Research

Analyzing News Consumption and Engagement Habits of Digital Audiences in Regard to Political and Pandemic-Related Articles Over a 10-Day Period

Executive Summary

This study analyzed the following research questions:

• How does day of the week impact how audiences engage with coronavirus-related news content?

• How does consumer demand compare to the number of articles published each day about Trump vs. Biden?

To analyze these questions, data was collected over the course of 10 days using Parse.ly in order to assess readers’ digital news consumption habits in regard to political and pandemic-related content. In order to answer the aforementioned research questions, Parse.ly was used to track traffic (measured in page views) and consumer demand (measured in average daily views per article). Despite finding no observable relationship between day of the week and the consumption of coronavirus content, results of this study did reveal a recent overall decrease in the demand for coronavirus-related coverage. This study also found that Trump continues to receive more media coverage than Biden, even as consumer demand for content about the president-elect increases. A discussion detailing possible reasons for the general decrease in coronavirus news content as well as probable explanations for Trump’s continued accrual of press coverage is included in this report. If journalists seek to have breaking news content – specifically related to health – reach audiences, they should account for the possibility of information overload, according to this study. This study also found that the effects of the incumbency bonus on media coverage persist, even for lame duck politicians who have limited time left in office.

Introduction

The chances for future pandemics are increasing. Epidemiologists insist that it is becoming more likely than ever that new diseases will develop, existing diseases will evolve into more deadly and virulent strains, diseases will multiply more quickly and that these diseases will continue to become resistant to human efforts to control them (Dodds, 2019). The state of modern society has increased the conditions under which new diseases can develop. Factors such as more intimate contact with wildlife, dense livestock production, and great losses of biodiversity are all predicted to result in the increasing occurrence of deadly global viruses (Dodds, 2019). 

For this reason, it is critical to evaluate and determine how people seek and/or avoid information and how those decisions affect their behavior, particularly because the news cycle – which is characterized by the disintermediated diffusion of information – alters the way that information is consumed and reported on (Cinelli et al., 2020). Increased interconnectivity enables the rapid spread of misinformation, which becomes a matter of life-and-death when trying to manage virus outbreaks. The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies the significant influence of misinformation in the current media landscape. 

While there are massive benefits due to the ever-increasing variety of sources and formats of traditional and digital media to consume news content, this new, information-rich environment has the potential to cause overload and news fatigue to users (Ahmed, 2020). Ironically, a common user response to exposure to mass quantities of information and news content is to “switch off” and avoid the barrage altogether. As such, it seems necessary to inquire about whether the constant deluge of information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic has had any measurable effect on how users consume and engage with news.

This study analyzed how day of the week influences digital news consumption and engagement habits of consumers regarding coronavirus-related content. For the purposes of this study, consumption and engagement habits of coronavirus-related content were measured by tracking demand and daily traffic, or the total views across all types of devices, of trending topics on Parse.ly. Though page views are not the most reliable metric, this study used total views across devices, simply due to the limited capabilities of Parse.ly. This study specifically drew inspiration from the content and user factors of the Digital Engagement Model, which posits that digital engagement is partially dependent on a user’s environment, available time and interests. Global situational interest regarding news about the coronavirus pandemic has likely generated engagement from users who might not typically interact with health-related content. 

This study analyzed, interpreted, and considered the following questions: How does timing – and more specifically, day of the week – influence the digital news consumption and engagement of coronavirus content? More specifically, does engagement with coronavirus content decline as the week progresses (i.e. as the weekend nears)?

Additionally, this research sought to evaluate and compare fluctuations in consumer demand for media content about an incumbent president to his successor following Election Day. This study will be evaluating why Donald Trump specifically has had such a large impact on both the way the media covers news as well as the rate at which audiences consume it. Over the course of his presidential term, Trump has become known for rejecting professionalization and courting controversy by favoring provocative pronouncements, distorted facts and an “off-the-cuff” speaking style (Wells et al., 2016). These strategies, among a variety of factors, have caused Trump stories to consistently garner lots of audience attention, and for better or for worse, profitability has a substantial impact on what content news publications decide to publish and push. This study aimed to evaluate the influence that Trump has had on the news media and re-examine the lifespan of the incumbency bonus, which asserts that parties and politicians in government receive more media coverage than those of the opposition (Hopmann, de Vreese & Albæk, 2011).

This research used average daily views per article to measure consumer demand for and engagement with a variety of content. Audience engagement online can be defined as the extent to which website visitors are interested or actively involved in content. During periods of time closely preceding or following shifts in political power, interest and consumer demand for news about those involved tends to skyrocket (Hopmann, de Vreese & Albæk, 2011), meaning that changes in news coverage are more likely to be driven by changes in the political system than the media market. Tracking fluctuations in demand for media content about the current president versus his successor helped to provide further insight into the longevity of the incumbency bonus. 

With all that said, this study considered the following question: Does media content about the current president, Donald Trump, garner greater demand and engagement than content about the president-elect, Joe Biden? 

Background on Digital Audiences

To thoroughly analyze the consumption and engagement of coronavirus-related content, as well as political content, it is essential to evaluate the backgrounds and habits of the digital audiences contributing this data. In a study designed to analyze the influence of the coronavirus on news consumption, the credibility given by citizens to the media, and citizens’ ability to detect fake news, it was found that audiences are reverting back to relying on legacy media (Casero-Ripolles, 2020). The study also found that audiences who did not typically consume news media prior to the pandemic have been increasingly engaged with coronavirus content (Casero-Ripolles, 2020). Survey data collected in late March and early April 2020 to document how people in six countries (Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.) accessed news and information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the global pandemic found that “news use is up across all six countries, and most people in most countries are using either social media, search engines, video sites, and messaging applications (or combinations of these) to get news and information about coronavirus” (Nielsen et al., 2020). It was also found that people with lower levels of education were less likely to rely on the news media for information regarding the pandemic, and more likely to rely on social media and messaging applications for information (Nielsen et al., 2020). Additionally, there were significant political differences in audience levels of trust in news organizations and the government across the six countries. In the U.S., people on the political left were found to trust news organizations substantially more than the government, and people on the political right were found to trust the government substantially more than news organizations (Nielsen et al., 2020). Notably, a large portion of consumers have shifted to acquiring information regarding the latest number of positive coronavirus cases from government sites (Chauhan & Shah, 2020). 

With all this in mind, it is imperative to continue studying patterns of engagement with coronavirus-related content, in order to best understand where audiences are primarily seeking health-related news and to prevent the dangerous spreading of misinformation. Another reason that highlights the importance of the ongoing study of coronavirus-related media consumption is the possible mental health effects of those engaging with such content. “Greater COVID-19 media consumption is associated with greater psychological distress,” according to Stainback, Hearne & Trieu (2020), and over 27% of people agree that their usage of social media has increased significantly in response to the coronavirus pandemic (Chauhan & Shah, 2020). 

In terms of all content, but especially politically-focused content, online audiences have a tendency to acquire information adhering to their worldviews and political leanings, ignore dissenting information, and form polarized groups with shared beliefs (Cinelli et al., 2020). Audiences aren’t the sole entity to blame for this habit, though. Social networking sites bring politically like-minded individuals together, and “in this environment, citizens are only exposed to information that reinforces their political views and remain isolated from other individuals with opposing views, in part due to the filtering effects of ranking algorithms that generate filter bubbles” (Persily & Tucker, 2020). Generally, social media algorithms serve as ranking and sorting systems that aim to provide users with content similar to that which they’ve engaged with before. Algorithms are part of what make social media so addictive – user preferences and habits are catalogued and reinforced, essentially rewarding individuals by providing them with content that reflects their pre-existing viewpoints and biases. When it comes to politics, interactions between candidate communications, social media, partisan media, and news media combine to shape the amount of audience attention delegated to each candidate (Wells et al., 2020). This study aimed to analyze media coverage and audience demand for content about the current president, Donald Trump, and the president-elect, Joe Biden, in order to pinpoint notable trends following Election Day.

Method

Design/Sample

For this study, a content analysis was conducted to assess users’ digital news habits in regard to political and health-related articles. Parse.ly was utilized to collect data related to all traffic (measured in page views) and consumer demand (measured in average daily views per article). 

Analytics Data

Parse.ly was used to track engagement and demand for select stories over the span of seven days. Data was collected from the topics section of Parse.ly and the stats section when comparing the topics of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The metrics used to track engagement were page views and average daily views per article. These metrics were chosen because knowing how many page views an article has received can be telling about audience interest about certain topics, how well webpages are optimized for search and what the user behavior trends are. The metric of average daily views per article can more specifically help in understanding users’ patterns of engagement and effective strategies for increasing and sustaining traffic to a webpage over time. 

While Parse.ly Analytics measures content performance on thousands of websites, Parse.ly Currents collects and anonymizes the data from those sites to create a unique picture of the relationship between content production and attention, according to their website. On Parse.ly, content production metrics include publish date, category, topic, site, site size and story. To analyze attention, Parse.ly manages the following metrics: view date, traffic source, traffic source category, device, market area and U.S. state. Because of the scope of information collected, data from Parse.ly can be trusted to be reliable.

