Three Responses to #BlackLivesMatter, Individual Evolution, and Institutionalized Racism (A Tribute to Sandra Bland) and My Replies (Below are three responses to my previous essay. My responses are in italics.) N.’s Response: Michael, I just read your paper with great interest. You make a number of important points. However, you say repeatedly that not every group needs to follow all of the 10 steps [required according to IndividualEvolution.org] to be successful. However,… Read More
#BlackLivesMatter, Individual Evolution, and Institutionalized Racism (A Tribute to Sandra Bland) “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” -Assata Shakur. While I am certainly not qualified to compose a proper tribute to Sandra Bland, I am qualified as a social psychologist to analyze some elements of #BlackLivesMatter in… Read More
Unintentional Sexism: The influence of language upon media propaganda, individuals and small groups Abstract While propaganda in the form of unintentional influence and the language of sexism has been independently researched, a review of literature reveals no such studies that link these two topics. In this paper, I link these two subjects to study the hypothesis that the language of sexism, embedded within media, unintentionally influences individuals and… Read More
Summary Analysis of Levy, Collins, and Nail’s A New Model of Interpersonal Influence Characteristics Summary. The authors present a reformulation of social influence theory as a taxonomy, decision tree, and glossary sorted through the basis of “Four Fundamental Interpersonal Influence Distinctions,” cognitive processing (conscious/unconscious), perceived intentionality, relative social status, and direction of change. (p. 715). The authors suggest that this reformulation suggests several directions for further research by asking… Read More
A Qualitative Methods Research Proposal (By no means is this complete, but I have to start someplace) I. Introduction. Intentional propaganda is the systematic propagation of ideas in a deliberate manner in order to encourage or instill a particular attitude or response and it is a broad and infinite subject. In other words, it is deliberate and intended. Here I… Read More
Reflections on Subjectivity, Role, Access, Ethics (This is something that I have considered since working for local network television news. The readings lately and the other students viewpoint on this have just codified what I have known all along. Now I just have to find a way to research with this in mind. Stay tuned.) Everyone has a bias, and objectivity… Read More
Reflections on My Driving Research Interests My driving research interests are more like lifelong passions, as any glance into one of several bookshelves of my library will reveal. However, those interests are usually distilled into a few topics that contain a myriad of additional subjects. I am fascinated by sociology in general, but I am especially fascinated by how people react… Read More