Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, made waves in May 2021 when he publicly suggested that Israel should prioritize its relationship with American evangelicals over American Jews. Dermer described evangelicals as the “backbone of Israel’s support in the United States.” By contrast, he described American Jews as “disproportionately among [Israel’s] critics.” Dermer’s comments...
The majority of the remaining American troops in Afghanistan were withdrawn recently, with the rest due to leave by the end of August 2021. This withdrawal marks the end of nearly 20 years of American military presence in Afghanistan. Support for the withdrawal is widespread in the United States, with the majority of Americans –...
My prepandemic summers were always packed with travel – trips to Europe for work and play, and, most recently, a road trip across the American West. At the end of a sweltering day of activities, I’d routinely wind down with some social drinking. In recent years, though, I started to notice a shift. Beer lists...
Spying is a risky profession. For the 14th-century English undercover agent-turned-poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the dangers – at least to his reputation – continue to surface centuries after his death. In his July 2021 essay for the Times Literary Supplement, A.S.G. Edwards, professor of medieval manuscripts at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, laments the...
Three decades ago, child development researchers found that low-income children heard tens of millions fewer words in their homes than their more affluent peers by the time they reached kindergarten. This “word gap” was and continues to be linked to a socioeconomic disparity in academic achievement. While parenting deficiencies have long been blamed for the...
In cities and towns across the United States, neighborhoods with more Black, Hispanic and Asian residents experience hotter temperatures during summer heatwaves than nearby white residents, a new study finds. It is the first to show that the trend, documented in some major cities, is widespread, even in small towns, nationwide. According to the new nationwide study,...
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought increasing attention to disparities in how police officers treat Black and white Americans. Now, research published by the American Psychological Association finds that disparity may exist even in subtle differences in officers’ tone of voice when they address Black and white drivers during routine traffic stops. In the...
Low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods within a vast majority of populous U.S. counties, according new research from the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. The analysis of remotely-sensed land surface temperature measurements of...
Informing people about how well the new COVID-19 vaccines work could boost uptake among doubters substantially, according to new research. The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, shows the importance of raising awareness of vaccine efficacy, especially if it compares very favourably to another well-established vaccine. The...
Researchers from University of Bath, University of Melbourne, and King’s College London published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explains a four-stage process that can help firms create pleasurable social atmospheres for consumers. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Social Atmospheres: How Interaction Ritual Chains Create Effervescent Experiences of Place” and...
