social science

American  

noun

1. the study of society and social behavior.

2. a science or field of study, as history, economics, etc., dealing with an aspect of society or forms of social activity.

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social science British  

noun

1. the study of society and of the relationship of individual members within society, including economics, history, political science, psychology, anthropology, and sociology

2. any of these subjects studied individually

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social science Scientific  

/ sō′shəl /

1. Any of various disciplines that study human society and social relationships, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, and history.

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social science Cultural  

1. The study of how groups of people behave, often in an effort to predict how they will behave in the future. The social sciences include economics, anthropology, sociology, political science, and aspects of psychology and history.

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Other Word Forms

• social scientist
  noun

Etymology

Origin of social science

First recorded in 1775–85

Example Sentences

In a paper recently posted on the Social Science Research Network, Erb spelled out these and other implications of the model.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 11, 2026

About the author: Mark Y. Rosenberg is a visiting scholar and lecturer with the UC Berkeley Department of Political Science and Computational Social Science.

From Barron's • Mar. 2, 2026

The findings were published recently in Social Science & Medicine.

From Science Daily • Dec. 19, 2025

Another study in Social Science and Medicine in 2013 concluded that “immigrant youth have a lower risk of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use relative to U.S.-born youth.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025

I worked for a solid year, and at the end of it I had a draft of my thesis: “The Family, Morality, and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813-1890.”

From "Educated" by Tara Westover

Related Words

• business
• finance