Public support is crucial for the success of policy interventions that aim to change behaviour. While communicating evidence of policy effectiveness can increase support, it remains unclear which type of evidence is most effective. Statistical evidence is often seen as objective and persuasive, yet personal anecdotes can strongly influence beliefs. We examined how statistical and anecdotal evidence affect policy perceptions. In three online experiments with representative UK samples (N = 908), we showed participants different types of evidence (statistical, anecdotal, or both) that argued for or against six policies, such as meat taxes (climate change), banning e-cigarettes (public health), and 20 mph speed limits (community safety). We measured policy support and perceived effectiveness before and after exposure and explored participants’ reasoning through open-text responses. Results showed that positive statistical and anecdotal evidence did not significantly increase perceived policy effectiveness or support, even when combined. However, negative anecdotes significantly reduced both, though this effect was sometimes mitigated when paired with statistical evidence. Qualitative results found that participants have broader concerns beyond policy effectiveness, such as fairness. Our findings suggest that communicating evidence on policy effectiveness alone may not increase support, as it does not address broader public concerns.

To study the social impacts of third sector organizations seeking the integration of vulnerable populations, we explored an alternative approach: life-history narratives. In this methodological article, we present and detail the steps followed in qualitative research applying this approach. We depict the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of life-history narratives, from the individual narratives to the construction of a typology, in consideration of the broader social context. We also address the challenges encountered in this type of research and then share some of the general results from our specific project to highlight the richness of the approach. Our contribution offers a deep-seated exploration of complex methodologies that involve working with third sector organizations toward concrete alternative means of impact assessment, and the consideration of effects on individual trajectories anchored and situated in more macro, societal context.

Narrators like to highlight important events in their stories. In some languages, they may shift to first- or second-person pronouns to refer to third-person referents in order to do so. Such pronoun shifts show functional parallels with tense shifts like the historical present, as both highlight events through shifts in deictic categories. Longacre (1983:138-39) discusses the parallels between person and tense shifts in his account of narrative peak, that is, the formal marking of important narrative events. Labov (1972) analyzes similar strategies as internal evaluations. Person shifts constitute a phenomenon of the discourse-syntax interface and present a clear case of discourse structure influencing grammar. Both person shifts themselves and their motivation in narrative structure have been little investigated. The article reviews person shifts in a number of languages reported in the literature and analyzes in detail the characteristics of this discourse strategy in Saliba-Logea, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. The study contributes to the growing body of research on pronouns and person markers, and on referring expressions more generally, by adding a new angle of investigation. Previous studies have tended to focus on the morphosyntactic choices of referring expressions and their motivations, that is, on the choices between lexical nouns, free vs. bound pronouns, and so forth. The present study focuses on the paradigmatic choices between different person forms within one and the same morphosyntactic expression type. In doing so it offers a new perspective on pronoun choice and the factors influencing it crosslinguistically. While some types of person shift appear to be rare, overall, the strategy of person shift at narrative peak seems to constitute a solid crosslinguistic phenomenon.

Narratives shape public perceptions and policymaking around emerging technologies like quantum technologies (QTs), yet what narratives develop across different societal domains remains underexplored. This study analyzes narratives about QTs in 36 government documents, 163 business reports, and 2023 media articles published over the past 23 years, using a mixed-methods approach that combines topic modeling with qualitative thematic analysis. We find that the dystopian or utopian extremes associated with technologies such as artificial intelligence are largely absent from discourse about QTs. Media coverage tends to cover a broad range of topics, while business and government narratives emphasize technical milestones, economic competitiveness, and national security, frequently at the expense of questions about ethics, equity, and accessibility. We discuss the implications of this focus, particularly the risk that an emphasis on zero-sum geopolitical competition could foster a more closed and fragmented innovation ecosystem.

We examined the growth of English-L2 clausal density (CD) in narrative language samples from 129 school-age Syrian refugee children during their first 5 years of residency in Canada. First, we found that CD showed unique developmental trajectories from MLUw, and relatively rapid acquisition, consistent with studies with non-refugee participants. Second, faster growth in CD was associated with superior cognitive abilities and higher maternal education. An older-age advantage was found at Time 1, but a younger-age advantage emerged across Time 2–3. Factors more specific to the refugee experience (time in refugee camps and wellbeing difficulties) also predicted variance in CD and MLUw development but to a lesser extent. Finally, modeling performance on sentence repetition tasks revealed stronger contributions of lexical diversity and MLUw than CD. We conclude that complex syntax is relatively resilient in the L2 acquisition of refugee children and that CD in naturalistic production and SRT capture different abilities.

