporation into agricultural practice to ensure the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of the K-Ricebelt Project's bottom-up model.
• Discursive Construction of Gendered Hate Speech in Domestic Violence Victims' Narratives in Nigerian Court Series
  Gendered hate speech remains a pervasive feature of domestic dispute discourse, particularly within legal setting where power, morality, and social norms intersect. This study examines gender-related hate speech through an analysis of Justice Court episodes by Funmi Asaolu. Using van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis, the study analyses spoken interactions in domestic violence cases that reveal both explicit and implicit hostile expressions. A qualitative analysis of 100 purposively selected utterances demonstrates that hate speech in this context operates through subtle discursive strategies rather than overt slurs. Lexicalisation and labelling, negative predication, moral evaluation and judgement, argumentation through pseudo-rational justification, and delegitimisation emerge as dominant strategies that construct stable negative identities and legitimise blame, exclusion, and symbolic violence. The findings reveal a strong gendered pattern, with women disproportionately subjected to moral condemnation related to sexuality, motherhood, and respectability, while men are more frequently evaluated through responsibility and credibility. The study shows that everyday language in domestic and quasi-institutional contexts functions as a powerful vehicle for gendered hate speech, reinforcing patriarchal ideologies and sustaining unequal power relations.
• Illegible performance: Constructing scientific credibility in the "post-truth" era
  The sciences have historically secured social trust and authority through widely comprehensible performances of trustworthiness and of predictive and technological power. However, shifts in the structure and operations of the sciences; in the sociotechnical environment where public knowledge is constructed and contested; in the political goals of the sciences; and in the audiences to whom the sciences aim to speak have collectively left the sciences lacking public credibility concomitant to their public aspirations in areas like climate change and COVID-19 vaccination. As an alternative to pining for a science-dominated past that never was, I investigate the performances by which the sciences have achieved public credibility in the past and by which they might do so in the present and future. I articulate a contemporary set of performances by which the sciences may be able to demonstrate their value to broad sectors of society, emphasizing humility, responsiveness to public values and concerns, openness of interest, and situated rather than general utility. I hope that, by pursuing such performances, scientific institutions could rebuild, and, indeed, merit the broad-based trust to which they aspire.
• Seeds of Change: A Historical Perspective on Farming Innovations and Social Outcomes in the K-Ricebelt of Africa
  This paper explores the historical development and social implications of farming innovations introduced through the K-Ricebelt initiative in Africa--a collaborative agricultural project spearheaded by South Korea to enhance rice production across several African nations. By tracing the evolution of rice farming techniques from traditional subsistence methods to modern technological practices, the study examines how these innovations have shaped rural livelihoods, economic structures, and community dynamics. Drawing on case studies from Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya, it analyzes the socio-economic outcomes of increased yields, mechanized farming, and agricultural training programs, with particular attention to income distribution, gender roles, and rural employment. While the K-Ricebelt has contributed to improved food security and the transfer of agricultural knowledge, this paper also addresses critiques concerning environmental sustainability and unequal access to resources. Ultimately, the research offers a nuanced perspective on how external agricultural interventions can reshape local societies, emphasizing the need for context-sensitive and inclusive innovation strategies in development efforts.
• Do Children's Genetic Differences Change Their Parents' Economic Outcomes? Insights from Norway
  Traditional perspectives emphasize a unidirectional link between parental economic outcomes and child traits, but effects could be bidirectional; child behavioral or health-related traits might elicit caregiving and practical demands that affect parents' economic outcomes heterogenously. Advances in genomics enable testing this reverse causal pathway by leveraging the random allocation of alleles from parents to offspring. First, we linked ~28,000 genotyped parent-offspring trios from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort to yearly registry data on parental labor income, net wealth, and government transfers from three years before to fifteen years after birth. Second, we estimated the overall impact of the first child in the genotyped sample using event studies. Third, we estimated the impact of common genetic variation in children on parental economic outcomes. We used relatedness disequilibrium regression to estimate the total effect of children's genetic differences and within-family polygenic index models to test particular child genetic dispositions. Event studies show a larger impact associated with child birth for maternal outcomes compared to paternal outcomes. The genetically informed methods yielded inconclusive statistical evidence of child-driven genetic effects on parental economic outcomes. Translating effect sizes into practical terms, a child one standard deviation above the mean on a relevant genetic trait would be expected to reduce the parental "child penalty" by near zero at the confidence interval lower bound and roughly 40% at the upper confidence interval bound. Although mitigation of effects by the Norwegian welfare state is likely, both null and moderate effects remain plausible, warranting further investigation. In this exploratory study, we provide a novel foundation for future research on child-driven economic effects and how institutions limit their impact.
• How Incumbency Shapes Electoral Competitiveness in Ranked-Choice Voting
  We provide the first systematic analysis of electoral competitiveness in American ranked-choice voting (RCV) elections. First, we develop a novel dataset of the margin of victory in American RCV contests from 2004 to 2024 by integrating a state-of-the-art optimization algorithm with over 38.9 million candidate rankings submitted by actual voters. Second, we propose a theoretical explanation for how the presence of an incumbent may shape electoral competitiveness under RCV. We show that incumbent-held seats are, on average, less competitive and have fewer candidates than open races. Using regression discontinuity with non-ignorable sample selection, we also illustrate how incumbency may allow candidates to cultivate favorable rankings under RCV. Finally, we also show that incumbent-held seats are, on average, less likely to have second and higher rounds than open races, making voters' lower preferences count less. These findings have broad implications for election reforms, the incumbency advantage, and electoral competition.
