news 2022

In recent years, the popularity of visual social media has grown rapidly. These platforms allow users to share their lives with a large online audience by posting photos.

Dishonesty and corrupt behavior by institutional representatives undermines trust and cooperation among people who have witnessed this kind of violation of norms. This is the conclusion of social psychologists Giuliana Spadaro and Paul van Lange (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) in collaboration with the University of Turin.

Recently, a new one-stop point for information on migrant integration in Europe is launched. The  SprINg evidence repository  helps policymakers, service providers and advocates work with migrants to make their policies and practices more evidence-based. The repository is created under the leadership of Peter Scholten , dr. Asya Pisarevskaya and Alex Webb from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR).

In the Netherlands, community service was introduced in the Criminal Code in 1989 as an alternative to imprisonment. In the juvenile justice system, community service is the most imposed punishment for perpetrators. Even though community service is most often imposed in the juvenile justice system, few large-scale, reliable studies have been conducted on its effectiveness since the 1990s.

People in deprived city areas tend to have less services available than inhabitants in wealthier parts. They have less access to urban infrastructure such as pharmacies, libraries, sports clubs and even public transport in their neighbourhood. Reversing this tendency is a priority for today's policy-makers.

Mothers who served a prison sentence can help prevent their children from becoming delinquents by taking part in Better Start. This parent intervention aims to prevent that children of these mothers go on to exhibit antisocial behaviour, such as committing offences. Ankie Menting , developmental psychologist at Utrecht University, and Bram Orobio de Castro, Professor of Child and Youth Care Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, have researched the long-term effects of the intervention.

The media has often drawn attention to increasing armed violence amongst youth. Since 2019, an increase in violence amongst youth has become apparent. Rotterdam and its surroundings have been the scene of this violence more than once. Although national and local campaigns have been launched and research has been done in Rotterdam and the Netherlands, much information on the scope, cause, and background of this issue among the youth in Rotterdam remained inconclusive.

Social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitter encourage their users to scroll endlessly through content. But this doesn't automatically imply that there is evidence of 'doom scrolling', in which the user's endless scrolling has a negative effect on their well-being. That's what Nastasia Griffioen argues, who has conducted research into smartphone use among young people; she will receive her PhD from Radboud University on 12 September.

Increased dissatisfaction with government policies and low institutional trust, but mutual solidarity and neighborhood cohesion remain high and stable. This is evident from the fourth measurement of the impact of COVID-19 on social cohesion in the Netherlands. This follow-up study was conducted by researchers from Risbo and Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, commissioned by ZonMw, and led by Prof. Godfried Engbersen.

In the last 60 years people became more cooperative, even in small steps. People did not become less cooperative over time, as one should expect, because of the dominant belief our society is becoming more individualistic. An international team of scientists, led by Giuliana Spadaro from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and Mingliang Yuan from Anhui Agricultural University found no evidence for a decline in cooperation over a 61-year period (from 1956 to 2017) involving more than 63,000 American participants.