Procedures

To collect the following data about article page views related to the coronavirus as well as page views and demand related to content about the topics of Joe Biden and Donald Trump for this study, Parse.ly was used. The currents section of the Parse.ly website was utilized to collect this data because currents track content production and attention, meaning that they are useful in seeing exactly how people are responding to content at any given time. 

To collect the coronavirus-related engagement data, the Topics section on the Discover page of the website “currents.parsely.com” was accessed and downloaded at the same time (4 p.m. EST) every day for a total of 10 days straight, in order to assess how engagement and interaction with coronavirus topics would fluctuate over the course of a week. Data was collected for over a week, despite the research only being concerned with the period of seven days, because it was crucial to discover if there was any observable pattern in engagement over the time period of a single week, and the extra three days would confirm or refute this. Analysis of this data will include an investigation into why certain patterns of engagement with coronavirus-related content did or did not arise over the course of a week. This analysis will draw upon not only the data ascertained but will also reflect upon pre existing literature about relevant topics.

To collect data about the current and future presidents, the topics of Donald Trump and Joe Biden were compared side-by-side using the website “currents.parsely.com” which has the ability to track and measure traffic of two topics and provide an in-depth comparison of available metrics. This data was accessed and downloaded at the same time (4 p.m. EST) every day for a total of 10 days straight, in order to assess how engagement and interaction with content about each politician fluctuated as Inauguration Day nears. The data collected will be evaluated, and demand for content about each politician will be noted and compared in the Results and Discussion sections. Evaluating patterns in this data will allow for the support or rejection of this study’s hypothesis – that content about Donald Trump, the incumbent president, will receive more engagement than that of Joe Biden. Relevant evidence from the data collected and the relevant literature will be cited to provide clarity for either outcome.

Results

For 10 consecutive days, data was collected on Parse.ly in order to track the most-read topics. Any most-read topic unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic was not recorded on the chart below, titled, “Most-Read Topics Across 10 Days, According to Parse.ly Data.” The two most-read topics that were consistently viewed across the period of data collection were “Coronavirus disease 2019” and “COVID-19 pandemic.” Other popular most-read topics across the period of data collection included: “Infection”, “Pandemic”, “Health”, and “Vaccine.” “Moderna” and “Pfizer” and “Dose” became increasingly popular in the later stages of data collection, after it was announced that several pharmaceutical companies had approved vaccines. Also around this time, the topics of the “American Medical Association” (abbreviated in the chart as “AMA”) and of the “Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices” (abbreviated in the chart as “ACIP”) became increasingly popular. The results are summarized in the chart below.

Demand for the pandemic-related topics, “Coronavirus disease” and “COVID-19 pandemic” was recorded from November 18, 2020 to November 27, 2020, using Parse.ly. The data shows a general downward trend in demand for coronavirus content over the course of 10 days. Days with heightened demand for coronavirus content were sporadic, with the highest demand for the topic “Coronavirus disease” appearing on November 20 and November 24 and the highest demand for the topic “COVID-19 pandemic” appearing on November 19 and November 21. 

Average demand for the topic “Coronavirus disease” was 687 over the period of 10 days, and the median value of demand was 691. Demand for this topic had a range of 384. Average demand for the topic “COVID-19 pandemic” was 580 over 10 days, and the median value of demand was 583. Demand for this topic had a range of 385. The results are summarized in the graph below.

The topics of Donald Trump and Joe Biden were input and saved on Parse.ly for a data comparison across the span of 10 days. The average number of articles published about Trump and Biden were measured from November 18, 2020 to November 27, 2020, in order to capture possible weekly recurring trends in content production about the current president and the president-elect. Overall, Trump received more media attention than Biden but also saw a more drastic decline in the average number of articles per day following the announcement of election results. The average number of articles per day about Biden declined over the course of 10 days as well, but this decline was not as significant. The average number of articles about Trump decreased 28% from November 18 to November 27. Notably, the average number of articles about Trump and Biden exhibited similar trendlines. For example, when the number of articles about Trump decreased, so did the number of articles about Biden. 

The 10-day average number of articles about Trump was roughly 13,540. The 10-day average number of articles about Biden was roughly 8,636. The range for the average number of articles about Trump per day over the course of 10 days was 4,290, and the median was 13,671. The range for the average number of articles about Biden per day over the course of 10 days was 2,377, and the median was 8,918. The averages and medians, or measures of central tendency, support the fact that there were more articles published about Trump each day. The ranges display a greater disparity in the average number of articles published about Trump over time. The results are summarized in the graph below.

The topics of Donald Trump and Joe Biden were input and saved on Parse.ly for a data comparison across the span of 10 days to acquire the following data. Average daily views per article about Trump or Biden were collected in addition to the average number of articles published about Trump or Biden each day (see above). Average daily views per article represent audience demand and engagement with content, while average number of articles per day represent media attention and coverage of specific topics. 

While there were more articles per day about Trump than Biden, the articles about Biden consistently received more views than those about Trump. The 10-day average for daily views per article per day about Trump was 902, and the median was 937. The 10-day average for daily views per article per day about Biden was 1,230, and the median was 1,288. These measures of central tendency confirm that there is greater demand for content about Biden than Trump. The results are summarized in the graph below.

The chart below was sourced from Chartbeat Blog’s research update, “Audience Engagement with the U.S. election candidates” (Wiggins, 2020). The research update revealed that “Biden fared comparatively better by Engaged Time on articles that mentioned him more than 50% of the time, surpassing Trump on that metric on certain days” (Wiggins, 2020). This trend was most notable following each debate and the town hall events. Biden showed more engagement when it came to content that was primarily about a certain candidate, perhaps suggesting that the president’s advantage in overall engagement could be driven more by the number of articles than by the depth of reading and/or engagement from the audience. The results are summarized in the chart below.

Discussion

This study analyzed the following research questions:

• RQ1: How does timing – specifically, day of the week – influence how audiences engage with coronavirus content?

• RQ2: Does media content about the incumbent president, Donald Trump, garner greater demand and engagement from consumers than content about president-elect, Joe Biden?

This section will review the key findings related to these two questions, and provide possible explanations as to why there was a recent decrease in demand for coronavirus-related coverage, despite the pandemic continuing to heavily impact everyday life. This section will also highlight potential reasons why Trump continues to receive more media coverage than Biden, even as consumer demand for content about the president-elect increases.

One potential reason for the decline in demand for coronavirus content could be information overload. The current situation has been designated as an “infodemic,” which is a portmanteau of the words “information” and “epidemic.” An infodemic is an excessive amount of information – typically false or unverified – about an issue or major crisis, that often makes finding and/or achieving a solution very difficult (Cinelli et al., 2020). While living in such an information-rich environment does have its perks, the diversity of perspectives and news formats, the ubiquity of news media, and the sheer volume of information also hold the potential to quickly fatigue and overwhelm consumers (Ahmed, 2020). “People are feeling debilitated by information overload and unsatisfying news experiences… And the more overloaded or unsatisfied they were, the less effort they were willing to put in” (Ahmed, 2020). Audiences have been ceaselessly inundated with coronavirus content since February 2020, and I personally think that exhaustion has set in, leading to a decrease in engagement. 

A second possibility for the decline in demand for coronavirus content could be the time that the data sample was collected. Being that this was an election year, the focus might have been primarily on politics during the weeks of data collection. Election day was on November 3 and the incomplete results were announced on November 7. Data collection began only 11 days later, as President Donald Trump continued to stoke a media frenzy by falsely claiming election fraud, despite having no evidence to support his claims. At this point, President-elect Joe Biden had also started to publicly outline his plans for his first 100 days in office and hint at individuals he was considering picking to fill his cabinet. Among all of this – and also the Thanksgiving holiday – it’s possible that coronavirus-related news was simply put on the back burner, which would account for the decrease in both number of articles and demand.

In terms of news coverage of Trump versus Biden, this study found that the media publishes significantly more content about the incumbent president than the president-elect. This study also displayed a recent increase in demand for content about Biden, as well as deeper engagement (i.e. more engaged time in minutes) from those who chose to consume content primarily about Biden than those who engaged with content primarily about Trump. 

So, why is Trump still receiving more media attention than Biden, despite the fact that he lost the election and that Biden-centric content is in high demand? There are a couple possible reasons. 

First, populist leaders like Trump have a tendency to go out of their way to court press attention, while simultaneously criticizing (and being critiqued by) the very same organizations (Wells et al., 2020). And this symbiotic relationship is mutually beneficial to Trump and to the press – while Trump receives increased coverage and an elevated platform, the press is rewarded with plenty of clicks. Thus, a positive feedback loop is created, as Trump stories prove to be fruitful sources of clicks, and clicks serve as the metrics guiding news production (Wells et al., 2016). Second, there is the effect of the incumbency bonus, which posits that parties and politicians in government receive more media coverage than those of the opposition (Hopmann, de Vreese & Albæk, 2011). This phenomenon is only logical, of course. The incumbent is still in office, actively taking part in national political affairs, and the media must cover these decisions and events, which involves discussing the incumbent politician. Being that Trump is still in office, it makes sense that he continues to receive ample media coverage, regardless of the demand for content about Biden.