• Perceiving Protest: How Publics View the Disruptiveness and Effectiveness of Protest
  How do people evaluate social movement protest tactics? Theories covering public perceptions of protest emphasize that activists face a tactical dilemma, employing disruptive tactics to advance goals without alienating public support. Existing quantitative evidence on the perceived relationship between tactical disruptiveness and effectiveness, as well as how tactics are influenced by objective properties or subjective perceptions across social groups, remains limited. We address this gap through survey experiment data measuring U.S. voters' paired-choice preferences across 66 tactics. Using Bradley-Terry models, we show that perceptions of disruptiveness and effectiveness are nonlinearly related, and their misalignment varies across different tactical dimensions. Additionally, results show that perceivers' sociodemographic characteristics moderate the effects of tactical dimensions on protest perceptions. We find that social characteristics pattern views of effectiveness but not disruptiveness. Our research highlights the need to understand how perceptions of effective and disruptive protest are analytically distinct, shaped by tactical dimensions and the diverse publics perceiving them, and holds implications for how tactics may be perceived as legitimate.
• Collective Intelligence as Collective Information Processing
  Collective intelligence research spans multiple disciplines and focuses on a broad range of collective behaviors, including group problem-solving, flocking in social animals, and the formation of social knowledge. It is not apparent what these different forms of collective intelligence have in common, apart from being instances of collective behavior. In this paper, we develop a framework that enables us to better classify different forms of collectively intelligent behavior in relation to one another based on the information processing mechanisms involved. We argue that these behaviors share a common foundation, which we call collective information processing, or CIP. CIP involves two key mechanisms: (1) individual processing of group information and (2) group processing, or group-level sensitivity to the arrangement of individual information. We operationalize the CIP framework to analyze different forms of collective intelligence, both classifying them in relation to one another and in alignment with generalized quantifiable measures of information processing. Our account of collective intelligence as CIP offers a novel framework for identifying and classifying forms of collective intelligence across a wide range of disciplinary contexts. This framework is meant to unify and subsume, rather than simply challenge, existing attempts to define collective intelligence.
• Can AI Models Be Used to Generate High-Quality Pictorial Stimuli for Consumer Behavior Change Interventions?
  As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded in marketing practice and consumer research, understanding its potential to support psychologically grounded behavior change interventions is both timely and essential. Traditional methods for creating experimental stimuli are time-consuming and prone to bias, potentially undermining scientific rigor. This study investigates whether AI models generate high-quality pictorial stimuli for interventions aiming to change consumer behavior, both as single stimuli and as groups with controlled variations. In an online experiment (N = 995), we compare AI- and human-generated pictorial stimuli, evaluating AI models' effectiveness in conveying object and emotion accuracy (for happy), anthropomorphic qualities, and overall appeal. Results show AI-generated pictorial stimuli outperform human-created stimuli in object and emotional accuracy, anthropomorphism, and visual appeal. Notably, participants struggled to distinguish AI-generated pictorial stimuli from those created by humans, highlighting the credibility and realism of AI outputs. ChatGPT 4o excelled in generating consistent stimuli with simple styles, though complex emotions like envy remain challenging to depict. These findings suggest that AI models offer a scalable, efficient, and psychologically valid alternative to traditional design methods for creating pictorial stimuli in marketing and behavioral research contexts.
• Understanding the connection between parental and filial aspirations - Do family relationships matter?
  Educational aspirations are a key driver of educational inequalities. This article explores how such aspirations are transmitted within families, drawing on psychological research and extending the Wisconsin Model. Challenging its assumption of a universal parental influence on children's aspirations, we build on Coleman's notion of an interplay between human and social capital. We argue that high parental aspirations shape children's aspirations only when there is close intrafamily exchange, which builds the channel to transmit parental aspirations to children. Using data from the National Educational Panel Study, we distinguish between realistic and idealistic aspirations from 6,053 children and their parents and structural and process related aspects of intrafamily social capital. A series of linear probability models find assumed interaction effects only for realistic aspirations and process-related aspects of intrafamily social capital. Consequently, high parental aspirations are specifically transmitted to children when there is strong and close interaction within the family and aspirations are understood as expectations.
• Institutional Social Capital and Postsecondary Outcomes
  For students, navigating the U.S. higher education system requires significant institutional knowledge. This study estimates the effects of institutional social capital on postsecondary outcomes, focusing on how students' interactions with school- and college-based actors shape their college choice and educational attainment. Using nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and doubly robust propensity score matching models, we assess the impact of interactions with high school teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and college representatives on postsecondary enrollment and degree completion. The results indicate that meeting with a coach, counselor, or college representative significantly increase students' likelihood of enrolling in a four-year college, whereas meeting with a teacher has no such effect. Counselors and college representatives also positively impact enrollment in two-year or less-than-two-year institutions, though the effects are smaller than those for four-year enrollment. All four types of institutional interactions increase students' likelihood of earning a bachelor's degree, while none affect sub-baccalaureate credential completion. These findings suggest that institutional actors can play a critical role in promoting four-year college enrollment and completion but are less effective in facilitating access to alternative postsecondary pathways. By isolating the effects of students' interactions with distinct institutional agents, this study contributes to the literature on social capital and highlights the importance of broader college-related support beyond traditional counseling roles.