It’s always a bummer when an experiment fails to reject the hull hypothesis. Fortunately I have pretty thick skin. Before my colleague and I eventually found the right stimuli we created plenty of wrong stuff. Feeling especially clever one day, I thought I would prove an interaction (with just the right framing conditions) using nearly identical manipulations:

I thought the presence of two sets of hands (instead of one) would be enough to induce people to think about their relationship with others. Whoops, I was wrong. But being wrong can help steer you toward what is right. Once the full study is published I’ll post the rest of the failed stimuli here…. I think research should be honest, and that it can be enlightening even (and especially) when it stumbles at first. -insert Edison quote on 10000 ways a lightbulb doesn’t work here-

As a semi-thesis at Fuller I wrote a paper on Secular Religion in the Showtime series Dexter. After a revision, I incorporated Charles Taylor’s concept of the Immanent Frame, and it was recently published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.

It’s possible we binged Dexter harder and faster than any other show, ever. Man it was so good… especially the first four season.

In one of my first journal articles, which can be found here, I explored the difference (in terms of self-reported loneliness) on CREATING social media (commenting, adding a new post, replying to someone, etc.) and CONSUMING social media (reading, browsing, scrolling, liking). I found no difference between the two, because BOTH were associated with decreased loneliness. This is congruent with other part of this study that found an increase in affinity for (and use of) social media was also associated with less loneliness.

Again, there are causality questions: are social media MAKING people less lonely, or are less lonely people just more likely to use social media more often, perhaps since they have more social connections? This is part of what I’ll be investigating with my dissertation, which draws heavily upon Media Multiplexity Theory (like this article). Perhaps, as the above image indicates, there are relevant differences in the specific platforms or devices people use for creating and consuming?

More can be found here:

Disturbing Photos of People Getting Sucked Into Their Phone Screens