Limitations

Like any research, this study has its limitations. One limitation of this study was the time constraint placed on the collection of data through Parse.ly. The data collection period was only 10 days long, which is a very short amount of time when trying to track and evaluate digital engagement patterns. Ideally, I would want to collect this data everyday for years, in order to observe longer-term trends and changes in audience engagement. By recording such a small sample, my data and conclusions are highly susceptible to external factors. For example, election events may have impacted my coronavirus research and the coronavirus may have impacted my political research.

Another limitation of this study was the time of year it was conducted. Data was collected the week before and the week during the Thanksgiving holiday, and there was a noticeable effect around this time on demand and engagement with political and pandemic news content. It’s plausible that audiences were consuming news at a lower rate due to being busy with travel, family, or holiday preparations. The data collected from Parse.ly showed a clear decrease in demand and engagement across both topics during this time, and being that the study only collected data for 10 consecutive days, the impact of the holiday on results could have been significant. 

A third limitation of this study was a lack of prior research studies on the topic of the impact of the coronavirus on the media and on news consumption. While there were a handful of prior studies, there was not an abundance of them, presumably because of the relative newness of the topic. This was slightly problematic, considering this study relied so heavily on evidence and support from prior research to justify the findings of the data collected, though I imagine this is an issue that all researchers face when exploring newer fields of study and/or newer topics.

Conclusions

In brief, this study concluded the following:

• No observable trends or patterns of digital engagement regarding day of the week and the consumption of coronavirus-related news content exist. However, Parse.ly research suggests an overall decrease in the audience demand for coronavirus content.

• Incumbent President Trump consistently receives more media coverage than President-elect Biden, while content about Biden is in higher demand from audiences, according to data collected using Parse.ly. 

Application for Journalists

This study’s findings are extremely relevant to journalists today. As mentioned previously, the COVID-19 pandemic has been designated as an infodemic, which is defined as a situation where extreme amounts of false or unverified information about an issue or major crisis circulate, often leading to a fragmented social response. One of the causes of an infodemic is information overload and consumer fatigue, which can lead to the careless spread of misinformation. Unfortunately, studies have found that misinformation spreads just as fast (if not even faster) than reliable content (Cinelli et al., 2020). Knowing this, journalists must commit themselves to publishing only the highest standard of work and also to slowing the spread of “fake news” by making reliable content available on various platforms and in various easily-digestible formats. 

Journalists should also work to develop a greater awareness of how profitability incentives can elevate populist leaders and, in some cases, even sway election outcomes. Unlike celebrities or “normal” people, populist leaders, like Trump, tend to gain leverage from coverage in the press, even if that coverage is largely negative in tone (Wells et al., 2020). For populists, the positive impacts of increased visibility overpower the negative impacts of the tone of the media coverage, essentially meaning that all press is good press (Wells et al., 2020). By rewarding the “novel, unusual, and conflictual, which populists have become expert at providing” (Wells et al., 2020), the media reinforces unprofessional behavior and elevates individuals who are unfit to hold public office into power. While the media is meant to be unbiased, providing essential information while also serving a watchdog role, it must be acknowledged that this institution does not operate in a vacuum. The media is at a critical crossroads where it must find a way to remain profitable without disturbing the balance of democracy. 

References

Ahmed, Sameera Tahira. “Managing News Overload (MNO): The COVID-19 Infodemic.” Information, vol. 11, no. 8, 25 July 2020, p. 375., doi:10.3390/info11080375.

Azari, Julia R. “How the News Media Helped to Nominate Trump.” Political Communication, vol. 33, no. 4, 8 Sept. 2016, pp. 677–680., doi:10.1080/10584609.2016.1224417.

Casero-Ripolles, Andreu. “Impact of Covid-19 on the Media System. Communicative and Democratic Consequences of News Consumption during the Outbreak.” El Profesional De La Información, vol. 29, no. 2, 2020, doi:10.3145/epi.2020.mar.23.

Chauhan, Vilas, and Heer Shah. “An Empirical Analysis into Sentiments, Media Consumption Habits, and Consumer Behaviour during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak.” ResearchGate, 8 May 2020, pp. 353–378., doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.32269.15846.

Cinelli, Matteo, et al. “The COVID-19 Social Media Infodemic.” Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 1, 6 Oct. 2020, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-73510-5.

Dodds, Walter. “Disease Now and Potential Future Pandemics.” The World's Worst Problems, 3 Dec. 2019, pp. 31–44., doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30410-2_4.

Hopmann, David Nicolas, et al. “Incumbency Bonus in Election News Coverage Explained: The Logics of Political Power and the Media Market.” Journal of Communication, vol. 61, no. 2, Apr. 2011, pp. 264–282., doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01540.x.

Kousha, Kayvan, and Mike Thelwall. “COVID-19 Publications: Database Coverage, Citations, Readers, Tweets, News, Facebook Walls, Reddit Posts.” Quantitative Science Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, 4 Sept. 2020, pp. 1068–1091., doi:10.1162/qss_a_00066.

Nielsen, Rasmus K, et al. “Navigating the ‘Infodemic’: How People in Six Countries Access and Rate News and Information about Coronavirus.” Politico, 15 Apr. 2020, pp. 1–32.

Persily, Nathaniel, and Joshua A. Tucker. Social Media and Democracy: the State of the Field, Prospects for Reform. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Stainback, Kevin, et al. “COVID-19 and the 24/7 News Cycle: Does COVID-19 News Exposure Affect Mental Health?” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, vol. 6, 2 Nov. 2020, pp. 1–13., doi:10.1177/2378023120969339.

Wells, Chris, et al. “How Trump Drove Coverage to the Nomination: Hybrid Media Campaigning.” Political Communication, vol. 33, no. 4, 8 Sept. 2016, pp. 669–676., doi:10.1080/10584609.2016.1224416.

Wells, Chris, et al. “Trump, Twitter, and News Media Responsiveness: A Media Systems Approach.” New Media & Society, vol. 22, no. 4, 2 Apr. 2020, pp. 659–682., doi:10.1177/1461444819893987.

Wiggins, Jon. “Audience Engagement with the U.S. Election Candidates.” Chartbeat Blog, Chartbeat, 4 Nov. 2020, blog.chartbeat.com/2020/11/03/2020-election-data-update/?utm_campaign=Newsletter+%E2%80%94+Customer+Facing+Version. 

The Difficulty of Portraying Generosity in "The Blind Side": The Fight Between Altruism and the "White Savior" Trope

Some might argue that The Blind Side by Michael Lewis is a book about football. Others might argue it is a book about success stories; about the intersection between talent and circumstance. I believe it is meant to be a book about generosity and the unexplainable pull which certain people feel to one another that evades both logic and reason.

Within Lewis’s book, though, there are several plot points that can be interpreted in one of two distinct ways: Each instance either serves to demonstrate pure altruism in a world that is in dire need of genuine kindness, or to reinforce the subjugation of the ethnic minority in order to champion white civility. The Blind Side, it seems, struggles to find its footing in this area, leading readers to wonder: is this a book which is meant to inspire the best in humanity or a book which seeks to further promote the white savior narrative?

Criticisms of the book explain that it is “structured within a colonial narrative of the white savior in that a good white person (Leigh Anne Tuohy) rescues a poor black child (Michael Oher) from poverty and ignorance by bestowing the gift of civilization upon him.” The story itself is written semi-chronologically so as to emphasize the humble beginnings from which Michael Oher emerges before going on to become a successful football player at the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, on a full football scholarship. By detailing the unfortunate circumstances Michael grew up in, Lewis dramatizes the “heroism” which Leigh Anne Tuohy and her family display in taking in and eventually adopting Michael and that those at the Briarcrest Christian School display in granting him admission to the institution, despite his subpar grades.

Early in the book, “Big Tony”, an adult who allows Michael to sleep at his house for months, drives his son, Steven, along with Michael, to Briarcrest Christian School, in hopes of obtaining a better education for the both of them. Public schools in Tennessee tend to be of poor quality, particularly for non-white children, due to the de facto color barrier which exists, so for a decent education, private schools are one of the only options. After Briarcrest administrators meet with Michael, it quickly becomes clear that he is not the kind of student which the school typically admits. But, the Briarcrest football coach, Hugh Freeze is insistent on Michael’s admittance to the school; ““This wasn’t a thing you did for the Briarcrest football team, Freeze had said, this was a thing you did because it was right! Briarcrest was this kid’s last chance!”” Though Freeze claims his insistence on admitting Michael is his moral Christian duty, it isn’t until after he has laid eyes on Michael, taking in the boy’s enormous size, that he begins to actually campaign for him to be admitted. To Freeze, Michael is nothing more than an asset to the school’s football team, but Lewis frames the coach’s behavior as being righteous, rather than selfishly strategic, further contributing to the white savior narrative. Notably, “Big Tony”, who is not white, does not get accredited for any of Michael’s later successes in the way that Freeze does, despite the purely altruistic contributions that he makes to Michael’s life.

