The Houston Chronicle recenly reported on the efforts of social scientists to understand whether the death penalty deters potential murderers.  According to the article, research on the issue has historically produced mixed results:

In 1967, sociologist Thorsten Sellin found no significant impact when he studied murder rates in adjacent states with differing approaches to capital punishment.

The next year, Nobel Prize economist Gary Becker developed a theory supporting the deterrent value of the death penalty, and eight years later one of his students published a study based on national statistics purporting to show that each execution saved eight lives.

The controversy led to a study commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences that found evidence of deterrence to be unconvincing.

More recent studies have reached conclusions all over the map. A national study in 2005 found “profound uncertainty” on the question and even suggested that executions might slightly increase the murder rate (possibly through a cultural “brutalization”). Another study that year suggested that each execution saves 150 lives.

The article discusses a new study, forthcoming in Criminology, by Duke University sociologists Kenneth C. Land and Hui Zheng and Sam Houston State University criminologist Raymond Teske Jr.:

After reviewing earlier studies, these authors came to the conclusion that the death penalty is used too sporadically and inconsistently around the nation for studies on national data to accurately measure its effect on crime.

They decided to focus their study by taking advantage of Texas’ gift to social science, what they call “an orgy of executions in Texas beginning in 1994,” during which time the state provided more than a third of the nation’s executions.

The authors compared this period to an era in which Texas carried out fewer executions from 1980 to 1993, attempting to isolate the effect of the increased use of the death penalty:

They found that many earlier studies had vastly overestimated the effect, but the number of murders did go down in the short-term aftermath of executions.

Based on two different statistical models, they found the effect in the months after each execution to be a reduction of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides.

That may not sound like much, but as the authors note, “even the estimated .5 deterrent per execution yields an estimated reduction in the expected numbers of monthly homicides of 5 to 10 during the subsequent 12 months, which is substantial.”

Perhaps more interesting are the difficult issues that remain unresolved:

Here’s the mystery:

This study and previous ones show no correlation between the amount of publicity executions receive and their deterrent effect.

“We have no theory on that,” Teske said on Friday. After a few more questions, he said, “I hear your frustration. If I wasn’t working with one of the top guys in the nation, my confidence would be shaken.”

One other mystery: The study shows, as other studies have, more impact on the kinds of murders that don’t qualify for the death penalty than on those that do.

Examiner.com recently reported on research into the connection between workplace gossip and office politics. Who gossips at work, and whom they gossip about, may reveal who has real power in the workplace.

Said Indiana University sociologist Tim Hallet, one of the authors of the study:

“If you’re interested in learning how an organization works, you can look at the organizational chart, which can be useful. But often people say, ‘I still can’t tell how things get done, who the prime movers are.’ If you’re attentive, you can see who has the informal status, which isn’t on the formal charts. It can help you understand how work actually gets done.”

More about the research:

In order to determine what political work was getting done through gossip, Hallett and his colleagues—sociologists Donna Eder and Brent Harger—observed the employees at an elementary school. At the time, teachers at the institution were adjusting to a new school principal and often felt like their concerns were not being adequately addressed. In order to cope with this sense of powerlessness, the teachers often used gossip to vent their concerns, as they believed the official channels were not open to them to lodge formal complaints.

According to Hallett, gossip not only happens during employee downtime, but often in more formal settings like business meetings:

“When you’re sitting in that business meeting, be attentive to when the talk drifts away from the official task at hand to people who aren’t present,” he said. “Be aware that what is going on is a form of politics and it’s a form of politics that can be a weapon to undermine people who aren’t present. But it also can be a gift. If people are talking positively it can be a way to enhance someone’s reputation.”

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad recently reported on research forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology that challenges the idea that increased education leads to decreased religiosity. According to the article,

Stijn Ruiter, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and Frank van Tubergen, a professor of sociology in Utrecht, compared ‘religious participation’ in 60 countries. They found no effect of education, but instead came to the conclusion that social insecurity and the environment people grow up in have a significant impact.

The authors focus on church attendance rather than religious belief as their measure of religiosity, and this may help to explain their findings.  Van Tubergen says,

“Other research has shown that highly educated people are indeed less religious. But at the same time they tend to be more actively involved in political parties, associations and thus also in churches. Less educated people are more religious, but less active about it. There is a higher rate of churchgoers amongst educated believers than low-skilled believers.”

According to the authors, the level of economic security in a country is a stronger predictor of religious participation.

“The US has long been regarded as a special case: a developed country and scientific vanguard that is exceptionally religious. But past researchers did not take uncertainties resulting from the high socio-economic inequality into account. In the US you can quickly climb the social ladder, but you can fall off very hard,” Ruiter explains.

Van Tubergen: “Conversely, the link between religiosity and uncertainty explains why the churches in the Netherlands have emptied out. As a result of the welfare state great security can be found outside the walls of the church. It would be interesting to examine the impact of the current economic crisis on church attendance.”