"Black fathers’ military service increased children’s probability of earning a bachelor’s degree by 53 percent compared with children of Black nonveterans"

Just out in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social

Why do Public Debates Escalate? Trigger Points and the Moral Dynamics of “Hot Politics” Escalating, emotionally charged, and moralized forms of controversy are a central feature of contemporary politics. Our study develops a framework for understanding how political debates between ordi...

Knife crime! Pronouns! Meat bans! Some political issues lead to "hotter", more emotional and polarizing debates than others. We show how these "trigger points" reveal a contested structure of moral expectations and how they get weaponized by polarization entrepreneurs. OA @bjsociology.bsky.social 🧵

NEW: Marie Labussière, Thijs Bol, "Are Occupations “Bundles of Skills”? Identifying Latent Skill Profiles in the Labor Market Using Topic Modeling" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Fig. 2: Data and code availability by field. Left, data and code availability as a percentage of papers. Right, the raw counts of papers with data and code available and not available. Restricted data (purple) did not count as available data, but might be accessible in principle. This shows political science has thee most papers with open data/code, followed by economics, then much further behind, psychology and then sociology (sad). Sociology is well below all field average.

This figure is the one that is actually embarrassing for sociology:

NEW: Vida Maralani, Camille Portier, Berkay Özcan, "Early Childhood Investments and Women’s Work Outcomes across the Life Course" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Why does a worse candidate win? Or an inferior song dominate?

New article with @alexgelas.bsky.social, @pantelispa.bsky.social & Gaël Le Mens.

We show that often once A becomes even slightly more popular than B, people choose A much more often.

www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

📢 In this Social Forces article, I introduce occupational elitism as a novel measure of social closure: the share of upper-class background workers within an occupation.

Its consequences for earnings stratification can be examined using a social closure theory lens.

🔓 doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

Figure 4 Average marginal effects, representative and wealthy sample. Notes: Each color represents one hypothesis. Based on N = 5,600 evaluations in the representative sample and N = 6,368 evaluations in the wealthy sample. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals shown.

Interesting paper by @natrinh.bsky.social, @dariatisch.bsky.social, & @schechtlm.bsky.social on how the Germans assess division of intergenerational transfers among siblings academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

Migrant rent penalties in the German housing market Abstract. We investigate whether migrants pay higher rents for comparable housing than natives with similar characteristics using nationally representative data from the 2018 German Microcensus. The d...

For a change, something we made ourselves: Together with my colleagues Tobias Roth, Andreas Horr, and @nataliebackes.bsky.social, we examined ethnic rent penalties. Do migrants pay higher rents for comparable housing than natives with similar characteristics? direct.mit.edu/euso/article...

Now officially published in jpeaceresearch.bsky.social.

Link to full-text:
academic.oup.com/jpr/advance-...

#PoliticalScience #PoliticalPsychology

RegCheck RegCheck is an AI tool to compare preregistrations with papers instantly.

Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding.

RegCheck was built to help make this process easier.

Today, we launch RegCheck V2.

🧵

regcheck.app

BJPolS abstract of a study on bias in judicial decisions affecting juvenile criminal offenders, emphasizing the impact on immigrant offenders and suggesting reforms for a more equitable justice system.

From November 2025 -

Anti-Immigrant Bias in the Choice Between Punitive and Rehabilitative Justice - https://cup.org/49vUfVa

- @riazsascha.bsky.social & @mhamjediers.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

New paper in the American Journal of Sociology (with Michael Grätz), and a very good way to close an important chapter!

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

How Robust Are Country Rankings in Educational Mobility? Article: How Robust Are Country Rankings in Educational Mobility? | Sociological Science | Posted December 11, 2025

Mine and @pengzell.bsky.social paper
"How Robust Are Country Rankings in Educational Mobility?" was published in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social yesterday edu.nl/y7ct3
More details in the future, but for now short explanation of what we did, and the origin story of the paper.
[Thread below]

I’m hiring a postdoc! Flexible in terms of details, but I’m looking for someone to collaborate with on research about labor market inequality. I’ll review applications as they come in and the posting just went up here:
apply.interfolio.com/178873

Zustimmung nicht gleich Bereitschaft Die Studie zeigt: Es besteht eine große Diskrepanz zwischen der Zustimmung zu den Plänen und der persönlichen Bereitschaft zum Dienst an der Waffe. Die größten Unterschiede verlaufen nach Alter und Geschlecht – nicht nach Migrationshintergrund: Obwohl sich 58 % aller Befragten für die Wiedereinführung aussprechen, würde nur knapp jede*r Vierte (23 %) tatsächlich dienen. Unter den 18- bis 28-Jährigen sogar nur jede*r Siebte (14 %). Nach Geschlecht unterschieden zeigen sich ebenfalls deutliche Abweichungen: 66 % der Männer, aber nur 49 % der Frauen plädieren für eine Wiedereinführung.

