Politics and the Life Sciences最新文献

Amid growing public discourse about a "masculinity crisis," political scientists have sought to measure masculinity as an identity distinct from binary sex. This paper advances a continuous framework for assessing self-perceived masculinity rather than fixed categories. We review measures of masculinity used across the social sciences, zeroing in on self-perceived measures and what they have contributed to the political science literature. Drawing on original survey data, we show that continuous masculinity (and femininity) predict political participation, attitudes on force issues, and broader ideological orientations. We conclude by calling for renewed attention to masculinity as a political identity-one that can be measured continuously and helps explain patterns of backlash, hierarchy maintenance, and participation in contemporary politics. Integrating expectancy-discrepancy models of masculine identity, we propose new directions for understanding how feelings of masculine threat and loss shape political behavior in an era of shifting gender norms.

The redefinition of gender roles in modern societies has created unprecedented opportunities for women while contributing to the decreased successful outcomes of certain male populations (i.e., "male marginalization"). In Part One, we explore women's adjustment to changes in men's gender roles. We investigate the implications for women, analyzing how some men's marginalization affects female reproductive choices and decision-making. We examine how these changes burden women with responsibilities of professional success and caregiving while providing autonomy for personal fulfillment. In Part Two, we address how perceived scarcity of the men who are desirable intensifies intrasexual competition, manifesting through both direct and indirect competitive strategies that strain female friendships and social networks. Despite these challenges, women also demonstrate cooperative behaviors and alliance formation, reflecting adaptations that facilitated survival. We conclude that while women's empowerment represents progress toward gender equality, the marginalization of some men creates situations that call for thoughtful, new solutions.

The cross-national correlation between gender equality and lower fertility is exceptionally strong (r ≈ 0.81). After the 1960s, a unique mating regime spread across parts of the world-with female emancipation, individual mate choice, and effective birth control-followed by a continuing rise in singlehood and declining fertility. Almost all women still want to reproduce, but many struggle to find a good-enough partner. This article argues from an evolutionary perspective that many men's utility to "free women" has been so diminished that solving the fertility crisis by increasing pair-bonding rates seems unfeasible. A viable means for aiding the survival of low-fertility nations could be to provide women with the economic and social resources necessary for them to conclude that having children alone makes for a better life than remaining childless. Such policies would likely exacerbate male marginalization, but new technologies are on the horizon that could offer men reproductive equality.

Using an adoption design and data from a U.S. sample of adoptive and biological siblings and their parents, we examine the role of pre-birth (e.g., genetics) and post-birth factors (e.g., family socialization) in shaping numerous measures of political engagement, several of which have not been studied before in the context of an adoption design. Our results provide suggestive evidence that pre-birth factors play a larger role in shaping children's political engagement than post-birth factors. More specifically, we find that the sense of responsibility to stay politically informed and vote and contacting a politician seem to be more heavily influenced by pre-birth factors than post-birth factors. Future studies should replicate these findings using larger samples and also build on our results by examining a wider array of acts of political engagement.

Conspiratorial thinking is an indelible part of American politics; indeed, conspiracy theories proliferated in North America even before the founding of the United States. A current headwind of trends appears to facilitate a surge in conspiratorial thinking, including the increased spread and accessibility of misinformation, steady declines in public trust in authority figures, and an increasingly polarized electorate marked by mutual partisan animosity. The annual symposium of the UC Irvine Center for Neuropolitics brought together experts in law, political science, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology to discuss why and how conspiracy thought develops and persists. This paper synthesizes the insights from that symposium, addressing the foundations of conspiracy thinking in both individuals and society as a whole, and its place in the current American political landscape. Through integrating various disciplinary perspectives, the symposium aimed to identify possible pathways to alleviating the prevalence and influence of conspiratorial thinking.

Ever since the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the early 1970s concerns have been expressed about the misuse potential of this and subsequent biotechnology breakthroughs. This article focuses on the securitization of gain-of-function (GOF) virology research in the United States, utilizing an updated theoretical framework that distinguishes between "riskification" and "threatification." The paper examines three distinct cases, two historical, one ongoing. It argues that early attempts to govern GOF research primarily employed a riskification approach, characterized by self-governance by the scientific community. However, the controversy over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift toward threatification, bringing in high-level political actors like the U.S. President and Congress, resulting in the adoption of more restrictive, legally-enforced oversight measures. The article concludes that the application of this theoretical distinction provides a better understanding of how the governance of dual-use research has evolved in the United States.

Previous research on the underpinnings of support for conspiracy theories has explored the role of both generalized trust and political trust, but scholars have yet to explore whether both generalized and political anxiety are related to support for conspiracy theories. While studies have shown that general measures of anxiety predict support for conspiracy theories, researchers have not yet devoted much attention to understanding whether feelings of political anxiety are also related to conspiracy theory endorsement. Using data from an original survey fielded in 2023 that includes a measure of generalized anxiety and an eight-item measure that specifically captures political anxiety, we find that political anxiety is not related to conspiracy theory support, and that generalized anxiety is weakly related to conspiracy theory support. Thus, although there are good reasons to be concerned about the ill effects of political anxiety, it does not appear to be strongly related to conspiracy theory endorsement.

This study examines the impact of Colombia's mental health system reforms (1999-2021) on suicide mortality trends using national vital statistics data (51,924 suicide-related deaths). Through joinpoint regression and interrupted time series analyses, we assessed age-standardized suicide rates (ASSRs) across demographic subgroups. Results revealed no statistically significant associations between policy reforms and suicide trends, despite Colombia's progressive legislative advancements, including Law 1616 (2013) and expanded mental health services. Key findings include (1) declining ASSR for adolescents (-0.75% annually, p < 0.001) but rising rates among women (+3.8% post-2012, p < 0.05); (2) rural areas consistently exhibited higher ASSRs than urban settings; and (3) reforms showed nonsignificant immediate or sustained effects (p > 0.05). The study underscores the complexity of suicide determinants, suggesting that structural factors (e.g., socioeconomic disparities) may outweigh health-sector interventions. These findings highlight the need for integrated, context-specific suicide prevention strategies in Colombia and similar settings.

The Biden administration requested comments regarding "Public and Private Sector Uses of Biometric Technologies" in the Federal Register from October 2021 to January 2022. This generated 130 responses, helped shape the "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights," and resulted in Executive Order 14110 on "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence." While the Trump administration immediately rescinded this executive order, these comments provide insight into salient AI biometrics technologies and relevant political players. We first identify AI biometric technologies before asking which institutions and individuals commented (RQ1), and what the substance and tenor of responses were regarding the opportunities and threats posed by AI biometrics (RQ2-a) based on respondent type (RQ2-b). We use text mining and qualitative analyses to illuminate how uncertainty about AI biometric technology in this nascent policy subsystem reflects participants' language use and policy preferences.

Stress is a response to external environmental conditions that encourages individuals to pursue changes in their lives. We examine the relationship between stress and federal and provincial political leaders' approval ratings. We theorize that, as a strategy to cope with the pandemic stresses outside of their direct control, individuals will redirect their frustrations toward incumbents. We hypothesize that greater experiences with stress will negatively correlate with the approval of political incumbents even among members of incumbents' political in-group. We analyze data from the COVID-19 Monitor survey, a multi-wave, cross-sectional survey of over 56,000 Canadians. On three out of four measures, we find that stress negatively impacted incumbent approval, and that these negative impacts occur among the incumbent's supporters and non-supporters. On the fourth measure, we find the effect of stress on approval is moderated, positive or negative, by whether regional leaders took action to limit the spread of coronavirus disease 2019.