Social Sciences (Faculty & Staff)

Many grooves and dimples on the surface of the brain are unique to humans, but they’re often dismissed as an uninteresting consequence of packing an unusually large brain into a too-small skull.

But neuroscientists are finding that these folds are not mere artifacts, like the puffy folds you get when forcing a sleeping bag into a stuff sack. The depths of some of the smallest of these grooves seem to be linked to increased interconnectedness in the brain and better reasoning ability.

In a...

If someone asked you to imagine a psychopath, who would you picture? Many of us might conjure an image of a violent criminal who will do anything without remorse to get what they want. After all, we’ve seen such a character in countless movies and other depictions over the decades.

But this isn’t the profile for everyone with psychopathic personality disorder, says Keanan Joyner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology. Rather, it describes the most extreme cases of psychopathy.

Joyner runs the ...

Sociology Professor Emerita Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote an op-ed that was published today in the The New York Times.

“We’re losing our best and brightest,” Roger Ford, the 58-year-old president of an energy startup, told me sadly one day as we ambled through a hillside cemetery brightened by graveside flowers. “Too many young people are leaving these mountains looking for jobs in cities, and too many of the ones who stay behind have been caught in an opioid epidemic.”

Mr. Ford has lived here in Kentucky’s Pike County all his life. Around us lay the graves of his...

The first cohort of the Master of Computational Social Sciences (MaCSS) program has officially graduated, capping off a year-long journey of discovery, innovation and transformation.

Over the past year, these students have learned to use computational tools to answer complex questions about human behavior and the social world, a pioneering combination of technology and social science that reshapes how we understand the world.

MaCSS graduates were filled with joy and excitement as they celebrated this milestone...