Nature Human Behavior, one of the most influential social science journals, is now publishing a groundbreaking study from a Swedish team of researchers that answers several critical questions on how public opinion changes on moral issues, such as: How come today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals? Why has the public opinion in large parts of the world shifted so rapidly in favor of gay and lesbian rights, but been virtually unchanged on other contested issues such as abortion rights? And is it possible to create a scientific model that can predict public opinion changes on moral issues?

Emotion Review Abstract Cultural variants may spread by being more appealing, more memorable, or less offensive than other cultural variants. Empirical studies suggest that such “emotional selection” is

Royal Society Open Science, vol. 9, issue 4 Abstract The General Social Survey, conducted every 2 years, measures public opinion on a wide range of moral issues. The data from the 2020 survey are expect

Substance Use & Misuse, doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2018.1517172. AbstractBackground: Alcohol use in adolescence predicts future alcohol misuse. However, the extent to which different patterns of adol This study investigated how adolescent trajectories of alcohol consumption during the school years predict alcohol misuse at age 19 years. Data were drawn from 707 students from Victoria, Australia, longitudinally followed for 7 years. Five alcohol use trajectories were identified based on the frequency of alcohol use from Grade 6 (age 12 years) to Grade 11 (age 17 years). At age 19 years, participants completed measures indicating Heavy Episodic Drinking (HED), dependency – Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and social harms. At 19 years of age, 64% of participants reported HED, 42% high AUDIT scores (8+), and 23% social harms. Participants belonging to a steep escalator trajectory during adolescence had twice the odds at 19 years of age of high AUDIT scores and social harms, and three times greater odds of HED than participants whose alcohol use slowly increased. Stable moderate consumption was also associated with an increased risk of HED compared to slowly increasing use. Abstinence predicted a reduced likelihood of all forms of misuse at 19 years of age compared to slowly increased alcohol use. Trajectories of drinking frequency during adolescence predict alcohol misuse at age 19 years. Although rapid increasing use presents the greatest risk, even slowly increasing drinking predicts increased risk compared to abstinence. The findings indicate that alcohol policies should recommend nonuse and reduced frequency of use during adolescence.

Emma Engström

I defended my PhD thesis on predictive modeling of groundwater contamination at the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED), KTH, Royal Institute of Technol

Modelling as a basis for decisions with Joe Roussos

Policymakers often rely on models in order to help them plan ahead - this has been frequently discussed during the corona pandemic where new facts have changed the prerequisites for the healthcare sys

Today, moral questions tend to become more important to voters in many countries. Is it possible to understand - and predict - how the public opinion changes on moral issues?

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 13(3), 410-434. Abstract This study explains the conditions under which new venture boards are less or more culturally diverse in terms of their directors' country of b

How come today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals? Why has the public opinion in large parts of the world shifted so rapidly in favor of gay and lesbian rights, but been virtua

Personality and Individual Differences, Volume: 122, pp. 29-37. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.10.001 Abstract Ambivalent sexism is a two-dimensional framework that assesses sexist and misogynous attitudes