During Briarcrest’s Thanksgiving Break, Leigh Anne Tuohy sees Michael walking in shorts through the snow in hopes of staying inside of the school to keep warm. With tears in her eyes, Leigh Anne picks up Michael in her car in order to purchase warmer clothes for him, claiming, ““God gives people money to see how [they’re] going to handle it.”” Leigh Anne, like Freeze, cites religion as the reason for her generosity, but does so in a self-righteous manner, belittling others who have money and do not “handle it” in the same way that she does. Leigh Anne sees Michael as someone who needs saving and considers herself his savior, ultimately establishing a hierarchy where she is above him. Lewis goes on to describe the pair’s time shopping together, saying, “[Leigh Anne] couldn’t explain why just then, but she was drawn to [Michael] and felt the urge to do things for him. He was just this big ol’ kid who could have been mean and scary and thuggy, but everything about him was soft and gentle and sweet-natured. With him she felt completely safe; even if he wasn’t saying anything, she sensed he was watching out for her.” Because Michael does not fit the stereotype of “deviant black masculinity” or play the role of the “Bad Black Man”, Leigh Anne finds him endearing. She is inclined to help him because he has replicated white norms, and in her eyes, has “earn[ed] assimilation” into her civilized, nonviolent, white world. She feels “completely safe” with him, despite not knowing him in the slightest, because he complies with her commands without question. In this instance, “whiteness emerges as an iron fist in a velvet glove, the knightly savior of the dysfunctional ‘others’ who are redeemable as long as they consent to assimilation and obedience to their white benefactors of class, capital, and compassion.”

Later on in the book, shortly after Michael has officially moved in with the Tuohy family, he decides that he wants to obtain a driver’s license. An unexpected roadblock is faced when Leigh Anne and Michael realize that there is no evidence of Michael’s existence- he does not have a birth certificate, Social Security card, or even an official school ID. Leigh Anne desperately pleads with the man at the Social Security office until he relents to printing Michael a new card. The man claims there is “no such person as Michael Jerome Oher” and Michael prompts him to try “Michael Jerome Williams”, which works. This moment is symbolic of the recreation or rebirth of Michael. He is now recognized by society as a person, but has had to change his name to achieve this feat. And without Leigh Anne, obtaining his own identity would not have been possible. And again, the theme of the white savior arises. With a pretty, wealthy, white woman by his side, Michael is able to do things that he has never done before and would not be capable of doing alone due to his race and socioeconomic status. Though it is (probably) not meant to be metaphorical, it is fitting that the process of Michael obtaining his own personal identity (and therefore, his own rights) was contingent upon a person of “higher” status fighting for them.

During Michael’s senior year, dozens of scholarship offers from elite football colleges roll in, and Leigh Anne begins to worry that he does not have the breadth of life experience necessary to live alone. She starts to take Michael to restaurants to try entire menus-worth of new foods, educates him in what she deems is “important” music and art, and even works to reshape his vocabulary. Essentially, “Leigh Anne Tuohy was trying to do for one boy what economists had been trying to do, with little success, for less developed countries for the last fifty years. Kick him out of one growth path and onto another. Jump-start him. She had already satisfied his most basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and health care… Now she was moving on to what she interpreted as his cultural deficiencies.” As her adoptive child, Leigh Anne wants Michael to not just live in the white community but thrive in it, as her biological children do. Though the sentiment is nice, the implications of it are not. The choice to use the phrases “less developed” and “deficiencies” reveal Leigh Anne’s (and for that matter, Lewis’s) attitudes towards African American culture as inferior to white culture. By comparing Michael’s knowledge to “less developed” countries and labeling him as being culturally deficient, Leigh Anne and Lewis encourage the “interpretation of non-white characters as essentially broken, marginalized, and pathological, while whites emerge as messianic characters that can easily fix the non-white pariah with their superior moral and mental abilities.”

Reviews of The Blind Side are largely positive, despite the book’s issues. Interestingly enough, some of the reviews of The Blind Side are actually similarly problematic. An example of this can be found in The New York Times’ “Sunday Book Review” of The Blind Side. The author of the review, George F. Will, demonizes Michael’s biological mother and fails to attribute a name to “Big Tony”, who is a very influential figure in Michael’s life. Additionally, Will writes that the Tuohys were the driving force of “salvation” and “redemption” in Michael’s life, framing his success as being solely the result of their charity.

Though Lewis may have originally intended for his book, The Blind Side, to serve as an inspiring story of generosity and triumph, I believe that it ends up simply relegating Michael Oher’s difficult journey into a romanticized narrative where the white savior trope is again the star.

Bibliography

Denzin, Norman. "The Savior Trope and the Modern Meanings of Whiteness." Temple University Press. Accessed May 16, 2019. http://tupress.temple.edu/uploads/book/excerpt/2263_ch1.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

Oca, Jeffrey Montez De. "White Domestic Goddess on a Postmodern Plantation: Charity and Commodity Racism In The Blind Side." Sociology of Sport Journal 29, no. 2 (2012): 131-50. Accessed May 16, 2019. doi:10.1123/ssj.29.2.131.

Will, George F. 2006. “The Next Big Thing.” The New York Times. The New York Times. November 12, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/books/review/Will.t.html.

Online Dating and the “Market Metaphor”

Metaphors help to bring out the “thisness of a that” or the “thatness of a this”, according to writer of “A Grammar of Motives”, Kenneth Burke. Burke emphasizes that when faced with complex ideas, metaphors allow us to fall back upon what we know, our schemas, in order to make what we do not know less foreign.

Perhaps this is why modern society inextricably links dating and sex to consumption through the use of economic terminology as well as advertising- both of which reflect a culture rife with materialism and objectification- in order to explain the online dating phenomenon.

Because love and intimate relationships are complex ideas or concepts, they are frequently analogized, meaning that we see an overwhelming number of metaphors for each to improve clarity, explains Leslie A. Baxter, author of “Root metaphors in accounts of developing romantic relationships”, which appeared when first published in May of 1992 in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

In “Root metaphors in accounts of developing relationships”, Baxter claims that there are over 300 conventionalized English expressions concerning love, “including, among others: love as a journey (e.g. ‘We’re at a crossroads’); love as a force (e.g. ‘There were sparks’); love as a nutrient (e.g. ‘I can’t live without him’); love as unity (e.g. ‘We were made for eachother’); love as heat (e.g. ‘She set my heart on fire’); love as fluid in a container (e.g. ‘She was filled with love for him’); love as a hidden object (e.g. ‘He found love’); love as an opponent (e.g. ‘She was overcome by love’); love as valuable commodity (e.g. ‘I gave her all my love’); love as game (e.g. ‘She plays hard to get’); love as living organism (e.g. ‘My love for her will never die’); love as disease (e.g. ‘He’s love-sick’); and love as machine (e.g. ‘Something went wrong’).” The way love is personified is dependent upon the person describing the feeling-- perhaps less emotional people would be prone to characterize love as a machine, while those more romantic people might be so inclined to characterize love as heat or chemistry. In addition to the aforementioned concepts of love, another isolated concept of love is love or “relationship as investment”, used to display the time and effort that spouses put into their relationships in order to “reap mutual benefits”. These benefits might include things such as financial security, intimacy, sex, and companionship, among other things.

This economic perspective of love displays a more practical side of the emotion, “viewing it in cost-benefit terms” (Baxter, 1992), emphasizing a recent shift in society’s way of thinking. Now more than ever, people demand instant gratification or the quickest fix, which supports the “Courtship as a Market Phenomenon”, or the idea that stresses “social exchange in which each individual attempts to maximize their own utility,” according to Mara B. Adelman and Aaron Bernard, Northwestern alumni and co-authors of the research paper, “Market Metaphors For Meeting Mates”, which was published in 1990. The increased demand for instant gratification, perhaps sparked by the increase in technology, has exacerbated the problem of the utilization of others only for one’s own benefit.

A more positive connotation of the exchange metaphor is the utilization of it to emphasize the idea that most successful relationships function on the basis of compromise and a coordination of each partner’s wants and needs (Baxter, 1992). This viewpoint mimics the idea of supply and demand, as one partner might demand or ask for something, in which case, the other partner would supply it if possible, in order to keep the relationship running smoothly, much like a market or business would. This business-like exchange is not only metaphorical but also literal, as partners share tangible things like financial resources as well (Adelman & Bernard, 1990).

To illustrate the differences between face-to-face dating and online dating, I must touch upon the differing schemas between them, with there being a higher rate of “market metaphors around consumption,” like the reference of potential partners as a package as well as selling (or to “sell oneself”) than romantic metaphors, such as “creating magic,” when participants described their experience using an online matchmaking service, as opposed to meeting someone offline (Ellison et al., 2010). Though the “characterization of individuals as products” might feel dehumanizing to some, the market metaphor truly puts the idea of online dating into perspective, as the practice relates heavily to online shopping, or even shopping in general.

This comparison of online dating to shopping has become so blatant that online dating has even been coined as “relation-shopping”, or looking for a perfect mate, as opposed to “relationshipping”, which is, or would be, the building of a successful relationship through communication and offline interaction. The mentality of relation-shopping encourages a culture of laziness, as people are so focused on finding, or shopping, for the perfect product/relationship online instead of proactively developing a relationship by dedicating time, effort, emotional connection, and communication to a “product” that might be less than perfect at first glance.

