I checked 9 sociology journals on Monday, October 26, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period October 19 to October 25, I found 11 new paper(s) in 5 journal(s).

American Journal of Sociology

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change(As Told Through the Birth and Brutal, Blackened Death of Metal Music)
Bernard J. Koch, Daniele Silvestro, Jacob G. Foster
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American Sociological Review

What Do “Most People” Believe? Race, Gender, and the Generalized Other
Natasha Quadlin, Trenton D. Mize, Long Doan, Bianca Manago
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When people form beliefs in social life, they often calibrate their own thinking against what they anticipate “most people” think. Although prior research demonstrates the importance of these inferences, scholars have yet to examine who is best proxied by “most people.” Given persistent inequalities in U.S. society that advantage White men, as well as theories of cultural hegemony, we hypothesize that “most people’s” imagined beliefs are closely proxied by those of White men. We test these ideas using an original survey experiment conducted with a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults ( N = 2,089) in which we adapt 64 core items from the General Social Survey. Respondents were randomly assigned to answer these questions either from the perspective of most people, or from the perspective of designated race-gender groups. Contrary to our hypothesis, we find strong and consistent evidence that White men are not seen as standard-bearers for most social issues. Instead, perceptions of what most people believe are highly aligned with the imagined beliefs of White women. Importantly, this pattern emerges not because White women are seen as influential, but because White women are perceived as less extreme than other groups. We also observe variation across respondents, such that respondents tend to center their own race-gender group in conceptualizing most people’s beliefs (with White women typically close behind).

Social Forces

Religion and early fertility in the United States: changes during the second demographic transition
Jeremy E Uecker, Riley S Peterson
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We assess how changes in early fertility varied among US women with different religious characteristics, and how the associations between religion and early fertility changed across birth cohorts from 1950 to 1993. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth, we examine the timing of nonmarital, marital, and overall first births through age 24. Results from life tables and discrete-time event history models reveal that increases in early nonmarital first births were smaller among women who attended religious services more frequently in childhood, whereas early marital births declined at similar rates irrespective of childhood religious service attendance. Because early births became increasingly nonmarital across birth cohorts, women who attended religious services more frequently in childhood became less likely to have an early birth overall. Early fertility differences by religious tradition generally converged across cohorts, although women raised conservative Protestant continued to have higher likelihoods of early birth relative to women raised in other religious traditions net of controls. Women who were raised nonreligious remained similar to conservative Protestants in their likelihood of nonmarital childbearing across cohorts and became statistically similar to them in their overall early births in the latest cohort. Changes in early fertility during the second demographic transition therefore varied by religious background and reshaped the relationship between religion and early fertility.
Structuralizing the stress process: states as contextual determinants of stress and mental health
Rachel Donnelly, Zhe Zhang, Mateo P Farina, Blake W Powell
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Despite growing evidence that policy environments influence mental health, we have limited knowledge of how policy environments influence the stress processes that shape mental health. This study develops and tests a theoretical framework that structuralizes the stress process model by explicating how the state policy context (1) directly influences mental health, (2) indirectly influences mental health via stress exposure, and (3) mitigates the impact of stressors on mental health. This study uses nationally representative data from the Household Pulse Survey (2020–2023; n = 3,043,961) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS; 2015–2019; n = 1,989,932) merged with state policy liberalism data to consider how state policy liberalism—the ideological orientation of state policies—shapes mental health. Results show that more liberal state policies were associated with lower odds of probable depression, probable anxiety, and frequent mental distress and weakened associations between three focal economic stressors—income loss, financial hardship, employment status—and mental health outcomes. Moreover, the association between state policy liberalism and mental health was partially mediated by financial hardship. Findings differed slightly by age: mediation via financial hardship was more evident among older adults (65+), whereas the buffering of economic-related stressors was mostly among adults under sixty-five. Overall, this study demonstrates the importance of a structuralized stress process model for mental health research.
Leaving together: social influence and church decline
Elis Carlberg Larsson, Peter Hedström
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Church membership has declined across much of the Western world in recent decades. Existing research has identified individual characteristics that affect individuals’ likelihood of leaving their churches, but far less is known about how social interactions influence church decline. We examine (1) how exposure to others leaving the Church of Sweden affects individuals’ likelihood of leaving and (2) the aggregate membership dynamics generated by these micro-level processes. Using full-population register data from 2002 to 2023 and a dynamic matched-sample design, we estimate social-influence effects and assess how susceptibility varies with religious embeddedness, defined as the extent to which individuals are socially connected to other church members. We use these estimates to calibrate an agent-based simulation model linking individual behavior to aggregate membership decline. The results show that exposure to leavers increases individuals’ likelihood of leaving the Church, particularly among those with weak religious embeddedness. The simulations indicate that social influence contributed appreciably to the numerical decline of the Church of Sweden, while religious embeddedness moderated this effect. Social influence can thus amplify ongoing religious decline, while religious embeddedness attenuates this amplification.
Review of “Family Legal Vulnerability: How Immigration Policy Shapes the Lives of Latino College Students”
Edelina Burciaga
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Social Networks

Exponential-family random graph models in resident-healthcare provider networks: An application using data from long-term healthcare facilities in the United States
George G. Vega Yon, Chong Zhang, Karim Khader, Nai-Chung Nelson Chang, Lindsay D. Visnovsky, Alun Thomas, Candace Haroldsen, Kristina Stratford, Matthew H. Samore
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From lifestyle to citizenship: Social influence and political consumerism in egocentric networks
Xueying Zhang, Ting Wang
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Social Science Research

Postmaterial emancipative values emerge over time rather than solely through generational succession
Martin Schröder, Gordey Yastrebov
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A randomized trial of poverty reduction in the US and residential mobility to lower-crime neighborhoods
Abhery Das, Theresa L. Osypuk, Lisa A. Gennetian, Katherine Magnuson, Tim A. Bruckner
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Competing powers: An examination of the role of intra- and extra-household factors on fathers' leave take-up
Merve UzunalioÄźlu, Marie Valentova, Margaret O'Brien, Katherine Twamley
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