Zitat von Dr. Jannes Jacobsen: Während sich nur wenige selbst an der Waffe sehen, ist der breite Zuspruch zu einem verpflichtenden Gesellschaftsjahr deutlich. Der Wille, sich für die Gemeinschaft einzusetzen, ist also da – nur nicht militärisch. Da freiwilliges Engagement ein zentraler Bestandteil unserer Gesellschaft ist, sollte dieses Potenzial anerkannt und ausgeschöpft werden. Unsere Daten zeigen, dass besonders die Bereiche Umwelt- und Naturschutz, Kinder- und Jugendarbeit sowie Bildungseinrichtungen davon profitieren könnten.

Rückkehr zur #Wehrpflicht? Neue Studie untersucht Einstellungen zur geplanten Wiedereinführung der Wehrpflicht und zeigt: Die junge Generation lehnt den #Wehrdienst klar ab. Ein verpflichtendes #Gesellschaftsjahr findet jedoch Unterstützung.
Zur Studie 🔗 www.dezim-institut.de/publikatione...

Problems with the so-called gender equality paradox
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/25/p...

Gaza: Study Reveals Unprecedented Losses of Life & Life Expectancy
Researchers from MPIDR & the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED) investigated the impact of the conflict in Gaza on mortality. Life expectancy 2024 fell to nearly half the level expected without the war. www.demogr.mpg.de/go/GazaLE

Why did I visit the Facebook pages of 5500 German grocery stores on a grey lockdown day ca. 2021?

You can now find out in AJS.

Our work on ethnoreligious infrastructures is finally online in the ominous Volume 0:

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Embryo selection based on polygenic prediction risks reinforcing social inequality The rise of companies offering embryo selection based on genetic testing has triggered heated debate about ethical acceptability, as well as the accuracy and scientific validity of these techniques. W...

There’s a new kid in town!

Companies are now selling IVF and embryo selection based on genetic testing for traits related to health and even intelligence.

We outline methodological and ethical concerns, and warn against risks for social inequality.

With the fantastic @gaiaghirardi.bsky.social

New publication with @riazsascha.bsky.social in @bjpols.bsky.social

As I’m concerned that the figures in the SI might get too little attention, here are some findings in visual form:

New paper with @mhamjediers.bsky.social

German judges have discretion to apply rehabilitative juvenile criminal law (Jugendstrafrecht) or punitive adult criminal law to 18–20-year-old offenders. We show that immigrant youths are ~10 percentage points less likely to be sentenced under juvenile law

Always enjoy any kind of discussion with you - whether they spark papers like this one or not

I could see how this could make sense in the revision phase, if it's also clearly communicated to the reviewers, potentially bounding extensive comments and enforcing both parties to stick to the core of a project.

But why you would do this for initial submissions seems also senseless to me

why do journals restrict the number of pages of the online supplementary material? I am confused! 😅

🚨 Applications Now Open for the EUI PhD Programmes 2026-2027!

📊 Economics |⚖️ Law |📘 History | 🏛 Political and Social Sciences

Join the EUI's 50th PhD cohort!

Apply by 15 January 2026 (14:00 CET) for the academic journey of a lifetime! 👉: eui.eu/phd

#EUIPhD #PhDOpportunity

New article out in @sociusjournal.bsky.social.

It shows how closely linked motherhood penalties 🤰📉 and gender inequalities 👨‍💼💰👩‍💼 are by studying many local labour markets.

Thread 👇

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Growing up Different(ly than Last Time We Asked): Social Status and Changing Reports of Childhood Income Rank - Social Indicators Research How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

The GSS asked the same people about their childhood income rank three different times. 56% changed their answer, even though what was trying to be measured couldn’t change! We dig into this in a new article at @socialindicators.bsky.social. 



doi.org/10.1007/s112...

🧵👇 (1/5)

This important paper shows a precipitous drop in girls' achievement in recent years, closing a third of the gap with boys.

Covid doesn't seem to be the smoking gun, but tiktok may be

And the 1st Replication Award of the Academy of Sociology goes to..

Sergio Lo Iacono, Wojtek Przepiorka, Vincent Buskens, Rense Corten, Marcel van Assen, and Arnout van de Rijt

for "The competitive advantage of sanctioning institutions revisited: A multilab replication"

#AkadSoz25 #sociology

1/