Heino, Ellison, and Gibbs’s analogy of the online dating scene to a market with the comparison of people to “products” seems to work surprisingly well, effectively characterizing the modern practice as fundamentally materialistic, and the people as greedy and superficial, continually swiping or searching for a better profile despite having several viable profiles in front of them.

Likewise to the market metaphor, or “relation-shopping”, we are able to see the same sort of logical intuiting in an example seen in “Marley’s (2007) work on metaphors of identity in dating ads… [finding that] the use of the word “kitten” to describe a desirable female implied a younger woman with characteristics similar to a young cat, such as cuteness or dependence” (Ellison et al., 2010). It is through this example that we are able to fully grasp how, often, saying things in the most roundabout of ways can paint the clearest of pictures and imply certain ideas that could and would not have been communicated through a more literal explanation.

Both the market metaphor as well as the kitten metaphor bring us full circle, back to the idea of the usage of metaphor in order to bring out the “thisness of a that” or the “thatness of a this”, showing us perhaps why the online dating phenomenon is described in seemingly every sense except for the literal.

The market metaphor stresses the concept of online dating sites or apps as “places where people go to ‘shop’ for potential romantic partners and to ‘sell’ themselves in hopes of creating a successful romantic relationship,” an idea further “highlighted by the layout and functionality of online dating websites, which evoke e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com” (Ellison et al., 2010). By utilizing the terms buying and selling to explain the online dating phenomenon, it is clear that society views the process of searching for a mate, as well as the process of courtship, in terms of “marketing” and “consumption”, two concepts that imply the primary goals of mate-seeking are individualistic and focused solely on the attainment of personal fulfillment (Adelman & Bernard, 1990). It is also important to take note of the mirrored formats of dating sites and e-commerce sites, as traces of the latter appearing in the former are able to tickle the subconscious and impact the online dating experience, possibly without some users even realizing this.

Yet another reason why the market metaphor remains salient is because of the “availability of a large pool of people, which one participant referred to as greater ‘inventory’, as well as the ability to search for specific characteristics,” citing that this “made online dating feel like an effective and efficient option because it seemed to increase their chances of meeting a potential partner simply because they were exposed to so many individuals”, according to Rebecca Heino, Nicole Ellison, and Jennifer Gibbs in their manuscript “Relationshopping: Investigating the market metaphor in online dating”, published in 2010. Having a larger pool of people allows online daters to more easily “invest” in multiple people, therefore greatly increasing their chances of finding a compatible life partner through the simple concept of probability.

This modern relationship strategy of “not putting all of your eggs into one basket” (Proverb) is, funnily enough, mirrored in billionaire Warren Buffet’s essential investment tips for those less knowledgeable investors. Buffet states that spreading your “eggs” between multiple baskets reduces the possible risk, while spreading them between too many baskets, or over-diversifying, can lead to a hampering of returns (Curtis, 2017). Again, we are able to see the intersection of economy and romance, shown through analogous financial terminology.

Going more in depth about the issue of over-diversification as mentioned in the previous paragraph, we are able to see the psychological flaws in online dating as well. While there may be a greater statistical probability of obtaining a relationship through online dating, having the option of such a large pool of people can be surprisingly detrimental to daters. “People are spoiled for choice… It’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory,” claims Christoph Lutz, writer of the documentary “Love at First Swipe? Explaining Tinder Self-Presentation and Motives.”

The issue with there being such an abundance of people, and therefore, such an excess of choice, is shown in psychology’s “paradox of choice”, which states that the “intuitive assumption [that more choice is better] turns out to be an illusion- the more options we have, the less likely we are to make a decision at all,” says Dr. Liraz Margalit, writer of the 2014 article “The Psychology of Choice”, which appeared in Psychology Today.

The paradox of choice has been displayed countless times in media, but is best displayed, in my opinion, in the novel “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. In her novel, Plath philosophizes upon the paradox of choice, saying, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet… and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Though an extreme description of the paradox through metaphor, Plath touches upon the idea that when faced with too much choice or opportunity, we are bound to end up unable to choose. The threat of choosing one choice and neglecting to choose another, perhaps better, choice is universally known to be stressful, even when deciding between something so trivial as what to eat for dinner or what shirt to wear to class Tuesday. When this paradox is applied to life choices of greater consequence, such as employment or marriage, making the decision to choose and stick with one option can sometimes seem virtually impossible, as shown by Plath’s dilemma and subsequent inability to choose “a fig”.

Though, dating didn’t always used to be this way- saturated with choice and the freedom to choose. Nathan Bailey, author of the article “What is dating, what is courtship? | Dating vs. Courtship: Part 1” addresses this by explaining how dating today is different from courtship, a practice described as the traditional “Christian” style of romantic pursuits.

Bailey emphasizes the young shelf life of modern dating, citing it as being less than a century old, extremely young in comparison to the practice of courtship, which has been around since the mid-1700s. Sparked by the Enlightenment era and philosophers like John Locke, courtship-- or at least the style of courtship most of us picture when we think about courtship (think Jane Austen novels)-- did not become prevalent until roughly 300 years ago (Umstattd Jr., 2015).

The Enlightenment era brought with it not only new ideas about liberty and justice but also of love, marriage, and family. As doctors became increasingly aware of the impact of healthy relationships on a person, specifically men (Having your wife hate you isn’t healthy-- Shocker.), the idea of marrying for love, as opposed to just mutual benefit, arose, subsequently changing the dating landscape forever. No longer did love come after, as a result of marriage, but rather, marriage was the byproduct of an already loving relationship.

Through this brief history, it becomes increasingly clear that economics and romance have always been associated with one another, but it has been the context of this association between variables (for lack of a better word) that has changed over time. The context has gradually shifted from an emphasis on the common, expected economic practices required of relationships, such as the paying of a dowry or acquisition of shared property, to the usage of economic language surrounding relationships, as evidenced through terms like “selling oneself” and “investing in someone”.

Though I first hypothesized, [similar to (Napoli, 1999)], that the intermingling of economic language and intimate relationships signaled an increasingly vapid and vain society, I now believe, due to the extensive research I have done, that the use of the market metaphor to characterize relationships and/or love does not indicate a greedier, more consumptive society, but rather, effectively displays and highlights important consumerist values, specifically those of materialism and competition.

Different language and phrasing are things that make it possible to determine certain core values of a society, and as a post-industrialist society, America has fostered a foundation strong enough to support primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary industries, displaying the importance of economic progress to the nation as a core value. As a nation that focuses heavily on service work as well as the production and exchange of goods, it is unsurprising that terms from these practices should filter into other sectors of our lives, such as our intimate relationships. As our nation’s industries continue to expand and evolve, it is inevitable that our language will evolve as well.

Analogizing intimate relationships to the market metaphor allows for the easy conceptualization of an extremely complex topic. Love is a universal emotion, yet, despite the vast breadth of stories and plays and poetry on it, struggles to be completely understood and defined in a singular way. Our society is in love with the idea of love-- we all want it, and we all want to understand it, too.

References

McLeod, S. A. (2014). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Vaillant, G. E. (1994). Ego mechanisms of defense and personality psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103(1), 44-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.103.1.44

Morrill, E. F., Brewer, N. T., O'Neill, S. C., Lillie, S. E., Dees, E. C., Carey, L. A. and Rimer, B. K. (2008), The interaction of post-traumatic growth and post-traumatic stress symptoms in predicting depressive symptoms and quality of life. Psycho-Oncology, 17: 948–953. doi:10.1002/pon.1313

Lutz, Christoph. “Love at First Swipe? Explaining Tinder Self-Presentation and Motives.” Mobile Media &Amp; Communication, www.academia.edu/27241898/Love_at_First_Swipe_Explaining_Tinder_Self-Presentation_and_Motives.

Barkho, Gabriela. “Analysis | Why Are Millennials Putting off Marriage? Let Me Count the Ways.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 June 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/06/06/why-are-millennials-putting-off-marriage-let-me-count-the-ways/?utm_term=.7e2cd56376f6.

Dack, Jessica. “The.” The Odyssey Online, The Odyssey, 27 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/the-almost-relationship-in-the-information-age.

Solomon, Alexandra. “What Love in the Information Age Asks of Us.” NewHarbinger.com, 6 Feb. 2017, www.newharbinger.com/blog/what-love-information-age-asks-us.

Hertlein, Katherine M., and Markie L. C. Blumer. The Couple and Family Technology Framework : Intimate Relationships in a Digital Age, Taylor and Francis, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umdcp/detail.action?docID=1319013.

Martin, Lauren. “The Dark Side Of The Information Age: If You Like A Man, Stay Off His Facebook.” Elite Daily, Elite Daily, 11 Sept. 2017, elitedaily.com/dating/sex/like-man-stay-facebook-page/642031. Manson, Mark. “Sex and Our Psychological Needs.”

Manson, Mark 23 June 2017, markmanson.net/sex-and-our-psychological-needs.

