Volume 2 Issue 4, April 2018

Early adolescence (age 10–14) is an important window of opportunity to address gender socialization as the basis for health and social justice. This Comment explains why this is the case and provides illustrative examples of existing evidence on strategies to promote gender equitable attitudes in young adolescents.

Many have argued that populism dominated the 2016 US presidential election. Textual analysis of electoral discourse in the United States, Greece and Venezuela suggests that the overall level of populism in the US election was in fact moderate. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump engaged in populist discourse, but Trump lacked consistency.

Growing evidence links adverse childhood experiences to health problems decades later. A study of adults followed in midlife finds that perceived social support predicts lower subsequent mortality, particularly for adults reporting child abuse, suggesting that supportive relationships buffer long-term health in the context of early maltreatment.

Polling problems in recent elections have called into question whether sample surveys can still produce valid data. A new study provides reassurance.

The social science of happiness needs to recognize the importance of social connection and prosocial action for human well-being and become more interdisciplinary with greater collaboration, especially among social scientists and policymakers.

Diener et al. synthesize findings from psychology and economics on subjective well-being across cultures and identify outstanding questions, priorities for future research and pathways to policy implementation.

Childhood abuse increases the risk of early mortality. Using data from the MIDUS study, the authors show that perceived social support received in adulthood can act as a buffer against the adverse effects of childhood abuse.

An analysis of genetic influences on educational attainment and occupation in pre- versus post-Soviet-era Estonia shows that genetics has a much greater influence on social outcomes in a meritocratic society.

An analysis of more than 30,000 national polls from 351 general elections in 45 countries over the period between 1942 and 2017 shows that, contrary to popular belief, election polling misses have not become more prevalent.

Altenburger and Ugander identify ‘monophily’ or the overdispersion of attribute preferences in a social network and show that it can be used to predict otherwise hidden attribute information about an individual.

Short breaks in a stimulus stream are sufficient to create event boundaries during fear conditioning, which modulate the recognition rate for in-episode stimuli.

Different parts of tools are often handled in different ways. This study presents a computational model explaining how humans build separate motor memories for different parts of the same objects.