CC Skills Social Science

Social science is a category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within that society. There are a myriad of branches, most of whom share a somewhat common introductory level of skill to the human condition, then quickly branch into their specialty. It will be rare, then, that a character has appreciable skill in "Social Science" unless they are generalist and/or social theorist.

The specific disciplines here are beyond the scope and capacity of Speculation to track and detail. Instead, the system provides guideposts for relative skill ratings and allows Refs and Players to shape character skill sets according to their own level of understanding and comfort level when designing their campaigns.

We will include key specific disciples that have seen regular use in real-world operations. Refs and Players have a great deal of latitude stepping beyond this list to detail what would be relevant to the character in a given campaign.

Political Science

 * Political Science details systems of governance, and the analysis of political activities, political thoughts, and political behavior. Political leaders are often the origin of – and target of – operations. Likewise intelligence analysts would have significant, potentially localized political science knowledge.

Psychology

 * Psychology is the science of behavior and mind (not to be confused with neuroscience, which studies the neural underpinnings of psychological phenomena ex. neural circuits). Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, as well as feeling and thought. It is an academic discipline of immense scope.
 * Psychology is applied everywhere from marketing to hostage negotiation to profiling suspects.

Sociology

 * Sociology is the study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution.
 * Sociology is another staple of intelligence analysis, often hand-in-hand with political science and geography, and often localized to particular regions, languages and cultures. Statistics is a common math complementary with Sociology.

Skill Rating Levels
Skill ratings follow the general curve for all skills.
 * 15: B.S. Graduate (possibly B.A. for sub-skills such as Communications).
 * 20: Lab assistant (or marketing research)
 * 25: Masters
 * 30: Corporate lab, working on PhD
 * 35: Doctorate or equivalent experience. Advertising/influence experts reside here.
 * 50: Post-doctorate, well-published and recognized
 * 60: Has been on the cover of science journals
 * 75: Has been featured in mainstream media