Baxter, L. A. (1992, May 1). Root Metaphors in Accounts of Developing Romantic Relationships. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265407592092006

Bernard, A., & Adelman, M. B. (1990, January 01). Market Metaphors For Meeting Mates. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/6999/volumes/v17/NA-17

Bernard, A., Adelman, M. B., & Schroeder, J. E. (1991, January 01). Two Views of Consumption in Mating and Dating. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/7211/volumes/v18/NA-18

Heino, R. D., Ellison, N. B., & Gibbs, J. L. (2010, June 9). Relationshopping: Investigating the market metaphor in online dating. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265407510361614

Margalit, L. (2014, October 03). The Psychology of Choice. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/behind-online-behavior/201410/the-psychology-choice

Plath, S. (1963). The Bell Jar. Heinemann.

Bailey, N. (2012). What is dating, what is courtship? | Dating vs. Courtship: Part 1. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from http://polynate.net/books/courtship/what-is-courtship.html

Curtis, G. (2017, June 06). Think Like Warren Buffett. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/buffett-style.asp

Jr., T. U. (2015, May 30). The 4000 Year History of Courtship by Thomas Umstattd Jr. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from http://www.thomasumstattd.com/2015/05/history-of-courtship/

Deconstructing the Interrogation Scene from "The Dark Knight"

Throughout the interrogation scene in The Dark Knight, the struggle between good and evil is personified through two archetypal characters, Batman and The Joker, in order to emphasize the overlap in morals between polarized ideologies as well as the concept that order is prone to chaos, and that without structure, the descent into chaos is inevitable.

To show the duality of good and evil, The Joker uses the collective “they/them” when describing the citizens of Gotham, essentially lumping himself and Batman in a category of their own. In doing so, The Joker reinforces the established sets of “morals” that he and Batman have, while pointing to the ever-changing morals of the “civilized people,” which seemingly depend on circumstance or causal events, claiming that, “When the chips are down, these civilized people… they’ll eat each other.”

Another way The Joker and Batman are separated from the “civilized” people is literal in this scene, as the two are in a closed-off room with several officials standing outside watching through a two-way mirror, safe from any harm. The interesting thing about this type of mirror is that a two-way mirror has one transparent side and one reflective side, meaning in interrogation rooms, criminals have their image reflected back at them while those officials outside the room are able to observe. It also means that one side of the mirror is well-lit while the other is dark. The significance of this is the two-sided mirror is the interplay between light and darkness, or symbolically, good and evil. The lit side is actually the criminal’s side, while the darkened yet transparent side is the officials’. While the transparent side allows the officials to be watchdogs, it does not force them to evaluate their own actions the way that the reflective side of the mirror might, leading one to perhaps question the honesty (and literal) transparency of government officials.

Returning to the idea of circumstance and the disparate morals of Batman and The Joker as compared to others, one must pose the question inquiring what worldly things or events impact the decisions one makes? And secondly, is it possible for all of the decisions one makes to be completely moral or immoral?

One might venture to say that the common person would choose “good” over “evil” if given the chance and circumstances to easily do so, yet, when life gets complicated, these same people often neglect their morals in lieu of convenience. As The Joker mentions, people are only “as good as the world allows them to be”, and this is apparent in the way that the city of Gotham uses Batman for its own agenda, which is to eradicate crime and restore order. In the wake of rising levels of crime and violence, it is a more attractive option for the city of Gotham to enlist the help of a willing participant rather than risk the lives of their own people, such as the police force. Despite the city’s exploitation of Batman’s generous crime-fighting, there are threats for his arrest anyways, and he is thought to be a separate entity, or a “freak”, in The Joker’s words.

Though the city and the mayor’s intentions are honorable, the way they go about fulfilling these goals is not. Herein lies a prime example of the disparity between action and intent. Though the intent of the city is honorable, the city’s actions and manipulation of Batman lack the same moral standing and conviction with which their thoughts and beliefs do. And this is often where personal discomfort arises, as people begin to realize their conscious beliefs and values do not reflect upon their actions. This cognitive dissonance forces people to internally decide whether they should change their beliefs to match their actions or their actions to match their beliefs. Usually, because it is an easier task, people choose the former, despite the solid logic of the latter.

Throughout the scene, we see the definition of “justice” shift substantially, from being something that is upheld with righteous and moral tactics to something that is violently enforced and done so only once the conflict has become personal. The lighting and scenery help to characterize this descent into moral degradation effectively through the use of intense overhead lighting and overexposure. The utilization of bright lighting in this scene displays the honesty and raw emotion of both characters--there are no shadows to hide in or escape to-- and this is key in making the interrogation seem authentic.

In addition to the lighting, the camera angles are shot in extremely tight close-ups in which The Joker tends to bob in and out, causing the focus to blur quite a bit, while Batman sits so still he seems almost statuesque. The Joker seems almost untrackable and unstoppable in this way-- he cannot be stopped nor can he be slowed-- much like the nature of chaos itself. On the other hand, Batman seems very controlled. From his clean, sleek attire to the way he composes himself, Batman is the perfect picture of restraint and order until The Joker at last gets under his skin enough to provoke the spontaneous violence displayed in this scene.

This moment is a turning point in The Dark Knight, and arguably the most important scene in the entire film, as one is finally able to witness how a simple change in circumstance (threats towards a loved one) completely changes the way a seemingly in-control character can spiral into a state of disarray. From this scene, one can perhaps begin to understand the mechanics and workings of human nature. Though it’s a desirable first thought to blame the antagonist, The Joker, for throwing Gotham into chaos, perhaps one must first consider: If given the traumatic childhood and circumstance The Joker lived through, how would they themselves react? So truly, there is no fault to be found in the presence of chaos other than in the completely random and spontaneous events of the universe which spur individuals into anarchistic action, not the other way around.

Wave after wave: an analysis of "Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements"

“Third wave” feminism is perhaps the black sheep of its parental movements, first wave and second wave feminism. First wave feminism focused on suffrage and second wave feminism on equal rights in terms of education, housing, employment and protections under the law. Third wave feminism, on the other hand, focused more broadly on being inclusive of all races, genders, etc. and in doing so, lost a clear political agenda, causing developing feelings of anomie for its followers. While having multiple, discrete feminist movements has allowed for the passage of varied legislation over time, the divide has also caused friction between groups that are, at their roots, trying to achieve the same goals. Understanding the separation between these groups is key to understanding how different brands of feminism came to fruition and why certain feminist movements, such as the movement led by NOW, were more successful and long-lasting than others.

The first wave of feminism began prior to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and continued on until the mid-1960s. This first major feminist movement grew and changed with the precipitation of the events of the time, such as the ratification of the women’s right to vote and an attitude of post-war indifference shown by society towards women who had so heavily aided the war effort itself. Whilst “equal rights feminists” simply desired rights and treatment equivalent to that of their male counterparts, “social justice feminists” desired more than sex equality, but rather, equality in multiple areas of injustice, such as income and race inequality. “What women judged as fair between the sexes changed dramatically during and after World War II,” as women continued to function as caregivers and breadwinners for their families. Though, some women were removed from the workplace altogether as the men they’d been covering for arrived home, seeking the employment they’d had before leaving. Amid this upheaval, “midcentury social feminists criticized what can be called the ‘masculine mystique,’ or the valorizing of the qualities associated with masculinity and the male sphere of employment.” The masculine mystique disadvantaged women at work and at home, as masculine qualities were valued above feminine qualities, reinforcing a pre-existing gender hierarchy. One of the main, though less tangible, goals of social justice feminists was “ending the unequal valuing of gender differences, not ending the difference itself.” To work to change ingrained values was to work to change society and its own structures, which its toxic ideals and values built and continued to support. As lofty as these goals seemed, social justice feminists would continue to persist, displayed by actions such as their annual reintroduction of an “equal pay for comparable work” bill to Congress for upwards of fifteen years to help women and minorities alike.

The second wave of feminism, or the women’s liberation movement, took place mostly from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. This movement sought to improve upon the first wave of feminism by being more inclusive of race but overlooked the divide between low-income women and others. The women’s liberation movement involved much introspection, which birthed the practice of consciousness-raising groups that worked to answer questions such as “‘Who benefits from sexism? Are men in general the enemy? How does sexism relate to and interact with other forms of discrimination?’” By asking questions such as this, women began to realize their problems were not personal but social problems, and this allowed to create an increasingly collectivist, unified feel in terms of group ideology. This collectivist ideology manifested itself into the slogan, “The personal is political”, which “encapsulated the idea that many problems previously considered individual and private were created by social structures.” Like first wave feminists, second wave feminists realized “sexism was learned” and could be unlearned- if the structure built by society could be deconstructed. An unrealistic movement stemmed from this need to secede from male-dominated institutions, and sexuality, specifically the “choice” of lesbianism was brought into the conversation and utilized as a political tactic. Unlike other feminist movements, the separatist movement encouraged withdrawal from male institutions, rather than the changing and reshaping of them. Cultural feminism, a byproduct of separatist feminism, aimed instead to “replace male superiority with female superiority, on the grounds that women were a kinder, more cooperative sex, and that if women ruled, the world would be freer of conflict and other ills.” What cultural feminism did not take into account, though, were the differences between individual women. The earlier concept, the “feminine mystique”, did not imply that all women shared the same qualities, and cultural feminists made the mistake- the oversight- of assuming they did. “By the early 1970s, however, the various streams of feminism converged, in a unity created in part by the virulent anti-feminist backlash.” This convergence was displayed in groups like NOW, which were more diverse than women’s liberation groups and supported women of all classes, which had been an issue previously. Though younger feminists were “allergic to hierarchical organization and leadership”, NOW consistently proved that some hierarchy within an organization could be beneficial.