We offer a novel analysis of conspiracy theorizing, according to which conspiracy theory communities are engaged in collective projects of storytelling. Other recent accounts start by analyzing individual conspiracy theorists’ psychologies. We argue that a more explanatorily unifying account emerges when we start by analyzing conspiracy theorizing as a social practice. This helps us better account for conspiracy theorists’ psychological heterogeneity. Some individual theorists care about uncovering the truth, while others incorporate truth into their theorizing in subtler ways; viewed as a social phenomenon, though, the function of conspiracy theorizing is not to discover the truth, but to tell good stories.

Why is exposure to political violence associated with both mobilising and demobilising outcomes? Community dynamics influence the local materialisation of violence engendered by supra-local political conflict. The reification of the driving political conflict as intracommunal or intergroup produces disparate outcomes. Exposure to violence may generate an enduring rift concretised through intimate bloodshed or could fashion a shared victimisation experience viable as a collective political mobilisation resource. In Cameroon, the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) opposed French colonialism through political action and guerilla warfare. Many saw the UPC as a heroic nationalist movement, others as murderers. Through interviews, I examine narratives that [re]construct social and political meaning out of conflict and death. These narratives of conflict are used to mobilise in places where the UPC was locally hegemonic and demobilise in politically competitive areas.

The Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 was a pivotal event for the Ottoman Empire in various ways, but one of its defining characteristics is its association with the large-scale displacement of people. This article seeks to contribute to the history of migration and displacement in the late Ottoman Empire by exploring how Muslim refugees understood and narrated their experiences. Methodologically it underscores the use of narrative sources, such as memoirs and literary works. The aim is to examine displacement from the perspective of the refugees through sources reflecting their voices, rather than from the standpoint of state and administrative actors. The article focuses on an account of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 and subsequent flight (hicret) by Hüseyin Raci, a Muslim ʿalim, teacher, and poet from Eski Zağra, a city in the Balkans, while also drawing connections with other literary works penned by Muslim refugees.

Millions worldwide face poverty daily. While its effects vary by society, poverty consistently marginalizes individuals, limiting their opportunities and access to societal benefits. Myths about poverty undergird and perpetuate socioeconomic exclusion, being the vehicles for cultural processes, such as stigmatization, racialization, and rationalization. These myths abound in law. They include the conception of poverty as solely concerned with the deprivation of basic material goods; equal opportunities and collective amnesia about the past; stigmatization of people in poverty as irresponsible and lazy; the categorization of aspects and elements of their poverty condition as criminal. This Article argues that judges, as (meta)narrators, have the power to challenge myths and develop new narratives about poverty, through the language of non-discrimination and equality. This could open the way to judicially redress certain troubling situations of misrecognition, social exclusion and inequality. Ultimately, as long as myths about poverty prevail in law any attempt to tackle the issue of socioeconomic exclusion is destined to fail. This article contributes to the law and sociology literature on poverty in judgecraft by addressing the research gap on narratives of poverty within judicial reasoning and practice.

How can local governments in developing countries, constrained by limited resources, identify and respond to the most pressing public demands? This paper posits that public deliberative platforms, even those with controlled agendas, can be instrumental in this regard by facilitating communication between local elites and ordinary citizens, thereby leading to an observable uptick in political trust over time. Public deliberation serves two functions: firstly, it highlights shifting societal issues, incentivizing bureaucrats to respond more promptly; and secondly, it generates narratives that temporarily improve the public perception of local governments, even among individuals not directly benefiting from government actions. This study provides evidence consistent with these theoretical implications by examining Chinese topical debate programs, during which local officials engage with citizens and respond to their concerns. Empirical results based on a staggered difference-in-differences design suggest that broadcasting such programs in China produces a prompt increase in citizens’ trust in local officials. Our results demonstrate that public deliberation can yield noticeable outcomes in developing countries, even with controlled agendas and constrained resources.