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Our romances tell us a lot about how we live our lives and vice versa. They can help us make informed choices about changing and breaking habits or developing new ones.

Disproportionate police violence against minority communities, while not a new phenomenon, took on greater prominence in the national consciousness following the deaths of African Americans Michael Brown in 2014 and George Floyd in 2020. Like so many critical social issues that receive such focused attention, perceptions of racial bias in policing have become politicized and entrenched in recent years. Social science can help us break through this entrenchment and better understand the…

We live in an era of rapidly expanding economic inequality, humanitarian crises, chaotic deportation efforts, the militarization of U.S. cities, global conflicts and wars, burdensome labor practices that undermine work-life balance, and continued attempts to erode rights and protections of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ people. We also face ongoing environmental catastrophes, with additional consequential environmental challenges looming on the horizon. Social science…

Archaeologists have studied how astronauts use the International Space Station to improve its potential future successors.

When I was in elementary school, the way we studied geography was...not fun. It involved a lot of memorizing: state capitals, rivers and mountains, maybe a famous place from history or two. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that places and names are just a fraction of what geography is all about. In fact, geography is a social science that explores much more than the points on a map. It is a discipline that asks how? and why? as much as it asks where? Geography embraces…

The path from research to policy is rarely straightforward; it takes collaboration between researchers and policymakers at every stage. In child-centered policymaking, where the goal is to improve the lives of children and families, these partnerships are especially vital. Evidence helps policymakers better understand complex issues and identify effective solutions, while researchers gain the opportunity to demonstrate the value of their work in addressing real-world challenges. At the…

Wearing my hats as a social science scholar and academic leader, I have studied trends in the development of science over the past 150 years. Over that time, scholarly science has focused on the continual advancement of knowledge. As such, the science produced has become more precise—theoretically and empirically—more sophisticated in its methods, more interdisciplinary, and more connected to practice and policy. To the last point, in this century science, including education research,…

Nearly 40% of deaths in the United States are preventable through changes in behavior. Modifiable risk factors like smoking, poor diet, inactivity, or alcohol use are contributors to many cancers. For children and teens ages 1 to 17, the leading cause of death is not disease…it’s gun violence. These are not problems with strictly biomedical solutions. They are deeply embedded in how people live, what they believe, and the environments they navigate every day. This is where behavioral and…

On March 24-25, 2025, over 70 social and behavioral science researchers, students, and advocates from 17 different states participated in Social Science Advocacy Day. This annual event brings together advocates from across the country to discuss with Members of Congress and their staff the importance of prioritizing funding for federal agencies and programs that support social and behavioral science research. Below are reflections from three advocates who participated: Sarah Wang, an…