I had another dream, I had another life
Last year, Senator Mike Lee launched The Social Capital Project, described as “a multi-year research effort that will investigate the evolving nature, quality, and importance of our associational life. “Associational life” is our shorthand for the web of social relationships through which we pursue joint endeavors—namely, our families, our communities, our workplaces, and our religious … Read more
Anthropologist and cultural psychologist Joseph Henrich has defined our peculiar subset of the world population as WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. How did this psychological variation arise? A new working paper offers a very interesting answer: A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions, … Read more
According to a new study, the answer is “yes” to both: Our study suggests a close and painful partnership between pornography and loneliness for some users. From our survey of over 1,000 individuals around the world, we developed a statistical model that suggests an association between pornography use and loneliness, each increasing in tandem with … Read more
Several years ago, I linked to a Brookings post that highlighted parenting as having a massive effect on children’s outcomes. I was reminded of it while reading a 2016 post at the World Bank’s Development Impact blog. The author David McKenzie, Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, writes, I was surprised by a paper by Todd … Read more
Pro-choicers frequently claim that making abortion illegal won’t decrease the number of abortions; it will only decrease the number of safe, legal abortions. They suggest that there is no practical use to restricting abortion legally and that if pro-lifers really cared about decreasing abortion rates, they would focus on decreasing unplanned pregnancies (through better access … Read more
This is part of the DR Book Collection. I’m once again behind on my book reviews, so here’s a list of the books I’ve read recently, their descriptions, and accompanying videos. Jon D. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2016): “The love of God … Read more
My article on the LDS Church and immigration should be out–hopefully by the end of the month–in the next issue of BYU Studies Quarterly. In it, I tackle five common objections to immigration: Immigrants “steal” native jobs. Immigrants depress native wages. Immigrants undermine host country culture and institutions. Immigrants are a fiscal burden and increase … Read more
About a year ago, Monica had a post on liberal bias in the media. Drawing on this Business Insider article (amongst others), she pointed out that those “who work in newspapers and print media are almost exclusively liberal.” Last month, Monica had a follow-up post in which she introduced MediaBiasFactCheck.com. Reading these posts piqued my interest … Read more
Not according to a recent op-ed in The New York Times. The authors–sociologists all–argue based on findings from their new study that reducing single motherhood would not substantially reduce poverty. Single-mother families are a surprisingly small share of our population. Among households headed by working-age adults, 8.8 percent of people lived in single-mother households in … Read more
President Thomas S. Monson–the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–died on January 2, 2018. Here is how the NYT covered this event: For contrast, this is what they tweeted when Fidel Castro died: The NYT also had nice / neutral things to say about folks like Hugh Hefner and Hugo Chavez … Read more