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. image collage of a woman looking pensively off into the distance surrounded by money, books, a rock climber, mountains and a statue couple
    Psychology

    Perspective-changing experiences, good or bad, can lead to richer lives

    Happiness or meaning have long been seen as keys to the “good life.” Psychologists have now defined a third good life for people leading rich psychological lives.

  2. pictures of bananas arranged in a row from brown to yellow to green
    Psychology

    Everyone maps numbers in space. But why don’t we all use the same directions?

    The debate over whether number lines are innate or learned obscures a more fundamental question: Why do we map numbers to space in the first place?

  3. grid of window air conditioning units outside a Manhattan building
    Science & Society

    How extreme heat from climate change distorts human behavior

    As temperatures rise, violence and aggression go up while focus and productivity decline. The well off can escape to cool spaces; the poor cannot.

  4. child removing a mask to eat lunch in a school cafeteria
    Health & Medicine

    6 answers to parents’ COVID-19 questions as kids return to school

    Universal masking in schools could prevent a bumpy 2021–22 schoolyear and keep kids, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated, safe, experts say.

  5. protester holds a sign that reads "I am not invisible"
    Science & Society

    How science overlooks Asian Americans

    Existing scientific datasets fail to capture details on Asian Americans, making it hard to assess the group’s overall well-being.

  6. stock image of a mother and daughter in the kitchen
    Science & Society

    The gap in parenting time between middle- and working-class moms has shrunk

    Some well-educated mothers are spending less time with their kids than before, while some less-educated mothers are spending more, a new study shows.

  7. image of people on a beach in Florida in spring 2020
    Science & Society

    Moral judgments about an activity’s COVID-19 risk can lead people astray

    People use values and beliefs as a shortcut to determine how risky an activity is during the pandemic. Those biases can lead people astray.

  8. two people on a snowmobile
    Science & Society

    50 years ago, scientists predicted steady U.S. population growth

    The country’s annual population growth rate, mostly stable since the 1970s, is now the lowest it’s been in over a century.

  9. woman and child at grocery store not wearing masks with man wearing mask
    Health & Medicine

    The CDC’s changes to mask guidelines raised questions. Here are 6 answers

    Experts weigh in on the U.S. CDC’s recommendation fully vaccinated individuals removing masks indoors and what it means for the pandemic’s future.

  10. two people washing their hands under a kitchen faucet
    Psychology

    Small bribes may help people build healthy handwashing habits

    Getting people to wash their hands is notoriously difficult. Doling out nice soap dispensers and rewards helps people develop the habit.

  11. Lego staircase
    Psychology

    People add by default even when subtraction makes more sense

    People default to addition when solving puzzles and problems, even when subtraction works better. That could underlie some modern-day excesses.

  12. parent working on a computer while child makes a funny face in the background
    Science & Society

    Parents in Western countries report the highest levels of burnout

    The first survey comparing parental exhaustion across 42 countries links it to a culture of self-reliance.