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Playing with future of British armed forces

Social scientists are to examine whether action figure dolls help form children’s opinions on war and have a role to play in shaping the future of our armed forces.

It is the first time research has examined the role of toys in the making of young citizens. The £492,508 project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The researchers, Dr Sean Carter, from Geography at the University of Exeter, Dr Tara Woodyer, of the University of Portsmouth and Professor Klaus Dodds, of Royal Holloway University of London, have expertise in human geography, children’s play, childhood studies, geopolitics and the culture of war. (more…)

Some People’s Climate Beliefs Shift with Weather

By Guest PostApril 8, 2011Culture, Environmentatmospheric mechanisms, australia, clean air, climate, conservatives, cool planet, day, democrats, earth science, global warming, human influenced climate change, manmade global warming, political belief, political liberals, public opinion, republicans, social scientists, temperature, united states, weather, ye li

*Study shows daily malleability on a long-term question*

Social scientists are struggling with a perplexing earth-science question: as the power of evidence showing manmade global warming is rising, why do opinion polls suggest public belief in the findings is wavering? Part of the answer may be that some people are too easily swayed by the easiest, most irrational piece of evidence at hand: their own estimation of the day’s temperature.

In three separate studies, researchers affiliated with Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) surveyed about 1,200 people in the United States and Australia, and found that those who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually cold. A new paper describing the studies appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. (more…)

Tag Archives: social scientists

Playing with future of British armed forces

Some People’s Climate Beliefs Shift with Weather