The younger women included in the third wave of feminism “grew up taking for granted many of the social, political, and economic gains achieved in the decades prior to and surrounding their births” and “learned the history of feminism through a critique of its past,” rather than through firsthand experiences. Third wave feminists did hone in on certain weaknesses of their mothers’ feminist movement (the second wave) such as its “ overwhelming whiteness and inability to create an interracial movement, as well as its hostility to popular commercial culture” but perhaps focused a bit too heavily on what they deemed were flaws in the previous movements, leaving their own with a decidedly ambiguous agenda: to have “a broad vision of feminism and an inclusive call for participants.” Though the third wave was inclusive, aiming to represent multiple races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds, it lacked clear, substantive goals, such as the push for certain legislation, which the other waves had had. Though, this cannot be blamed on the young women themselves but perhaps on the developing nature of feminism. “Feminism has become ubiquitous—everywhere—as its ideals and goals have been woven into every aspect of contemporary life, yet feminism can seem hard to locate—nowhere—in its diffuse and fragmented focus. We are also living in a time of intense contradictions: while women have made tremendous gains since the 1960s, we still live in a “half-changed world,” to quote Generation X journalist Peggy Orenstein.” Despite achievements made, sexism and gender discrimination have manifested into entities which are no longer easily pinpointed, making the process of eliminating them extremely difficult.

What is evident though, in this post-third-wave era, is progress. From the Me Too movement that recently arose to combat sexual assault and unequal power dynamics in several industries, to the record number of women being elected into the House of Representatives, it is clear that a new wave is cresting. For historians, recognizing the complexity of the feminist movement(s) is paramount to understanding a key humanitarian ideal, summarized well by Hillary Clinton in a speech she gave at the United Nations World Conference on Women: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”

Bibliography

Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. 2014. Feminism Unfinished : A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements. First. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.

A portrait of Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, or Dorothy Dix

As a youth, Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer could be found traversing her family’s extensive library, cutting her teeth on classics like Dickens or Austen. Though, Elizabeth also had an appetite for adventure, converse to this quiet curiosity that she harbored. Elizabeth’s engagement in activities deemed “boyish” for the time perhaps foreshadowed the entirety of her life, primarily her discontent with the familial gender roles she was expected to fill.

Elizabeth, the eldest of three, was born into a privileged family, but was not so blessed to lead a privileged life. Her mother, Maria Winston, died when she was young, prompting her father to remarry a woman named Martha Gilmer early on. It was this second marriage that would precipitate, perhaps, the most dysfunctional relationship Elizabeth would endure throughout her lifetime.

Soon after her father married, Elizabeth married her stepmother’s brother in 1882. This match was neither a romantic nor a joyous one and was fueled primarily through obligation and familial pressures. Though her partner, George O. Gilmer, had many promising business ideas, he lacked the follow-through necessary to will these various ventures into existence, though his many attempts did indeed leave a monetary mess which Elizabeth had to clean up. In addition to causing monetary distress, George was mentally unstable and made Elizabeth’s life wildly unpleasant, filling years of marriage with emotional and physical abuse. Elizabeth inevitably suffered a mental breakdown in 1893, after 11 years of marriage. Despite this, she would remain married to George for another 36 years until his death.

This breakdown prompted Elizabeth to return to her family, though, and then to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, at her doctor’s suggestion. Despite being spurred by unfortunate circumstance, Elizabeth’s move to the Gulf Coast would prove to be the greatest turning point of her life.

Once at the Coast, Elizabeth took up in a cottage where she would soon experience the most fateful of encounters with her neighbor, Mrs. E.J. Nicholson, the owner of the New Orleans Picayune. As the two became acquainted, Elizabeth timidly decided to show Nicholson a piece of her own writing. Nicholson proceeded to immediately buy the story for (what was at the time) a decent sum of $3 and enthusiastically exclaimed, “Why, child, you can write!”

Soon thereafter, Nicholson introduced Elizabeth to the managing editor of the Picayune, Major Nathaniel Burbank, a man who had served as a lieutenant in the Civil War, and would go on to teach her everything she’d need to know about journalism.

At the Picayune, Elizabeth took the odd jobs of reporting that no one else wanted, and this dedication to the mundane propelled her career forward. She created a pen name, Dorothy Dix, and began to write for the Sunday paper of the Picayune. Burbank soon named a new weekly column for Dix to write, called “Sunday Salad”. It was a hit, and Dix’s columns and stories began to be reprinted in other publications.

One of the places Dix’s writing was reprinted was in Hearst’s New York Journal. Dix was offered a position at the Journal, but her loyalties to Burbank and the Picayune held her back initially. The Journal refused to let Dix go that easily, though, and continued to badger her to write stories for them, which she eventually relented to. Her love for the Journal grew, and Dix eventually got the Picayune’s blessing to go.

Initially, Dix’s annual salary at the Journal was around $5,000. Rapidly, it was increased to $90,000 a year, more than any male or female writer at the time. For the Journal, Dix wrote high-profile stories, covering wild figures, such as prohibitionist, Carrie Nation and murderers like Harry Thaw. Dix’s work on these stories was easily distinguishable from that of other reporters at this time, though, which gave her (and her editor, for that matter) an edge over the competition. As a woman, Dix proved to be more adept at depicting the human aspects of otherwise “hard” news than her male (and even female!) competitors. In many of her pieces on criminal trials, readers found themselves feeling sympathy both for the victim and the accused. This power of Dix’s to accurately portray both sides often swayed the decisions of juries, sometimes even saving innocent people from being unjustly incarcerated.

Dix wrote these sensational trial stories for the Journal whilst continuing her column on the side, and at peak workload, would often find herself writing roughly 90,000 words a week. Unsurprisingly, she eventually tired of the demanding workload and joined the Wheeler Syndicate, which permitted her to scale back on the number of columns she wrote per week and visit the Orient, a place she’d always dreamed of going. Though, she’d bring her husband along with her, a critical misstep that would be pinpointed as one of the several factors contributing to his significant -yet inevitable- mental decline.

Dix remained with the Wheeler Syndicate until 1923, when she switched to the Ledger Syndicate (and then in 1942 to the Bell Syndicate). For the Ledger Syndicate, Dix was sent abroad again and began to write her own travel books inspired by these trips. With the precipitation of this second scheduled trip abroad and explicit threats George had made towards her life, Dix admitted her husband to a mental institution.

In 1925, convinced her career was over and she’d soon retire, Dix published a philosophy about her life, advising readers on how to make the best of what they were given, a skill she’d honed quite a bit over her own lifetime. Though, unbeknownst to Dix, her career would span another 25 years.

The passing of Dix’s husband, father, sister, and closest confidante would occur over the years of 1929 to 1948, leaving Dix alone in the world, save for her brother, Ed, and his wife. Regardless of the great sadness that marked this period of time, these years also presented themselves as some of Dix’s most successful, marked by her reception of not only thousands of letters a day querying her for advice but also by the reception of a plethora of awards and honorary degrees. Dix amassed honors such as member for the board of directors for the Picayune, honorary degrees from Tulane and Oglethorpe University, and even “Dorothy Dix Day”, which was to be a celebration of her journalistic and humanitarian work.

Though Dix’s personal life was tragic, she explained that her work fulfilled her. Despite a journalistic double standard that existed during her time, Dix remained optimistic and sharp, writing scathing yet humorous social commentary about things like love and sex, which had not yet been thoroughly (or honestly) explored. In addition to creating a more open and honest dialogue, Dix prodded other women to try their hand at journalism, quipping sarcastically, “What is a newspaper, anyway, but the aggregate gossip of the world?”

Working her way up from a starting salary of $6 a week at the Picayune to having her writing appear next to journalistic titans like Ambrose Bierce accurately shows the progression of Dix’s career from one of obscurity to celebrity.

What is perhaps most notable about Dix, though, are not the positions nor the bylines she occupied, but rather, her ability to understand (arguably) the most complicated human emotion, despite never experiencing it for herself: love. The irony of this notion had not been lost on Dix, either. Throughout the loveless years, she stayed loyal to her husband in order to set an example for her readers, whom she often inspired with words of encouragement that urged them to mend their broken relationships. Unlike many, Dix practiced what she preached, essentially sacrificing her own happiness in order to bring others joy.

So, in the end, when Dix passed away on December 16, 1951, after 21 months in the hospital at the ripe age of 90, she was only married to her work, bringing to mind a pertinent sentiment she’d voiced earlier: “What a terrible thing it is to have nothing but money, and [to see] how little money really buys.”

References

Belford, Barbara. Brilliant Bylines. A Biographical Anthology of Notable Newspaperwomen in America. New York, NY: Columbia Univ. P., 1986.

