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

    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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. Psychology

    Latin America defies cultural theories based on East-West comparisons

    Theories for how people think in individualist versus collectivist nations stem from East-West comparisons. Latin America challenges those theories.

  6. Science & Society

    Ukrainian identity solidified for 30 years. Putin ignored the science

    Social scientists have mapped Ukrainian allegiances shifting from Russia toward Ukraine since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

  7. Science & Society

    Nudge theory’s popularity may block insights into improving society

    Small interventions that influence people’s behavior can be tested. But the real world requires big, hard-to-measure changes too, scientists say.

  8. Science & Society

    Military towns are the most racially integrated places in the U.S. Here’s why

    The military’s big stick approach allowed the institution to integrate troops and military towns. Can the civilian world follow suit?

  9. Science & Society

    Why do some people succeed when others fail? Outliers provide clues

    A close look at outliers — people or communities that defy expectations — reveals what could be.

  10. Science & Society

    How missing data makes it harder to measure racial bias in policing

    Police officers rarely record nonevents, such as drawing a gun without firing. Failing to account for that missing information can obscure racial bias.

  11. Psychology

    Scientists should report results with intellectual humility. Here’s how

    Foregrounding a study’s uncertainties and limitations could help restore faith in the social sciences.

  12. Psychology

    Nostalgia may have bona fide benefits in hard times, like the pandemic

    Once described as a disease, nostalgia’s reputation is much improved. Researchers hope to develop mental health therapies that trigger these memories.