Sujata Gupta

Sujata Gupta

Social Sciences Writer

Sujata Gupta is the social sciences writer for Science News. She was a 2017-18 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Nature, Discover, NPR, Scientific American, and others. Sujata got her start in journalism at a daily newspaper in Central New York, where she covered education and small town politics. She has also worked as a National Park Ranger, completing stints at parks in Hawaii, California and Maine, and taught English in Nagano, Japan.

All Stories by Sujata Gupta

  1. Science & Society

    Why fuzzy definitions are a problem in the social sciences

    Social sciences research is plagued by murky definitions and measurements. Here’s why that matters.

  2. Psychology

    The pandemic shows us how crises derail young adults’ lives for decades

    Age matters for when we experience calamities, such as pandemics. Young adults are especially vulnerable to getting thrown off their life course.

  3. Psychology

    The pandemic may be stunting young adults’ personality development

    People typically become less neurotic and more agreeable with age. The COVID-19 pandemic may have reversed those trends in adults younger than 30.

  4. Science & Society

    Looking for a job? Lean more on weak ties than strong relationships

    A 50-year-old social science theory gets put to the test in a new study using data on 20 million LinkedIn users.

  5. Health & Medicine

    How living in a pandemic distorts our sense of time

    The pandemic has distorted people’s perception of time. That could have implications for collective well-being.

  6. Neuroscience

    Sleep deprivation may make people less generous

    Helping each other is inherently human. Yet new research shows that sleep deprivation may dampen people’s desire to donate money.

  7. Science & Society

    Friendships with rich people may help lift children out of poverty

    For poor children, forming connections to richer peers is linked to greater earnings later in life, researchers say.

  8. Psychology

    The idea that many people grow following trauma may be a myth

    Studies of posttraumatic growth are fundamentally flawed and can contribute to toxic cultural narratives, researchers say.

  9. Science & Society

    How having health care workers handle nonviolent police calls may impact crime

    A new study analyzes a Denver program that sends a mental health professional and EMT to handle trespassing and other minor crime offenses.

  10. Science & Society

    COVID-19 has killed a million Americans. Our minds can’t comprehend that number

    We intuitively compare large, approximate quantities but cannot grasp such a big, abstract number as a million U.S. COVID-19 deaths.

  11. Science & Society

    Pressure to conform to social norms may explain risky COVID-19 decisions

    As a science reporter covering COVID-19, I knew I should mask up at Disney World. Instead, I conformed, bared my face and got COVID-19.

  12. Humans

    Eating meat is the Western norm. But norms can change

    A meat-heavy diet, with its high climate costs, is the norm in the West. So social scientists are working to upend normal.