Social Sciences

Young children gravitate toward objects with anthropomorphic features, an inclination that is not as strong in children with early signs of antisocial behavior, according to research from the lab of associate professor of psychology Rebecca Waller.

An Annenberg Public Policy Center panel survey finds that a sizable majority of Americans think the three vaccines that combat measles, mumps, and rubella are safe to take, although perceptions of the safety of all three vaccines showed a statistically significant drop over the past three years.

The systems-level framework for evaluating the trustworthiness of research findings is published by a group of researchers, including Annenberg Public Policy Center director Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

At Penn’s Graduate School for Education, doctoral student Estefanie Aguilar Padilla’s work with associate professor Rachel Baker reveals why students walk away—and how colleges can help them stay.

Why do some groups get smarter together while others collapse into groupthink? New research from theoretical biologist Joshua Plotkin and collaborators show that collective intelligence doesn’t emerge by rewarding the most accurate individuals but by rewarding those who improve the group’s prediction as a whole.

A report co-authored by Annenberg School for Communication professor Victor Pickard traces the erosion of the free press in the United States over the past two decades.

How Alyssa Smith, a McNeil Center for Early American Studies Consortium Fellow is turning to Penn for her research.

This new program will fund the development of openly shared datasets, models, and other digital resources so developers, school districts, and educators can build safe, effective, and equitable AI tools for K–12 teaching and learning.

Penn experts share insights into Thomas Paine’s influential written work, 250 years after its publication.

Criminology professor Greg Ridgeway has developed a model that estimates an officer’s likelihood of using a higher level of force than peers in similar situations—an improvement on existing early-intervention systems that don’t account for differences in time and location.