polarization

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new analysis shows that trust in scientific expertise among the American public remained high during the last six decades and that the Trump administration attacks on scientific expertise did not modify the basic confidence of Americans in science and scientific expertise. The study, "Citizen attitudes toward…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Political polarization can be reduced when people are told to think about the personal relevance of issues they might not care about at first glance. We, a social psychologist and an evolutionary psychologist, decided to investigate this issue with two of our undergraduate students, and recently published our results…

Students entering a polling location to cast their ballots. Credit: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki/University at Buffalo Introducing compulsory voting in the United States and other majoritarian democracies, with meaningful and enforceable penalties for abstention, has the potential to reduce political polarization and protect democratic institutions from anti-democratic threats, according to a paper published by a University at…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The United States House of Representatives held more than 700 votes in 2023, but fewer than 30 bills were signed into law. Partisan politics may explain why, with polarization potentially causing enough friction to slow down the legislative process and make the passage of fewer, farther-reaching public laws likelier, according to researchers. …

Retweet networks before and after the Russian invasion show how the discussion was depolarized, but also how the cluster built on disinformation endured despite the invasion. Credit: Yan Xia & Marianne Lenoir, Aalto University With over 4 billion people eligible to vote in elections, 2024 is the largest election year ever. At the same time, disinformation and polarization on social media pose unprecedented challenges to the…

Kevin Dorst’s research on U.S. political polarization suggests that rationality plays a key role in forming diverse political opinions. His concept of ‘rational polarization’ posits that people interpret ambiguous political information differently, leading to varied conclusions. This challenges the notion that political beliefs are solely based on emotion or misinformation.A study by philosopher Kevin Dorst explains how political differences can result from a process of “rational polarization.”U.S. politics is heavily…

Juliette Schaafsma. Credit: Tilburg University Discussions about important societal issues, whether they relate to domestic or foreign affairs, on the street and in academia, seem to be intensifying. The heightened tone, personal attacks, and polarization are characteristic of these discussions. Is this a prevailing feature of our time, or is it just our perception? Who should take the lead in countering polarization—the…

They range from galaxy detection to nanofabrication of integrated circuit chips and encompassing biomedical and clinical characterization. Credit: Chao He, Jacopo Antonello, Martin J. Booth Vectorial adaptive optics (V-AO) is an innovative approach to correct phase and polarization aberrations in optical systems. It improves resolution and vector field uniformity, impacting fields like biomedical imaging, astronomy, and nanofabrication. Adaptive optics (AO) is a technique used for real-time correction of phase…

MIT researchers found that people’s reported media preferences often differ from their actual online news consumption, questioning common beliefs about the polarized nature of American media habits. By examining both survey responses and web-browsing data, the study reveals that the extent of media’s influence on political views is closely tied to how preferences are measured, with real-world data offering important insights into political polarization. Partisan media might deepen political polarization, but we should…

While GPS can be used to determine one's geographical coordinates on land, such is not the case underwater. Scientists have developed a possible alternative, however, in the form of a system that analyzes the manner in which sunlight is polarized by water.GPS functions by calculating the user's position relative to four or more satellites, all of which are orbiting the Earth at known locations. The system only works if it can receive radio signals from those satellites, though, and those signals don't travel well through…