Write so you can write

The summer of 2007 was my first as a PhD student. I was tasked with developing a “summer paper,” and I latched on to something one of my advisors said in a lab meeting. He was agitated by a resolution the American Psychological Association had published calling for the retirement of all American Indian sports mascots.

To be clear, I don’t think Tony was a fan of these mascots. His beef was that the APA got out over its skis by asserting that the use of American Indian mascots perpetuated negative stereotypes. To his knowledge, no empirical study had demonstrated this. He was correct.

A worthy cause presented, I set out to conduct this absent “empirical study.” What ensued was a nine year journey, full of fits and starts, eventually leading to a publication grippingly titled “Activating Stereotypes with Brand Imagery: the Role of Viewer Political Identity.”

In this paper we demonstrated that exposure to these mascots had observable, negative effects across the general population, under certain conditions. That might seem like an obvious conclusion, and in many ways it is, but supporting that view with proof was not so easy. Publishing an academic paper that very few people read created the opportunity to write op-eds that reached millions, to play a small part in an important social change, and to use my position as an academic to do something meaningful.

I’ve been writing these weekly essays all summer. In them I try to present an idea that inspires you to think. These pieces are essentially hot takes and they are generally fun to write. They don’t take nine years.

I’m grinding on another paper this week…one that asserts that marketing played a role in some of the largest catastrophes in modern society: the opioid epidemic, the Financial Crisis, ultra-processed foods, social media, and fossil fuels. Another obvious premise that’s proving quite difficult to formally substantiate and get through the gauntlet of peer review.

My co-authors and I are on the cusp, but it’s a long game. Far too long.

That’s why I’m cutting this essay short so I can work on an academic paper few will read but that might just change the world in some small way.