In Disney’s “Pinocchio,” Jiminy Cricket famously sings, “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you.” But Jiminy Cricket got it wrong. We’re often taught that we are free to dream – to imagine our future possibilities. Yet in a large research project we...
Perspectives
Instability Can Benefit Teams with Different Expertise
Co-workers who team up to solve problems or work on projects can benefit when they have less in common and take turns spotlighting their different expertise, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. The findings have implications for how managers can better form and manage teams so all voices are heard....
What Makes Us Subconsciously Mimic the Accents of Others in Conversation
Have you ever caught yourself talking a little bit differently after listening to someone with a distinctive way of speaking? Perhaps you’ll pepper in a couple of y’all’s after spending the weekend with your Texan mother-in-law. Or you might drop a few R’s after binge-watching a British period drama on Netflix. Linguists call this phenomenon...
Of Speech and Spatial Identity
Style and Polity in conversation with Benjamin A. Bross, an Assistant Professor of architecture and an urban historian at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, discusses “Mexico City’s Zócalo: A History of a Constructed Spatial Identity,” San Martin de Hidalgo tequila’s featured title for the brand’s Fall 2022 Tequila Book Club. In his recently published...
How On-Screen Representations of Professions Have Changed Over 70 Years
Across 70 years of data on media subtitles for television and film, architecture and engineering are the most positively portrayed professions, whereas sales-related professions fare worst, find the authors of a new study published in PLOS ONE. Probing media depictions of professions can highlight stereotypes or discrimination. It can also underscore trends in career choices:...
How to Avoid Eating the World
“Just shrinking the size of our current food system won’t cut emissions much. Instead, we need to transform the very nature of that global food system.”, says Benjamin Bodirsky, researcher at Potsdam and the World Vegetable Center in Tainan, Taiwan and author of a new study published in Nature Food. “That means on the one...
Langvardt Discusses Free-Speech Implications of Musk’s Twitter Purchase
Faculty at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center are monitoring Elon Musk’s recent $44B purchase of the Twitter platform for how Musk can and will manage the free-speech implications of the platform. Professor Kyle Langvardt in 2020 joined the faculty of the multidisciplinary center focused on the regulatory and legal implications of technology. He is...
The Trump Baby Bump Among Republicans After the 2016 Election
Republican-leaning counties saw a sharp rise in birth rates compared to Democratic-leaning counties after Donald J. Trump’s surprise win in the 2016 presidential election, reveals a forthcoming study from the University of California San Diego. Democratic counties, on the other hand, experienced a baby slump. The paper’s authors find that this difference between Republican versus...
Elon Musk’s Plans for Twitter Could Make Its Misinformation Problems Worse
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, acquired Twitter in a US$44 billion deal on April 25, 2022, 11 days after announcing his bid for the company. Twitter announced that the public company will become privately held after the acquisition is complete. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for his initial bid for...
What the New Science of Authenticity Says About Discovering Your True Self
After following a white rabbit down a hole in the ground and changing sizes several times, Alice finds herself wondering “Who in the world am I?” This scene, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” might resonate with you: In a world that’s constantly changing, it can be challenging to find your authentic self. I...