Benbow-Pfalzgraf, Taryn. American Women Writers : A Critical Reference Guide: From Colonial Times to the Present. Vol. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale Division of Cengage Learning Inc, 2000. http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=80448&site=ehost-live.

Brady, Patricia. “Literary Ladies of New Orleans in the Gilded Age.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 33, no. 2 (1992): 147-56. http://www.jstor.org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/stable/4232936.

Dix, Dorothy. “Which? Shall a Girl Be an Old Man’s Darling or a Young Man’s Slave?” The San Francisco call. (San Francisco [Calif.]), 26 Sept. 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1913-09-26/ed-1/seq-10/>

J, A. F. "In the Public Eye." The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health (1870-1911) 118, no. 9 (09, 1905): 278. https://search.proquest.com/docview/137918557?accountid=14696.

Johnson, Eleanor. “The woman behind the advice.” (1953, Jan 11). The Sun (1837-1992) Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/539041290?accountid=14696

Mundt, Whitney R. "Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (18 November 1861-16 December 1951)." American Newspaper Journalists, 1926-1950, edited by Perry J. Ashley, vol. 29, Gale, 1984, pp. 113-120. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 29. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/JMVAZV323352104/DLBC?u=umd_um&sid=DLBC&xid=a763b290. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.

Signorielli, Nancy. Women in Communication: A Biographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Anorexia Nervosa and the Assessment of Mate Value

The current research explores how women with anorexia nervosa evaluate their mate value and how this evaluation impacts their matching potential, or in other words, their adherence to the matching hypothesis. The overarching thesis is that women with anorexia will adhere to the matching hypothesis despite their disordered perceptions of themselves. In the first section of the paper, I will discuss background research on mate value, as well as the perceived level of controllability of certain oft-looked for mate characteristics in females. In addition, I will discuss research on how intrasexual competition (ISC) gives an evolutionary perspective on anorexia. Then, I will discuss the current hypothesis in more detail, along with proposed methods to this hypothesis. Finally, I will discuss implications and conclusions from this research.

Previous research has shown that humans typically form more successful intimate relationships with those who are roughly as attractive as they are (Taylor et. al, 2011), confirming the matching hypothesis. When looking for mates, humans tend to focus on mate value (also known as “sexual market value”) in order to determine their own compatibility with potential mates by assessing the possession of certain, desirable characteristics which indicate a potential mate’s reproductive success. Characteristics focused on when assessing mate value vary between the sexes, due in part to evolutionary psychology and the concept of paternity uncertainty, a term which conceptualizes the idea that women will always know for certain that a child is their own while men will never be able to know with complete certainty that the child they are raising is theirs (Buss, 1996). It is because of this uncertainty, evolutionary psychologists suggest, that men are inclined to sleep with more partners and spread their seed, while women are likely to be choosier while selecting a partner, as it is evolutionarily advantageous for them to focus on a singular partner who can provide resources to potential offspring. These different evolutionary drives are the reason that women are increasingly likely to focus on mate characteristics like wealth or status, while men are more likely to focus on characteristics like youth or facial attractiveness.

In one study, the perceived controllability (defined as the degree to which a trait or characteristic can be intentionally made to change for the better with some effort and exertion of willpower) women felt they had over traits that men value in mates compared with men's controllability perceptions regarding traits that women value in men was found to be lower than that of males’ perceived controllability. In this study, researchers hypothesized that women’s perceived controllability over mate value would be lower than men’s perceived controllability, as the physical-biological traits most highly valued by men while mate-seeking tend to be less controllable than the status-relevant characteristics valued by women (Hamida et. al, 1998). The researchers administered self-report questionnaires that inquired about different traits and behaviors. The questionnaires asked participants to rate the importance of each trait or behavior in a long-term partner of the opposite sex and then rate the perceived degree of personal control over each trait. Researchers manipulated the traits most important to each sex when searching for mates (the independent variable) using a questionnaire in order to assess the degree of controllability each sex felt over the most preferred characteristics of the other sex when searching for mates (the dependent variable).

In another study, because of potential for confounding of variables such as anorexia and bulimia, a multivariate causal model with 11 separate variables and 15 separate measured interactions was created in order to distinguish separate effects of different underlying factors. I am going to focus on three of the 15 interactions the study measured, the hypotheses of which three say that higher personal mate value (the independent variable) will predict high ideal partner mate value (the dependent variable), higher ideal partner mate value (the independent variable) will predict higher body dissatisfaction (the dependent variable), and that higher personal mate value (the independent variable) will predict higher occurrences of anorexia (the dependent variable)(Faer et. al, 2005). Mate value is defined as the sum of traits perceived as desirable, representing either good or poor genetic quality, so personal mate value refers to how one evaluates their own mate value, while ideal partner mate value refers to the ideal partner one would choose for themselves. Body dissatisfaction is defined as the negative subjective evaluation of one’s own body weight and shape. This study was conducted by researchers as an observational study in which participants completed identical paper-and-pencil surveys, which included scales such as the Female Competition for Mates Scale, the Female Competition for Status Scale, the General Competitiveness Scale, and the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI). All variables listed above were operationalized through queries in questionnaire packets. Results of the study showed that personal mate value had a direct positive effect on ideal partner mate value, displaying that the higher one’s perceived mate value, the higher one’s standard will be for a long-term romantic partner, confirming the matching hypothesis. Personal mate value also had a direct negative effect on body dissatisfaction, meaning the higher one’s personal mate value, the lower their body dissatisfaction and vice versa. Lastly, ideal partner mate value had a direct positive effect on body dissatisfaction, indicating that higher standards for a romantic partner put more pressure on women to possess a thin, attractive body (Faer et. al, 2005).

In my own research, I hypothesize that women with anorexia (a feeding disorder where a restriction of energy intake relative to healthy requirements leads to a significantly low body weight within the contexts of age, sex, development, and general physical health) will adhere to the matching hypothesis (a principle asserting that humans typically form more successful intimate relationships with those who are roughly as attractive as they are) despite their disordered perceptions of themselves. In other words, I propose that the independent variable (having the feeding disorder, anorexia) will not cause a difference in the matching phenomenon of mates (the dependent variable). I predict that anorexic women will evaluate their personal mate values accurately (perhaps even inflating these values) and choose partners correlating to these mate values, despite holding unrealistic perceptions of their own bodies.

I will operationalize the independent variable by administering a questionnaire that will evaluate the assessments of participants’ personal mate values and compare these individual assessments of personal mate values to assessments of ideal partner mate values of the participants from a randomly selected group of males. The participants will be randomly selected from a population of clinically-diagnosed anorexic women. Then, I will operationalize the dependent variable by administering a second questionnaire to participants that will evaluate their individual ideal partner mate value. In comparing the perceived personal mate values of the participants, the ideal partner mate values of the participants as assessed by the males, and the ideal partner mate values of the participants, I will identify discrepancies, or results that challenge my hypothesis that despite body dysmorphia, anorexic women are able to accurately assess their own mate value as well as ideal partner mate values. I predict that the personal mate values of participants as assessed by participants will be nearly identical to the personal mate values of participants as assessed by males, and that participants’ assessment of ideal partner mate value will equate to both aforementioned values.

Implications and conclusions from this research could include a change in how anorexics are treated in therapy. With the understanding that anorexics are able to perceive themselves accurately, the question arises about whether anorexics maintain overvalued beliefs, rather than delusions in body size (Gadsby, 2017), meaning that, perhaps, a better treatment strategy for anorexic patients could be teaching them to adjust the way they use such labels as “fat” and “thin”. The incomprehensibility of anorexics’ perceptions might not arise from extreme standards for what constitutes “fat,” after all, but rather the misapplication of this label to the object under scrutiny, or the anorexic’s own body (Gadsby, 2017).

Lastly, the second study I discussed (Faer et. al, 2005) failed to use a population of clinically-diagnosed anorexics and/or bulimics of a diverse age range, and instead pooled a random sample of participants from the general population, which, as stated by researchers, could have, and likely did, impact the results and causal effects evidenced in the study. Future research could focus on completing a replication of this study using, instead, a clinically-diagnosed population, rather than participants from the general population, in order to gain more statistically significant results. Further future research could focus on the male anorexic population.

References

Buss, D. M. (1996). Paternity uncertainty and the complex repertoire of human mating strategies. American Psychologist, 51(2), 161-162. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.2.161

Faer, L. M., Hendriks, A., Abed, R. T., & Figueredo, A. J. (2005). The evolutionary psychology of eating disorders: Female competition for mates or for status?. Psychology And Psychotherapy: Theory, Research And Practice, 78(3), 397-417. doi:10.1348/147608305X42929

Gadsby, S. (2017). Explaining body size beliefs in anorexia. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 22(6), 495-507. doi:10.1080/13546805.2017.1401531

Ben Hamida, S., Mineka, S., & Bailey, J. M. (1998). Sex differences in perceived controllability of mate value: An evolutionary perspective. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 75(4). doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.4.953

Taylor, L.S., Fiore, A.T., Mendelsohn, G.A., Cheshire, C. (2011). “Out of My League”: A Real-World Test of the Matching Hypothesis. Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 37(7), 942-954. doi:10.1177/0146167211409947