social science

Helena Silverstein, Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, attempts to expose how pregnant teenagers navigate the abortion laws intended to provide them a judicial bypass option that avoids parental notification. Her research is designed to challenge the idea that judicial bypass laws represent an effective and rational compromise that gets implemented apolitically.

Here's one for Jakob: Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his team of investigators selected twenty-four young men to participate in their study of the psychology of imprisonment. The reviewer notes: He is much too emotionally involved in the outcome steering his actors around for the resulting behavior to be scientifically reliable. Looks like compelling reading nonetheless.

Tall people make more money than short people because they have more self-esteem…unless, of course, they were short in high school. This and other odd ideologies in More Sex is Safer Sex, where economist Steven E. Landsburg dabbles in psychology and tries to convince the world that life should be lived by numbers.